HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH A SCHOOL-MASTER.-SUGGESTIONS AND HINTS FOR THE CLASS-ROOM.-BOYS ON HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.-“MAXIMS” AND “WISE THOUGHTS.”-ADVICE TO THOSE ABOUT TO TEACH.-“SIR,” AND NOT “MOSSOO.” Fräuleins” AND “MADEMOISELLES.”-“CHECK” YOUR LOVE FOR BOYS.-NO CREDIT.-WE ARE ALL LIABLE TO MAKE MISTAKES.-I GET AN INSIGHT INTO “STOCKS.”

I know masters who spend their time looking at their books with their heads downwards, and who only occasionally lift them up to say to a boisterous class: 

“Now then, now then!”

They might as well tell the boys:  “Just take a minute’s rest, my dears, will you?  In a moment I shall be looking at my desk again, then you will be able to go on.”

Face the boys, or you will be nowhere.

Always be lively.  If you once let the boys go to sleep, you will never wake them up again.

Always look the same in face and person.  Your moustache curtailed, your whiskers shaved, or the usual shape of your coat altered, will cause a revolution in your class.

Never show your temper if you have one, and keep the changes of your temperature for the benefit of your wife and family.  If you once show your boys that they have enough power to disturb your equilibrium and interfere with your happiness, it is for them a victory, the results of which they will always make you feel.

If you are annoyed by a boy constantly chatting with his neighbors, see if he has a brother in the class.  If he has, place them side by side, and peace will be restored.  Brothers will sometimes quarrel in class, but have a quiet chat together, never.

Never overpraise clever boys, or they will never do another stroke of work.  Never snub the dull ones; you don’t know that it is not out of modesty that they will not shine over their schoolfellows.

Never ask young English public schoolboys any questions on history that may be suggested to you by the proper names you will come across in the text.  Their knowledge of history does not go much beyond the certainty that Shakespeare was not a great Roman warrior, although his connection with Julius Cæsar, Antony, and Coriolanus keep a good many still undecided as to the times he lived in.

Ask them under whose reign Ben Jonson flourished, and you will be presented by them with a general survey of English history from the Norman Conquest to the reign of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.  A good many will also take the opportunity of making a show of their knowledge of literary history (the temptation is irresistible), and add that he was a great man who wrote a good dictionary, and was once kept waiting for a long time in Lord Chesterfield’s antechamber, “which he did not like.”  Boys are generally good at historical anecdotes, a remnant of their early training.

We once had to put into French the following sentence: 

“Frederick the Great of Prussia had the portrait of the young Emperor in every room of his Sans-Souci Palace, and being asked the reason why he thus honored the portrait of his greatest enemy, answered that the Emperor was a busy, enterprising young monarch, and that he found it necessary always to have an eye upon him.”

I asked the class who this Emperor was that Frederick the Great seemed to fear so much, and I obtained many answers, including Alexander the Great and most well-known imperial rulers down to Napoleon the First; but not one named Joseph II. of Austria.

Another time we were translating a piece of Massillon, taken from his celebrated Petit Carême.

When we came to the following passage, in his sermon on Flattery:  “The Lord,” once said the holy King, “shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things,” I asked the boys, who, by-the-bye, were referred in the notes to Psalm xi, who was this holy King mentioned by Massillon?

The first answer was “Charles I.”  The second was “Saint Louis,” and I should not probably have received the proper answer if I had not expressed my astonishment at finding that nobody in the class seemed to know who wrote the Psalms.

Even after this remark of mine, many boys remained silent; but at last one timidly suggested “David.”

He did not seem to be quite sure.

“This,” I thought to myself at the time, “is hardly an encouragement to make children read the Bible twice a day from the time they can spell.”

The knowledge of geography is not more widespread than the knowledge of history among these same boys.  So, if you have no time to waste don’t ask them where places are.

They know where England is; they know more or less precisely the position of India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope, and such other spots of the earth as are marked in red on the maps published in England.

France, Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Turkey, they could after a few hesitations find out on the map of Europe, but as they are not marked in red, their patriotism prevents them from taking any more interest in these countries.

France, however, is rather interesting to them as being a part of the globe in which the French irregular verbs come by nature.

Never expect any thanks for all the trouble you have taken over your pupils.

When boys succeed in their examinations, it is owing to their intelligence and industry; when they fail, it is owing to the bad teaching of their masters.  Boys can do no wrong; get this well engraven on your minds.

When a boy laughs at a mistake made by a schoolfellow, do not believe that he does so out of contempt, and that he knows better.  Ask him for the answer immediately, and he will be as quiet as you please.

If you observe him a little, you will see that he never begins to laugh before you have declared the answer of his schoolfellow to be wrong; he would never know himself.

I always carefully prepared the piece of French that my pupils had to translate, in order to be ready with all the questions suggested to me by the text; but I never prepared composition:  I preferred working it in class with them, so as to show them that scores of French sentences properly rendered an English one.  I think it is a mistake to impose one rendering of an English sentence.  Anybody can do this-with a key.

Be not solemn in class, nor aim at astonishing the boys with your eloquence.

To look at their staring eyes and gaping mouths, you may perhaps imagine that they are lost in ecstatic admiration.  Look again, they are all yawning.

When you have made the personal acquaintance of the boys who are to make up a class during the term, you can easily assign to them seats that will not perhaps please them, but which will insure peace.  A quiet boy placed between two noisy chatterboxes, or a chatterbox placed between two solemn boys, will go a long way towards securing your comfort and happiness.  The easiest class-room to manage is the one furnished with separate desks.  Then you may easily carry the government on the old principle of Divide et regna.

If you see a boy put his hand before his mouth whilst he is talking, snub him hard for it.  Tell him that, when you were a boy and wanted to have a quiet chat with a neighbor, you were not so silly as to thus draw the master’s attention and get your little conversation disturbed.

We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us, as the late Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, once wittily remarked.

Never be tired of asking for advice; you will become a good school-master only on condition that you will take constant advice from the old stagers.

If, however, you should discover that, in the middle of your lesson, your pupils are all sound asleep, don’t go and tell the head-master, and ask him how you should set about keeping them awake.  This is beyond his advice.

The General commanding a French military school had once decided upon having a lecture on Hygiene given to the pupils on Monday afternoons.  The day was badly chosen.  A French Sunday always means for a French boy a little dissipation in the shape of a good dinner at home or with friends, and on Monday afternoons we generally felt ready for a little doze, if the lecture was in the least prosy.

The lecturer, tired of addressing sleeping audiences, lodged a complaint with the General, and asked that his lecture should henceforth take place on another day of the week.

This could not be arranged, but the General soon decided upon a plan to set matters to rights.

“I will place a basof in the room,” he said; “he will take down the names of all those who go to sleep, and I shall have them kept in on the following Sunday.”

When the lecturer made his next appearance, followed by the basof, we thought it would be prudent to listen, and the lesson passed off without accident.

The following Monday, however, the poor lecturer had not proceeded very far, when he discovered that we were all asleep-and that so was the basof.

Of course the General inflicted a severe punishment upon us, and also upon the offending Cerberus.

Moral.-I believe that, if a lecturer or a master had gone to complain to an English head-master that all his pupils went to sleep whilst he lectured, the head-master would have answered him: 

“My dear sir, if your lecture sends your audience to sleep, it is your fault, not mine, and I don’t see how I can help you.”

And the sooner the man sent in his resignation, the better for the comfort of all concerned.

If you are a Frenchman, never allow your boys to call you Mossoo, Myshoo, Mounzeer, or any other British adaptation of Monsieur.  If you do, you may just as well allow them to pat you on the back and call you “Old chappie.”  They should call you “Sir,” otherwise you will lose your footing and fail to be the colleague of the English masters.  You will only be the Mossoo of the place, something, in the world, like the Mademoiselle (from Paris), or the Fräulein (from Hanover), of the Establishment for Young Ladies round the corner.

All the Fräuleins come from Hanover, as all the Mademoiselles are Parisian and Protestants, if I am to believe the column of scholastic advertisements in the English newspapers.

This is wonderful, is it not?

If you set any value on your reputation and your time, never carry the interest which you naturally take in your pupils the length of inviting them to come to your house to receive extra teaching at your hands, unless it be as a means of improving your revenue.

I once determined to devote all my Saturday evenings to two young fellows whom I was anxious to pass through the Indian Civil Service examination.  I thus worked with them five months.  Their fathers were men of position.  I never received so much as a post-card of thanks from them.  If I had charged them a guinea for each visit, I should have received two checks with “many thanks for my valuable services,” which would have benefited my banking account and given satisfaction to my professional vanity.

I have since “checked” my love for boys.

Shun interviews with parents, mothers especially, as you would the plague.  Leave this privilege to the head-master, who is paid handsomely for these little drawbacks to his position.  If they invite you to dinner, do not fall into the snare, but remember that a previous engagement prevents you from having the pleasure of accepting their kind invitation.  Never enter into correspondence with them on the subject of “their dear boy.”  If, to inflict scruples on your conscience, they should enclose a stamped envelope, give a penny to the first beggar you meet on leaving school.  Relieve the conscience, but, whatever you do, don’t answer.

Always pretend you have not seen a breach of discipline when you are not quite sure about the offender, or, when sure, you can not bring a clear charge against him.  You have no time for investigations.

Wait for another chance.  A boy never rests upon an unpunished offence.

Offence and punishment should be exchanged like shots.

No credit:  cash.

If you correct little boys’ copies yourself, you will find that you have undertaken a long and wearisome task that brings no result.  When you return these copies, they are received with thanks, folded up, carefully pocketed, and never looked at again.  Make the boys reserve a good wide margin for the corrections.  Underline all their mistakes, and, under your eyes, make them correct the mistakes themselves.

However well up you may be in your subjects, you are sure to find yourself occasionally tripping.  The derivation of a certain word will escape you for a moment, or the right translation of another will not come to your mind quickly enough.  With grown-up and intelligent young fellows in advanced classes, no need to apologise.  But with little boys you must remember that you are an oracle.  Never for a moment let them doubt your infallibility; call up all the resources of your ingenuity, and find a way out of the difficulty.  So a good actor, whose memory fails him for the time, calls upon his imagination to supply its place.  And must not any man, who would gain and keep the ear of a mixed audience, be a bit of an actor, let his theatre be the hustings, the church, or the class-room?  Has not a master to appear perfectly cross when he is perfectly cool, or perfectly cool when he is perfectly cross?  Is not this acting?

It once fell to my unhappy lot to be requested to take an arithmetic class twice a week, during the temporary absence of a mathematical master.  In my youth I was a little of a mathematician, but figures I was always bad at.  As for English sums, with their bewildering complications of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings, which that practical people still fondly cling to, it has always been a subject of wonder to me how the English themselves do them.  How I piloted those dear boys through Bills of Parcels I don’t know; but it is a fact that we got on pretty well till we reached “Stocks.”  Here my path grew very thorny.

One morning the boys all came with the same sad story.  None had been able to do one of the sums I had given them from the book.  They had all tried; their brothers had tried; their fathers had tried; not one could do it.

A short look at it convinced me that I should have no more chance of success than all those Britons, young and old, but it would never do to let my pupils know this.  They must suppose that those few moments had been sufficient for me to master the sum in.  So, assuming my most solemn voice, I said: 

“Why, boys, do you mean to tell me you can not do such a simple sum as this?”

“No, we can’t, sir,” was the general cry.

“Why, Robinson, not even you?” I said to the top boy.  “I always considered you a sharp lad.  Jones, you cannot?  Nor Brown?  Well, well; it’s too bad.”

And, putting on a look of pitying contempt-which must have been quite a success, to judge by the dejection written on the faces before me-I proceeded to give them a little lecture on their arithmetical shortcomings.  I felt saved.  It was near the time for dismissing the class.

“Boys,” said I, to finish up, “I must have been sadly mistaken in you; the best thing we can do is to go back to addition and subtraction to-morrow.”

Without being quite so hard as that upon them, I set them an easy task for the next lesson; the bell rang, and the boys dispersed.

I immediately went to the head mathematical master, and had the difficulty explained away in a few seconds.

How simple things are when they are explained, to be sure!

Armed with a new insight into Stocks, I was ready for my young friends the following Friday.  After the ordinary work had been got through: 

“Now,” I said, “have you had another try at that sum, any of you?”

“Yes, sir; but we can’t do it,” was the reply.

“Well,” I said, in a relenting tone, as I went to the blackboard, “I suppose we had better do it together.”

I made the boys confess it was too stupid of them to have proved unequal to this simple sum; and thus they regained my good graces.

Later in the day I received the glad tidings that the master I replaced was better (goodness knows if I had prayed for the return of his health!).  He was to have his boys next time.

Thus was I enabled to retire from the field with flying colors.

If you do not love boys, never be a school-master.  If you love boys and wish to become a school-master, see that you are a good disciplinarian, or take Punch’s advice to those about to marry: 

“Don’t.”