Little Aliens

But among the pheasant and the trout of the ideal hunting-fields the true relation between home and school flits ever along the horizon, a very sea-serpent. Everyone has heard of it. Some have pursued it. Some even vow they have seen it. Almost any one is ready to describe it. Expeditions have gone forth in search of it, and have come back empty-handed or with the haziest of kodak films. And the most conservative of insurance companies would consider it a safe «risk.» In every-day and ordinary conditions this relation between home and school is really a question of mother and teacher, with the child as its stamping-ground. Two very busy women, indifferent, hostile, or strangers to each other, are engaged in the formulated and unformulated education of the child. To the mother this child is her own particular Mary or Peter. To the teacher it is the whole generation, of which Peter and Mary are such tiny parts. The ideal teacher is as wise as Solomon, as impartial as the telephone directory, as untiring as a steam-engine, as tender as a sore throat, as patient as a glacier, as immovable as truth, as alert as a mongoose, and as rare as a hen's tooth. But her most important qualification is the power to combine her point of view with the parental one, and to recognize and provide for the varieties of character, temperament, mentality, and physical well-being of the children entrusted to her care. The average teacher—nearly as elusive as the ideal—is, to a surprising and ever-increasing extent, learning to do this. It is, in fact, a very large part of the law and the prophets in modern pedagogy. The teacher is expected to know, and she generally does know, what, in hospital parlance, is called the «history» of her pupils, and the newer schools are equipped with apparatus for making thorough physical examinations upon which the pupil's curriculum will largely depend.