One other caution ought also to be given.  Do not judge too severely in respect to the ordinary cases of misconduct in school.  The young teacher almost invariably does judge too severely.  While engaged himself in hearing a recitation, or looking over a “sum,” he hears a stifled laugh, and, looking up, sees the little offender struggling with the muscles of his countenance to restore their gravity.  The teacher is vexed at the interruption, and severely rebukes or punishes the boy, when, after all, the offense, in a moral point of view, was an exceedingly light one—­at least it might very probably have been so.  In fact, a large proportion of the offenses against order committed in school are the mere momentary action of the natural buoyancy and life of childhood.  This is no reason why they should be indulged, or why the order and regularity of the school should be sacrificed, but it should prevent their exciting feelings of anger or impatience, or very severe reprehension.  While the teacher should take effectual measures for restraining all such irregularities, he should do it with the tone and manner which will show that he understands their true moral character, and deals with them, not as heinous sins, which deserve severe punishment, but as serious inconveniences, which he is compelled to repress.

There are often cases of real moral turpitude in school, such as where there is intentional, willful mischief, or disturbance, or habitual disobedience, and there may even be, in some cases, open rebellion.  Now the teacher should show that he distinguishes these cases from such momentary acts of thoughtlessness as we have described, and a broad distinction ought to be made in the treatment of them.  In a word, then, what we have been recommending under this head is, that the teacher should make it his special study, for his first few days in school, to acquire a knowledge of the characters of his pupils, to learn who are the thoughtless ones, who the mischievous, and who the disobedient and rebellious, and to do this with candid, moral discrimination, and with as little open collision with individuals as possible.

7.  Another point to which the teacher ought to give his early attention is to separate the bad boys as soon as he can from one another.  The idleness and irregularity of children in school often depends more on accidental circumstances than on character.  Two boys may be individually harmless and well-disposed, and yet they may be of so mercurial a temperament that, together, the temptation to continual play will be irresistible.  Another case that more often happens is where one is actively and even intentionally bad, and is seated next to an innocent, but perhaps thoughtless boy, and contrives to keep him always in difficulty.  Now remove the former away, where there are no very frail materials for him to act upon, and place the latter where he is exposed to no special temptation, and all would be well.