On Habits

In those days there were six standards in the Primary School and those standards represented levels of achievement. Any individual who failed to reach the required standard at the end of the year, was obliged to repeat the year. So efficient was the teaching, however that the rate of failure was very small. Moreover, "dyslexia' was almost unknown,except in text books on Education. The reason was that incipient cases were immediately nipped in the bud. I remember coming across such as case in 1922, during a period of teaching practice as a Training College student, in one o f the city schools. In the infant department there were a couple of identical twins, who had difficulty in writing the "n's" and "s's" the right way around and in distinguishing between "p's" and "q's" and "b's " and "d's" in the lower case. Upon spotting this, the teacher in charge of the class gave me the job of concentrating my attention on these two little girls until the difficulty was overcome. In a couple of weeks they had both been re-incorporated into the class and thereafter developed quite normally. The subsequent abandonment of standards of achievement in primary schools and the adoption of 'social promotion' , has been a prolific source and cause of problems and has contributed greatly to the current prevalence of so much 'remedial' work. It has been a great mistake to neglect basic habit formation during these important formative years, in favour of the illusory 'personality development', to which it has given place. Good habits are basic to the cultivation of personality, for without them the reliability and trustworthiness are impossible.