Stableton,[4] who has made interesting notes on individual boys entering the adolescent period, emphasizes the importance of sympathy, appreciation, and respect in dealing with this age. They must now be talked to as equals, and in this way their habits of industry and even their dangerous love affairs run be controlled. He says, "There is no more important question before the teaching fraternity today than how to deal justly and successfully with boys at this time of life. This is the age when they drop out of school" in far too large numbers, and he thinks that the small percentage of male graduates from our high schools is due to "the inability of the average grammar grade or high-school teacher to deal rightly with boys in this critical period of their school life." Most teachers "know all their bad points, but fail to discover their good ones." The fine disciplinarian, the mechanical movement of whose school is so admirable and who does not realize the new need of liberty or how loose-jointed, mentally and physically, all are at this age, should be supplanted by one who can look into the heart and by a glance make the boy feel that he or she is his friend. "The weakest work in our schools is the handling of boys entering the adolescent period of life, and there is no greater blessing that can come to a boy at this age, when he does not understand himself, than a good strong teacher that understands him, has faith in him, and will day by day lead him till he can walk alone."
Small[5] found the teacher a focus of imitation whence many influences, both physical and mental, irradiated to the pupils. Every accent, gesture, automatism, like and dislike is caught consciously and unconsciously. Every intellectual interest in the teacher permeates the class--liars, if trusted, became honest; those treated as ladies and gentlemen act so; those told by favorite teachers of the good things they are capable of feel a strong impulsion to do them; some older children are almost transformed by being made companions to teachers, by having their good traits recognized, and by frank apologies by the teacher when in error.
An interesting and unsuspected illustration of the growth of independence with adolescence was found in 2,411 papers from the second to eighth grades on the characteristics of the best teacher as seen by children.[6] In the second and third grades, all, and in the fourth, ninety-five per cent specified help in studies. This falls off rapidly in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades to thirty-nine per cent, while at the same time the quality of patience in the upper grades rises from a mention by two to twenty-two per cent.