as sinful, and are punished; or else
the teacher pits his or her will against the child's will, considering
that the latter must be 'broken.' "Break your child's will, in order
that it may not perish," wrote John Wesley. "Break its will as soon as
it can speak plainly--or even before it can speak at all. It should be
forced to do as it is told, even if you have to whip it ten times
running. Break its will, in order that its soul may live." Such
will-breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous wear and
tear on both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, and the
victory not always with the would-be will-breaker.

When a situation of the kind is once fairly developed, and the child is
all tense and excited inwardly, nineteen times out of twenty it is best
for the teacher to apperceive the case as one of neural pathology rather
than as one of moral culpability. So long as the inhibiting sense of
impossibility remains in the child's mind, he will continue unable to
get beyond the obstacle. The aim of the teacher should then be to make
him simply forget. Drop the subject for the time, divert the mind to
something else: then, leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of
association, spring it on him again before he has time to recognize it,
and as likely as not he will go over it now without any difficulty. It
is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse: we divert his
attention, do something to his nose or ear, lead him round in a circle,
and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him
more invincible. A tactful teacher will never let these strained
situations come up at all.

You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as
teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of
ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it
that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the
pupil still retains his power of vigorous action. Psychology can state
your problem in these terms, but you see how impotent she is to furnish
the elements of its practical solution. When all is said and done, and
your best efforts are made, it will probably remain true that the
result will depend more on a certain native tone or temper in the
pupil's psychological constitution than on anything else. Some persons
appear to have a naturally poor focalization of the field of
consciousness; and in such persons actio