Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/497

Rh It is given to comparatively few to exert this powerful and subtle influence in a high degree, for it is a gift confined to a few rare natures. All the more important is it, therefore, to ensure that an effective personal influence may play its part in the intercourse between ordinary teachers and ordinary pupils in the customary routine of school and university life.

How, then, is the proper personal and sympathetic relation to be established between teacher and pupil, so that the individuality of the one may call out the character and the effort of the other? Those who enquire of their earliest school reminiscences will probably recollect that the teachers who obtained a real hold upon them did so by virtue of the power which they possessed of arousing their intellectual interest. I would ask you for a moment to analyze the character of this interest.

In the young child I believe that it will be found to be mainly that of novelty: with him "this way and that dividing the swift mind," sustained thought, or even sustained attention, has not yet become possible; the inquisitive and acquisitive faculties are strong; and every new impression awakens the interest by its novelty quite apart from its purpose. You have only to watch and see how impossible it is for a young child to keep its attention fixed upon a game such as cricket or football to realize how still more difficult it is to keep his attention fixed upon an intellectual purpose.

To quite young children, except to those who are unfortunately precocious, even an impending examination is not a permanent object of anxiety.

Now contrast the aimless interest which can be aroused in any young child's mind by the pleasure of a new impression, a new activity, or a new idea, with that which appeals, or should appeal, to the more mature intellect of an older student. With him it is not enough that the impression or the idea should be new; if it is to arouse interest it must also direct his mind to a purpose. This is to him the effective interest of his games or sport; in the game the desire to succeed or to win is the animating purpose, just as the expectation of catching a fish is the interest which keeps the angler's attention fixed for hours upon his line. In both the desire is fostered by the imagination, which maintains a definite purpose before the mind.

It is sometimes forgotten that as he grows the pupil is no longer "an infant crying for the light," but has become a man with "splendid purpose in his eyes."

While, therefore, it should be the aim of a teacher of young children to set before them the subjects of their lessons in an attractive manner, so that the novelty is never lost, and not to weary their active and restless minds with too sustained an effort, it should at a later stage be the teacher's aim to keep the object and purpose of the new fact or