Now such a dialogue as this, if the teacher speaks in a good-humored, though decided manner, would be universally well received in any school. Whenever strictness of discipline is unpopular, it is rendered so simply by the ill-humored and ill-judged means by which it is attempted to be introduced. But all children will love strict discipline if it is pleasantly, though firmly maintained. It is a great, though very prevalent mistake, to imagine that boys and girls like a lax and inefficient government, and dislike the pressure of steady control. What they dislike is sour looks and irritating language, and they therefore very naturally dislike every thing introduced or sustained by means of them. If, however, exactness and precision in all the operations of a class and of the school are introduced and enforced in the proper manner, that is, by a firm, but mild and good-humored authority, scholars will universally be pleased with them. They like to see the uniform appearance, the straight line, the simultaneous movement. They like to feel the operation of system, and to realize, while they are at the school-room, that they form a community, governed by fixed and steady laws, firmly but kindly administered. On the other hand, laxity of discipline, and the disorder which will result from it, will only lead the pupils to contemn their teacher and to hate their school.
By introducing and maintaining such a discipline as I have described, great facilities will be secured for examining the classes. For example, to take a case different from the one before described, let us suppose that a class have been performing a number of examples in Addition. They come together to the recitation, and, under one mode of managing classes, the teacher is immediately beset by a number of the pupils with excuses. One had no slate; another was absent when the lesson was assigned; a third performed the work, but it got rubbed out, and a fourth did not know what was to be done. The teacher stops to hear all these, and to talk about them, fretting himself, and fretting the delinquents by his impatient remarks. The rest of the class are waiting, and, having nothing good to do, the temptation is almost irresistible to do something bad. One boy is drawing pictures on his slate to make his neighbors laugh, another is whispering, and two more are at play. The disorder continues while the teacher goes round examining slate after slate, his whole attention being engrossed by each individual, as the pupils come to him successively, while the rest are left to themselves, interrupted only by an occasional harsh, or even angry, but utterly useless rebuke from him.
But, under another mode of managing classes and schools, a very different result would be produced.
A boy approaches the teacher to render an excuse; the teacher replies, addressing himself, however, to the whole class, "I shall give all an opportunity to offer their excuses presently. No one must come till he is called."
The class then regularly take their places in the recitation seats, the prepared and unprepared together. The following commands are given and obeyed promptly. They are spoken pleasantly, but still in the tone of command.
"The class may rise.
"All those that are not fully prepared with this lesson may sit."
A number sit; and others, doubtful whether they are prepared or not, or thinking that there is something peculiar in their cases, which they wish to state, raise their hands, or make any other signal which is customary to indicate a wish to speak. Such a signal ought always to be agreed upon, and understood in school.
The teacher shakes his head, saying, "I will hear you presently. If there is, on any account whatever, any doubt whether you are prepared, you must sit.
"Those that are standing may read their answers to No. 1. Unit figure?"