Anger and impatience grow out of irritability. It is as necessary for
the boy to understand his teacher as for the teacher to understand the
boy, and hasty temper is an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of
such understanding. "The teacher is angry to-day," "The teacher is
irritable to-day," "The teacher is short-tempered to-day," are phrases
too often on the lips of boys, and they produce a feeling of discomfort
in the class-room that makes harmony and ease impossible. Boys learn to
watch their teachers, and to guard themselves against their moods, and
so distrust replaces confidence. The value of the teacher depends upon
his power of inspiring confidence, and he loses this when he gives way
to irritability. This is particularly important with young children,
for they are eager to learn and eager to love, and only those who have
no business to be teachers would dare to meet such eagerness by anger.
It is of course true that younger boys are in many ways more difficult
to teach than elder ones; for they have not yet learned how to make
efforts, nor how to control and guide them when made. The teacher has
therefore to help them much more than the elder boys who have learned
largely to help themselves. The chief difficulty is to make the best use
of the young energies by finding them continual and interesting
employment; if the young enthusiasms are checked harshly instead of
being guided sympathetically they will soon die out, and the boy will
become dull and discontented.

I have read that youth is full of enthusiasm and ideals, and that these
gradually disappear with age, until a man is left with few or none. But
it seems to me that enthusiasm, if real, should not die out, and leave
cynicism behind, but rather should become stronger and more purposeful
with age. The young children coming straight out of the heaven-world
have brought with them a feeling of unity, and this feeling should be
strengthened in them, so that it may last on through life. Anger and