This is an extraordinarily difficult situation. Mr. Thomberg’s success
in dealing with this unusual case depended first of all on the fact that
his knowledge of pedagogy enabled him to analyze the situation truly. He
saw that the bad order was not caused by any one pupil, but was the
result of a social tradition for which many persons, in and out of the
school, were responsible. All the pupils upheld the disorder; therefore
all the pupils were dealt with in a group.
In the second place he was independent, as a really first-class teacher
can be. He set the standard of behavior, and required his students to
come up to it or give up school altogether. Had the school declined to
take the social responsibility he asked of them, he would really have
packed his trunk and left. He was well prepared for his work, and was
greatly in earnest about it, nor did he propose to do what he considered
an undignified thing in probing for evil.
His personality was strong enough to set up a new standard for
imitation, and to supplant the old one of inefficiency and mischief. The
problem of order was for a time swallowed up in the greater one of
securing real mental development in his pupils, and when it did show
itself he treated it as a matter to be dealt with socially by the
pupils. This seemed to put upon them a responsibility they had been used
to having the teacher assume unaided, and they rose to the new honors
imposed upon them. Mr. Thomberg utilized imitation in setting up a new
regime, by requiring united action of his pupils. In this way he met a
psychological situation with psychological weapons.
(11) _Snobbishness._ Snobbishness is a very hard thing to meet wisely,
and a sin which is too easily learned by imitation.