This may easily be illustrated by supposing a particular case. The teacher has, we will imagine, been accustomed to teach spelling in the usual way, by assigning a lesson in the spelling book, which the scholars have studied in their seats, and then they have recited by having the words put to them individually in the class. After sometime, he finds that one class has lost its interest in this study. He can make them get the lesson it is true, but he perceives perhaps that it is a weary task to them. Of course they proceed with less alacrity, and consequently with less rapidity and success. He thinks, very justly, that it is highly desirable to secure cheerful, not forced, reluctant efforts from his pupils, and he thinks of trying some new plan. Accordingly he says to them,
"Boys, I am going to try a new plan for this class."
The mere annunciation of a new plan awakens universal attention. The boys all look up, wondering what it is to be.
"Instead of having you study your lessons in your seats, as heretofore, I am going to let you all go together into one corner of the room, and choose some one to read the lesson to you, spelling all the words aloud. You will all listen and endeavor to remember how the difficult ones are spelled. Do you think you can remember?"
"Yes, sir," say the boys. Children always think they can do every thing which is proposed to them as a new plan or experiment, though they are very often inclined to think they cannot do what is required of them as a task.
"You may have," continues the teacher, "the words read to you once, or twice, just as you please. Only if you have them read but once, you must take a shorter lesson."
He pauses and looks round upon the class. Some say, "Once," some, "Twice."
"I am willing that you should decide this question. How many are in favor of having shorter lessons, and having them read but once?--How many prefer longer lessons, and having them read twice?"
After comparing the numbers, it is decided according to the majority, and the teacher assigns, or allows them to assign a lesson.
"Now," he proceeds, "I am not only going to have you study in a different way, but recite in a different way too. You may take your slates with you, and after you have had time to hear the lesson read slowly and carefully twice, I shall come and dictate to you the words aloud, and you will all write them from my dictation. Then I shall examine your slates, and see how many mistakes are made."
Any class of boys now would be exceedingly interested in such a proposal as this, especially if the master's ordinary principles of government and instruction had been such, as to interest the pupils in the welfare of the school, and in their own progress in study. They will come together in the place assigned, and listen to the one who is appointed to read the words to them, with every faculty aroused, and their whole souls engrossed in the new duties assigned them. The teacher, too, feels a special interest in his experiment. Whatever else be may be employed about, his eye turns instinctively to this group, with an intensity of interest, which an experienced teacher who has long been in the field, and who has tried experiments of this sort a hundred times, can scarcely conceive. For let it be remembered that I am describing the acts and feelings of a new beginner; of one who is commencing his work, with a feeble and trembling step, and perhaps this is his first step from the beaten path in which he has been accustomed to walk.
This new plan is continued, we will suppose, a week, during which time the interest of the pupils continues. They get longer lessons, and make fewer mistakes than they did by the old method. Now in speculating on this subject, the teacher reasons very justly, that it is of no consequence whether the pupil receives his knowledge through the eye, or through the ear; whether they study in solitude or in company. The point is to secure their progress in learning to spell the words of the English language, and as this point is secured far more rapidly and effectually by his new method, the inference is to his mind very obvious, that he has made a great improvement,-one of real and permanent value. Perhaps he will consider it an extraordinary discovery.
But the truth is, that in almost all such cases as this, the secret of the success is, not that the teacher has discovered a better method than the ordinary ones, but that he has discovered a new one. The experiment will succeed in producing more successful results, just as long as the novelty of it continues to excite unusual interest and attention in the class, or the thought that it is a plan of the teacher's own invention, leads him to take a peculiar interest in it. And this may be a month, or perhaps a quarter, and precisely the same effects would have been produced, if the whole had been reversed, that is, if the plan of dictation had been the old one, which in process of time had, in this supposed school, lost its interest, and the teacher by his ingenuity and enterprise had discovered and introduced what is now the common mode.
"Very well," perhaps my reader will reply, "it is surely something gained to awaken and continue interest in a dull study, for a quarter, or even a month. The experiment is worth something as a pleasant and useful change, even if it is not permanently superior to the other."
It is indeed worth something. It is worth a great deal; and the teacher who can devise and execute such plans, understanding their real place and value, and adhering steadily through them all, to the great object which ought to engage his attention, is in the almost certain road to success as an instructer. What I wish is, not to discourage such efforts; they ought to be encouraged to the utmost, but to have their real nature and design, and the real secret of their success fully understood, and to have the teacher, above all, take good care that all his new plans are made, not the substitutes for the great objects which he ought to keep steadily in view, but only the means by which he may carry them into more full and complete effect.
In the case we are supposing however, we will imagine that the teacher does not do this. He fancies that he has made an important discovery, and begins to inquire whether the principle, as he calls it, cannot be applied to some other studies. He goes to philosophizing upon it, and can find many reasons why knowledge received through the ear makes a more ready and lasting impression, than when it comes through the eye. He tries to apply the method to Arithmetic and Geography, and in a short time is forming plans for the complete metamorphosis of his school. When engaged in hearing a recitation, his mind is distracted with his schemes and plans; and instead of devoting his attention fully to the work he may have in hand, his thoughts are wandering continually to new schemes and fancied improvements, which agitate and perplex him, and which elude his efforts to give them a distinct and definite form. He thinks he must however, carry out his principle. He thinks of its applicability to a thousand other cases. He revolves, over and over again in his mind, plans for changing the whole arrangement of his school. He is again and again lost in perplexity, his mind is engrossed and distracted, and his present duties are performed with no interest, and consequently with little spirit or success.
Now his error is in allowing a new idea, which ought only to have suggested to him an agreeable change for a time, in one of his classes, to swell itself into undue and exaggerated importance, and to draw off his mind from what ought to be the objects of his steady pursuit.
Perhaps some teacher of steady intellectual habits and a well balanced mind may think that this picture is fanciful, and that there is little danger that such consequences will ever actually result from such a cause. But far from having exaggerated the results, I am of opinion that I might have gone much farther. There is no doubt that a great many instances have occurred, in which some simple idea like the one I have alluded to, has led the unlucky conceiver of it, in his eager pursuit far deeper into the difficulty, than I have here supposed. He gets into a contention with the school committee, that formidable foe to the projects of all scheming teachers; and it would not be very difficult to find many actual cases, where the individual has, in consequence of some such idea, quietly planned and taken measures to establish some new institution, where he can carry on, unmolested, his plans, and let the world see the full results of his wonderful discoveries.