Real Attention, and Its Importance
How to get attention, and how to hold it, are matters in the art of teaching which are to be studied wisely. Attention is something more than looking straight at the person or the thing needing attention: staring at vacancy gives all the fixity of gaze that the best attention calls for; but staring is by no means the giving of attention. Attention is something more than hearing: one may hear the clatter of the steam-cars in which he rides, the din and rattle of the city streets along which he walks, or the rush and roar of the storm outside his house as he sits at home on a wintry night, and yet give no attention to that which he hears. His attention may be wholly on the book he is reading, the business matter he is considering, or the picture he is examining, while the discordant sounds about him are heard without being heeded. If you think that attention is easily secured, or that it is commonly given by listeners of ordinary intelligence, test the matter, some time, in your home circle, at family prayers, when you are reading a lesson. I have tried it this way scores of times, and almost always with the same result. When all were seated, with the understanding that this was a religious service, and that the Bible reading was worthy of the attention of all, I have read a verse or two from the Bible, and then have suddenly asked a question as to the particular statements of the verses just read, in order to see how many of my hearers had given their attention to the reading. Not one time in ten have I ever obtained a correct answer from even my more intelligent and thoughtful hearers, on such a test as this. And this is only one of many proofs that close attention is not easy to secure, nor is it commonly secured, in ordinary religious services. Yet without having attention, the teaching process must still wait for its very beginning. Holding the attention is as essential to a teacher’s work as keeping his balance is to a walker on a tight rope. In either case the loss is fatal to success. This being so, it is evident that a vital question to the teacher, as he begins his class work, and at every moment as he goes on in it, is not, Am I saying what needs to be said, and saying it so that these scholars ought to take it in? but, Am I holding the attention of my scholars? Failure at this point is, to say the least, a complete suspension of the teacher’s work, and it ought to be so recognized by all.—Selected.