Twenty Talks to Teachers
Date: 2022-02-04T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Teaching; Teachers

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Title: Twenty Talks to Teachers

Author: Thomas E. Sanders

Release date: February 4, 2022 [eBook #67315]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The Teachers Co-operative Company, 1908

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67315

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS ***

This eBook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders 20th Anniversary.

TWENTY TALKS
—TO—
TEACHERS

—BY—
THOMAS E. SANDERS

AUTHOR OF
“Management and Methods,”
“Opening Exercises for Schools,”
“An Outline Guide to Civil Government,”
“Outline of Arithmetic,”
“The Sanders Report Card”

THE TEACHERS CO-OPERATIVE COMPANY
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Copyrighted, 1908
——BY——
Thomas E. Sanders

PREFACE.

Twenty Talks to Teachers is an epitome of some of the discussions used by the author in teachers’ institutes. It is not a profound book. It was not intended to be. Its object is to call the attention of young teachers to some of the every day conditions and problems which they must solve for themselves. The average term of service of teachers is little over three years, hence the great mass of teachers are young in service. A number of these have expressed themselves as being pleased with the discussions in institutes, especially so because they were plain homely talks rather than learned discussions. Perhaps these and others may appreciate them as well in the printed form.

No one is expected to agree with all that is said. If the topics are suggestive to young teachers, if the book helps them over a few of the hard places, if it sets them thinking on some topics, if the advice that is given proves sound, and if it should encourage a few to deeper study, better preparation and broader reading, it will have done well. Trusting that it may form the basis of profitable discussions in teachers’ institutes and meetings it is submitted to the great body of young teachers whose zeal, enthusiasm and optimism, has done so much in the past, is doing yet, and will continue to do so much for our schools and out of whose work must grow in the future a worthy profession of teaching.

CONTENTS

PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Am I Fit to Teach? | 7
CHAPTER II.
Shall Teaching be My Life Work? | 14
CHAPTER III.
Securing a Position | 21
CHAPTER IV.
Passing the Examination | 31
CHAPTER V.
Problems of the Young Teacher | 36
CHAPTER VI.
Grading a School | 44
CHAPTER VII.
Opening Exercises | 55
CHAPTER VIII.
The Spirit of the Teacher | 63
CHAPTER IX.
The Teacher’s Library | 70
CHAPTER X.
The Teacher Outside the Schoolroom | 80
CHAPTER XI.
Good Teaching Conditions | 90
CHAPTER XII.
Keeping Good Conditions | 96
CHAPTER XIII.
What Makes a Good School? | 105
CHAPTER XIV.
Ten Time Killers | 116
CHAPTER XV.
The Value of a High School Course | 125
CHAPTER XVI.
A Talk About Spelling | 132
CHAPTER XVII.
Arithmetic in the School | 142
CHAPTER XVIII.
Teaching Literature | 153
CHAPTER XIX.
The Teacher’s Vacation | 166
CHAPTER XX.
The Teacher’s View of Life | 172

CHAPTER I.
AM I FIT TO TEACH?

The talks that follow are addressed to young teachers. They treat everyday problems in a homely way. I have tried to be plain and pointed. I have omitted long terms. I do not speak of correlation, apperception, spontaneity, etc., and I omit long psychological terms. You get enough of these in county institutes and educational journals.

You are a school teacher. You have taught but a short time, and you want to make a success of the work. You may not be even a professional teacher. You hold neither a normal school diploma nor a life license. Both of these are good, and a desire for one or both upon your part would be commendable, but neither is all that is required to teach a successful school. Some of the most impractical of visionary dreamers I have ever known possessed the first, and the most tiresome of moss-backs the second. Given a young man or a young woman of good character and fair scholarship, desiring to teach school, with little or no professional study or training, yet anxious to succeed, what may I say to help them? What are the problems which they must face? What advice and what cautions will they need, and how may I say this to be most effective? This is my task.

Perhaps a little self-catechising on your part will be helpful. In the daily hour of self-communion—and each teacher should have such an hour—when you turn your thoughts inward and analyse your own motives and shortcomings, ask yourself in all seriousness: “Am I fit to teach?” You may not be a “born teacher.” Very few persons are. Few indeed have the inborn qualities so strong that teaching and teaching alone will satisfy. Few are so heavenly inspired that they may teach and succeed at it in defiance of all rules or regulations or accepted laws of pedagogy. There are some qualities that will help you and some qualities that you may cultivate—qualities that are essential to the person who would aspire to be leaders and models for young people. What are some of these?

1. Your character must be above reproach.—Whatever else you may lack, your character must be above suspicion. Character, unquestioned and unquestionable, first. Other things may be essential, but this is the one first essential. If you are to be the model after which the boys and the girls—the most priceless product of the state—will both consciously and unconsciously fashion their lives, you must be in all things a worthy model. Pure thoughts, pure words, sincerity, honesty, earnest and deep convictions must be habitual with you. The purity of your own thought, the sincerity of your own motives, flashing through your eyes, the windows of your soul, must call out and strengthen the purity and nobility of other minds. Your character and your reputation, too, must stand the search light of the X-ray without showing flaw or blemish. This, and this alone, is the character and reputation worthy the teacher, the builder and architect of immortal minds.

Character is what you are; reputation is what others think you are. Character is essential to pure manhood and pure womanhood, but reputation also is essential to the teacher. Reputation cannot exist long without character, but if from any cause however unjust your reputation is lost even though character remain, your best usefulness in that immediate community is gone. Then guard well your life if you are to teach. Avoid not only evil but the appearance of it. Be not prudish, but keep your reputation unsullied or seek not to stand as teacher to the young.

2. A thorough knowledge of the subject taught is essential to success.—You cannot be a successful teacher of the things you do not know. Clear-cut, definite, specific knowledge of a subject cannot be obtained in the pupils when the teacher does not have it. You cannot successfully teach up to the limit of your knowledge. There is a margin between your teaching limit and your knowing limit. As you reach your knowing limit in class, your questions become hazy, indefinite, crude. You hesitate, you stammer, you repeat yourself, you thresh over and over again the same thought. You lack proper perspective, and your teaching becomes dry and tiresome. A thorough and systematic knowledge of the subject you teach will give you teaching power.

Then, too, your teacher’s knowledge of the subject must be broader and deeper and better organized than the pupil’s. You must see each subject in its proper relation to other subjects. Each chapter must be seen in its relation to the chapters which precede and follow it in the development of the subject. The pupil’s knowledge of a subject may end with the gathering and the understanding of facts, but the teacher’s knowledge must include this and add to it the knowledge of its deeper relations to other subjects and to mind growth. To teach a subject is to learn that subject anew, to see it in a new light, in a deeper and richer significance. You cannot as teacher reach your own highest success with but a student’s knowledge and view of the subject you teach. You must have a connected and logical view of the subject as a whole, and also an intimate and accurate knowledge of the relations of the parts. This deeper and broader knowledge, properly focused and presented to pupils gives you strength as a teacher. The deeper, the broader, the more accurate the knowledge of the subject, the better the teaching, provided the teacher has tact to present it properly. You must focus your efforts and bring your teaching into the range of the pupil’s mental capacity and in an organized form so that pupils may grasp it. You must stick to the subject, remembering that the minimum of your knowledge of the subject without review will probably be the pupil’s maximum after study.

3. You must keep your knowledge fresh by study.—Growing minds alone are fit to teach. Stale mental stock does not create fresh mental appetites. Your attainments are of less importance than your mental habits. To teach well you must keep growing. Scholarly habits are more important than ripe scholarship with sluggish habits. Young teachers often do the best work. They are thinking, investigating, growing. They are full of life and enthusiasm, and the spirit is contagious with their pupils. The teacher who is accurate in details without being tiresome will train pupils to accuracy, unconsciously perhaps, but successfully. The young teacher faces the future with faith, and hope and enthusiasm. He is looking to the sunrise and not to the sunset. He is winning laurels, not resting upon laurels already won. He is losing his life in his work and will find it again in the lives of his pupils. Should I choose an institution for myself or for others, I should choose an institution in which a majority of the faculty were yet young men, men making reputations rather than men who had made reputations. The hope and faith, the fire and enthusiasm, the energy and earnestness, which they bring to their work accomplishes more than men resting on their accomplishments can possibly accomplish.

You must carry on some line of study or investigation, or systematic reading, or else you must fossilize fast. This, when dealing with immature minds year after year, is your only hope. It may be mathematics, it may be history, it may be science, sociology, political economy, music or art, it matters very little what the subject is, but it must be something, and it must be pursued regularly, systematically and persistently. In no other way can you keep growing and not be lost in the educational ruts. When you cease to grow you begin to decay.

4. You must love the work of teaching.—If after a fair trial you do not love to teach and feel deep down in your own consciousness that you cannot learn to love it, quit by all means and do it at once. No one is fit to teach who finds the work thoroughly distasteful and who does not have a genuine love for children and young people. No sadder sight was ever seen than a long-faced pessimist in the school-room. It is cruelty personified to keep children in the school-room under the chilling, blighting influence of a sour-grained pessimistic teacher, long since dead, else never alive to the beauty of nature and the buoyancy of childhood—firmly convinced of the total depravity of all children. Teachers should be full of health, beauty and good cheer. They must be able to enlist the good-will, co-operation and sympathy of young people. Children should not look to teachers as masters to drive them to tasks and to exact penalties, but as friendly companions and leaders, with strength of character, and force enough to inspire, to guide, and to direct to higher and purer and nobler things. Teachers must be able to see the beauties and harmonies of nature all about them, and to lead pupils to feel and to appreciate the higher things of life, ever looking upward, lifting upward and pointing upward.

5. You must be sincere.—You must love your work and believe in it. You must have a burning desire to help young people, and faith in your ability to do so. Gushing and lip service will not suffice. The sincere teacher is always ready to serve. Your actions will speak louder than words. You will as a rule be in no hurry to leave the building after school in the evening, but ready and willing and anxious to consult, to help, to advise, to be of service. The primary teacher’s success may be judged by the group of children that circle about her at recess, or that wait to go home as she goes. The sincere teacher is found at teachers’ meetings and associations, ready to help and on time. If you are genuinely sincere in your profession you will own a few professional books and add to them yearly. You will take and read educational journals and periodicals, and find pleasure in the reading. You will be found in the summer schools and colleges gaining help and inspiration for your work. You will have faith in the profession of teaching, and faith in yourself, and in your ability and worthiness to be one of the leaders of the youth of our land.

6. You must possess a worthy ambition.—You are a poor teacher if you have reached the height of your ambition, intellectually, professionally or successfully. If you are content or satisfied with your work, you will let things drag. You should be ambitious to do the best work of any teacher in your community. You ought to be ambitious enough also to desire better facilities for teaching and broader opportunities. We regret the itineracy and lack of stability in the teaching profession. It is one of the problems of the day. But all this is better than a body of teachers thoroughly content with conditions as they are. The teacher content to adjust himself to the conditions of a certain community and cloister himself there for life at a minimum salary is lacking in the ambition to do the best work for himself or others. The teacher who has ambition enough to improve and who seeks to do his best because it is right and because he desires to advance in his profession will kindle higher ambitions in his pupils and build higher types of men and women. A worthy ambition, a proper rating of your worth, pluck and stamina to stand for your rights, but to do it decorously and properly, is essential to your best work as a teacher.

Ask yourself, seriously and earnestly, “Am I fit to teach?”

CHAPTER II.
SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK?

Shall teaching be my life work? This question stares the sincere young teacher squarely in the face. He must answer it sooner or later. His answer means much to himself as well as to others. We speak of the profession of teaching, but in the truer sense we have none at present. Teaching may be “the noblest of professions and the sorriest of trades,” but as long as our standards of entrance are so low and the number of exits so many, teaching cannot be in its strictest sense a profession. It is far behind medicine or law, and to a large number of persons it is only a trade or a temporary occupation.

There are professional teachers. There are persons who have spent time and money and mental energy studying the problems of the school and of education. There are persons who seek earnestly to formulate the truths and to reduce teaching to a science. Many of these truths are as clearly worked out, as reliable and as completely accepted as are many of the principles of law and medicine. The work is yet incomplete. Shall I make it a life work and give to it my life and the best that is in me? This is the question.

No man can answer this question for you. It is personal. The best that can be done, and this is worth while, is to weigh the good and the bad features and leave you to choose for yourself. So much depends upon the individual. Let me say also that it is never too late to mend. I am one who believes that there are thousands of good teachers, persons who are teaching and doing it well, persons who are leaving their impress for good upon boys and girls, and young men and young women, and who will not make teaching their life-work, and have never intended to do so. They are teaching now, and they are, for the time being, putting their best self into the work. So long as they live in the work and get life out of it nothing is lost. When they begin to slight it, turning their energy to law or medicine or business, when their best self goes to something else while they become “school keepers” instead of teachers, it is time for them to quit.

And what about the lady teachers? Are they to make it a life work too? That is also a question for the individual. To this large and growing class of zealous, capable and untiring teachers the present and the future owes a debt which the world can scarcely pay. There is but one more sacred place—the wife and mother’s. The woman who quits teaching to become the center of the home—the purest, the noblest, the most sacred—she does not leave the profession. She is only promoted.

Let us look at the ugly side of the profession first.

1. It is itinerate.—The best teacher in the best school in the best county in the best state can hardly hope to live and die in the same position. He cannot depend entirely upon teaching and plan and build a home, plant his trees and feel confident he will rest beneath their shade and eat their fruit in years to come. He may be ever so conscientious, he may be ever so capable, and in time he must change. The position will outgrow him or he will outgrow the position. He will spank the wrong boy or refuse to spank him—it matters not—sooner or later he will do what the powers that be at the time think is the wrong thing, and then he must go. To the real lover of the settled home, this is a serious drawback. Professionally it may not be so serious as it seems. If you expect to teach as a life work you must expect to change every few years either because you choose to change or because you must. From the standpoint of your own professional advancement I should advise you to move just awhile before it becomes necessary. There are always places open, and they are often more easily secured while things are pleasant in your present position.

2. The money returns from teaching is less than in law, medicine, or business.—The same amount of energy and ability used in teaching would frequently bring many times its money returns in other things. The successful lawyer or physician often makes several times the amount in a year that the superintendent of his schools makes. So far as I know the highest salaried educational position in the United States is only ten thousand a year. It is a very common thing to find a physician whose income is more than that. Hundreds of attorneys may be found receiving many times this amount as salary, and ten thousand a year is not now considered a large salary for the heads of business firms.

3. The energy used is great.—Probably few other positions require a greater amount of energy constantly. It is the little things which sap the life of the teacher—the constant strain, the nervous tension, the magnetism going out continuously, the half fear it may be that something will go wrong.

4. It is narrowing mentally.—Except in the highest college or university positions the teacher is dealing with persons less mature, less intellectual, and in one sense inferior. This is apt to cause him to grow dictatorial, pedantic and conceited. It is often an excellent thing for the teacher to come in contact with superiors, to run against business men in a business manner, and learn other people’s estimate of himself. To have some minor occupation—something besides teaching, interesting but not all-absorbing, is often a boon to the teacher. It keeps him from ruts and grooves and from fossilizing professionally. The lawyer, the business man and the physician are often rubbing against their equals and superiors, and this is a thought-awakener to them which the teacher often misses.

5. Teaching is for the young.—Teaching is a young man’s profession. With a number of notable exceptions, the great mass of teachers are under fifty. The teacher who has not made more than a local reputation before he is fifty years old will find it hard to advance if he must change. Hard as it may be upon the earnest, conscientious, hard-working teacher, most of us if compelled to choose between a man of fifty and a man of thirty would, if other things were equal, choose the man of thirty. The successful physician at fifty may have shorter office hours, charge larger fees and have cases coming to him for consultation because of his age and experience. The lawyer at fifty is in his prime. To him his clients come to consult upon important cases. Minor and unimportant cases he turns over “to the boys.” But it is different with the teacher at fifty. Every one is then trying to put him on the shelf, and the chances are they will succeed.

These are the things which make against teaching as a life work, but the picture has a brighter side—a side too often overlooked in this day of dollar chasing.

1. Teaching pays at least a comfortable living from the very first.—Hundreds of persons enter it because of this fact, and many remain for life because of their love for the work. The doctor and the lawyer must go through a starvation period, and many of them do not survive it. The lawyer that pays his necessary expenses and lives comfortably from his fees during the first five years is on the high road to success. The same is equally true of the physician. To tide over this starvation period many take up side lines which prove fatal to their real success, while others find subordinate salaried places in firms and incorporations. The salary in teaching may be low, but it is specific and certain, and meets present needs.

2. Teaching keeps you in close touch with the best people.—Nothing is more conducive to pure thoughts and upright conduct—not even the ministry. To be looked at as a model and as a guide by the boys and girls of a community day after day—if that does not inspire to noble thoughts and actions, what will? A father and mother can see their son or daughter leave home to teach with every assurance that no other occupation will be a higher incentive to pure thinking and perfect living. The best people of the community welcome them to their home, the churches invite them to take part, and simple, trusting childhood in its purity, looks to them for guidance. If this does not keep them in paths of virtue they must show signs of total depravity. Do not overlook the fact when choosing a life work, that for personal purity, high ideals and constant inspiration to the highest, the purest and the best of our natures, teaching is unsurpassed.

3. Hours are shorter than in many occupations.—While the nerve strain is great and worry and fear often intrude, the teacher has more time than many other occupations. Exercise and recreation in the open air an hour a day or more is always possible. If one likes to garden, to raise chickens, or to tend flowers, they can find the time, and the recreation will be beneficial. Teachers complain of the long hours and hard work partly from habit and partly because they do not know the long hours and real hardships of other occupations. To the person who is prepared to teach and who has the gift or power to govern and control without worrying about it, or having to continually fight for it, teaching is not exhaustive drudgery. It is true, lessons must be looked over and work planned outside of school, but even then there is some time for relaxation and recreation.

4. The rewards are many.—In a sense, most teachers teach for the money—that is, if they were not paid for it very few could afford to give their time to the work. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and yet may the Lord pity the person and his pupils if he teaches for money alone. The money will enable him to continue the work, and it should be ample enough to give a comfortable living with all of the necessaries of life and a few of the luxuries. It should be ample also to provide for improvement and for necessary accessories to carry on the work and to lay by enough for old age or a rainy day. But the money received from teaching sinks into insignificance with the real teacher when compared with the real pleasure one can get from his work, the good he can do, the love and trust and confidence of his pupils. These, with the uplift and noble aspirations which he can inspire with its volumes of sunshine and gladness and progress which his teaching may bring about are infinite. To have pupils group about you, to see them cross the street sheepishly it may be but for no other purpose than to speak to “teacher,” to share their troubles, to increase their joys, to lead them to see more of the beauty and the harmony all about them and to receive their letters in later life confessing their faults, begging pardon for offenses you have long since forgotten, telling you of successes, sharing little secrets and asking your advice—all these are the rewards of every true teacher beside which the money received is insignificantly mean.

5. The work is intellectual.—It keeps you in contact with books and the best minds of all ages. The greatest men of all time come and converse with you. A pity it is if you see nothing but drudgery and dull pupils and hard lessons and unruly boys and petty mischiefs and little annoyances in teaching. If this is all you see, quit—never teach again.

Teaching, if your heart is in the work, will keep you young. It will bring you into contact with the best in life. It will be a constant inspiration to pure thought and right conduct. It will give you the love and respect of young people whose future joys and sorrows will be your joys and sorrows, and whose successes will bring you pleasure. Last and least, but nevertheless essential, it will remunerate you until by thrift and economy you may lay up enough to live a comfortable, even though it be a simple, life.

CHAPTER III.
SECURING A POSITION.

The problem of securing a position concerns not only the young teacher, but often the experienced teacher as well. Thousands of young persons begin the work of teaching for the first time each year. The securing of the first school is usually a red-letter day for most persons who are really anxious to teach. Most boards of education and school officials hesitate to employ a teacher who has had no experience. It is one of the conditions to be met in all occupations. Often principals and older teachers are loudest in their demands that only the experienced be employed, forgetting that there was a time when they themselves were without experience. For a subordinate place where there is not too much executive work, I should prefer the young person well prepared to the teacher who has so much experience that they feel that they know all that is needed to be known.

Most young persons, unless they have a good professional course to begin with, teach first near their home. The time is coming, and let us hope coming rapidly, when one or two years of professional study must precede any attempt at teaching. It will be well for the pupils, well for the schools and, in the long run, well for the teachers themselves. Natural ability being equal, the young teacher who has a year or more of professional study has a decided advantage. This professional study gives clearer ideas of school and higher ideals of what should be accomplished. When school officials and communities insist on professional preparation and pay salaries sufficient to justify them in demanding professional preparation, they have taken a long step in advance toward a profession of teaching. Communities will then be less dependent upon local teachers—the sons and daughters and nieces and nephews of local politicians and relatives of prominent families. Between these on the one hand and the indigent never-do-wells who have a half charitable claim on the community and are pensioned with a position in the schools there are many communities in which there is little incentive for young persons to prepare for teaching. When a professional preparation is required from all applicants things will be different. Then those who look to teaching as a serious occupation will have the advantage.

It is an unfortunate thing for the schools that so few teachers can be progressive, up-to-date, and thoroughly alive to their own welfare and continue to teach for a life time in their own locality. There are a few examples of such teachers and such teaching. The person and the opportunity met, but in many, many cases, in fact, very few cases has the worthy person and the worthy position for such person come together. President John W. Cook, in an address a few years ago, in commenting upon this lack of opportunity, thought it the duty of the community to increase the salary until we could have the best teachers remaining continually at the same school or neighborhood. This sounds plausible at first. It would seem strange, however, to see a man of President Cook’s caliber content to continue to teach in the same district school where he began. We may well wonder if it would have been the same President Cook of national fame as an educator if he had done so, or whether he had been dwarfed in the staying into a very ordinary person—perhaps a cook without the capital letter.

The worthy, ambitious, successful teacher will in more than nine cases out of ten sooner or later desire a position away from home. Then the problem of how to secure a position becomes a live one to them. The first thing, of course, is to find a vacancy, a place where a teacher is wanted, and the second thing is to make the school officials believe you are just the person for the position.

A good teachers’ agency can be of much service to you in finding the vacancy. They serve the same purpose in locating teachers—and a legitimate purpose it is, that a real estate agent does in buying or selling real estate. The dealer in real estate brings the buyer and the seller together. He serves both, and if a man of honesty and principle, may be of service to both and his business in every way a creditable one. The real estate man usually knows who wants to sell property, knows something of the value of property, looks up the title and records, and then brings the buyer and seller together, or takes charge of the details entirely. To the person who has ever been served by a good real estate agency no justification of the business is needed. The same is true of a good teachers’ agency. A good agency spends hundreds of dollars each year seeking information of where there are to be vacancies and changes. School officials learn to depend upon many of the reliable agencies to aid them in the selection of their teachers. Agencies also often have some weight in the matter of recommending teachers. This is especially true late in the season when unexpected vacancies occur. Agencies are then often asked to select teachers for the positions and school boards take them upon the recommendation of the agency.

The greatest value of the teachers’ agency to you in the early part of the season is in giving you reliable information in regard to vacancies. They often know where vacancies are to occur and the particulars of them. You would find it hard to collect this information—the places where there are vacancies, salary, qualifications desired, nature of work, etc. The information is valuable and is worth to you the cost of the commission in that it widens your field and chances. After you know these things, you must then push your own claims to secure the place.

A good agency looks up your record as a student, as a teacher, and as a person of good character, and if your record is not good it refuses you membership. There are, however, many agencies that are only leeches, depending upon membership fees for existence and caring little or nothing for the real business of locating teachers. In selecting an agency as in other things, you must use good judgment. There are many agencies that do good, honest work for its members. They usually charge a membership fee of two dollars and five per cent of the first year’s salary, but they work faithfully for their members, and will not admit to membership a teacher whose record is not good. Beware of the agency that guarantees you a position. It cannot do it and do a legitimate business.

After you know there is a vacancy, the next thing is to make the Board of Education believe you are the person for the place. You must depend upon your own personality and ability in presenting your claims, together with the aid of your friends. Applications are usually made in writing, and often personal applications are called for before final arrangements are made. Your letter of application should be brief, specific, neatly written and well arranged. School boards are often business men, busy with other duties besides school affairs. They want the facts in the case—age, health, weight, education, experience, success in teaching and governing, something of your personality, etc. They will want personal references also that they may write and get information about you direct, and very often ask very pointed questions. They, in fact, want to know the very things which you would probably want to know if you were employing a teacher. These facts should be briefly told, but well. The better the language, the more straightforward, the more forcible, the better it is arranged, the stronger the impression, and the more attention it will receive. Into your letter of application you must put your best self.

Let me emphasize the matter of arrangement of the letter. It goes without saying that the letter must be neatly and plainly written or type-written, and free from misspelled words. To my personal knowledge many teachers fail to arrange the form of the letter to appeal to the eye, and this is essential. Paragraphing counts for much in a letter of application. The long, loose, scrawly, disjointed letter, hard to follow when reading it, with pages mixed until you must turn the sheet once or twice to tell for sure where the sentence is continued—these letters often cost the writer a position, and it is right that they should. Use the standard business letter size of paper of good quality. Make your left-hand margin uniform. Write a neat, plain hand. Punctuate properly, and above all paragraph so that the eye catches at a glance each topic treated. If you are a teacher and do not know the value of the margin in placing emphasis and attention upon a topic you should study it before writing letters of application.

Do not ask a lot of questions in your letter of application—such as size of place, cost of board, railroad facilities, etc. It is true that these are important items to you. But the secretary of a school board is too busy to answer all these points until you are seriously considered for the position. You may be only one of fifty applicants. With the help of a few members of the board he will in a few minutes reduce them to probably half a dozen by eliminating those whose letters do not appeal to them. If your letter of application has been neat enough and strong enough to make a good impression it will be among this half dozen. Now comes the actual consideration of the board. They weigh and study this select half dozen. They may then eliminate two or three of these and investigate and consider the remaining ones for several days before coming to a conclusion.

Keep your application before the board. If your first letter is strong enough to place you among the few to be carefully considered, these days of investigation are critical times. The skill with which you keep yourself before them will count much. Manage to write one or two members of the board every two or three days. Be brief and be business like, but do not seem to be anxious. Personal letters from those who know you will be worth much. Have them addressed to different members of the board. This will impress your name and application upon each member. Each member will have a vote, and you must reach a majority to win. Be careful also in the persons who write in your interests. Many good men cannot write letters of recommendation and do it gracefully. They either overstate or scatter. The list of references you give will mean much.

If you are elected to the position then comes the time and opportunity to make inquiry as to salary, work, expenses, etc., before accepting. This can be done without giving offense or arousing the suspicion that you will not accept. You may also accept only conditionally until you know these points. After you have been offered a place, if you have any doubts about the work, then ask your questions. Be pointed and accurate, and expect a prompt and businesslike reply. If the conditions are such that you cannot accept do not keep them waiting, but tell them that you decline the place, and give them the reasons.

With your letter of application should go copies of a few good testimonials from persons who know you and your work. Send also a good photograph, and a self-addressed, government stamped envelope for reply. Get some good brief testimonials from those who know you best—your teachers and one or two business men. If you have taught, get testimonials from the school board and patrons testifying to the success of your work. Keep these original testimonials. Have neat type-written copies made and send a few of these with each letter of application. Offer to send others, and in writing the board later it is well to enclose one or two new testimonials with each letter.

In addition to the testimonials, refer them to a few reliable persons who know you and your worth. Ask the board to write these persons asking about you. Many persons have little faith in a general testimonial written to the public and for your own perusal. These same persons often have much confidence in a personal, private letter stating the same thing, or answering definite questions about you. For reference it is best to give the names of persons who have not already given you public testimonials. Select for such references persons who know you, and persons who will answer promptly and specifically any questions asked about you. Many good men who could and would give you a good testimonial are so negligent and careless that they fail to answer a letter of inquiry until it is too late. The busy business man who is accustomed to attending to his mail promptly and on time often makes a better reference than a man of more leisure. The first writes promptly, while the second may carry the letter for a week or ten days before the spirit moves him to reply. This delay is considered by the board making the inquiry as a reluctance on his part to recommend you.

A good small photograph should go with each application. Good copies of large photographs are inexpensive and answer the purpose well. Often these photographs are not returned, and if the copy is a good one it answers the purpose as well as a more expensive one. The photograph should be plain, but showing you at your best. A front view is usually best. The eyes and expression should be good. It should show you neatly dressed, but modestly and becomingly. Its purpose should be to emphasize your personality and not to show how pretty you can look. The low-necked, short-sleeved dramatic-posed photographs sent out by some teachers will and should defeat the applicant for a position as teacher. Such photographs might be all right in gay Newport or some other fashionable resort. But fortunately, a majority of our school boards are composed of business men of common sense, modesty, and good judgment. They are not seeking vaudeville performers, nor stage poses, but persons of modesty and good common sense to teach school. Your photograph should show these qualities in you, else in most cases it will serve to defeat rather than to help you to a school position.

Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for reply. It will pay. This will bring you more replies than a loose stamp enclosed. It is even better if you use the government stamped envelope which may be had at any postoffice. Applying for a school is a business matter, not social, and business forms should be used. Use plain white paper, business size, with envelopes to match, and write on one side of paper only, numbering pages.

If the position is a good one and the contest close, the board may request a personal visit. If possible, it is best for you to go. Five minutes conversation may clinch a position which otherwise you would lose. Make it a business call, not a social. Dress for business, not for society. Be well groomed, but seemingly indifferent to dress. Be at your best. If the trip is a long one stop at a hotel and rest and dust before calling on the board. Excuses for personal appearance may be reasonable, but to “land the job” your chances are better if no excuses are necessary. It is a difficult trial to appear before a board of strange men, an applicant for a position from them, and yet be quiet and composed. It is a test of your personality, and if you acquit yourself well it shows strength and usually secures you the position. To be composed you may have to use will power and mental effort. It is possible to do this successfully. In fact much of experience consists in nothing more than the ability to keep composed under trying conditions. Neither your life, health, happiness nor future success depends entirely upon the result of the interview. It may be hard to believe this at the time, but if you can make yourself realize it you have struck the keynote to success. The members of the board are only men, plain, blunt men, not always the strongest men. They are human like yourself. Be frank, be independent, be courteous, look them square in the eye, talk to the point, but do not talk too much. The interview is often a contest of personalities, your own personality, and that of the board. You must show composure and courage. This will secure for you the position often over the strongest of applicants.

There is skill and art in one’s ability to secure a position. One element of advancement and success will depend upon how you master these.

CHAPTER IV.
PASSING THE EXAMINATION.

The formal examination of teachers is a necessary evil. It is one of the ways of eliminating the incompetent. Examinations are necessary. On the other hand, they sometimes license those who are utterly incompetent and cut out those who would teach good schools. Taking the examination, all in all, it is helpful. By eliminating the bad features and encouraging the good they may be made better still.

Passing the examination is an ordeal that confronts most young teachers and often older ones. We all feel better after it is over. Many of our leaders in education, university professors, normal school teachers, specialists and heads of departments along with many superintendents would hesitate to stake their reputation as a teacher or educator upon the answers to ten questions from each of ten subjects, these subjects to be prepared and the answers graded by “the other fellow.” Yet this is the ordeal to be passed by most young teachers. Is it any wonder they dread it?

Every thinking man will concede that the usual examination does not test the applicant’s ability to teach. The answers to a series of questions will not do this thoroughly. A better and more sensible test would be to have the applicant prepare a list of questions to test a class that has just completed a given division of a subject. If the teaching ability of some superintendents and examining boards were to be tested by the lists of questions sometimes asked of teachers they would be refused a third-grade license. The lists show quite evidently that they were hurriedly made with little thought of testing the applicant’s teaching ability. It is also true that the examination is not even a good test of the applicant’s knowledge of the subject. The real intelligence shown in the answers, the arrangement and scholarship and neatness and accuracy are the essential things. Nothing can be more ridiculous than a little two-by-four examiner or superintendent making a list of questions, many of them narrow and indefinite, and then that these same questions must be answered in certain specific words to make grades on them. One examiner recently asked: “What did Washington do before he crossed the Delaware?” Well, he did many things. But if the applicant did not state that “he divided his army into three divisions, etc.,” he missed the question intended by the examiner, and lost ten per cent on that question. Examinations based upon such questions are as much a farce as the method of holding a two weeks’ institute and follow it by an examination based upon the subjects discussed during the time. The whole time and energy of the teachers is spent in cramming for the examination.

If an examination is to be a fair and reasonable one, the best preparation for it is an intensive study of the subject upon which you are to be examined. Do not study the subject with the thought of examination uppermost in your mind. Study it with a view to mastering and understanding it. Let the thought of what questions may be asked on examination go. If you master the subject, all legitimate questions asked on examination will be easily answered. The hard examination to you is an examination in which you do not know how to answer the questions. If you have mastered the subject you will very probably know the answers to most of the reasonable questions asked. Cramming for examination is usually time wasted. To study and cram on question books and old lists of examination questions is time thrown away. Get your text-book and try to master the principles and divisions of the subjects, and your time is well spent.

If possible, be in good physical condition on the day of examination. This counts for much. Some teachers overwork themselves preparing for examination. They become nervous and do not sleep well. This leaves them without reserve force and in poor physical condition when the time comes. Other teachers work late the night before examination and sleep little, often getting up early to study just before going to examination. I have seen them bring a book in one hand glancing at it to refresh their mind in the hall as they were passing to the examination room. This anxiety saps their nerve force and leaves them in no mental state for a strenuous day’s work. If early in the examination they find something difficult to them they go to pieces and do not recover during the day. Leave off both study and review. Do this for at least twenty-four hours before time for examination. Keep your mind from dwelling upon the examination. Take plenty of exercise and if you find time hanging heavy, read some good story. Retire at your usual time the night before examination and sleep your usual number of hours. Get to the place of examination in time to have a half hour or more to get familiar with the strange surroundings and to talk with teachers before the examination is called. Nothing relieves one’s anxiety more. Practice writing a few minutes before the actual work begins. This makes your hand steady, and you are pleased with your first work. It always pays you to be on time or ahead of time on examination day.

Go to the examination room prepared for work. Have either a good fountain pen or a good easy penholder with some extra pens and a bottle of ink. It may be your superintendent demands some special kind of paper or manuscript book. Get this before going to the examination unless the superintendent supplies them. Have also a blank book and pencil and a sharp knife or a pencil sharpener. In other words, go to the examination prepared for work just as you would expect your pupils to come to school on examination day.

Work carefully and persistently, and as rapidly as possible. Nothing is more detrimental to good work than to feel that you are behind with your subject. Do not rush, but try to complete each subject in time to review your paper before time is called. Neatness, accurate spelling, and careful, systematic arrangement of your work will make a good impression always, and get the good will of the examiner. Slovenness and careless arrangement will unconsciously prejudice the examiner against you. Your thought and answers must be unusually strong if they overcome the prejudice unconsciously caused by poor writing or poor arrangement.

Let me emphasize again the importance of systematic arrangement of work. Poor penmanship, if it is uniform and legible, may be overlooked if the work is properly arranged. Paragraphing, punctuation and general arrangement count more than all else in making a neat manuscript. I used to read the manuscript of an author frequently. His writing, considered by itself, was poor—extremely poor. It required practice to learn to read it, but it was uniform. It all looked alike. His punctuation and paragraphing was almost perfect. The general impression was good, and when you once mastered his particular letter formation and learned to distinguish his a’s, his o’s and a few others, his manuscript was easily read. The mechanical side of your examination manuscript, will, if properly cared for, balance many little flaws in the answers themselves.

Read the questions carefully. Hasty reading of questions will account for many mistakes. After having read the question take time to think the answer. Then condense the answer as much as possible, and have it complete and clear. Number your answers to correspond with the questions, leaving one or two lines blank between the answers. If you have doubts about the meaning of a question, express it in writing, and answer it according to the interpretation you think most plausible. Do not be long-winded or wordy in your answers. Be brief, be accurate, be neat.

Try to complete each subject in time to go over it carefully. Correct any mistakes you may find before handing in your paper. It will be time well spent. Many little mistakes, simply little slips of the hand, will occur when your mind is centered upon the thought to be expressed. If any work or calculations are transferred from your scratch book to your manuscript be sure it is copied correctly. Frequently mistakes are made in copying, but the examiner cannot know this, and must grade you in what you place on your manuscript. He grades upon the accuracy of the work as he finds it.

Approached properly, the examination should lose many of its terrors for young teachers.

CHAPTER V.
PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER.

Experience in the school-room counts for much. Teaching soon fastens certain personal peculiarities upon the teacher which makes him readily distinguished from other persons. Fifty teachers visiting Chicago had agreed to be so discreet in their conduct that no one would judge them to be teachers. Much to their surprise they had not walked two blocks from the depot until a dirty-faced bootblack called out in a drawling tone: “First class in geography, stan’ up.” Some of these eccentricities may be detrimental. Others are worth much professionally, as they give other people confidence in your ability to teach. They are recognized as ear-marks of the teacher.

Pupils and patrons are often more critical of young teachers than of teachers who have had experience, and have established reputations as being able to teach and to govern. They are looking for signs of weakness. Fortunate is the young teacher who can stand this test. His first and second schools will pretty well establish his standing in the community. After that they will be less critical and more apt to take things for granted.

One of the hardest problems of the young teacher is to acquire the feeling of familiarity or composure in the school-room. New clothes sometimes do not set well and new positions are the same. He hesitates, his voice does not sound familiar, he feels and looks awkward, he lacks confidence in himself, and instead of children being considerate of these things they notice them and are quick to take advantage of them. The rougher element of boys and the more careless of the girls may take pleasure in the teacher’s discomfort. Such things try the mettle of the teacher. If he is made of the right material and has good judgment, he will come out all right. If he is naturally a coward or if he is full of egotism and conceit the pupils may soon lead him a merry chase. The more clearly he has the work planned, the more definite his ideas of what and how and why to do, the easier to gain composure in the school-room. Then, too, many excellent teachers are sensitive. They may soon grow easy and composed in the school-room with only their pupils before them. A caller or a visit from the principal or a school official completely unnerves them. They are ill at ease, they blush and blunder, and are always at a disadvantage. Familiarity and composure are the fruits of experience and study and practice in the school-room.

Composure, a level head, a knowledge of what you want done, and why you want it done and faith in your own ability to have it done gives composure to the whole school. Restlessness, lack of faith in self, fear of failure, these bring about the very conditions you are striving to avoid, and the school becomes restless, noisy, hard to control. The school takes its coloring from your own attitude, and when things go wrong, begin to seek the cause in your own actions, disposition and manners. Learn to study yourself without upbraiding, and yet with determination to find the cause of your failure. Confidence in yourself and courage backed by good judgment will make government easy. Remember the government of a school is more a matter of mind than of physical strength. The clearness of your mental vision, your insight into motives, your ideals of school and of life and your knowledge of boy and girl nature count infinitely more than your avoirdupois. In very rare cases from home training or peculiar environment wrong motives of true manhood may inspire a bully until force—mere physical force—is the proper remedy, and a downright good threshing is the thing needed. But such occasions are rare indeed, and the young teacher should feel that there is something radically wrong in his own personality and methods of government if he must resort to such measures often.

A young teacher must guard his health. You can’t teach day and night. The petty worries of the school-room must not be carried to your home or boarding place. Shake them from yourself when you quit the building and grounds. Lock them in the school-room when you leave it, and if you sleep soundly they will have vanished into thin air before the door is opened the next day. Your health will react upon your work in the school-room. Not the work, but the worry kills. During my first three terms I taught school all day and dreamed school all night. The dreaming was harder than the teaching. My best pupils, the ones who would not for the world do anything to cause me trouble, were always in mischief in my dreams. From the first, force yourself to think of the pleasant things of the day as much as possible, and forget the unpleasant or shut them from your thoughts. Too often you find after sleepless nights of worry about some frivolous little breach of conduct by some thoughtless boy the whole thing glides by without a ripple, and the problem solves itself.

If you are blessed with a good digestion, the world ought to look bright to you. No terrors in teaching are equal to those caused by undigested beefsteak, and a dose of pepsin is often a far greater aid in teaching than a six-foot switch. Eat plenty of nutritious food, such as agrees with you, drink plenty of pure water, take plenty of exercise in the open air, laugh when you can, meet and mingle with people, think good thoughts, teach yourself to believe in your own ability and success without growing egotistic, sleep not less than eight hours in each twenty-four, and make it nine if you can sleep soundly; keep clean, and the world and your school will move well with you.

The mind is self-creative. It can make a “heaven of hell or a hell of heaven” Milton tell us, and it is true. But there is a close relation between its activity and mental coloring, and the physical condition of the body. Teachers especially should learn to keep the body and the mind each at its best. Each reacts upon the other, and your school as well as your own happiness depends upon keeping both in the best condition. Avoid late study, irregular habits, and all kinds of dissipation. Planning and preparation of work is necessary, but it is not the number of hours you work, it is the intensity of the application that counts most. Systematize your work and work regularly and intensely, but do not encroach upon your hours of sleep unless you want to pay the penalty with interest. Let me say here parenthetically that if all teachers had a fair knowledge of shorthand, enough to enable them to record their own thoughts and to read their own notes readily what a saving of time it would mean in the preparation of their daily work. Would not it be worth while for every teacher to know this much stenography?

Then, too, regular habits count for so much—regular eating, regular sleeping, regular exercise. Teachers who board cannot always get just what they want, but as a rule their accommodations are fairly good—often as good as they would get at home. One can adjust themselves to the conditions if these be regular. In most homes the meals are served nearly on time, seldom varying more than half an hour, but sleeping is often irregular. Regular sleep is perhaps the most important item of all—a good bed, ventilation, comfort, quiet, with little variation in retiring or rising—these are important to the teacher who must meet with plenty of reserve and nerve force the problems of the school-room next day.

There are various forms of dissipation. In addition, however, to intoxicants as a beverage, the habitual use of many patent medicines may be almost as injurious. Then, too, there are lighter beverages very injurious. The coca-cola habit is little better than the beer-drinking habit, and the same is true of many other drinks so “refreshing to tired nerves.” One of the worst forms of dissipation is day-dreaming, or simply idling away the time. If you have time to idle or to day-dream, do it in the open air and in the sunshine where the exercise will do you good or go forth on a still, clear night and watch the movements of the heavenly bodies, the star-decked sky, and drink in its inspiration and beauty. Much of the light reading—newspaper, magazine, and the rag-time fiction so current—is the worst form of mental dissipation.

The love-sick young man and the giddy girl are too often teachers, and the time and energy in thinking and writing to one another is more than is used in their teaching. I do not speak lightly of love or criticise teachers for falling in love or in loving one another or in loving some one who is not a teacher. Love in its highest form and love of the individual as well as the love of humanity as a whole is essential to the development of the person. Nothing creates higher ambition or nobler impulses than love. To love a pure-minded woman—a teacher she may be—is one of the greatest things that can happen to a young man. It is equally valuable to a young woman. The young man or young woman in love, with the hope that this love is or may be mutual, and when this loved one is idolized as made up of all that is pure and worthy and noble, is always safe. It gives new life and energy and ambition. It can be seen in the flashing eye, the elastic step and the bodily poise. No tonic is so life-giving, no beverage so invigorating, no view of life so rich in its coloring. Health, hope, courage, ambition, all good things follow in its wake. Such love as this is not dissipation. But the love-sick young man who pines for his lady love—the last one who smiled on him, it matters little who; the giddy girl who has two strings to each of her half a dozen beaux and is too busy pulling these strings to think of anything else—these are unfit to teach.

Then, too, the young teacher must sacrifice something to public opinion. Public opinion may be ever so narrow, so unreasonable, so unjust, but if you are to establish your reputation in that community as a reliable, trustworthy teacher, you cannot afford to be indifferent to it. I am speaking especially of the town, the village, and the country where all eyes are on the teacher, and where every man, woman and child knows him. In the towns, villages and the country the teacher is relatively of greater importance than in the city. Young men teaching in these communities cannot afford to do much keeping company or going to see the girls, and young women teachers cannot afford to have many beaux or even one regular one whose attentions are quite noticeable to the public. The highest motives may prevail, the enjoyment and pleasure may be great, and even then the teacher, like the minister, must forego many things which would be unnoticed in others, or else pay the price which is often dear enough. Sniggering school boys and giggling school girls for weeks will nudge one another and make remarks at your expense, and not always complimentary. Rail against it if you will, but it makes matters worse. Laugh about it and it often compromises your dignity. Punish for it, and you stir up a hornets’ nest in the neighborhood. You can soon kill your influence in that neighborhood for good by a little harmless indiscretion. Beware!

Just how to get the good will and respect of patrons and pupils no one can tell you. It is a problem to be solved by your own good sense and personality. It is easier to tell you what not to do than to tell you what to do. The best advice is to be yourself, but to be your best self. Do not try to show off. Do not try to advise on every topic that comes up. Do not push yourself forward in outside matters. Listen to those older than yourself. Weigh what they say, but in school matters be your own boss. Talk little about your plans or your past success. Keep your school room troubles strictly to yourself. Do not criticise former teachers, and if teaching with other teachers beware of criticising another teacher in the same school, however much you may dislike their methods. The teacher may be ever so unpopular, and the person may invite criticism ever so much, but it is your place to avoid it. Then, too, do not criticise or praise one pupil before another pupil or patron outside of school. It is dangerous, and a little tact will enable you to avoid it. Your criticism will do no good, and your praise may cause the bitterest of jealousy. “Miss Jones, don’t you think Grace is smart?” said a little girl. “Yes, we have many smart pupils in school,” replied Miss Jones, and the girl’s question was answered and no jealousy created.

Your success and power for good in the neighborhood will be determined very largely by the esteem and confidence the pupils and the patrons place in you.

CHAPTER VI.
GRADING THE SCHOOL.

The planning and making of a course of study falls to the lot of few teachers at present. Nearly every state has either a well-planned state course or else the county is the unit, and the county superintendent or the county board of education plan the course. While there is growth along this line in many places, the organization of the schools is less perfect, and the course of study is planned by the teacher in charge of the school.

A uniform course of study is a great strength to the school system. By uniformity, I do not mean dead uniformity, but intelligent, rational uniformity. Not the uniformity that takes all the life and individuality out of the teacher, but the uniformity that sets definite, rational ends, and makes a proper criterion of work and attainment possible in the different schools. What is needed is a course of study flexible enough to be adjusted to the varying classes and schools and uniform enough that the pupil leaving one school may be easily and properly classified when he enters another school. Many of our city systems have more red tape and system than any thing else, but our country schools in most states will be improved by more system and organization. Many able persons and many teachers of experience will cry out against better grading of the country schools and declare it cannot be done. This was the cry twenty-five years ago when my own state began in a crude way to grade the country schools. It will continue in every onward step taken.

Experienced teachers who have become used to the old way are often the first to cry out against the change, and assert vehemently that it will never work in the country school. Long after it has become an accomplished fact there will be some who will refuse to see it. Like the stubborn father whose son had told him he could show him snow in June. Following the boy up a narrow little ravine, the boy pointed down in the cavity of an old hollow stump and said, “Look there father, there is the snow.” The father took care to close his eyes before looking, and replied: “Son, I don’t see a bit of snow.”

The very argument used to prove that the country school cannot be graded and follow a uniform course of study is the best argument for gradation and a uniform course of study. I believe that every one who has ever studied the subject will agree that a rational uniform course of study will do the following things:

1. Secure better attendance.

2. Secure more regular attendance.

3. Keep pupils in school longer. Hundreds of pupils are kept in school and do good work because of their desire and their parents’ desire that they graduate. The desire for a diploma may not be the highest motive for an education, but so far all of our best institutions have found it necessary to hold to the custom.

4. Secure better work on the part of both teachers and pupils. The tread mill grind of going over and over the same work year after year disgusts many pupils with school life. Unless there is specific things set for the grade, or in other words, if there is not a course of study, very few schools but will repeat the same work with the same class. When a boy in the ungraded school we went over the identical work five years in succession, the only variation was the natural variation from having three different teachers in the five years.

There is but one argument against the grading of the country schools. That argument is that the pupils do not attend regularly. Grading is one of the best promoters of regular attendance. If there is anything that stirs parents and makes them alive to school matters and observant of what is going on in school, it is for their boy or girl to fail to be promoted. Irregular attendance is very apt to be remedied when they find that it will endanger the promotion. This overcomes many a flimsy excuse which would otherwise keep the child out of school near the close of the year. It makes the work of school a reality, a business, something to be rated along with any other kind of business instead of an entertainment or place of amusement to be attended when there is nothing else to do.

In my own experience I have never been troubled much with attendance running down near the end of the year, although I have taught in different schools, different localities, and often as late as the middle of June. Pupils and parents knew that those who missed the last month or the last few weeks of the term must stand an examination at the opening of the next term before being promoted. It may have been a false motive, but I believe it was as good and as legitimate a motive as many parents have for keeping children out of school the last month or six weeks of the term as is often done. Pupils want to come and parents usually arrange to let them come rather than to risk an examination after the summer’s vacation of three months.

While in common with all good teachers, I have put forth an extra effort near the close of the school year to keep up school interest and a good school spirit, I think the graded school course has helped me much. As a boy, I attended the ungraded school where any pupil took practically anything that suited him or his parents. I began teaching in an ungraded school, and am glad that at the end of two years I left it as well graded as many city schools. The schools of that county are now well graded, much to the advantage of education in the country. Two of my best teachers were bitterly opposed to the grading of the country schools. They fought it in institutes, associations and at every possible opportunity in conversation. One of them taught long enough to be converted and see the error of his way, the other never did surrender, quit teaching fifteen years ago, and thinks the world is badly out of joint. The grading of country schools is coming, in fact, is here in some form except in the most primitive communities. It is the common sense plan, it is practical, it is efficient. It does not have the hide-bound red tape of the city system, but it gives all the interest of class stimulus and definite rational accomplishment as a standard.

If you want to find individualism gone to seed, if you want to find hobbies ridden hard, and to the everlasting detriment of children, go to the ungraded public or average private school. The teacher leads off on his hobby, and he magnifies the hobby as he goes. If it is an ungraded public school, they go to seed on arithmetic, or history or map-drawing, or the particular line that offers least resistance or that fits the teacher’s particular whims best. If it is the average ungraded primary private school, filled with mammas’ little angel darlings, too pretty and too petted to go to the public school, it is even worse. The teacher masticates everything, and puts it into the most charming fashion and makes believe they are really doing something. She is also discovering latent geniuses every few days. If the child likes to use water colors, she is an embryo artist, and her mother must develop this unusual talent. If the child can sing “Merry Greeting to You” she is a musician and the mother must from that day plan to keep her very exclusive and later send her to Paris to finish. A uniform course of study planned properly, representing the accumulated experience and judgment of our best educators, may have some flaws, but on the other hand it saves many of the gravest mistakes with the great mass of teachers and persons unaccustomed to thinking on educational subjects.

The planning of a rational course of study is no small task. It will vary with state and probably with the locality within the state. It will vary much with the nation. The danger is that each small locality may feel that their particular needs are different and must have special attention. In making the course of study the knowledge of the specialist is needed, toned down and corrected by the liberally educated man with broader views. Conditions must be weighed and due consideration for the worth of studies taken into account. The scientist wants to magnify science, the historian history, the mathematician mathematics, etc. It is in this particular that the specialist in the high school or the grades must be held in check by a liberal-minded superintendent or principal. Unless this is done, each will overload the student with his specialty. I have had teachers who if left to themselves would have monopolized the time of the high school pupil with Latin. The student that did not know Latin was in the estimation of that teacher a block-head, and should quit school and go to work.

Examine a course of study and you will find revealed much of the judgment and mental caliber of the teachers of the school. It is not uncommon to find high schools proper with university curricula. High-sounding names, often, are an attempt to hide the fact that it is an ordinary high school and many times very ordinary indeed.

Before me is a recent catalogue of a collegiate institute—it would be more appropriate to call it a village high school, that completes in two years Latin, including Preparatory Latin, Cæsar, Cicero, Sallust, Ovid and Virgil, and then devotes the last year to Greek. There must be either intellectual giants in those parts or else some gigantic fools. To the thinking man the course of study would be a signal to give the school a wide berth.

We must not forget that the course of study is made for the child and not the child for the course of study. It must not be too hide-bound. There may be once in a while an exception to it. There may be extraordinary children that will not fit into the ordinary course. These should be treated as exceptions, and considered by themselves. Study the cause and figure the results of such changes and then be true to the child rather than to the course of study. The ungraded school goes to one extreme. Each child is changed and classified for any sort of whim. If he does not get all of to-day’s lesson he goes it alone, thereby losing the incentive that comes from class competition. On the other hand, the course of study may become a fetich until the pupil that cannot make the uniform course is ignored. The saner, safer middle ground is best.

Below is given a mere skeleton outline of a course of study. Roughly it follows what is sometimes called the nationalized course. It would seem that careful adjustment would adapt it to almost any kind of school. The teacher or local board could follow its guidance as to subjects and quickly allot the work in the different grades. The texts used, the local conditions and the particular classes would thus be cared for. One class perhaps could do more in arithmetic than the same grade next year. Certain standards could be set. If the class could not reach this standard they could come as near reaching it as possible, and the remainder of the work could go over to the next year. The best classes would set standards of attainment that succeeding classes might be envious of equaling or surpassing. I have known teachers and classes to snooze over simple interest for month after month while if the teacher and the class had known that if they did not get a good working knowledge of simple interest in one month that the class would be considered slow or else the teaching poor, the work would have been done and well done in one month. Teachers and classes accomplish most when much is expected of them. That is one of the good things about a uniform course of study. One school learns to compare itself with another school, and both are benefited by it.

Set certain definite accomplishments for the class and the grade, do well what work you undertake, but keep moving. The outline may help you.

- I. Primary Grades.

- 1. First year.

- 1. Reading.

- 2. Writing

- 3. Spelling.

- 4. Language.

- 5. Numbers.

- 6. General lessons.

- 1. Singing.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Care of the body.

- 4. Calisthenics.

- 5. Morals and manners.

- 2. Second year.

- 1. Reading.

- 2. Writing.

- 3. Spelling.

- 4. Language.

- 5. Numbers.

- 6. General lessons.

- 1. Singing.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Care of the body.

- 4. Calisthenics.

- 5. Morals and manners.

- 3. Third year.

- 1. Reading.

- 2. Writing.

- 3. Spelling.

- 4. Language.

- 5. Primary arithmetic.

- 6. General lessons.

- 1. Singing.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Care of the body.

- 4. Calisthenics.

- 5. Nature study.

- 6. Morals and manners.

- II. Intermediate grades.

- 1. Fourth year.

- 1. Reading.

- 2. Writing.

- 3. Spelling.

- 4. Language.

- 5. Arithmetic.

- 6. Geography.

- 7. General lessons.

- 1. Singing.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Health lessons.

- 4. Nature study.

- 5. Calisthenics.

- 6. Morals and manners.

- 2. Fifth year.

- 1. Reading and literature.

- 2. Writing.

- 3. Spelling.

- 4. Language.

- 5. Arithmetic.

- 6. Geography.

- 7. General lessons.

- 1. Music.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Hygiene.

- 4. Nature or agriculture.

- 5. Calisthenics.

- 6. Morals and manners.

- 3. Sixth year.

- 1. Literature.

- 2. Writing.

- 3. Spelling.

- 4. Elementary grammar.

- 5. Arithmetic.

- 6. Geography.

- 7. History.

- 8. General lessons.

- 1. Music.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Hygiene.

- 4. Nature or agriculture.

- 5. Calisthenics.

- 6. Morals and manners.

- 7. Sloyd.

- III. Advanced grades.

- 1. Seventh year.

- 1. Literature.

- 2. Orthography.

- 3. Grammar.

- 4. Arithmetic.

- 5. Geography.

- 6. History.

- 7. Physiology.

- 8. General exercises.

- 1. Music.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Nature or agriculture.

- 4. Sloyd.

- 2. Eighth year.

- 1. Literature.

- 2. Orthography.

- 3. Grammar and composition.

- 4. Arithmetic.

- 5. Geography.

- 6. History.

- 7. Physiology.

- 8. General exercises.

- 1. Music.

- 2. Drawing.

- 3. Nature or agriculture.

- 4. Sloyd or manual training.

- 5. Literary exercises.

No one would expect you to have a daily lesson in all the above subjects. For example, in the first year reading, writing, spelling and language would be combined. In the second year these subjects in the main would be combined. The general lessons need not be daily lessons and often two or more years could be combined in the same instruction. Calisthenics could be general exercises for all the grades or the two advanced grades might be excused from these if you thought best. History and geography might come on alternate days, or history and physiology. The course is to represent the lines of study that in a well-graded school are kept abreast. The allotment of time and the work is left to the adjustment of the teacher or school.

CHAPTER VII.
OPENING EXERCISES.

No period of the day is so important in its influence on the day’s work or so rich in opportunities for good in after life as the first fifteen minutes after school is called in the morning. The teacher’s task is not an easy one. Before her are as many dispositions as there are pupils. Before her are the physical, mental and moral defects of inheritance and the pernicious habits of home neglect and wrong training. The rich and the poor, the high and the low, the proud and the humble, the good and the bad, a heterogeneous group all are there—and out of these the teacher is to construct the working unit, the school.

The spoiled babe, the father’s favorite, the mother’s pet, the orphan and the outcast, all meet here on common ground. The hope of a democracy is based upon this meeting and mingling. The perpetuity of our institutions must stand or fall by the results of such meeting. Each here learns to estimate the other and the estimate is usually the par value of the pupil. The banker’s boy must measure brains with the bootblack and often each gets the best lesson of life in that measurement. The banker’s boy often finds a worthy rival in the bootblack and unconsciously rates him higher than if they had never met. The bootblack may have higher hopes and ambitions kindled, together with a better estimate of his own innate worth and this is uplifting. Blood tells, but it as often tells weakness as strength, and often the best lesson of a wealthy boy’s life is when he is wallowed—wallowed physically as well as mentally—by some poor, humble widow’s son upon whom he had always looked with contempt.

Out of this group of individuals, the teacher is each day to construct the working unit, the school. They gather from various homes and conditions, some gorged with indigestible dainties, others with appetites hardly appeased with the plainest of food, some bubbling over with fun and mischief, and others sour and sullen, all these are to become a unit for the day’s work. To focus these minds, to draw them from the petty home incidents of the morning, to put them into harmony with the work of the day, the tuning of these minds is the one great purpose of the daily opening exercises of the school.

But in the very process of the exercise there comes numerous opportunities for the richest lessons of the school course. It gives the opportunity for teaching lessons of patience, patriotism, duty, love, respect, obedience, gratitude and devotion. Kindness to animals, appreciation of the beautiful in art and nature and literature, higher ideals of life, faith and hope and charity, and greatest of all the criterion of the really educated person, liberal-mindedness—all of these should find food in the unifying process of the school, the opening exercise.

Perhaps, the one thing that will bear repetition oftenest and grow in its good results by repetition in the opening exercise is singing. I discriminate between singing and a lesson in music. A lesson in music may not be one whit better for unifying the minds of the pupils than a lesson in grammar or arithmetic. But singing is better. An angry pupil cannot sing. In the singing he forgets his anger. Nothing so quickly recalls the wandering minds of pupils and gets them into harmony with the purpose of school, and makes them forget petty troubles, as a good, soul-stirring song in which all unite. Patriotic songs, devotional songs, folk songs, songs of the home and the heart, nature songs—the list is long—all have their use in the opening exercise. Glad or sad, as the teacher desires to stir the pupils, so let the morning song be in opening exercise.

Even if the teacher sings but little, there will be found always the faithful half dozen who can and will sing. The others will follow. Choose the songs that nearly all like and sing with enthusiasm. For the opening exercises not many songs are needed. If music is taught, new songs may be learned, and the favorite ones added to the list for morning use. Let me emphasize the fact that it is not the new and the difficult, but the old, the familiar, the soul-stirring song that is most useful in opening exercise. Something that all like, something that all can sing, something that appeals to the emotions—these are the songs for the opening of school.

It is well if the teacher is leader in music, it is well if you have an organ or piano or other good instrument, it is well if you have song books, but sing even if you have none of these. A few pupils will be found who can lead, and many of the best music teachers advocate that pupils should be taught to sing alone and not with the teacher. The instrument is good, but not absolutely essential. Song books are very valuable indeed, and most schools can obtain them, but if you do not have them have each pupil make a copy of the words of a song in their opening exercise note book and commit the words to memory. By all means sing at the opening exercises of the day. Nothing will more quickly drive out the peevishness, relieve the sullenness, and make glad the whole school than the morning song well sung.

The opening exercise requires study, planning, and skill on the part of the teacher. No lesson needs more planning and in no lesson will you get better results if you do plan wisely and well. You must know in advance what you will present, not leave it to the impulse of the moment. Then, too, there must be variety. Children tire of sameness. If pupils know weeks in advance just what to expect at the opening exercise they will care less to be on time, especially if this particular exercise does not happen to appeal to them. If there is variety, if they feel that something new and good may occur any morning, they are more apt to be on time. Tardiness will decrease as the opening exercise increases in interest and value.

Make the opening exercise brief, interesting and pointed. I have tried the various plans given below with success. The interest in each particular exercise varied with the school, the class and the conditions. If the pupils were particularly pleased I continued it longer. If they showed that they were not especially pleased I left it sooner and came back to it later, else omitted it in the future. These suggestions worked out will I believe give you abundant material for a year of school.

1. A cheerful song, or two or three cheerful songs with no other exercise will often please the pupils. This is especially true on days when pupils are in the mood to sing. Choose songs that will suit the mood of the pupils at the time.

2. A solo from some pupil or person or a duet from two pupils makes a pleasing change. These will be all the more pleasing if they come as a surprise to the school.

3. A humorous or pathetic story, either read or related, if well done, is always interesting and instructive. Do not spoil it by tacking a long moral to it. Pupils, most of them, will get their own lesson. Neither grown people nor children care to be preached to always.

4. Reading from the Scriptures, and without comment, may often please and is always in place. This may be followed by a brief prayer if it come from the heart. Religious service in the public school must be free from sectarianism, and it is well to guard such exercises carefully.

5. A cheerful devotional song followed by the Lord’s Prayer given in concert by the school is good. Sincerity must characterize all exercises of a devotional nature, else they should be strictly avoided.

6. A brief summary of the world’s news of the week given by some pupil may be made very interesting in many schools. This is a splendid exercise for broadening the views and life of the pupil.

7. Review the life of any great men dying. Prepare the leading facts of their life carefully and pointedly so that pupils will remember the facts and gain inspiration from the life.

8. Discuss in the same way the lives of great men yet living. Avoid over praise and still better over-criticism. The natural tendency to hero worship in children is an uplifting force. Cultivate it. The past few years has seen a tendency in muck-rake quarters to belittle men. There are spots on the sun and perhaps faults in great men. Teach pupils to enjoy the warmth and heat without worrying about the spots. Teach them to look for the best in men rather than the worst.

9. Discuss social questions such as strikes, elections, social movements, etc. Be liberal in your views, avoid partisan statements and bitter criticisms. The great purpose of education is to make men think and to be charitable and liberal in their thinking of others.

10. Place a maxim or motto on the board and discuss its meaning and application with the school. This is very interesting often and broadening to the views of the class. Many of our maxims are rich with meaning, but pupils often fail to grasp the meaning.

11. Perform or have some pupil perform an interesting experiment in physics or chemistry, one that explains some scientific fact or principle. This will prove intensely interesting. It is no trouble to select several such, and pupils are seldom tardy if they think they may miss such an exercise.

12. Short queries are good if they are appropriate ones.

13. Information lessons on plants and animals, illustrated when possible by objects or pictures, will be interesting and profitable.

14. Discuss the manufacture of common articles, such as pens, pencils, boots, shoes, buttons, cotton and woolen goods, etc. If possible, have pupils visit such factories and describe the processes. If you cannot take the pupils, visit the factories yourself and observe the processes carefully that you may describe them accurately and interestingly.

15. Select famous historic quotations such as “Don’t give up the ship,” “Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute,” and have pupils tell when, by whom and upon what occasion they were uttered.

16. Give brief descriptions of historic places and things you have seen. Be modest and be brief.

17. Describe the habits, manners, customs and life of strange people. Material is easily found for this. Do not read it to pupils, but prepare it and tell it to them.

18. Select some interesting book and read one or two chapters each morning. Pupils will be anxious to follow the story and will be greatly interested.

19. Have pupils give memory gems. This to me has been one of the most uniformly successful opening exercises I have ever tried. I have never had a class that tired of it. To have the minds of pupils stored with beautiful gems of poetry and prose, little life sermons, means much to the young persons. One of my former pupils ten years later, himself then a teacher, told me he valued that above everything else I gave him. It had been a source of the greatest pleasure to recall these and to add new ones at intervals.

20. Help pupils to better grasp facts by graphic illustrations of them. Pupils have no conception of a billion. When we read in our geography that the United States raised two and a half billion bushels of corn a few years ago, it makes no impression on the mind. Have pupils figure out how long a procession of wagons would be required to haul it, counting twenty bushels to the load and twenty feet of space for the wagon and team. How many times would this procession reach around the earth at the equator? The result may surprise you unless you have figured on it, and I am sure it will surprise your pupils. At least it will help them in some little measure to grasp the enormity of the corn crop. Then what becomes of all this corn? Another fact that can be graphically illustrated is to have the class figure out how many tons of water fell upon the school building last year. You can find the average rainfall for your state or locality. A cubic foot of water weighs about 62 1-2 pounds. Then figure out the number of tons. Get your patrons to figure on it before you tell them the amount or they may doubt your veracity, or else your sanity. Dozens of such topics may be used, and will make the most interesting of opening exercises.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER.

The more one studies the forces which combined make a successful school, the more he sees that the teacher is the all-important factor. Buildings, grounds, furniture, apparatus, books, all these are important—and the material equipment of a school makes much difference—but over and above these and vastly more important than these, is the spirit of the teacher. From the contact of mind with mind grows a quickened intellect. Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and Garfield on the other, these, Garfield said, would make a university. The teacher whose soul is on fire with her work, the pupil who is willing to learn, these are the essentials of a good school. The teacher, one whose heart is in the work, one who realizes the dignity and the importance of teaching, one who not only knows the subject to be taught and the laws of mental development, but has that innate tact and worth and personal magnetism that draws young people to her, such a teacher is a priceless gem. Such a teacher brings order out of chaos. The pupils feel the magnetism of her presence. She enters into their very lives, lifting them to higher things and leading the way.

It is the spirit of a teacher that governs a school. In one room is disorder, a spirit of idleness and sometimes defiance, carelessness and contempt for all that is pure and good and noble in school life—loose paper, marred desks, paper wads, marked walls—you know the signs. The teacher among her personal friends and intimate acquaintances speaks always in contempt of the pupils, calling them her “mean kids,” “hateful little imps,” “despisable brats,” etc. She longs for the monthly return of pay day and the end of the term. She scolds, frets, punishes, threatens, bribes and coaxes by turns and in rapid succession, and then expresses surprise that the pupils of her room take little interest in their work and are so “torn down mean.” She is lacking in natural dignity and seriousness, and wonders why her pupils are frivolous. She makes no daily preparation of lessons and cannot understand why the children do not study. She is the giddiest of the giddy in talking about her beaux, and wonders why the school girls are so rude as to speak about their “fellows.”

The pupils of another room—and often the same pupils under another teacher—are quiet, orderly, obedient, respectful and studious. She does not gush. She is not petty and has no pets. She is quiet, bright, cheerful, cheery, orderly, serious, natural, and has confidence in her pupils. She speaks kindly and affectionately of her boys and girls, neither thinking them faultless nor lauding them to the skies. Her every act is an inspiration to her pupils. She plans her work, she works to her plans, and the pupils both consciously and unconsciously imitate her. She shapes the lives and destinies of her pupils for the better. The work of such a teacher is above all money value. The former is dear at any price.

The spirit of the teacher shows itself in the intellectual attitude of the pupils. The teacher should be a living fountain, not a stagnant pool. The growing mind is alone fit to teach. The best, the life-giving teaching, which makes the pupil’s soul thirst for more is not being done by men and women who have long since completed their education. I pity the high school pupil whose teacher adds nothing to his intellectual growth each year. Were I seeking an institution in which to educate a boy of mine, I should care very little for the religious creed of the faculty, but I should prefer that there was diversity among them and I should want good morals. I should care little for the political faith of his teachers, but I should want them honest in their convictions. My first and deepest concern would be the spirit of the teachers in charge of the school. I should want a faculty mature enough to have lost much of its freshness, but fresh enough to be growing still. The average age should not exceed forty, men growing in knowledge day by day, each strong in his specialty but pushing forward to new and better things, broad enough to grasp life and to see things from more than one angle, men whose gaze and hope is turned to the sunrise and not to the sunset, men who are winning laurels and making a name in their profession rather than men who have won laurels and made a name and are now resting. Such teachers and the spirit of such teaching would show in the intellectual attitude of the boy.

The spirit of the teacher will show itself in the pupil’s view of life. I often think of one of my favorite teachers. I have forgotten most of the lessons he taught me from books. Much of the algebra he taught me has been relearned or else I do not know it. I violate daily many of the rules of syntax he tried so hard to teach me, and yet he taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life. He looked on life with a broad perspective. He was liberal-minded. He taught us, unconsciously perhaps, to be generous in our judgments of others. He opened our minds and our lives to the beauties and harmonies of nature all about us. The sunset took a brighter tint, the rainbow showed a deeper color, the pansy gave a more delicate odor, life gleamed broader and sweeter because of the unconscious inspiration of this man’s life. Cheerfulness, hope, faith, trust in the eternal triumph of right should be a part of every teacher’s faith. No carping, sour-grained, narrow-minded teacher ever did much to develop healthy, hearty, liberal views of life in the pupil. One of the greatest misfortunes of our schools is the fact that occasionally such teachers are found in them.

The spirit of the teacher is shown in the attitude of the pupil in his daily work. She cheers or depresses. Constant nagging would drag down angels. If there is anything that saps the mental life of pupils, dulls their intellectual desires, disgusts them with school and all that pertains to it, it is the spirit of the grumbling, growling, whining, probing, complaining teacher. Occasionally we meet such a teacher in the schools, and her work is followed by the wreck of childish hopes and ambitions. Her very atmosphere is blighting and dwarfing. Have you ever met such a teacher? I trust not, and yet I fear you have. Here is a sample:

“Now, George, you may tell us about Braddock’s defeat. Stand up and tell us all about it. You remember you had that topic yesterday and did not know it. I told you to take your book home with you last night and to study all about this topic, you remember. You may stand up now and try it again. Stand up straight. Get out from the desk. Now, that is better. I have told you several times how I wanted you to stand when you recite. Put down that rule and take your hand out of your pocket. How often am I to tell you about that.

“A little louder, I can’t hear you. I told you the other day to speak loud enough that you could be heard by any one in any part of the room. You must remember what I tell you.

“Now, that is better. Stand up straight. Now, tell us all about Braddock’s defeat. Begin over again. ‘Braddock was a British general sent over to this country to help us,’ well that is all right so far. Go on. Who was Braddock? Who was he and what had he done? Tell us all about him.... Well, if the book does not say, you ought to have looked it up in some other book. Didn’t I tell you I wanted you to read other histories and not to depend on one text-book?

“Now, stand up and tell us all you know about Braddock’s defeat. You’ve had that topic two days, and surely you can tell us something. You have got to study your history. Take your book home with you to-night and study the lesson three or four times. A great big boy like you ought to know history. You will want to vote sometime. I would be ashamed if I were you. Study that topic so you can tell us all about it to-morrow. Remember this class completes history this year. If you are to be promoted you will have to work. We will have an examination on all of these topics, and after we have had these lessons over and over again, if you do not pass it is not my fault. You will have to work, young man, or fail. That is all I have to say about it.

“Remember, you have got to learn this lesson next time. If I were you, I would try to use my brains, if I had any. It makes me tired when I have to tell and tell you what to do and you do not care a cent. I am just doing my best to help you, and you do not seem to appreciate it a bit. I would be ashamed, and you would be if you had the least bit of get up to you.

“Now, we must close. For to-morrow we shall review to-day’s lesson and take down to the bottom of page 105, down to where you see the big, black-faced letters which say, ‘William Pitt is made Prime Minister.’ I wonder what a Prime Minister is, anyhow. Well, you may think about that. You may get down to that topic for next time. Now, study this lesson well, so that you can recite it right off to-morrow. Get a good lesson next time. We did not get over the lesson to-day. Let’s do better next time. Class excused.”

Of course, George left the recitation with a burning desire to learn all about Braddock’s defeat. The inspiration was sufficient to do him for life. The inspiration from the recitation in other subjects being of the same satisfying kind, he withdrew from school two months later. The spirit of a teacher sometimes kills.

The school, large or small, country or town, blest with a teacher of broad mold, liberal-minded, active, studious, still learning, virtuous and pure-minded, such a school is a dynamic force for good in the neighborhood. Such a teacher is not worried by bad boys. Her energy is not sapped by keeping order. She does not nervously pound the desk or the call bell for quiet. Her very attitude begets quiet without having to demand it. She may sit down and hear a recitation. Composure on her part gets composure on the part of the pupils. If John forgets himself and gets into mischief a look from her settles him. She does not have to stop the recitation every few minutes to reprimand. She does not nervously walk the aisle to keep order while she is hearing a recitation. If a boy is devoid of principle and persists in doing annoying things she lets him come to her instead of rushing back after him. Her look of indignation and scorn makes him feel his insignificance, and he does not try it often. She has learned the lesson of letting the offender do the walking instead of the teacher.

When patrons and officials learn that it is the personality and individuality, or the spirit of the teacher that counts in teaching, then will they discriminate between teachers and school keepers, and be willing to pay the former living salaries and encourage the others to try new fields of labor.

CHAPTER IX.
THE TEACHER’S LIBRARY.

What do you read? A look at your library will reveal much of your interest and professional zeal. Gypsies examine your hand or feel of your head to tell your fortune and predict your future. If you want revealed the future and the fortune of a teacher examine that teacher’s library and see what books they read and have read. A glance at the library will tell much of the teacher’s zeal, earnestness, and enthusiasm in the profession. You can gauge them pretty accurately by the books they read. One’s library, like one’s dress, oft proclaims one’s character.

Of course the teacher does not confine herself to professional books and reading alone. No one would expect such a thing. It would make you narrow. If this had been your entire line of reading you would be narrow now. The question is, do you ever read professional books and professional literature? What faith would you have in a physician who had never read medical books, and who did not take and read the current literature of his profession? Would you engage a lawyer to defend your interests or to look after your business who had never read or heard of the great treatises on law? Would you entrust the life of your child to the former? Would you intrust your business to the latter?

Would you then ask parents to entrust the education of their child to you when you have never read nor heard of the literature that bears upon teaching and education? If you neither read nor care for the current literature of teaching, educational journals, and magazine articles of merit bearing upon your work, do you think that you are equipped properly for the best interest and education of the child? Can you blame thinking men and women for criticising and often giving very little deference to the teacher’s opinion of education? Is the mind so much less important that good judgment would reject the physician and the lawyer who have done no professional study, and accept the teacher, ignorant of the literature of her line of work and who had never given any study of why or how or what to teach in order to best develop the child? Is the mind of less importance than the body? Is property dearer to the parent than the child?

If teaching is a profession, or is ever to become one, teachers must read the literature of the profession. If you are a professional teacher, or if you are ever to become one, you must read and enjoy the reading of good books on teaching and education. It is not the reading alone but the keen interest and love for the reading. Teaching can never become a profession until teachers become acquainted with the literature of the profession, and even before they enter the profession must show that they have made the acquaintance of this literature.

I have little faith in the teacher who does not care for good books, and who does not own and read a few good books. The teacher who has taught for a few terms and who has not at least the beginning of a professional library ought to quit. It is an imposition upon the public to continue year after year teaching when you do not have interest enough in your work nor love enough for the profession to own a few good books bearing upon your work. It is a sure sign that your interest in teaching is a mere mercenary interest. You teach for the dollars only. That is not so bad in itself if you want to give value received for the dollars. Few of us could or would teach if there were no salary attached, but there is a deeper and broader interest that is above money value. This broader interest is lacking when the teacher does not care to buy and read a few books each year upon her professional work.

It is not the size of the library that counts. It is the reading and the study and the assimilation of the contents of the library that is of value. Your library should not only be well read, but steadily growing. New books should be added from year to year, educational journals and magazine articles bearing upon the present trend of teaching and education should be found. They should be read carefully and critically. You need not swallow without mastication every newly-hatched theory or educational cure-all that is advocated. It is the reading teacher that has ballast and is not swept away with every new-fangled notion that is sprung upon the public by the educational demagogue and sensationalist.

Your library need not be large, but it should be well-selected. It should be bought for use and not for show. There is much difference between the teacher’s working library and the teacher’s parlor show library. It takes but a glance to recognize the difference. In the working library there will be the regular text-books used in the school course. These are for getting clear, systematic, fresh outlines of the work from day to day. How often a five-minutes’ glance at the author’s treatment of a subject at night will clear up two or three days of work for the class. It lightens your work and it enables you to organize what you give to the class. There should be a few other late texts upon the subjects. From these you will get side lights and little points of information to supplement the regular texts. There should be a few more advanced texts upon several of the subjects from which you may occasionally get view points to keep your own knowledge from fossilizing. Advanced text-books and other good texts besides the regular ones used by the pupils are the every day tools of the teacher.

A good dictionary is very essential. This dictionary need not be the largest nor latest complete dictionary. Such a dictionary is proper equipment for the schools, but the best working dictionary for the teacher is often an academic or a student’s dictionary. You will refer to these oftener. I know from experience. On my study desk are three dictionaries—one is a late edition of one of the very best, the others are academic dictionaries, late and standard, but books of from five to eight hundred pages. I use the smaller ten times to the larger once. When you buy a dictionary get one with the index. If your time is worth a cent an hour it will soon repay you the extra cost. Then you will use it oftener because it is more quickly done.

You need a good, authentic, up-to-date encyclopedia. This need not be the largest, nor an expensive one. A two or a four-volumed encyclopedia will often be of more use to you than a larger one. You will use it oftener, just as in the case of the dictionary. In buying an encyclopedia, do not be gulled by cheap reprints—something that treats everything else in the world but the things you want, and treats these at such length that you are lost in a mass of detail before you have read half a page. The young teacher makes a mistake in buying a fifty or seventy-five dollar encyclopedia when he has not twenty dollars worth of other books in his library. Do not be so foolish as to think an encyclopedia will give you all the knowledge that is ever wanted. Thinking is what gives you power, not facts. Facts serve a useful purpose in thinking, but unless they are organized you will get little out of them. An encyclopedia can give you only general facts. Half a hundred other books would be far more useful to you than a complete encyclopedia.

You should have a good, small atlas for ready reference. This should be fairly authentic and up-to-date at the time you buy it. Look carefully at reprints and unauthentic compilations. They are many and often costly. You can get a very reliable small usable atlas for a dollar or two. The world is changing fast. An atlas soon gets out of date. When you buy one get one that gives the latest census. The present atlases giving the census of 1900 will soon be laid on the shelf after the census of 1910 becomes available.

You should have a few good, authentic histories, histories of our own country as well as general histories. Here, too, good text-books will give you a bird’s-eye view and an understanding of things often better than the larger histories. Get your general outline view first, and then as time and opportunity offers get the deeper, more critical view by the study of special events and topics. Teachers are lacking in their knowledge of history. The teacher should have a well-organized epitome of the world’s history clearly in mind. He should see the nations come and go as he looks down the ages, and see the mile post which each nation marked in the growth of civilization. Then he should have a broader, closer knowledge of our own country, trying in every case to see our national development and progress in the light of the world’s progress rather than the events in themselves.

Do not forget biography. It is rich in interest and inspiration, not only for the teacher as a person and an individual, but it is even richer still in food for the teacher as a teacher. The pupil is hard to find who is not or cannot be interested in biography if the teacher is full of it. His history is his knowledge of the individual. He is hungering for this knowledge of the individual if only the teacher will point the way and show an interest in it. I may be wrong, but I fear we are going to seed on myths and gods and heroes of the remote past. Fairy stories and myths have their place. To say the child is interested in them is not always conclusive argument. If the teacher would get out and help build it the child would be intensely interested in making a snow man. The difference between a teacher and an ideal teacher is often the difference between the teacher that can inspire an interest in sane, sensible, intelligent lines and the teacher that can interest along the useless, unimportant lines. At least the teacher’s library should be rich in biography. No book ever read so thoroughly interested me when I was a boy as Franklin’s Autobiography, and no book I ever read had greater influence on my life. To this day I find his common-sense maxims coming up before me with telling force.

What fiction is more enjoyable than many of the biographies of our great men? Read Grant’s Memoirs, read Phil Sheridan’s Life, read the Autobiography of the teacher and diplomat, Andrew D. White. Can you in fiction find anything more interesting? Then such books as Blaine’s “Twenty Years in Congress,” Benton’s “Thirty Years,” Greeley’s “American Conflict,” Davis’s “Rise and Fall of the Confederacy,” and Nicolay and Hay’s “Life of Lincoln”—what teacher can begin one of them and not become thoroughly absorbed in it, living over again the scenes they describe. In mentioning the individual books, I do not mean to imply there are not others just as interesting, but these are types and valuable types, types with which teachers should be familiar. Some of these should be found in the teacher’s library and the teacher should know the contents.

Then there is pure literature, the great poems and poets, the classics. Read and own Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, and Holmes. Start with Longfellow, and after you have read the others mentioned and have them on your library shelves add others as you like. Read fiction of course. Begin with the better class. Read Hawthorne, Scott, Dickens, Eliot and others. Read some of the later fiction but do not waste time on every piece of rag-time fiction that comes from the press. Teachers do not have time to do it, and it would lead to intellectual imbecility if they did. We are smothering in a deluge of light literature of the rag-time class—literally smothering beneath it. Teachers at least should be discriminating enough to select intelligently the things worth reading, but are they?

But what about professional reading? If you neglect professional reading you ignore the profession that you are striving to build up. Read psychology, methods, history of education, and educational views and discussions, and keep up on what is going on in administration of schools and changes in school laws. This concerns you and should be of interest to you. The lives of the great educational reformers of the world, the lives of a few of our own educators like Horace Mann, David Page, and others, should be of intense interest to you. Books on management, books on method, books on the science and art of instruction, books giving in detail the plans, methods and devices for teaching and handling a school, how can such things lack interest for you? Many of these represent the best experience of intelligent teachers for years. They have pointed out to you their faults and mistakes. They have shown you the way. You are not to follow such books blindly. But read discriminately they will become guides to you. They will save you from the pitfalls of others. They will save you nerve force and strength by giving you clearer notions of what to expect and how to secure it. They will help you to govern bad boys and naughty girls. Ignore them and you start in to re-discover all the pitfalls of the teacher. Then read the plans and devices that add spice and interest. They represent successful experience. Then the deeper educational works, those which point out principles, the books that are for laying the foundation for a real science of education and to prepare the way for a profession of teaching, shall teachers neither read, own, nor care for such books and yet call themselves teachers, professional teachers?

Before leaving the subject of the teacher’s library, I want to caution against some mistakes. I have seen the libraries of many teachers. I think I can make pretty accurate predictions from looking at the library of the teacher’s judgment, standing, and teaching ability. It is lamentable that so many young teachers are gulled into buying sets of books—a set of Shakespeare, a set of Irving, a set of Dickens, a set of Scott, a set of the library of history, or a set of the world’s literature, etc.

Mark you, I do not throw stones at any particular collection of books. I have every respect for the agent and the publishers of such books. In fact, I always feel like taking my hat off to the book agent when I meet one. As an orphan boy I was reared in a home where there were more than ten acres of land for each book in the home. The few that were there had been sold by enterprising book agents, who made them think their future prosperity and soul’s salvation depended very largely upon whether they bought the book or not. If he succeeded in making them believe this and would knock off fifty cents and board out half the balance they would sometimes buy the book. One of these books touched me and gave me some aspirations that have influenced my life. Blessings be upon the agent that sold it, if he is living. If he is dead, may his soul rest in peace and prosperity attend his posterity.

It is not the particular set of books, nor the publisher, nor the agent, but the foolish spending of money for what will not do the good for you that half of it well spent would do. It is a reflection upon a teacher’s judgment when he allows himself to be talked into buying a large set of books, uniform in price and binding, and much alike. What does the average young teacher want with a whole set of Shakespeare, or a whole set of Scott, or of Dickens. Life is too short to read all the works of very many authors. You want to be familiar, genuinely familiar, with five or six of Shakespeare’s best plays. You want to know well three or four of Scott’s best novels. You want to be familiar—to have read, re-read and lived over again and again with the author Dickens’ David Copperfield, his Tale of Two Cities, Little Nell, and perhaps one or two others. But you do not have time to read all of Dickens, and if you had the time you could better spend it in reading one or two of the best of some other author rather than wading through the worst of Dickens. No author, not even Shakespeare, can always be at his best. The teacher who knows thoroughly the three or four best of an author’s writings may well afford to be ignorant of the others, and use the time in growing familiar with the best of some other author.

Select your library. Put some good volumes of history, biography, travel, fiction, and great poems in it. Do not neglect your professional books. If you have taught ten years and do not have at least twenty-five professional books, you have very little professional spirit, and ought to quit teaching or begin reading. Let your library be a working library. Do not get all your books the same size, shape and binding. Nothing is a greater give away on one’s library. Working libraries are not that way. Libraries bought in bulk, bought for show, bought not because you need them or want them, but because some firm or agent is pushing their sale, these are in large sets. Such is an infallible sign that your library was not built up as a working, usable library—a growth, and not a full-grown product at one time.

Your library will be a fair index of your professional standing, and the practiced eye can readily paint you after examining your library.

CHAPTER X.
THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

Teaching has two sides. There is the school-room side and the public or community side. Each is important. You cannot be a successful teacher without mastering the first. You can’t hold your job long unless you have some skill in the second. Your success in a community is often measured more by the second than the first. In fact, the good you do, the influence you exert on the lives of the pupils, the net results of your work, is often a reflex of your skill and ability to get along with the people, to get their respect, good will and hearty co-operation.

You must know how to meet and mingle with people. You must understand your patrons and many of their peculiar neighborhood whims. You must know enough of human nature to get along with people, to be diplomatic without being weak, and to get your way without stirring up determined opposition. Confidence in yourself, freedom from excessive or offensive egotism, a knowledge of the home life and surroundings of your patrons, and that rarest of accomplishments, the ability to listen and say little, these will help you. It will often happen also that you must teach your patrons, and this requires more skill than to teach pupils. You must teach them as if you taught them not. You must use diplomacy without deceit or sham or show of weakness.

There will be certain local standards that you should respect if you can do so conscientiously. I have taught in neighborhoods where dancing and card-playing were considered long steps toward everlasting perdition. The teacher who had gone to a public ball or dared dance at a private home in the community would have been met with a storm of opposition. In fact, it would have been almost as bad as if she had gotten drunk. In such communities a teacher would do well to avoid such amusements, and if she is skillful she need not commit herself upon the matter. Leave the people to guess her real sentiment on these things. On the other hand, if the teacher has been taught to regard dancing, card-playing and kindred amusements as wrong, and then teaches in a community where such things are common she need not indulge in them. With an ordinary share of discretion she need not give offense in declining invitations to such amusements should they come. She cannot as a stranger do much in one or two terms toward changing the sentiment of the community either for or against such things. After long acquaintance she can build up her circle of friends where other amusements take the place of these that are under ban. Even in time she might create a tolerance for such indulgences, but it is likely to cost more than it will come to. More real good can be done by looking pleasant, and taking no real active partisan part in either way. For my own part I can see no sin in a quiet, civil game of cards. But my mother’s puritanical views forbade such as if it were satan’s certain snare. Out of respect to my mother’s memory I have never learned the names of the different cards in a deck, and unless I simply applied my own judgment of the meaning of words could not tell one card from another. I lost pleasant evenings occasionally during my university course because of this “narrowness” as many called it. Occasionally now, I must decline an evening out or else be a drag to the entertainment feature. I have never offended any one so far as I know, nor lost their respect and good will by refusing to take part in a game. The sacred memory of my angel mother who died when I was a child has far more than compensated me for all the pleasure I have lost. For the other person, I can see no harm in a quiet game of cards; for me to break my boyhood promise and later resolution would not only rob it of all pleasure but would be a positive personal loss.

There are other indulgences also that the teacher must forego for the sake of public opinion. Many a young man has lost a splendid opportunity to make a reputation of being a good teacher in a community by being indiscreet in keeping company. However unobjectionable the girl, and however much he may be interested, he must remember that much of the world dislikes a lover if that lover be the school teacher of the neighborhood. People that think or care very little what the young man in the store or the postoffice do, will resent too much company keeping for the teacher. The young woman teaching should be even more careful about keeping company. It is not good policy to do it, and it will be more pleasure in the long run to be with young people, but do very little keeping of young men’s company.

With your patrons you may be more free. Strict etiquette might dictate that you wait until they have called on you. If you wait you will know few of them and meet these after trouble has come up and they call on you to make complaint. The teacher, like the preacher, if there is strong personality and good address, can ignore many little formalities, and no one will question it. Make the acquaintance of as many of your patrons early in the term as you can. Be cordial, be pleasant, be brief. Do not fawn. Do not gush nor bubble over. Do not find fault. Do not tell all your plans for the year or make glowing promises. Be yourself, but be your best self. Do not talk shop all the time. Do not talk Shakespeare, politics, religion or the higher criticism. You might soon interest them in the second and third, but a discussion would probably do you no good. The first and last they probably know little about and care less. Your ability to make friends and to mix with people is limited often by your ability to talk to the other person about something in which he is interested. The hardest clam will open if you know how and where to touch it.

Learn how to shake hands. You are often judged by the handshake. The hand, the eye, the voice—these if used properly quickly overcome prejudice and barriers of opposition and build up forces in your favor. If you can shake hands with a firm, hearty grasp, meet the eye with frankness and composure, and speak in a pleasing, even, well-modulated, quieting voice, you have the strength of Gibraltar at your back. If you have knowledge and skill and personality and character to back the first impression made by such a combination, you should be invincible. If your handshake, however, is loose and passive, Uriah Heep-like, if your eyes wander, and your voice is screechy or faltering, you should begin at once to overcome these obstacles. They lie in your road to success as a teacher, and you should lose no time in trying to overcome them.

Many teachers lack poise. If you prefer, you may think of it as personality or force of character. Whatever term you may use to name it, it remains true that many teachers lack the ability to command attention and respect, and to mingle readily among the best business and professional men of the community. It is sometimes want of experience, it is sometimes want of knowledge, and breadth of vision. Teachers are too often narrow. They do not have the world view of things they should have. It is sometimes bookishness and lack of contact with the practical business side of the world. I am sorry to think that it is sometimes caused by the feeling that the fact you are a teacher is something to be apologized for. Teachers are so often inclined to whimper and whine, to seek to be pitied and petted. They brood over their imaginary troubles. They conclude the world does not properly appreciate their efforts. They want the public to grant them special favors and attentions instead of commanding the respect and attention of the community by weight of their own strength and personality.

The teacher should strive first to be a man or a woman in the best sense of the term, strong mentally, morally and physically, with personality and independence, but without rudeness. He should command respect as a thinking person, avoid eccentricities and partisan measures, have opinions of his own, but without flaunting them in the face of others to provoke combat or opposition. Then to the respect due him as a man will come, if his teaching justifies, the additional respect due him as a teacher.

The teacher should ever be the apostle of education and high thinking, a living example of the best product of the school and its worth. To be a consistent preacher of right living, high thinking, and the power of education in the progress and development of the state, he himself should be a worthy example. Of all persons the teacher should be the champion and the defender of the school and the cause of education. He should be a high example of the best product of the schools and education. His power, his carriage, his character, his thrift, his independence, his zeal in good works, should bear testimony and be the strongest argument for the schools. A genuinely good teacher, who has the intellectual and moral force to be a man among men, such a teacher in a few years will create a public sentiment that will demand good schools, buildings, equipment and teachers of the best, in the community in which he teaches. His influence will bear fruit for generations.

As long as the teacher is a weakling, a figure-head, a crank, an upstart, a person whose opinion—if he has one—on business or on the questions of the day would be hooted or laughed at by every level-headed business man of the community, there is little sentiment for schools or education developed. If the whole energy of the teacher is exhausted in keeping the problems solved in advance of his class, if his personal appearance, his carriage, his address, his thrift, and his thoughts are below the average business man of the community, many of whom have little or no education or school training, it places the school on the defensive. The hard-headed, but sober-minded, man of affairs will look upon the teacher as a fair sample and typical product of the schools, and will not regret that he lost such opportunities when he was young, or perhaps he will thank his stars that he did not have such things forced upon him.

My contention is that the teacher should be a man or woman of strong personality, a worthy product of the school, a person whose judgment and opinion of schools, of business, of the questions and the issues of the day would be such that it would be respected by the best people of the community. His opinions should have weight. He should have all the elements that go to make up a successful business career. He should be a man of force and character, whose influence would be felt in any line he should take up. With such teachers the schools will become what they should be. Such teachers will get results—results of the teaching act and results in the material equipment of the schools. Buildings will improve, conditions will improve, furniture and proper apparatus will be forthcoming. The community will soon begin to look upon the schools as safe investments, every dollar of which yields golden dividends; then the community will be generous.

When teachers possess the strength, the force, the poise, the diplomacy they should, good things will follow. Some of the criticism and carping about the schools will be changed. It makes my Scotch-Irish blood to tingle when I hear a few of these questions discussed. If it is not the teacher’s business to defend the school whose is it?

One of these things that should arouse a teacher is the insinuation still met in a few localities and among a few people—the would-be blue-bloods, with more inheritance of money than brains—that the public schools are pauper schools; or at least schools for poor people only. Such sentiment in free America seems to me born of ignorance or treason. I first heard it advocated by a physician, a native of New York, a graduate of a church endowed school and a product of it. His alma mater was supported by the contribution box passed at regular intervals in his church to which many a poor washerwoman contributed a far greater percentage of her earnings each time than the same physician did in a twelve months. Yet this good hypocritically pious, but deluded man, ridiculed the thought of the state supporting a university at public expense. He kept private tutors to teach his children that they might not have to attend the public school to mix with all “the rabble,” as he declared. There could not be a better indictment of his own education. He had failed to grasp the spirit of American liberty and American institutions. His ideas were those of effete aristocracy and wealth. The best lesson his boy may ever learn will be when some son of a washerwoman, or some poor paper boy or news seller meets him in competition in after life, and he goes down ignominiously in the contest. The chances are if the contest comes, and it will come in the present generation or in a near generation, the sturdy bootblack will win. This same physician did not think himself a partaker of charity by getting his mail at a government postoffice, by drinking from a public fountain or having his house and lot protected from the lake by Uncle Sam’s break water.

It is the duty of the state to educate. This is not the rich nor the poor, but all. The state’s schools are maintained as a public necessity, and for the whole people. The patron whose child attends the public school is no more an object of charity or a pauper for that reason than he is for patronizing the postoffice, using the city paved streets or using the street lamps at night. There are many things the public can do and do much more efficiently than they can be done otherwise. Education is one of these things. Every man, woman and child is benefited by good public schools, the bachelor and the childless family as well as the family of a dozen children.

Another fallacy often advocated is that the people are not able to support good schools. Nothing can have a less foundation in fact. Let us think about it. It is a principle that is almost axiomatic that no people can be pauperized by local taxes applied to local purposes. Now, very little of the school taxes ever leaves the immediate community. The teacher is often one of the community, and many times of the immediate neighborhood. If the teacher is from a distance he usually boards in the neighborhood and spends much of his earnings in the neighborhood. The percentage of his salary that leaves the community is not large. The expense of wood, repairs, and supplies are usually spent in the immediate community. The money that leaves the community is, as a rule, not as much as the state pays toward the maintenance of the school. No people can be pauperized by the money properly spent on their schools. It is only a short time until the increased earning capacity of the more intelligent citizenship soon begins to pay good dividends on the investment, even though part of the money should find its way out of the community.

When the cry came to us from Cuba in 1898, no one claimed that we were too poor to help. When later disturbances occurred, we sent our soldiers to maintain peace, and our secretary of war and assistant secretary of state were sent to restore order. No one said it cost too much. Count the cost of our war with Spain and place against it the money spent in the same time for schools and in fighting ignorance and then say if we are able to have good schools. Spend the money to train our young people to future usefulness which is spent in defense against imaginary foreign enemies and the world could not stand against us in a generation.

Few Americans but point with pride to our growing navy, now world famous and we hope effective. The launching of each new war ship is a thrilling event to the nation. The daily papers for weeks tell of its progress and every trifling event is carefully chronicled. Count how long the cost of one of these vessels would support one of our state universities. The mission of the university is to build up, to increase human intelligence and happiness. The mission of the war vessel is to destroy life and property and to make desolate.

Figure on these things, and then say whether or not we are too poor to have the best of schools.

CHAPTER XI.
GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS.

The life of the school is the teacher. There is less difference in pupils than in teachers. Under a weak teacher pupils will take every advantage they can. Under a strong teacher the pupils will behave as well as they can. The difference in rooms is usually a difference in teachers. If the equipment of rooms are the same or practically the same, and the teacher is not over burdened with pupils, the spirit and condition of the room will be determined by:

1. The teacher’s ideal of what constitutes good conditions.

2. The teacher’s strength and personality in getting results in conduct and work.

3. The former training and efficiency of the class. This will be seen more in the matter of attainment than in conduct. I have seen the worst of classes in conduct transformed into a class of good behaviour in three months by a change of teachers.

The teacher’s ideal of what constitutes good conditions counts for much. This ideal is a composite product, a result of all the former experiences of the teacher with her natural gifts. Training in good schools, teaching under good conditions, professional study, and natural high ideals in life count in one’s ideal of school. If the teacher is satisfied with dirty desks and scraps of paper on the floor she will get these conditions. If sloven, half-executed work suits her she will get it. If disrespect, sullenness and angry retorts will pass with her she will get them. If she is willing for the boys to whittle on the desks, they will whittle. To the practiced eye a five-minutes’ glance at a school-room will show pretty well the spirit of the teacher and her ability to get results.

High ideals of school work coupled with common sense and executive ability will get results. High ideals will prevent you from being satisfied with low standards in conduct or work. Common sense will guide you over rough places, and executive ability will have nerve force.

Common sense will keep you from attempting the impossible and then worrying because you cannot accomplish it. It will keep you out of difficulties in the school-room and in the community. So many teachers are lacking in this great characteristic of the plain, honest, thinking citizen. In a fit of anger they set a punishment impossible to be inflicted and then compromise themselves by withdrawing it. Arbitrary rules with no reason behind them often get teachers into trouble. Sensible rules, common sense rules, rules that would stand the test of good judgment, judiciously applied, bring good fruit. Setting a specific punishment for all pupils who for any cause go outside the school ground, locking the doors at a certain time regardless of the weather, forbidding any pupil from leaving the room, etc., the list of arbitrary, unreasonable rules are many. Now we shall agree that a healthy pupil should not have to leave the room once in three months. Restrict it, be positive in the matter, but do not forbid it, and then be compelled to vary the rule or do worse.

Most of the trouble in the school-room comes either from lack of action on the teacher’s part or action that is hasty and hence injudicious. The teacher of experience and one who has profited by experience could give numerous cautions to young teachers, all of which summed up might be the advice to use common sense. Among these cautions and suggestions those of most importance might be named as follows:

1. Remember that order in the school-room does not mean deathlike stillness.—There is the noise of work—a noise pleasing to the ear of the successful teacher, and the noise of idleness and confusion. The first is as inspiring to a good teacher as the second is discouraging. The stillness that comes through fear of punishment may be the worst of conditions. Under routine drill to quietness under the eagle eye of a so-called disciplinarian, the pupils are often on the borderland of anarchy. They have never learned the lesson of self-control nor the reasons for good behaviour.

Order means opportunity for effective work. The mind of the pupil and the mind of the teacher in perfect contact; this is order. When a pupil is preparing his lesson the author or text becomes the teacher, and there must be perfect unity between his mind and the thought of the text. Order, good order, permits this. Anything that disturbs this contact is detrimental to the school and is that far poor order. The criterion, then, for the teacher as to what constitutes good order is how nearly are conditions perfect for proper contact of the minds of the pupil and the teacher.

2. Do not lose your head.—Composure counts for more perhaps in the school-room than elsewhere. A nervous teacher makes a nervous school. Teachers sometimes pace the floor like a wild animal in a cage. Learn the art of sitting to hear a recitation without becoming lazy. Stand with composure when you stand. If you cannot govern yourself you will find it hard to govern others. Too many teachers are afraid there will be disorder. They can neither sit nor stand with composure during a recitation. They fidget and make the pupils fidgety. They watch the bad boy suspiciously. They walk back to his desk repeatedly to see if he is in mischief instead of waiting with composure, and if he does get into mischief punishing him for it. If you show that you expect a boy to be bad he will seldom disappoint you.

“Look for goodness, look for gladness,

You will find them all the while.”

Many, many times have I heard teachers say to pupils, “Sit down and be still,” when I wanted to say to them, “Go and do the same thing.”

3. In the long run pupils will give you the respect you deserve.—If you think you have the meanest pupils in the world they will not disappoint you. If you treat the pupils with firmness, and courtesy and respect they usually return to you in kind. When after a few months the majority of your pupils do not respect you, and have confidence in you, begin to examine yourself. In changing teachers, especially if your predecessor has been popular, you may for a few weeks feel that the pupils are not in sympathy with you. Tact and good judgment will win them if you have wearing qualities. Do not resent their feeling of respect for the former teacher. Try to be worthy their respect, and when you leave they will regret your leaving just as much.

4. The teacher who has ceased to learn becomes a phonograph, and can do nothing but repeat.—When you have something fresh, something new to you, something worth while to bring to the recitation, do you know how anxious you are for the time to come. The very gleam of the eye tells to pupils that you have a message for them. You cannot have the enthusiasm that appeals to childhood and continue to depend upon an old stock of goods.

5. You will find the school-room a good barometer.—When I began teaching, bad days came and I worried about it. Things went wrong, lessons were not well prepared, boys got into trouble on the playground, and girls were idle. I was often in despair. But perhaps the very next day was a delightful one. Everything went so well that I disliked for night to come. It took me several terms before I found out the relation of the weather to conduct, but it exists. The weather barometer that hangs on your wall is little better in its predictions of change than are the careful observations of the conduct of the pupils. Ask a dozen teachers at night how the day passed, and see what a majority will vote the same way. A bright morning, clouds gather and thicken—a bad day. Clearing weather—good work in the school-room. Observe if it is true.

6. A pleasing voice, freshness and vivacity in the teacher, quickens and inspires the class.—Her questions come as if she were really seeking information. They are crisp and to the point. The answers are cheery as if they were meant to impart information and not simply to tell something already known. Her face beams at a good answer, making the pupil believe he has done his teacher a favor by imparting the information. A cheery smile and a quick question that in its answer shows the error in the first follows a wrong reply. Discussions are bright and animated, and full of life, but always respectful and courteous. She is in strong contrast to the teacher that talks and talks in a monotonous tone until half the class are sleepy and the others thinking about everything else save the subject she is trying to explain. One draws out information and stimulates thought. The other pours in second-hand information and deadens thought. One sharpens intellect. The other dulls it.

7. Proper seating and grouping pupils, the calling of classes, the distribution of wraps, the collection of papers, the passing of classes, the dismission of school at recess and at night, the answering of questions, the passing of pupils from the room or across the floor—all these do much to make or mar the school.—A well-arranged program that indicates not only the time and order of the recitation but of the study period as well will help. Teachers make woeful failures often from no other cause but that they fail to plan carefully in advance just what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

8. The afternoon dismission to the careful observer is a fair index not only of the day but the teacher’s grasp of her school.—Teachers often hurry to dismiss the children, anxious to be rid of the responsibility. The pupils rush from the door with a jump and a shout as boisterous as a wild group of Comanche Indians. Of all the periods of the day, the one just before dismission is the one when the teacher should show most composure and deliberation. Of all the periods of the day, the pupils are most at the teacher’s mercy. Let them understand that quiet and decorum precede dismission. If it requires one minute, ten minutes or half an hour, let them know that no lines pass until all is quiet and orderly. Then at the customary signals, the lines pass quietly, orderly, respectfully.

9. Running, jumping, or boisterous conduct in the school-room is never in place.—The school-room should be looked upon as a pleasant workshop, not a skating rink or vaudeville theater. Best results always come where pupils are decorous in the room at all times. Quiet, homelike conversation is in place, but no rude or boisterous conduct at any time unless you expect to pay the penalty with interest in days to come.

CHAPTER XII.
KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS.

Your school began in September. Your pupils returned to school, most of them glad vacation was over. They entered with high resolves to make this year of work the best they had ever done. If you made a good beginning, the first few weeks of school strengthened these resolutions in many of your pupils. If you planned your work well each week, if your program was thoughtfully prepared, if you assigned lessons carefully, and if by your every act you showed without stating it that you were master of the situation and that you knew what you wanted to do, how you wanted it done, and why you wanted it done, the first few weeks of the term passed pleasantly, and well begun may not be half done, as the adage goes, but it counts for much.

October’s frost has now painted the landscape a myriad hue, and November’s hazy days are fast approaching. The novelty of school is beginning to dull. Pupils have grown used to the new teacher and stand no longer in such awe. The truth is that for both teacher and pupils, school has settled down to the real thing. Some of the high resolves of the opening of the term are beginning to weaken under the regular routine of school work. Dropping nuts have overcome the good resolution of a few, and they have missed a day or two to lay up the winter’s stock. Missing will be much easier now for these pupils the rest of the year. Some of the larger boys who remained at home to sow the wheat and help gather the corn are now entering. In the main they are good boys, worthy boys, boys whose greatest ambition is to work faithfully in school as well as on the farm, but their entrance has broken into the class organization and unity. The teacher and the pupils from now on recognize the school as a genuine business. The real problem of government begins to face the teacher. Then, too, school interest must not begin to drag, or else the holiday spirit will overbalance school spirit. Unless there is genuine interest some, often many, may become so infatuated with Santa Claus that they cannot study, and begin holiday vacation early. Lost time is hard to recover, and lost interest at the middle of a term is seldom completely restored.

Let us trust that your beginning was good. It is far easier to form than to reform. Definite standards of conduct, order and system, good common sense rules and regulations, good judgment, a knowledge of boys and girls, insight into the spirit and motives that prompt actions in young people, frankness and honesty with pupils, and above all the saving grace in the teacher of a sense of humor and the knowledge of the purifying and vivifying power of a hearty laugh—if you have understood these and exercised them from the first day, reforms will not be necessary. Still followed faithfully, they serve as correctives and prevent the necessity of reforms later.

How then may the teacher keep conditions good? What are the things to guard against in order to keep the school atmosphere wholesome, the interest good, and the conduct up to the standard? There are a few cautions which every teacher of experience would give the young teacher. These watched well and the teacher will grow in the power to govern and instruct. They will be found the key to a good school. While they do not cover all points, no teacher ever succeeded thoroughly and yet neglected many of them, and no teacher is a complete failure if many of them are in every way successful. Perhaps in naming some of these I may restate a few things mentioned in the chapter just preceding.

1. You must have good order.—Not simply quiet but intelligent quietness. Children are controlled by internal and external motives. Appeal to the former always, but be ready to use the latter should the former fail. You must govern your pupils else they will run away with you. If you are weak they will take every advantage of you they think they dare to take. Do not blame the children if your room is littered, desks marked and marred and scratched—they will soon learn to do it if you are a negative quantity. They will never do it if you are the positive force you should be.

Can you leave your room for ten minutes or half an hour and return to find things moving on with proper decorum and orderly manner? If you cannot do this, why not? The best teachers can do it. A class whose former record had been bad, in two weeks’ time under another teacher were entirely trustworthy, and during a ten months’ term were never known to do a disorderly act, though the teacher was frequently out of the room. Where the power? Where the fault? It can be done. Good order implies that each pupil is able to do his best work at any or all times without annoyance or external disturbance from others. Some pupils may be idle, but their idleness must not be catching. It must not disturb those who want to work. This is to be your criterion. Make it a constant study how this and the other may affect the proper work of your pupils. This will answer as well as it can be answered what you may permit and what you cannot permit in your school.

Good order in the recitation demands that the mind of the teacher and the pupils’ minds must focus upon the same thought. This is the basis of all school rules. How does it affect the unity of mind of the teacher and the class? If it tends to unity it is good. If it tends to destroy unity, it is bad, and should not be allowed. If it is incompatible with unity it should at once be forbidden. Let the young teacher learn to measure conduct by this standard, and she will soon solve the various perplexing questions, little in themselves but big to her. “Shall I permit whispering?” “Shall I permit a child to get a drink during school hours?” “Shall I stop a recitation to reprimand a bad boy?” The best answer is found in the criterion—do that which will result in the closest possible contact between the mind of the teacher and the mind of the pupils in class.

Of course, in the application of the above principle we must often choose between two evils. But the criterion is a good guide. If the conduct of the pupil will disturb the mental unity of the class and teacher more during the recitation than the reprimand, by all means stop the recitation and give the reprimand. Be sure, however, that you give the reprimand so effectively that it will seldom or never have to be repeated while the pupil comes to school to you.

2. Guard well your recess.—It is a critical time for the teacher. Often it may be even detrimental to the school. It is in many ways the test of the teacher’s power to govern. If she has quick insight into child nature she may get some of the deepest glances at the real nature of the pupils—the best and the worst traits of character—at this period. Much of the disorder of the school-room has its origin at recess. The playground and the open-air are the places for games and sports. The school-room may be a place for relaxation and reasonable conversation and jest, but if you value peace of mind and good conditions for school work, never, never let it become a place for games, boisterous conduct, or running and jumping at recess.

Pupils should from the first day enter the school room as though it were sacred ground, dedicated to cheerful, pleasant, profitable work. I do not mean that there should be a long face and a woebegone expression upon entering the school-room, but the feeling of frivolity and boisterousness must be laid aside. Running and jumping and boisterous conduct in the room at recess makes the pupils familiar with such conduct until it is no longer shocking to them when repeated after recess. There should be a feeling of impressiveness but cheerfulness upon entering the school-room which is conducive to study and right conduct. Much of the sacredness, the calm, restful sweetness which comes to us upon entering the church would be lost if all kinds of noisy games and boisterous carousals were indulged in before the opening of the church service.

The teachers should be at school at least half an hour before the time for opening school. If the teacher is habitually late she should reform or resign. The noisy disorder and pandemonium that so often reigns in the school-room when the teacher is late is detrimental to school during the day and often for days. Some of the worst disturbances of the school will be prevented if the teacher is first to reach the building in the morning. If pupils bring lunch and remain at school during the noon hour the teacher should remain also. One teacher at least should remain during the noon hour. The extra work and tax on the teacher during this time is far less than the nerve force required to set things right that will happen during the year if she is absent.

Proper decorum must be insisted upon when pupils enter the room after intermissions. All racing and shouting and games should stop at the first tap of the bell. The pupils then prepare to enter the room. This will depend upon the size, location and entrance of the building. In cities and larger towns where hundreds of pupils must be handled, the regular march may be necessary. In smaller schools, falling into line without regard to grade may be all that is necessary. In schools of middle size pupils may fall into line by grades. At a second signal, after all is quiet, the lines pass to the rooms in good order, the boys removing their hats at the door as if they were entering the home or a church. No pushing, shoving or racing is permitted. The teacher who tries and is persistent and uniform about it, can by her kindness and conduct, readily secure this order and decorum without seeming to force it.

3. Be systematic and orderly in calling and dismissing classes.—No teacher can long maintain order and decorum in the school-room without some system in calling and dismissing classes. One of the most signal failures I ever knew—a normal school and university graduate too—could be traced largely to his lack of system in calling and dismissing classes. As one class was dismissed the next started to the recitation seat and without signal. They raced, and scrambled and rushed for certain favorite positions. They came pell-mell, hurry-scurry, each trying to get there first, and it never seemed to dawn upon the teacher that there was a better way or that the disorder bred here hung about the work of the school like a millstone.

Each pupil should have a definite position for the recitation. If the room is arranged so that there are separate recitation seats the pupil’s position in class will be determined by:

1. The location of the pupil’s desk and his natural place in the line as the class passes to recitation.

2. The kind of classmate with which he will be thrown at recitation. Some pupils are so congenial that if thrown near each other in the recitation, neither seem to be able to behave. Two boys, reasonably good when separated, may not be able to sit near one another without kicking, pinching and whispering. Be sure that they are separated in recitation.

Good order in the recitation, like good order in the study period, is often influenced by the teacher’s good judgment in seating pupils.

There should be a definite signal for calling classes. It may be a gentle tap of the bell, a rap of the pencil, or by calling “One” by the teacher. I have always preferred the latter. The teacher may then call the class from any position in the room. At the signal the pupils begin to get ready to rise, if the class is to pass to the recitation seat. If the recitation is to be in the study seat, all books, papers, pencils, etc., not needed in the recitation are laid aside at this signal. The second signal, “Two” is given, and each pupil stands quietly by his desk, each knowing in which aisle he is to stand. After all have risen, a third signal, “Three” is given, and each passes quietly to his place in class, and at a gentle nod of the head of the teacher or a fourth signal all are quietly seated.

If the recitation is to be at the study desks all books, pencils and papers not needed in the recitation must be laid aside. These are always disorder breeders, and serve only to distract attention. Flowers in the springtime may often become a nuisance, as they come too often between the pupil’s mind and the lesson. The same is true of perfumed cards and numerous other innocent looking little things.

The same plan of calling a class may be used in dismissing it. After the class is seated, give ample time for them to get all necessary books and papers for preparing the next lesson before calling the next class. Never seem to be in a hurry. Have your classes follow directions promptly, but haste is waste of time.

4. Train yourself to pleasant tones of voice and composure.—Perhaps the teacher’s voice is one of the strongest elements that go to make up that which we call personality. Even tones quiet and soothe. Guttural tones, harsh, rasping, high-keyed tones grate upon the ear and get disorder. Your command should be gentle, but none the less firm. Believe in your own ability to govern. Unless you can do this you are apt to fail. Give every command in pleasing tones, courteously, firmly, never letting the voice show doubt or fear that it will not be obeyed. A sharp, rasping command with the faintest lack of self-confidence breeds contempt and leads to a trial of strength. If teachers could hear themselves for a day, repeated with the exact inflection by the phonograph, many of them would cease to wonder why their rooms are noisy.

Composure in actions, along with firmness of voice, gentle tones and decision of character makes the teacher master of the situation. They make or mar the teacher’s record. Given these with enthusiasm and you should have no serious trouble in keeping conditions good in your school after you have made a good start. Your term is usually pretty well established by the time it is half over. Your success is determined by that time. The first good resolutions have been strengthened and become well fixed. You have shown your ability or lack of it in keeping conditions good, and the rest of the year should, if this is good, pass without much to discourage.

CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL?

In an institute of something over a hundred teachers, nearly all of them comparatively young in the work, I was once asked to give a ten-minutes’ talk on what makes a good school. I am glad that I was, not because anything which I said was so helpful to the young teachers, but because it set me thinking by what things I judge teachers and the school. My notes show the following points, although I am not sure of the exact wording of the talk:

1. The teachers and the pupils of a good school should be happy.—A good digestion, a clear conscience, and reasonable success are three things that should make any man or woman happy. A healthy child has the first and second, and their ideas and hopes and ambitions of success are and should be at school age very largely wrapped up in the successes of the school and the home. If the teacher is unhappy the school becomes unhappy. A low nervous state, indigestion, worry either about school or other things, trouble in the home, sorrow over friends or family, uneasiness about financial matters or anything that saps the energy or spoils the sleep of the teacher, is detrimental to the school. Anything that disturbs the majority or even a considerable minority of pupils interferes with the school. If the teacher is thoroughly discouraged over school work or if a very large percentage of the pupils are displeased with the teacher after the first month, there can be no whole-souled, happy work and conditions in the school. If you or any considerable number of your pupils are unhappy, try if possible to remove the cause. Your results in teaching will be infinitely better, the work will be less taxing to you, you and the pupils will get more out of life at the time and more out of life in the future if all are happy in the school-room. To the practiced eye five minutes will tell whether the work is a work of pleasure to teacher and pupils or whether it is a task to both.

2. The whole atmosphere of the school must be conducive to good work.—While the teacher and the pupils are happy it should be that quiet happiness that makes for good work. Children may be boisterously happy. The idea of a good time with many boys is the loudest noise they can make. It is the quiet, composed happiness springing from interesting work well done that gives the best atmosphere of the school. It is the spirit, the atmosphere, the social or psychological conditions growing out of the relations existing in the school that gives life to the school and that educates in the broadest sense. This is intangible and invisible, but it is easily discerned, and to the discriminating principal or superintendent it will form very largely his basis for judging the teacher and the school. In associations with visiting principals in my own school and in visiting other principals, a frank estimate has often been given of the relative success of teachers. It is surprising often how the visiting principal can in five minutes rate a teacher, and this rating will in the main agree with the regular principal. The practiced eye of the principal should, like the practiced eye of the physician, see more in a minute than the unskilled would in a month. For my own part I trust very largely to the spirit and atmosphere existing in a room, the social echo of the school, and it is only occasionally that I am far wrong.

3. The personality of the teacher and its influence on the school.—Does she know what to do, does she know how to do it, does she have the dignity to get this done promptly and well without it ever entering the mind of a pupil to question its propriety or her ability to get it done? Your personality should be strong enough that it is rare indeed that any pupil dare to dispute your authority and then you should have weight of character enough to prevent open rebellion. The personality of the teacher, like the atmosphere of the school, is intangible. Someone has said that personality is “cultured individuality.” It is individuality with the corners ground off and polished. It is the individuality that gets results without fighting for it. It does not offend in taste, in physique, or personal bearing. It is the personality that pleases and yet makes the pupil, the parent, or the public to hesitate before it dares express a criticism.

The personality of the teacher reaches the outward as well as the inward. It is read in the teacher’s dress and bearing. No teacher can afford to neglect her dress and personal appearance. Dress need not be costly, but it should be in taste. To the lady teacher, a becoming dress, a spotless collar, an appropriate ribbon, hair neatly brushed, teeth white as pearl, nails immaculate as ivory—these are potent influences and will win over thoughtless boys and careless girls when all the switches in a mile square, and other means of punishment known to the modern school, would fail. Spotless attire is essential to the lady teacher, but a man will find it of scarcely less importance. There must be no suggestion of the dude and the dandy, but clean linen, well kept hands and nails, clean teeth, uncontaminated breath, clothing that fits and is free from dandruff and dust—everything of the gentleman but nothing of the dude—these will count in your personality and go to determine the worth of your school.

4. The good school has interest and enthusiasm, but it must not be of the soap-bubble variety.—If you have the first insight into human nature, if you know the first thing about swaying pupils in mass, you know that it is easy to waste energy, get up steam and chase fleeting phantoms in school, make a tempest in a teapot, and be no farther along at the end of the year educationally than at the beginning. The faddist in the school-room, the teacher that periodically discovers the coveted panacea that will relieve the pupils from all good, old-fashioned, hard work, is as dangerous as the demagogue in politics. Interest and enthusiasm should be well directed. Sanity should guide it. It should drive toward a worthy goal, it should be tempered by rationality and common sense. The interest should as soon as possible be transferred to self interest. One of the most enthusiastic teachers I ever knew was of the hypnotic, spellbinding kind. Pupils waved their hands, snapped their fingers, and jumped up and down in their eagerness to tell what they knew of a topic. Strange to many—not strange to the man who knew something of good teaching—very, very few of the pupils of this teacher either continued school after the graded school course or took much interest in self-directed study or reading in after life.

5. In a good school the teacher loves the work.—We have much unrest in teaching. For years teachers have been inviting dissatisfaction. They have brooded over fancied evils, poor salaries, and lack of tenure of position, until the great mass of them have become infected. In teaching as in other things, if you look up the stars will guide you, if you look down the sewer may beckon. The young teacher often does the best work because she is happy and contented with her lot in the first school. When she begins to tire with teaching, when she begins to look forward to the time when she can get more congenial work—in the store, in the office, or possibly in the home—she grows more and more dissatisfied with school, she grumbles more and more about low salaries, an unappreciative public and bad children. In a good school the teacher is in love with her work and feels that for the time being nothing would tempt her to leave it.

6. A good school will have a well-arranged program giving not only the recitation periods but the study periods as well.—Systematic study is essential. As a university student I found my time planned until at certain times each day I found myself wanting to take up certain studies. Just as one may become hungry at their usual time of eating, so should one come to desire to do work at certain times. Too much variation of a program weakens it in the minds of the children. This program should be prepared with thought and care. There should be a proper balance of study. Here is where good judgment in the relative value of studies is shown. I visited a sixth grade once where as much time was used each day on spelling as upon any other study. Now I believe in spelling. I believe we are neglecting spelling, but I cannot think it is worth as much and is justified in having as much time in the sixth year as any other study of the school course, surely not if the proper amount of attention to spelling has been given in the first five years.

7. In a good school the modern studies—music, drawing, manual training and domestic science—will be recognized.—The two last will be needed worse in some schools than others. The old-fashioned home life is fast disappearing. Whether this is better or worse is not ours to discuss. The fact is that under the modern trend pupils are not taught to do the homely and valuable tasks that was so common forty years ago. Then the boy made his sled, his wagon, his hobby horse, and his ball bat. Now he buys them and loses the greatest good of all, the skill and the development in making them. He got his manual training then in his home life, now, except on the farm, he gets scarcely any of such training, and must depend upon the initiative of the school, else go forever without it. The girl then was busy with helping her mother in the house work. She learned to cook, to sew, to make quilts, to wash, iron, and scrub. In other words, she got a complete and efficient training in domestic science in her own home, and often had not only the practice in doing it but had an intense liking for it. Much is changed now. The school must come to the demands and needs of the time and give the girl some touch with, respect for, and knowledge of this essential work or she never gets it.

Music is more an intellectual and cultural subject. It needs no defense. The time is coming, and let us hope before many generations, when as nearly all the people can sing ordinary music as can read the ordinary book. Drawing, not necessarily the decorative art which so often is called drawing, needs no justification. It leads to closer observation, it is needed in the practical affairs of life, it develops so many of the powers of the mind that as a cultural study it needs no defense. A good school will recognize these modern studies. In the country, the manual training may go more to the farmer’s needs, it may be more closely allied to agriculture than in the cities. School gardening is far more essential to the city child, however, than to the country. In the crowded districts of the city, it is a rest and recreation together with intense interest in a new and valuable line of thought to tend the small school vegetable garden. In the country, or in the city district, where each pupil has a vegetable garden at home, and where the father often is skilled in the work of furnishing vegetables for the market, the school garden is not worth the time and energy put upon it. Like fashions in hats and dress the teacher who feels that she must be up-to-date, must follow the fads and fashions of New York, Chicago, Washington and other places regardless of the difference in conditions, will have pupils spend an hour a day in tending a vegetable garden when they had better be sent home to help their parents to tend the family garden.

The modern studies, however, must be kept in their legitimate place. When manual training has for its avowed purpose the making of a carpenter or a mechanic, when the study becomes strictly practical instead of educational, it is out of the proper province of the common school. Even the high school is not to make doctors, lawyers, clerks, mechanics, but to make thinking men and women, who then can with time and direction soon develop into these others. The very purpose of the school is to give in a large measure those things that have very little connection with the later life of the individual. The increased power to think, to analyze, to understand, the higher ideals of life, the hopes, the aspirations, the ability to see the world in a broader light and from a wider horizon—these are the essential things after all. To save the boy from his dwarfing environment, to kindle in him ambitions and desires, to give him broader views of life without making him unreasonably discontent with his own lot is the great purpose of the school. His life will be narrow enough in his little niche without making his school training narrow him still more. The most impractical of the so-called practical men often want every lesson in school to be a lesson to save the time of apprenticeship instead of a lesson to develop higher thinking power.

8. In a good school the teacher or teachers will be professional.—They will have studied the problems of the school and have high ideas and ideals of what it should be and of its place in the development of the life of the child. They will look on the purpose of the school, and hold to these essentials even at risk of the criticism of faddists. A thorough educator refused a principalship at a better salary. When asked why, he replied that the qualities the board were looking for must be found in a carpenter, a football coach, and a peanut vender, and as he did not desire a position along either of these lines, it would not be worth while to accept a position requiring special qualifications along all of these lines. Eight hours a week was to be devoted to manual training. He could use say a plane and a hammer very well, but he had never had any desire to become a carpenter, else he would have taken it up. He was expected to take charge of the boys’ athletics, having daily drills and preparing them for the annual festivities. He cared little for sport, and believed the playground should be distinctly the place for self-initiative of pupils, feeling that the greatest lessons of school life came from the fact that pupils here were left free from the direction of teachers so that they might have some chance at self-direction. The third requirement was that he should be able to drill vaudeville school plays, sell popcorn, peanuts, lemonade and other similar things to procure funds for decorating the school, improving the grounds and furnishing money for athletic sports. If he was to take up commercial life as a serious matter, he preferred to go into business. These three lines absorbing most of his time and sapping his energies made him prefer to remain where the thought and energy of the principal was directed to the development of mind and character.

In many schools the demand is for the carpenter, the football coach, and the peanut vender combined for principal rather than the man who sees the deeper problems of mental development.

9. The teacher or teachers should be loyal to their school.—The teacher who teaches in a district or school where she from any cause dislikes the place, will not teach her best school. In cities some teachers teach in certain districts only under protest, and never do their best work. I should not seek to hold a teacher in my school when I knew she was deeply dissatisfied with me or the school. Her work would be forced, and she would unconsciously put less enthusiasm into it. Just as the pupils should love their school and their teacher and feel that they would not exchange it for any other school, so should the teacher feel that her lot is well cast. The patrons should be as loyal to the school and the teacher as the teacher is to the school. Loyalty of teacher, pupils and patrons, will make a prosperous and successful school.

10. A good school is properly heated, lighted, ventilated and carefully looked after by a trusty janitor.—Thousands of eyes are ruined yearly by poor light, pupils are injured in health by poor heating and ventilation. The care of the building counts for so much. Proper janitor work is as necessary as any other work. It is hard to keep clean and live in a hog pen. It is hard to think elevating thoughts and live in dirt and dust and cobwebs. The schools, the churches and the hotels are the best advertising agents of any neighborhood. A good school near by often increases the market value of a farm from ten to twenty dollars an acre. The same is true of a church. The best class of emigrants, the best citizens who want to buy a farm to live on and to cultivate do not care to go to localities where there is not a majority, a strong, working, active majority of the people interested, vitally interested, in such things. Environment makes the price of property. The neighborhood of good schools and good churches is worth more per square rod than the neighborhood which is content to let its children be educated in a building fit only for a sheep shed or to attend a dilapidated church.

11. The good school has decorations for its walls.—These silent but effective teachers grow into the lives of the pupils. Simplicity, plainness, but good taste should be the test of the school decorations. Get good pictures—not necessarily costly ones—get good, plain, but artistic frames, select pictures that appeal to children, and yet are artistic, and let them be hung in good taste on the wall. Do not overcrowd, study the simple and the artistic in arrangement. In selecting, do not forget the value of the portrait as a school picture. Washington, the father of his country; Lincoln, true and noble, a man of the common people; Longfellow, poet beloved by all; the list is a long one—these features looking down daily grow into the lives of the pupils. Then landscape views, Landseer’s animals, pictures of homes and famous paintings, the list is almost endless. To these may be added a few good statues. Good taste in the selection and the funds to buy with will make any school-room what it should be as to decorations.

These are some of the first things that I should look for in judging a school. Buildings and grounds and numerous other things cannot be touched upon.

CHAPTER XIV.
TEN TIME KILLERS.

School time is precious. Each minute should count. The formation of correct habits is the greatest end of school work. Surely then the proper use of time is essential to a successful school. We lose time in so many ways. It often looks as if teachers tried to waste time purposely. We cultivate lazy habits in pupils by letting things drag. They learn to snooze over their lessons, to grope about mentally, to allow their minds to wander to irrelevant things, to put off until the last minute what should be done promptly and well.

The teacher should not seem to hurry. The intense nervous tension sometimes found is detrimental. But the school-room should be a workshop in which pupils are intelligently and profitably busy. They should be happy in their work, but they should be working. The work should be done well, this brings even to little children the feeling of satisfaction, the feeling that it is worth while in school. The work should be intelligent, educative work. In the modern school the strength and worth of the teacher and the principal is shown in the intelligence and breadth of view with which the school work is selected. We are going wild on busy work. Interest is an essential to profitable work, but all work in which the teacher may get up interest and enthusiasm may not be profitable work. To say that because pupils are easily interested in raffia weaving, sewing, manual training, etc., does not necessarily prove that these subjects are essential to the best development. The child’s interest is usually a borrowed interest, at least is often a borrowed interest. You could get up just as much interest in building a snow man, in jumping the rope, in rolling rocks down a hill or splashing water in the brook as in the raffia work or domestic science. It requires more than the fact that children may be made to like a subject to justify its use in school. The pupils should be busy and busy at intelligent, educative work. They should be happy in that work. Happiness usually comes from the feeling of doing something, and doing this thing well.

But let us notice some of the time killers. They are numerous. The ten mentioned below are probably the most common among young teachers, although it is not assumed that the list is complete.

1. Lack of definite plans for the day.—For the teacher who has never made definite plans for her daily work, it is hard for her to understand the loss of time and energy—time and energy on the part of the pupils and even more so, time and energy on the part of the teacher. You should, from the course of study, know what is expected of the grade in a term. Divide this by the number of months you have to teach. Look over the work carefully, examine the text-book, note what supplementary work you think the text will need. Then at the beginning of each month write out briefly, but specifically, what you want the class to do each week of the month. With this general outline before you, work out in advance each day’s program for the first week. At the end of the week prepare in the same way each day’s program for the second week, etc. It will take but a few minutes, and it will be profitable minutes to you and to the class.

If you find that you cannot do the work planned for the month, do not worry about it, but do well as much of it as you can and pass the rest over to the next month. If you find you can complete the work of the month well, and have extra time, do not by any means keep the class marking time and waiting. Take up the work of the next month. The important thing is that you set yourself and your class a certain task—I do not mean to imply that it is an unpleasant task—for each month, each week and each day of the week. This lesson plan made at times of leisure or when the mind is free to consider the work as a unit will be a criterion for judging your own progress with the class and will be a valuable guide in planning how best to present the subjects to the class. It will save you much time and energy and worry at the recitation periods when everything must be centered on the work before you.

2. By allowing slovenly work.—I believe that from one to two hours a week are lost in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth years, in the subject of arithmetic alone, because the pupils in the first four years are not properly drilled in the four fundamental processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. There should be snap and vim and hustle in the early number work. The tables should be learned and learned thoroughly. Pupils should be drilled in rapid combinations. It may be well to know how to develop the multiplication table, but knowing how to develop it will never take the place of knowing it. Time is wasted in developing in early number work when it should be used in knowing, in thorough committing to memory. When asked how many seven times seven, the child should answer forty-nine as quickly and with as little hesitation as if asked his own name. The drill should be so perfect the mental response is instantaneous.

3. By rusty machinery.—There are many things about the school that must be looked upon as the machinery of the school. Order and decorum are great time savers, but red-tape for its own sake is to be avoided. Keep your thoughts centered on what you want done and how this can be done with least loss of time. I was at the opening of a famous normal school a few years ago. The freshman class was to be divided into three sections. Two teachers, normal teachers too—teachers whose very methods are supposed to be worthy models—spent over forty minutes in making the division. It was tiresome to the class and tiresome to me to observe. In less than ten minutes I should have passed about pointing to each student numbering as I pointed, “first,” “second,” “third,” “first,” “second,” “third,” etc. Then I should have asked all those numbered “first” to take one part of the assembly room. All numbered “second” to take another. All those numbered “third” to take another. Then in ten minutes more by passing slips of paper I should have had the names and addresses of each and the class could have been dismissed.

Time is wasted in the passing of classes, the distribution of wraps, collecting of papers and necessary school movements. Teachers often lose from two to five minutes by a clumsy method of collecting or distributing papers. I saw a good part of a recitation period lost recently by a teacher in a city school where I was visiting. She wanted the composition papers collected and redistributed. There seemed to be no system or forethought either in collecting or redistributing, several pupils getting their own papers back for correction. Some such plan as follows would have saved time, energy and discipline:

“Time.” All pupils stop work and sit in easy, graceful positions.

“Papers to the right.” Each places the paper to the right side of the desk where the monitors can reach it easily.

“Collect.” Pupils in back row of seats acting as monitors quickly and quietly collect the papers in regular order to the front.

“Exchange.” Monitors exchange papers in some regular order.

“Redistribute.” Monitors pass back to their seat, placing a paper on each pupil’s desk as they pass.

With these five simple directions the compositions could have been collected and redistributed for correction. No time is lost. There is no noise or confusion. The very matter of collecting helps in order and decorum.

Oil up the machinery of your school-room and see if you cannot gain from ten to twenty minutes each day and at the same time get better results.

4. Lack of scholarship.—If a teacher has ballast and good judgment, no amount of well-organized knowledge will hurt her. Narrow vision, poor judgment as to what is essential and what is not, gets clouded explanations. This leads to lack of interest and loss of time. Clear-cut, definite knowledge on the part of the teacher will put life and vim in the teaching.

5. Grinding over and over again things already known well.—Nothing is more detrimental to mental growth. Teachers too often fail to discriminate between thoroughness and mere mechanical repetition. Be thorough, but be alive. There is much drill work to be done. There is no substitute for it. We fail often in the newer education because we neglect drill and review, but there should be life in the work, not mere marking of time and perfunctory repetition. Nowhere is drill more necessary than in number work, and yet this drill need never drag or become uninteresting. One of my fourth grade teachers had done good work in the mechanical part of number work. Her class had been accurate and rapid, and I had allowed them upon several occasions to challenge other rooms. In fact they had done well the foundation work in numbers so essential to good work in arithmetic in the upper grades. To test them I asked the class to vote upon which they would prefer, a fourth of a day picnic out on the lake front or to spend the same time ciphering against some other room. They voted almost as a unit to cipher against the other room. They had been doing the grinding process, it is true, but do you think it had been marking time with them? Every minute had been a pleasure to them because each had been pitted against some other. This had made the work a contest and a pleasure instead of a grind. It is the grind without the pleasure and over something well known that kills.

6. Assigning lessons without any thought on the teacher’s part of their contents.—Many teachers would find it hard to solve the problems which they assign to the class in the same time the class has for preparation. The result is that they do not get over the lesson next day. This leaving off part of the lesson day after day soon gets a habit in the class to prepare only the first of the lesson, feeling confident that they will never get down to the last of it. Teachers should know the contents of the lesson they ask the class to prepare. They should assign only what the class can do well in the time. Then each member should feel that he is held strictly accountable for an honest effort to get the whole lesson.

7. Not teaching pupils how to prepare lessons.—The greatest service a teacher can do for a class is to teach them how to study. Pupils waste hour after hour in honest effort with little accomplished and much discouragement by not knowing how to apply themselves to the work before them. One of my boyhood spelling books has marks to show that I had studied the lesson more than sixty times. I wanted to be faithful, I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was not. I should have learned the lesson by heart so that I could have spelled it from beginning to end in less than sixty times study if I had really studied. What a saving of time if my teacher had taught me how to study my spelling, to think each word over slowly and carefully as I spelled it to myself, to center my best efforts on the words in the list which I was not sure of knowing, instead of studying all alike. Then if I had been taught to study I should never have kept careful account as to how many times I studied the lesson. My thought was to satisfy myself and my teacher that I had tried, instead of getting the lesson. Frequently spend a recitation with pupils until you feel sure they know how to study and apply themselves. One of the greatest compliments a former pupil ever paid me was when he said that I taught him how to apply himself and how to study.

8. Talking too much.—The greatest fault of all, the greatest loss of time perhaps, when teachers as a body are considered, is the fault of constant and often useless talking. Teachers repeat over and over again. They scold and keep it up and keep it up. They explain and explain and keep it up and keep it up.

“Full many a teacher you may know,
Along life’s slippery pathway walking,
Who left off thinking years ago,
But kept on talking.”

To spend time in further explanation and elucidation of any point after it has dawned clearly on the pupil’s consciousness is a waste of time to the pupil and has a tendency to destroy interest in the subject. To explain a thing to them and then to explain it “in other words” and “in other words” and then again “in other words,” as many teachers do, is deadening to mental growth. I am not speaking of repetition of knowledge in review to deepen and impress it firmly on the mind. I am speaking of new knowledge. When the teacher has explained a point briefly, definitely, understandingly, he catches the gleam of recognition in the pupil’s eye, showing that the explanation is understood. Further talk and explanation is useless and even detrimental.

9. Answering useless questions.—If the teacher is weak, there will be a growing habit in many pupils to ask useless questions as well as to ask over and over again for repetitions. I have known pupils who would, unless restrained, ask for the repetition of half the words in a spelling lesson. Speak distinctly, and teach pupils to listen attentively. It is the part of the pupil’s duty to listen attentively to every word of the teacher that is addressed to him or his class. Another habit of many teachers is after a question has been properly answered by some pupil, to again state the answer herself. Nothing is more deadening either to the pupil who first gave the answer or to the interest of the class. If a pupil answers a question accurately, no further comment is necessary. For the teacher to repeat the answer is worse than a waste of time.

Then there is the telltale pupil, who is always ready to run to the teacher with little troubles, always being imposed upon by others. Every teacher of experience knows such pupils. Discourage tattling, but make sure the child is not being imposed upon. A little Italian girl kept coming to me and to her teacher with all sorts of imaginary grievances, until she came in one day with her tale of woe when I had weightier matters to attend to. Rather more vigorous than polite, I told her if she came to me with such hatched-up troubles again I should punish her. It had the desired effect. Show pupils who have all kinds of imaginary troubles how it becomes a duty for them to put themselves in harmony with other pupils and to live agreeably with the school family. Then with a careful lookout that they are not being imposed upon deny them the right of coming to you with tales of woe, else you may use much time every day chasing phantoms.

10. Failing to keep the room ventilated.—No one can work vigorously in contaminated air. It will be a great day when every school-room will have proper heating and ventilation. For some years I have worked where there were adequate provision for forcing pure, warm, filtered air into every room in abundance, while the foul, impure, dusty air was being constantly forced out. The value of pure air and ventilation can readily be seen when one compares such conditions and contrasts them with many school-rooms. No school can do proper work without proper ventilation and heating. Do not neglect this important matter in your school.

CHAPTER XV.
THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE.

These talks are directed especially to young teachers. It is presumed that most of these are teachers in the grades or elementary schools. Your highest success and greatest usefulness must be measured by the lasting impressions you leave on your pupils. The worthy pupil who catches fire and ambition from you to be something and to do something, who years after can truthfully say it was from you that he got his aspiration for a high-school course, these pupils are to be the reward to you that is above all money value. I feel that I am justly proud of the percentage of my grade pupils who have gone to high school, and of my high school graduates that have taken a college or university course. Yale, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Purdue, Chicago University, four State Universities, a number of normal schools and smaller colleges have had my high school students later in life. Most of them have made good. Many of them have done well, and in life are doing something for themselves. Whether I have contributed anything to these young men and women can hardly be told. But I rejoice in their success. Occasional letters from many of them, and greetings I get when we meet by accident, are some of the rewards which come to the earnest teacher—rewards above any money value.

I believe in education. I believe that right education will increase the value of the man. It will not make him do less work, but more. It may change his line of work, but if the necessity comes he can with all the energy and good cheer of the ignorant man do work no matter how humble and often more of it for his education. Not only that, but the boy of courage, and with a desire strong enough, if he have health, and no one depending upon him for support, can earn his way through the best high school or college. It is the measure of the grit of the boy. The world turns aside to let the man pass that knows where he is going. To kindle the fire of ambition in a capable boy, to call out the latent force and set it in the right direction, that is the highest office of the teacher.

Twenty-five years ago, when a boy of fourteen, in a country school, I had as teacher a young man to whom I owe much. It was his first term of school. Some patrons, in fact many, would not have voted the term a success, but he reached many of the boys, and myself among them. From him I received my first desire to be a teacher. From him dates my first desire for an education, and the faith in myself that I could secure it. Measured by the world’s standards he has not been a great success, but to me his teaching was of the inspirational kind. It helped me to get my bearings, it created worthy desires and ambitions. Later, I have told him of the results of his teaching upon my own life and ambitions. With a modesty that is unassumed he begs me not to mention it, and thinks that it was simply a matter of chance.

A few years ago a father wrote asking me why he should send his son to high school. I wrote him my reasons for doing so. Perhaps these reasons may serve some young teacher for urging some other boy to go. They were at the time the best I could summon, and are yet as good as I could state in the limits of a personal letter.

1. If your boy is worth a bag of shucks, it will make a far more able man of him, mentally, morally and physically.—There are exceptions, it is true, but the exceptions only prove the rule.

2. High school teachers should be, and, if the high school is a good one, are, broad gauge, scholarly men and women, educated in our best colleges, normal schools and universities.—For a boy to come in close contact with such manly men and womanly women as should and do form the faculty of good high schools is above all money value to the boy. The magic mental touch that comes to the boy in contact with scholarly men and women of character, lifts him out of the hum-drum of life and makes a thinking man of him.

3. It will increase your boy’s money-making capacity.—The best statistics available show that the illiterate man in the United States earns less than $300 a year. The man with a common school education earns $400 a year. The graduate of the high school earns over $600 a year. Suppose your boy works from the time he is twenty until he is sixty years old—an earning period of forty years—figure the increased earning capacity the high school education will give him, and then answer if you think it will pay. There are some exceptions, of course. I take it that your boy is an average boy, as bright or brighter than his father was at his age. If he is an average boy, this will represent his chances. Fools and dudes are exceptions to all rules.

4. A good high school course will give a broader field of activity to your boy.—In every walk of life the demands are more and more for men and women with more than a common school education. Firm after firm announces that their employees must have at least a good high school education. The mental discipline and self-control given by a good high school course will give self-direction and grasp of conditions to your boy long after the Latin endings and algebraic formulae which gave the discipline have been forgotten. It is discipline for life’s duties that is the real worth of the high school to the boy.

5. The more thorough the education of your boy the larger will be his adaptability to different kinds of work.—Blessed is the man whose resources and intelligence are such that he can readily—if circumstances demand it—find a dozen ways to make an honest living for himself and family. Here it is that the great superiority of the culture-giving, broad-gauge high school course is shown over the trade-fitting, quick-time, short-cut, get-ready-in-a-hurry trade or business school.

6. The high school course will prepare your boy for the deeper and broader training of the university.—If he is made of the right material he will get the university training for himself, or urge you to help him to secure it. If he does not go to the university the high school course will fit him to become a successful leader in business or lay the foundation for a professional course or career.

7. The discipline and training of a high school course will not only increase the earning capacity of your boy, but it will increase his living capacity.—He will see more beauty in the evening sunset, God’s wonderful watch care in the stars overhead, and more and sweeter fragrance in the pansy at his feet. It will develop character and manhood, give him thoughts and ideas of his own, make him broader in his views of life, and raise him to a higher standard of manhood.

8. The high school course should, and the chances are that it will, discover the boy to himself.—This is the greatest discovery any man can make—his own dignity, and worth, and capacity, and inclination—these things discovered and the man has a stronger power of his own to make life a success. If the high school discovers the boy to himself it has been of infinite value to him.

9. The high school course will increase your boy’s chances for distinction in his life work.—A high authority, after much study of census returns and biographical dictionaries, reaches the following conclusions:

(1) That an uneducated child has but one chance out of 150,000 to gain distinction as a factor in the progress of the age.

(2) That a common school education increases his chances four times.

(3) That a high school education will increase the chances over the common school twenty-three times, or make his chances for distinction eighty-seven times as great as if he were without education.

10. A high school education will make your boy a more positive force in his community, his state, and the nation, socially, economically, and politically.—With many noted exceptions, in the future as in the past, our real constructive men, men whose monuments are their work, will be men trained and disciplined in the best schools of the country.

If your boy will work in school, if he has any desire whatever to continue in school, if he has the requisite amount of gray matter, or if he has the capacity of the average American boy, give him the advantage of a high school course. It will pay you and it will pay him. Make some sacrifice on your part if necessary to do it. Do not spoil him by giving him too much money. Teach him the worth of a dollar and how to earn one honestly. Hold him to strict account of every cent he spends, the day and date and for what spent. Teach him from the very first to handle your money as he should handle the money of an employer, accounting for his allowance each month without quaking, quibbling or miscellaneous accounts, and he will handle his own money better later in life.

Keep in close touch with his teachers, give them your loyal support, see them frequently and make inquiries about the boy and his work. For the boy’s sake do not take his part against the teachers if he should be reprimanded by them for any cause. Do not tell his teachers too much about his excellent qualities at home, and how smart he is. They may soon know him as well as you do and maybe better. If they point out some of his faults, listen to them and do not fly off the handle—the chances are that they can see scores of faults that you have never discovered. Show your genuine interest in the boy, their work and the school. Take at least as much interest in the trainers of your boy as you do in the trainer of that young horse of yours which you confidently hope will take first prize next fall at the county fair. Show your interest in the boy as much as the horse and the chances are the results will be as good.

Understand your boy, and expect much from him. Let him know you expect much from him and that you shall keep close track of his work and his conduct. Study his report each month. If his grades are low, question him about it, and question to the point. Know the subjects he studies and who teaches each subject. Perhaps you know nothing in the world about the subject yourself, but question him and let him justify the study and what he is getting out of it. It will help you and do him much good. It is this daily co-operation and sympathy, this close oversight, the constant keeping in touch with the boy and his work, and your loyalty to the teachers and the school that will determine largely your boy’s success.

Yes, send your boy to high school, and these are my reasons for you doing so.

CHAPTER XVI.
A TALK ABOUT SPELLING.

Most of the talks in this book are on the questions of school management. Perhaps it would not be out of place to speak of the teaching of a few subjects. This and the two following chapters are devoted to the teaching side of the work. Spelling and arithmetic, the teaching of these concern every teacher whatever her grade of work. Literature is a neglected study in many of our schools, and yet a life-giving subject. That is my reason for including that important subject.

The suggestions given below on spelling may help young teachers. I have used them at times in my own teaching and found them useful. No attempt is made to be profound. If the hints are helpful, that is enough.

Two General Plans of the Recitation.

I. The Oral Method.—This is the method by which most of us learned to spell twenty-five years ago. We memorized the letters of the word in correct order, associating the sounds to some extent with the letters themselves. There was a time when the method was almost universal in the schools. It has some evident advantages:

1. Pupils are taught to pronounce words as they learn to spell them.

2. Pupils acquire facility and readiness in dividing words into syllables.

3. It is often a saving of time.

The method has some disadvantages also. Among these may be mentioned the following:

1. Often pupils who spell well orally are poor spellers when writing, and writing is the primary test of the speller.

2. The principal use of spelling is in writing. To spell correctly in writing, the muscles of the hand and arm must be trained to execute quickly and accurately the thought of the mind.

3. The number of words spelled by each pupil in oral spelling is less than in the written lesson.

No teacher ever accomplishes much in any subject without the hearty interest and co-operation of the class. Any little device or method that gives you an increased and deeper interest in the subject on the part of your pupils is helpful. Variations in the recitation often adds spice and interest to what otherwise might be dull routine. In oral spelling I have found the following variations to be good:

1. The position of the class.—As a rule, I prefer the class to stand in straight line, with arms gently folded, while the teacher stands quietly where she can have the eye of each member of the class. When a word is missed, the pupil spelling it correctly “passes up,” always as a mark of courtesy going behind the pupil “turned down.” I have found, however, that occasionally for a few days to let pupils be seated during the recitation period while the teacher seated quietly before them pronounces the words, gets interest and attention that the usual standing order does not get.

2. Never pronounce the words in regular order.—You may pronounce up the columns, down the columns, or across the columns, but never let the pupils know in what order the words may be given to them. They will not then be tempted to pick out and study the words which are likely to come to them.

3. It is sometimes a good drill in self-confidence and attention to ignore all mistakes in spelling at the time.—Any pupil below, noticing the mistake, may, when his turn comes to spell, spell the word which was missed, going above all who failed to note the mistake. This device gets good results. Try it.

4. Closely related to the above is the plan of passing a word correctly spelled just as if it were misspelled.—See if the next pupil will change the spelling with the hope of getting it right or spell it the same way with confidence. This is a splendid drill in self-reliance.

5. Spelling matches.—These will never regain their former interest in school and it is well that they do not, but they often serve a good purpose and are interesting. There are many varieties. Let us mention five kinds.

(1) The method of choosing sides and spelling for captain.—Two pupils “choose up.” These make some guess for first choice of spellers. The one beating in the guess—as for example at what page I have opened this book or similar guess—gets first choice. Then each chooses alternately, dividing the school into two sides. Those who “choose up” spell first. As fast as a pupil is “turned down” the next choice on that side takes his place. When one side is down it is best to spell through next time beginning with last to be chosen on each side.

(2) The one objection to the plan above is that the best spellers do most of the spelling.—This may be overcome by spelling by “tally.” The plan is to let the captains who “choose up,” as in the first method, stand in opposite corners of the room. Let one stand in the northeast corner of the room while the other stands in the southwest corner. As each pupil is chosen he takes his place on the left of his captain. When the choosing is over the pupils will stand in two opposing bodies on opposite sides of the room. Let all pupils on one side be called “Number One” and all on the other side be called “Number Two.” Each pupil is to keep this number no matter where or in what position he may be while the spelling is going on. Then two reliable pupils, one from each side, are chosen to keep “tally.” You are now ready to begin the spelling. Suppose you begin with the captain on side “Number One.” He spells the word correctly and crosses the room and takes his place at the foot of side “Number Two.” As he crosses the floor he calls out in distinct tones “Number One.” The pupils who are keeping “tally” give side “Number One” one credit or “tally” by placing a straight line in the column headed “Number One.” The spelling then continues down side “Number One.” If a word is missed the next below spells it and passes up the same as in the ordinary oral spelling class. When the last in side “Number One” has spelled you pronounce the next word to the first or captain of side “Number Two.” He spells the word and crosses the room, calling out distinctly as he crosses, “Number Two,” and side “Number Two” gets a “tally.” By missing words you will notice that soon the pupils from the different sides are all mixed up. You see also that the best spellers will gain as they pass above those who miss. The best spellers will then cross the room oftenest, thus calling their number and giving the most credits to their side.

It takes but a moment to get the sides started to spelling when you have studied the plan. The spelling can be continued indefinitely. The side that gets the most “tallies” is winner. Pupils will take great interest in it. The poorest spellers get as much practice in spelling as the best ones. You will find it in every way practical just as soon as you and the pupils understand the plan well. Another advantage is that if you desire two persons may pronounce at the same time without confusion, and thus double the amount of practice in spelling in the same time.

(3) Let the class stand.—Pronounce a word to the first pupil, and let the second spell a word beginning with the last letter of the word spelled by the first pupil. Let the third pupil spell a word beginning with the last letter of the word spelled by the second pupil, etc. If a pupil misspells a word, fails to think of a word or spells a word previously spelled, he must be seated. This is a good drill not only in spelling but in thinking of new words and for increasing the pupil’s vocabulary.

(4) Let each pupil name and spell a word of one syllable.—A word of two syllables. A word of three syllables, etc.

(5) Let the class stand while the teacher gives the first pupil one of a class of words.—The pupil spells the word, and then pronounces another word of the same class of words to the second and so on. If the pupil misses the word, or fails to name another word of the same class, he is seated. Numerous classes of words may be given, suited to the grade, the pupils or to the time. Here are a few suggestive lists. The teacher can readily plan others: 1. Domestic animals. 2. Fruits. 3. Trees. 4. Flowers. 5. Birds. 6. Minerals. 7. Furniture. 8. Articles made of iron. 9. Articles made of wood. 10. Names of cities. 11. Names of countries. 12. Names of persons.

II. The Written Method.—The written method of teaching spelling is now very largely used. It has the following advantages:

1. Pupils learn to spell more rapidly by sight than by sound.

2. In after life we use spelling only when writing.

3. Each pupil gets to spell more words in a written recitation than in an oral recitation in spelling.

4. All pupils are kept busy during the recitation period.

5. Pupils may examine their mistakes and correct them. This impresses the correct form more clearly upon their minds than to simply correct them orally.

6. Written spelling is a more accurate test of scholarship than oral spelling.

The principal objection made to the written method of the recitation in spelling is that it requires more time than the oral. This can be obviated by selecting only the more difficult words for spelling in the recitation. Much time is wasted in the study of the spelling lesson. Unless taught otherwise, pupils will spend just as much time “studying” the easy, familiar words in the lesson as the more difficult ones. No greater good can be done than to teach pupils how to study the lesson. As soon as the pupil knows how to spell a word, and knows that he knows how to spell it, he should eliminate it from the lesson and center his attention upon those of which he is not sure. If the teacher remembers that it is not always necessary to spell all the words in the lesson the written method will appear more rational.

The written method also admits of less variation in the recitation than the oral method. The two methods usually used are the blackboard and the blank book method. Let the class pass to the blackboard. When the board is clear, the class faces the teacher, who quickly divides them into two or more sections by pointing to the pupils rapidly and numbering, first, second; first, second; first, second; etc. This separates the sections and lessens the probability of copying. He then pronounces the words, naming the section and following by the word for that section at once. Pronounce as rapidly as the pupils can spell the words. Never let pupils get into the habit of snoozing over the spelling lesson either in recitation or in study. He should write the word correctly the first trial. No communication should be permitted. When the words are spelled, the pupils may move one space either to the right or the left and correct the work of another pupil, marking the grade.

When pupils use blank books, the words may be written in vertical columns, and each word numbered. If no special book is used it will be well to use paper just large enough to spell one lesson on a page. No communication is allowed, and when the pupil is done writing the word he quietly raises his right hand to indicate to the teacher that he is ready for the next word. The teacher can then judge when to pronounce the next word from the number of hands raised. Unless the class is very large it is best for the teacher to do the correcting. If the class is large, the papers may be collected and redistributed. Wrong words are checked and grades marked. Keep a list of the words misspelled and drill on them from time to time. Have each pupil correct his mistakes daily and keep a list of the words which he has missed during the term, neatly and correctly written.

One device I have found very successful is to select lists of common words often misspelled and words that pupils use and should by all means know how to spell. Place ten of these words on the board daily, and have pupils study them carefully for a few minutes. When the recitation time comes erase the words from the board and pronounce them to the class, having pupils write them. Then call upon pupils separately, having them to pass quickly and write the word on the board as he has it written on paper. At the end of the recitation the list of words will be written on the board again correctly. The teacher can keep marked on his original list the number of pupils who missed each word. This will serve a valuable purpose in review and drill. Ten words are few, and yet if each pupil learned the spelling of ten words each school day, think what an increase in vocabulary it would mean in a few years.

Any word having been used before may be given to the class at any subsequent lesson. The class is to be held responsible for knowing thoroughly all words of former lessons.

A few cautions may not be out of place either in written or oral spelling.

1. As a rule give one trial in spelling a word, and never more than two. The problem is to have the word so well known that the first trial is all that is needed.

2. Pronounce distinctly, but do not, as a rule, pronounce the word but once. There may be exceptions, but they should be few.

3. Do not mispronounce a word in order that the pupil may spell it correctly. Do not say sep-a-rate to make sure the pupil gets an a in the second syllable.

4. Have pupils spell in natural tones. If teachers could hear themselves pronounce a spelling lesson and hear their pupils spell it—if they could hear this as the outsider and disinterested person often hears it—they would soon reform and reform the pupils.

5. Do not pronounce words to the class in the same order the class has used in studying them.

6. It is a good rule to have each pupil pronounce the word distinctly before he tries to spell it. It insures you that the word is correctly understood and it serves to call the pupil’s attention to the word, emphasizing it. If the pupil does not understand the word then is the time for the teacher to repronounce it.

7. In oral spelling the plan of having pupils pronounce each syllable correctly as it is spelled is a good one. I would not, however, urge that he should go back and pronounce all the syllables each time he adds a new one. There is some argument for it and some advantage in it, but the plan is rather cumbersome.

CHAPTER XVII.
ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL.

For generations arithmetic has held a prominent place in the school curriculum. Should you teach any one or all of the first eight years of school work the teaching of arithmetic will be of practical interest to you. Even the most modern of school courses has not eliminated arithmetic nor curtailed to any great extent the proportionate share of attention given to it. Most teachers will admit that the subject has been over-estimated, and that it is not of the great practical value popularly attributed to it. The man in business does not use the principles of arithmetic half so often as many believe. Outside of the four fundamental processes and the principles of percentage, the average merchant and trades people generally do not use much arithmetic. The use of mechanical means of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing has become widespread. Few business men now depend upon adding long columns of figures mentally. The adding machine is quicker and absolutely correct.

Arithmetic has a practical value, but it is not its so-called practical value that is its greatest worth. Few subjects in our school course develop the mind in so many ways. Unless many of our newer subjects prove their worth even beyond the fondest hopes of many of their advocates, arithmetic must yet hold a prominent place in the school. It is the teacher’s duty to teach it so as to make the best out of it for the child.

I believe most teachers will agree that at present and in the past much time has been wasted in arithmetic. The results achieved do not justify the time spent. Whether these teachers will agree with me as to the reasons for this I am doubtful. To get teachers to question themselves on this point, and if possible to gain some time in this subject, else get better results for the time spent, is the purpose of this little talk.

1. Our pupils lack intensity in the study.—I believe this is one of our greatest faults. We allow the pupils to get into bad mental habits. They snooze over the work. They put in too much time. Their thoughts are allowed to go wool-gathering. They grow into time-killers instead of learning clear, sharp business methods.

2. Much time is lost in dry formalism.—We hold to the form and neglect the content. We seek the husks rather than the ear. Some formalism may be helpful, but to hold to it in all things is not only a waste of time but it weakens the thought power. I knew a graduate of a township high school, a bright boy and a boy in no way slow to grasp things, that had been so thoroughly drilled in the formal analyses of problems, following the dictum, “always teach your pupils to reason from many to one, and then from one to many,” that after more than a year in a store he told me he was never certain of an account until he had written it out in formal fashion:

1. If twelve eggs are worth 18 cents.

2. One egg is worth 1-12 of 18 cents, which is 18-12, or 1 1-2 cent.

3. And 16 eggs is worth 16 times as much as one egg or 16 times 1 1-2 cents, which is 24 cents.

4. If eggs are 18 cents a dozen, 16 eggs are worth 24 cents.

It may have been logical reasoning, some of it may have been useful, but to grind formalism into a boy for a twelve year’s course of study, by never allowing anything to pass that was not “analyzed” was a loss of time and mental discipline.

3. Pupils are not trained to read and grasp the conditions of problems.—Fifteen years’ experience with high school pupils leads me to believe that their ability to understand English causes a loss of time and results in arithmetic. Practice your pupils on problems without figures until they look for conditions rather than figures. Make numerous problems and let pupils tell you how to solve them. For example, “If you have the length and the breadth of a rectangular field stated in yards, how will you find the number of acres it will contain?” If teachers would give all through the grades more attention to problems without figures, pupils would accomplish more when they come to using problems with figures because they could grasp the conditions better.

4. Teachers neglect the four fundamental processes.—It is not an uncommon thing for pupils in the advance grades or even in high school to be unable to add, subtract, multiply or divide with anything like rapidity and accuracy. I am told the superiority of the German schools in arithmetic comes very largely in the thorough and accurate manner in which pupils are held to a mastery of the four fundamental operations in the first four years. When the advanced work is reached pupils are not handicapped by inaccurate results.

5. Pupils are not taught to grasp each new subject and its purpose, how it is like and how it differs from the subject that precedes it.—Before beginning the new subject they should take an inventory of what they already know of the new subject and then the teacher can make clear to them the new things to learn. When the subject is complete they have a grasp of it as a whole. Many of our newer and most popular text-books in arithmetic are weak—unpardonably weak—because of too close a devotion to the spiral and other methods that try to teach each process and division of the subject just so far and then return to it on the next trip around the auger in just such a time. The best results more frequently come from the teachers and the texts that teach one thing at a time. Then if the problems are well graded there is a growing power on the part of the pupil to master the text for himself. When a boy in my ’teens, I bought a book and solved the problems in an advanced arithmetic, getting from the effort more growth than any teacher could have gotten by using a text where the child must be led all the way or else is lost in a maze of uncertainties. Do not teach arithmetic in scraps and fragments if you want the pupils to understand it. Connect each new subject with those that precede, and give them the feeling of unity of the subject.

6. Teachers neglect mental arithmetic.—There was once a special time, set aside in the program for such study, now there is a tendency to neglect it even in connection with the written work in arithmetic. Nothing paves the way better for good work in written arithmetic than mental arithmetic. The teacher states the problem orally, the pupil states the conditions carefully, gives a good logical solution, and the result or conclusion. The long problems solved without the use of figures is not so important as the clear statement of conditions. To multiply 746234 by 278 without making any figures is not half so valuable in mental arithmetic as to tell how to solve a problem, giving the reason for each step, without giving the numerical result.

These, it seems to me, are the chief reasons why our results in the study of arithmetic are not richer. Now there should be three chief aims in teaching arithmetic. If these are accomplished, the pupil has not only the highest practical value of arithmetic, but the best and richest of the cultural value also.

The first aim should be accuracy.—This accuracy should include not only accuracy in result, numerical result, but accuracy in reasoning process, and accuracy in expression also. Mathematics is an exact science. Its great cultural value lies in its training in exact reasoning. The arithmetic that does not give exact numerical results is poor—extremely poor. In fact, much of our work in arithmetic drills to poor standards. The boy who gets nine problems out of ten—even in routine drill work—is graded high. Suppose the boy goes into the store or the bank and makes one mistake in ten computations—how long would he hold his job? He would pass, but it would be off the pay roll. Do we not make a mistake unless we hold up to pupils in all drill work a standard of absolute accuracy? After the pupil has mastered the mechanical processes until he is accurate, make sure that he is accurate in reasoning process. Teachers often err here by confusing numerical results with proper thought results. If a field is 40 rods wide and 80 rods long, how many acres does it contain? After the pupil is accurate in the fundamental processes, the real food in this problem for the pupil is what is given, what is required, and how the results required may be obtained from what is given. It is the steps in the process, why and how they may be obtained—and not the numerical result that is wanted. After these steps are fully in mind, as a drill in the fundamental processes he may solve the problems and give you the answer in figures.

The second aim of arithmetic is rapidity.—This is the age of electricity. Speed counts. Time is money. We have no time for frills. The clearest, quickest, most direct processes are the best. Get the correct results and get them quickly. The person who can do this is at a premium, the person who cannot do it is at a discount. Teach pupils to concentrate the attention upon the problem, shutting out all thought of irrelevant things. This is discipline as well as training for good results. Strive to keep your pupils from slothful habits in written or mental arithmetic. The habit grows and lessens results as well as wastes time.

The third aim of arithmetic is neatness.—This is less important than the other two, but it is important and should not be neglected. It was made a shibboleth by teachers in the past. The form and neatness counted for more than the thought. Manuscripts were carefully bound to show the beauty and neatness of the work. Not long ago in a private school I saw exhibited with pride the work of pupils in the class in arithmetic, the chief merit of which was the faultless neatness of which it was placed on the paper. Ignorant people and those who are untrained in judging good work in school give credit for the form. Those who judge intelligently look for the content as well as the form. Teach pupils to orderly arrangement of work. The visitor in the school-room, if familiar with the processes of arithmetic, should have no trouble in following a solution on the blackboard or paper.

I cannot in the limits of this chapter go into detail of how particular subjects are taught. Your teaching should center about these three aims. Any method or device that helps any one of these is helpful. Center your energies upon the essential things. Train pupils to careful, accurate, rapid work. See that principles and processes are made clear, but do not waste time trying to develop the processes down in the grades where the children are and should be interested in the memory work. Do not fool away time on the process of developing the multiplication table and let pupils leave the subject without being able to give the multiplication table. It may be useful to the child to know how to find how many six times seven are by using chalk marks or counters. The one thing that must not be neglected is to make sure that the child knows that six times seven are forty-two. The results are the practical things.

The first four years in school should make the pupils able to add, subtract, multiply and divide, and it should enable them to do this quickly and accurately. If I could get a class proficient in these—up to my standard of proficiency—at the end of the fourth year, I should give them a thorough knowledge of the practical arithmetic by the end of the seventh year and they would have the eighth year for algebra or commercial arithmetic.

A principal of one of the most thorough and reliable business colleges of which I know told me that his greatest trouble in a commercial course was to hold the students down to a regular systematic drill in the fundamental processes of arithmetic. The trouble was that they could not add accurately and quickly. Their results could not be relied upon. Many of them he kept two periods of thirty minutes each daily on rapid calculations in fundamental processes.

See that your pupils get correct ideas of number. Children think figures instead of number. Two dollars to many is a figure two with a dollar mark to the left. Two feet is a figure two with ft. to the right. See that they think number rather than figure. This comes often by having them make figures before they can use numbers.

Teach ideas instead of words. One-half does not mean a fraction to many pupils—it means the figure one above the figure two with a line between. Do not confuse a fraction with the manner in which a fraction is expressed. Principles should precede rules and pupils should comprehend these principles. I am even old-fashioned enough to believe that often, very often, pupils should be asked to commit the definitions and principles and rules as given in the book, but the language and purpose of these same definitions, principles and rules should be understood. The fault of the old plan was not that pupils were to commit definitions but that the pupils failed to comprehend the language and meaning of the definitions.

See that each new subject is properly related in the child’s mind with the subject that preceded it. It will then become one step of the ladder, something specific and definite in the child’s mind. When they study decimals they should be able to recall and use any principles learned when studying common fractions. When they learn percentage there is little new to learn if they apply their knowledge of decimals. If percentage is well learned there is little else to learn in interest.

These principles applied carefully will make your teaching of arithmetic more fruitful. It will save you time to do the more important work. Many teachers tell me it is hard for them to keep children interested in the drill and abstract work. They find it hard to keep pupils interested in addition until they become accurate and rapid in results. I have never found it so. In fact, I have always found the abstract drill problems to be the most fascinating work. The only thing necessary is to call into play the spirit of contest or rivalry. Take an excellent test for reviewing and drilling on the tables.

Suppose pupils have learned all the combinations up to 100. Suppose they have been drilled on adding by endings and the thing the class needs is practice. Some such device as this will make splendid practice. Draw a circle on the blackboard. On the circumference of the circle write the numbers 6, 9, 5, 7, 8, 11, 9, 4, 5. Then in the center of the circle write some number, let us say 7. To show what is to be done with the numbers write a plus mark before the seven. That will show that seven is to be added to each of the numbers on the circumference in rapid succession, the pupil calling the result. John is given a pointer to pass to the board and call the result. He will point to each of the numbers written above calling the result after adding 7 to it, as 13, 16, 12, 14, 15, 18, 16, 11, 12. Time John in giving the answers. Then send Mary to the board and see if she cannot beat him. The rivalry will be intense. Interest will be at fever heat and drill will become a game and a pleasure. Place a sign of multiplication before the seven and you have the whole drill changed in a moment from addition to multiplication. In the same way it can be changed to subtraction or to division. Change your numbers as soon as the pupils begin to repeat the results from memory of position.

Baseball terms and other things may add spice and awaken some of the sleepy boys that have never taken an interest. If he makes a mistake it may be called a foul, if he does not get far without a mistake he is out on first, etc. In the same way you may have an automobile race. The circles may well be thought of as the automobile and try which can beat giving the results. Should some one fail to give the correct results his automobile breaks down. A little ingenuity of the teacher will keep the drill work on abstract number and the learning of the tables a fascinating game instead of a continuous grind.

The spirit of the contest can be profitably used in all subjects of arithmetic by means of the ciphering match. Perhaps all teachers have used the ciphering match as a stimulus to two of the great aims in teaching arithmetic, accuracy and rapidity. Nothing will excel it in this. To those who have not tried a ciphering match the following directions will make it clear as to method. The more you use it and study the results on the arithmetic work of your school the more you will come to value it.

The ciphering match may be between members of the same class or between different classes, or the whole school may be divided into two classes by choosing up, or the teacher may call on pupils on any order he chooses. You may state in advance what subjects may be used in the match at a given time. To begin with it is well to limit to addition. Later it may be any one of the four fundamental processes. Then it makes a splendid review test when the class has completed any particular subject or group of subjects. Then to encourage them to keep well up on all subjects completed it is a good plan to allow them to choose from any subject over which the class have passed during the year. Short problems make the best drill for the ciphering match.

Send the two “captains,” if the school has chosen up, to the board. Read them a problem. The first to call the answer turns the other one down. Make calling of the answer the test, as it relieves you of watching them so closely. It is best to have another arithmetic or a list of problems so that you will not lack for problems. As the next pupil passes to the board he has the right of choice of subject and calls this as he passes to the board. He may choose a subject in which the first pupil is known to be weak or one perhaps in which he himself is considered strong. The choosing of subjects is a fine stimulus to keeping up in review all subjects previously gone over.

Do not give long, involved, complex problems. The purpose of the ciphering match is drill on fundamentals and accuracy and quickness in getting results. Long problems kill interest. If one class is pitted against another or if the school is divided into two parts it is easy to determine the victor. The individual who turns the most down is the victor in one sense and then keeping a score of which side turns the most down is often a good plan.

The best results of the ciphering match is the voluntary work and drill you get from the pupils in preparation. They will time themselves. They will practice to see who can solve the most problems in a given time, they will solve problems at home or meet other pupils at a neighbor’s house and get as much enjoyment out of it as they would at card-playing and more profit. I have seen scores of boys quickened and interested permanently in arithmetic from the ciphering match. Pupils quit snoozing over their work and try to go direct for results. Try a ciphering match a few times this year—often enough to get the pupils thoroughly acquainted with the plan and see if you and they do not both feel that it is profitable.

CHAPTER XVIII.
TEACHING LITERATURE.

Literature, History, Algebra, Civil Government—these have been favorite subjects of mine. The teaching of each has brought me pleasure. Perhaps literature in many schools is most neglected. I wish that I might say something which would call the attention of teachers to this subject. Let us discuss briefly the principles that should be made clear to the class and then apply these to that beautiful poem of Lowell’s: “The Vision of Sir Launfal.” This poem has been reprinted in numerous cheap editions, and no teacher but can afford a copy and secure a copy for each of his class.

The successful teacher of literature must believe in his subject. He must believe with his whole heart that to lead a pupil to the proper appreciation of a piece of pure literature is to place that pupil on a higher spiritual plane; that it will lift that pupil above much that is low and groveling and vicious, and give to him a constant companion and monitor, which, like Copperfield’s Agnes, always points upward.

The teacher of literature must have read critically much of the best literature. He must be especially familiar with the particular selections he is to teach. He must know the selection in its bearings. He must have studied it earnestly and critically, and in addition he must have planned how he can best present it to his class so that they may get most out of it. Less than this is apt to make the study of literature in the school a mere farce.

But what is pure literature? By what criterion do we draw the line between literature and other forms of writing? What distinguishes pure literature from the news article? What distinguishes literature from the statements of history or of scientific truths? I should reply that the constructive energy of pure literature is “universal, ideal, emotional life.”

Pure literature must be universal.—Lowell tells us that a literary man cannot air his private liver complaint to the public. He also gives us his conception of literature in another place. “Literature that loses its meaning, or the best part of it, when it gets beyond the parish steeple, is not what I understand by literature. To tell you when you cannot fully taste a book that it is because it is too thoroughly national, is to condemn the book. To say it of a poem is even worse, for it is to say that what should be true of the whole compass of human nature is true only to some north-and-by-half-east point of it. I can understand the nationality of Firdusa when, looking sadly back to the former glories of his country, he tells us that ‘the nightingale still sings old Persian.’ I can understand the nationality of Burns when he turns his plow aside to spare the rough burr thistle, and hopes he may sing a song or two for dear old Scotie’s sake. That sort of nationality belongs to a country of which we are all citizens—that country of the heart that has no boundaries laid down on the map.”

Literature must be ideal.—The lessons it brings are the ideals of the soul’s possibilities. It quickens in the individual soul the inspirations that are universal. The beautiful friendship of Damon and Pythias is above our selfishness—an ideal lifting us above ourselves, creating in us higher aspirations and showing us our own possibilities. There are, it is true, various degrees of idealizations. Heroism may be idealized and uplifting and yet not be to the degree of idealization in Enoch Arden. The strength and beauty of women’s devotion may be worthy of emulation and yet not reach the standard of Evangeline.

Literature must be emotional.—It deals more with the heart than with the head. The emotions of literature are of various kinds, but these may be all summed up in the emotions of spiritual freedom. The soul is constantly struggling to free itself from bondage, and every time a limitation is removed the soul leaps with joy. In this lies much of the educative power of literature. The all-inclusive pleasure of literature is the soul’s joy in its hopes and its possibilities of freedom. The reader, if he really reads, is forced to live for the time being at least the ideal life pictured in the literature, and thus from day to day his soul attains to higher levels.

The Vision of Sir Launfal.

Let us now discuss “The Vision of Sir Launfal.” This is a work of literary art, a gem from a master, beautiful in conception, beautiful in execution, and beautiful in its inspiration to higher life. The teacher who secures the proper conception of this poem by the pupil rings a rising bell in the dormitory of that child’s soul. Methods of teaching may vary with the personality of the teacher. The best method of one teacher may or may not be the best method of another. It is hoped the following suggestions may be helpful to some, and if so, they were not written in vain.

The following general suggestions may pave the way for a closer study:

1. Study the legend of the “Holy Grail” carefully.

2. In connection with the study of “The Vision of Sir Launfal” read Tennyson’s “Holy Grail” and “Idylls of the King,” noting likeness and difference.

3. Have pupils read through the poem carefully until they catch the movement and the rhythm. It is as great a mistake to set a class to criticising a poem or picking to pieces and analyzing the first paragraph of a selection of literature before they have read it as a whole as it would be to have them criticise a monument by having them examine one or two of the blocks of granite at the quarry.

4. Keep closely before the student the standard and tests of pure literature.

The first step then in the study of “The Vision of Sir Launfal”—and the same would be true of any selection of literature—is to find the author’s theme. The second step is to test this theme by the questions:

- 1. Is it universal?

- 2. Is it ideal?

- 3. Is it emotional?

These tests will determine the class of literature to which it belongs.

The theme of literature is its soul or purpose, but this soul must have a body. The writer of literature does not speak in abstract terms. He embodies the forms in concrete, visible forms. The ideal image is presented in the real, the universal in the individual, and these objective or concrete particulars become types or symbols of the abstract or universal. Thus Hester in “The Scarlet Letter” and Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables” are realizations of universal principles in human nature. The building and the launching of the ship with Longfellow is typical of national life. He who reads Evangeline and sees but Evangeline the individual loses most of the poem. Evangeline is the concrete individual form or embodiment of the abstract and the universal—woman’s devotion. To see the universal symbolized by the particular, to see Evangeline no longer as an individual, but as a type—an ideal to which our souls may aspire—gives life to the study of literature and makes it a monitor to our own soul.

Language is the medium which carries the theme through the embodiment to the reader. In other forms of art, as in sculpture and painting, the embodiment stands alone and the reader must make out of it what he can. Literature, however, is more plastic. It may represent the change, the rate of progress or development. Language brings a vivid image before the mind, and may give the meaning of the image in terms of life. Literary language must be beautiful. Its interpretation must yield aesthetic pleasure; not only aesthetic pleasure, but sensuous pleasure also. It must caress the ear. These pleasing qualities give rise to euphony, harmony, rhythm, and rhyme in all its pleasing forms. It includes also alliteration and the balanced sentence. Language has both a form side and a sense side. It is the incarnation of thought, and the soul is indispensable to the body. Language also awakens sensuous pleasure by stimulating the imagination and the judgment. The connotation of language is often of more importance than the denotation.

Now let us apply these principles more in detail to “The Vision of Sir Launfal.”

The Theme.

The theme of the poem is charity. The foundation of charity is our feeling of kinship. Blood kinship is a strong bond and has been in all of man’s history. The recognition of spiritual kinship has grown out of blood kinship. The prejudice of the Greeks against the barbarian came from the denial of blood kinship, while they failed to recognize the higher spiritual kinship. For the same reason the Gentile and the Jew were enemies. Monotheism—one God, one Father of all—lies at the foundation of all true charity. No wonder the greatest of virtues is charity. It is

“That thread of the all-sustaining beauty,

Which runs through all and doth all unite.”

The theme of the poem is not apparent at first. The poet, like the organist, begins “doubtfully and far away.” This stanza is typical of the universal method of thought. We approach the definite through the vague and the indefinite. The stanza has no connection with the theme of the poem. It is simply a prelude, and serves to prepare the mood of the reader for what follows.

In the second stanza the theme is the unconscious rising to higher life through the uplifting influences of nature about us—the winds, the mountains, the woods, and the sea.

The theme of the third stanza is the cost of earthly things contrasted with God’s gifts. Earth gets its price; it is only heaven can be had for the asking. The theme of the next stanza is the power of a June day unto righteousness. The general purpose of this beautiful description of a June day is to bring the reader to a realization of the uplifting influences about him. The particular purpose is to furnish the immediate connection with Sir Launfal, in whom from this time the theme is to be embodied. Mark the highly idealized upward impulse of a June day. Even the clod climbs upward to a soul in the grass and flowers.

The theme in Part I., except the last stanza, is selfishness—unconscious selfishness under the guise of a noble deed. The theme of the preceding is continued, and shows strongly by contrast the uncharitable element in Sir Launfal’s character. His own life was so bright his heart could not be opened to the leper. Sorrow and reverses must touch him and melt his selfishness. Unlike the bird, there is no song of sympathy in the heart of Launfal, and like the castle he rebuffed the sunshine and gloomed apart. Everything up to this point is unified in the one idea of selfishness. The leper states this definitely. Heaven may be had for the asking, but we rebuff the gifts of heaven as the castle does the sunshine. Sir Launfal gives alms only; the gifts of true charity must come from the heart. The knight rode to do a noble deed, but he could have found the Holy Grail at his own castle gate had his heart gone with his gift. He was seeking the husk instead of the grain. The crusaders sought Christ by going to Jerusalem, and many yet seek Him in the mere external ceremonies of the church. Notice how the leper contrasts this false charity with the real:

“But he who gives but a slender mite,
And gives to that which is out of sight,
That thread of the all-sustaining beauty,
Which runs through all and doth all unite,
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
The heart outstretches its eager palms,
For a god goes with it and makes it store

To the soul that was starving in darkness before.”

Sir Launfal has realized the false charity; he is now to grow into the true; and that is the problem to be worked out in the life of each individual. It is the unceasing conflict between egoism and altruism, between the individual and the universal self. In this conflict there is a failure to recognize the self where the true self is found. Failing to see the divinity in things we fail to see ourselves in them.

In the prelude to Part II. we have the inner beauty of life set over against the external form. It requires the chilling influences of winter to awaken the soul of Sir Launfal to the realities of life, to enable him to recognize his kinship to the leper. His act was a small one; little in the eyes of the world. He gave but a mouldy crust and a drink of water, but

“The Holy Supper is kept indeed
In whatso we share with another’s need;
Not what we give but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three—
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.”

If the pupils do not realize the theme, if they do not see it as universal in time and place—as good to-day as in time of knighthood, and as applicable to one individual as another—they have lost the best, in fact all, of the good of the poem. If they really read the poem they must live for the time being decidedly above the ordinary level of charitable feeling.

The Embodiment.

The theme is embodied in a person. Sir Launfal is not simply Sir Launfal the individual, but Sir Launfal the universal. He is the potential of what you and I may become. We know nothing and care nothing about the ordinary events of his life. Even the most matter-of-fact person cares nothing about when or where he was born. Age and clime do not concern us. We are interested only in his growth in charity. The embodiment is not Sir Launfal only, but Sir Launfal with all his accessories, the castle, the leper, summer, winter, etc. Sir Launfal before the castle gate, confronted by the leper, stands boldly out in the foreground of the picture in the beginning, and the scene must be shifted until he stands confronted by the leper again—from June to December of life—and Sir Launfal, and not the leper, must change.

The heavenly influences must bring knight and leper together so that each shall recognize their spiritual kinship, and in the beginning they are the extremes of human life. The only ideal charity is the kind which has power to bring together the extremes of life, to show how the kinship in a person in the most abject and offensive condition of life. Sir Launfal is a knight, and the sworn duty of a knight is to do good to others and to protect and defend the weak. Here is the opportunity to do good to one who needs help, but he fails utterly. He makes no sacrifice in giving gold; he does not share his life; he gives the gold in scorn.

Sir Launfal, the proud, selfish knight, can never realize his kinship to the leper until his selfishness is overcome, until his heart is changed. He is uncharitable to an ideal degree, and this is still more idealized when we consider that the June day which inspired Launfal to the keeping of his vow was a free gift. The poet describes the June day until the reader feels its power unto higher living. The physical and the spiritual are blended, and to such a degree is the spiritual idealized that the reader consciously feels the uplifting impulse. The class that does not feel this uplifting impulse does not really read the poem.

The June day is called a perfect day. It is a time when earth is in tune with higher life. Every clod feels a stir of might, and such an idealized effect on the clod makes the reader reach and tower to a higher life. But Sir Launfal’s selfishness makes him out of harmony with nature all about him. The little bird, deluged with summer, sings to the world:

“His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings,”

but Sir Launfal’s heart sings only to the wide world, if it sings at all. He does not respond to the quiet duty before him. Everything but Sir Launfal is upward striving; selfishness like a lodestone, is holding him down. At first it seems the poem lacks unity, but a careful study shows that the preludes have the closest relation to the theme. The uplifting influences of the free June day makes the selfishness of Sir Launfal all the greater.

The castle is the embodiment of Launfal and selfishness. It, too, was besieged by the summer, but “lay like an outpost of winter, dull and gray.” The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang as the knight dashed forth, but the sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill as he beheld the leper. This picture is the embodiment of the emptiness of the outward forms of charity—the mere almsgiving. The picture of true charity is quite different. Sir Launfal and the leper meet again before the same castle wall and again the leper begs an alms. The chilling influences of life and the reverses of fortune have wrought a change in Sir Launfal, and he now listens to the “grewsome thing.” He recognizes in him not only a kinship, but sees in him the image of Christ—the real Christ—while his life has been spent in seeking only the shadow of Christ. The external contrast is as great as the spiritual contrast. Sir Launfal is now an old, bent man. There is no sign of Knighthood—he is “shelterless, shelterless, shelterless.”

The description of the little brook is, if possible, more delightful than that of the June day, and is the embodiment of Sir Launfal’s present life. The reader feels the joy of the fullness of inner life independent of external circumstances. The warmth and comfort inside the castle is a striking contrast with the cold outside, and this expresses the condition of Sir Launfal. The inner life is now triumphant over the outer. Contrast the picture of Sir Launfal leaving the castle, and Sir Launfal returning to the castle. In the first the outward life is triumphant over the inner. The external world is light with warmth and cheer. In the second it is cold and bleak and gloomy, while the ruddy glow comes from within. This growth is typical of the progress of the soul from the pride of youth and inexperience to the joy of the inner spiritual life of old age. It suggests also the historical movement from external splendor of chivalrous deeds to inner Christlike charity; the growth from symbolism to the thing symbolized.

The class should study the embodiment until they feel:

1. That the picture is accurate, vivid and full.

2. That it makes its appeal to the inner life of sympathy and love.

3. That there is perfect harmony between the real as presented in the picture and the ideal as potential in human nature.

The Language.

The pupils should scan the poem to catch the music of the verse. Notice the external mechanism, the language and its power to awaken aesthetic pleasure. Note the freedom and variety of the structure. There is no monotonous jingle. Rhythm is the primary element in poetic form, and a return to it. There must be no fixed regularity in the departure and the return. Notice the flexibility in the rhyme, as “knowing” “growing,” “ear” “near,” “flowing,” “sky” “by,” “back” “lack,” “chanticleer” “year,” “crowing.”

The measure is as free and as playful as the rhyme. The iambic is the characteristic foot, but there is frequently variations by the use of the anapest. The trochaic foot is used occasionally at the beginning of the line. Notice the variations running through the poem and the variations in the length and structure of the stanzas. The more complex the movement of a poem, provided there is unity in it, the more music there is in it. Stanzas cut by the same form and pattern are artificial and mechanical.

The form of poetry, however, cannot be considered separate from the thought and sentiment expressed. Alliteration, unless it fit the form to the idea, is mere affectation. When the sentiment rises and falls or moves with varying rapidity, the form of the stanza must vary. The class should study the poem to see:

1. If there is any conflict between the form and meaning.

2. If the variation in form comes naturally with the variation of the sentiment expressed.

Suggestion and allusion are well employed in the selections. The author utilizes the reader’s knowledge of Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality,” the Bible story of Moses and Sinai, Druid religion, and Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” and he does it skillfully. He does not thrust it at the reader, but assumes the reader’s intelligence, and the compliment is pleasing. The poems are few where we find the objects presented so completely and transformed into spiritual types so perfectly. Even the clod climbs to a soul. Note the suggestiveness, the connotation, in “reaches” and “towers,” “groping blindly” and “climbing.” All of them suggestive of the human soul’s ascent to higher things.

The poem is a unit. It is “universal, ideal, emotional.” There is complete fusion of form and content, a rounded fullness, completeness and beauty which makes it a work of fine art. Do not let your class leave it until they have stored their minds with beautiful quotations—gems of thought and sentiment, jewels of expression—which will bless and brighten and uplift them in after years.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE TEACHER’S VACATION.

Your school term has closed. Vacation is here. How shall you spend it? That is the question.

Rest. That is the proper thing to do. Rest does not mean idleness, however. Why are you tired? The merchant works twelve months in the year, six days in the week and more hours in a day than you do? The farmer, the mechanic and others do the same. They are glad to get a week off once a year, and many of them do not get that. Why are teachers so completely worn out at the close of the term? Why are they so pale, so nervous? Why do they so often count the weeks, then the days, and at last the hours before the term ends? Is there a teacher of five years’ experience who has not at some time been guilty of such counting? Is it the hard work? Is it the lack of agreeable surroundings? Is it want of pure air and exercise, or is it worry?

Freed from anxiety, and to the lover of the work, teaching is neither dull nor exhausting. The actual mental energy spent in teaching by most teachers is not great. It is seldom that they give long continued mental effort to one subject during school hours. In fact, the worst drawback to teaching to one who seeks to be a scholar in the best sense of the term, is that his attention is continually divided. He cannot concentrate his mind on one subject long enough. He must divide his time between government and the teaching process. For this reason, those who wish to be scholars rather than teachers seek to teach in the universities rather than in the primary or secondary schools. Here they may specialize. Here their class work is free from government proper. Their students are mature. The mature thought of the student stimulates the teacher and the investigator. They are growing into ripe scholarship instead of directing younger pupils in the elements of subjects.

We may safely say it is not the unusual amount of thought devoted to teaching that gives pallor to the cheek of so many teachers at the close of the year, nor do we believe it is altogether due to unpleasant surroundings. School houses are in many places far from inviting. Two or three churches with stained glass windows and pretty homes of comfort and refinement are often found near the most dilapidated old tumbled-down school house, and a shame it is. But the teacher who is master of the situation and a leader of children, can do much to overcome this. Clean buildings and grounds with some good walks and a few trees and flowers will follow as a result of a good teacher after a few years in almost any school.

The teacher, too, usually secures room and board with a good family where they may have comforts equal or superior to their own home. Teachers are always welcome to the best society—it may not be the low-necked, high-heeled variety—but the best and most substantial. The best homes welcome them as guests and the biggest fat apples are laid—an honest and worthy tribute—on the teacher’s desk. Churches and societies in rural and village schools always welcome the teacher with pleasure, and the teacher is lacking in mixing qualities who does not get access to all the comforts and pleasures the community affords. Their standards may not be your standards, but their honesty and unconventionality will make up for much. One of the inexpressible pleasures of teaching comes when you can lose your own selfishness in your own quiet devotion to duty in the community. The worn-out condition of the teacher, if she has the ability to adapt herself to reasonable conditions, does not come from lack of congenial surroundings.

Lack of fresh air and exercise may count for much. Many school-rooms are poorly ventilated. Teachers standing breathe more impurities than pupils seated. The windows should be slightly lowered at the top and the room frequently flushed with fresh air for the benefit of both teachers and pupils. Then most teachers do not take enough exercise. Do you play at recess? Whether it is advisable to play with your pupils or not depends upon your own power. Can you play with pupils without sacrificing or compromising your dignity? Some persons can, and others cannot. Some gain the good will of pupils by playing with them, others lose it. You must know your own ability. Games in which you can excel usually count in your favor. Games in which the pupils can greatly excel you, are not apt to add to your standing or reputation among pupils. But whether you play or do not play you should spend an hour or two each day in exercise in the open air. A brisk walk to the postoffice, an hour of work in the garden or with flowers, or the care of chickens or anything which gives you exercise in the open air and calls your thoughts from the work of the day is beneficial. The work must be congenial, but the labor must not be so strenuous as to sap your vitality. It should be of everyday occurrence, and yet so that in extremely bad weather the time may be shortened. An hour of work in the open air in something in which you have a genuine interest will put life and vigor into your school work.

Worry kills. Relieved of all worry, the teaching profession would be ideal, and yet worry springs almost all together from the imagination. The teacher goes to school in the morning scared for fear of trouble. A feeling of dread that something is going to go wrong, that some calamity is about to befall, hangs over the teacher. She fears to look out of the window or to step out on the playground for dread she will see something wrong. It is this dread, this feeling that something awful is going to happen, this worry which causes the pale face and the nervous condition of the teacher at the close of school.

Then so many teachers never get the confidence of their school. They are looking for open defiance or open rebellion at any minute. They prowl about to find something going wrong. They tip-toe and sneak on the pupils, confident always that pupils are plotting against them. It is no wonder that pupils delight in annoying such a teacher. They stop the recitation time after time to reprimand Johnnie in the back part of the room. They pace the floor like a hyena in a cage, looking for trouble. Let me suggest that if Johnnie is disturbing the recitation to such an extent that something must be done that you let Johnnie do the walking instead of yourself, and let your rebuke or punishment be severe enough, and sincere enough, and complete enough, and yet reasonable enough, that you will never have to stop the recitation again to reprimand him.

Good common sense and self-control should be brought to bear on your duties, and as an aid in making steady your nerves. As responsible as the school-room is, pupils are not going to run off with the building. Neither are they going to do anything unpardonably bad. Their youthful faults and follies will be forgotten by you, and the neighborhood too, in a few years. So what is the use of wasting the nervous force and energy which ought to be directed towards the teaching process in needless worry for fear something will happen.

You ask, “How can I help it?” You can help it:

1. Use your will to control your mind.—You have read of the soldier who found his knees trembling. Stopping short and looking at them he said: “If you knew where I was going to take you you would shake worse than that.” By centering his mind upon other things he gained control of his shaking knees. You, by exerting your will, may learn to calm your fears.

2. A large part of your nervousness comes from feeling that you are not well prepared for the work.—You fear that something will come up which you do not understand. You are not right sure whether you can answer the questions you are going to ask the class in to-day’s lesson. You feel that the problems and questions of the school-room are going to come to you as a surprise. The best remedy for this is to study and plan and organize your knowledge of the subject; to read carefully and critically but with discrimination the plans, methods, devices and experiences of other teachers. These may be found in journals and books on methods and plans of teaching.

3. Your vacation, while they should be free from worry and unnecessary work, may be seeding time for storing up many helpful things which will prevent worry in the future.—Read a few good thoughtful professional books. Question the plans and methods mentioned. Make clippings of those things which will help you in the future, and keep them in scrap-books, classifying these that you may readily turn to any topic wanted. What stores of knowledge, what amount of worry may thus be avoided by planning for the future. Not only this, the planning itself will give pleasure as its own reward at the time, with compound interest in the future. Think over and plan and systematize your work. Yes, I hear you say that you cannot plan then so that you can use it the next year. You must revise your plans, it is true. A plan is much more easily revised than constructed anew. No teacher can use a plan over and over without revision or adaptation to the individual class. But during vacation is the time to make collections of material, storehouses as it were, to interest your class for next year.

4. Do not neglect the rest and recreation and inspiration that comes from a week at the county institute or a few weeks at a good summer school.—The acquaintances made, the inspiration received, the thought-producing ideas gained, and the feeling of professional fellowship engendered is worth many times its cost. With a vacation rightly used you may come out of your next school term with more energy and more physical strength.

It is the worry of the school-room that kills. Teachers must overcome the worrying habit or succumb to its baneful influence.

CHAPTER XX.
THE TEACHER’S VIEW OF LIFE.

Of all the things that indirectly affect your teaching, as well as your own personal happiness, nothing is of such importance as your view of life. It gives coloring to your every act. It is a background from which other things must take their tint. It shapes your views and determines your actions unconsciously upon hundreds of the less important things of life. It makes you a long-faced pessimist, sour and grouchy, or it makes you an optimist, bright and cheery.

One’s view of life is not always entirely his own choosing. Health, family, friends, success, may affect your view of life and in turn be affected by this same view of life, but your view of life can be consciously cultivated. You are what you are from three sources.

First, your inheritance. Color, race, nationality, physical features, natural talent, etc., are not of our own choosing. These are for us or against us. We are bound by these fetters and yet we cannot be held morally accountable for them. They determine in a greater or lesser degree our future in many things. Our moral responsibility would make it our duty to accept without pride or regret, without boasting or apology, without compliment or complaint, our God-given, parent-inherited possibilities. From these we are to make the best we can.

Second, You are what you are from your environment. In no marked measure are we responsible for our environment in early life. While it leaves its indelible traces on us, it is not of our own choosing. No man is individually responsible for his own birthplace nor boyhood home. Whether in the busy marts of trade or the seclusion of a frontier farm, whether in primitive Patagonia or gay Paris—it may affect his life and ideas and attainments, but for this there is little credit due him as an individual because it was not of his own choosing.

The potent influence of environment and opportunity on the individual is the hope of the teacher and the reformer. To improve this the state spends its millions upon schools, education, good roads, mail service, sanitation, etc. The great reformers of the ages have been true to their highest ideals because of their faith in their ability to improve the conditions of the masses of mankind. Our schools and reformatories are based upon the same faith. We can improve the race by improving the environment of the young. A careful study and contemplation of the effects of improved environment upon the life of the individual should nerve any teacher to the highest effort.

Third. You are what you are largely by your own efforts. The mature man should be self-directive. Circumstances, inheritance and environment may limit him, but he grows in strength and courage in fighting and overcoming this environment. The ripened fruit of education is intelligent individual self-direction. It is the aim and end of a liberal education. It is the goal to which all else in education should direct.

We believe, then, that it is possible for the individual—the thinking, liberal-minded individual, the teacher trained to see not only the highest ideals of education but to understand the principles and laws of mental growth to attain such ideals—we believe that it is possible for such a person to shape in a very large measure his view of life. Upon the way he looks at life depends largely his health, happiness and success.

“As a man thinketh, so is he.” This has been the thought of the great religious reformers of the ages. Buddha and Christ, and all that go between, agree in this one particular. They differ in what to believe, but all agree that one’s innermost belief shapes and determines his life and final reward. With Milton, I believe that “mind can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell.” With these statements let us see if we can make more clear how one’s view of life will enter the practical affairs of the teacher and make for them of teaching either a paradise or purgatory.

Contrast these views of farming—the first a farmer only; the second a man on a farm. The one is narrowed in his view of life to his cabin and forty acres. Each day is a ceaseless grind. The old statement that there is nothing new under the sun is true so far as he is concerned. His soul and life are dwarfed and swiveled. He ekes out a miserable pittance day by day. Growling and miserly and grudgingly he makes his simple exchanges at the country store. He haggles, and frets and stews over prices, seeking a low and sinister motive in every man’s transaction but his own. Of all men he thinks himself the most besought and hard pressed. Day after day he spends in absolute idleness because he can find nothing worth doing. His cattle, his corn and his surplus supplies are so many cents saved for the winter’s clothing. The weeds grow up to his front door, his fences are unkept, his stables are falling down, and from the broken window panes hang “the signal rags of shiftlessness.” Life holds for him no hope save the sordid things of life. Narrowed and dwarfed and ignorant he goes his ceaseless round. No beauty for him in the sky overhead or in the flower at his feet. The storm cloud appeals only as it may break the drouth or blow down the crops. His thoughts and his vocabulary are bounded by his daily ceaseless round of small economies. Healthy, hearty, his view of life is so narrow that what God intended for a man is little more than a thing.

His neighbor measures all by its market value. The money it will bring—this to him would measure anything less than a soul and would tempt him to sell his soul. He buys land to raise corn to feed hogs to buy more land to raise more corn to feed more hogs; to buy more land to raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land and thus the endless possession goes until he is gathered to his fathers and his children have a chance to spend his earnings often in riotous living. His view of life is broader than the first. He learns that there is a difference in the quality of corn and hogs. To produce continuous crops he must protect and build up the land. The stock of hogs and the care they get make a difference in the profits. His view of life is bounded by the almighty dollar. He is not hopeless, as he has interests outside himself.

Contrast these with the man of liberal mold on the farm. The farm is to him his apportioned part of God’s green earth, a place to live and to be happy. An ever-changing scene and view makes life on the farm to him a continuous panorama of beauty. The blueness of the sky, the brightness of the stars, the balmy breezes, the landscape view, even the heat of summer and the cold of winter add zest to his living. He is ever thankful for sunshine or showers, pure air and fresh water, health and exercise—thankful that his is an environment of taste and beauty. He is busy and he is happy. His mind is centered on other things but the dollars, and the comforts come as a side line and without worry or fretting on his part. He rises with the lark to give another touch here and there that will add to the growing of the crops or the beauty of the home. He feels that by his labor he is not only keeping his wife and family but helping to feed the hungry millions of mankind.

What a difference in the spirit of the man who feels that he is feeding the hungry millions of the earth, helping in God’s great plan of civilization and enlightenment and the miserable miser who seeks but shade and shelter!

Your view of life changes the complexion of the things about you. It puts spirit and energy into the most humdrum tasks. A necessary work is an honorable work. Do that which your ability and your environment makes necessary. Do it with cheerfulness and a will. Envy no man his success until you are willing to pay for it what he has paid. By paying the price you can win success for yourself. But success is not always measured in dollars and cents. Teach yourself to view life and labor in its broader light, and you will have found the philosopher’s stone that dignifies labor well done, and draws pleasure from any honorable occupation.

To deify your own work is the way to get pleasure and growth out of it. Forget as far as possible the daily wage. Let the carpenter see himself helping to build and improve the homes of mankind and he is ashamed of shoddy work. The street sweeper should glow with civic pride. His work is as essential as that of any man. When he realizes this, his work is then not drudgery. He feels the worth of his work. He feels that he is making his city the cleanest, the brightest, the healthiest and the most beautiful in the world. When he turns at the end of his beat to see behind him a street immaculate, there swells in him a worthy pride of his work and his worth, a thrill as pardonable and as justifiable as that in the mayor’s breast as he reviews his uniformed police. The teamster with his load of coal, dirty and begrimed though he may be, should forget his toil and drudgery in the conviction that he is helping humanity to keep warm while in turn he is earning an honest living and the comforts of home for himself and family.

Let the washerwoman, bending over her tub, feel that her work is not only honorable, but necessary. Except for her, or others doing her work, humanity in a few months time would be in a pitiful plight, and our present civilization could not long exist. Dignify your own little niche in life. See in all things the hand of an infinite power, shaping and directing the destiny of man and then no work will be drudgery to you.

You get out of life what you put into it. Measure and it is measured back to you. Joy, sunshine, cheerfulness, obedience, these are reflections of yourself. The brightest colors, the most beautiful harmonies, are self-created products of your own mind. We see what we look for, we hear what we listen for, we get what we give. We must lose our life in our work if we are to find it again renewed and more fruitful in the lives of our pupils. Love our pupils and they will love us in return. See good in everybody and the goodness in them will rise up then to greet the goodness in us. Have beauty in our own life and we shall see beauty in the life about us—the rainbow, the storm cloud, the landscape, the sparrow’s song, the brooklet’s ripple, will all find an inspiring response in our natures.

Grouch and the world is grouchy. Fault-find and others will find fault. Distrust and others will not have confidence in us. The world and all things about us is one huge mirror from which our own image is being reflected back to us. If we want to change the image begin to consciously build up in ourselves a bigger, brighter, better view of life and we shall begin to see bigger, brighter, better images reflected back to us.

As a teacher learn to look on life with a healthy optimism. Get a world view of humanity in its progress. Recognize yourself as a force—infinitely small perhaps, but a necessary force in the triumphant march. Dollars and cents are necessary to you to fill to perfection this place—but over and above all money, sweeter and more lasting, is the lives you can reach, the good you can do, the pleasure you can inspire, the kindlier feelings you can cultivate in your pupils. Cheered, upheld, inspired by such thoughts as these, no community will be uninteresting, no school will be unworthy your best efforts, no healthy, hearty, happy child but will stand before you an instrument of infinite possibilities. Knowing what notes to strike you can place it in harmony with God and the universe.

To see life in its larger views, to live life on a higher plane, to lift others to this larger life is the opportunity of the true teacher. Think you that teaching is dull?

Transcriber’s Note:

The text from the original publication from which this eBook was derived has been retained as published specifically where:

• the text appears to be missing a number of articles and prepositions
• in several instances, subject and verb are not in agreement
• some apostrophes for ownership are missing
• inconsistencies appear between chapter headings and the body text
• there are anomalies in punctuation

Fractions on pages 63 and 143 have also been retained as printed in the original publication, i.e. 62 1-2, 1-12, 18-12 and 1 1-2.

The following changes have been made:

- Page 87
ignominously in the contest changed to
ignominiously in the contest

- Page 95
as a pleasant workship changed to
as a pleasant workshop

- Page 128
will be his adaptibility changed to
will be his adaptability

- Page 135
a word is missed the the next below changed to
a word is missed the next below

- Page 139
No communicaton is allowed changed to
No communication is allowed

- Pages 156 and 164
Idyls of the King changed to
Idylls of the King
Idylls of the King

- Page 156
Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” changed to
Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables”

- Page 157
and the soul is indispensible changed to
and the soul is indispensable

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Table of Contents

- TWENTY TALKS —TO— TEACHERS

- PREFACE.

- CONTENTS

- CHAPTER I. AM I FIT TO TEACH?

- CHAPTER II. SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK?

- CHAPTER III. SECURING A POSITION.

- CHAPTER IV. PASSING THE EXAMINATION.

- CHAPTER V. PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER.

- CHAPTER VI. GRADING THE SCHOOL.

- CHAPTER VII. OPENING EXERCISES.

- CHAPTER VIII. THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER.

- CHAPTER IX. THE TEACHER’S LIBRARY.

- CHAPTER X. THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

- CHAPTER XI. GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS.

- CHAPTER XII. KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS.

- CHAPTER XIII. WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL?

- CHAPTER XIV. TEN TIME KILLERS.

- CHAPTER XV. THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE.

- CHAPTER XVI. A TALK ABOUT SPELLING.

- CHAPTER XVII. ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL.

- CHAPTER XVIII. TEACHING LITERATURE.

- CHAPTER XIX. THE TEACHER’S VACATION.

- CHAPTER XX. THE TEACHER’S VIEW OF LIFE.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE