There are other
pressing and exhausting pursuits, which wear away the spirit by the
ceaseless care which they impose, or perplex and bewilder the intellect
by the multiplicity and intricacy of their details; but the business of
teaching, by a pre-eminence not very enviable, stands, almost by common
consent, at the head of the catalogue.
I have already alluded to this subject in the preceding chapter, and
probably the 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 a considerable 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.
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