New Iberia enterprise. (New Iberia, La.) 1885-1902, 1900-04-21

To discriminate between pupils
of different capacity, to select the
competent for suitable instruction
and advance each pupil with ap.
propriate rapidity, will ultimately
become, l believe, the most impor-
tant functions of the public school
administrator.
Everybody knows that children
are infinitely diverse; that chill
dren in the same family even are
apt to be very different in DISPOSE
ton, temperament and mental pow
er. Every child is unique per-
sonality. 1t follows, of course,
that uniform programmes and uni
form methods of instruction, ap-
piled simultaneously to large num-
bers of children, must be unwise
and injurious. It is for the interest
of society, as we'll as the individual,
that every individual child's Pc
culiar gifts and powers should be
developed and trained to the highest
degree. Hence, in the public schools
of democracy, the aim should be
to give the utmost possible amount
of individual instruction; to grade
according to capacity just as far as
the number of teachers and their
strength and skill will permit, and
to promote pupils not by battalions,
but in the most irregular and indi-
vidual way possible.
Some time ago heard an assist
ant superintendent in an impor-
tant city declare that many gram
mar school teachers in his city OBJ
jected to any division among the
fifty or more pupils in each room,
any division, that is, according to
the attainments and powers Of the
individual pupils. They wanted
all the pupils in a given room to
be in one grade, to move together
like soldiers on parade, and to ar
rive at examination day having
all performed precisely the same
tasks, and made the same progress
in the same subjects. If that were
a true portrait of the city graded
school, it would be safe to predict
that the urban school would before
long become nothing but charity
school for the children of the de-
pendent classes. Intelligent Amer
leans win not subject their children
to such a discipline, when they
once understand what it means. |
Not only is it no serious objection
to the new proposals that they
must diminish uniformity in
schools-it is their strongest rec
commendation.
The poor boy in the United States
should have as good a chance as
the child Of a rich man to obtain
The best school training which his
character and powers fit him to re-
ceive. The rich man can obtain
for his children a suitably varied
sourse Of instruction, with much
individual teaching, in a private or
endowed school, but the immense
of American children are
to the limited, uniform
machine programme Of the graded
school. A democratic society was
never more misled as to its own in
crest than in supposing such q
to be for the interest Of
he masses.
Selection of studies for the in-
lividual, instruction addressed to
he individual, irregular promo
ion, grading by natural capacity
Ind rapidity Of attainment, and di-
,ersity Of product as regards age
md acquisitions, must come to
'haracterixe the American public
chool If it is to answer the pur-
,oses Of democratic society.
The right time for advancing q
'hild to the study Of q new sub
ect is the first moment he is capa-
lie Of comprehending it. The
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