Every good school must proceed through an orderly series of typical
events. A school is not a mob wandering over square feet of ground,
meandering through wearisome ways. It is an organized mass of busy
workers taking one task after another and doing it in the best manner
its overseer can devise. Nevertheless some eager teachers stress order
and strain at system until both break. Here is the place of weakness and
blame when this occurs: these teachers talk too much about how the
children ought to act, instead of focusing attention upon the effect of
the act upon the school as a whole and upon the best way to coöperate in
preventing undesirable effects, expressing their ideas of good behavior
in rules. We have a sample of running a school by rules, where seventh
and eighth grade pupils are involved.