but that does not prevent the teaching of religion in its essence. Religion is a matter of heart and life rather than of form. Its natural, casual expression in the thought and conduct of superiors is the most powerful religious influence to which young people can be subjected. The irreligious teacher lacks the power to appeal to and stimulate one of the deepest impulses of humanity. Faith in Human Nature. The teacher should have a deep and abiding faith in human nature, in the individual youth, and in education as the best means of making him more efficient as an individual and as a member of society. The miracle of faith is that it enables its possessor to compass the ideal, and it inspires the personal object of that faith to rise above himself into the ideal of the one who has faith in him. Such faith gives dignity, steadiness, and power to a teacher's whole career because he believes that he is engaged in the greatest work which it is possible for man to do. While others are doing the great deeds of the world, it is given to him to train those who in future years will do greater deeds. While others build their monuments in gross matter, he builds his in the human soul. Joined with love like that of Socrates for young men and that of Jesus for humanity, such faith is unconquerable. Personal Influence. - We have enumerated some special elements in the personality of the successful high-school teacher. It is a bald analysis and incomplete. The real teacher must possess these and many more, and they must be combined in that subtle, vital way which makes a manly man or a womanly woman. We have come to believe profoundly in the social inheritance, in the influence of the social environment. The blind primal instinct of imitation lays fast hold upon all that comes within its reach. Attitudes of mind and heart, no less than specific acts, are absorbed into the life. The awakened self-consciousness of youth makes personality the object of supreme interest and attention. Its influence is inevitable and tremendous. It does more than all else to give set to the affections and an attitude toward life; and these are more important than scholarship. The high-school teacher whose personality is great and good may make scholars, he must make men; and a man is more than a mere scholar. The problem of superior success in the teaching of youth is, more than all else, a problem of personality. EXPERIENCE The rule of many school boards to employ no teacher who has not had experience finds at least partial justification in the fact that the success of every teacher is more or less problematical until it has been demonstrated by actual teaching under normal conditions. Academic scholarship may be thorough and extensive, professional training, where it exists, may be good, personality may be attractive and promise success, and yet something may be lacking to make the teacher's work successful. Success or failure will usually appear the first year, especially if his work is carefully supervised. Prospective teachers rarely realize the importance, for future success, of doing their first teaching in a good school, under the supervision of an efficient superintendent or principal. In the Grades. There is some difference of opinion as to the kind of first experience that is most profitable for the prospective high-school teacher. It seems clear that experience in the primary grades is little help in the high school, since the spirit and methods of work are so different. One or two years, however, can be profitably spent in the seventh or eighth grade preliminary to taking up high-school work. This experience gives the teacher a definite idea of the work done in the grades, and it enables him to understand better the needs of pupils when they enter the high school. Advanced grade work and highschool work would both be materially improved if the teachers in each place knew definitely the special problems and difficulties of the other. If teachers who are prepared to do high-school work could accept positions in the seventh or eighth grade, with the assurance that they would soon be promoted to the high school, the work in both places would be materially strengthened. In the Small High School. — Under existing conditions, however, it can hardly be expected that young men and women who are prepared to do high-school work should serve an apprenticeship in the grades. They go directly into the high schools, usually the smaller ones, and secure promotion to the larger upon the merits of their work. In the first two years of work in the high school, the teacher learns his subjects better than he has ever known them before; he learns the important points, the hard places, a reasonable assignment for the day and for the semester or year; he learns the machinery of school management; he learns the art of class management and instruction; he learns more than he has known before of the nature and needs of boys and girls; he learns where to expect difficulty and how to avoid it; he learns not only what the problems of the school are, but what is the direction of their solution; and, most important of all, he learns through observation, experience, and habit, what his own powers are and how to command them. He learns none of these things in their fullness, but he makes a beginning, and he is now ready to proceed to the attainment of that intuitive skill which enables him to diagnose and treat the individual case as if by instinct, and to assume larger responsibilities successfully. Of course this higher development comes only with effort. If he ceases to think, to study, and to strive toward higher ideals, progress stops and the retrograde movement soon begins. Assuming the possession of the necessary youthful spirit, the high-school teacher should grow constantly stronger through many years of experience. SEX Reasons for Preponderance of Women. - Statistics show that a very large majority of the teachers in the high school are women. The cause is to be found in social and industrial conditions. Men are loath to enter upon a life work which promises insufficient financial returns to enable them to establish a home and rear a family in comfort and respectability. Many men, after entering successfully upon the work of teaching, leave it for financial reasons. Others deliberately use it as a stepping stone to something else. Still others soon become conscious of financial limitations, but they remain through force of habit. A few serve on through sheer love of the work. Most of the young men who now enter intelligently upon the work of teaching do so with the deliberate purpose of preparing themselves for positions of leadership in the profession, which pay a living wage, but yet far short of that received in other professions requiring the same degree of training and ability. Generally speaking, men cannot afford to accept subordinate positions in the high schools, hence their absence. On the other hand, the work of teaching naturally appeals to women, and they are preeminently successful in it. In these days of freedom they are ambitious for positions of honor and profit. Social conditions and the law of supply and demand make it possible to secure women teachers of greater native |