Sunday-School Success. Wells Amos Russel
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something in concert, find a verse, or look at something. For this purpose maps, diagrams, pictures, all material objects connected with the lesson, are invaluable. Scholars yield their wills to yours through their hands or their eyes more readily than through their ears.
And none of this must be done with manifest purpose. Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird. Woe to the teacher who shouts the word "Attention!" He will get nothing but the echo of the word from stony cliffs of indifference.
And finally, woe to the teacher who relies at bottom on any skill of his own to draw young hearts to his teaching; whose main dependence is anything but the attention-winning power of that incarnate Sympathy and Love who promised to draw all men—and children—to himself.
Chapter IX
Keeping Attention
We are likely to think that the attention of children is hard to get; but the very opposite is true. The minds of children, like their tongues, are hung in the middle. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn them in any direction. No teacher need spend much force on his introduction. Merely appear and begin to talk—that is enough. A fresh voice and presence and a new theme will draw all eyes and all hearts. If grown people are your audience, the situation is somewhat reversed. They are the heavy weights—hard to move, but just as hard to stop. An attention-forcing prelude will hold them attentive to a good half-hour of platitudes.
The teacher of children, however, flattered by the eager listening given at the start, is likely to relax his efforts and deem the crown of the children's interest already attained. But alas! soon here a little tot wriggles, and there another whispers, and yonder a third giggles, and now a fourth turns around to see what's up, and the teacher might as well be talking to a school of young fishes.
Demosthenes once said that if whatever a man got he took care to keep, he was grateful to the gods; but if he spent it, he spent with it all his gratitude. How many teachers are so prodigal of the attention given at the beginning that toward the close, dismayed at the listlessness, they forget ungratefully their initial capital of bright eyes and eager ears! There are many ways of squandering this attention capital. We may waste it on those long exhortations so very valuable (when omitted), on side issues, on quibbles. We may choke it with dullness, drive it off with scolding.
The only way always to keep attention is always to be expecting to lose it. Be prompt to note signs of its vanishing in drooping eyelids, wandering gaze, jerking in the seat, uncertain answers. The teacher whose ingenuity can always recall stray-away minds need fear few other recitation problems. How to do it?
The best provocative of attention is variety. The skilled teacher brings as many suits of manner to the class as the bulkiest clown wears costumes to the circus. Before one suit becomes wearisome he strips it off, and presto! a fresh teacher before the wide-eyed children. If he has been sitting, he rises; if erect, he leans eagerly forward. His utterance becomes rapid from slow, impetuous from drawling. He darts from generalizations into personalities. If motionless before, he begins to gesticulate. This is acting? No. It is only doing what the facile children themselves do on their kaleidoscopic playground, where no one goes to sleep.
Again, a teacher must learn to emphasize his important points, not by enlarging on them, but by reverting to them. Slight impression on a wall by holding a battering-ram against it! Nor can you impress a child's mind by holding a fact up against it. It is intervals which make blows possible.
So the child will attend to two things or three better than to one. Concentrate on one matter, burning-glass fashion, but only while the sun of interest is shining. With the first mist of indifference the wise teacher will drop the burning-glass. More teachers fail from having too few points to make than from having too many.
But to retain attention, you need less to multiply points than points of view. A teacher can usually fix the attention of his class upon one subject while using in succession six different methods of treatment. Passing swiftly from questioning to formulating principles and illustrating them, from Bible quotations to personal experiences and exhortations, he will hold his audience delighted, though a single method would have wearied it. Note how a skilled cook presents the Thanksgiving turkey on different days. It is a lordly brown biped, a plateful of nice slices, a salad, a pot-pie, hash. Teachers will be able to hold the youngsters' attention as well as cooks, if they learn thus to put things in different lights.
Furthermore, let it be remembered that no one was ever dignified with a child, and won its attention. And some teachers are too staid to be useful. Startle into inattention by a smart slap of the hands together, sharp extension of the finger, abrupt turns upon the floor. Preachers use such artifices when pews grow somnolent, and why not teachers? Never forget that the slightest inanimate object wins attention better than the greatest animation of the teacher. A pencil-tablet will rivet all eyes. A finger laid upon a map is cynosure for the most fidgety scholars. If you have a picture which can be brought into connection with the lesson, it is a pedagogical sin to omit it. A chart is as necessary to the Sabbath-school teacher as to the sailor, albeit the teacher's is best home-made. I used to hesitate to take time to use such helps; but I found that the poorest picture did better work than my most vivid word-paintings, and that my clearest statement was inefficient beside the clumsiest diagram.
The beginner in this fine art of attention-holding is likely to derive the word "attention" thus: from teneo, "I hold," ad, "on to"; attention, "I hold on to" him. He tries to hold attention, therefore, by main strength. He grapples with his audience as a bulldog would. His nerves are tense. His voice is imperative. His eye glares. He is rapid, impetuous, strategic. This is power, he thinks, and this is skill; but his audience astonishes him by going to sleep. Abashed, he tries milder means of holding on to them. He begins to buttonhole his audience. He uses soft and flattering tones. He coaxes. He wheedles. He jokes. He chucks them under the chin. And then his audience gets up and goes out.
The real meaning of the word "attention" contains an invaluable hint for all who are trying to win others by speaking or teaching. It is teneo, "I hold, I stretch," ad, "toward"; and it is not by any means applied to the speaker, but to the listener. To get your audience, whether of little folk or big folk, to stretch out toward the same goal of truth that you are seeking is the true art of winning attention.
This understanding of the matter implies that the teacher also is really in pursuit of truth himself. The failure of much teaching is because it cries "Go on" instead of "Come on." The speaker that you follow with most difficulty is the speaker who has the air of "knowing it all," while the speaker who succeeds best in holding your attention gives you the impression of a chase.
There's the game before you—that elusive truth slipping away through the thicket yonder. The huntsman's eye flashes. He whistles up the dogs. We all leap to the saddles. Off we go, over upland and vale, swamp and rock, fence and ditch, our leader far in the van, pointing here, waving there, and hallooing the huntsman on. And when the game is tracked down, and our leader stands above it, dripping knife in hand, our veins tingle with his, and we shout with delight at our triumph.
This is the first principle in the art of winning attention. The speaker must give the impression of a truth-seeker, if he would win others to seek truth with him. What Edward Everett Hale once said of a sermon applies to this. Every Sunday-school lesson should start out to prove something. It should have some goal. It should intend something. Intention must precede attention.
But though there must be this element of pleasing uncertainty and suspense, we all have difficulty in attending to a speaker who does not appear to have himself well in hand or to be quite sure what he is about. Have you not caught yourselves, teachers, talking as if in your sleep? Have you not sometimes waked up at the end of a sentence, a question, or a harangue, and wondered what you had been talking about? Did you suppose that any one else knew? Did you expect to hold on to them when you had no grasp of the subject? Can listeners pay attention to any one who does not pay attention to himself?
Teachers make the mistake of dividing attention between the class, to watch that they hear; and themselves, to see how they are getting along; and the little attention left goes to the theme. Not unnaturally, the attention of the class is divided in the same way—much to themselves, less to the teacher, and least of