Practical school discipline

by Ray Coppock Beery

Consistency

While good results can be obtained by the use of co-operation, yet it can be made effective only by practicing consistency. In the application of the principle of co-operation in discipline, the teacher needs to be consistent. The entire school should be treated as a unit. Particular pupils should not be singled out as recipients of the teacher’s companionship. Such a procedure would defeat the effectiveness of the principle. Many pupils are so amiable that they are more closely associated with the teacher than more diffident and bashful pupils. Such pupils will naturally secure for themselves a goodly share of the privileges given by the teacher—not because they are selfish, but because they are more forward. Thus it will happen that the diffident pupil will get few or no privileges from the teacher. This will work great evil in a school. Soon some one will accuse the teacher of being partial when in reality the teacher is not at fault, since the forward pupil really causes the teacher to seem partial. Teachers must guard against this condition, for often parents misunderstand the situation and likewise accuse the teacher of being partial. When this happens his influence is undermined. A careful teacher will explain to his pupils that the confident pupil gets more from the teacher than the diffident and bashful pupil. It is his duty to insist that the diffident pupil help himself to all privileges. The teacher needs often to aid bashful pupils to get privileges; he should in many instances seek to reassure such pupils. This will lead them to love and cherish him. No teacher has not had pupils who invited him into their homes, desired to walk with him, took him riding, or brought him various little favors. The sociable teacher will accept with good grace all these kindnesses that pupils extend to him. But here it happens that many pupils will not offer their teachers such favors. This would be well if other pupils did not infer that the teacher is partial. He should make it plain that he loves his pupils all alike, though some treat him with more consideration than others.

A common fault with teachers who indulge their pupils is that sometimes they meet with adversity in the form of an irate parent or some incompatible person and because of their ruffled spirits they spend a day in the school-room without showing even friendship to the pupils. The next day their feelings are placated and, somehow, in trying to make up lost time they make unwise use of indulgence. Such a lack of day by day consistency will surely destroy the effectiveness of companionship.

A principal of a well-known high school had accustomed himself to be very friendly and amiable outside of the school, but when he was in the school-room his manner was antagonistic. He seemed unfriendly and not at all courteous to his pupils. This contrast of mannerism or temperament had become so marked that many of the pupils wondered why he did not conduct himself in the school-room as he did on the street. Most of his pupils disliked him but admitted that they could admire him, were he to conduct himself as amiably in the school-room as he did outside. This principal failed to practice a consistency in his life which is so necessary to make and hold friends.