ention. What I now condemn
is the practice, of which all teachers are in danger, of devoting such a
disproportionate and unreasonable degree of attention to them as to
encroach upon their duties to others. The school, the whole school, is
your field, the elevation _of the mass_ in knowledge and virtue, and no
individual instance, either of dullness or precocity, should draw you
away from its steady pursuit.

(6.) The teacher should guard against unnecessarily imbibing those
faulty mental habits to which his station and employment expose him.
Accustomed to command, and to hold intercourse with minds which are
immature and feeble compared with our own, we gradually acquire habits
that the rough collisions and the friction of active life prevent from
gathering around other men. Narrow-minded prejudices and prepossessions
are imbibed through the facility with which, in our own little
community, we adopt and maintain opinions. A too strong confidence in
our own views on every subject almost inevitably comes from never
hearing our opinions contradicted or called in question, and we express
those opinions in a tone of authority, and even sometimes of arrogance,
which we acquire in the school-room, for there, when we speak, nobody
can reply.

These peculiarities show themselves first, and, in fact, most commonly,
in the school-room; and the opinions thus formed very often relate to
the studies and management of the school. One has a peculiar mode of
teaching spelling, which is successful almost entirely through the magic
influence of his interest in it, and he thinks no other mode of teaching
this branch is even tolerable. Another must have all his pupils write on
the angular system, or the anti-angular system, and he enters with all
the zeal into a controversy on the subject, as if the destiny of the
whole rising generation depended upon its decision. Tell him that all
that is of any consequence in any handwriting is that it should be
legible, rapid, and uniform, and that, for the rest, it would be better
that every human being should write a different hand, and he looks upon
you with astonishment, wondering that you can not see the vital
importance of the question whether the vertex of an _o_ should, be
pointed or round. So in every thing. He has _his way_ in every minute
particular--a way from which he can not deviate, and to which he wishes
every one else to conform.

This set, formal mannerism is entirely inconsistent w