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Image provided by: South Dakota State Historical Society – State Archives
Newspaper Page Text
at the same time with the utmost firmness, a pupils should be made to feel that the hours for study are for study. As soon as they can understand them, the teacher should show them the reason for his requirements. He should make them feel that in obeying him, they are obeying reason, and not arbitrary will. He should make them feel that he requires what he requires because he must, because he would be false to the trust reposed in him by the community unless he did. Teachers should never permit themselves to resort to "Laziness" or "Stupidity" to account for inattention as long as any other explana tion is possible. Sometimes a pupil is inattentive because he does not see the practical value of the work, he is set to doing sometimes be cause he does not understand certain fundamental ideas which being in darkness, necessarily darken the entire subject sometimes also, sad to relate- because a teacher, by sarcastic and satirical remarks, has excited the boy's dislike. "When a teacher indulges in saracasm at the expense of his pupils, they are very likely to slight their work as much as they can, even when they know they are in jurying them selves, because the teacher wants them to do it. Sometimes pupils are indifferent because the facts of the subject have no natural interest for them, and have never been connected with anything that is interesting. No observer of children has failed to notice that things devoid of interest may become interesting by being connected with something that is interesting. "When children start to school, they are already interested in nature, in the bugs, butterflies, grasshoppers, birds, trees, plants and flowers with which they are familiar. They are also interested in such stories as come within the range of their conprehension—stories about animals, fairy stories, stories of adventure and the like. The thing for the teacher is to work these interests for all they are worth, to gradually develop the interests in nature into an interest in science, and the interest in stories into an interest in literatnre and history, and also to connect these interests with the other work of the school, in such a way that it may be done in the most economic manner possible. To this end, the number, reading, writing, spelling, draw ing and language work should be connected with the study of nature 13.