Drill and mechanical discipline.

wind up children and never let them go." We have not to think of a scholar merely as material put into our hands to mould and manipulate, but rather as a responsible human being, whom we are so to help, that as soon as possible he may regulate his own life, and be a law unto himself. Keep clearly in view your own responsibilities, but the less display you make of your disciplinary apparatus, and the more freedom you can leave to the pupil, the better. Reduce as far as possible the number of formal rules; and remember that the perfection of government is to effect the maximum result with the minimum of visible machinery.

And yet you will gain much in a school by cultivating the habit of order and exact obedience about little things. There are right and beautiful ways and there are clumsy and confused ways-of sitting down at a desk, of moving from one place to another, of handling and opening books, of cleaning slates, of giving out pens and paper, of entering and leaving school. Petty as each of these acts is separately, they are important collectively, and the best teachers habitually reduce all such movements to drill, and require them to be done simultaneously, and with finished and mechanical exactness. Much of this drill is conducted in some good schools by signs only, not merely because it is easy so to economize noise and voice-power, but also because it makes the habit of mechanical obedience easier. And children once accustomed to such a régime always like it-nay even delight in it. I have seen many schools, both small and large, in which all the little movements from class to class were conducted with military precision; in which even so little a thing as the passing of books from hand to hand, the gathering up of pens, or the taking of places at the dinner table, of hats or bonnets from their numbered

places in the hall was done with a rhythmical beauty, sometimes to musical accompaniment, which not only added to the picturesqueness of the school life, and to the enjoyment of the scholars, but also contributed much to their moral training and to their sense of the beauty of obedience. And I have no doubt that it is a wise thing for a teacher to devise a short code of rules for the exact and simultaneous performance of all the minor acts and movements of school life, and to drill his scholars into habitual attention to them.

ness.

Does it seem to some of you that there is a little Limits to inconsistency between the last two counsels I have venits usefultured to give you the one, that you should not waste power by a needless multiplication of rules, the other, that you should turn the little ones into machines, even in regard to such matters as sitting and standing at a desk, or opening a book? There is indeed, if you will look at it, no inconsistency between these two views of your duty. There is a sphere of our life in which it is desirable to cultivate independence and freedom; and there is another in which it is essential that we should learn to part with that independence for the sake of attaining some end which is desirable for others as well as for ourselves. In the development of individual character and intelligence, the more room we can leave for spontaneous action the better; but when we are members of a community, the healthy corporate life of that community requires of us an abnegation of self. The soldier in an army must quâ that army forego his personal volition, and become part of a great machine, which is working towards some greater end than could possibly be achieved, if he retained complete autonomy. And every one among us is called, as citizen, as member of a council or municipality, or public company, to work with others 7

F. L.

towards ends which require unity of action, and which are incompatible with the assertion of our individual rights. It is then for this class of duties that school should in some measure prepare every child. He is in an artificial community which has a life and needs of its own, and in so far as he contributes to make up this school life, he may be well content to suppress himself and to become a machine. There are times in life for asserting our individuality, and there are times for effacing it. And a good school should provide means whereby it may be seen when and how we may do both.

The corThis sense of corporate life and responsibility so porate life of a school. essential to the making of a good citizen may be further cultivated by providing, as far as possible, that the school shall have something in it for the scholar to be proud of; some function or ritual in which he shall be specially interested, and in which he can sustain an honourable part. I do not like a needless multiplication of unmeaning offices in a school, but every little function, such as that of curator of the books, or the copies, or the apparatus of a class is in its way useful, if it makes the elder scholar feel that he can be helpful to the younger, or that he can contribute something to the beauty or to the repute of the school as a whole. It is here, as with the games in which the victory is not for an individual, but for the side, the company or the school to which the player belongs; the very act of putting forth effort on behalf of the community tends powerfully to check selfishness and egöism, and to make the scholar conscious that the community has interests into which for a time, it is both a duty and a privilege for him completely to merge his own.

Difference

between

Some there may be who as they hear me now are saying to themselves, This may be true in the case of large

School Discipline not that of Home.

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discipline

schools, but mine is a small sheltered establishment, school where we take great pains with the formation of indi- and that vidual character, and where we seek to make the dis- of home. cipline more like that of a family. Now let us try to clear our minds of illusions. It is not well to make believe that a school, even a small school, is a family; because it is not one. Your relations to your pupils can never be those of a parent, and any pretence that they are has an unreality about it, which very soon becomes evident both to them and to yourself. The fact is that a child is sent to school to obtain a kind of discipline which is impossible in a family, and to learn many things which he could not learn at home. The moral basis of family life is affection. The moral basis of school life, as of that of all large communities is justice. It is not difficult in a well-ordered home to learn courtesy, kindness, the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice, because those virtues have to be exercised towards those whom we know and love. But in a school we are called on to respect the rights and consult the feelings of people whom we do not love, and whom we scarcely know. And this is a great part of education. It can only be attained when the corporate spirit is rightly called forth, when the equal claims of others are fully recognized, and when opportunities are offered for losing the sense of personal claims in those of comradeship, and for evincing pride in the perfection and prosperity of the school as an institution.

nature to

And in governing, it is of the last importance that we Child should well consider the nature of the being whom we be studied want to control, and not demand of him an impossible before standard of virtue. A little child has not your serious- insisting ness, nor your sense of duty, nor your capacity for sitting still. He would be a very curious, almost an unpleasant

on rules.

Fill the time with work.

phænomenon if he had. On the contrary, nature makes him physically restless, very curious, mobile, and inquisitive, and exceedingly deficient in reverence. And these qualities should be taken for granted and allowed for, not set down as faults. Provision should be made for giving lawful vent to his personal activity, and if such provision be not made, and he is called on to maintain a confined posture for an unreasonable time, his restlessness and disobedience are the teacher's fault, not his. Let us take for granted that in every fault of a child there is an element of good, 'would men observingly distil it out,' that every act of mischief he is guilty of, is only an example of perfectly healthy and legitimate activity, accidentally misdirected. And above all let us take care not to measure his fault by the inconvenience which it causes us, but rather by considering the motive and the causes of it. Some of the little wrong acts of a child which bring the most annoyance to a teacher and try his temper most are precisely those which from the point of view of a moralist, are least blameworthy-talking at unreasonable times, destructiveness, untidiness, noise. These things have to be checked of course. But do not let us confuse the conscience of a child by exaggerating their seriousness, or by treating offences against school rules, as if they were breaches of the moral order of the universe. Consider what are the natural instincts of a child, and how unformed his moral standard is, and you will see that relatively to him offences of this kind are not crimes, though relatively to you and to the school they may be serious annoyances.

After all the great safeguard for good and happy discipline in a school is to fill the time with work. If a child is to have an interval of leisure, let it be in the play-room or ground, where relaxation is permissible,