THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL 307 



themselves, make the new education succeed — it will be the teachers; 

 and if this vast responsibility rests upon them, with them must rest 

 also power and initiative, in them must appear professional pride far 

 beyond what they possess to-day. 



These fine, great schoolhouses, with all modern devices — provided 

 their ventilating systems work, their floors are kept clean and their 

 rooms are not overcrowded — are admirable; but they do not in them- 

 selves educate. The complicated apparatus, the works of art, the libra- 

 ries, with which many of those schoolhouses are filled, again are admir- 

 able; but in themselves they are mere sticks and stones. The subdivi- 

 sion of labor among teachers, the calling in of specialists, the elaboration 

 of methods of teaching are — sometimes — excellent ; but they are but the 

 husks of real education. Psychological laboratories, child- study, the 

 heaping up of great masses of pedagogical data are also, when backed 

 by real knowledge, excellent: but they are only minor helps to a real 

 education. Pile buildings, apparatus, methods, psychological sub- 

 tleties high as Pelion on Ossa and there will result no better education 

 than was given in the ancient district school unless behind this com- 

 plexity of educational machinery are real teachers knowing how to 

 teach and with time to do true, individual teaching. The more we 

 elaborate education, the more time we spend on pedagogical minutise, 

 the more we load ourselves down with apparatus, the more plainly it 

 appears that the sole essential for real education is the educated teacher 

 who knows how to teach. Upon his, or her, personal fitness rests the 

 future of the country ; with him, or with her, not in systems and appa- 

 ratus, lies the solution of this vexed question of the public school. The 

 regeneration of mankind will be brought about, so far as the common 

 school can effect it, by the direct, human influence of the individual 

 teacher upon the individual pupil. 



Such teachers, however, will not appear in numbers sufficient to 

 make their influence felt until they are assured of decent remuneration, 

 of tenure of office during real efficiency, of small classes, and of a pro- 

 fessional standing regulated, as is that of physicians and lawyers, by 

 the profession itself. And only when the great public gives that as- 

 surance, by its individual and corporate support of those who are trying 

 to foster the new education, will it prove that it really believes now, any 

 more than it did in 1841, in the actual " power of physical, intellectual 

 and moral training." 



