The principle of suggestion will be given the first consideration, not because it is more important than any of the fundamental principle in discipline, but because it is so obviously and vitally correlated with all others. At the very outset it is a truth that cannot be overlooked that the teacher’s very life is a silent suggestive stimulus. In fact all the other principles would lose their effectiveness to a great extent were not the principle of suggestion interwoven in their operations. For example, the teacher has occasion to use the principle of approval. In it the principle of suggestion is involved. The teacher approves of a pupil’s behavior, immediately there is suggested to the pupil the idea of future good behavior for the sake of approval, and furthermore because it means better class-standing. The operation of the principle can even effect other than direct results. A pupil or a number of pupils, who were indifferent regarding this special point of good behavior, indeed, who may have been misbehaving at the time the other pupil was conducting himself so as to elicit approval from his teacher, will be affected by the approval. The principle of suggestion leads them to infer that they too can gain approbation for good behavior. Thus, the principle operates in channels where the teacher may not have directly applied the principle.
The principle of suggestion can be defined or explained as the process by which associated ideas follow one another into consciousness. Sometimes it is explained simply as the association of ideas. It can be termed an intrusion into the mind of an idea; met with more or less opposition by the person; accepted uncritically at last; and realized unreflectively, almost automatically. Suggestion is always a stimulus to action. The proposed action may be external or internal, a movement or an attitude. A suggestion can never refer to a mere idea. If a mere notion is aroused in the mind it is not suggestion; it becomes such if an impulse to act is aroused. This impulse may be suppressed or it may ripen into action. One idea in the mind or consciousness recalls another and so on, a chain of ideas may pass through consciousness, one suggesting the other. Quite often the last idea is very unlike the first in content, and yet if the suggestion is strong action results. “A supply of ideas of the various movements that are possible, left in the memory by experiences of their involuntary performance, is thus the first prerequisite of the voluntary life.”[[13]]
Henry R. Pattengill, the great Michigan educator and editor, recalls that when a small boy in his log-cabin forest home, his father brought an ax into the house one cold winter morning. As the father laid the ax on the floor beside the fireplace, he said to the children, “Don’t touch that ax or your fingers will stick fast.” Then he left the room. He had unconsciously applied the principle of suggestion. No sooner was the door closed than Henry revolved this question in his mind, “Why will my fingers stick to the ax?” This suggested that he try for himself and see. The trial was made and the results were as the father had intimated, but the boy did not learn the true reason until years afterward.
Another illustration is in point. One of the best rural schools in a Western State had employed a new teacher. He was one of that class of teachers who believe that rules were necessary to cover every known misdemeanor that might happen during the school-year. After opening his school on the first day, he read his list of rules. The pupils had always been well-behaved and well-governed, but not unlike other children were buoyant with abundant life. Among his many rules was one that forbade any pupil to climb upon the woodhouse roof. The punishment for disobeying the rule was a whipping. He skillfully, but in the wrong place, applied the principle of suggestion. Many of the pupils had attended the school for six years and had never thought of climbing upon the woodhouse roof. The new teacher had given the suggestion. Great was his surprise when he walked into the back yard at recess and found every boy and several of the bolder girls on the woodshed roof. They had acted in accordance with the principle of suggestion and it was “up to him” to make good. His predestined punishment was next in order to meet this result of a never-failing operation of a fundamental principle. The most lamentable part of the affair was that the whipping was an impossibility with so large a number of pupils. The teacher was compelled to break one of his rules, which true to a fundamental principle was a suggestion to his pupils that he would break the others as well. It is needless to say that his discipline was of the poorest kind. He failed.
[13]. Tracy, Psychology of Childhood, p. 95. Heath.
Rules
How many young teachers feel that it is very necessary to have a code of rules! They make themselves believe that it will display authority to begin their first school by reading a list of rules. No worse mistake could be made. By reading a list of rules they are showing a distrust in the boys and girls and thereby laying a foundation for future trouble. It is better to say nothing about order on the first day of school than to parade authority by setting forth rules. Authority and firmness can be far better indicated by beginning earnest work at once on the first day without any reference to rules. “Authority may compel because of its might, and often it must compel because of its responsibility; but the type of order that is most effective is that in which the fact of coercion is least in evidence. In the city and state, as in the school, the condition that is sought is a “fashion” of obeying the law and respecting the rights of others; and while the forces that can coerce must be made plainly evident to those who can be appealed to in no other way, the wise executive keeps them from constantly and irritatingly impinging upon public attention.”[[14]]
Do not emphasize the idea of authority in the pupils’ minds and your authority will not be forever put to the test. It is a wrong use of the principle of suggestion to exercise authority in a way that is still far too common among teachers. The average boy with good red blood in his veins tends to take the attitude of authority on the part of a teacher as a kind of challenge. The teacher who is constantly flaunting his authority will most assuredly have occasion to use it. The less authority shown the less need for it, is a safe rule to follow. It is bad policy to make rules for the government of a school, and then attach punishments of various kinds and degrees for the infringement of the rules. In governing a school, it is time enough to deal with a misdemeanor after it is committed. Often a certain rule against a certain misdemeanor encourages that act, thus operating in accordance with the principle of suggestion. To apply unvarying rules to varying conditions is a prolific source of error and confusion. No rule can be made to fit a case before it arises.
Suggestion is certainly nothing abnormal and exceptional. It does not lead us away from our ordinary life. Child life is a rich field into which suggestion may enter in a hundred different forms. The life of the family, education, law, business, politics, art, public life and religion are all dependent upon suggestion. Everywhere, at all times individuals are stimulated to actions by outside suggestion, that they would not perform, if they were to act upon their own impulses or reasons. Experience shows that different individuals have different degrees of suggestive power. Attendant circumstances have a great influence upon the power of suggestion. Individual characteristics differ widely as to the effect of suggestion.