Page:State manual and course of study.djvu/18

 Examination papers:—











Government:—

Closely allied to good teaching is good school government. Indeed it is safe to say that the second is a necessary adjunct of the first. The teacher should feel that control lost, all is lost. While that mysterious property whereby one person silently controls another can be neither analyzed nor acquired by any principles of meta-physics, there are certain general rules whose use will strengthen one’s personality, and the following are suggested:



















A self-governed school should be the ideal of every teacher, and all effort to control should aim at securing a democratic type of government. Pupils can often be spurred to efforts of self-control by the organization of the school into a “Council” that, by majority vote, shall pass rules of conduct both on school grounds and during sessions. Further restraint can be added by having a “Daily Chronicle,” “Visitor’s Book,” or school “Log-Book” in which every event of importance is faithfully entered for the inspection of visitors.

However, all devices will fail, unless back of them is a cool, calculating head, a watchful eye, and a steady hand. The moment pupils think any plan of work is a clap-trap for them, that moment it is useless. But govern the teacher must; and such pupils as will not or cannot (there are many such) exercise self-control, must be restrained. Yet there should be a marked distinction between occasional violations of rules, and studied, habitual disobedience, as also between simple infractions of regulations and vicious immoralities.

Finally, when everything else fails, incorrigible pupils should be suspended or expelled for the protection of the school.