Chapter 2
A great part of the teacher's work lies in the playground, and the teacher who does not play with his boys will never quite win their hearts. Indian boys as a rule do not play enough, and time should be given for games during the school day. Even the teachers who have not learned to play in their youth should come to the playground and show interest in the games, thus sharing in this part of the boy's education.
In schools where there are boarding-houses the love of the teacher is especially necessary, for in them the boarding-house must take the place of the home, and a family feeling must be created there. Bright and affectionate teachers will be looked on as elder brothers, and difficulties which escape rules will be got rid of by love.
In fact, all the many activities of school life should be made into channels through which affection can run between teacher and pupil, and the more channels there are the better it will be for both. As the boy grows older these channels will naturally become more numerous, and the love of the school will become the friendship of manhood. Thus love will have her perfect work.
Love on the physical plane has many forms. We have the love of husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, the affection between relatives and friends. But all these are blended and enriched in the love of the Master to His disciple. The Master gives to His pupil the gentleness and protection of a mother, the strength of a father, the understanding of a brother or a sister, the encouragement of a relative or a friend, and He is one with His pupil and His pupil is a part of Him. Besides this, the Master knows His pupil's past, and His pupil's future, and guides him through the present from the past into the future. The pupil knows but little beyond the present, and he does not understand that great love which draws its inspiration from the memory of the past and shapes itself to mould the powers of the future. He may even sometimes doubt the wisdom of the love which guides itself according to a pattern which his eyes cannot see.
That which I have said above may seem a very high ideal for the relation between a teacher and pupil down here. Yet the difference between them is less than the difference between a Master and His disciple. The lower relation should be a faint reflection of the higher, and at least the teacher may set the higher before himself as an ideal. Such an ideal will lift all his work into a higher world, and all school life will be made happier and better because the teacher has set it before him.
II. DISCRIMINATION
The next very necessary qualification for the teacher is Discrimination. My Master said that the most important knowledge was "the knowledge of God's plan for men, for God has a plan, and that plan is evolution." Each boy has his own place in evolution, and the teacher must try to see what that place is, and how he can best help the boy in that place. This is what the Hindus call Dharma, and it is the teacher's duty to find out the boy's dharma and to help him to fulfil it. In other words, the teaching given to the boy should be that which is suitable for him, and the teacher must use discrimination in choosing the teaching, and in his way of giving it. Under these conditions, the boy's progress would be following out the tendencies made in past lives, and would really be remembering the things he knew before. "The method of evolution," as a great Master said, "is a constant dipping down into matter under the law of readjustment," _i.e._ by reincarnation and karma. Unless the teacher knows these truths, he cannot work with evolution as he should do, and much of his time and of his pupil's time will be wasted. It is this ignorance which causes such small results to be seen, after many years at school, and which leaves the boy himself so ignorant of the great truths which he needs to guide his conduct in life.
Discrimination is wanted in the choice of subjects and in the way in which they are taught. First in importance come religion and morals, and these must not only be taught as subjects but must be made both the foundation and the atmosphere of school life, for these are equally wanted by every boy, no matter what he is to do later in life. Religion teaches us that we are all part of One Self, and that we ought therefore help one another. My Master said that people "try to invent ways for themselves which they think will be pleasant for themselves, not understanding that all are one, and that therefore only what the One wills can ever be really pleasant for anyone." And He also said: "You can help your brother through that which you have in common with him, and that is the Divine life." To teach this is to teach religion, and to live it is to lead the religious life.
At present the value of the set moral teaching is largely made useless by the arrangements of the school. The school day should always open with something of the nature of a religious service, striking the note of a common purpose and a common life, so that the boys, who are all coming from different homes and different ways of living may be tuned to unity in the school. It is a good plan to begin with a little music or singing so that the boys, who often come rushing in from hastily taken food, may quiet down and begin the school day in an orderly way. After this should come a prayer and a very short but beautiful address, placing an ideal before the boys.
But if these ideals are to be useful, they must be practised all through the school day, so that the spirit of the religious period may run through the lessons and the games. For example, the duty of the strong to help the weak is taught in the religious hour, and yet for the rest of the day the strong are set to outstrip the weak, and are given valuable prizes for their success in doing so. These prizes make many boys jealous and discourage others, they stimulate the spirit of struggle. The Central Hindu College Brotherhood has for its motto: "The ideal reward is an increased power to love and to serve." If the prizes for good work and conduct and for helping others were positions of greater trust and power of helping, this motto would be carried out. In fact, in school honour should be given to character and helpfulness rather than to strength of mind and body; strength ought to be trained and developed, but not rewarded for merely outstripping the weak. Such a school life will send out into the world men who will think more of filling places of usefulness to the nation than of merely gaining money and power for themselves.
An important part of moral teaching lies in the training of the boy in patriotism--love of country. The above plan of teaching the boy to be of service in the little family of the school, will naturally widen out into service in the large family of the nation. This will also influence the boy in his choice of a profession, for he will think of the nation as his family, and will try to fill a useful place in the national life. But great care must be taken in teaching patriotism not to let the boys slip into hatred of other nations, as so often happens. This is especially important in India, where both Indian and English teachers should try to make good feeling between the two races living side by side, so that they may join in common work for the one Empire.
Discrimination may also be shown in the arrangement of lessons, the most difficult subjects being taken early in the day, as far as possible. For even with the best and most carefully arranged teaching a boy will be more tired at the end of the school day than at the beginning.
Discrimination is also wanted in the method of teaching, and in the amount of time given to mental and physical education. The care of the body and its development are of the first importance, for without a healthy body all teaching is wasted. It should be remembered that the boy can go on, learning all his life, if he is wise enough to wish to do so; but it is only during the years of growth that he can build up a healthy physical body in which to spend that life. Therefore during those early years the healthy development of that physical body must be absolutely the first consideration, and anything that cannot be learned compatibly with that must for the time remain unlearned. The strain on the boy's mind--and particularly on those of very young boys--is far too great and lasts far too long; the lesson period should be broken up, and the teacher should be very careful to watch the boys and to see that they do not become tired. His wish to prevent this strain will make him think out new ways of teaching, which will make the lessons very interesting; for a boy who is interested does not easily become tired. I myself remember how tired we used to be when we reached home, far too tired to do anything but lie about. But the Indian boy is not allowed to rest even when he comes home, for he has then to begin home lessons, often with a tutor, when he ought to be at rest or play. These home lessons begin again in the morning, before he goes to school, and the result is that he looks on his lessons as a hardship instead of a pleasure. Much of this homework is done by a very bad light and the boy's eyes suffer much. All home lessons should be abolished; home work burns the candle at both ends, and makes the boy's life a slavery. School hours are quite long enough, and an intelligent teacher can impart in them quite as much as any boy ought to learn in one day. What cannot be taught within those hours should be postponed until the next day.
We see the result of all this overstrain in the prevalence of eye-diseases in India. Western countries set us a good example in the physical training of their boys, who leave school strong and healthy. I have heard in England that in the poorer schools the children are often inspected by a doctor so that any eye-disease or other defect is found out at once before it becomes serious. I wonder how many boys in India are called stupid merely because they are suffering from some eye or ear trouble.
Discrimination should also be shown in deciding the length of the waking and sleeping times. These vary, of course, with age and to some extent perhaps with temperament. No boy should have less than nine or ten hours of sleep; when growth ceases, eight hours would generally be enough. A boy grows most during his sleep, so that the time is not in the least wasted.
Few people realise how much a boy is affected by his surroundings, by the things on which his eyes are continually resting. The emotions and the mind are largely trained through the eye, and bare walls, or, still worse, ugly pictures are distinctly harmful. It is true that beautiful surroundings sometimes cost a little more than ugly ones, but the money is well spent. In some things only trouble is needed in choosing, for an ugly picture costs as much as a pretty one. Perfect cleanliness is also absolutely necessary, and teachers should be constantly on the watch to see that it is maintained. The Master said about the body: "Keep it strictly clean always; even from the minutest speck of dirt." Both teachers and students should be very clean and neat in their dress, thus helping to preserve the general beauty of the school surroundings. In all these things careful discrimination is wanted.
If a boy is weak in a particular subject, or is not attracted by some subject which he is obliged to learn, a discriminating teacher will sometimes help him by suggesting to him to teach it to one who knows less than he does. The wish to help the younger boy will make the elder eager to learn more, and that which was a toil becomes a pleasure. A clever teacher will think of many such ways of helping his boys.
If discrimination has been shown, as suggested in a preceding paragraph, in choosing the best and most helpful boys for positions of trust, it will be easy to teach the younger boys to look up to and wish to please them. The wish to please a loved and admired elder is one of the strongest motives in a boy, and this should be used to encourage good conduct, instead of using punishment to drive boys away from what is bad. If the teacher can succeed in attracting this love and admiration to himself, he will remain a helper to his students long after they have become men. I have been told that the boys who were under Dr. Arnold at Rugby continued in after life to turn to him for advice in their troubles and perplexities.
We may perhaps add that discrimination is a most important qualification for those whose duty it is to choose the teachers. High character and the love-nature of which we have already spoken are absolutely necessary if the above suggestions are to be carried out.
III. DESIRELESSNESS
The next qualification to be considered is Desirelessness.
There are many difficulties in the way of the teacher when he tries to acquire desirelessness, and it also requires special consideration from the standpoint of the student.
As has been said in _At the Feet of the Master_: "In the light of His holy Presence all desire dies, _but_ the desire to be like Him." It is also said in the Bhagavad Gita that all desire dies "when once the Supreme is seen." This is the ideal at which to aim, that the One Will shall take the place of changing desires. This Will is seen in our dharma, and in a true teacher, one whose dharma is teaching, his one desire will be to teach, and to teach well. In fact, unless this desire is felt, teaching is not his dharma, for the presence of this desire is inseparable from real capacity to teach.
We have already said that little honour, unfortunately, is attached to the post of a teacher, and that a man often takes the position because he can get nothing else, instead of because he really wants to teach, and knows that he can teach. The result is that he thinks more about salary than anything else, and is always looking about for the chance of a higher salary. This becomes his chief desire. While the teacher is no doubt partly to blame for this, it is the system which is mostly in fault, for the teacher needs enough to support himself and his family, and this is a right and natural wish on his part. It is the duty of the nation to see that he is not placed in a position in which he is obliged to be always desiring increase of salary, or must take private tuition in order to earn enough to live. Only when this has been done will the teacher feel contented and happy in the position he occupies, and feel the dignity of his office as a teacher, whatever may be his position among other teachers--which is, I fear, now marked chiefly by the amount of his salary. Only the man who is really contented and happy can have his mind free to teach well.
The teacher should not desire to gain credit for himself by forcing a boy along his own line, but should consider the special talent of each boy, and the way in which _he_ can gain most success. Too often the teacher, thinking only of his own subject, forgets that the boy has to learn many subjects. The one on which most stress should be laid is the one most suited to the boy's capacity. Unless the teachers co-operate with each other, the boy is too much pressed, for each teacher urges him on in his own subject, and gives him home-lessons in this. There are many teachers, but there is only one boy.
Again, the boy's welfare must be put by the teacher before his own desire to obtain good results in an examination. Sometimes it is better for a boy to remain for another year in a class and master a subject thoroughly rather than to go up for an examination which is really too difficult for him. In such a case it is right to keep him back. But it is not right to keep him back merely for the sake of good results for the teacher. On the other hand, a teacher has sometimes to resist the parents who try to force the boy beyond his strength, and think more of his rising into a higher class than of his really knowing his subjects.
Unless the teacher has desirelessness, his own desires may blind him to the aspirations and capacities of the boys in his care, and he will be frequently imposing his own wishes on them instead of helping them in their natural development. However much a teacher may be attracted towards any profession or any particular set of ideas, he must so develop desirelessness that while he creates in his pupils an enthusiasm for principles, he shall not cramp them within the limits of any particular application of the principles, or allow their generous impulses--unbalanced by experience--to grow into narrow fanaticism. Thus, he should teach the principles of citizenship, but not party politics. He should teach the value of all professions to a nation, if honourably filled, and not the superiority of one profession over another.
IV. GOOD CONDUCT
There are six points which are summed up by the Master as Good Conduct. These are:
1. Self-control as to the mind.
2. Self-control in action.
3. Tolerance.
4. Cheerfulness.
5. One-pointedness.
6. Confidence.
We will take each of these in turn.
1. _Self-control as to the mind_ is a most important qualification for a teacher, for it is principally through the mind that he guides and influences his boys. In the first place it means, as my Master has said, "control of temper, so that you may feel no anger or impatience." It is obvious that much harm will be done to boys if their teacher is often angry and impatient. It is true that this anger and impatience are often caused by the outer conditions of the teacher's life, but this does not prevent their bad effect on the boys. Such feelings, due generally to very small causes, re-act upon the minds of the students, and if the teacher is generally impatient and very often angry, he is building into the character of the boys germs of impatience and anger which may in after life destroy their own happiness, and embitter the lives of their relations and friends.
We have to remember also that the boys themselves often come to school discontented and worried on account of troubles at home, and so both teachers and boys bring with them angry and impatient thoughts, which spread through the school, and make the lessons difficult and unpleasant when they should be easy and full of delight. The short religious service referred to in an early part of this little book should be attended by teachers as well as students, and should act as a kind of door to shut out such undesirable feelings. Then both teachers and students would devote their whole energies to the creation of a happy school, to which all should look forward in the morning, and which all should be sorry to leave at the end of the school day.
The lack of control of temper, it must be remembered, often leads to injustice on the part of the teacher, and therefore to sullenness and want of confidence on the boy, and no boy can make real progress, or be in any real sense happy, unless he has complete confidence in the justice of his elders. Much of the strain of modern school life is due to this lack of confidence, and much time has to be wasted in breaking down barriers which would never have been set up if the teacher had been patient.
Anger and impatience grow out of irritability. It is as necessary for the boy to understand his teacher as for the teacher to understand the boy, and hasty temper is an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of such understanding. "The teacher is angry to-day," "The teacher is irritable to-day," "The teacher is short-tempered to-day," are phrases too often on the lips of boys, and they produce a feeling of discomfort in the class-room that makes harmony and ease impossible. Boys learn to watch their teachers, and to guard themselves against their moods, and so distrust replaces confidence. The value of the teacher depends upon his power of inspiring confidence, and he loses this when he gives way to irritability. This is particularly important with young children, for they are eager to learn and eager to love, and only those who have no business to be teachers would dare to meet such eagerness by anger. It is of course true that younger boys are in many ways more difficult to teach than elder ones; for they have not yet learned how to make efforts, nor how to control and guide them when made. The teacher has therefore to help them much more than the elder boys who have learned largely to help themselves. The chief difficulty is to make the best use of the young energies by finding them continual and interesting employment; if the young enthusiasms are checked harshly instead of being guided sympathetically they will soon die out, and the boy will become dull and discontented.
I have read that youth is full of enthusiasm and ideals, and that these gradually disappear with age, until a man is left with few or none. But it seems to me that enthusiasm, if real, should not die out, and leave cynicism behind, but rather should become stronger and more purposeful with age. The young children coming straight out of the heaven-world have brought with them a feeling of unity, and this feeling should be strengthened in them, so that it may last on through life. Anger and irritability belong only to the separated self, and they drive away the feeling of unity.
Self-control also involves calmness, courage and steadiness. Whatever difficulties the teacher may have either at home or at school, he must learn to face them bravely and cheerfully, not only that he may avoid worry for himself, but also that he may set a good example to his boys, and so help them to become strong and brave. Difficulties are much increased by worrying over them, and by imagining them before they happen--doing what Mrs. Besant once called, "crossing bridges before we come to them." Unless the teacher is cheerful and courageous with his own difficulties, he will not be able to help the boys to meet _their_ difficulties bravely. Most obstacles grow small before a contented mind, and boys who bring this to their work will find their studies much easier than if they came to them discontented and worried. Courage and steadiness lead to self-reliance, and one who is self-reliant can always be depended on to do his duty, even under difficult circumstances.
Self-control as to the mind also means concentration on each piece of work as it has to be done. My Master says about the mind: "You must not let it wander. Whatever you are doing, fix your thought upon it, that it may be perfectly done." Much time is lost in school because the boys do not pay sufficient attention to their work; and unless the teacher is himself paying full attention to it the minds of the boys are sure to wander. Prayer and meditation are intended to teach control of the mind, but these are practised only once or twice a day. Unless the mind is controlled all day long by paying attention to everything we do, as the Master directs, we shall never gain real power over our minds, so that they may be perfect instruments.
One of the most difficult parts of a teacher's duty is to turn quickly from one subject to another, as the boys come to him with their different questions and troubles. His mind must be so fully under his control that he can pay complete attention to the particular anxiety of each boy, taking up one after the other with the same care and interest, and without any impatience. If he does not pay this full attention he is sure to make mistakes in the advice which he gives, or to be unjust in his decisions, and out of such mistakes very serious troubles may arise.