Pupil

“ But the more formidable the teacher becomes, the more difficult for a child to do his duty. Here, again, we can best afford to go back to the sources from which attention naturally springs, interesting subject of thought, vivid and concrete perceptions, lively and suggestive appeal to the imagination, the sphere of noble thought and emotion, variety and movement in mental effort, a mutual sympathy and harmony between teacher and pupil. ”

“ They occupy the pupil in a way most congruous with the spontaneous interests of his age. They absorb him, and leave impressions durable and profound. Compared with the youth taught by these methods, one brought up exclusively by books carries through life a certain remoteness from reality: he stands, as it were, out of the pale, and feels that he stands so; and often suffers a kind of melancholy from which he might have been rescued by a more real education. ”

“ It is, however, a trick with such masters to put simple questions of that nature to their pupils, when at the houses of their parents, as knotty and difficult, and when they are answered, to assume an air of astonishment at the profound reach of thought displayed by the pupil. ”

“ Our modern reformers, in their books, write too exclusively of the earliest years of the pupil. These lend themselves better to explicit treatment; and I myself, in dwelling so much upon the native impulses, and object-teaching, and anecdotes, and all that, have paid my tribute to the line of least resistance in describing. Yet away back in childhood we find the beginnings of purely intellectual curiosity, and the intelligence of abstract terms. ”

“ Beginning with familiar forms of life, the pupil is led to see more clearly that which is about him, and then to advance into the realm of the unknown with assured steps, in the tried paths of investigation and comparison. ”

“ The drawing and applying of lessons, the exercise which we are here recommending, has been found a valuable remedy for this defect in ordinary reading. The object of the teacher by its use, is to accomplish in the pupil by reading, what we have shewn Nature so frequently does by observation;—that is, to train the child to apply for his own use, or the use of others, those truths which he acquires from his book, in the same way that he does those which he derives from experience. ”

“ The school, for its intellectual function, causes the pupil to learn certain arts, such as reading and writing, which make possible communication with one's fellow-men, and impart certain rudimentary insights or general elementary ideas with which practical thinking may be done, and the pupil be set on the way to comprehend his environment of nature, and of humanity and history. ”

“ Or the associations may all be required from the pupil. The words used as starters should be carefully chosen, of course, to meet the mental condition of the pupil; such words as Baby, Doll, Mamma, Bed, House, etc., being good for children of tender years.
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Another excellent exercise is that of “Contrasts or Differences,” where the teacher says, “Boy,” and the pupil responds, “Girl.” “Black” calls forth “white,” “heavy” is responded to by “light,” etc.
Equally good is “Finishing Quotations” or “lines”—provided, of course, the pupil is old enough for such a mental exercise. ”

“ Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action. ”

“ In the light of all such facts one may well believe that the total impression which a perceptive teacher will get of the pupil's condition, as indicated by his general temper and manner, by the listlessness or alertness, by the ease or painfulness with which his school work is done, will be of much more value than those unreal experimental tests, those pedantic elementary measurements of fatigue, memory, association, and attention, etc., which are urged upon us as the only basis of a genuinely scientific pedagogy. ”

“ The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly. Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity. ”

“ In the elementary school the pupil is a child, with the mind, the tastes, the ambitions of a child, and he should be allowed to remain a child. The ends in view are right habits, [Pg 231] right ideals, and knowledge facts. In the secondary school the student is an adolescent, with the mind of an adolescent, having peculiar and erratic tastes, changing ambitions, and conflicting emotions. ”

“ In the work with literature, however, the teacher should take the lead. She should open to the pupils the magic treasure house of the world's best story and song. The literature period of the day should be the pupil's imaginative play period, bringing relief from the tension of tired nerves. The teacher who makes the study of literature a mechanical grind instead of a joyous exercise of imagination misses at least two of her greatest opportunities as a teacher. ”

“ The desire of a pupil to do as well as other members of his class, or the desire of a class to equal the record of another class of the same grade, will do much to keep attention fixed on the work. Neither the devices mentioned nor any others will avail unless the teacher is wide-awake and alert herself. ”

“ There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. ”

“ The training furnished by Part 1 should result in giving to the pupil some fluency of expression, some confidence in his ability to make known to others that which he thinks and feels, and some power to determine that the theme he writes, however rough-hewn and unshapely it may be, yet in its major outlines follows closely the thought that is within his mind. ”

“ In their own sphere they display a good memory, a lively imagination, keen understanding; by the teacher they are credited with little of all these. They rule perhaps over their playmates because of their superior intelligence, or possess at least the respect of the latter, while in their classes they show only incapacity. Such experiences suggest the difficulty of making instruction take proper hold of the inner growth of the pupil. ”

“ The lesson of a teacher can not be well understood if any obstacle is interposed between him and the eyes of the listening pupil. So that if a pupil's eyes wander, we know that he is not attentive.— Wonders of the Human Body. ”

“ This new plan is continued, we will suppose, a week, during which time the interest of the pupils continues. They get longer lessons, and make fewer mistakes than they did by the old method. Now in speculating on this subject, the teacher reasons very justly, that it is of no consequence whether the pupil receives his knowledge through the eye, or through the ear; whether they study in solitude or in company. ”

“ Here again comes in the advantage of the object-teaching and manual training methods. The pupil's attention is spontaneously held by any problem that involves the presentation of a new material object or of an activity on any one's part. The teacher's earliest appeals, therefore, must be through objects shown or acts performed or described. Theoretic curiosity, curiosity about the rational relations between things, can hardly be said to awake at all until adolescence is reached. ”

“ The course in reading requires patient work on the part of the pupil, just as the course in arithmetic does, and the chief pleasure that the primary pupil can derive from the work is a consciousness of enlarged power and of success in accomplishing what is undertaken. ”

“ This leads us to observe another circumstance connected with the operation of this principle, in the instruction of the young, which is the remarkable fact, that, by making the child familiar with a very few primitive elements, a parent or teacher may communicate an almost infinite variety of groupings, or stories, for cultivating the mind, and increasing the knowledge of his pupil. ”

“ I have seen an elementary school of some six hundred pupils, in which teachers and pupils follow closely the scientific spirit, if not the very letter, so far as it should be followed by children varying from five to fifteen years of age. All do the same kind of work, which is allowed to vary in quantity and quality in accordance with the natural ability, individuality, and originality of each pupil. Local material almost exclusively is examined individually, each pupil thinking and passing judgment for himself, and expressing his ideas accordingly in writing and drawing. ”

“ The school says the pupil has had enough of this particular experience; he knows how to do this thing when he needs to and he has understood the principles or facts which it illustrates; it is time he moved on to other experiences which will teach him other values and facts. ”

“ At five or six years of age the pupil comes to the primary school. His experience is very limited; his senses are open to the impressions of color and sound and touch, and he eagerly or timidly mixes in the social group which is often to him bewilderingly large and strange. The key to the understanding of this period is to be found in the simple psychological principle that out of all the bewildering mass of childish experience it is persons who attract the child’s most vivid attention. ”

“ In short, I make no difficulty about indulging my pupil as soon as possible. All vary in capacity for work and in capability of progress. But as a rule, after a month, more or less, of regu- lar study, when my acolyte has learned to understand the small number of movements which have been described to you, and when he executes them with vivacity and relative regularity why, I put on my mask and plastron, and bid him come on and do his best. ”

“ Such is the little interested and impulsive psychophysical organism whose springs of action the teacher must divine, and to whose ways he must become accustomed. He must start with the native tendencies, and enlarge the pupil's entire passive and active experience. He must ply him with new objects and stimuli, and make him taste the fruits of his behavior, so that now that whole context of remembered experience is what shall determine his conduct when he gets the stimulus, and not the bare immediate impression. ”

“ As the pupil's life thus enlarges, it gets fuller and fuller of all sorts of memories and associations and substitutions; but the eye accustomed to psychological analysis will discern, underneath it all, the outlines of our simple psychophysical scheme. ”

“ The teacher does his best work when he makes all conditions favorable for the self-activity of the pupil. Such conditions create a lively interest in the objects and forces of nature, invite examination of facts and discovery of relations, arouse the imagination to conceive results, awaken query and reflection, stimulate the emotional life toward worthy and energetic action, and make the pupil ever progressive. ”

“ This partially qualitative study of forces and mechanical inventions has the educational effect of enlightening the pupil, and emancipating him from the network of superstition that surrounds him in the child world, partly of necessity and partly by reason of the illiterate adults that he sometimes meets with in the persons of nurses, servants, and tradespeople, whose occupations have more attraction for him than those of cultured people. ”

“ The earliest lessons will thus be a stimulus to mental growth: the pupil will learn to take in by the eye and the ear, and what he takes in will enable him to understand and to appreciate more and yet more. ”

“ When a pupil enters a room to teach one of these assigned lessons, he is to bring with him only his crayon and pointer, and is expected to assume entire charge of the class, maintaining order, hearing the pupils recite, correcting their mistakes, illustrating the subject, if necessary, by diagrams or experiments, giving supplementary information drawn from other sources than the text-book, and acting in all respects as if he were the regular teacher. ”

“ By reading short biographies a few clear ideas may be formed in the pupil's mind, which may stimulate to further reading. A vivid impression of one period, however short, will carry the pupil onward and give more general histories an interest in their turn. ”

“ Each scholar in the school learns his own particular page or lesson independently of the others, and the many voices blend into one, rising and falling from time to time in a not unmusical hum, sometimes loud and full, when the master is vigilant and the scholars are energetic; often soft and feeble, when the master is dreaming on the floor or lounging in the sun, and his pupils are getting weary of their monotonous task. ”

“ Sufficient guidance is given to enable every pupil to deal with the topic in a sensible manner; but at the same time there remains ample scope for the exercise of ingenuity and imagination, and the effort of composition cannot fail to test and to cultivate a faculty for giving expression to whatever knowledge the pupil has gathered in his reading. ”

“ This is accorded only after the Master has had considerable experience of the man as an accepted pupil, when He is quite certain that nothing can arise in the mind or astral body of the pupil which will ever need to be shut off. ”

“ Having taught the pupil to respect a “working line,” which experience shows takes the greater part of the seventh year, it will be time to begin to encourage original thinking on the part of the pupil. ”

“ What teacher sees in biology all the grandeur of the evolution of the race, or imparts to his pupils the noble lessons of life that the study of this subject should suggest? What teacher of Latin brings his pupils to read the ancient letters with full appreciation of the dignity of style and the nobility of thought that they contain? ”