But the truth is, that in almost all such cases as this, the secret of the success is, not that the teacher has discovered a better method than the ordinary ones, but that he has discovered a new one. The experiment will succeed in producing more successful results, just as long as the novelty of it continues to excite unusual interest and attention in the class, or the thought that it is a plan of the teacher's own invention, leads him to take a peculiar interest in it. And this may be a month, or perhaps a quarter, and precisely the same effects would have been produced, if the whole had been reversed, that is, if the plan of dictation had been the old one, which in process of time had, in this supposed school, lost its interest, and the teacher by his ingenuity and enterprise had discovered and introduced what is now the common mode.
"Very well," perhaps my reader will reply, "it is surely something gained to awaken and continue interest in a dull study, for a quarter, or even a month. The experiment is worth something as a pleasant and useful change, even if it is not permanently superior to the other."
It is indeed worth something. It is worth a great deal; and the teacher who can devise and execute such plans, understanding their real place and value, and adhering steadily through them all, to the great object which ought to engage his attention, is in the almost certain road to success as an instructer. What I wish is, not to discourage such efforts; they ought to be encouraged to the utmost, but to have their real nature and design, and the real secret of their success fully understood, and to have the teacher, above all, take good care that all his new plans are made, not the substitutes for the great objects which he ought to keep steadily in view, but only the means by which he may carry them into more full and complete effect.
In the case we are supposing however, we will imagine that the teacher does not do this. He fancies that he has made an important discovery, and begins to inquire whether the principle, as he calls it, cannot be applied to some other studies. He goes to philosophizing upon it, and can find many reasons why knowledge received through the ear makes a more ready and lasting impression, than when it comes through the eye. He tries to apply the method to Arithmetic and Geography, and in a short time is forming plans for the complete metamorphosis of his school. When engaged in hearing a recitation, his mind is distracted with his schemes and plans; and instead of devoting his attention fully to the work he may have in hand, his thoughts are wandering continually to new schemes and fancied improvements, which agitate and perplex him, and which elude his efforts to give them a distinct and definite form. He thinks he must however, carry out his principle. He thinks of its applicability to a thousand other cases. He revolves, over and over again in his mind, plans for changing the whole arrangement of his school. He is again and again lost in perplexity, his mind is engrossed and distracted, and his present duties are performed with no interest, and consequently with little spirit or success.
Now his error is in allowing a new idea, which ought only to have suggested to him an agreeable change for a time, in one of his classes, to swell itself into undue and exaggerated importance, and to draw off his mind from what ought to be the objects of his steady pursuit.
Perhaps some teacher of steady intellectual habits and a well balanced mind may think that this picture is fanciful, and that there is little danger that such consequences will ever actually result from such a cause. But far from having exaggerated the results, I am of opinion that I might have gone much farther. There is no doubt that a great many instances have occurred, in which some simple idea like the one I have alluded to, has led the unlucky conceiver of it, in his eager pursuit far deeper into the difficulty, than I have here supposed. He gets into a contention with the school committee, that formidable foe to the projects of all scheming teachers; and it would not be very difficult to find many actual cases, where the individual has, in consequence of some such idea, quietly planned and taken measures to establish some new institution, where he can carry on, unmolested, his plans, and let the world see the full results of his wonderful discoveries.
We have in our country a very complete system of literary institutions, so far as external organization will go, and the prospect of success is far more favorable in efforts to carry these institutions into more complete and prosperous operation, than in plans for changing them, or substituting others in their stead. Were it not that such a course would be unjust to individuals, a long and melancholy catalogue might easily be made out, of abortive plans which have sprung up in the minds of young men, in the manner I have described, and which after perhaps temporary success, have resulted in partial or total failure. These failures are of every kind. Some are school-books on a new plan, which succeed in the inventor's hand, chiefly on account of the spirit which carried it into effect; but which in ordinary hands, and under ordinary circumstances, and especially after long continued use, have failed of exhibiting any superiority. Others are institutions, commenced with great zeal by the projectors, and which succeed just as long as that zeal continues. Zeal will make any thing succeed for a time. Others are new plans of instruction or government, generally founded on some good principle carried to an extreme, or made to grow into exaggerated and disproportionate importance. Examples almost innumerable, of these things might be particularized, if it were proper, and it would be found upon examination, that the amount of ingenuity and labor wasted upon such attempts, would have been sufficient, if properly expended, to have elevated very considerably the standard of education, and to have placed existing institutions in a far more prosperous and thriving state than they now exhibit.
The reader will perhaps ask, shall we make no efforts at improvement? Must every thing in education go on in a uniform and monotonous manner; and while all else is advancing, shall our cause alone stand still? By no means. It must advance; but let it advance mainly by the industry and fidelity of those who are employed in it; by changes slowly and cautiously made; not by great efforts to reach forward to brilliant discoveries, which will draw off the attention from essential duties, and after leading the projector through perplexities and difficulties without number, end in mortification and failure.
Were I to give a few concise and summary directions in regard to this subject to a young teacher, they would be the following:
1. Examine thoroughly the system of public and private schools as now constituted in New England, until you fully understand it, and appreciate its excellences and its completeness; see how fully it provides for the wants of the various classes of our population.
By this I mean to refer only to the completeness of the system, as a system of organization. I do not refer at all to the internal management of these institutions: this last is, of course, a field for immediate and universal effort at progress and improvement.
2. If after fully understanding this system as it now exists, you are of opinion that something more is necessary; if you think some classes of the community are not fully provided for, or that some of our institutions may be advantageously exchanged for others, whose plan you have in mind; consider whether your age, and experience, and standing, as an instructer are such as to enable you to place confidence in your opinion.
I do not mean by this, that a young man may not make a useful discovery; but only that he may be led away by the ardor of early life, to fancy that essential and important, which is really not so. It is important that each one should determine whether this is not the case with himself, if his mind is revolving some new plan.
3. Perhaps you are contemplating only a single new institution, which is to depend for its success, on yourself and some coadjutors whom you have in mind, and whom you well know. If this is the case, consider whether the establishment you are contemplating can be carried on, after you shall have left it, by such men as can ordinarily be obtained. If the plan is founded on some peculiar notions of your own, which would enable you to succeed in it, when others, also interested in such a scheme, would probably fail, consider whether there may not be danger that your plan may be imitated by others, who cannot carry it into successful operation, so that it may be the indirect means of doing injury. A man is, in some degree, responsible for his example, and for the consequences which may indirectly flow from his course, as well as for the immediate results which he produces. The Fellenberg school at Hofwyl has perhaps, by its direct results, been as successful for a given time, as perhaps any other institution in the world; but there is a great offset to the good which it has thus done, to be found in the history of the thousand wretched imitations of it, which have been started only to linger a little while and die, and in which a vast amount of time, and talent, and money have been wasted.
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 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. By going, however, to some new field, establishing some new and fanciful institution, you take yourself from such a sphere;—you exert no influence over others, except upon feeble imitators, who fail in their attempts, and bring discredit upon your plans by the awkwardness with which they attempt to adopt them. How much more service to the cause of education, have Professors Cleaveland and Silliman rendered by falling in with the regularly organized institutions of the country, and elevating them, than if in early life, they had given themselves to some magnificent project of an establishment, to which their talents would unquestionably have given temporary success, but which would have taken them away from the community of teachers, and confined the results of their labors to the more immediate effects which their daily duties might produce.
5. Perhaps, however, your plan is not the establishment of some new institution, but the introduction of some new study or pursuit into the one with which you are connected. Before, however, you interrupt the regular plans of your school to make such a change, consider carefully what is the real and appropriate object of your institution. Every thing is not to be done in school. The principles of division of labor apply with peculiar force to this employment; so that you must not only consider whether the branch, which you are now disposed to introduce, is important, but whether it is really such an one as it is, on the whole, best to include among the objects to be pursued in such an institution. Many teachers seem to imagine, that if any thing is in itself important, and especially if it is an important branch of education, the question is settled of its being a proper object of attention in school. But this is very far from being the case. The whole work of education can never be intrusted to the teacher. Much must of course remain in the hands of the parent; it ought so to remain. The object of a school is not to take children out of the parental hands, substituting the watch and guardianship of a stranger, for the natural care of father and mother. Far from it. It is only the association of the children for those purposes which can be more successfully accomplished by association. It is an union for few, specific, and limited objects, for the accomplishment of that part, (and it is comparatively a small part of the general objects of education) which can be most successfully affected by public institutions, and in assemblies of the young.
6. If the branch which you are desiring to introduce appears to you to be an important part of education, and if it seems to you that it can be most successfully attended to in schools, then consider whether the introduction of it, and of all the other branches having equal claims, will, or will not give to the common schools too great a complexity. Consider whether it will succeed in the hands of ordinary teachers. Consider whether it will require so much time and effort, as will draw off, in any considerable degree, the attention of the teacher from the more essential parts of his duty. All will admit that it is highly important that every school should be simple in its plan,—as simple as its size and general circumstances will permit, and especially, that the public schools in every town and village of our country should never lose sight of what is, and must be, after all, their great design—teaching the whole population to read, write, and calculate.
7. If it is a school-book, which you are wishing to introduce, consider well before you waste your time in preparing it, and your spirits in the vexatious work of getting it through the press, whether it is, for general use, so superior to those already published, as to induce teachers to make a change in favor of yours. I have italicised the words for general use, for no delusion is more common than for a teacher to suppose, that because a text-book which he has prepared and uses in manuscript, is better for him than any other work which he can obtain, it will therefore be better for general circulation. Every man, if he has any originality of mind, has of course some peculiar method of his own, and he can of course prepare a text-book which will be better adapted to this method, than those ordinarily in use. The history of a vast multitude of textbooks, Arithmetics, Geographies, and Grammars, is this. A man of a somewhat ingenious mind, adopts some peculiar mode of instruction in one of these branches, and is quite successful, not because the method has any very peculiar excellence, but simply because he takes a greater interest in it, both on account of its novelty and also from the fact that it is his own invention. He conceives the plan of writing a text-book, to develope and illustrate this method. He hurries through the work. By some means or other, he gets it printed. In due time it is regularly advertised. The Annals of Education gives notice of it; the author sends a few copies to his friends, and that is the end of it. Perhaps a few schools may make a trial of it, and if, for any reason, the teachers who try it are interested in the work, perhaps in their hands, it succeeds. But it does not succeed so well as to attract general attention, and consequently does not get into general circulation. The author loses his time and his patience. The publisher, unless unfortunately it was published on the author's account, loses his paper. And in a few months, scarcely any body knows that such a book ever saw the light.
It is in this way, that the great multitude of school-books which are now constantly issuing from the press, take their origin. Far be it from me to discourage the preparation of good school-books. This department of our literature offers a fine field for the efforts of learning and genius. What I contend against, is the endless multiplicity of useless works, hastily conceived and carelessly executed, and which serve no purpose, but to employ uselessly, talents, which if properly applied, might greatly benefit both the community and the possessor.
8. If, however, after mature deliberation you conclude that you have the plan of a school-book which you ought to try to mature and execute, be slow and cautious about it. Remember that so great is now the competition in this branch, nothing but superior excellences will secure the favorable reception of a work. Examine all that your predecessors have done before you. Obtain, whatever may be the trouble and expense, all other text books on the subject, and examine them thoroughly. If you see that you can make a very decided advance on all that has been done, and that the public will probably submit to the inconvenience and expense of a change, to secure the result of your labors, go forward slowly and thoroughly in your work. No matter how much investigation, how much time and labor it may require. The more difficulty you may find, in gaining the eminence, the less likely will you be to be followed by successful competitors.
9. Consider in forming your text-book, not merely the whole subject on which you are to write, but also look extensively and thoroughly at the institutions throughout the country, and consider carefully the character of the teachers by whom you expect it to be used. Sometimes a man publishes a text-book, and when it fails on trial, he says, "It is because they did not know how to use it. The book in itself was good. The whole fault was in the awkwardness and ignorance of the teacher." How absurd! As if to make a good text-book, it was not as necessary to adapt it to teachers as to scholars. A good text-book which the teachers for whom it was intended did not know how to use!! i. e. A good contrivance but entirely unfit for the purpose for which it was intended.
10. Lastly, in every new plan, consider carefully whether its success in your hands, after you have tried it, and found it successful, be owing to its novelty and to your own special interest, or to its own innate and intrinsic superiority. If the former, use it so long as it will last, simply to give variety and interest to your plans. Recommend it in conversation or in other ways to teachers with whom you are acquainted; not as a wonderful discovery, which is going to change the whole science of education, but as one method among others, which may be introduced from time to time, to relieve the monotony of the teacher's labors.
In a word do not go away from the established institutions of our country, or deviate from the great objects which are at present, and ought to be pursued by them, without great caution, circumspection, and deliberate inquiry. But within these limits, exercise ingenuity and invention as much as you will. Pursue steadily the great objects which demand the teacher's attention; they are simple and few. Never lose sight of them, nor turn to the right or to the left to follow any ignis fatuus which may endeavor to allure you away; but exercise as much ingenuity and enterprise as you please, in giving variety and interest to the modes by which these objects are pursued.
If planning and scheming are confined within these limits, and conducted on these principles, the teacher will save all the agitating perplexity and care which will otherwise be his continual portion. He can go forward peaceably and quietly, and while his own success is greatly increased, he may be of essential service to the cause in which he is engaged, by making known his various experiments and plans to others. For this purpose it seems to me highly desirable that every teacher should KEEP A JOURNAL of all his plans. In these should be carefully entered all his experiments: the new methods he adopts; the course he takes in regard to difficulties which may arise; and any interesting incidents which may occur, which it would be useful for him to refer to, at some future time. These or the most interesting of them should be made known to other teachers. This may be done in several ways.
(1.) By publishing them in periodicals devoted to education. Such contributions, furnished by judicious men, would be among the most valuable articles in such a work. They would be far more valuable than any general speculations, however well conceived or expressed.
(2.) In news-papers intended for general circulation. There are very few editors whose papers circulate in families, who would not gladly receive articles of this kind, to fill a teacher's department in their columns. If properly written they would be read with interest and profit by multitudes of parents, and would throw much light on family government and instruction.
(3.) By reading them in teacher's meetings. If half a dozen teachers who are associated in the same vicinity, would meet once a fortnight, simply to hear each other's journals, they would be amply repaid for their time and labor. Teacher's meetings will be interesting and useful, when those who come forward in them, will give up the prevailing practice of delivering orations, and come down at once to the scenes and to the business of the school-room.
There is one topic connected with the subject of this chapter, which deserves a few paragraphs. I refer to the rights of the Committee, or the Trustees, or Patrons, in the control of the school. The right to such control, when claimed at all, is usually claimed in reference to the teacher's new plans, which renders it proper to allude to the subject here; and it ought not to be omitted, for a great many cases occur, in which teachers have difficulties with the trustees or committee of their school. Sometimes these difficulties have amounted to an open rupture; at other times, only to a slight and temporary misunderstanding, arising from what the teacher calls an unwise and unwarrantable interference on the part of the committee, or the trustees, in the arrangements of the school. Difficulties of some sort very often arise. In fact, a right understanding of this subject, is, in most cases, absolutely essential to the harmony and co-operation of the teacher, and the representatives of his patrons.
There are then, it must be recollected, three different parties connected with every establishment for education; the parents of the scholars, the teacher, and the pupils themselves. Sometimes, as for example, in a common private school, the parents are not organized, and whatever influence they exert, they must exert in their individual capacity. At other times, as in a common district or town school, they are by law organized, and the school committee chosen for this purpose, are their legal representatives. In other instances, a board of trustees are constituted by the appointment of the founders of the institution, or by the legislature of a state, to whom is committed the oversight of its concerns, and who are consequently the representatives of the founders and patrons of the school.
There are differences between these various modes of organization which I shall not now stop to examine, as it will be sufficiently correct for my purpose to consider them all as only various ways of organizing the employers, in the contract, by which the teacher is employed. The teacher is the agent; the patrons, represented in these several ways, are the principals. When, therefore, in the following paragraphs, I use the word employers, I mean to be understood to speak of the committee, or the trustees, or the visiters, or the parents themselves, as the case, in each particular institution, may be; that is, the persons, for whose purpose, and at whose expense, the institution is maintained; or their representatives.
Now there is a very reasonable, and almost universally established rule, which teachers are very frequently prone to forget, viz., the employed ought always to be responsible to the employers, and to be under their direction. So obviously reasonable is this rule, and in fact, so absolutely indispensable in the transaction of all the business of life, that it would be idle to attempt to establish and illustrate it here. It has, however, limitations, and it is applicable to a much greater extent, in some departments of human labor, than in others. It is applicable to the business of teaching, and though, I confess, that it is somewhat less absolute and imperious here, still, it is obligatory, I believe, to far greater extent, than teachers have been generally willing to admit.
A young lady, I will imagine, wishes to introduce the study of Botany into her school. The parents or the committee object; they say, that they wish the children to confine their attention exclusively to the elementary branches of education. "It will do them no good," says the chairman of the committee, "to learn by heart some dozen or two of learned names. We want them to read well, to write well, and to calculate well, and not to waste their time in studying about pistils and stamens and nonsense."
Now what is the duty of the teacher in such a case? Why, very plainly her duty is the same as that of the Governor of a state, where the people, through their representatives, regularly chosen, negative a proposal, which he considers calculated to promote the public good. It is his duty to submit to the public will, and though he may properly do all in his power, to present the subject to his employers in such a light, as to lead them to regard it as he does, he must still, until they do so regard it, bow to their authority; and every magistrate, who takes an enlarged and comprehensive view of his duties as the executive of a republican community, will do this without any humiliating feelings of submission to unauthorized interference with his plans. He will, on the other hand, enjoy the satisfaction of feeling that he confines himself to his proper sphere, and leave to others, the full possession of rights which properly pertain to them.
It is so with every case, where the relation of employer and employed subsists. You engage a carpenter to erect a house for you, and you present your plan; instead of going to work and executing your orders according to your wishes, he goes to criticising and condemning it: he finds fault with this, and ridicules that, and tells you, you ought to make such and such an alteration in it. It is perfectly right for him to give his opinion, in the tone and spirit of recommendation or suggestion, with a distinct understanding that with his employer rests the power and the right to decide. But how many teachers take possession of their school room as though it was an empire in which they are supreme, who resist every interference of their employers, as they would an attack upon their personal freedom, and who feel, that in regard to every thing connected with school, they have really no actual responsibility.
In most cases, the employers, knowing how sensitive teachers very frequently are on this point, acquiesce in it, and leave them to themselves. Whenever in any case, they think that the state of the school requires their interference, they come cautiously and fearfully to the teacher, as if they were encroaching upon his rights, instead of advancing with the confidence and directness with which employers have always a right to approach the employed; and the teacher, with the view he has insensibly taken of the subject, being perhaps confirmed by the tone and manner which his employers use, makes the conversation, quite as often, an occasion of resentment and offence as of improvement. He is silent, perhaps, but in his heart he accuses his committee or his trustees of improper interference in his concerns, as though it was no part of their business to look after work which is going forward for their advantage, and for which they pay.
Perhaps some individuals, who have had some collision with their trustees or committee, will ask me if I mean, that a teacher ought to be entirely and immediately under the supervision and control of the trustees, just as a mechanic is when employed by another man. By no means. There are various circumstances connected with the nature of this employment; the impossibility of the employers fully understanding it in all its details; and the character and the standing of the teacher himself, which always will, in matter of fact, prevent this. The employers always will, in a great many respects, place more confidence in the teacher and in his views, than they will in their own. But still, the ultimate power is theirs. Even if they err,—if they wish to have a course pursued which is manifestly inexpedient and wrong, they still have a right to decide. It is their work: it is going on at their instance, and at their expense, and the power of ultimate decision, on all disputed questions, must, from the very nature of the case, rest with them. The teacher may, it is true, have his option either to comply with their wishes or to seek employment in another sphere; but while he remains in the employ of any persons, whether in teaching or in any other service, he is bound to yield to the wishes of his employers, when they insist upon it, and to submit pleasantly to their direction, when they shall claim their undoubted right to direct.
This is to be done, it must be remembered, when they are wrong, as well as when they are right. The obligation of the teacher is not founded upon the superior wisdom of his employers, in reference to the business for which they have engaged him, for they are very probably his inferiors in this respect; but upon their right as employers, to determine how their own work shall be done. A gardener, we will suppose, is engaged by a gentleman to lay out his grounds. The gardener goes to work, and after a few hours the gentleman comes out to see how he goes on, and to give directions. He proposes something which the gardener, who, to make the case stronger, we will suppose knows better that the proprietor of the grounds, considers ridiculous and absurd; nay, we will suppose it is ridiculous and absurd. Now what can the gardener do? There are, obviously, two courses. He can say to the proprietor, after a vain attempt to convince him he is wrong, "Well, sir, I will do just as you say. The grounds are yours: I have no interest in it, or responsibility, except to accomplish your wishes." This would be right. Or he might say, "Sir, you have a right to direct upon your own grounds, and I do not wish to interfere with your plans; but I must ask you to obtain another gardener. I have a reputation at stake, and this work, if I do it even at your direction, will be considered as a specimen of my taste and of my planning, so that I must in justice to myself, decline remaining in your employment." This too, would be right, though probably, both in the business of gardening and of teaching, the case ought to be a strong one, to render it expedient.