The routinizing of school work can go too far. The requirement has been imposed within the memory of this adult generation that pupils sit in their seats through long recitation periods with their hands behind their backs. Marching in lockstep from class to class has sometimes been required. The list could be lengthened indefinitely. The trouble in most of these cases is that the teacher loses sight of the educational motive of all discipline and begins to think of so-called order as an end in itself.
Even after a situation has been as carefully organized as is humanly possible, there are sure to come social emergencies. These furnish occasions for a type of discipline which is valuable not so much for the effect which it produces on the present situation as for its effect on the future. Furthermore, there is often very little expectation that the future will bring an exact repetition of the particular situation which has just passed. The discipline is therefore general in its type rather than specifically applicable to the present.
Viewed as a general preparation for the future, the social condemnation or approval of an act is often very important. For example, a boy breaks something through sheer carelessness. Shall the teacher pass the act without comment, or shall the act be made an occasion for punishment? Some people are disposed to determine what kind of treatment shall be given in terms of the value of the object broken. This is evidently to make of the specific act a specific issue. It is better, if it can be done, to detach attention from the specific act and note the general consequences of carelessness. Educationally, the accident furnishes an opportunity to warn, not against breaking that particular object again, but against being careless. If the lesson is well taught, it will tend to keep the boy from rushing about in the future without regard for his surroundings, whatever those surroundings may be.
Commendation, like blame, is useless except as it sets up in the pupil’s mind true canons of judgment. To praise a child for a particular act, merely concentrating attention on that act, is to neglect the opportunity of cultivating a general virtue.
So complicated are the issues touched on in the last few paragraphs that many teachers feel that the safest course is to avoid praise and blame as far as possible and allow natural consequences to open the eyes of children to the virtue or error of their ways. Social approbation and social condemnation are thought of as something highly artificial and to be avoided. Experience does not justify this view. Social life has its rewards and its punishments, and the child will miss a large part of his education if he does not come to understand the importance to him of social values.