cautious, therefore,
on this point, and in the survey of your pupils which you make during
the first few days of your school, trust to nothing but the most sure
and unequivocal evidences of character, for many of your most docile and
faithful pupils will be found among those whose appearance at first
prepossessed you strongly against them.

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 wi