Keeping Attention
We are likely to think that the attention of children is hard to get;
but the very opposite is true. The minds of children, like their
tongues, are hung in the middle. It is the easiest thing in the world
to turn them in any direction. No teacher need spend much force on his
introduction. Merely appear and begin to talk--that is enough. A fresh
voice and presence and a new theme will draw all eyes and all hearts.
If grown people are your audience, the situation is somewhat reversed.
They are the heavy weights--hard to move, but just as hard to stop. An
attention-forcing prelude will hold them attentive to a good half-hour
of platitudes.
The teacher of children, however, flattered by the eager listening
given at the start, is likely to relax his efforts and deem the crown
of the children's interest already attained. But alas! soon here a
little tot wriggles, and there another whispers, and yonder a third
giggles, and now a fourth turns around to see what's up, and the
teacher might as well be talking to a school of young fishes.
Demosthenes once said that if whatever a man got he took care to keep,
he was grateful to the gods; but if he spent it, he spent with it all
his gratitude. How many teachers are so prodigal of the attention
given at the beginning that toward the close, dismayed at the
listlessness, they forget ungratefully their initial capital of bright
eyes and eager ears! There are many ways of squandering this attention
capital. We may waste it on those long exhortations so very valuable
(when omitted), on side issues, on quibbles. We may choke it with
dullness, drive it off with scolding.
The only way always to keep attention is always to be expecting to
lose it. Be prompt to note signs of its vanishing in drooping eyelids,
wandering gaze, jerking in the seat, uncertain answers. The teacher
whose ingenuity can always recall stray-away minds need fear few other
recitation problems. How to do it?
The best provocative of attention is variety. The skilled teacher
brings as many suits of manner to the class as the bulkiest clown
wears costumes to the circus. Before one suit becomes wearisome he
strips it off, and presto! a fresh teacher before the wide-eyed
children. If he has been sitting, he rises; if erect, he leans eagerly
forward. His utterance becomes rapid from slow, impetuous from
drawling. He darts from generalizations into personalities. If
motionless before, he begins to gesticulate. This is acting? No. It
is only doing what the facile children themselves do on their
kaleidoscopic playground, where no one goes to sleep.
Again, a teacher must learn to emphasize his important points, not by
enlarging on them, but by reverting to them. Slight impression on a
wall by holding a battering-ram against it! Nor can you impress a
child's mind by holding a fact up against it. It is intervals which
make blows possible.
So the child will attend to two things or three better than to one.
Concentrate on one matter, burning-glass fashion, but only while the
sun of interest is shining. With the first mist of indifference the
wise teacher will drop the burning-glass. More teachers fail from
having too few points to make than from having too many.
But to retain attention, you need less to multiply points than points
of view. A teacher can usually fix the attention of his class upon one
subject while using in succession six different methods of treatment.
Passing swiftly from questioning to formulating principles and
illustrating them, from Bible quotations to personal experiences and
exhortations, he will hold his audience delighted, though a single
method would have wearied it. Note how a skilled cook presents the
Thanksgiving turkey on different days. It is a lordly brown biped, a
plateful of nice slices, a salad, a pot-pie, hash. Teachers will be
able to hold the youngsters' attention as well as cooks, if they
learn thus to put things in different lights.
Furthermore, let it be remembered that no one was ever dignified with
a child, and won its attention. And some teachers are too staid to be
useful. Startle into inattention by a smart slap of the hands
together, sharp extension of the finger, abrupt turns upon the floor.
Preachers use such artifices when pews grow somnolent, and why not
teachers? Never forget that the slightest inanimate object wins
attention better than the greatest animation of the teacher. A
pencil-tablet will rivet all eyes. A finger laid upon a map is
cynosure for the most fidgety scholars. If you have a picture which
can be brought into connection with the lesson, it is a pedagogical
sin to omit it. A chart is as necessary to the Sabbath-school teacher
as to the sailor, albeit the teacher's is best home-made. I used to
hesitate to take time to use such helps; but I found that the poorest
picture did better work than my most vivid word-paintings, and that my
clearest statement was inefficient beside the clumsiest diagram.
The beginner in this fine art of attention-holding is likely to derive
the word "attention" thus: from _teneo_, "I hold," _ad_, "on to";
_attention_, "I hold on to" him. He tries to hold attention,
therefore, by main strength. He grapples with his audience as a
bulldog would. His nerves are tense. His voice is imperative. His eye
glares. He is rapid, impetuous, strategic. This is power, he thinks,
and this is skill; but his audience astonishes him by going to sleep.
Abashed, he tries milder means of holding on to them. He begins to
buttonhole his audience. He uses soft and flattering tones. He coaxes.
He wheedles. He jokes. He chucks them under the chin. And then his
audience gets up and goes out.
The real meaning of the word "attention" contains an invaluable hint for
all who are trying to win others by speaking or teaching. It is _teneo_,
"I hold, I stretch," _ad_, "toward"; and it is not by any means applied
to the speaker, but to the listener. To get your audience, whether of
little folk or big folk, to stretch out toward the same goal of truth
that you are seeking is the true art of winning attention.
This understanding of the matter implies that the teacher also is
really in pursuit of truth himself. The failure of much teaching is
because it cries "Go on" instead of "Come on." The speaker that you
follow with most difficulty is the speaker who has the air of "knowing
it all," while the speaker who succeeds best in holding your attention
gives you the impression of a chase.
There's the game before you--that elusive truth slipping away through
the thicket yonder. The huntsman's eye flashes. He whistles up the dogs.
We all leap to the saddles. Off we go, over upland and vale, swamp and
rock, fence and ditch, our leader far in the van, pointing here, waving
there, and hallooing the huntsman on. And when the game is tracked down,
and our leader stands above it, dripping knife in hand, our veins
tingle with his, and we shout with delight at our triumph.
This is the first principle in the art of winning attention. The
speaker must give the impression of a truth-seeker, if he would win
others to seek truth with him. What Edward Everett Hale once said of a
sermon applies to this. Every Sunday-school lesson should start out to
prove something. It should have some goal. It should _intend_
something. _Intention_ must precede _attention_.
But though there must be this element of pleasing uncertainty and
suspense, we all have difficulty in attending to a speaker who does
not appear to have himself well in hand or to be quite sure what he is
about. Have you not caught yourselves, teachers, talking as if in your
sleep? Have you not sometimes waked up at the end of a sentence, a
question, or a harangue, and wondered what you had been talking about?
Did you suppose that any one else knew? Did you expect to hold on to
them when you had no grasp of the subject? Can listeners pay attention
to any one who does not pay attention to himself?
Teachers make the mistake of dividing attention between the class, to
watch that they hear; and themselves, to see how they are getting
along; and the little attention left goes to the theme. Not
unnaturally, the attention of the class is divided in the same
way--much to themselves, less to the teacher, and least of all to what
is being taught. Of course it is a teacher's business to hold his
scholars' attention, but he will never do it by worrying and
wondering whether he is succeeding.
Nay, I even go so far as to say, if one of your pupils pays no
attention, then pay no attention to him, provided the mischief is not
spreading. A teacher should not fritter away his attention on
inattentive pupils. If he cannot win their attention by his own interest
in his theme, he cannot win it at all. Not that I would imply for a
moment, however, that the teacher is to rest satisfied while a single
one of his pupils remains inattentive. If your chicks are average chicks
they are gregarious, and one stray-away is enough to carry the whole
flock with him into foreign parts. While you have a single inattentive
scholar you should conduct your lesson with a view to holding him. You
will hold the rest then, as a matter of course. I am only speaking of
the best way to win attention. It must be won, or you are beaten to some
extent; and the attention of all _will_ be won in the end if you are
deeply enough in earnest yourself, if you do not allow your attention to
be side-tracked by the inattention of a few. If you wish to win and hold
the attention of others, _win and hold your own_.