Practical School DisciplineApplied Methods Part 1 by Ray C Beery

170 Pages·2021·1.15 MB·English

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by Ray Coppock Beery

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Title:Practical School Discipline Vol. 2 Part I

Applied Methods

Author: Ray Coppock Beery

Release Date: April 24, 2021 [eBook #65152]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: MFR, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRACTICAL SCHOOL
DISCIPLINE VOL. 2 PART I ***

Practical School Discipline—Applied Methods Part 1

PRACTICAL

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

Applied Methods

PART I

By

RAY C. BEERY

A. B. (Columbia), M. A. (Harvard)

President of

International Academy of Discipline

PLEASANT HILL, OHIO, U. S. A.

Copyrighted, 1917, by

RAY C. BEERY

────

Copyrighted, Great Britain, 1917

All Rights Reserved

Dedicated

to the

Members of the J. A. D. Teachers’ Club

❧

“He that ruleth his spirit is greater

than he that taketh a city.”

GREETING

With this second book of Practical School Discipline, we wish to send to each member of the

Teachers’ Club our personal word of greeting. Applied Methods was written for you. Primarily
it was written for you only. It is a book to help teachers, by means of teachers’ experiences. We
believe it will lighten your work, brighten your school room, and lengthen your years of effective
service by easing the friction in daily school routine. Work can no longer be drudgery when
conducted according to principles which take the drudgery out of it.

Because we have faith in the principles herein discussed, we are desirous to learn from each

member of the “Teachers’ Club” what the result has been in his or her individual case. Have you
been particularly successful in the management of some difficult situation? Write and tell us
about it. Have you failed to find your own specific problem treated within these pages? Tell us
that also. Perhaps we can help you by letter.

The Teachers’ Club is a coöperative organization from which we expect the most stimulating

results—results which can be made much more effective by personal correspondence with its
members. Your experience may help another who is still struggling with the difficulty which you
have overcome. Another teacher’s experience may help you. Our offices are clearing houses for
exchange of views and mutual aid. Coöperation we believe to be the principle which eventually
must supplant, throughout the world, the cruder method of competition. The members of the
“Teacher’s Club,” the first and only one to be organized upon this plan, will be quick to
recognize the higher ideal and to respond thereto.

Finally, if the better understanding of the principles herein treated, and the tonic effect of

interchange of ideas with fellow teachers who appreciate your difficulties and who desire to
assist, should prove helpful to you, then tell other teachers about your Club. Perhaps they might
profit also by the same mutual help. Meanwhile our thought for you does not end with placing
these Case Books on Discipline within your hands.

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PREFACE

The readers of Applied Methods will note that in the discussion of problems which confront

the teacher the “case citation” plan peculiar to legal and medical writers is here followed. That is
to say, instead of long enumerations of general principles relating to disobedience, impoliteness,
dishonesty, etc., specific cases or incidents are cited, followed by “constructive treatment” or
suggestions for treating each specific case. It is believed that this method will be more helpful
and more suggestive to the ordinary teacher than is the usual method.

To make the suggestions still more helpful, because more personal, the reader is asked to

transfer himself after the citation of each case from past time to present, and from the other
teacher’s school to his own room; and, in the “constructive treatment” which follows, imagine
the “Case” to be the reader’s individual problem, and the author to be conversing with him
personally.

In the preparation and collation of the cases it has been thought more practicable and also

more convenient for the teachers, to divide the subject matter of the text into two volumes rather
than to combine all into one large book. There will be no break in the continuity of thought,
however. The second volume, like the present, will follow the case citation plan and will
continue the treatment of school disturbances which develop for the most part out of natural
instincts of children.

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CONTENTS

DIVISION I

PAGE

Introduction
13

DIVISION II

Obedience
27

DIVISION III

Concrete Cases on Obedience
49

DIVISION IV

Concrete Cases Arising Out of Self-preservative

Instincts

129

9

DIVISION I

DISCIPLINE

INTRODUCTION

Discipline is three-fourths of life.

—Matthew Arnold.

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INTRODUCTION

13

1. Why Discipline Is Necessary

There are no two persons in all the world, however separated by space or circumstances,

who do not in some way affect each other. This influence is unseen and untraceable in most
cases; it is only when the relations are very immediate and obvious that we realize how unified is
the life of the people on the earth. The welfare of the whole race is tied up in the welfare of each
man, woman and child; and so it is the duty of each to work for the welfare of all his fellows.
When each person controls his actions and contributes his influence so as to further the
interests of all, present and future, the world is in harmony, civilization progresses and
happiness reigns on earth.

But it is not natural for people unselfishly to strive for the good of all other people. All men

are born with strong instincts of self-preservation, and their limited outlook upon life, their small
knowledge of remote things, often prevents their seeing that, in the end, social action best
protects their own interests.

Instinct urges, “Look out for number one. Enjoy yourself. Catch at the immediate good, for

you are not sure of the future.” Something higher than instinct in man says to him, on the other
hand, “Deny yourself for the good of others. Find a greater life in the life of the race. Endure
hardship now, submit to privation, that in the future you and others may be more happy.”

It is this higher standard of thought and action which we call right; it is passive submission to

the dictates of selfish instincts which we call wrong. Right and wrong have other phases than
these of social effect, but upon these most men, of whatever faith or philosophy, agree; and
these social phases are the ones which affect the whole problem of discipline most. Briefly,
then, we may say that for our purposes those things are right which contribute to the welfare of
men, and those things are wrong which interfere with their happiness and progress.

The great men and women of the world are they who make the richest contribution to human

progress and happiness. They are the artists, the thinkers, the givers of every kind, who leave
their fellows better for their passing by. They who in their coming and going add nothing to the
sum of human welfare, are the paupers, the criminals, the imbeciles. Paupers may live in palaces,
and criminals may for generations receive great honor of men, but unless they have really made
the world better, men in their final judgment can not count such glorious rascals among their
friends. They are not civilization-builders, they are not race-leaders, nor have they real strength
in themselves, for they have never conquered those selfish instincts which dominate men in the
lowest stages of their development.

The big problem of mankind, then, is to make of the naturally selfish and self-centered

individual a helper in a great social enterprise, that is, to make him nothing less than a contributor
to the evolution of the whole race toward its final high estate. How can this be done? And who
is to do it? These questions are fundamental to human progress. Men have been grappling with
them for centuries. This is a great world-question which, looming behind the more immediate
problem of discipline, gives it all the significance it has. It is because through disciplinary
processes the world is to be made better, and not primarily because such processes will make
schools more orderly and homes more delightful, that we study the subject and hope to become
skilled in the practice of its technique.

The responsibility of making each person a contributor to social progress rests largely with

those who hold in their hands the training of the young. Hence such training is, in a peculiar
sense, the business of parents and teachers. Not for long have people worked intelligently
toward the socialization of human interests. Christ taught this doctrine nearly two thousand
years ago in Galilee, but only lately have very many persons realized that His message is a
practicable one. The Middle Ages were given to an effort to realize the gospel individually;
today we see a great effort to apply it universally. But the individualism of the past still
dominates the thinking of the older generation; selfishness and prejudices, which are intrenched
in tradition, seem altogether justifiable to peoples whose children will fully realize their
inadequacy and falseness.

It is in these children that the hope of the race inheres; these are they who must bring about

the new order of things. Not in reforming the adult criminal, not in making the adult pauper a
producer, not in making the adult individualist a humanitarian, lies the true secret of world-
betterment, but in rearing a new generation which shall meet the old problems with instincts

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