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.