g, painting,
electrical wiring, and the like are offered for boys; and cooking,
sewing, including dressmaking and designing, millinery, drawing, with
emphasis upon design and interior decoration, music, machine operating,
pasting, and the like are provided for girls. Another type of course has
provided for training which looks toward commercial work, even though it
is recognized that the most adequate commercial training may require a
longer period of preparation. In some schools special work in
agriculture is offered.

Our schools cannot be considered as satisfactorily organized until we
make provision for every boy or girl to work up to the maximum of his
capacity. The one thing that a teacher cannot do is to make all of his
pupils equal in achievement. Whatever adjustment may have been made in
terms of special classes or segregation in terms of ability, the teacher
must always face the problem of varying the assignment to meet the
capacities of individual children, and she ought, wherever it is
possible, especially to encourage the abler children to do work
commensurate with their ability, and to provide, as far as is possible,
for the rapid advancement of these children through the various stages
of the school system.

QUESTIONS

1. What are the principal causes of differences in abilities or in
achievement among school children?

2. What, if any, of the differences noticed among children may be
attributed to sex?

3. Are any of the sex differences noticeable in the achievements of the
school children with whom you are acquainted?

4. To what extent is maturity a cause of individual differences?

5. What evidence is available to show the fallacy of the common idea
that children of the same age are equal in ability?

6. How important is heredity in determining the achievement of men and
women?

7. To what extent, if any, would you be interested in the immediate
heredity of the children in your class? Why?

8. To what extent is the environment in which children live responsible
for their achievements in school studies?

9. What may be expected in the way of achievement from two children of
widely different heredity but of equal training?

10. For what factor in education is the environment most responsible?
Why?

11. If you grant that original nature is the primary cause of individual
differences in intellectual achievements, how would you define the work
of the school?

12. Why are you not jus