Look at that teacher, and consider for a moment, his condition. He began to teach when he was twenty years of age, and now he is forty. Between the years of fifteen and twenty he made a vigorous effort to acquire such an education as would fit him for these duties. He succeeded, and by these efforts he raised himself from being a mere laborer, receiving for his daily toil a mere daily subsistence, to the respectability and the comforts of an intellectual pursuit. But this change once produced, he stops short in his progress. Once seated in his desk, he is satisfied, and for twenty years he has been going through the same routine, without any effort to advance or to improve. He does not reflect that the same efforts, which so essentially altered his condition and prospects at twenty, would have carried him forward to higher and higher sources of influence and enjoyment, as long as he should continue them. His efforts ceased when he obtained a situation as teacher, at forty dollars a month, and though twenty years have glided away, he is now exactly what he was then.
There is probably no employment whatever which affords so favorable an opportunity for personal improvement,-for steady intellectual and moral progress, as that of teaching. There are two reasons for this.
First, there is time for it. With an ordinary degree of health and strength, the mind can be vigorously employed at least ten hours a day. As much as this, is required of students, in many literary institutions. In fact ten hours to study, seven to sleep, and seven to food, exercise, and recreation, is perhaps as good an arrangement as can be made; at any rate, very few persons will suppose that such a plan allows too little under the latter head. Now six hours is as much as is expected of teachers under ordinary circumstances, and it is as much as ought ever to be bestowed. For though he may labor four hours out of school, in some new field, his health and spirits will soon sink under the burden, if after his weary labors during the day in school, he gives up his evenings to the same perplexities and cares. And it is not necessary. No one who knows any thing of the nature of the human mind, and who will reflect a moment on the subject, can doubt that a man can make a better school, by expending six hours labor upon it, which he can go through with, with some alacrity and ardor, than he can by driving himself on to ten. Every teacher therefore, who is commencing his work, should begin with the firm determination of devoting only six hours daily to the pursuit. Make as good a school, and accomplish as much for it, as you can in six hours, and let the rest go. When you come from your school room at night, leave all your perplexities and cares behind you. No matter what unfinished business or unsettled difficulties remain. Dismiss them all till another sun shall rise, and the hour of duty for another day shall come. Carry no school work home with you and do not talk of your work. You will then get refreshment and rest. Your mind during the evening will be in a different world from that in which you have moved during the day. At first this will be difficult. It will be hard for you, unless your mind is uncommonly well disciplined, to dismiss all your cares; and you will think, each evening, that some peculiar emergency demands your attention, just at that time, and that as soon as you have passed the crisis, you will confine yourself to what you admit are generally reasonable limits. But if you once allow school with its perplexities and cares to get possession of the rest of the day, it will keep possession. It will intrude itself into all your waking thoughts, and trouble you in your dreams. You will lose all command of your powers, and besides cutting off from yourself all hope of general intellectual progress, you will in fact destroy your success as a teacher. Exhaustion, weariness, and anxiety will be your continual portion, and in such a state, no business can be successfully prosecuted.
There need be no fear that employers will be dissatisfied, if the teacher acts upon this principle. If he is faithful and enters with all his heart into the discharge of his duties during six hours, there will be something in the ardor, and alacrity, and spirit with which his duties will be performed, which parents and scholars will both be very glad to receive, in exchange for the languid, and dull, and heartless toil, in which the other method must sooner or later result.
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If the teacher then, will confine himself to such a portion of time, as is, in fact, all he can advantageously employ, there will be much left which can be devoted to his own private employment,-more than is usual in the other employments of life. In most of these other employments, there is not the same necessity for limiting the hours which a man may devote to his business. A merchant, for example, may be employed nearly all the day, at his counting-room, and so may a mechanic. A physician may spend all his waking-hours in visiting patients, and feel little more than healthy fatigue. The reason is that in all these employments, and in fact in most of the employments of life, there is so much to diversify, so many little incidents constantly occurring to animate and relieve, and so much bodily exercise, which alternates with, and suspends the fatigues of the mind, that the labors may be much longer continued, and with less cessation, and yet the health not suffer. But the teacher, while engaged in his work, has his mind continually on the stretch. There is little to relieve, little respite, and he is almost entirely deprived of bodily exercise. He must, consequently, limit his hours of attending to his business, or his health will soon sink under labors which Providence never intended the human mind to bear.
There is another circumstance which facilitates the progress of the teacher. It is a fact that all this general progress has a direct and immediate bearing upon his pursuits. A lawyer may read in an evening an interesting book of travels, and find nothing to help him with his case, the next day, in court,-but almost every fact which the teacher thus learns, will come at once into use, in some of his recitations at school. We do not mean to imply by this that the members of the legal profession have not need of a great variety and extent of knowledge; they doubtless have. It is simply in the directness and certainty, with which the teacher's knowledge may be applied to his purpose, that the business of teaching has the advantage over every other pursuit.
This fact now has a very important influence in encouraging, and leading forward the teacher, to make constant intellectual progress, for every step brings at once a direct reward.
10. THE CHESTNUT BURR. A story for school-boys.[E] One fine pleasant morning, in the fall of the year, the master was walking along towards school, and he saw three or four boys under a large chestnut tree, gathering chestnuts.
[Footnote E: Originally written for a periodical.]
One of the boys was sitting upon the ground, trying to open some chestnut burrs, which he had knocked off from the tree. The burrs were green, and he was trying to open them by pounding them with a stone.
He was a very impatient boy and was scolding, in a loud angry tone, against the burrs. He did not see, he said, what in the world chestnuts were made to grow so for. They ought to grow right out in the open air, like apples, and not have such vile porcupine skins on them,-just to plague the boys. So saying he struck with all his might a fine large burr, crushed it to pieces, and then jumped up, using at the same time profane and wicked words. As soon as he turned round he saw the master standing very near him. He felt very much ashamed and afraid, and hung down his head.