TEACHERS AND THEIR PUPILS 489 
THE RELATIONS BETWEEN TEACHERS AND THEIR 
PUPILS 
By PrincipaL H. A. MIERS, M.A., D.Sc., Baas: 
PRESIDENT OF THH SHCTION 
eh O preside over this section is to incur a responsibility which I con- 
fess somewhat alarms me; for the president may, by virtue of his 
temporary office, be regarded as speaking with authority on the subjects 
with which he deals. Now, it is my desire to speak about university 
education, and for this purpose I must say something of school educa- 
tion; but I would have it understood that I really know little about 
the actual conduct of modern school teaching. One may read books 
which describe how it should be conducted, but this is a very different 
thing from seeing and hearing the teacher in his class; and I fear that 
personal recollections of what teaching in preparatory and public schools 
was like from thirty to forty years ago do not qualify one to pose as an 
intelligent critic of the methods which now prevail. 
Human nature, however, has not changed much in the last forty 
years, and if, in considering the relations between university and school 
education, I can confine myself to general principles, based upon the 
difference between boys and men, I trust that I may not go far wrong. 
I propose first to consider some general relations between teachers 
and their pupils, and then explain what, in my opinion, should be the 
change in the method of teaching, or at any rate in the attitude of 
teacher to pupil, which should take place when the scene changes from 
school to university. 
First as to general relations between teachers and their pupils. 
Educational systems necessarily prescribe the same methods for 
different teachers, and, being made for the mass, ignore the individual. 
But happily, in spite of the attempts to formulate methods of instruc- 
tion and to make precise systems, there are many, and those perhaps 
some of the most successful, in the army of earnest school teachers who 
are elaborating their own methods. 
Now among all the changes and varieties of system and curriculum 
there is one factor which remains permanent and which is universally 
confessed to be of paramount importance—the individuality of the 
teacher and his personal influence upon the pupil. It is therefore a 
healthy sign when school teachers who have been trained on one system 
begin to develop their own methods, for in this they are asserting their 
1 Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, Sheffield, 1910. 
