"I know now. They told me. It was your aunt. And your father may come. You're Miss Miranda Gale-Wright!... Good-by!" "And if I am," she cried so loudly that her voice echoed in the big room, "don't you love me? Because I've lied to you a little, won't you believe me at all? How do I come to sing of small, sweet humbleness and beauty and peace? Because they're everything in the world to me. Oh, Christopher, I thought-I thoughtI had found 'the magic hand'!" She clung to him sobbing and laid her cheek in his palm. As he held her, only the miracle of her song stood out. For she had not seen the little house on the inlet; she had not known. In her own life there had been dusty pavements. She too had longed. "Miranda," he whispered, "I have something wonderful I want to show Will you go with me, to-morrow, to see it?" you. SONNET By R. Henniker Heaton “We are betrayed by what is false within.”—George Meredith. "WE are betrayed by what is false within." To stain our milk-white souls with deadly sin. At our fools'-talk of Destiny and Fate. He knows that no man's love and no man's hate Dare even touch a soul to God akin! Like unto like! Was there no answering chord In vain were evil's panoplies arrayed, In vain the onslaught of the fiercest horde. THE PROGRESSIVE IDEAL IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT By Francis E. Leupp ESS than a half-century has New conditions call for new policies and passed since the whole body new measures. Hard as it may be for of students in a leading old-fashioned people to face the fact, the New England college went child of to-day is not the child of a generout on strike because the ation ago. The blood of a hundred forcefaculty had enacted a rule ful ancestors united in his veins is not which seemed to them unjust. They ab- nearly so powerful a factor in his making sented themselves from all scholastic ex- as the environment amid which he finds ercises till they had received satisfactory himself as soon as he begins to think. We assurances that the offensive decree would can almost measure his normality by the be reconsidered, but no violence or other degree to which his conduct is swayed by sensational feature marred the dignity of the social instinct. From the day he betheir demonstration. Nevertheless, the gins to play with other children, their prefincident was so astonishing that it filled erences weigh more with him than all the columns of space daily in the newspapers admonitions of his elders. In the era when throughout the country, and furnished children accepted both instruction and texts for bushels of editorial comment, discipline on authority, it was a comparauniformly condemnatory of the action of tively simple matter to govern a school. the students, and breathing dire appre- But now that it is the educational vogue hensions of what was likely to happen to make every child analyze every subwhen this brood of young rebels should ject of study and form his conclusions come to fill the places of the better-be- for himself, is it not natural that he haved generation from whom they were should carry the same principle into the descended. domain of conduct, and insist upon his right to decide how he ought to be governed? A few months ago a large American city was the scene of a revolt by twenty or thirty thousand school-children, because the local board of education had refused one of their demands. The infection of upheaval spread to other places, where a like petty drama was enacted on a smaller scale. There were parades and rioting, destruction of property, and a little bloodletting, and police squads had to be detailed for special service. Yet this outbreak of small boys and girls, with all its disorderly accompaniments, excited far less criticism than was called forth by the wholly peaceful protest of a body of young men, mature enough to know what they were about, in the late '60's. Why? Because in the interval the spirit of self-assertion has so permeated all classes of our population that even the babes and sucklings brought under the Montessori method are showing its influence, and the rest of us are calmly taking its phenomena for granted. The fact that, willy-nilly, we must reckon with this changed condition, will explain the interest I have felt in watching the operation of a system of self-government established in the last of all places where a casual observer would look to find it-a boarding-school for girls. I shall not identify the institution further than to say that it is in the heart of a city; that it is owned and managed by a woman in the prime of life whom we may call for convenience Mrs. Sperry, a college graduate who has made teaching not only a livelihood but a serious profession ever since she received her diploma; and that it was started in the face of many discouragements and has been maintained at its original standard in defiance of the advice of a multitude of good friends who were sure that that way lay disaster. It was folly, they said, to require an entrance examination, not of the prospective pu pils but of their parents, for "it will not do to solicit their patronage, and then dictate terms to them as to matters which they consider within their exclusive jurisdiction." "I shall not solicit their patronage," answered the brave little woman; “I shall tell them what I have to offer, and on what terms they may obtain it. A minister does not ask his congregation what doctrines he shall preach, nor does a lawyer distort his advice to suit the fancy of his clients. Is not my calling as responsible as either of theirs?" Accordingly, she advertised her school as open for pupils, but reserved the right to investigate the antecedents of every girl applying for admission, and to reject any who seemed unlikely to fit into her scheme of things. Rich and influential parents who were resolved that their daughters should have certain luxuries and recreational privileges not permitted to the other girls, or be subjected to a kind of surveillance which the principal deemed unwise, or be prepared for "society" rather than for life, she courteously advised to seek in a "finishing" school what they could not find in hers. When the reason for rejection lay deeper, and touched the character of the girl herself, she never fell back upon the conventional euphemism that there was "no vacancy," but told the truth frankly and faced the consequences. A girl described by a former teacher as never having been caught at anything bad, but being one who would "bear watching," was declined, to the indignation of her family, to whom it appeared preposterous that she should be excluded while another girl, widely known as "troublesome," was taken in. The ground of the discrimination was that the shortcomings of the troublesome girl lay all on the surface. It was true that she had been expelled from her last school; but what interested Mrs. Sperry in her was the fact that she gave no signs of a furtive disposition, but had confessed her crowning misdeed and taken her punishment without a wry face. Her parents were plain people, who were in despair over their failure in management and expressed only a hesitating hope that the new principal might be able to do better. "I'm not afraid to try," said Mrs. Sperry. "In spite of this record, Mary looks to me like good raw material to work upon." And so it proved. Her independence, as was to be expected, gave more or less offence to several worthy persons, and resulted in gathering into her school, for the first stage of its existence, an undue percentage of unpromising pupils. Although these made life anything but easy for her, like a healthy athlete she grappled every new difficulty with a sort of joyful zest. What she did find irksome was the reproachful urgency of some of her friends, who pleaded: "Why persist in a thankless struggle? You have made your name and place as a teacher. Drop theorizing now, and run your school on business principles. Give the public what plainly they want, raise your prices to correspond, and retire presently on a competency." "Surrender all the ground I have gained by hard fighting?" she inquired cheerfully. "You don't know me. If I had not intended to see this thing through, I should not have gone into it." It cost Mrs. Sperry two years or more of unremitting toil to establish completely her mastery of the situation. Then, the school having reached a point where it began to have well-recognized customs and traditions, she entered with her whole heart upon the second part of her programme. This was the conversion of the discipline of the institution from the usual system of concentrated authority and blind obedience into one of tactful leader ship and voluntary co-operation. In other words, into this company of about a hundred half-grown girls she carried the order. of self-government. Again arose the chorus of protest. "You are inviting anarchy!" cried her doubting friends. "The experiment has not always worked well even among older and more womanly students; what can you hope from these fledglings?" "Possibly," suggested the unterrified innovator, "it would have worked better among those older students if they had been broken to it during the plastic age." Every mother who is rearing a family of children, and has the courage to require them to bathe and dress themselves as soon as their little hands are capable of such work, discovers that their efficiency in toilet-making acquires a sort of pro gressive momentum. The first learners phere cleared. The girls who got a real are slow at it, and waste many tears and taste of self-government began to take an complaints; but their pride later in teach- interest in it; and when not only were ing their younger brothers and sisters the proctorships filled cheerfully, but an bears fruit in better records for them- occasional request would come in that the selves, till in due course the whole group association might be allowed to assume this are operating like a series of cog-wheels of and that item of authority hitherto reserved divers diameters, the rapid ones moving for the faculty, Mrs. Sperry knew that the the slower, and these in turn the yet worst of her battle was over. Then she slower ones, till the speeding-up of any of made a new step forward, in the interest the series quickens the revolutions of all. of mixing humanity with justice. She So Mrs. Sperry felt justified in believing began taking the "old" girls, meaning that if she could once bring the wheels of those who had passed a year or more in her school discipline into proper co-ordi- the school, into partnership with her in nation, the machinery would largely run it- looking after the "new" girls. Confidenself, leaving her more hours and energy to tial consultations were held from time to devote to other interests. But she real-time over the cases of those novices whose ized that she must move gradually and with great care. As soon as practicable she organized a students' association among the girls, and turned over to it the choice of a small body of proctors, who should supervise the conduct of the other pupils during the study-hours, preventing disorder and seeing that they stuck to their work. At the start, the pupils accepted this responsibility very grudgingly, being suspicious of a novelty which they could not reconcile with anything in their experience. Teacher government they could understand, because it followed the rule of the world that the stronger shall dictate to the weaker. What subtle design could be lurking behind a proposal of the faculty to abdicate a part of their authority and let the school discipline itself? The association worried over this question at its meetings, and changed its attitude almost from week to week. Mrs. Sperry did nothing to force the issue, merely advising the doubtful contingent to consider both sides well be fore acting, and thus bringing them face to face with the alternative between pupil government and teacher government, of course with the result of a decisive vote in favor of the former. For some time she saw the chairmanship of the association, as well as the proctorships, go begging, especially since, as one upheaval settled itself after another, she turned over to the girls additional duties, including several which, from their point of view, their teachers had been hired to perform and could evade only by shirking. Little by little, however, the atmos temperamental peculiarities, or homesickness, or defects of earlier training threatened to interfere with their progress. Her amateur assistants responded to her overtures most warmly; all their feminine sympathies were stirred; activities of their minds which, unguided, would probably have run into fruitless gossip, were thus given play in a line of really useful endeavor, and their social consciousness was awakened. Meanwhile, the pride of the old girls was stimulated in knowing and preserving the traditions of the school. Such and such things "are not done here" became their favorite formula in admonishing newcomers, and was received with a deference seldom accorded to an arbitrary mandate from an instructor. For this reason among others, the girls fell into the habit of preferring for proctors those of their number who were best acquainted with school precedents and understood how to use them in place of mere commands. And back of all these guides and sanctions, now well rooted, stand the con- ▲ stitution and standard rules adopted by the students' association. In that compendium, printed in a neat little pamphlet, we find laid down the duties of the elective officers. One of these is a warden, who rings the bells, has charge of the school registers, takes the roll at meals, and the like. The proctors divide the oversight of the dormitory buildings, one caring for each. They inspect bedrooms and bathrooms, enforce the rules generally, report on the conduct of the girls, and go through the houses the last thing at night to see that all hands are in bed, the rooms in order, and the lights out. Warden and proctors are elected monthly. On the last Friday evening of the month the association holds a meeting to nominate candidates for these offices, and the election is made the following day by ballot, the pupils dropping their written votes into a box set up for the purpose. At the outset, most critics of the plan were ready to prophesy that only those proctors who courted popularity at the expense of strict fulfilment of their obligations could hope for re-election. Experience proves the reverse to be true. So keen is the general sense of justice, now that the pupils have charge of their own superintendence, that the proctor who holds the girls in her jurisdiction to account without fear or favor, but in a reasonable way, receives a rare meed of respect from her associates, and is apt to be elected again and again. But this tribute does not lapse into a perfunctory form. All the girls take a lively interest in the canvass which always precedes an election, and now and then they will temporarily retire a highly successful proctor in order to "try out" another girl, who has never held office, but who, by the part she has taken at the meetings of the association, has given indications of marked capacity and character. Indeed, as the system has been working for some years, the girls exhibit a genuinely democratic spirit. They are quick to appreciate traits of real leadership in each other, and to manifest this sentiment practically on election day. There seems to be no "playing politics" or "trading" among them, doubtless partly because they are at the age of idealism, and partly because they enter and leave school within a brief span of years, and have no time to become indifferent, like their fathers, through over-familiarity with the elective franchise. Nor is it an insignificant circumstance that those girls who pass from our self-governing school to college are promptly discovered by their new companions and pushed to the front there, taking a prominent part in the collegiate activities, heading important committees, and, by their poise and their cultivated sense of responsibility, making themselves felt in every way as a positive influence for the common welfare. The rules betray their juvenile authorship by an occasional slip in syntax, and some are deliciously characteristic, voicing a sense of the proprieties evolved from the girls' own experience. Thus: "No girl may go down-stairs in a kimono except at the end of the evening studyhour, and not at all on Saturday or Sunday. "No girl may wash her hair or do laundry-work in the bathroom, during study hour. "A girl must take her baths at time indicated by the bath schedule, and must report immediately before going to the bathroom. "A girl must not act in an undignified manner in the classroom, in the diningroom, or under chaperonage." Mark well the lines of reservation: nothing here against pillow-fights in the dormitory halls, or ducking a lazy girl to wake her in the morning. In suitable places and at suitable hours, why shouldn't girls be girls? Again, among the liberties specifically granted under the rules, note this evidence of compromise between faculty preferences and schoolgirl cravings: "Each girl is allowed to have in her own room crackers, fresh fruit, prunes, figs, dates, and olives. Every Saturday a girl may have candy, cake, or nuts in any proportion or combination so that the whole amount will not exceed a pound in weight. This food must be disposed of by the following Monday morning inspection." But since proctors, after all, are only human "If a girl becomes proctor for the afternoon or evening study-hour or for overnight, and knows beforehand that someone has forbidden food, the food shall be confiscated and no demerits given." The girls have so framed their rules that the pervading spirit everywhere is one of respect for the authorities they have themselves constituted; for example: "No girl may argue with the proctor, nor question her decisions. "No girl may be impertinent, defiant, or disobedient to a proctor. "A girl who considers a warden's or proctor's decision unjust may take her case first to the committee, second to the head of the school." |