On discipline - A perspective from 1910

The following advice to teachers was published to the Masters of Berkhamsted School in 1910 when Dr Fry was Headmaster.

• Find out how to get your influence; without it you cannot teach.
• Do not shout.
• Do not be glued to your chair.
• Air your room: it takes trouble to do aright.
• Make your boys respect their books.
• If your arrival in a room does not secure serene respectful silence, you have no grip on your form.
• Maintain your discipline with as few words as possible.
• Force is not discipline, nor is temper.
• Boys prefer order and the man who can keep it.
• Cultivate the power of glances and silences: be a bit of an actor.
• The best power is undemonstrative.
• Do not seem to expect anything but order.
• If one word secures attention, you are probable a disciplinarian.
• Watch against allowing temptations to do wrong.
• Do not scold. Enlist the class on your side.
• Always acknowledge an unintentional injustice.
• The less “black book,” the better discipline.
  
• Be ambitious never to retort, except for serious moral offences.
• Never goad into resistance.
  
• Do not have too long a memory. Make a little allowance.
• Do not mistake success for virtue.
  
• The stupid often plod and fail. Remember how failure deters.
• Be punctual.
  
• Do not forget dignity altogether. Show sympathy.
• Distinguish character in your own mind.
• Don’t be funny, if you cannot easily control results.
• Compel a tidy room.
• Dismiss quite quietly.
• Think over your failures to influence, and their cause.
• The root of discipline is boys’ high respect for you.
• No imposition that is not seriously examined can fail to demoralise.