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Show Personal Contact Between Teacher and Pupil Potent Force for Good By DEAN WENDELL S. BROOKS, Northwestern University. IpjipJlIEIlE are today tremendous obatacles to the "personal" instructs instruc-ts tion that used to prevail in the pre-World-war days, in the day Jl wllu:h tlle fathers and mothers' of the high school and college student of the present so vividly remember. In those days higher high-er education was something of a luxury; there was not such an influx of students into the halls of high schools and universities as there is today. to-day. Instructors were more or less able to know the personal traits and characteristics of students and to advise each and all as a friend of the family. Now there are great hordes pouring through the gates of the college and that means new efforts and new plans. A teacher having four or five sets of pupils daily cannot come to know them intimately; the pupils in turn are bewildered by the different personalities per-sonalities as well as by the different methods of the half-dozen teachers presenting to them many different subjects. If there is any high school senior who has not yet felt that spark of fire that strikes from a good teacher to the spirit of youth, I would urge him to go to the teacher who has meant most to him and talk over a plan for the future. Counsel from good teachers now will be the determining force in shaping the life career of thousands of this year's high school graduates. Personal contact is a potent force on every level of education. The mother devoting herself to the little child in her home, teaching by example ex-ample and precept, illustrates the early stages of this mighty force. The high school or college teacher who interests himself in the problem of his student and devotes himself not primarily to the solution of that problem but to the calling forth of that student's power, illustrates th later stage, the value of personal contact. |