Evening star., 1937-10-30
Child Finds
Fear Poor
Teacher
Charge Atmosphere
OfClassrOom With
Proper Feeling.
By ANGELO PATRI.


WE WHO work with children know
that it is the thought highly
charged with emotion that reaches
them soonest and stays by them long
est. Emotion, or what we call feeling,
is the medium of communication be-
tween us and the children. What we
think they feel, and their feelings
stimulate them into action.
When the teacher enters the class
room in q whirlwind of haste, short
of breath. full of the excitement of
wrath, that feeling runs through the
classroom like q current of electricity.
ALI the children are excited by it
some to fear, some to defiance. some
to bewilderment. Anger is about the
worst stimulant that can be used on
children. I know that an occasional
burst of wrath. justified wrath. clears
the atmosphere of something that has
been clouding 1t for some time.
Wrath has been known to check evil.
But rarely. 1t is not to be resorted to
without Justification, and a teacher
must be careful in all justification Of
that sort.
Fear charges the atmosphere, jumps
from mind to mind as Summer light
ming skips across the sky. Fear kills
initiative and paralyzes ambition. A
fear-driven family or class will not
rise to high achievement, because high
achievement Is the expression of the
free spirit. Fear binds the spirit and
weights down the body and nothing of
creative power ever comes out of 1t.
Well-meaning teachers, anxious to
get the best out of their pupils,
threaten and storm and scold until
fear grips the minds of the children
and they are unable to do anything
worth while.
Now remember. Keep your mar
gins. Begin every sentence with =
capital letter and end it with q period
or . question mark. Don't get q blot
on your paper Don't make . single
mistake in spelling. want this COM
position to be perfect. Any child max
ing 8 mistake will stay in and write
it again until 1t is perfect. won't
take q paper that has a mistake on
it. A single error in the arrange
ment Of your paper will give you a
zero. Now Begin
She might better have said, "Finis."
There could be no beginning in
an atmosphere charged with fear.
Creative work-and that is the only
kind that matters in composition
periods stimulated by confidence,
courage, faith. Charge the atmos-
phere with those and they call out
ambition, power; desire to express
some secret power of the mind. Then
the creative spirit does its perfect
work. The spelling may be poor,
the margins missing. but look for the
creative power in the job itself and
you will find it.
So often we make impossible the
work we strive to do by charging the
children with emotions that stiten
them into stone images. We want =
child to be truthful and we thunder
at him: Speak the truth. Don't dare
lie to me" But he cannot feel the
truth within him. We want child
to be gentle and kind and we shout
at him in anger, Why don't you be-
have like q human being once in a
while?" Thus we make gentleness
and kindness impossible to his think
ing. Force and fear have flooded his
thinking and drowned 1T.
What you feel communicates itself
to the child You cannot hide 1t.
Charge your thought with love, toler-
anoe, faith, hope, and you make all
things possible to the expectant child.
(Copyright. 1879