In many cases the communication may be made most delicately and most
successfully in writing. The more delicately you touch the feelings of
your pupils, the more tender these feelings will become. Many a teacher
hardens and stupefies the moral sense of his pupils by the harsh and
rough exposures to which he drags out the private feelings of the heart.
A man may easily produce such a state of feeling in his schoolroom, that
to address even the gentlest reproof to any individual, in the hearing
of the next, would be a most severe punishment; and, on the other hand,
he may so destroy that sensitiveness that his vociferated reproaches
will be as unheeded as the idle wind.
If, now, the teacher has taken the course recommended in this
chapter--if he has, by his general influence in the school, done all in
his power to bring the majority of his pupils to the side of order and
discipline--if he has then studied, attentively and impartially, the
characters of those who can not thus be led--if he has endeavored to
make them his friends, and to acquire, by every means, a personal
influence over them--if, finally, when they do wrong, he goes plainly,
but in a gentle and delicate manner, to them, and lays before them the
whole case--if he has done all this, he has gone as far as moral
influence will carry him. My opinion is, that this course, faithfully
and judiciously pursued, will, in almost all instances, succeed; but it
will not in all; and where it fails, there must be other, and more
vigorous and decided measures.
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