[Sidenote: Order]
“Now, children, I saw yesterday how muddy your feet were when you
stepped on to the walk from the playground; and then you marched
instantly into your schoolroom and muddied the floor all over.
“Remember, no more muddy feet in this school building this winter. Make
it a rule to scrape off the mud carefully before you come in. Be careful
now about the mud.”
There is a lapse of some minutes and this guide of youths again breaks
out:
“Jane, did you take your books home last night and work an hour on your
lessons? You know our rule about that. Why didn’t you do it?” No answer
and no defined idea of what her future conduct will be.
Just before intermission is announced Miss Petit again speaks out:
“Hereafter I want every boy and girl in this room to make a search for
scraps of paper. Our room looks so untidy unless we clean it up a bit.
Don’t forget, I want, every noon and night, each one of you to obey me
and pick up your scraps.”
Later: “Say there, Walter, you haven’t set your desk in order before
going home. Don’t you know what good schoolroom manners call for? Why
don’t you have good manners, such as your folks want you to have at
home?”
This was an unusually hard day. The last was a climax of irritations
that provoked Walter beyond the strength of his patience. “Miss Petit, I
don’t want to keep my desk in order; I’m tired of doing everything just
so.”
Miss Petit stared in pedagogical horror; this from Walter!
“Why, what do you mean, Walter? Aren’t you coming to school any more?”
“Yes, I s’pose I’ll come, but I can’t think of all these little things,
and I don’t care if I do forget ’em.”
This was a strange situation. Walter was not a boy who would provoke
trouble; surely something must be done to put this young man on the
track again.
Miss Petit knew something about keeping order. It had not been so long
since she had heard her teacher use some such words as these:
“Now, children, remember this is a new term. I want you to watch your
lessons. I’m going to have good lessons. There’s a lot of good hickory
sprouts growing nearby here and we’ll be cutting some of them if lessons
don’t come in right. I won’t hold back. You know the rules. I’ll break a
hickory for every rule you break and you’ll feel it breaking, now, you
may be sure.”
Miss Petit did not intend to make any such announcements. But
nevertheless she had been taught under the whipping system and the
effects were stored up among her ideas of how to conduct a school. In
reality she whipped very little; instead she lashed with her tongue. She
held up the rules and browbeat her pupils into obeying them. Here was
the result in Walter’s new conduct.
She sat down with Walter (he was good enough to wait according to her
command) and delivered a long harangue on the necessity for good order
in the school.
Every word was an insult to him and he knew it. He listened in silence,
with an occasional smile of irony and made some general promise,
secretly determined to try out these rules and see what was to happen if
“the old granny” couldn’t have her way about the forty-odd things that
she wanted to manage in the seventh grade room.
Thus matters stood. They did not improve until a new dawn broke in the
mind of Miss Petit.