Note 171 — XVI. PESTALOZZI. 1746-1827. (continued 2)

Having watched the “teaching” of pupil-teachers, I find that some of them (I may say many) never address more than one child at a time, and never attempt to gain the attention of more than a single child. So, by a very simple calculation, we can get at the maximum time each child is “under instruction.” If the pupil-teacher has but three-quarters of the pupils for whom the Department supposes him “sufficient,” each child cannot be under instruction more than two minutes in the hour. The rest of the time the children must sit quiet, or be cuffed if they do not. What is called “simultaneous” teaching in, say, reading, consists in the pupil-teacher reading from the book, and as he pronounces each word, the children shout it after him; but no one except the pupil-teacher knows the place in the book.

But perhaps the dangers from employing boys and girls to teach and govern children are greater morally than intellectually. Whether he report on it or not, the Inspector has less influence on the moral training than the youngest pupil-teacher. Channing has well said: “A child compelled for six hours each day to see the countenance and hear the voice of an unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher is placed in a school of vice.” Those who have never taught day after day, week after week, month after month, little know what demands school-work makes on the temper and the sense of justice. The harshest tyrants are usually those who are raised but a little way above those whom they have to control; and when I think of the pupil-teacher with his forty pupils to keep in order, I heartily pity both him and them. Is there not too much reason to fear lest in many cases the school should prove for both what Channing has well described as “a school of vice”? (R. H. Q. in Spectator, 1st March, 1890.)