This book is intended to detail, in a familiar and practical manner, a system of arrangements for the organization and management of a school, based on the employment, so far as is practicable, of _Moral Influences_, as a means of effecting the objects in view.

Its design is, not to bring forward new theories or new plans, but to develop and explain, and to carry out to their practical applications such principles as, among all skillful and experienced teachers, are generally admitted and acted upon.

Of course it is not designed for the skillful and experienced themselves, but it is intended to embody what they already know, and to present it in a practical form for the use of those who are beginning the work, and who wish to avail themselves of the experience which others have acquired.
Although moral influences are the chief foundations on which the power of the teacher over the minds and hearts of his pupils is, according to this treatise, to rest, still it must not be imagined that the system here recommended is one of persuasion.

It is a system of authority--supreme and unlimited authority--a point essential in all plans for the supervision of the young; but it is authority secured and maintained as far as possible by moral measures.

There will be no dispute about the propriety of making the most of this class of means.
Whatever difference of opinion there may be on the question whether physical force is necessary at all, every one will agree that, if ever employed, it must be only as a last resort, and that no teacher ought to make war upon the body, unless it is proved that he can not conquer through the medium of the mind.
In regard to the anecdotes and narratives which are very freely introduced to illustrate principles in this work, the writer ought to state that, though they are all substantially true--that is, all except those which are expressly introduced as mere suppositions, he has not hesitated to alter very freely, for obvious reasons, the unimportant circumstances connected with them.