THE CALIFORNIA TEACHER AND HOME JOURNAL. JANUARY, 1884. NO. 6. Official Organ of the Department of Public Instruction. SAN FRANCISCO: The editor disclaims responsibility for the opinions of contributors, whether their articles are signed or anony mous. 259920 Why don't you visit the schools in which your children spend so many hours a day for so many months a year? Do you personally know the teacher-the man or the womanwhose daily teaching, whose hourly living, whose constant example are doing even more than your own to mold the temper, to form the habits and to shape the character of your boy or girl? Do you ever think how few hours a day you have your boys and girls in sight? Do you realize how much more you care for the capacity of the trainer who breaks your pointer or setter, the jockey who breaks your colt or the stableman who keeps him, than for the physical, mental and moral fitness of the teacher who trains your sons and daughters, and who trains them. vastly more by what he is than by all he says or does before them? In the midst of your.jealous, and wholly proper, scrutiny into the security of bonded warehouses and banks and safes and vaults, and the integrity of your banker, do you ever give a careful thought to the capacity and reliability of those who have in charge treasures far more precious-mind-stock and soul-stock-worth a thousand-fold more than all the bonded warehouses ever contained or the longest piers ever supported? I beg your pardon if I seem to catechize too closely or presume to question too freely. It is only for the good of those with whom I have gladly chosen to spend thirty years of delightful labor, and who should be infinitely more precious to you than to me. Can you estimate the value of well-trained minds, of noble souls, of pure hearts? Can you put a price upon that gleam of quick intelligence which flashes from the clear eye of your own brave boy, your own beautiful girl, as you call them fondly to you in those rare moments which "more important business" suffers you to give your children? You question closely, you demand the amplest references, to know with certainty the perfect fitness of the man who would become your bookkeeper. You require abundant testimonials, the "best of references," and sometimes even exact bonds. Does he deal with what concerns you so much more deeply than the minds and hearts of your children? Why set the worth of your book-keeper so far above that of your childkeeper? And, mothers, how is it with you? Do you enter on the list of calls which must be made the school-room in which your darling daughter lives almost as much as in her home? Do you take pains to acquaint yourself with the teacher? Do you reckon it a duty to establish a cordial understanding with her as early as possible-to learn how much you can help her better to understand the mind and the heart of your girl or your boy? Do you realize that to help her thus AFTER-DINNER TALK WITH FATHERS AND MOTHERS. 355 is to give a ten-fold benefit to your child, and through her to yourself? Please think of and care for all this. And reflect, too, that for you to call on the teacher would count but one call and would cost you but little time or trouble. And please consider that for the teacher to call on each of you at your houses, so widely scattered, would compel her to make half a hundred calls and consume her leisure for a whole term. You surely cannot think it fair to expect her to make fifty calls rather than be willing to make one yourself. But this matter of calling is not all. How many times have you asked your daughter's teacher to lunch or dine with you? Have you heartily welcomed her into the friendship and freedom of your own family home, and offered her such cheer and comfort as might brighten, for a few brief hours, her lonely longing for the dear old home she has left? Your daughter may teach. How would you like the mothers of her pupils to treat her? Think of all this, please; and if you find that in this particular you have left undone those things you ought to have done, resolve that the next quarter-nay, this quarter and all coming ones-shall see you prompt, faithful, regular and persevering in personal attention to this sadly-neglected part of every mother's duty to the teacher of her child. One point more. Do you sometimes find yourself worried and vexed almost to death" with the restlessness and mischievousness of your boys and girls at home? Does it ever seem as if their noise and confusion would spoil all your peace and worry the very life out of you? If so, pray think that the teacher has fifty, sixty, seventy or even eighty just such restless, mischievous, tempestuous and irrepressible youngsters to deal with, every soul of them claiming some care every hour, needing watching every minute. And if you can't or don't always keep your own temper at home, with but four or five, can you wonder that the overjaded teacher sometimes speaks hastily, scolds sharply or even strikes unjustly? I don't want to defend any teacher's loss of temper, nor |