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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

babe in arms and the strong man from his field of toil, the provision is the same; so in all our class work we have the sameness of provision with almost as great disparity of capacity and need. If, out of the whole mental “ mess of pottage,” that can be taken which builds the student up in true wisdom and knowledge, it is fortunate; but if noth­ing is assimilated on which the mind can truly thrive, no fault is found with the pro­vision, nor is resultant ignorance considered to be specially worthy of blame.

The evil effects of educating in masses, or in classes, is sufficiently apparent to cause us to consider the question whether there is any possible remedy, whether there could be a substitution of individual for general training, or a combination of the two, that would produce a better result. That student is losing ground as an individual who comes to be considered, or to consider himself, as simply a factor of a class. If the general teaching must be that which is applicable to the entire class, there should also be provision for instruction that could be adapted to the individual need, and as great effort as is made to adapt class work to the general need should be made in the special direction also. But the objection arises that the modern teacher is not able to work in both directions in the time allotted for student life. We are very well aware that we have not yet passed the stage where the value of the teacher’s work is measured by the number of hours in which he is engaged in the class-room. Trustees, as a whole, pay for the professor’s full time, and expect it to be fully employed. Neither are the edu­cators many of whom would know what to do if simply let loose among students and left free to make their best impressions upon the minds of the young.

To many teachers the mind of youth is in reality an unexplored region, and until we have a change in this respect, and learn that the knowledge of books is only the beginning of wisdom, and that the true knowledge must include also that of the living book—the student intrusted to our care—we have scarcely learned the alphabet of true education.

The day will come, though it may be long in coming, when every institution of learning will have—besides its technical teachers, its lecturers and its conductors of reci­tations—one man or one woman, or as many men and women as are needed, whose special province it will be to study the individual temperament, to discover native tendencies, tastes and capacities of the mind, and whose knowledge will be true wis­dom in the sense that they will know not only how to ascertain, but how to supply real needs.

That cramping and stifling of natural tastes, which is now so marked a feature of school training, will be replaced by the cultivation of every good natural ability, and the suppression of only that which in itself is evil. Quite too often even in this latter day the restraint is put upon the natural powers, simply because their development calls for e.xtra labor and special trouble, or because these powers indicate training in lines of work not being attempted by the class.

Let the routine work continue to be done and, if necessary, in the routine fashion; but let every institution have on its faculty one soul, at least, whose province is not to crush, but to cultivate and develop individual traits of mind and character. Such an instructor must not be ignorant of books, but that intricate book, the human heart, should be his special study and he should know not only what human beings are, but should be able to help them to grow into what God meant them to be. Such a man with a large and sympathetic heart, that can be hospitable to boyhood as it is, will do more toward the molding of genuine manhood than can a dozen professors of the ordinary type. One such woman in every institution for the education of girls, holds really the future destiny of those girls in her hands, for her life among them could have but one dominant desire—that of helping them to be the thing God meant. Practically living out that desire she becomes, not the restraint and destroyer of their natural vitality of thought and feeling, but the guide and director of all their native forces into every beautiful field of learning, and into the highest type of development possible for woman under present limitations to attain.

Whether we recognize the fact or not, there is not a phase of our social or national