OBEDIENCE

Obedience is a subject of paramount interest in the minds of administrators. They seek for hearty, sympathetic, genuine loyalty to those in authority, for this constitutes the greatest safeguard against failure as a teacher. Although obedience is but rarely alluded to in the best schools, its very perfection is the explanation of this silence. Nor is its value less because of the high standard of conduct in such a school.

1. OBEDIENCE IN RELATION TO SCHOOL EFFICIENCY

Discipline and effective instruction in school are based upon obedience. Disobedience, then, is the teacher’s most serious problem.

The school is an especially organized community. It has its internal interests; its chief aim to be attained; its regular head and a variety of relations between teacher and all who attend, patronize or support the school.

School obedience is nothing more nor less than the continuous act of fitting one’s self as a pupil into a social machine. A pupil who is disobedient at every point can not be a pupil in fact. In proportion as a child is disloyal to the school, he cuts himself off from connection with it.

28In the school community, adults are appointed to lead. The state, town, school district appear before the child and say, “This way.” The school board stands as an agent of the district or town, and actively supervises the school. The superintendent and teacher make specific the plans that have been broadly laid down by the state and school board. Now a child has all of these individuals and bodies politic to heed if he enters school. He places himself in their hands. When he enrolls he pledges conformity to the plans established for the control of the school. Consequently disobedience is rebellion and anarchy. Obedience is quite as essential in a good school as in an effective army on a military campaign.

Every child is a citizen in the making. A citizen must live and toil in harness with his fellows. “Teamwork” is a necessity now more than ever before in human history. The home and the school are the finest training-grounds for developing skill in team-work. Obedience is the essence of such coöperation.

The smooth running of the school machine conserves time for effective instruction. Loose government wastes effort, is destructive to mental training, and hence a fatal obstruction to school efficiency. Every disaster in school management is more or less of a lesson in immorality, whereas training in good morals is the duty of the teacher. A good disciplinarian can, of course, turn these occasional errors in school government into educative experiences, but the fewer they are the more advantageously can the moral education of the pupils in school be accomplished.

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2. OBEDIENCE IN RELATION TO CHARACTER BUILDING

The law of obedience is the only fundamental formal law of character building we know. Without yielding to some will other than our own we can not become greater than our immature selves. Disobedience is the pupil’s most serious offense against himself.

Perhaps it rarely needs to be said that until a pupil has learned at home or at school the art of submitting his conduct to the direction of another, he has no sure proof that he, himself, can guide his own career. Every person needs, at some point, to learn the lesson of self-direction. As a rule, this lesson is never learned except by social contact. Only he who has found out how to work as a member of a group of people has discovered the art of self-control.

As a matter of fact, every one is unsocial until by training he becomes a social being. The school has for one of its essential duties, this task of reorganizing the individual life so that the unsocial person attains adequate adjustment in association with his fellows. The core of this problem, therefore, is how to accept gracefully and heartily the course of action laid down by another person.

The community has a will on a large number of points. Unless the individual discovers and heeds this will, he must oftentimes run contrary to established customs and laws.

Furthermore, if an immature person hopes to profit from the experience of the past, he must show “docility.” That is to say, he must be willing actually to 30change his way of acting because he finds that certain forms of conduct do not turn out well. He must obey the “commands” that arise from human experience. In the process of yielding up his own will to the will of society, the child acquires the power to compel himself to obey his own commands. The ideals of conduct which he develops at home or school or elsewhere, will attain the force of commands and enable him to subject his impulses, aspirations and hopes to the domination of his noblest ideals.

We may point out, therefore, with certainty, that obedience is the law of life. Everyone may well be concerned that little children and older ones as well discover this fact.

3. THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF DISOBEDIENCE

(1) Instinctive factors. In searching among the instinctive elements of human nature for the chief inner stimulus to disobedience we are led to that group which is designated by such terms as self-preservative, individualistic or egoistic. Both obedience and disobedience seem to be expressions of the same basal incitements. In the lower stages of existence the free will of savage and child meets with circumstances in which it must yield to an external plan of action if life is to be preserved or self-gratification secured. Obedience is the price paid for life and for the luxury of being satisfied.

In the case of disobedience the same stimuli operate; 31the proposed course of action appears hostile to the interests of the self and the person rebels. The gratification of the countless desires, tastes, expectations, choices, hopes, rights, etc., that the human person constantly carries with him occupy the forefront of attention always. Disobedience is nothing more nor less than a decision that some one or more of these egoistic demands is being carelessly or ruthlessly dealt with and that the person is going to seek gratification in another direction.

(2) The element of choice. We can analyze the disobedient state of mind, at least to some extent. The first factor that we meet is choice. Choice enters into disobedience in two forms: first, the choice between courses of action, between ideals. The teacher proposes one line of action. This suggests other alternatives; a choice is necessary. Second, there must be choice between yielding to the teacher and resisting his command.

The obedient child is hardly aware of this distinction as such. A disobedient pupil may readily agree that a proposed action is wise and opportune, but his dislike for the teacher appears in a decision not to heed the command. Strictly speaking, this is a partial obedience, in that the child consents to the wisdom and worth of the course of action, although, for reasons of prejudice, he refuses to heed the command. The decision not to heed the teacher is the crucial point in disobedience. If unwilling to obey, the pupil weighs the gains and losses and decides to disobey the teacher. Usually there is no very great gain to be had when this sort of action follows. More than likely there is personal 32prejudice, false pride, or some similar cause for the refusal to obey.

At times, to be sure, the disobedient pupil believes that he can not in reality trust his teacher. Confidence in the teacher is impaired or entirely lacking. Disobedience must follow in many cases where such is the state of a pupil’s mind.

(3) Confidence. Confidence underlies all loyal obedience. Confidence is faith in the person who proposes the action, a conviction that when he himself acts, he will satisfy in a large degree, the expectations of the one who obeys. A pupil always sets up certain standards by which he measures a teacher. If a teacher gives ground for the anticipation that his acts will conform to these standards, he has won his pupil’s confidence.

The chief modes of winning the confidence of pupils may be briefly stated: first, by the teacher’s loyalty to his own principles of conduct; second, by revealing an identity between these principles and those accepted by the school community and the pupil; third, by setting before pupils courses of action which are seen to be primarily developments of pupils’ own ideals.

Even kindergartners who do not secure obedience based on confidence, fail. Some members of the circle of children may have no working ideals of school behavior. These must be taught dogmatically to the child before even mere outward conformity to rule can be secured. If properly taught, if actually trained, in the essentials of good order, the child accepts as his own these necessary ideals, and thereafter a call to obedience is a demand for the child to do what he himself naturally regards as the best thing to do under the 33given circumstances. His reasons for deeming this the best thing to do may be few or entirely wanting so far as fundamental grounds are concerned.

Whether it be suggestion or social impetus, the love of system, or whatever it is that gives this ideal value in the mind of the child, we need not try to comprehend. The only point is that the obedience that belongs to good character is a willingness to do what the pupil regards as right under the leadership of another person. These ideals in the child’s mind that are reproduced in the commands of the teacher may be simple, perhaps mere images of muscular activity; nevertheless, they are the forecast of an activity which later develops into complex concepts that cover worlds of thought.

4. STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF OBEDIENCE

As a further preparation for the most fruitful study of the “cases” in disobedience we must examine the several stages and types of obedience.

Obedience may occur in two forms: first, formal obedience in which the will is not heartily enlisted in the act. Oftentimes there is positive rebellion, opposition of will to the command given. Second, intelligent, loyal obedience, in which the child yields the inner consent when he outwardly conforms to the teacher’s instruction. With this loyalty there may be, indeed, many counter attractions which occur to the child’s mind and cause him to hesitate, in a way, or to meditate over the gains and losses involved in his 34proposed course of action. He balances these possible ways of acting, but conscience speaks up and he yields obedience despite a lingering regret. As he reflects more and more, he finds increasing satisfaction in having followed the commands given to him.

(1) Formal obedience. The intellectual factor varies greatly in different circumstances. “Blind obedience,” loyal conformity to commands with no comprehension of the reasons for so acting, is a valuable asset. It seems needful in many cases in the life of young children to require conformity to unexplained commands. Says G. Stanley Hall, “About the only duty of young children is implicit obedience,” yet Kate Douglas Wiggin is right when she says, “Blind obedience to authority is not in itself moral. It is necessary in order that we may save children from dangers of which they know nothing. It is valuable also as a habit.” This unthinking acquiescence to the will of another is neither moral nor immoral; it is unmoral. It is a safety device for the young which precedes the development of judgment, as habit-forming precedes the making of moral choices.

As a child advances toward maturity he comes more and more to discover the reason why certain commands are laid upon him. Formal obedience is peculiarly likely to occur in younger children who for lack of experience can give small consideration to the reasons that underlie prudent action. They gradually shift from one type of obedience to the other as they learn the grounds for the customary ways of doing things.

The habit of obedience need not be fundamentally changed by this discovery of reasons. Children may 35well be expected to obey because they have confidence in a superior. Whatever groundwork of reason may be desired and granted will be a reinforcement of the impetus to obey; yet confidence must always be the ground of the obedience we aim to secure.

Montessori finds that there are three periods in the development of obedience in young children. In the first period, there is spiritual disorder; the child seems to be physically deaf, unable to hear commands.

In the second stage, the child understands the command and seems to anticipate pleasure in realizing it; but there is a palsy of will: he acts tardily and with dissatisfaction.

In the third stage, he obeys instantly, with pleasure and enthusiasm. As he acquires skill, he takes pride in his new achievement. He will readily learn to leave absorbing interests in order to obey.

Implicit obedience is to be required of children, even after they have attained the power of fully comprehending requirements laid upon them. There are often occasions in which time for explanation is insufficient. If the child develops the habit of always insisting upon an explanation simply because he can not understand it, teachers and parents will find themselves seriously handicapped. Even adults find it necessary to give instant and unexplained obedience when emergency calls reach them.

Again, explanations, though incomprehensible, are sometimes embarrassing, owing to the presence of other people or of circumstances in some involved situation. Explanation, in such cases, must be avoided, and the pupil at once heed the request. As in the case of the 36youngest child, so a mature person occasionally finds himself in a situation where a crisis demands obedience without an instant’s delay.

(2) Intelligent obedience. In what we term intelligent obedience, there is a fair understanding of why the act is required. For the most part, the commands of teachers are well understood by children in the public school. It takes but a short time to interpret the general significance of school requirements. In the world at large, as, for example, in manufactories, stores, mines and the like, the commands of superiors, in nearly every instance, carry with them a large degree of broad significance.

Without a doubt, a careful teacher discloses very generally the reasons why a specific course of action is recommended and required. Such procedure is a recognition of the mental powers of the pupils. They are treated as intelligent human beings when reasons for commands are offered. The teacher hopes to train pupils to use their power of free choice intelligently. This is done by revealing the grounds for proper conduct and securing the inner consent of the pupil’s intelligence to natural commands.

The presentation of reasons for a command also appeals to the good-will of the pupil. He presumes that his conduct is not always determined by authority, but that he is expected to act on grounds of his own loyalty and good-will. As a consequence, intelligent obedience normally results in an excellent comradeship between pupil and teacher. It begets a mutual understanding. It is a preventive of misconceptions and complaints by the pupil. Clearly enough, intelligent 37obedience is the mainstay in school discipline. The school, as a whole, is entitled to know very many reasons why the customs and procedures laid down by principal and teacher have been adopted.

To be sure, the giving of explanations to public school pupils will be determined partially by the grade and circumstances in which each pupil is found.

Willing obedience establishes a basis for any amount of moral instruction that a teacher may desire to give. The moral influence of the school wavers when uncontrolled, and the corresponding obedience falters. After willing obedience has become a school tradition, or an individual habit, the teacher needs no longer to exercise extreme caution as to favorable conditions under which he may give commands for new activities. He has established a general confidence. He is supposed to be trustworthy in large and small matters, and he may take great liberties in leading his pupils into new courses of action.

It is difficult for a teacher to believe that this high type of obedience can really be secured. The occasional tilts with rebellious pupils tend to cause him to adopt a method based upon blunt authority, and to apply this method far too often. Confidence in human nature, we may say then, has been shattered largely through applying to the majority a method of treatment which has been provoked and deserved by only a small minority. The teacher is too close to the details of critical cases of discipline to see the whole situation in its true perspective.

In other instances the teacher has an inordinate eagerness to use authority. Young teachers often enter 38the schoolhouse vowing vengeance on disobedient pupils. For such teachers to be over-severe is far too easy. They need to take a second look at the situation before them, instead of rushing in with heavy artillery. “A man who would regulate his watch with a crowbar would be considered an ass, but a person who thinks a child of delicate and nervous organization can be made bold by bullying is no better.”

All pupils are “delicate and nervous” in respect to some matters, at least. Even the roughest and crudest backwoods giant has a tender spot around which the ennoblement of character can be developed; if this point of vantage is lost, all hope of “saving” the boy’s better nature is gone.

5. FACTORS THAT MAKE FOR OBEDIENCE

The teacher takes up his work in a community where already many ideas, customs and standards of conduct are fully developed. He has much in his favor when entering upon his duty in the schoolroom.

(1) The public expects obedience. The general supposition is that the teacher is going to demand obedience. The community, the school authority, the parents and the teacher all anticipate that school obedience will be required. In many cases this is the chief virtue of a schoolmaster. His success is determined in the popular mind by the efficiency of his control in the schoolroom. This, all taken together, is a powerful force operating already in the direction of good conduct. Everybody’s mind is set, in a large degree, in favor of loyalty to the school.

39(2) Pupils expect to obey. Nevertheless, the most important fact is that the pupil himself expects to obey. He may be watching for an opportunity to disobey in some particular, but such a pupil plans, on the whole, to heed his teacher’s requests.

“We need only reflect that this obedience which we treat so lightly, occurs later, as a natural tendency in older children, and then as an instinct in the adult to realize that it springs spontaneously into being, and that it is one of the strongest instincts of humanity.”^[1]

To be sure the child’s mind is often divided in a bewildering manner, when choosing alternative courses of action. Incentives, motives, tastes, longings, impel the pupil in many opposing directions. Education has for one of its prominent functions, the training of a child so that he may inhibit some tendencies and nourish others into action. A good teacher prunes and prods; he culls out and represses; he approves and disapproves (or ignores) what will make good character on the one hand, or will mar a soul on the other.

This is the method of all great educators. The outcome is the unification of personality; that is the organization of all the elements of conduct into a system. Perfection of character is the crowning achievement in such a program. For one whose character is correctly formed, obedience is a mere name, for a perfect character acts nobly always; the presence of another’s will wisely directing him adds no stimulus to his, because there is no resistance to ideals which are already sanctioned in his own soul. However, the teacher is dealing almost exclusively with unformed character. 40The child needs support to be enabled to do the thing he knows ought to be done. Speaking of a former teacher a pupil said, “She was not a good teacher, she let us do whatever we pleased.” This statement shows that the child recognized in his own mind two planes of desirable action, the lower plane of “what he pleases” and the higher plane of what he ought in justice to do. The story shows furthermore that the child rightly expects the teacher to hold him to the higher plane.

Dr. DeMott in his lecture on “The Harp of the Senses” says the boy was right who blamed his mother because she did not call from the window when she saw he was about to choose a wrong course of action. Even adults need help to do what they regard as their best. We easily understand the soldier boy who wrote from the Mexican border, “A fellow needs the thought of home ties to keep him straight.” Who has not understandingly read, “For the good which I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I practice?”

Pupils expect, therefore, that teachers will render them substantial assistance by training them to obey. They sense the presence of disorder and weak-will in a teacher’s character, and scorn any substitutes for a wholesome control of the school machine.

This fact constitutes a basis in the nature of the child upon which to build, from the first moment of contact with him, a stable ground-work of loyalty. With these conditions in favor of good government, and obedience in particular, no teacher is predestined to fail when he demands obedient conduct.

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6. CAUSES OF DISOBEDIENCE

Any precise generalization covering all the causal factors that enter into a disobedient attitude is of course impossible. Certain factors obvious to all people and others discovered by careful observations embrace only a fragment of the facts and yet they are worth careful scrutiny.

(1) Causes within the child. As already noted the fundamental cause of disobedience in the child is a vague perception, a suspicion or a conviction that some of his interests are jeopardized by a proposed course of action. Selfish interests are ready to speak up and dictate to him what to do and what not to do. Lack of inhibitory habits often permits a quick expression of the impulse to take good care of their egoistic rights and interests.

The ordinary observer is prone to affirm that the chief causes for disobedience are to be found in the child himself. It is easy to make a long list of conditions which provoke him to disobey. Among these we may mention the following: poor health, bad habits, natural stubbornness, which is independence of spirit uncontrolled, mental dullness, eagerness for action, delight in pleasure, desires for popular esteem, perverted ideas of duty and the like. Beneath all these conditions the great irrepressive incitement is the eagerness of the self to satisfy the natural cravings that the inherited constitution continually develops.

(2) Provocation by parents. School administrators find it impracticable to attempt accurately to survey home conditions in the majority of cases, but many 42reports that filter into school through children reveal fairly well the circumstances at home which make obedience in school extremely difficult.

A genuine lover of children will make every effort to discern instigation to disobedience. Parents may take what seems to be at the time the easiest course: namely, to let the child do whatever he chooses, or the mother may not have the time and strength to insist that a child obey. Many parents sincerely desire to govern their children properly, but are ignorant as to how they may accomplish it.

Oftentimes children disobey as a means to attract attention to themselves; only in such a way do they receive consideration in the home. They have found it highly entertaining to be the center of a furor when they have been “naughty.” Parents have not learned to use the many forms of approval to satisfy the call of the child for notoriety.

(3) Causes in the teacher’s mismanagement. The teacher’s mismanagement must be named in enumerating the causes of disobedience. Here, perhaps, a “challenge” is the chief incitement to the child of the choice of obedience or disobedience, daring him to choose the latter.

Some foolish imp at times provokes teachers to lay before pupils very clearly what are the alternatives between which they must choose. It may go so far that the teacher says in so many words, “I dare you to break the rule.” This is an outspoken challenge and incites all well-made characters either to indignation or to actual rebellion. The implied challenge appears in an aggravating espionage, watching from the corner 43of the eye, too frequently questioning or checking up and snappish manners generally in enforcing obedience. The challenge may appear in the arrangement of circumstances, so that obedience is difficult, as when the teacher leaves the room with an exhortation to maintain good order during his absence. Every cautious teacher adopts the following resolution, “I will never, by word or deed, plan or project, purposely make it easier for a pupil to disobey than to obey.”

The second great fault in the teacher is blindness to actual conditions. There are several forms of ignorance that may be cited. The teacher or principal may not know that a whole body of pupils is prejudiced against him, or ridicules him or is waiting to precipitate a collision; that he is arousing community prejudice; that he has let slip clear evidence of disobedience; that he accuses the wrong child; that his fellow teachers despise him; that his manners are ridiculous and weaken his influence.

This disregard of facts may be due to lack of native insight, heedlessness of daily experiences, lack of social training or an exaggerated sense of self-sufficiency. Each teacher must find his own cure. The careful assimilation of the instructions given herein should effect a change in many a failing teacher.

Again, teachers usually fail to secure obedience if they themselves refuse to submit to authority. It is difficult, sometimes, for a person of strong will, well developed talents, and perhaps mature years, to yield cheerful submission to the requirements of his superiors in the school system; but the greater the personality, the more evident is the power of self-control and 44the consequent skill in so ordering one’s behavior as to fit properly into the school mechanism.

Sad to say, there are some teachers who are entirely out of place in the schoolroom. Neither by natural endowment nor technical preparation have they any equipment that suffices for the duties they have assumed. School life is to them abnormal. They do not sense the fine adjustments of pupil and teacher. They can not profit from experience as managers, or as directors of social activities. They blunder and stumble and fail. Perhaps for them the best hope is that they may soon discover their mistake in attempting to teach.

(4) Community conditions favoring disobedience. Often a teacher finds that the standards of action endorsed by the school community are such as to make his work as a disciplinarian extraordinarily difficult. The neighborhood heroes are those who have had long careers as bullies. Conditions of frontier life when rowdyism was the avenue to popular esteem still may dominate public opinion. There may be a general scorn of education and the teacher is placed upon the defensive from the very start. Very frequently religious and racial prejudices at once appear when the teacher becomes a little known. Circumstances of this sort require a broad knowledge of human nature and an ever resourceful tact on the part of the teacher. If he is a man of wide sympathies and considerable information, he will easily find a starting-point for a campaign of reform. A cautious foresight will suggest to him that the leaders of the community be enlisted as sympathetic patrons of the school, and as his own 45personal friends. He frequently associates with the people of the community in church and social affairs, and becomes familiar with the public enterprises of the community. As rapidly as possible, he makes himself a well-known exponent of the best sentiment found in the neighborhood. By thus identifying himself with the most progressive elements in the community, he leads by following, and enrolls among his firm friends those who might have become enemies.

The theory of obedience herein expounded is based essentially on comradeship between pupil and teacher. A good teacher and a typical public school pupil can easily find common ground and discover a satisfactory basis of coöperation. The teacher must lead, the pupil will follow. Under proper conditions obedience comes as a matter of course. When perplexities arise, specific counsel is needed, but the aim of every good disciplinarian is to cultivate the soil in such a manner that only the good fruit of loyal obedience will appear at the harvest.

In discussing the particular instances presented in the following cases, the purpose is to guide the teacher so as to forestall acts of disobedience as far as possible. With this, however, are numerous suggestions as to the best methods of dealing with pupils when they actually refuse to obey.

47DIVISION III

CONCRETE CASES ON OBEDIENCE

Let thy child’s first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.

—Benjamin Franklin.

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