The two
hundred minutes a day are a vital factor in the life of the child and
must be regarded as highly valuable. The teacher, therefore, who
subtracts this time from the child's life is assuming a responsibility
not to be lightly esteemed. She takes from him his most valuable
possession and one which she can never return, try as she may. Worst of
all, she purloins this element of time clandestinely, albeit
seductively, in the guise of friendship. The child does not know that he
is the victim of unfair treatment until it is too late to set up any
defense. He is made to think that that is the natural and, therefore,
only way of school, and that he must take things as they come if he is
to prove himself a good soldier. So he musters what heroism he can and
tries to smile while the teacher despoils him of the minutes he might
better be employing in play, in reading, or in work.
=The teacher's complacency.=--This would seem a severe indictment if it
were incapable of proof, but having been proved by incontrovertible
evidence its severity cannot be mitigated. We can only grieve that the
facts are as they are and ardently hope for a speedy change. The chief
obstacle in the way of improvement is the complacency of the teacher.
Habits tend to persist, and if she has contracted the habit of much
speaking, she thinks her volubility should be accounted a virtue and
wonders that the children do not applaud the bromidic platitudes which
have been uttered in the same form and in the same tones a hundred
times.
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