The Evolution of "Dodd" Part 2

For some cause or other Miss Stone and "Dodd" did not get on well together as their acquaintance progressed. The boy was impulsive, saucy, rude, and generally outrageous, in more ways than can be told or even dreamed of by any one but a primary teacher who has become familiar with the species.

Miss Stone had no natural tact as a teacher, no gift of G.o.d in this direction, no intuition, which is worth more than all precepts and maxims combined. She knew how to work by rule, as so many teachers do, but beyond this she had little ability. This to her credit, however: she did, ultimately, labor hard with the boy, and tried her best to do something with him, or for him, or by him, but all to little purpose.

It seemed to be "Dodd's" special mission to knock in the head the pet theories of this hand-made school-ma'am. She had him up to read on the afternoon of the first day of his attendance at school. Being but six years of age, and having just entered school, it was proper, according to the regulations, that he should enter the Chart Cla.s.s. So to the Chart Cla.s.s he went.

The word for the cla.s.s that day was "girl," and the lesson proceeded after the usual manner of those who hold to this method of teaching children to read.

A little girl was placed upon the platform (the prettiest little girl in the cla.s.s, to be sure), and the pupils were asked to tell what they saw. They all answered in concert, "a girl;" and it is to be hoped that this answer, thus given, was duly evolved from their inner consciousness by a method fully in harmony with the principles of thought-development, as laid down in the books, and by Miss Stone's preceptors. A picture girl was then displayed upon a card-board which hung against the wall. There were many of these card-boards in the room, all made by a book-concern that had some faith and a good deal of money invested in this particular way of teaching reading--all of which, I am sure, is well enough, but the fact, probably, ought to be mentioned just here, as it is.

The pupils were asked if the girl on the platform was the same as the one on the card-board, and there was a unanimous opinion that they were not identical. The a.n.a.lysis of differences was not pursued to any great length, but enough questions were asked the children, by Miss Stone, to develop in them the thought that "structurally and functionally the two objects, designated by the common term, were not the same!" When this diagnosis had been thoroughly mastered by the children, a third member was added for their serious consideration, Miss Stone having duly explained to the cla.s.s that "there is still another way to make us think girl."

"You know," she said, "we always think girl when we see 'Lollie'"--the little girl on the platform--"and we always think girl when we see the picture; but now you all watch me, and I will show you one other way in which we may always be made to think girl."

Then, with much flourish of chalk, Miss Stone printed "GIRL" upon the board, and proceeded to elucidate, as follows:

"Now, this that I have written upon the board is not 'Lollie,' for she is on the platform yet; nor is it the picture, for that is on the card-board, but it is the word 'girl,' and whenever I see it, it makes me think girl. Now, 'Lollie' is the real girl, on the card-board is the picture girl, and on the blackboard is the word girl. Now, who thinks he can take the pointer and point to the kind of girl I ask for?"

Several little hands went up, but "Dodd's" was not among them. Miss Stone noticed this and was "riled" a little, for she had tried doubly hard to do well, just because this tow-head was in the cla.s.s, and now to have the little scamp repudiate it all was too bad.

She called on one and another of the children to point, now to the real girl, now to the picture girl, now to the word girl, and all went very nicely, till finally she asked "Dodd" to take the pointer and see what he could do. But the boy made no motion to obey. Gently she urged him to try, but he hung his head and would not budge.

"Why don't you want to try, 'Dodd?'" asked the lady, bending down over the child.

O fatal question! Quick as thought the lad replied, as he raised his head:

"Coz, I've knowed that always!"

It is not the intention of this chronicle to pa.s.s judgment upon any system of teaching children to read. This record does not concern itself with one system nor another. But in the evolution of "Dodd,"

Miss Stone used the word-method of the charts, as before stated, and using it just as she did, she failed to reach the boy as she hoped to, and her failure was very unfortunate for the child. She was aware of this, but she had not strength enough, in her own right, to change the result.

So it was that day after day went by, and the antagonism between teacher and pupil grew.

The boy presently discovered that he could annoy Miss Stone mightily, and he lost no opportunity to do what he could in this direction. It was contrary to the creed taught this good woman to inflict corporal punishment upon any child, and though "Dodd" aggravated her almost to desperation, and was malicious in his persecutions, yet she kept her hands off him. Once or twice she tried some slight punishment, such as making him sit on the platform at her feet, or stand with his face in the corner, but these light afflictions the boy counted as joyous rather than grievous, and did as he chose more than ever. He slyly unfastened one of Miss Stone's shoestrings one day, when seated at her feet for penalty, and laughed when she tripped in it as she got up; and somehow or other, he would always put the whole room in a turmoil whenever placed with his face to the wall.

"Dodd" learned to read quite rapidly, however, having mastered his letters before he went to school, and having spelled a good many words on signs and in newspapers. Before the end of the third week he had read his first reader through, one way or another, though he was still in the Chart Cla.s.s, and having once been through the book, it lost many, if not most, of its charms for him thereafter.

But if his reader was so soon crippled for him, what shall be said of the work of the Chart Cla.s.s, over which he went again and again, always in substantially the same way?

It may be said, and truthfully, that there were some pupils in the cla.s.s who, even after going over and over the same lesson, for days and days, still did not master it, and so the cla.s.s was not ready to move on; but it does not follow that therefore "Dodd" was not ready to move on. This did follow, however, according to Miss Stone's teaching, and according to the system adopted by mult.i.tudes of teachers East, West, North, and South.

I am well aware that there are teachers, plenty of them, whose spirits will rebel against the above insinuation, so, a word with you, ladies and gentlemen.

The system used by Miss Stone may have worked well enough in some other hands, but it should be remembered that it is not a system that can educate our children. Nor is it a system--any set of rules and formularies--that can make our schools, any more than it is forms and ceremonies that make our churches. These may all be well enough in their proper places, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in them, per se. It is the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees in the one case, and the dry bones of pedagogy in the other,

The evil arises, in the schools as in the churches, from believing and acting as if there were something in the system itself.

If human nature were a fixed quant.i.ty, if any two children were alike, or anywhere nearly alike, if a certain act done for a child always brought forth the same result, then it might be possible to form an absolute system of pedagogy, as, with fixed elements, there is formed the science of chemistry. But the quick atoms of spirit that manifest their affinities under the eye of that alchemist, the teacher, are far more subtle than the elements that go into the crucible in any other of Nature's laboratories.

A chemist will distill for you the odor of a blown rose, or catch and hold captive the breath of the morning meadow, and do it always just the same, and ever with like results. But there is no art by which anything a.n.a.logous can be wrought in human life. Here a new element comes in that entirely changes the economy of nature in this regard.

The individuality of every human soul is this new factor, and because of it, of its infinite variability--because no two atoms that are cast into the crucible of life are ever the same, or can be wrought into character by the same means--because of this, no fixed rules can ever be laid down for evolving a definite result, in the realm of soul, by never-varying means.

And this is where Miss Stone was at fault. She had put her faith in a system, a mill through which all children should be run, and in pa.s.sing through which each child should receive the same treatment, and from which they should all emerge, stamped with the seal of the inst.i.tution, "uniformity."

This was the prime idea that lay at the foundation of Miss Stone's system of training--to make children uniform. This very thing that G.o.d and Nature have set themselves against--no two faces, or forms, or statures; no two minds, or hearts, or souls being alike, as designed by the Creator, and as fas.h.i.+oned by Nature's hand--to make all these alike was the aim of the system under which "Dodd" began to be evolved, and with which he began to clash at once.

The boy was much brighter than most of the cla.s.s in which he was placed. The peculiarity of his own nature, and his surroundings before entering school, made him a subject for some special notice, something more than the "regular thing" prescribed by the rules. Yet this he did not get, and by so much as he did not, by so much he failed to receive his proper due at this period of his life.

And this is a fault in any system, or in any teacher who works exclusively by any card other than his or her own good sense, as applied to each individual case.

It was not so much the means that Miss Stone tried upon "Dodd" that were at fault, as it was the way in which she applied them and the end she strove to reach by their use. And for you, my dear, who are walking over the same road as the one just reported as traversed by Miss Stone, look the way over and see how it is with you in these matters. And do not content yourself, either, by merely saying, "But what are we going to do about it?" Bless your dear life, that is the very thing that is set for you to find out, and as you hope for success here and a reward hereafter, don't give up till you have answered the question.

Neither can any one but yourself answer this question. The experience of others may be of some help to you, but the problem--and you have a new problem every time you have a new pupil--is only to be solved by yourself. Look over the history of the Chart Cla.s.s, over whose silly mumblings this boy was dragged till disgust took the place of expectancy, then think of like cases that you have known, and ask yourself what you are going to do about it.

It is true that cla.s.ses are large, that rooms are full, that some pupils are severely dull, and that it is a very hard thing to know what it is best to do; but these things, all of them, do not excuse you from doing your best, and from making that best, in large measure, meet the absolute needs of the child. "Hic labor, hoc opus est."

And for you, who send your six-year-olds to school with a single book, and grumble because you have to buy even so much of an outfit, what are you going to do about it when your boy drains all the life out of the little volume, in a couple of weeks or a month? He knows the stories by heart, and after that says them over, day by day, because he must, and not in the least because he cares to.

What are you going to do about this? It is largely your business. You cannot s.h.i.+rk it and say that you send the boy to school, and it is the teacher's business to take care of him. That will not answer the question. Look the facts in the face, and then do as well by your boy as you do by your hogs! When they get cloyed on corn, then you change their feed, and so keep them growing, even if it does cost twice as much to make the change; and yet, the chances are that when your boy is tired to death of the old, old stories in his reader, tales worn threadbare, as they are drawled over and over in his hearing by the dullards of his cla.s.s, till his soul is sick of them, even then you force him to go again and again over the hated pages, till he will resort to rank rebellion to be rid of them!

And what are you going to do about it?

Miss Stone knew none of these things. They were of little interest to her, and she bothered her head but little about them. But they were of interest to "Dodd" Weaver. In the evolution of this young hopeful they played an important part. They were hindrances to the boy at the very outset of his course in the public schools. They begot in him habits and dislikes which it took years to efface, and from which it is doubtful if he ever did fully recover. There are mult.i.tudes in like case, and what are we going to do about it?

CHAPTER V.

The severity of the duties, pastoral and paternal, that fell to the lot of Elder Weaver, wore rapidly upon the const.i.tution of that worthy gentleman, and when "Dodd" was nine years old his father found it necessary to retire from the pulpit, for a year at least, and, as is usual in such cases, he went to that refuge for f.a.gged out ministers of all denominations, the old homestead of his wife's parents.

From this rustic domicile he had led the youngest daughter, a buxom bride, ten years before; to it he now returned with her and with seven small children besides. An ambitious young man and a healthy young woman, a decade before, they came back to the threshold from which they had gone out, he, broken in spirit and as poor in purse as in purpose; she, worn and faded, yet trying hard to seem cheerful as she came within the sunlight of the old home again.

The old people lengthened the cords and strengthened the stakes of their simple home, and made the Elder and his wife, and the seven children ("seven devils," an irreverent sister once called them in a burst of indignation at the state of affairs) as comfortable as possible. To be sure grandpa and grandma Stebbins were old, and it was long since there had been children in the house, but they had enough and to spare in crib and pantry, and they had lived sufficiently long in this world to accept the inevitable without a murmur.

But for all of that, the children were a source of a good deal of annoyance to the old people, especially until they were brought somewhat under subjection by the faithful hand of the old gentleman, who found that he should have to stand up for his own in the premises or submit to the unendurable.

The first real climax occurred on the second day of the quartering of the family thus, and "Dodd" was the boy who brought matters to a focus.

The month was October, and down in the yard, a few feet from the bee-hives, just beyond the shadow of the weeping-willow that stood near the well, and along the row of gooseberry bushes under which the hens were wont to gather and gossip--standing on one leg and making their toilets meanwhile--there stood a barrel, out of whose bung-hole protruded a black bottle turned bottom side up. The barrel was filled with the best cider made that season, a special run from apples that had been sorted out, and from which every worm-hole and specked place had been cut by the thrifty hand of Grandma Stebbins. This was for the family vinegar for the year, and the cask was thus left in the sun duly to ripen its contents.

"Dodd" had not been in the yard five minutes before his quick eye caught sight of this, and his eager imagination transformed it into a horse in a twinkling. He did this the more easily, too, because it was raised from the ground a foot or more, being supported by blocks of wood which in the mind's eye of the boy did well enough for legs, while a spicket, protruding from one end, below, made a head for the animal, which, though small, was available for bridling purposes.

It was the work of but a minute to jerk a string from his pocket, bridle the beast, and mount him for a ride.

"Dodd" had but fairly started on this escapade, however, when his grandfather appeared in the yard and at once saw the danger that threatened his carefully garnered cider. He quietly approached his little grandson, and, telling him that he could not permit him to play with the barrel, began gently to lift him to the ground.

But against this the boy rebelled. He clutched his little legs about the cask and held to his seat with all his might, and when at last he was forced to yield, he took the black bottle with him as a trophy.