Any mistake, miscarriage, or false step, on the part of a teacher, is for the moment fatal to his ascendency. Such things will happen and they render undue assumption all the more perilous.
The stress of the teacher's difficulty lies in the heavings of a mass or multitude. The working of human beings collectively is wholly distinct from their individual action; a new set of forces and influences are generated. One man against a multitude is always in the post of danger. As units in a mass, every individual displays entirely new characters. The anti-social or malevolent passion—the delight in gaining a triumph—which is suppressed in the individual as against a more powerful individual, is reignited and inflamed in company with others. Whenever a simultaneous charge is possible, the authority of a single person is as naught in the balance.
It is often said that the teacher should get the collective opinion on his side—should, in short, create a good class-opinion. It is easier to deserve success in this than to command it. The fear is that, till the end of time, the sympathy of numbers will continue to manifest itself against authority in the school. There will be occasions when the infection of the mass is a stronghold of order, as when the majority are bent on attending to the work, and are thwarted by a few disturbers of the peace; or when they have a general sympathy with their teacher, and merely indulge themselves in rare and exceptional outbursts. While a teacher's merits may gain for him this position of advantage, more or less, he is never above the risks of an outbreak, and must be ready for the final resort of repression by discipline or penalties. He may still work by soothing applications, gentle and kindly remonstrance; he may check the spread of disaffection by watchful tactics, and by showing that he has the ringleaders in his eye; but in the end he must punish.
It is this position of constant preparedness for disorder, sometimes in isolated individuals and sometimes in the mass, that demands an air and manner betokening authority, and carrying with it a certain hauteur and distance; the necessity for which is the stronger, as the warring elements are more rife.
The discipline of numbers is impeded by two sorts of pupils: those that have no natural liking for the subject, and those that are too far behind to understand the teaching. In a perfectly-arranged school both sorts would be excluded from a class.—Author's advance-sheets.
