Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/351

Rh for these variants. In some schools full cognizance is taken of these normal peculiarities. Economy, however, demands that all children of about a certain 'grade' shall pursue a 'systematic course.' The product is not what it should be.

The personal influence of the teacher is recognized increasingly. In some of our colleges a plan of subdividing the classes into small groups and placing them under tutors has been found of largest value. (At Princeton University a modified Oxford tutorial system was first initiated with excellent effect by Woodrow Wilson. This is now adopted by several other colleges.)

Indeed valuable horses and dogs get more careful personal teaching than most children. Boys whom we characterize as 'difficult' have become so largely by neglect or postponement of some important item of education. They have become warped, unsymmetric, psychically and physically. The prevention is right education, so also is the cure. The first thing is to correct faults of misdirected impulse, the next is to teach the elemental principles of self-restraint, disentangling errors, illuminating doubts, always encouraging and leading to wholesome customary lines of action and thought. Endless difficulties would be prevented, boundless good would be afforded, if from the earliest teachers to the highest university professors there should be pursued some uniform plan of notes or records on individual aptitudes, tastes, tendencies, capacities. Some teachers are endowed with instinctive capabilities for meeting unusual problems. Some also, the majority, are astonished and distressed, even annoyed and resentful in the face of individual peculiarities, good or bad. No one should judge too soon whether the peculiarity be altogether good or bad.

Errant impulses are by no means understood. Geniuses have exhibited strange individualisms. They are rare (geniuses), it is true, but how many times do well-meant efforts to suppress spots on the leopard, or to paint out the stripes on the tiger, fail to make of a well-bred wild cub a respectable tabby cat. The power of a nation resides in men of individual dominant personality.

We want our boys and young men to have ample opportunity to evolve their own individualism. University curricula are now made increasingly liberal. Why should not the primary schools adopt similar principles? It is quite true a 'system' is desirable for the average boy, but a sliding scale ought to be within the reach of any one who is recognizably unfit to pursue the customary methods.

Our 'difficult boys' may be divided roughly into those who are provided with overmuch impulse or too little, the robust exuberant doer, or the torpid dreamer. It is obvious that each needs motor education, partly similar and partly diverse. The chief defect of our school system is the lack of opportunity for motor education. In country