Pedagogue

“ that, instead of trying to educate the human race, they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person. ”

“ But I would mingle education with their joy and with their pleasures—health and lessons with their play—and affection and forgiveness in their little bands. Thus their joys or their pleasures, their play and their companions, become their teachers. By an infant school I would not mean a room where a hundred children may be crowded together in an unhealthy atmosphere. The situation and comforts of the school are almost as important as the nature of the instruction, or the character and disposition of the teacher. ”

“ For this reason, the Teacher in these lower Schools should be a partaker of the Idea, because it is his task imperceptibly to familiarize the youth with the high and noble before he is able for himself to distinguish these from the vulgar, to accustom him to these, and to estrange him from the low and ignoble. Thus guarded in his early years, and thus prepared for higher progress, the youth enters the University. ”

“ What, then, are the faculties which education is supposed to train? In my attempt to answer this question I will confine myself to the elementary school,—the only school which I can pretend to know well. A glance at the time-table of an ordinary elementary school might suggest to us that there were two chief groups of faculties to be trained—those which perceive and those which express, those which take in and those which give out. When such subjects as History, Geography, or Science are being taught, the child's perceptive faculties are being trained. ”

“ So the function of the teacher must change from that of a cicerone and dictator to that of a watcher and helper. As teachers come to watch their individual pupils with a view to allowing each one the fullest development of his thinking and reasoning powers, and to use the tables of reading, writing, and arithmetic as means of training the child’s abilities to judge and act, the rôle of the child necessarily changes too. It becomes active instead of passive, the child becomes the questioner and experimenter. ”

“ We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That which interests us most is naturally the progress made by the individual child of our acquaintance, his normal physical development, his advance in ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in the knowledge of geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness, order, and industry—it is from such standards as these that we judge the work of the school. ”

“ Next comes the reading and talking teacher who is a member of the faculty: his stage of learning is somewhere between the author and the best student. There then follow the other students at distances proportional to their degree of understanding. The old-fashioned ranking of classes in the little red schoolhouse is the image that we have in mind. At the head of the class is the author-teacher, at the foot of the class the worst student in relation to the subject matter. All the others are both teachers and pupils, each learning from those above and teaching those below. ”

“ To his pupils, however, he must always appear in the threefold character of teacher, master, and developed human being; while they correspondingly present themselves to him as pupils, members of the school, and elementary human beings. Of these pairs of relationships two are contrasted and supplemental,—teacher and pupil, master and scholar, having nothing in common, each being precisely what the other is not. As human beings, however, pupil and teacher are akin and removed from one another merely by the degree of progress made by the elder 63 along a common path. ”

“ But the Public School teacher will accomplish much if, reverently and sympathetically, he endeavours to preserve the freshness and ingenuousness of childhood and, by the influence of his own example, while leading the pupil up the golden ladder of mental acquisition, he encourages the cultivation of those graces of life which are the best adornments of youth.'—Feb. ”

“ Consider the influence you may have upon the other institutions of our country, by attaching yourself to some one under the existing organization. If you take an [Pg 231] academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own, will give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy, raises the standard of academic instruction. A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction. ”

“ In some cases a different course is wise undoubtedly, as, for example, where a teacher is commencing a private school, on a previously well-digested plan of his own, or where one who has had experience, and has confidence in his power to bring his new pupils promptly and at once into the system of classification and instruction which he prefers. ”

“ In the School of Education the program is for all [Pg 85] the professional subjects, save general psychology, to be taken after the beginning of the junior year and so immediately prior to the actual work of teaching, and too, when the student is relatively mature. But with the Arts student, it may all be taken much earlier, during relative immaturity and making a long period elapse between it and the work of teaching—quite long enough for the influence of the professional atmosphere, always valuable in such matters, to be wholly lost. ”

“ In all the former part of the day the scholars are divided into classes, according to their proficiency in particular branches of study, and they resort to their recitations for instruction. They now are divided into six sections, as we call them, and placed under the care of superintendents, not for instruction, but for what may be called supervision. Teaching a pupil is not all that is necessary to be done for her in school. ”

“ In five ways the pupil should honour his teachers, who are the south quarter. By rising in their presence, by ministering to them, by obeying them, by supplying their wants, and by attentively receiving their instruction. And in five ways the teachers show their affection for their pupil. They train him up in all that is good, they teach him to hold fast knowledge, they instruct him in science and lore, they speak well of him to his friends and companions, and protect him from danger in every quarter. ”

“ So deeply are we impressed with the importance and utility of the kinder garten, and with the high qualities required by the teacher of the very young, that we are more and more disposed to believe that the true order in rank and promotion among teachers should be, to speak in paradox, downwards; that is to say, the younger the children to be taught, the higher the rank and remuneration of the teacher ”

“ In the training of teachers he was one of the earliest and most effective workers, and the method of requiring all candidates for the teacher's office to give public lessons which were afterwards made the subject of private criticism by the fellow-students and by himself—a method now universally adopted in all good training colleges—may be said to have originated with him. His experience led him also to advocate the teaching of boys and girls together in the primary school, and to attach great value to this association on moral grounds. ”

“ The teacher in school, acquainted with the order in which the different powers of the mind develop in childhood, adapts his instructions to the growth in progress at any particular period. While not at all neglecting the general training of the child, he will direct his efforts particularly, at different stages of progress, to the development for example of perception, of imagination, of comparison or reason, in his pupil, as the mind under his charge grows in power. ”

“ It is felt that only as the teacher understands the child mind and the laws of its development can she direct that development aright. (That's a sensible point of view, isn't it? And yet it is only on the firing line in educational practise that we find it recognized. Without that factor of equipment, the teacher is teaching subjects, not boys and girls.) In many normal schools child study is one of the required subjects—no one may graduate or be recommended for a teaching position who has not taken it. ”

“ In the sixth place, pupils will be dropped and promoted by a teacher, in such a class as has been described, according to the spirit and force and creativeness of their daily work. Promotion will be by elimination—that is, the pupil will stay where he is and the class will be made smaller for him. The superior natural force of each pupil will have full sway in determining his share of the teacher’s force. ”

“ It proclaims its possessor a student but not a teacher. Yet, in our practices, we proceed upon the assumption that teacher and student are synonymous. We hold examinations for teachers in our schools, but not for teachers in our colleges of education. His degree is the magic talisman that causes the doors to swing wide open for him. ”

“ The effect of this minute will be to draw into the teacher's office many young persons of a higher grade, who have been educated in private schools, but who, out of real love for the work, are anxious to be engaged in teaching and to receive that systematic instruction in the art, which can only be obtained in the training schools. ”

“ They are not occupational studies. The object of woodwork is not to produce cabinetmakers, any more than the object of Latin is to produce professors of Latin. Education in the elementary school ought to be general.
Yet it is coming to be realised that it is part of the duty of the school to discover the kind of occupation for which the child is best fitted. The child's teacher is often appealed to for advice regarding the line of work most suited to the child's abilities; and teachers of insight have often been able to give the most valuable guidance. ”

“ In the nursery class therefore our curriculum is life, our apparatus all that a child's world includes, and our method the one of joyful investigation, by means of which ideas and skill are being acquired. The teacher is player in chief, ready to suggest, co-operate, supply information, lead or follow as circumstances demand: responsibility must still belong to the children, for while most of them know quite naturally how to play, there are many who will never get beyond a rather narrow limit, through lack of experience or of initiative. ”

“ The object of the division into classes is instruction. Whenever it is desirable that several individuals should pursue a particular study, a list of their names is made out, a book selected, a time for recitation assigned, a teacher appointed, and the exercises begin. In this way a large number of classes have been formed, and the wishes of parents or the opinion of the Principal, and in many cases that of the pupil, determines how many and what shall be assigned to each individual. ”

“ The modern city school with one teacher and forty pupils places before the teacher a constant temptation, which at times reaches the proportions of an overmastering necessity, to treat the group of children as if each child were like all the rest. A teacher who can individualize forty children, understand the peculiarities of each child, and teach in a way that will enable each of the children to benefit fully by her instruction, is [34] indeed a master, perhaps it would be fairer to say a super-master in pedagogy. A class of forty is almost inevitably taught as a group. ”

“ A wise teacher will work for his pupils. His aim will be steadily to aid them out of class as well as in class. I know a teacher who meets his class occasionally for a social hour in an informal way. The boys of that class are enthusiastic believers in their teacher and in the power of practical Christian fellowship. Look into the Elder Brother movement, the value of an organized class, and kindred movements that give the teacher the power to direct conduct in the pupil. ”

“ If the school is of higher order, the teacher should, in the same manner, before he forms his plans, consider well what are the great objects which he has to accomplish. He should ascertain what is the existing state of his school, both as to knowledge and character;—how long, generally, his pupils are to remain under his care,—what are to be their future stations and conditions in life, and what objects he can reasonably hope to effect for them, while they remain under his influence. ”

“ We were enabled therefore to conclude that the real teacher is within the soul of the pupil, or, better still, the teacher is the pupil himself in the dynamism of his development. So that, far from limiting the autonomy of the disciple, the master, as the propulsive element of the pupil’s spontaneity, penetrates his personality, not to suppress it, but to help its impulses and facilitate its infinite development. ”

“ It is desirable that the young teacher should meet his scholars first in an unofficial capacity. For this purpose repair to the school-room, on the first day, at an early hour, so as to see and become acquainted with the scholars as they come in, one by one. The intercourse between teacher and pupil should be like that between parents and children, where the utmost freedom is united with the most perfect respect. ”

“ We begin our kindly ministrations with the little kindergarten scholar, to whom work [Pg 37] is presented as play, and who is expected to absorb the elements of education without conscious effort, and certainly without compulsion. We encourage him to feel that the business of his teacher is to keep him interested in his task, and that he is justified in stopping short as soon as any mental process becomes irksome or difficult. ”