I repeat it, therefore, make it a principle in all cases to aim as much as possible at the correction of those faults which are likely to be general by general measures.  You avoid by this means a vast amount of irritation and impatience, both on your own part and on the part of your scholars, and you produce twenty times the useful effect.

3.  The next principle which occurs to me as deserving the teacher’s attention in the outset of his course is this: 

Interest your scholars in doing something themselves to elevate the moral character of the school, so as to secure a decided majority who will, of their own accord, co-operate with you.

Let your pupils understand, not by any formal speech which you make to that effect, but by the manner in which, from time to time, you incidentally allude to the subject, that you consider the school, when you commence it, as at par, so to speak—­that is, on a level with other schools, and that your various plans for improving and amending it are not to be considered in the light of finding fault, and punishing transgressions, and controlling evil propensities, so as just to keep things in a tolerable state, but as efforts to improve and carry forward the institution to a still higher state of excellence.  Such is the tone and manner of some teachers that they never appear to be more than merely satisfied.  When the scholars do right, nothing is said about it.  The teacher seems to consider that a matter of course.  It does not appear to interest or please him at all.  Nothing arouses him but when they do wrong, and that only excites him to anger and frowns.  Now in such a case there can, of course, be no stimulus to effort on the part of the pupils but the cold and heartless stimulus of fear.

Now it is wrong for the teacher to expect that things will go right in his school as a matter of course.  All that he can expect as a matter of course is, that things should go on as well as they do ordinarily in schools—­the ordinary amount of idleness, the ordinary amount of misconduct.  This is the most that he can expect to come as a matter of course.  He should feel this, and then all he can gain which will be better than this will be a source of positive pleasure; a pleasure which his pupils have procured for him, and which, consequently, they should share.  They should understand that the teacher is engaged in various plans for improving the school, in which they should be invited to engage, not from the selfish desire of thereby saving him trouble, but because it will really be happy employment for them to engage in such an enterprise, and because, by such efforts, their own moral powers will be exerted and strengthened in the best possible way.

In another chapter I have explained to what extent, and in what manner, the assistance of the pupils may be usefully and successfully employed in carrying forward the general arrangements of the school.  The same principles will apply here, though perhaps a little more careful and delicate management is necessary in interesting them in subjects which relate to moral discipline.