p. 377 | The Sabbath School

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1880

The Sabbath School.

ATTENTION A HABIT.

ATTENTION is an act of the will. We can all be attentive, or at least more attentive than we are, if we wish to be so. The degree of attention we pay, therefore, depends on our own disposition to attend. This shows us that the matter, after all, is very largely one of discipline, and that, all other things being equal, that teacher will win most attention who has most personal influence, and who is looked up to with the greatest respect. Is there any one of you whom the children are accustomed to treat with disrespect? Do any of you find your commands disobeyed, and your look of reproof disregarded? Ask yourself whether your own behavior is uniform and dignified; whether you ever give commands without seeing that they are obeyed; whether you waste your words or your influence in an injudicious way; whether there is anything in your conduct that reveals to the children a want of punctuality, or of earnestness, or of steadiness on your part. There can be no thorough attention unless you accustom yourself to have perfect order, and therefore every step you can take to secure better discipline, and to gain more influence over the minds of the children, will indirectly tell upon the degree of attention you will obtain in teaching.

Nor forget that attention is a habit, and subject to the same laws which regulate all other habits. Every time we listen languidly to an address, or read a book carelessly, the habit of inattention becomes strengthened, and it becomes less and less possible for us ever to become clear thinkers or steady reasoners. If a boy is allowed to be unpunctual, to miscall words without being compelled to go back and correct himself, to read how he likes, to answer when he likes, to sit down when he is told to stand, to repeat tasks inaccurately, and to give a half-hearted attention to the minor rules of the school, of course, he will give half-hearted attention to the teaching. It would be wonderful if he did not.

Try to feel with the children, to understand their natures, and to discern what is going on in their minds. Do not half the faults of our teaching arise from a want of thorough acquaintance with the little ones, and a want of true insight into their mental and moral nature? Does not this lie at the root of much of the inattention of which we complain? The truth is, that a good teacher ought not only to possess that sympathy which makes him feel for a child, and love him, and try to do him good; but the sympathy which feels with him, which makes due allowance for his imperfectly developed nature, and which thoroughly comprehends his character and wants. He is always the wisest teacher who can combine the man's intellect and the child's heart; who contrives to keep fresh in his memory the knowledge of what he once was, and what a child's wants, and a child's likes and dislikes, and a child's infirmities really are. A really earnest and loving Christian teacher will be very careful not to set up a man's standard to measure a child by; he will always ask himself, when preparing or giving a lesson, not, "What will it seem proper for me to say?" but, "What is the thing best adapted for these children to hear?" He will cultivate an intimate acquaintance with childhood, and all its little whims and follies. He will ask God daily to enlarge his own heart, and to make him sympathize with every form of childish weakness, except sin; and he will lay to heart the secret meaning of the solemn warning which our Saviour addressed to his disciples: "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones." I think that such a teacher will not want any one to give him rules for sustaining the interest of his class, because he will have got hold of the principle which will enable him to devise rules for himself. Such a teacher will be sure to win attention, and when he has won it, will be likely to keep it.—S. S. Hand-Book.