The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-10-25

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| pupil should be dragged along at a dis
advantage to himself and an injury to
others, but should proceed al as slow a
pace as nature has set for him.
| Second: Ethical discipline. In this
| America is far ahead of the world As
| a recent French critic of our schools
| has said, in America the child is treat
ed as a free personality. The teacher
is the friend rather than the enemy, of
| the child. Advice and encouragement
are largely superseding the more bru-
| tai forms of punishment The school is
modification of the home and in alli-
| ance with it, rather than a cherries
| barrack built on the military model
| The roots of this recognition of the
| child as a free person lie deep in our
national thought and life. Fifty years
| ago you would have sought for 1T in
| vain For neither the political liberty
| which Jefferson attributed to the abb
stract citizen nor the metaphysical
| freedom which Edwards aseribed to
the abstract sinner, We're sufficiently
vital conceptions to mould society and
modify the practice of the schools. Not
until Garrison and Mrs Stowe, and
Whittier and Lowell and Phillips and
Sumner and Lincoln had proclaimed
the emancipation of the loWliest and
the nation had ratified it in the blood OF
her noblest sons; not until Charming
and Parker and Emerson and Bushnell
and Beecher and Brooks, had affirmed
the infinite worth of the individual, and
the fatherhood of God, did the conoep-
ton of the free personality even OF the
child become the controlling principle
of the school discipline that it happily
is to-day The ethical discipline Of our
schools is the rich, ripe fruit of those
principles of civil and religious liberty
which a generation or more ago state
and church together learned.
Discipline must proceed from the
point Of view of the child, and recos-
milton of his rights and interests OH
erwise it is slavsh, not free. But 1t
must be the permanent personality OF
the child; not his passing Whim. 1t
should be also, if possible the child as
he is in the home, the child as his pa
rents desire him to be; not the pitiful
fraction of the child which turns up at
school in the morning, and shows him
self in study and mischief. The teach
err must get at that deeper self of the
real child, as his home has made him,
and as his parents wish him to be, and
as he half unconsciOusly desires to be-
come. Discipline should proceed on the
assumption, not always visibly justi-
fled to be sure, that the children on the
whole mean to do right, although the
often find it difficult in carrying out
their plans. The appeal should always
be to the strengthening of this good
purpose, rather than merely to the sup
preston of bad acts. A recent writer
on the psychology of suggestion has
ventured the assertion that in abnor-
NAL, or hypnotic conditions, direct sug-
gestion is most effective, but that in the
normal waking state the most effectual
suggestion is indirect. Certainly the
wise teacher will get better results by
keeping the minds of pupils occupied
with interests, motives and feelings
which point to good order and right
conduct, than by commanding such
conduct outright. The school which Is
governed directly by the sheer authori-
ty of the teacher imposing his arbitrary
commands on the intinidated pupils is (
an anomaly in a Christian civilization
and a democratic state. Such a school
in training its members to be either .
bringing towards or obstreperous reb-
els.
Third: The personal influence Of the (
teacher The writings of Tarde, Bald
win and Royce have brought promi-
nently to our attention the initiative
character of man According to these
writer's the child Is all the time either
his superiors or showing off |
to his interiors, learning from his eld-
ers, or practicing what he has learned
from them on younger children, pets or
in everything he does The
play of the child, the ambition of the
youth, the work of the man, owe all
that is good in them to admiration,
conscious or sub-conscious. BY the pa
tience and firmness, by kindness and
by scorn of what Is evil
and dedication to what is good the
teacher should aim to be the personal
deal of character and conduct, which
The children shall admire ard initiate.
There is no higher or hoiPr office than
hat Of the teacher who thus becomes
he ideal and inspiration of young, ar
lent, sensitive souls. One who per-
'orms this office faithfully becomes
hereby in a profounder sense than &C.
7lesiasticism has yet dreamed of,
priest or priestess of the living God
For it is through the human that we
orm our conception of the divine AS
following Plato, tells us, BE
holding in many souls the traits of the
Irvine beauty. and separating in each
oul that which is divine from the
amt which it has contracted In the
world, the lover ascends to the highest ,
beauty, the love and knowledge of the ,
ivinity by steps on this ladder Of Gre
ted souls.''
The teacher who thus becomes the in /,
arnation and representative to the b,
hildren of the divine traits of cheer ,
illness and kindness, and patience,
nd devotion to duty, the uncompro- !
lising foe of all falsehood, and laziness
nd meanness, and the strenuous help
+ in the struggle for the true the beau :
ful and the good will to be sure have
o special report to make out no rank
4 this department to hand in, no i'm 6
lediate results to show off The schol- =
rs will be scarce conscious at the time :
the debt they and at little pains to :,
xpress it If they are. Yet on the tab
It's of their slowly maturing hearts
n the walls of a society made nobler r
trough their presence in 1T, the names | q