OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 203 



^ewer schools. I doubt the wisdom of this, as it will be likely to make attend- 

 ance less regular. 



A good teacher with four scholars may be more useful than one with twenty. 

 Many of the greatest men were pupils of individual teachers. Take tlie grand- 

 est statesmen in the world, like Gladstone and Bismark, and they have been 

 educated by single tutors, men who have lived with them, and who have poured 

 into them the intelligence they had; who have put into them their personality; 

 who have directed the currents of their thought; and they have come out 

 skilled men, skilled diplomats, skilled statesmen, and have learned how to 

 think. They have learned how to read. Why, there is not one-half of the 

 people of this country who know how to read any subject. I do not mean the 

 mere reading over of the words; but to read understandingly, to get the inner 

 sense of things, to drink in the instruction so that it may become a part of 

 their bone and blood and spirit. Now you lose this individual instruction 

 when you have forty or fifty scholars. The teacher has to study each individual 

 mind and address this subject and that subject piece-meal, and the result is in a 

 large school the personality of the tetcher is spread out so that it becomes 

 pretty thin. Now it may be true, that there are some districts which from 

 necessity have but four or five students, but don't abolish them on that 

 account. I have in my mind a young man right here in the adjoining county 

 of Washtenaw, who was with me roughing and scuffling in the district school, 

 but shortly afterwards he was taken away from us and put under a private 

 instructor. I know it was town talk and town laugh that he had got a teacher 

 who went out fishing and hunting with him, who lived with him and slept with 

 him, and we all thought he was having a soft time, and so he was having a soft 

 time, but I tell you I wish I had had the advantages and the culture he had. 

 He has grown up to be a noble man to-day, one of the leading men of the 

 nation in one of the largest cities of this continent. And you can trace it from 

 this fact — he had poured into him all this skill and intelligence. 



i)o not fall into the idea that because your school is small you can have any kind 

 of a teacher. A teacher who is not thoroughly prepared for work, whose views 

 and opinions are faulty, affects the whole school. Get the best teacher you can, 

 ■regardless of the cost. One reason of the non-preparation of the student is 

 because the schools are so large that the personality of the teacher cannot reach 

 each individual mind and hence the students go struggling along learning 

 things half way and when they get through the arithmetic they don't know 

 the arithmetic. 



There are many sides to the question and while we see the advantages of 

 individua training, yet we are proud of the democratic equality of our public 

 schools. When a young man is sent into a public school it is a new life for 

 him. Every school is a community, it has its leaders, it has its se f-imposed 

 laws which every student must adapt himself to. The moment you put him 

 in a public school he has to fight his own way. He has got to know something 

 of the world and he learns a fellow-sympathy with his fellow-students that is as 

 good an education as he gets out of his books. It is the pride of our country 

 that there is an equality of all classes. Education is free to all. The thing 

 to do is to make education available in the meeting of life's duties. I had 

 rather be proficient in two studies than have a smattering of many. I would 

 rather you would be thorough with a few students than to give a superficial 

 knowledge to many. There is such a thing as mastering a subject, and the man 

 who feels that he is master of one thing knows that he is more of a power than 



