Monitor (student)

“ Be polite and dignified in their presence, be attentive in the lecture room, but not ostentatiously so, making a pretence of continually gazing at the professor, being the first to answer fly questions, or selecting a seat very near his desk, as there is nothing more displeasing to him than the endeavor of a student to make up for lack of merit by sycophantic fawning. ”

“ A spirit monitor—a match-making monitor—whispered these wise advices in her ear; yet she was powerless to profit by them. Like a school-girl about to be examined for a scholarship, knowing that all the future might depend upon an hour of the present, the dire need to be resourceful, to be brilliant, left her dumb. ”

“ Our college faculties must perforce content themselves with detecting vice, and punishing it when detected. The most satisfactory and appropriate means of detection is to watch closely the way in which the student performs his college duties. No man can waste his time over cards or the bottle without betraying his dissipation in the recitation-room. Here, and not in the dormitory, is the professor's hold upon the student. The dormitory system, so far from restraining, rather tends to diffuse vice and render its practice easy. ”

“ The Deans to visit the chambers of all undergraduates once at least every week, upon pain of forfeiting 10s. to the Lecturers for every omission.
“Fasting nights have a shadow of religion without any substance. ’Tis only supping more pleasantly out of the public hall. And this does great mischief by sending young students to find suppers abroad, where they get into company and grow debauched. Whether would it not be better to license undergraduates to sup together in such places as the Dean shall appoint, with a Monitor to note the names of the absent? ”

“ So much did the young man take upon his own shoulders, that before he was of age he was, in almost everything but name, the real Head-master.
“My first reform,” he one day told me, “was about the school-bell. I was then not more than twelve. It rang very irregularly. I looked into the matter and discovered the cause. It was owing to the following rule of my father’s. There was a monitor whose duty it was to ring the bell, and a penalty was fixed for any delay. But any one who happened to be in the school-room at the time was bound to ring the bell, and was fined for omission. ”

“ Is the professorial system—the system, I mean, of teaching in the lecture-room alone, and leaving the student to find his own way when he is outside of the lecture-room—adequate to the wants of learners? In answering this question, I confine myself to my own province, and I venture to reply for physical science, assuredly and undoubtedly, No. As I have already intimated, practical work in the laboratory is absolutely indispensable, and that practical work must be guided and superintended by a sufficient staff of demonstrators, who are for science what tutors are for other branches of study. ”

“ But whatever you turn out to be, it'll be no harm to have had the extra schooling you're getting, so you'll stay on a monitor for a while longer. And now quit talking, do, or you'll have me deafened with your clatter! ”

“ Thus the superintendent of a library, whatever be its character, should be no stranger to any department of learning: sacred and profane literature, the fine arts, the exact sciences, all should be familiar to him. A diligent and indefatigable student, ardently devoted to letters, his sole and abiding aim should be to make sure their advancement. ”

“ Among the truants had been no less than five monitors—Game, Tipper, Ashley, Silk, and Tucker.
“It would be a farce,” said the doctor, severely, “after what has happened, to allow you to retain the posts of confidence you have held in the school. Your blame is all the greater in proportion as your influence was greater too. For the remainder of this term you cease to be monitors. It depends entirely on yourselves whether next term you are reinstated.” ”

“ A record is kept by each teacher, of the daily recitations in his department. If the average of any student is found to be unsatisfactory, he is informed of the fact, and an opportunity given him either to prepare for a private examination, or quietly to withdraw from his class. ”

“ A short visit with a pupil from a well loaded teacher who knows her business, who leaves a cheerful word, who senses the situation in which a pupil finds himself, has a most stimulating effect. Even when no problem is awaiting outside aid, the genuine interest of a supervising teacher adds a great deal to the enjoyment of a day in school.
Helping a Pupil Some strong teachers have the knack of making even a somewhat noisy visit at a student’s desk without seriously distracting others from their work; the noise is that of intensity, not of uncontrolled explosiveness. ”

“ Angell's inauguration as President was the introduction of the seminar system of teaching, in effect a further application of the foreign methods; not only should the teacher be an investigator and searcher after truth, but the student as well; and more important still, the student should be taught how to carry on original investigation himself by means of seminar classes where student and teacher worked together on original problems. ”

“ It is true that we have two eyes given us that we may see, but we have also two eyelids to cover them up; and those who{594} have oversight of young men should know when to open and when to close these organs of observation. I have seen a band of students dragging a horse, which had entered the campus, without matriculating, into a goody-student’s room, and a professor with the scene before him determinedly turning his head now to the one side and now to the other that he might not possibly see it. ”

“ A thorough investigation of such a course will soon convince the teacher that the seminar method, whatever its merits in university training, must be refined and diluted before it is applied to college teaching. Let us see why.
Successful reference reading requires a knowledge of the field studied, maturity of mind, discriminating judgment in the selection of material, and ability in organization. The university student is not only maturer and more serious but has a basis of broader knowledge than most under [Pg 77] graduates. ”

“ Early spring is often winter with us, so that the school inspector comes when there is usually snow on the ground or threatening. The school is a mile away at another "clachan," but the inspector dines with me, and so does the schoolmaster. On these occasions the schoolmaster is not such good company as at other times, for he is anxious about his passes, and explains (as I think) more than is necessary that regular attendance is out of the question in a place like this. The inspector's visit is the time of my great annual political debate, for the doctor calls politics "fudge." ”

“ The rapid development of the voluntary school system was no doubt greatly facilitated by the monitorial plan of teaching, upon which Bell and Lancaster equally relied. Probably the first idea of utilizing the older pupils to teach the younger presented itself independently to Lancaster in the Borough Road and to Bell in Monitorial system.Madras. The monitorial plan never rested upon any educational theory; it was simply a makeshift, a rough-and-ready expedient for overcoming the practical difficulty caused by the dearth of competent teachers. ”

“ Monitors of course lived in solitary splendour, with a bed which would stand on its head, and allowed itself to be shut up in a cupboard in the corner. Small boys who had not attained even to the fringe of the school aristocracy lived in herds in bare and exceedingly untidy rooms round the inner quads. Even in those days there were monitors who were worshippers of art. ”

“ The watching was an easy matter, for Teacher, in common with the majority of rulers, lived much in the public eye. The stranger was often detected prowling in her vicinity. He even began to bring her to school in the mornings, and on these occasions there were always violets in her coat. He used to appear at luncheon time and vanish with her. He used to come in the afternoon and have tea in Room 18 with two other teachers and with Teacher. The antagonism of the Monitor of Gold Fish became so marked that Miss Bailey was forced to remonstrate. ”

“ It is in their speech that the unexpectedness triumphs; and the younger the child the more unexpected are his remarks. Many an inspector, many a teacher, has been reduced to utter confusion by these random shots. It was one of my own staff who came to grief in a country school in this way. ”

“ Above all, the instructor of introductory work should form a first-hand personal opinion of the student by requiring him to come to the office for consultation. Nothing can take the place of the personal touch. Quiz masters are better than no touch; but they are a poor substitute for the small class and direct contact, even if the instructor is not one of the masters of the profession. ”

“ The cultivation of initiative and self-reliance is of the highest engineering as well as educational value. Further, in the better institutions the instructor in surveying usually knows the result the student should obtain, and consequently the latter has a greater stimulus to secure accuracy than occurs in most laboratory work. Finally, the students, at least the civil engineering ones, always feel that surveying is highly practical, and hence are unusually enthusiastic in their work. ”

“ The duty of the Examiners was twofold, firstly to ascertain by inspecting the schedules given by his Masters that the candidate had completed the necessary residence and attended Lectures in the prescribed subjects, and secondly to examine him in the contents of his books. If he passed this Examination, he was admitted to determine.
Determination was a great day in the student's University life. It retained much of its primitive character of a student's festivity. ”

“ The teaching of the schools was in the hands of men who had scarcely any training, and who had often turned to the work because all other work had turned away from them. Under them it was conducted upon that monitorial system which was the inheritance from Dr. Bell, the rival of Lancaster. The pupils were set to teach one another. ... The inquiries of the Committee of Council thus gave the death-blow, in public estimation, to the once highly-vaunted monitorial system. But how was it to be replaced? The model of a better state of things was found in the Dutch schools. ”

“ Fry told us that the dividing the women into classes has been of the greatest advantage, and putting them under the care of monitors. There is some little pecuniary advantage attached to the office of monitor which makes them emulous to obtain it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When he was himself headmaster in after years, this want of sympathy with athletes and drones must have limited his sphere of influence. In some way he had failed to assimilate himself to Boy, and Boy saw that something was wanting. Without boy-knowledge a headmaster is like a coachman without horse-knowledge: he cannot drive.
I could fill many pages with stories of him, and many pages with tributes to his excellent merits, but I forbear. As Inspector I had no dealings with him. ”

“ An earlier part runs thus: "The pupils in the Senior Division are intelligent and bright under oral examination, and make an exceedingly good appearance in the class subjects."
I scratch my head thoughtfully. If the inspector finds the bairns intelligent and bright, why does he want them to be silent in school? I cannot tell; I suspect that talking children annoy him. I fancy that stern disciplinarians are men who hate to be irritated.
"More attention, however, should be paid to neatness of method and penmanship in copybooks and jotters." ”

“ By the time the teacher has proceeded thus far, he finds, as he looks around the room, that the countenances of his pupils are assuming a listless and inattentive air. One is restless in his seat, evidently paying no attention. Another has reclined his head upon his desk, lost in a reverie, and others are looking round the room at one another, or at the door, restless and impatient, hoping that the dull lecture will soon be over. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII TARGETS In my work as a schoolmaster I find it well to keep my mind open and not get to thinking that my way is the only way, or even the best way. I think I learn more from my boys and girls than they learn from me, and so long as I can keep an open mind I am certain to get some valuable lessons from them. I got to telling the college chap about a hen that taught me a good lesson, and the first thing I knew I was going to school to this college youth, and he was enlightening me on the subject of animal psychology, and especially upon the trial-and-error theory. ”

“ The principal in the smaller school as well as in the larger must give greater attention to the use of intelligence tests as an aid in classifying the pupils so that they can be better graded according to their ability. No teacher should be required to keep a pupil in her room indefinitely who is not mentally able to do the work or who is a constant disturber. ”

“ In all of these schools Monitorial Discipline has prevailed more or less for centuries, with this striking feature, that all the boys in the lower "forms" are subject, not only in ordinary school discipline, but for personal service of whatever kind, as cleaning rooms, brushing clothes, bringing wood and water, all kinds of errand-running, etc., to the "sixth form," commonly limited in number from fifteen to thirty of the best of the most advanced boys, who are clothed with authority, and are held responsible for keeping order at all times, in study, in dormitory, on the playground, etc. ”