There is scarcely any profession in the commonwealth more necessary,
which is so slightly performed. The reasons whereof I conceive to be
these: First, young scholars make this calling their refuge; yea,
perchance before they have taken any degree in the university,
commence schoolmasters in the country, as if nothing else were
required to set up this profession but only a rod and a ferula.
Secondly, others who are able use it only as a passage to better
preferment, to patch the rents in their present fortune, till they can
provide a new one and betake themselves to some more gainful calling.
Thirdly, they are disheartened from doing their best with the
miserable reward which in some places they receive, being masters to
their children and slaves to their parents. Fourthly, being grown
rich, they grow negligent, and scorn to touch the school but by the
proxy of the usher. But see how well our schoolmaster behaves
himself....
He studieth his scholars' natures as carefully as they were books, and
ranks their dispositions into several forms. And though it may seem
difficult for him in a great school to descend to all particulars, yet
experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a grammar of boys' natures,
and reduce them all--saving some few exceptions--to these general
rules:--
1. Those that are ingenious and industrious. The conjunction of two
such planets in a youth presages much good unto him. To such a lad a
frown may be a whipping, and a whipping a death; yea, where their
master whips them once, shame whips them all the week after. Such
natures he useth with all gentleness.
2. Those that are ingenious and idle. These think, with the hare in
the fable, that running with snails--so they count the rest of their
schoolfellows--they shall come soon enough to the post, though
sleeping a good while before their starting. Oh! a good rod would
finely take them napping!
3. Those that are dull and diligent. Wines, the stronger they be, the
more lees they have when they are new. Many boys are muddy-headed till
they be clarified with age, and such afterwards prove the best.
Bristol diamonds are both bright, and squared, and pointed by nature,
and yet are soft and worthless; whereas Orient ones in India are rough
and rugged naturally. Hard, rugged, and dull natures of youth acquit
themselves afterwards the jewels of the country, and therefore their
dullness at first is to be borne with if they be diligent. The
schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself, who beats Nature in a boy
for a fault. And I question whether all the whipping in the world can
make their parts, which are naturally sluggish, rise one minute before
the hour Nature hath appointed.
4. Those that are invincibly dull, and negligent also. Correction may
reform the latter, not amend the former. All the whetting in the world
can never set a razor's edge on that which hath no steel in it. Such
boys he consigneth over to other professions. Shipwrights and
boat-makers will choose those crooked pieces of timber which other
carpenters refuse. Those may make excellent merchants and mechanics
who will not serve for scholars.
He is able, diligent, and methodical in his teaching; not leading them
rather in a circle than forwards. He minces his precepts for children
to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his
scholars may go along with him.