Evening star., 1925-11-23
Make It Brief.

O ye good people. teachers and min
listers and fathers and mothers. and
especially grandfathers. all We who
have to do with the children, make
your story brief. How childhood Will
adore you If you remember that plea
and cut short your lesson.
1t is not that the children would be
disrespectful. Indeed, children are
wonderfully patient with US after all
is considered. They are helpless in
most cases. They must stand or sit
them interminable hours to what they
think is the dullest stuff they ever
heard in all their lives. They really
get too tired to think, and what is the
use of talking to children if they are
not to think?
You see, listening Is one of the most
fatiguing exercises that human be-
ing can be called upon to perform.
1t is far easier for a boy to chop
wood for two hours than it is for
him to listen intelligently for half an
hour. After the first 10 minutes you
will have to have a rabbit up your
sleeve or a rose in your ear II he is to
concentrate upon you longer. He Is
made that way and you must remen-
Der that when you talk to him.
Fatigue sets in very early when the
mind Is held with its hand cupped to
its ear Even grown folk with train
ed wills and a desire to listen find 1t
very hard to enjoy a sermon that lasts
over the half hour. They find them
selves dragging their unwilling minds
back by the ear again and again as
the earnest lecturer goes on from
point to point. Children cannot do
that.
If you would teach long periods OF
time, you must allow the learner to
take part in the exercise. and that
means he must be allowed to use his
eyes and his hands and his feet. II
possible. The more of him in active
service the more he is getting out of
your story. And strangely enough,
the more Of him that is in use the less
weary he will be at the end of the
lesson.
But If you make him sit still and
listen, he will be "off on his ear" as
sure as the world. The old rascally
schoolmaster that Dickens tells of had
a bit of logic in his wholly wrong
school. He let the lads do something,
and that saved them from going to
pieces altogether. "See that win
DOVE" Yes SIR" ''Is it clean or is it
dirty?" Dirty, sir" Then go and
wash It," That's something like what
he might have said to one of his shiv-
ering lads And in that idea lay the
lads salvation.
Make your talk brief and let the
child's action be as long as he pleases.
There's too much talking in our homes
and our schools and our churches and
far too little washing the windows. 1t
Is enough to have the children recog-
nize that they are dirty. Let them
set to work to wash them with no fur
ther accompaniment than the sound
of their own cheerful whistling.
Labels.
One must be careful in correcting
children to apply no labels. The
Christian Scientists have much right
on their side when they teach that
by naming conditions to ourselves we
appropriate them. By naming the
errors of children and making them
a part of their personalities we make
them more permanent than we in
tended.
When a child tells you what is not
so, even when he knows he is telling
an untruth and does so to make things
more secure for himself, or more COM
Portable, or even easier, 1t is not best
to name his error. To call him liar
Is an objectionable mistake. If you
would not have him so do not call
him so. Nor when he takes what is
the same reason.
We who teach children have dis.
covered that what we tell the child