The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1877-03-01


one might receive such an answer as
the above, and one given in good faith,
from child of earnest and clear-sight-
ed parents, but this scholar, as the
teacher took care to learn, had received
little, If any wise, training at home.
That a child should live to be four
teen or fifteen years old and have no
sense of personal obligation to do right
and to do we'll, argues a woeful lack in
the character and training of the pa
rents. With most individuals, much
time and strength has to be spent in
bringing the forces of our nature to
work in harmony and in one direction.
to thousand circumstan-
ces, one person has more or less of this
hard work to do than another; but all
the causes that constitute inheritance
and influence have their hold upon us,
and no one can wholly escape. Of
course personal eXertiOn must be the
one indispensable element in all this,
yet most sad it is when one has not in
youth some true help to look upon life
with steady purpose to make much of
it. Suppose a teacher to go into a
school Of forty pupils, many of them
nearly or quite grown. He will hardly
find ten whose rational development
has any direction to it. There are, so
to speak, the protoplasmic bases Of men
tai and moral life, but the continuously
harmonious action which is to consti-
tute mental and moral life has hardly
begun.
The pupil is not ready for the teach
er, and SO, much time has to be spent
in making him able to work. In many
cases nearly all the time of the teacher
must be SO spent, and then few minds
ere "oriented."
Napoleon Bonaparte, when asked
what France most needed, replied
mothers" But men and women are
cOrrelatives, and one cannot be truly
and generously elevated without it's in
fluence on the other.
1t is not easy to reach and wisely
change the fathers and mothers of our
land. The ministers pay far more heed
to doctrine than to conduct; and so re-
formers have decided that the hope of
our country lies with the young. These
considerations seem to point towards
some clear conclusions:
First of all, the people are very
wrong in supposing persons of inferior
character and ability to be we'll enough
able to teach primary schools. They
should see that the aggregate influence
upon small children especially needs to
be really wise and strong influence.
Then, the teachers themselves engaged
in such schools need to be touched by
some impulse that shall open their eyes
to see what work awaits them. If one
Of these could but see what there is to
be done for the children under her
care, or rather, what she is to make
them able to do, she would hardly dare
work at all, except reverently and with
her might.
DR.. Arnold, the great and good teach
er, said that the one requisite for the
teachers success was sincerity. One
thinks, at first, that he should have
added persist noe but then if one is
sincere, he must have seen the ''beauty
of truth" and he who has seen that,
will be persistent.
One great part Of the work to be
done is SO to study perfect clealness in
presenting subjects to children, to be
so clear, and to illustrate so we'll, that
S lesson may be valuable for suggestion
as well as for fact. There will always
be some pupils who will read between
the lines" and hear between the teach
|er,S words. For what is the final OBJ
Ject OF all study but to look at length
continually toward what is good and
great, and to know that these cannot
fail. Because, if by steady effort, I re-
sist an evil to-day, or if l work my way
to some new beauty by the light of
truth, shall be proving that "work is
victory" just as is the endeavor, so
the real effect will be.
Nothing helps the youth to compre-
Il