The most obvious ways that the school has of securing a good “memory of will” are those by which it enforces the well-known school virtues,—regularity, punctuality, silence, and industry. It is to the acquisition of these habits that the government, or discipline, of the school is chiefly directed. Dr. Wm. T. Harris has pointed out in detail the significance of this acquisition in the development of character.[16] It is interesting to note how the teacher’s personal authority is reinforced by social pressure both within and without the school. The Superintendent of a city of thirteen thousand inhabitants reports that but 1462 cases of tardiness occurred during a whole school year. The pupils of each room are given a brief holiday, from time to time, provided nobody in that room is tardy during the stated period. This brings an immense social pressure within the school to bear in securing prompt attendance. Happening to visit the Superintendent’s office in a city of some sixty thousand people, the writer observed the following scene: A young girl of perhaps fourteen years of age, accompanied by her father, who was a foreigner, unable to speak English fluently, entered the office. The girl began at once to make excuses for her brother who was a somewhat confirmed truant, and to beg that he might be excused and reinstated. To objections stated by the Superintendent, the father with much emotion replied, “Oh, Mr. Superintendent, won’t you give my boy another trial?” The boy had been ‘tried again’ so many times that father and daughter were referred to the judge, an officer having jurisdiction over such cases. The penalty for persistent truancy was attendance at a state reformatory school. This is a case in which the authority of the teacher in securing regularity of attendance was reinforced by the community outside the school. The constant pressure of school and community tend to establish habits of will memory that serve as an excellent foundation for later moral training.
[16] Third Year Book of the National Herbart Society.
[162.] Before training can have within itself the power to make up deficiencies in obedience, there must be awakened in the pupil a vivid feeling that the approval of his teacher is a valuable possession, which he would be loath to lose. This the teacher will bring about in proportion to the effective and welcome share he has in the life of his pupil. He must give before he can receive. Furthermore, if in his opinion the pupil needs to be turned in a different direction, he should not underestimate the difficulty of the task before him; he must proceed slowly.
The initial steps in character training are admirably described by Niemeyer in the following words: “The teacher’s first duty is to study the positively good elements in the native character of the being to be educated. To preserve these, to strengthen them, to transform them into virtue, and to fortify them against every danger, should be his incessant endeavor. They should constitute the keynote, as it were, of his whole method of education. He should look for the good even in the spoilt and vicious pupil, and should try to bring it to light, no matter how many weeds may have sprung up alongside of it. For all subsequent moral education must start from this point.”
Although this passage belongs in strictness to the discussion on moral education, it is plainly entitled to a place here also. An appeal to the pupil’s better nature promotes ready compliance on his part, especially when it is accompanied by those little courtesies that go with cultivated social intercourse. It is most effective with those who possess at the same time the strongest memory of will, which it will not be difficult for the supporting activity of training to strengthen still further.
[163.] On the other hand, the task of training grows arduous in proportion as the pupil fails to bear in mind his acts of will. But even here there is a difference between capricious unruliness and downright flightiness and levity.
Cases may arise where the impetuosity of the pupil challenges the teacher to a kind of combat. Rather than accept such a challenge, he will usually find it sufficient at first to reprove calmly, to look on quietly, to wait until fatigue sets in. The embarrassing situations into which such a pupil gets himself will furnish occasions for making him feel ashamed, and now it remains to be seen whether or not he can be made to adopt a more equable behavior. Here and there training may in this way even make good the lack of government; scarcely, however, for large numbers, after unruliness has once begotten vicious habits.
Combats of any kind between teacher and pupil are to be deplored. A good teacher is always strong enough in his mental superiority, his authority, and his influence as an executive to avoid it. Such a contest shows that the pupil has become self-conscious in a bad sense. He sets his personality over against that of the teacher. If the teacher is so weak as to meet him on his own ground, the pupil has a good chance for a bad victory—bad for himself, the teacher, and the school. It should be a constant aim of the teacher to supplant introspection, whether pertaining to feelings or to wilfulness, with motor activity. The pupil should always be doing something that will promote not only his own best good, but that of the school also. Authority should rarely so assert itself as to incite or to permit a personal contest with the pupil. It should be a strong but almost unseen presupposition of all school affairs. Here as elsewhere idleness is the mother of mischief. Lively action is sure to banish morbid introspection.
[164.] Thoughtlessness in the narrower sense, which manifests itself in forgetfulness, in negligence, in want of steadiness, and in so-called youthful escapades, is a defect in native capacity, and does not admit of a radical cure, imperceptible as it may become with age, by reason of repeated warnings and diminishing susceptibility to external impressions. All the more imperative is it in such cases to support by training, in order that the evil consequences of this character weakness may be prevented, or at least reduced to a minimum. For as soon as a thoughtlessly impulsive boy comes to take pleasure in his conduct, he will set himself against order and industry, and will strive to discover the means which promise to secure for him a life without restrictions. This danger must be forestalled by training. At the beginning, and before an evil will has had time to develop, training must take the place of will. It must bring home to the pupil that of which he had lost sight. To his fluctuating and roving impulses it must lend its own external firmness and uniformity, which cannot be created at once, if at all, within the pupil.
Here is the proper place for the injunction, not to argue with children. “I cannot be too emphatic and outspoken in my warning against too much arguing,” says Caroline Rudolphi; and Schwarz, who quotes this passage, adds, “Once is too often.” Niemeyer, after speaking of the excesses of abnormal liveliness and characterizing thoughtlessness, which, he says, “causes inattention, a disregard for consequences, and hasty actions,” continues thus: “All these are not faults of the heart; still they are faults that need to be amended, and about the only sure educational method for amending them is to cultivate right habits. Positive punishments wisely chosen may indeed be employed as auxiliary means, but only when there are evidences of a lack of good intention, or when these faults have become ominously prominent.” He further advises teachers to insist on this, that pupils rectify on the spot what can be rectified, since vague recollections prove barren of good results.