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21. TARDINESS.--When only a few scholars in a school are tardy, it may
be their fault; but if a great many are so, it is the fault of the
teacher or of the school. If a school is prosperous, and the children
are going on well and happily in their studies, they will like their
work in it; but we all come reluctantly to work which we are conscious
we are not successfully performing.
There may be two boys in a school, both good boys; one, may be going on
well in his classes, while the other, from the concurrence of some
accidental train of circumstances, may be behindhand in his work, or
wrongly classed, or so situated in other respects that his school duties
perplex and harass him day by day. Now how different will be the
feelings of these two boys in respect to coming to school. The one will
be eager and prompt to reach his place and commence his duties, while
the other will love much better to loiter in idleness and liberty in the
open air. Nor is he, under the circumstances of the case, to blame for
this preference. There is no one, old or young, who likes or can like to
do what he himself and all around him think that he does not do well. It
is true the teacher can not rely wholly on the interest which his
scholars take in their studies to make them punctual at school; but if
he finds among them any very general disposition to be tardy, he ought
to seek for the fault mainly in himself and not in them.
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