e., that the very rise of the condition itself is due, apart from heredity, oftener than not to the fact that he has not had proper treatment from his teachers.
The main point for a teacher to have in mind in dealing with such a boy or girl--the impulsive, active one, always responsive, but almost always in error in what he says and does--is that here is a case of habit.

Habit is good; indeed, if we should go a little further we should see that all education is the forming of habits; but here, in this case, what we have is not habits, but habit.

This child shows a tendency to habit _as such_: to habits of any and every kind.

The first care of the teacher in order to the control of the formation of habits is in some way to bring about a little inertia of habit, so to speak--a short period of organic hesitation, during which the reasons pro and con for each habit may be brought into the consciousness of the child.
The means by which this tendency to crude, inconsiderate action on the part of the child is to be controlled and regulated is one of the most typical questions for the intelligent teacher.

Its answer must be different for children of different ages.