The teacher takes up his work in a community where already many ideas,
customs and standards of conduct are fully developed. He has much in his
favor when entering upon his duty in the schoolroom.
(1) _The public expects obedience._ The general supposition is that the
teacher is going to demand obedience. The community, the school
authority, the parents and the teacher all anticipate that school
obedience will be required. In many cases this is the chief virtue of a
schoolmaster. His success is determined in the popular mind by the
efficiency of his control in the schoolroom. This, all taken together,
is a powerful force operating already in the direction of good conduct.
Everybody’s mind is set, in a large degree, in favor of loyalty to the
school.
(2) _Pupils expect to obey._ Nevertheless, the most important fact is
that the pupil himself expects to obey. He may be watching for an
opportunity to disobey in some particular, but such a pupil plans, on
the whole, to heed his teacher’s requests.
“We need only reflect that this obedience which we treat so lightly,
occurs later, as a natural tendency in older children, and then as an
instinct in the adult to realize that it springs spontaneously into
being, and that it is one of the strongest instincts of humanity.”[1]
Footnote 1:
Doctor Montessori, _The Montessori Method_, p. 363. Stokes.
To be sure the child’s mind is often divided in a bewildering manner,
when choosing alternative courses of action. Incentives, motives,
tastes, longings, impel the pupil in many opposing directions. Education
has for one of its prominent functions, the training of a child so that
he may inhibit some tendencies and nourish others into action. A good
teacher prunes and prods; he culls out and represses; he approves and
disapproves (or ignores) what will make good character on the one hand,
or will mar a soul on the other.
This is the method of all great educators. The outcome is the
unification of personality; that is the organization of all the elements
of conduct into a system. Perfection of character is the crowning
achievement in such a program. For one whose character is correctly
formed, obedience is a mere name, for a perfect character acts nobly
always; the presence of another’s will wisely directing him adds no
stimulus to his, because there is no resistance to ideals which are
already sanctioned in his own soul. However, the teacher is dealing
almost exclusively with unformed character. The child needs support to
be enabled to do the thing he knows ought to be done. Speaking of a
former teacher a pupil said, “She was not a good teacher, she let us do
whatever we pleased.” This statement shows that the child recognized in
his own mind two planes of desirable action, the lower plane of “what he
pleases” and the higher plane of what he ought in justice to do. The
story shows furthermore that the child rightly expects the teacher to
hold him to the higher plane.
Dr. DeMott in his lecture on “The Harp of the Senses” says the boy was
right who blamed his mother because she did not call from the window
when she saw he was about to choose a wrong course of action. Even
adults need help to do what they regard as their best. We easily
understand the soldier boy who wrote from the Mexican border, “A fellow
needs the thought of home ties to keep him straight.” Who has not
understandingly read, “For the good which I would I do not; but the evil
which I would not, that I practice?”
Pupils expect, therefore, that teachers will render them substantial
assistance by training them to obey. They sense the presence of disorder
and weak-will in a teacher’s character, and scorn any substitutes for a
wholesome control of the school machine.
This fact constitutes a basis in the nature of the child upon which to
build, from the first moment of contact with him, a stable ground-work
of loyalty. With these conditions in favor of good government, and
obedience in particular, no teacher is predestined to fail when he
demands obedient conduct.