Some teachers make the mistake of supposing that a love for the work and
a love for the children are one and the same thing. The two things are
certainly separable in thought, and they are often actually separated in
action. It is of some importance to teachers to remember the difference.
We see persons every day struggling with all their might to accomplish
certain results. They have certain ideas which they wish to realize,
certain theories which they wish to verify. To bring about these
results, is a matter of pride with them. So that the end is gained, the
means to be used are a matter of comparative indifference. Their heart
is set on the result, they care nothing for the machinery by which it is
brought about. Now, so long as the work is of a nature which requires
only the use of mechanical powers, or of mere brute force, it is all
very well. The sculptor need not fall in love with the block of marble
on which he is working, in order to realize from it the conception of
his mind. The engine which carries us thirty miles an hour towards the
goal of our desires, will not speed us more or less for not being an
object of our affections. But every man has a natural and proper
dislike to becoming a mere machine for carrying out the schemes of
others. Children especially revolt at being treated in this way. If a
teacher takes the charge of a class or of a school, for the purpose of
showing to himself or to others how certain things may be done, the
children are quick to find it out, and to resent it. No child, however
humble or obscure, but feels indignant at being considered as a mere
pawn upon a chess-board, or a mere wheel or pulley in some complicated
piece of machinery. Every individual child is to itself the centre of
all human interests, and if you are to have any real and abiding
influence upon him, he must first feel that you have a regard for
himself, in his own proper person, independently of any schemes or plans
of your own.
You may love to see your children all present punctually, to see them
making a good appearance, and by their orderly behavior and manners
helping forward the school generally; you may love the work of teaching
as giving you honorable and useful occupation. But something more than
this is wanting. _You must love the children._ You must love each
particular child. You must become interested in each child, not for what
it is to you, or to the class, or to the school, but for what it is in
itself, as a precious jewel, to be loved and admired, for those immortal
qualities and capacities which belong to it as a human being. No matter
how degraded or depraved or forbidding in appearance that child may be,
it has qualities which, if brought out, may make it more glorious than
an angel. If Jesus loved him, you may love him. Jesus did not stand off
at a distance from the loathsome and filthy leper, while performing the
miracle of healing. He first "_touched_" the leper, and said, "Be thou
clean." We are sometimes too fastidious in our benevolence, and shrink
too much from coming into contact with those whom we would befriend.
Little real influence is ever produced upon any human being, without
creating between you and him a bond of sympathy. If we would work
strongly and efficiently upon the minds of children, we must really love
them, not in the abstract, not in a general way, but concretely and
individually. We must love John and William and Mary and Susie, simply
and purely because he or she is, in himself or herself alone, an object
of true interest and affection. In looking over a school, it is not
difficult to discover at a glance which teachers thus love their
children. It speaks in every word from the lips. It beams in every look
from the eyes. It thrills in every tone of the voice. It has a language
in the very touch of the hand and the movements of the person.
Some persons are naturally more fond of children than others are. But
those not naturally thus inclined may cultivate the disposition. They
_must_ do so if they mean to be teachers. No one is fitted to be a
teacher, who has not learned to sympathize with the real wants and
feelings of children. Pretence here is all wasted. Shams may do with
grown persons sometimes, never with children. They have an instinctive
perception of what is genuine and what is pretended, in professed love
for them. In fact, the way to win the affection of a child is to love
him, not to make professions of love.
It is not always the easiest thing in the world to exercise this love. A
teacher may have the charge of a class of children whose appearance,
manners, and dispositions are exceedingly forbidding, perhaps even
loathsome. Yet observation and study will ordinarily discover some good
quality even in the worst and most degraded. A talent for discovering
what is good in a child is much more important in the work of elevating
him, than the smartness at detecting and exposing his tricks, in which
some teachers take pride. It is a bad sign, though not an uncommon one,
to see evidences of cunning in a teacher. Better by far to be outwitted
and duped occasionally, than to forfeit that character of perfect
sincerity and straightforwardness which secures the confidence of a
child. The teacher who would love his children, particularly if he
happens to have been entrusted with an unpromising class, must learn to
wear the spectacles of charity. He must cultivate the habit of seeing
things in their best light. While not blind to faults, he must be prompt
and eagle-eyed to spy out every indication of good. Above all, he must
remember that no human soul, however degraded, is without some elements
and possibilities of good, for whom there is the possibility that Christ
died.