"I will allow you, then, some time to-day, fifteen minutes to arrange
your desks, and I hope you will try to keep them in good order
hereafter. A few days hence I shall examine them. If any of you wish for
assistance or advice from me in putting them in order, I shall be happy
to render it."
By such a plan, which will occupy but little more time than the
irritating and useless scolding which I supposed in the other case, how
much more will be accomplished. Such an address would of itself,
probably, be the means of putting in order, and keeping in order, at
least one half of the desks in the room, and following up the plan in
the same manner and in the same spirit with which it was begun would
secure the rest.
I repeat it, therefore, make it a principle in all cases to aim as much
as possible at the correction of those faults which are likely to be
general by _general measures_. You avoid by this means a vast amount of
irritation and impatience, both on your own part and on the part of your
scholars, and you produce twenty times the useful effect.
3. The next principle which occurs to me as deserving the teacher's
attention in the outset of his course is this:
Interest your scholars in doing something themselves to elevate the
moral character of the school, so as to secure a _decided majority who
will, of their own accord, co-operate with you._
Let your pupils understand, not by any formal speech which you make to
that effect, but by the manner in which, from time to time, you
incidentally allude to the subject, that you consider the school, when
you commence it, as _at par_, so to speak--that is, on a level with
other schools, and that your various plans for improving and amending it
are not to be considered in the light of finding fault, and punishing
transgressions, and controlling evil propensities, so as just to keep
things in a tolerable state, but as efforts to improve and carry
forward the institution to a still higher state of excellence.
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