As in all other problems, the matter resolves itself into a question of individuals. Given a conscientious teacher, almost any pupil can make a success of school. But in a class of 40 or thereabouts no teacher can hope to meet individual needs. The best she can do Is hold the entire class to an average standard. Both the gifted child and the backward child are handicapped.
The gifted child is likely to get along well in his school work, no matter where he is placed, rural, village or city school. The trouble is that in a large class he is not likely to be busy "to capacity," and he develops bad habits of loafing and has endless chances of getting into mischief. The famous Leopold and Loeb are examples of superior mentality gone wrong; they were not given enough to do. Unless a gifted child can be in a class of his mental equals, he is better off in a rural school with a good teacher than in a village class of average intelligence where the teacher cannot give him individual attention. In a class to himself in the rural school he can at least travel a mental pace proportionate to his abilities. He will lack most in social contacts, but that is something that can be supplied in other ways.
The backward child suffers most from our present system. All his school life he is treated as an "average" child, and if he could get just the right start he probably would be "average." But so many slow children get a wrong start and all through school like they struggle with their lessons; they ahem that heart-twisting, hunted, baffled look in their eyes whenever they recite; they are terrified at examination time. They are thwarted in every way, and they grow to hate and dread the very name of school.
Should Be Easy
Poor darling! Learning should be as easy and delightful as picnicking on the hillside. There should be some hard climbing, some rough spots, but there should always be the lure and the joy of "getting on." there should be sunshine and romance and feasts of delight.
When I hear a backward child recite in school, trying so desperately to fit into the "average" scheme, it reminds me of -- well let's use a homely farm example. It is like a Mason jar lid which has started on at a wrong slant and about the second turn it gains to find and stick and squeak, and no amount of tugging will make it fit into the grooves. We try and try again and finally in most cases, if we start it right, the cap winds easily over the grooved path and slips into place to make a perfect seal. But with our children it is harder to go back and try again, and we find many of them stuck at about the second round; and all our trigging and forcing and pushing and twisting, all through their school lives, is not enough to help them over the road; and when they finally "finish school" there is still an awful gap between childhood and normal intelligent adult life.
When I see a little child being crowded out of so much happiness because he can't follow the beaten path, I feel like saying: "You blessed thing. I can't stand to see you suffer any more. Let's throw all the books and all the schools to the wind, and we'll go outdoors together and play in the sun and the wind, and somewhere, after a while, some way, we'll find your natural way to learn, and we'll help you get your share of all the sweetness and light which civilization has garnered for you!" --Hope