This is all very obvious, and known familiarly to all teachers who have had any experience.  But beginners are not generally so aware of it at the outset as to make any direct and systematic efforts to examine the school with reference to its condition in this respect.  It is usual to go on, leaving the boys to remain seated as chance or their own inclinations grouped them, and to endeavor to keep the peace among the various neighborhoods by close supervision, rebukes, and punishment.  Now these difficulties may be very much diminished by looking a little into the arrangement of the boys at the outset, and so modifying it as to diminish the amount of temptation to which the individuals are exposed.

This should be done, however, cautiously, deliberately, and with good-nature, keeping the object of it a good deal out of view.  It must be done cautiously and deliberately, for the first appearances are exceedingly fallacious in respect to the characters of the different children.  You see, perhaps, some indications of play between two boys upon the same seat, and hastily conclude that they are disorderly boys, and must be separated.  Something in the air and manner of one or both of them confirms this impression, and you take the necessary measures at once.  You then find, when you become more fully acquainted with them, that the appearances which you observed were only momentary and accidental, and that they would have been as safe together as any two boys in the school.  And perhaps you will even find that, by their new position, you have brought one or the other into circumstances of peculiar temptation.  Wait, therefore, before you make such changes, till you have ascertained actual character, doing this, however, without any unnecessary delay.

In such removals, too, it is well, in many cases, to keep the motive and design of them as much as possible out of view; for by expressing suspicion of a boy, you injure his character in his own opinion and in that of others, and tend to make him reckless.  Besides, if you remove a boy from a companion whom he likes, avowedly to prevent his playing, you offer him an inducement, if he is a bad boy, to continue to play in his new position for the purpose of thwarting you, or from the influence of resentment.  It would be wrong, indeed, to use any subterfuge or duplicity of any kind to conceal your object, but you are not bound to explain it; and in the many changes which you will be compelled to make in the course of the first week for various purposes, you may include many of these without explaining particularly the design or intention of any of them.

In some instances, however, you may frankly state the whole case without danger, provided it is done in such a manner as not to make the boy feel that his character is seriously injured in your estimation.  It must depend upon the tact and judgment of the teacher to determine upon the particular course to be pursued in the several cases, though he ought to keep these general principles in view in all.