es and punishments; but it is obvious that a clearly defined road
has been marked out which should lead us to comprehension of the
facts.

Prizes and punishments are not merely final episodes, they are
exponents of the moral organization of the school. Just as the
annulment of the examination of a pupil who has helped a companion is
but the extreme instance of "an education" which tends to isolate the
individual in his egotism; so the prize and the punishment are the
extreme incidents of the constant principle on which the organism of
the school is based: emulation. The principle is that children, seeing
others cleverer than themselves, who get high marks, praises and
prizes, will be stimulated to imitate these, to do better, to overtake
their companions. Thus what may be described as a kind of mechanism is
evolved, which uplifts the whole school, not merely towards work, but
towards effort. It is the moral purpose to accustom children to
"suffer."

Let us take an example of such emulation. When the observant doctor
entered the school, his attention was directed to the organs of sense,
and he found many slightly deaf children among the pupils. Hearing
less than the others, they appeared less intelligent, and as a
"punishment" they had been relegated to the desks at the very back of
the schoolroom. They were often set to repeat because they had never
learnt to write "from dictation," and made incredible and unpardonable
mistakes. Emulation and punishment had alike proved powerless; not
even when they were placed as far as possible from the teacher did
these deaf children improve! There were also lively children, who were
repeatedly punished to induce them to keep still, and who were vainly
exhorted to imitate companions whose conduct was exemplary. A large
number of children suffering from adenoids, who consequently breathed
through their mouths, and were incapable of fixing their attention,
got bad marks and punishments because they were never attentive;
meanwhile this defect of the open mouth was vainly combated by the
kind and careful teacher, who multiplied moral tales concerning the
ugliness of children who keep their mouths open, and, terrible to
relate, even sit with their fingers in their mouths!

Many of the lazy children, who would not do the gymnastic exercises
like the rest, who made pretexts for stopping and thus set a bad
example, were found to be suffering from heart affections, anemia, or
liver compla