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��The Free High School.
��duty it is to go about the country and limit the amount of steam which every steamboat and engine boiler shall be allowed to carry. The human mind and disposition are supposed to be made of indestructible and infinitely elastic material. Where are the in- spectors, to go through the land to see that no public-school teacher is com- pelled to have under her charge more pupils than any human being can ad- equately control and instruct? When one hears of primary schools with sixty or eighty pupils entirely under the charge of one teacher during sev- eral hours each day, one feels like shuddering ; but the committee-men do not. In most cities the public- school teachers (with all reverence be they mentioned) have about as much personal independence and opportun- ity to adapt instruction to the varied needs of individual pupils as the sales- women in the great retail stores have power to determine the prices of the goods which they sell. Yet every body admires the convenience, vari- ety, and i)late-glass and gilding of the great retail stores ; and everybody, presumably, approves the stacks of examination papers, the graduation days, and the Procrustean methods of the public schools.
There is one great difference which must always place the private schools either above or below the level of the public-schools, and it is about the same difference that exists between custom and ready-made clothing. The fact that there are so many in- competent teachers in ungraded dis- trict-schools, and that so many fash- ionable private schools are superficial and snobbish, merely shows that the supply is not better than the demand.
��It does not hinder the ideal school, and such have certainly existed, from being the one in which the master has power to carry out his own ideas, which must reflect the student's and the parent's wants, since they deter- mine the success of the school. To know that such masters have lived, we need not think of the great teach- ers whose genius drew from far coun- tries mature, brilliant disciples. We need only read D'Arcy Went worth Thompson's Day Dreams of a School- Master, and Mrs. Htowe's beautiful account of Cloudland, a country acad- emy in Old Town Folks.
But it is argued that the state can- not afford such expensive individual instruction, even if it were possible to provide it : the very reason why it should limit its present scheme. Every citizen of a republic has a right to thorough instruction in reading, writing, and the common operations of arithmetic, which constitute, ac- cording to Edward Everett, the essen- tials of a good education ; and he adds that if to this knowledge be added the ability to write pure, gram- matical English, I consider it an ex- cellent education." What he calls a good education should be required of every child in the land endowed with common faculties. What he calls au excellent education should be given all who desire it. Lack of the former training should be considered as se- rious as the deprivation of a sense. That such a training is not universal, even in the most civilized of our states, is evident from the census re- ports of those who cannot read and write.
But what more in the way of book instruction should the public purse
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