Her eye fell next on Arthur Boyd. “Now, Arthur, I’ve stood this just as long as I can. You two can just as well begin behaving properly at once. Get up, both of you! Stand on your seats until I give you permission to get down.” With open-mouthed wonder, the two mounted their seats as ordered and watched with glee the complete absorption of the other pupils in this novel sight. Some pretence of work was maintained for fifteen minutes until the two were ordered down from their seats. The results were not satisfactory. The children felt somewhat insulted at this form of punishment, at the same time some of them wanted to star as the object of general attention. CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT The best remedies for noises of this sort are intense drive on interesting work, and indifference to the noise, if there is an apparent concerted movement to annoy the teacher. In case you find it needful to speak privately to any pupil, assume that his motives are good all the way through and that he would like to lay his pencil down properly. Perhaps the following words will be appropriate: “I see you have some difficulty in keeping your pencil. My own desk has a slant and sometimes gives me trouble on that account. If we will lay our pencils down carefully in the groove, they will surely stay where they belong.” COMMENTS For these minor noises it seems safe to recommend for children in any grade the methods just outlined. Nothing is surer to provoke disrespect for a teacher than excessive attention to small annoyances. On the other hand the best remedy for these trifling troubles is plenty of hard work. In nearly every instance the noisy pupil is not a vicious child, but an active child. Let us recall how eagerly children produce interminable noises of all sorts when left to their own devices—banging, whistling, drumming, screeching noises. In school hours the noise-hunger takes secondary place. The pleasure of creating a sensation is the chief cause of the annoyance. ILLUSTRATION (FIFTH GRADE) [Sidenote: Experiments] Miss Miller came into a very noisy fifth grade room, where the pupils were good-natured and docile, but unused to orderly methods and untrained in self-control. She won their liking at the outset by her courtesy and her real mastery of her teaching subjects; therefore she found herself in a good position, after the first fortnight of establishing her authority, to attack her great problem of reducing the school-room routine to quietness and economy of nerve-force.