Teachers differ greatly in their ability to bring a class forward in
intellectual acquisition and growth. With one teacher pupils are all
life and energy, they take hold of difficulties with courage, their
ideas become clear, their very power of comprehension seems to gather
strength. With another teacher, those same pupils, studying the same
subject, are dull, heavy, easily discouraged, and make almost no
progress. The ability thus to stimulate the intellectual activity of
others, to give it at once momentum and progress, is the true measure of
one's teaching power. It may be well to consider for a moment some of
the conditions necessary to the existence and the exercise of this
power.
In the first place, we can exert no great, commanding influence over
others, whether pupils or not, unless we have in a high degree their
confidence. Pupils must have faith in their teacher. I never knew an
instance yet, where there was great intellectual ferment going on in a
class, that the pupils did not believe the teacher infallible, or very
nearly so. This principle of confidence in leadership is one of the
great moving powers of the world. In teaching, it is specially
important. This feeling may indeed be in excess. It may exist to such
an extent as to extinguish all independence of thought, to induce a
blind, unquestioning receptivity. Such an extreme is of course opposed
to true mental progress. But short of this extreme point, there is
almost no amount of faith that children can have in their teacher, that,
if well founded, is not of the highest advantage. Seeing the firm,
assured tread of father or mother, or of an older brother or sister, is
a great aid to the tottering little one in putting forth its own steps
while learning to walk. So the child is emboldened to send out its
young, unpractised thoughts, by the confidence it has in the guidance
and protection of its teacher. To acquire and retain the proper
ascendancy over the mind of a child, two things are essential, ample
knowledge and entire honesty. Shallowness and pretension may mislead for
a while. But to hold a child firmly and permanently, the teacher must
abound in knowledge, and must have thoroughly honest convictions.
The next condition to great teaching power is confidence in one's self.
A timid, irresolute, hesitating utterance of one's own convictions fails
to produce conviction in the minds of others. I do not recommend
self-conceit. It is not necessary to be dogmatic. Yet a certain style of
self-assertion, bordering very closely upon these qualities, is needed
in the teacher. In the higher regions of science and opinion, there are
of course many points about which no one, at least no one well informed,
would undertake to speak with authority. Such subjects it becomes us all
to approach with reverent humility, as at the best only inquirers after
truth. But the case is very different with teachers of the common
branches concerned in our present remarks. On these points the teacher
ought to have a certainty and a readiness of knowledge, so as to be
thoroughly self-reliant before the class. Teaching is like fighting.
Self-reliance is half the battle.
Equally important with the former is it to have the affection of one's
pupils. Writers on metaphysics now-a-days dwell much, and very properly,
on the influence of the body upon the mind, and the necessity of a
healthy condition of the former in order to the full clearness and
strength of our intellectual apprehensions. There is a still more
intimate connection between our moral emotions and our mental action.
The wish is father to the thought, in more senses than that intended by
Shakspeare. If the intellect is the seeing power of the soul, the
affections are the atmosphere through which we look. The same object may
appear to us very differently, as it is seen through the colorless
medium of pure intellectual perception, or as it is enlarged and
glorified by the mellowing haze of fond affection, or as it is distorted
and obscured by the mists of prejudice and hate. When a child has a
thorough dislike for a subject or for his teacher, the difficulty of
learning is very greatly increased. Not only is the willingness to study
weak or wanting, but the very power of mental perception seems to be
obstructed. The power of attention, the power of apprehension, the power
of memory, the power of reasoning, are all paralyzed by dislike, and are
equally vitalized by love and desire. Mental action, in short, is
influenced by the state of the heart as much as by the state of the
body. If you do not expect great mental efforts from a child that is
sickly, burning with fever, or racked with pain, neither may you expect
the best and highest results from one whose heart is diseased and
alienated, who approaches a subject with feelings of aversion and
dislike, whose conceptions are clouded with prejudice.
A teacher of great intellectual force, and with an overbearing will, may
push forward even a reluctant and a rebellious class with a certain
degree of speed. On the other hand, a teacher who enjoys the unbounded
love of his scholars, may accomplish comparatively little, on account of
lacking the other qualities needed for success. The highest measure of
success in teaching is attained only where these several conditions
meet,--where the teacher has and deserves the full confidence of the
scholars, where he has full confidence in himself, is self-reliant and
self-asserting, and where at the same time he has the warm affection of
his pupils. Love, after all, is the governing power of the human soul,
as it is the crowning grace in the Christian scheme. Love is, in
teaching, what sunshine and showers are in vegetation. By a system of
forcing and artificial culture, the gardener may indeed produce a few
hot-house plants, but for all great or general results, he must look to
the genial operations of nature.