Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1877-08-29

a very good hint as to the nature OF
the injury which the bold hunter had
suffered"
LARGE VS.. SMALL SCHoOLS.-We must
never overlook the fact that the girl
who, educated at home, never, till she
becomes woman, realizes in any sense
what it is to be a member of coum-
munity, misses a part of her education
which would have saved her afterward
from much embarrassment and trouble.
In school, for the first time in her life
the little girl finds herself member Of
a class of equals, whose rights she must
respect, and who must respect hers. She
finds herself also in relation to classes
of interiors and to classes of superiors,
and their distinctions are not based on
any external conditions, any advantages
of wealth or social position, but on con-
ducts, requirements, and discipline.
When she looks down, she is encouraged
by seeing that she has made some pro-
gress in selfgvoernmenta and knowledge;
when she looks up, she recognizes that
the fields of character and knowledge
rise terrace-like above her present level,
and she does not grow conceited, but
modest. In a word, she learns to know
herself and to find her own level.
Goethe's Three References are taught
her without words, and her degree of
culture is marked by an impartial hand.
To form community, all sorts of peo-
pie must combine. Emerson's squirrel
taught good lesson when he said:
All sorts of thinps and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up year
And sphere
and it is certain that we can have no
roundness of development in schools
or individual characters in cluster of
people that is too small to afford us
every variety of formative influences.
[ have in mind now little girl of ten,
who in small school or in a class of
two or three would be perpetual tor
ment careless and listiess, but who is
actually so borne along by the influence
of the rest of her class that she is being
forced to be docile, care-taking, and at
tentive, and all this with scarcely word
from her teachers. The current of ear
nest and honest work is too strong for
her to stem, and a few years of this
steady influence will develop her into
a fine woman.
The only reason that 1 have ever
heard assigned for the potential superb
ority Of small schools over large is, that
in them each pupil can have a larger
share of the teachers attention and SUI
pertision But this theory is based
upon a mechanical estimate of the force
of character and intellectual power
One might as we'll say that small fami-
lies were better than large for the chill
dren because one-half a mothers love
was more than one-seventh of the same.
The truth is that the moral and intel
letual influence of teacher, like the
love of a mother or any spiritual force,
is not subject to the laws of mathemat-
ics nor can it be expressed In figures,
with the number of the pupils as the
denominator of the fraction. Rather it
is indefinitely multiplied by the increase
of its objects, as is the mothers love or
the fathers care.
To the educator every child under her
training is as distinct an individual as is
every one of the hundred patients who
claim the physicians care. Because he
administers quinine to one who needs
it, he does not administer it to the next
An educator before her school is like a
skillful musician before his instrument,
no two keys of which give forth the same
sound, or can be mistaken the one for
the other; only with this difference, that
the keys she touches give forth a sound
of their own, and not one that has been
given them, and they are capable Of i'm
provement and development If they
need tuning, she knows how to do it;
she softens or stirs them up at her will,
and from them all calls forth not only
melody, but harmony. with which each
key grows capable of more individual
action. To such a master should there
be given an instrument of two, OF of
seven Octaves?
In what / have said [ have, Of course,
been speaking only Of good schools, for
these are the only kind that is necessary
to consider. No parent would send a
daughter to school, large Or small, which
he did not consider good, or without
sufficient testimony to substantiate his
wisdom in the choice. To compare a
poor school which was large with small
one that was good would be as absurd
as the attempt of Sponsors giant to
weigh the right against the wrong. After
all, the main question is not the size but
the excellence of the school. Bit be-
tween good school which is large and
all equally good one which is small the
advantage to the pupil is in every way
indsputably on the side of the large one.
anna G. BRACKET, in Ha,per's Maga-
zine for September.