CHAP. III.

Directions concerning the manner in which a Teacher should discharge the duties of his office.

HAVING disclosed to you the ultimate object of your exertions, and prescribed the qualifications necessary for accomplishing it, I shall now lay down some directions for the regulation of your conduct.

1. There should be a discriminating attention to the different capacities and tempers of the children.

A Sunday School may be considered as a plantation of young minds, the trees of which radicate in a different manner, and blossom at various times; each of them requiring a method of culture adapted to its nature. Some need to be brought forward to the sun; others to be thrown back into the shade. Some need to have their luxuriant growth repressed; others to have it encouraged. Children vary exceedingly in their capacities for learning.

Perception is more quick, memory more retentive, comprehension more enlarged in some than in others. What would be industry in one, would be indolence in another. Of this the teacher should be aware, lest by expecting the same in both cases, he produce despondency in the former, or nourish idleness in the latter. Nothing is more discouraging throughout the whole range of education, than to have the mind put upon exertions, to which its faculties are uneqnal. The spirit in such a case, like a horse that has sunk beneath his burden, lies down in despair with scarcely a struggle to rise. It is of immense importance that you should know the real capacity of your children, and that you should never require of them impossibilities. You will often need

much penetration to discriminate between a want of inclination, and a want of ability: this however, may be easily acquired.

The temper, as well as the mind, will require the same judicious attention. Some are timid and will need great pains to produce more confidence iu themselves; others are forward and must be assiduously taught to be more diffident. Some are open and sincere; others are artful and designing. Sometimes you will

find a character of such tenderness, that harshness would be like training the sensitive plant with a bar of iron; and then again you will meet with such hard incorrigible stubbornness, that a lenient softness would be like tying down the branches of the mountain oak with a silken thread. Study then the character of the children. Minds like locks, have different and often difficult wards; the same key will not open them all, yet all by a skilful locksmith may be opened.

It is astonishing what may be effected in the work of education by a little ingenuity and invention. There are some teachers, who like a set of empirics, have a certain nostrum which they administer in every case. They never vary the application. A command, a threat, and a blow; and if this does not succeed the case is abandoned as desperate; whereas a little variation in the mode of treatment, would have carried the point, and ensured success. We want more science in the business of edu cation. To a certain extent you should be experimentalists upon the human mind; and when you meet with a case which ordinary methods do not reach, you should call to your assistance the powers of invention, and try the

I will here insert two

effect of new measures. anecdotes illustrative of my meaning. Mr. Raikes was in the habit of visiting the parents and children belonging to his schools at their own houses. He called on a poor woman one day, and found a very refractory girl crying, and sulking. Her mother complained that correction was of no avail, and that an inflexible obstinacy marked her conduct. After asking the parent's leave, he began to talk seriously to the girl, and concluded by telling her, that as the first step towards amendment she must kneel down and ask her mother's pardon. The girl continued sulky. "Well then (said he) if you have no regard for yourself, I have much regard for you. You will be ruined and lost if you do not begin to be a good girl; and if you will not humble yourself, I must humble myself, and make a beginning for you." With that he knelt down on the ground before the child's mother, and put his hands together with all the ceremony of a juvenile offender, and supplicated pardon for the guilty daughter. No sooner did the stubborn girl see him on his knees on her account, than her pride was overcome at once, and tenderness followed: she burst into tears, and throwing herself on her

knees, intreated forgiveness; and what is still more pleasing, she gave no trouble afterwards.

What would many persons have done in this instance; uttered a scolding threat, and left the girl the miserable victim of her own bad temper. A little science, or in other words, a little ingenuity effected a rescue, for which perhaps, this child blesses the name of Raikes to the present hour.

Mr. Lancaster had once under his care a boy of most indolent and untractable habits, on whom the ordinary methods of punishment produced no effect. He resolved, as the case seemed almost desperate, to try an experiment. He placed him as monitor over an inferior class, and in order more effectually to awaken a feeling of interest and excite a habit of application, he opposed his class to another in a contest, proposing a reward to that monitor whose class was victorious. The experiment succeeded to admiration. Emulation was exDuring the proba

cited in the boy's mind. tionary week he was every morning at school in good time, urging on his class to the most vigorous exertions. His truant habits were