Practical school discipline

by Ray Coppock Beery

In no field of activity is the principle of suggestion so powerful and useful as in the teachers profession. It will be well to deviate from the subject of suggestion to note that imitation plays a vital part in suggestion in the school-room. It must be remembered that imitation follows suggestion; it is a resultant of suggestion. The teacher who embodies every qualification that makes a true teacher will suggest the traits of his character to his pupils. They will as a natural sequence imitate them. Every trait of a noble character is important and deserves to be emulated by the child; the characteristics that make successful men and women in every activity of life are worthy of imitation. The greatest trait of character is morality, and it is the most vital of the teacher’s requisites. To the average pupil this trait in the teacher’s character will appeal. If the pupil’s moral life is near perfection, the teacher’s life will only aid in helping the pupil to maintain his standard. This may be termed an unconscious co-operation of the teacher with his pupil. Building a strong character is not an easy matter for the average pupil. He sees in his teacher those requisites which he wishes to incorporate in his own life; he must overcome his own weakness; when he does so, he is allowing the teacher’s worthy characteristics to suggest to his the possibility of incarnating them into his own life. This is neither co-operation or imitation merely, but suggestion. It is also true of the law of suggestion that if the teacher exhibits unworthy traits of character, these too will act as suggestions to the pupils. It need not be argued further that the teacher’s life is a powerful incentive to imitation through suggestion.

Suggestion as an agency for effective volition does not stop with those elements that build character. It reaches into the child’s life at every opening. His habits of work, of study, of play, and every physical, mental and spiritual process are largely influenced by the principle of suggestion. In fact, his first notions always come from some suggestion. His first ideas of play, of work, and of study come as ideas from some one else or from some outside source. The notion in itself, at first, is abstract, but becomes concrete and a part of the child when he allows the suggestion of the notion to cause him to act so as to make the notion a reality and a part of his life.

One of the most powerful agencies for suggestion is the school community itself. The principal of a school had the pleasure of transferring his pupils to a new building, erected at a cost of more than sixty thousand dollars. He resolutely set his mind to the task of preserving the property from defacement.

In the old building a succession of teachers and pupils had allowed to grow up the custom of grossly injuring both the structure proper and the equipment as well. Both in public and in private he judiciously drew the picture of the contrast between the appearances of the two buildings. At the proper moment on each occasion he asked the individual or the school as a whole, as the case might be, if the preservation of the new building in its perfect condition was desirable: “Do you want to keep the new school house fresh and in perfect order as long as possible?”

The pupils in a large majority, of course, declared that that was their desire. The public sentiment soon became so strong that it entirely suppressed the few who otherwise would have continued the policy of defacing school property. There arose a community will among the pupils that made itself felt and held in easy control the unruly members of the school.

The teacher who fails to make use of this agency for suggesting courses of action to his pupils is neglecting a powerful force in the management of his school. Suggestions are rapidly transferred from pupil to pupil; a proper choice of the occasion is necessary; a careful balancing of diverse elements in the school group must be achieved; a variety of appeals to meet differences in dispositions is required; a knowledge of these guiding facts can not but make the plan of community suggestion a feasible and in fact a necessary instrument in school management.

“The best disciplined school that the writer has ever seen was under the charge of a principal who had worked for six years to make the collective will of the pupil-body give its sanctions to good order, courteous behavior, and aggressive effort. Interest in school work and co-operation with the teachers had become distinct fashions. So powerful was the force thus generated and directed that the superintendent not infrequently transferred to this school pupils who had got beyond control in other schools of the city.”[^[15]]

Since suggestion is by nature a stimulus to action it may be well to urge that all attempts to use suggestion as a disciplinary measure should be moulded by some specific plan of action for the pupil.

If the teacher attempts to direct merely the attitudes or feelings of the pupil he will often fail in the use of suggestion. Every person whether child or adult has far more interest in activity than in inaction. Even rest is always considered a preparation for further activity.

Activity may be of two kinds: work and play. Suggestion may be used in both. Madame Montessori says: “The first dawning of real discipline comes through work.”[^[16]] The fascination of a piece of work even in the kindergarten will fix attention, inspire persistence and in countless ways actually direct the impulses of the child. Discipline through work is the most ready and appropriate agency for the moral training of all, both young and old.