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desk. He must know what is happening and he must feel that it makes a difference.

Some years ago a mother called upon a member of the school board, asking that her daughter have her seat changed, stating that she then sat just across the aisle from a bad boy who made vulgar and insinuating remarks. The board member told her to consult the teacher. She replied that she had, but that the teacher had refused her request, stating that her daughter was entitled to no special privileges. The board member peremptorily ordered the teacher to place that boy where he could offer no indignities to decent pupils, and if she could not do this, to suspend him at once. The morals of the school must be⚫ protected.

During intermission the plays should be supervised. There are many good reasons for this, but the only one considered here is the moral one.

Children going long distances, over lonely roads, need supervision, and the adult person is of unusual experience if he does not know why. There are many reasons, but the reason now considered is a moral one.

Supervised play, and supervision going to and returning from school, is a more difficult matter in rural than in town schools.

To some teachers supervision is distasteful. They place it along with surveillance. They are willing to

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trust" their children, and such teachers who are mixtures of stupidity and credulity, work irreparable injury. This is an age of supervision and strict accounting. As well argue that a cash register is a challenge of one's morals. Carelessness in business methods makes rogues, and carelessness in child management either in the home or the school makes for imperfection. The wise teacher and wise parent will not wilfully disregard the temptations for wrong action that are often placed before children.

These are matters that caused me great uneasiness during my first school. The journey to and from school is one over which the teacher can have but little control. The law recognizes the gravity of this matter and gives the teacher and parent concurrent jurisdiction over the child from the time he leaves home till he returns home, but this does not insure safety from the vicious children.

There are many who are favorably located, where distances are short or where morals are clean, but there are those who have long distances to travel, and who are forced to be with those who are immoral, and it is for them that a care must be exercised,

CHAPTER XVII

MISTAKES

I HAVE said that one mistake I made was attempting to teach. This opinion is strengthened as I measure the results of my work during that first year. As I view my work of that period I am satisfied that few teachers ever did much poorer teaching, notwithstanding our grand finale and my offer of re-employment at the highest salary paid in the rural schools of the county. One consolation I have found in that year's work is that I have been, in later years, better able to detect weaknesses in teaching, for I was guilty of all of them and know their results.

At the beginning of my work in a city school some years ago the following incident occurred. I shall faithfully recite it for the benefit of my readers, believing that many will recognize in it a personal experience.

A father of children in my school called me into his place of business and said: "You are a stranger to me, but I have a trouble and I hope you can help me out of it. It may sound harsh to you to hear me say it, but I have a son, twenty-two years old, who is absolutely worthless. I am a poor man and have five children, all of whom I desire to educate and

make self-supporting. This son of whom I speak has never been a good student. He never learned very well, and the worst of it is, he never tried. Last year I sent him to a business college and last month he came home with his diploma. I got him a position with an old friend of mine in a neighboring town. Yesterday he came home. He came because he was discharged. I tell you, Professor, he is no good. Now what I want you to do, as our superintendent and as a man who is interested in young people and anxious to help them succeed in life, is to see him, talk to him, look him over, gain his confidence, and try to fix him so he can pass the teachers' examination, so that he can teach school. I know where he can get a school if he can procure a certificate."

I met this son, talked with him, and looked him over, but fear I did not gain his confidence. He was evidently not impressed with the seriousness of the teaching business. He undertook it, however, and, although he teaches but one term in a place, he always manages to be self-supporting, but, it is to be feared, at the expense of a childhood that is in no way responsible for the father's five children, the shortcomings of his son, nor for the father's consuming desire to make his children self-supporting.

Such crimes as the foregoing are directly chargeable to the system under which our rural schools oper

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ate. The system not only makes such cases possible, but it makes possible the worst results imaginable for such cases. If such teachers could be supervised they might be tolerated and they might be made of some use and some of their mistakes eliminated, but under the present small district system their opportunity for destructive work is almost unlimited.

The case cited is a double criticism on our schools. The school is responsible for this young man's condition, and a school that makes such misfits will continue to make them so long as it persists in hiring misfits for teachers.

Through a supposed kindness of heart boards hire such teachers; but kindness of heart and saneness of mind are far from being in evidence when such teachers are perpetrated upon a helpless childhood from which the opportunities of youth are withheld.

Such teachers as the one just described are often hired by well-meaning boards, not for the purpose of giving the teachers employment, but because the children in their school are small and not far advanced, and can, therefore, be taught by a teacher who has not made much preparation. These boards are certainly most ignorant concerning the necessary qualifications of a good primary or intermediate grade teacher. How good it makes the superintendent feel to have his board say, "Get us the very

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