Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-10-21
TEACHING AS AN ART.
How a Young Lady Captured Turbu-
lent School.


lent School.
The study of teaching as an art has not
been better illustrated than in the recent
instance OF Sunday-school in an unruly
section of a great city, where the teachers
had taught by the old routine of reading
and recitation, without resorting to any
special means of interesting the children.
which probably they would have con-
sidered clap-trap, and where they not only
| failed to excite interest or even attention,
but where they found it impossible to
maintain discipline, to command silence,
or create reverence, to make themselves
heard, to do any good whatever in the
old methods. In despair they resoried to
young woman for help, a teacher in a
secular school in a troublesome portion of
the town, who had become known for her
great work. She agreed to help them if
they would let her do so in her own way,
the teachers withdrawing, and letting her
have the school in her own hands COM
pletely. As they did SO, she went with an
assistant into the chapel where the chill
dren were assembled. Pandemonium
reigned in the place, with confusion worse
confounded; the children were talking,
laughing, wrestling, amusing themselves
in all, seething caldron of noise and dis
turbance.
The teacher mounted the platform
quietly, and, in the habitual disregard of
teachers there almost unobserved. Instead
of calling the school to order, which would
have been an entirely impossible and use
less proceeding, as no one could have heard
her and no one would have obeyed her,
,1 al haxr el, 4 hra,rr,ht fral-
of it large white dove, and going to the
front of the platform she held it aloft in her
extended arms, but did not say word.
AT the same time her assistant took from
another box long stalk ofwhite lilies and
held it up beside her. For moment or
two the uproar continued then one child
CHANGED to catch glimpse of the singular
sight, and called to another, and that one
to another those that faced the platform
stopped stone-still the others turned to see
what was the matter; in three minutes there
was not whisper, one could have heard
pin drop, and then the new teacher told
the children the story of Christ's baptism
and although it is some time since, there
has never been moments disturbance in
that rude school again.
The same methods as those used by this
teachel-that is to say, in their general
principle-have been having telling results
in day-schools Of late. In this case, the
teacher had studied the intelligences, tenn
peraments and habits of children so thor
oughly that she knew at once how to capti-
vate the interest and bring them into SUBJ
lection; and although she herself may have
had some peculiar gift Of fine organization
or Imagination, she only used the modern
system, applying to the use of the Sunday
school the object-lesson which had proved
SO valuable in the secular school. By these
methods everything studied becomes liv-
ing and, as it were, visible reality to the
student, and the stimulation of the imagi- |
nation fixes the knowledge, increases
the capability of receiving and adapt
ing, and in so doing enlarges the
possibility of future knowledge in the
race. No one thing in this world can
go forward without taking another
along with it, till all things are work
ing together. There have been, then,
tremendous strides forward in this century,
many of which must be considered the
result of the work of the century that
went before it. There ought, therefore, to
be some wondrous advance in the twen-
tieth century, as a result of the applica-
ton of thought to the work Of the nine
teenth.-Harper's Bazar.