“We came to ask you if you’d have us in school again,” he said. “All our fathers and mothers want us to go back, and we’ll be good if you’ll let us. The boy that threw the match-heads will tell you about it himself. He told us he would.” “There is no need of that, although he may do so privately tomorrow if he wants to. But I should rather not know who did it, if you’ll all be responsible for its not happening again. You see, I like you all so much that I’d hate to know who did so foolish and wrong a thing. And if you will agree that it is to be a good school, in which everyone works together in the right spirit, I’ll agree to stay until the end of the year. Otherwise I pack my trunk tonight.” The pupils gave ample promises, which were not broken. Mr. Thomberg stayed through that year and the next one also, and had the best school in the county. COMMENTS This is an extraordinarily difficult situation. Mr. Thomberg’s success in dealing with this unusual case depended first of all on the fact that his knowledge of pedagogy enabled him to analyze the situation truly. He saw that the bad order was not caused by any one pupil, but was the result of a social tradition for which many persons, in and out of the school, were responsible. All the pupils upheld the disorder; therefore all the pupils were dealt with in a group. In the second place he was independent, as a really first-class teacher can be. He set the standard of behavior, and required his students to come up to it or give up school altogether. Had the school declined to take the social responsibility he asked of them, he would really have packed his trunk and left. He was well prepared for his work, and was greatly in earnest about it, nor did he propose to do what he considered an undignified thing in probing for evil. His personality was strong enough to set up a new standard for imitation, and to supplant the old one of inefficiency and mischief. The problem of order was for a time swallowed up in the greater one of securing real mental development in his pupils, and when it did show itself he treated it as a matter to be dealt with socially by the pupils. This seemed to put upon them a responsibility they had been used to having the teacher assume unaided, and they rose to the new honors imposed upon them. Mr. Thomberg utilized imitation in setting up a new regime, by requiring united action of his pupils. In this way he met a psychological situation with psychological weapons. (11) _Snobbishness._ Snobbishness is a very hard thing to meet wisely, and a sin which is too easily learned by imitation. CASE 83 (HIGH SCHOOL)