Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/73

Rh from the parent, and allied to the wider authorities of the state; exercising larger control, encountering greater risks, and requiring a more steady hand. With an individual pupil, we need only such motives as are personal to himself; with numbers, we are under the harsh necessity of punishing for example.

Good physical surroundings are known to be half the battle. A spacious and airy building; room for the classes to come together and depart without confusion or collision—these are prime facilities and aids to discipline. Next is organization, or method and orderly arrangement in all the movements; whereby each pupil is always found in the proper place, and the entire mass comprehended under the master's glance. To this follow the due alternation and remission of work, avoiding fatigue and maintaining the spirits and the energies while the teaching lasts.

After the externals and arrangements come the methods and arts of teaching, considered as imparting lucidity to the explanations, and easing the necessary intellectual labor of comprehension. If to this prime quality can be added extraneous interest or charm, so much the better; but not to be at the expense of clearness, the first condition of getting through the subject.

The personality of the teacher may be in favor of his influence: a likeable exterior, a winning voice and manner, a friendly expression, when relaxing the sternness of authority. This is the side of allurement or attraction; the other side is the stately, imposing, and dignified bearing, by which the master can impersonate authority and be a standing memento to the evil-disposed of the flock. It is seldom given to one man or woman to display both attitudes in their highest force; but wherever, and to whatever extent, they can be assumed, they constitute a barrier to disaffection and remissness.

Any prominent displays of swagger and self-conceit operate against the teacher's influence, and incite efforts to take him down. It is possible to temper authority with an unassuming demeanor.

Much, of course, depends upon tact: meaning by that a lively and wakeful sense of everything that is going on. Disorder is the sure sequel of the teacher's failure in sight or in hearing; but, even with the senses good, there may be absent the watchful employment of them. This is itself a natural incapacity for the work of teaching; just as an orator is sure to fail if he is slow to discern the signs of the effect that he produces on his audience. A teacher must not merely be sensitive to incipient and marked disorder; he must read the result of his teaching in the pupils' eyes.

That quietness of manner that comes not of feebleness, but of restraint and collectedness, passing easily into energy when required, is a valuable adjunct to discipline. To be fussy and flurried is to infect the class with the same qualities; unfavorable alike to repression and to learning.