g to himself unmerited honors.
If his individual ability is responsible in one instance, why not apply the
same system to all pupils? If this system is responsible for the brilliancy
of one pupil, why does not the same system make all brilliant? The reader
knows the answer,--because heredity did not endow them equally. Men are not
born equal, despite the Declaration of Independence.

The school-master is not responsible for the apt and the inapt pupil. He is
responsible for his system which dictates how he will differentiate between
the apt and the inapt pupil, in order to achieve the best results without
injustice to either.

The inefficient teacher is a dangerous equation in the school system. I
mean by inefficiency, the quality of being temperamentally unsuited to the
profession. There are a large number of anemic, hysterical young women
teaching in the public schools of our cities who should not be there. They
should not be there in justice to themselves, nor should they be there in
justice to their pupils. A strict, yearly medical examination should be
made of the teachers to decide their physical and psychical fitness to fill
their positions adequately. One teacher, physically or psychically
inefficient, can do an inconceivable amount of harm in one school term. We
cannot afford to experiment along this line. It means too much, and even at
the price of one unhappy child it is too much to pay. The teacher who feels
that she is not suited to the work; who has constantly to hold herself and
her temper under control; whose nerves are such that she cannot do justice
to herself, whose sense of justice is capable of perversion on purely
sentimental grounds; or who has lost--or never possessed--the gift of
maintaining discipline, should promptly find another position. She is [33]
earning her salary under false pretenses, and that alone condemns her. I
believe, that a large percentage of the inefficiency of the New York
Schools is due, not to the academic or scholastic inability of the average
teacher, but to the average female teacher's physical, and especially her
psychical unfitness to teach. We must concede, however, that in many
instances the teacher's unfitness is a direct product of the pernicious
system itself.

[Illustration: _From "The Village of a Thousand Souls," Gesell, American
Magazine_

Evidence of a Feeble Mind

A dirty shack in a mud hole in the country is merely another reflection of
the same condi