Mr. Bradley was principal for two years of the Newcastle school. He
revealed his characteristics as a teacher so fully that we find in him
an example of the type not to be recommended and yet one that is very
instructive for students of school discipline.
In stature he was slightly below medium height. He came from rural
ancestry and was fairly well equipped as to physique. He had black hair
and eyes, somewhat mobile features and a wandering gaze. His movements
could hardly be called quick, but they were prompt and without distinct
mannerisms.
He had a most gracious manner when meeting people on the street or in
their homes. He spoke kindly to everyone and had the reputation among
the townspeople of being a royal, good fellow. Even his pupils could not
deny that he treated them very courteously and jovially outside of
school hours.
Despite all this he used essentially the method of the hen-pecking
incompetent when handling disciplinary matters in school. The moment he
entered the school precincts he was a different man. His countenance
then betrayed the sternness of the schoolmaster who dwelt within and
apart from the polite gentleman he seemed to be when outside the
school-room. His eyebrows gathered and his muscles reverberated with the
sense of authority that flooded his whole nature.
His eye was on the lookout for misdemeanors and if a pupil made a
misstep in the realm where Mr. Bradley thought he had jurisdiction, that
harsh, strident voice, with but the slightest trace of fellow-feeling,
spoke the word of correction or announced an impending penalty.
In the school-room it was his delight to slip up behind an offender and
pluck him by the ear as a reminder of duty. Being the only instructor
who indulged in this practice it soon came to be one of the most odious
signals of his presence in the room. When absorbed in his subject he
made instruction interesting; his pupils could not fail to learn if they
did not venture to vary the program by misconduct. However, their
recollection of his general attitude toward them, the ease with which
they could upset his plans by introducing a few school pranks, the
certainty that he would lose his temper on slight provocation, always
hung as a barrage screen between them and undivided concentration on the
subject-matter of their lessons.
Mr. Bradley made it a practice to watch for accumulating offenses. He
felt incompetent to handle minor evils, but attempted to squelch a
wayward pupil by reciting a list of grievances and applying penalties
for the same. He had a good memory for facts of this sort. He could
shake his finger in the face of a boy or girl and say, “Didn’t you pull
Esther’s hair yesterday ... trip up Jimmie on the way to class in
geometry and purposely spill the crayons when you were at the board?
Now, I have had enough of this. I want to know what you are going to do
about it.”
This gentleman could not catch the drift of things. Early in his first
year Mr. Bradley’s attention rested upon Ted. Ted was a short, heavy-set
chap of some fourteen years, incapable of any revolutionary
propensities, but able to interest himself with a variety of aggravating
tricks. His pranks were individually almost too small to command severe
penalties, but they were too annoying to escape the principal’s eye.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bradley hit upon the lash as a cure for Ted.
Selecting a more pronounced misdemeanor as an opportunity for settling
accounts with the troublesome pupil, he gave him a sound whipping.
There was some ground for the general protest that arose from the high
school. Ted was a favorite with every one. The crude principal had
struck one but he had wounded all. His untactfulness had made him
abhorrent to all, even to those who had not hitherto drawn upon
themselves his specific disapproval and useless punishments. Mr.
Bradley, perhaps, never knew that he had undermined his own usefulness
as much by this treatment of a school favorite as by any single deed
that transpired during his whole stay in Newcastle.
He had his own method of handling the problem of whispering. He made it
a rule that every pupil in high school must answer at roll call at the
end of the day on the matter of whispering. If a pupil had whispered he
must answer “Present,” and specify the number of times during the day he
had whispered. If he had a clear record on whispering he was privileged
to answer “Perfect.” Now, in fact, the pupils formed cliques and
agreements to such an extent that they made almost a complete farce of
this attempt at discipline. They lied with the greatest liberty and
seemed to feel no restraint from their principal. He appeared not to
know that they were guilty of deception and insubordination, and of
course he became the butt of ridicule because of these and many other
unwise acts.
The girls would be found by him crying over the low grades they
received. Through their hands they joyously watched him as he marched
back to his desk and silently changed the numerals. Occasionally he
returned and reported, “After thinking over your work further I have
decided to give you a better grade.” He was more than paid for his
trouble as the smiles drove back the tears and the eyes of the poor,
grieved ones hung for a moment on his.
He suffered from note-writing. Jim was a source of anxiety on this
score. The unvarying procedure was the following:
“Where is the paper you had a moment ago?”
“It’s in my desk.”
“Is there any writing on it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Hand it to me.”
Silence on Jim’s part.
“Jim, aren’t you going to give me that note?”
“No, sir.”
“Jim, you go at once to Mr. Evans’ room,” or, “Take your books and go
home.”
Not once, nor twice, but scores and scores of times this same routine
was followed. Jim never handed him a note in the whole two years. Mr.
Bradley never discovered the intense satisfaction that Jim had in
drawing attention to himself, in defeating the principal and in thus
creating a general sensation.
Mr. Bradley’s temper was easily aroused. At first his face would turn
white; the pupils quickly noted his pallor and laughed at him; his anger
then drove him to a few tears, which one by one trickled down his
careworn cheeks.
In these moments of ill-temper he was more helpless than ever. He did
not attempt to do much teaching for a short period, but marked time
until he could recollect himself and get his pedagogical machine back on
track again.
In the frequent, extreme cases of refractory pupils that he had to
dispose of, his main resort was to send or accompany pupils to Mr.
Evans, the superintendent of schools. In reporting the misdemeanor or in
remarking on the items of a report of misconduct by the pupil himself he
adopted the very poor method of exaggerating the circumstances
insufferably. Often he interrupted a pupil’s account with single words
or phrases that exaggerated the offense and so attempted to justify
himself in referring the case to higher authority. These unfair methods
enraged even a guilty pupil to an extent that all hope of his returning
to the high school room with any little good will toward the principal
was lost.
You at once inquire, How was it possible for a man of this sort to keep
his position for two years? The answer is two-fold: his treatment of
pupils and citizens generally outside of school hours was such as, in a
way, to discredit the impressions reported by dissatisfied pupils; the
superintendent was capable enough himself to neutralize, in part, the
ill effects of the principal’s poor disciplinary methods and thus to
enable him to retain a well informed instructor.
You want to know more about this remarkable superintendent, Mr. Evans?
His personal presence was somewhat in his favor. He was a man of good
height, but very slender. The look of his eye was direct and lingering.
His hand-grasp was warm, kindly and reassuring. He was never in a hurry,
but disposed of mountains of work. He always took time to hear all that
pupils had to say—one of his strongest assets.
It was a valuable lesson in school discipline just to observe him in an
interview with an offending pupil.
“Well, Jim, what is it this morning?”
“I suppose I’ve got to tell you about a little affair that occurred in
the Latin class yesterday.”
“Come and have this chair over here by the desk. Excuse me until I pull
down the shade a bit. Well, now, go on. What is it all about?”
But these cold words do not convey to the reader the impression that
they made on Jim. There was a yearning in the voice that fairly drew Jim
out of himself. He had just come from a fresh combat with Mr. Bradley
and was in a mood to do battle; in fact, strange to say, this thought
crossed his mind, “All right, I’ll go in to see Evans. If he has it in
for me, I’ll show them both a new deal; I’ll give them the time of their
lives in this town!”
How easy it would have been to set fire to this piece of tow and so
produce an uncontrollable conflagration. But there was Mr. Evans’ voice,
so suave and appealing. He assumed that Jim had something interesting to
tell; that he had suffered some accident; that he was in search of a
friend. Mr. Evans was that friend. He said, “You know, of course, that
I’ll want to hear the other side of the story, but you go ahead and tell
me everything just exactly as it is.”
Jim told his story. The superintendent nodded assent to the several
statements, indicating that he had taken in their full significance and
was laying the ground for a just disposition of the matter. About the
time Jim finished, Mr. Bradley stepped in. He soon began his account of
the affair. Mr. Evans listened with a judicial air, by no means
disclosing any antagonism toward his principal, but very cautious not to
give Jim any notion that the principal had the inside track in the mind
and sympathy of his superior. There were no comments, no nodding of the
head, no knowing smiles that meant, “We’ll fix this fellow, all right.”
Since Mr. Evans had previously frankly said that he would hear the
principal’s story, in the first part of the interview, Jim was not
surprised that it was given unremitting attention. But he was highly
pleased to see that favoritism for the principal was not going to play
any part in the final settlement of the matter.
In fact, every pupil expected to see Mr. Evans go the second mile in any
case where he came intimately into contact with a pupil, either in the
ordinary affairs of the school, or when disciplinary problems must be
adjudicated. It was, in a way, a painful experience to meet Mr. Evans
under circumstances such as these; he made one feel grieved to impose on
him by wrenching his heart with disappointment. There was no fear of
consequences, but an anguish over injuring the feelings of the
superintendent.
When the facts were all before him, this friend of boys and girls would
say:
“I don’t believe it would be right in this case to ...” and he would
mention penalties that were severe, though perhaps often employed by
other teachers, perhaps were even not condemned by the community. He
would finally come to the conclusion of the matter by saying:
“I think we can fix this up in this way ...” a method that was almost
without exception such as to strengthen the discipline of the school, to
rescue the pupil from provoking circumstances and probably to serve as a
deterrent to future misconduct.
At the conclusion of every case of discipline, Mr. Evans left the
situation in a better status than before. The boy or girl who had to
settle accounts with the superintendent, when all was said and done,
knew that the issue was disposed of according to the principles of right
and for the good of both the pupil and the school. Wisdom, sympathetic
understanding, willingness to make concessions, positive devotion to the
pupil’s comfort and welfare, were written all over the man’s actions so
plainly as to disarm criticism and to bind every pupil to him as a
life-long friend.
Throughout this Course for teachers, we have steadily laid emphasis on
the need in the pupil for the cultivation of self-control as a basis for
any satisfactory building of character. Scarcely less have we insisted
that the same trait of character is essential in a successful teacher.
Our survey of the blunders of disciplinarians leads to the conclusion
that by far the larger part committed by school teachers can be traced
back to an inexcusable lack of this central virtue of self-control.
The passionate, selfish teacher can not see the pupil’s point of view.
The measureless transformations of the adolescent period throw a vast
majority of people out of sympathy with the adolescent and still more
with those of younger years.
The system of school discipline advocated in this Course for teachers,
frankly rests on coöperation with the pupil, initiative being taken by
the teacher in working out disciplinary problems in frank, wholehearted
adjustment to pupil needs and characteristics. No teacher can adopt the
policy represented by this principle without attaining, in a measure,
and further developing his own self-control. Our experience and
observation, our fresh survey of all the facts while compiling the data
presented in these volumes, have deepened immeasurably the conviction
that the teacher who seeks the level of the life of the children whom he
wishes to govern, assisting them, aiding them, guiding them according to
the dictates of their natures rather than contrariwise, will cure
himself of one of his own worst vices, namely, anarchy in mood, temper
and judgment; and will develop in its place the basic element of a noble
character, self-control.
By presenting, as a final word, the contrast between these two teachers,
we hope to heighten the impressions that have repeatedly been made as
the reader has followed the narratives and discussions contained in the
preceding pages. Remember that the two men here described worked under
the same circumstances, during the same two years, with the same pupils,
in the same building; that each had the benefit of consultation with the
other, that both were well received in public and had many friends among
the business men and in the homes of the city. The advantage in physical
organization lay with him who failed. The essential difference between
the two is found in the inner, basic attitude of each toward his pupils.
The one ruled by personality and broad, humane principles; the other was
an apostle of force, fitfully administered, as, in fact, it must of
necessity be administered. The one was conscious of his authority; the
other forgot it and worked man to man with his pupils. The one exhausted
his force and failed; the other scarcely ever drew upon his reserve and
never lost a pupil friend. The one ground his teeth in rage at the
perversity and rebellion of his pupils, the other enjoyed their
friendship and reveled in the memories of sympathetic appreciation of
his labors. In short, one was beloved by all, the other despised.
Of all the words from tongue or pen that explain the more desirable of
the two methods described, none is better than the word Coöperation.
This is the capstone of our five fundamental principles—Suggestion,
Substitution, Expectation, Approval, Coöperation. Approval of good
effort, in fact, turns out to be one mode of coöperation with the pupil.
It ministers to his self-love and elicits further effort. A teacher can
not exemplify this one principle of coöperation without hitting upon or
consciously employing all the others we have named and illustrated. “I
work with my pupils,” is the highest self-praise a teacher can utter. It
is a simple, modest, unassuming statement; if true in its deepest sense,
he who thus speaks of himself is a perfect teacher and disciplinarian.
We commend this gospel to coöperative school-room discipline to every
aspiring teacher who reads these volumes; we can only hope that every
one may be converted heart and soul to this mode of action and with
religious devotion set about remoulding his treatment and management of
school children so that he truly may be a Friend to Man.