in the preceding chapter; and
probably the greater majority of actual teachers will admit the truth of
the view there presented. Some will however, doubtless say, that they do
not find the business of teaching so perplexing and exhausting an
employment. They take things calmly. They do one thing at a time, and
that without useless solicitude and anxiety. So that teaching, with
them, though it has, indeed, its solicitudes and cares, as every other
responsible employment must necessarily have, is, after all, a calm and
quiet pursuit, which they follow from month to month, and from year to
year, without any extraordinary agitations, or any unusual burdens of
anxiety and care.

There are indeed such cases, but they are exceptions; and unquestionably
an immense majority, especially of those who are beginners in the work,
find it such as I have described. I think it need not be so; or rather,
I think the evil may be avoided to _a very great degree_. In this
chapter I shall endeavor to show how order may be produced out of that
almost inextricable mass of confusion, into which so many teachers, on
commencing their labors, find themselves plunged.

The objects then, to be aimed at in the general arrangements of schools,
are two-fold.

1. That the teacher may be left uninterrupted, to attend to one thing at
a time.

2. That the individual scholars may have constant employment, and such
an amount and such kinds of study, as shall be suited to the
circumstances and capacities of each.

I shall examine each in their order.

1. The following are the principal things which, in a vast number of
schools, are all the time pressing upon the teacher: or rather, they are
the things which must, every where, press upon the teacher, except so
far as, by the skill of his arrangements, he contrives to remove them.

1. Giving leave to whisper or to leave seats.

2. Mending pens.

3. Answering questions in regard to studies.

4. Hearing recitations.

5. Watching the behavior of the scholars.

6. Administering reproof and punishment for offences as they occur.

A pretty large number of objects of attention and care, one would say,
to be pressing upon the mind of the teacher at one and the same
time,--and _all the time_, too! Hundreds and hundreds of teachers in
every part of our country, there is no doubt, have all these, crowding
upon them from morning to night, with no cessation, except perhaps some
accidental and momentary resp