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Special Opportunities of Small Boarding School For Girls
By DUMAS MALONE, Professor of Marthematies, Andrew College, Cuthbert, Ga.
Although the differences between
schools are usually due to their differ
ently taking advantage of opportuni
ties rather than to — differences in the
opportunities, it is undoubtedly true
that the various types of schools do
have different fields and that each type
has distinct opportunities and advan
tages. The small boarding school for
girls, the school with less than 200 stu
dents, while not pretending to offer the
breadth of training or the minute at
tention to detail which, the great col
lege affords, has yet certain special ad
vantages of its own.
For one thing, such a school gives
greater opportunity than any other sort
of institution for individual attention
•n the part of the teacher to the pupil’s
school work. There are not so many
pupils but that each one’s course can
be gone over carefully at the begin
ning of the year and proper sugges
tions be made. The individual capa
bility of the pupil can be more easily
determined, and she can be given the
amount of work and that sort work
which she is best qualified to do.
In many of the large schools, such
attention seems to be impossible. Al
though the tendency is now in tfie other
direction, for a long time students in
many of the large colleges and univer
sities arranged their courses of study
almost entirely to suit themselves, se
lecting more often the easiest than the
most suitable subjects. Where each
pupil can be given proper faculty guid
ance such mistakes are less likely to
occur.
Lecture System Important.
Tn the small school the classes are
always small. The teacher knows
every pupil well and soon learns what
each one can do. Although in many
of the great and wealthy universities
classes are small, it is a rare thing for
university professors to know much
more about their pupils than their
names. In some of the schools of the
South which lie between the great uni
versity and the small school, owing to
insufficient faculties, classes in some
subjects are very large.
Where such is the case the lecture
system must of necessity almost en
tirely prevail, and the examination
must be made almost the sole test of
the standing of the pupil. Much good
as there is in such a system, especially
for older students, it lias its limitations
even with them, and is wholly unsuited
to younger ones. It Is all right for
graduate students in English to hear a
lecture on some phase of poetical struc
ture. A lecture to boys and girls in
the parts of speech, however, or on
some of the fundamentals of rhetoric
is. of course, out of the question. In
some cases, nevertheless, in the lower
classes of larger colleges very element
ary work is treated in almost Ss ob
jectionable a manner. Certainly in a
large class it is very bard to do drill
work of anv sort. In the small class it
may easily be arranged for.
Not only may courses of study be
better attended to where there are not
many pupils, and not .only may the
regular class work be better directed,
but, in addition, the teacher is enabled
to study his pupils more closely, to
watch their progress and to aid them
individually in their work. Where
classes are large, teachers become
barely acquainted with their pupils and
are unable to offer much direction to
them.
More Homelike For Students.
Again, the small boarding school for
girls may provide a more homelike and
a more democratic social life than al
most any other type of institution. It
is almost impossible to make a big dor
mitory. where there are hundreds of
students, seem like a home. It will
naturally be more like a hotel where
each student is an individual unit, en
tirely self-directing and responsible
JHE ATLANTA (iKORGI AX. SATl’h’nA Y. JULY (i. 1912
ll' ' wll
■M ' R
DUMAS MALONE. A.8..
Professor of Mathematics, Andrew Col
lege, Cuthbert, Ga.
only to himself. In a school where
there are less than 200 pupils it is far
easier to make the dormitory seem like
a home. Especially is this true where
the president and his family or some of
the teachers’ families live in the dor
mitory. Their presence adds a touch of
home lite such as nothing else cati do.
In the small boarding school for girls
it is possible to make the entire student
body feel somewhat like a big family,
each member realizing her influence
upon and responsibility to the rest.
Intimate contact between teachers
and pupils is impossible in many larger
colleges. It is taken as a matter of
course in many small ones. Teachers
and pupils see each other every day
and come to know each other intimate
ly. Thus is the chasm which often
exists between them bridged in a per
fectly natural way. This intimacy, fur
thermore. adds greatly to the charm of
the home life. A group of interesting
teachers can make things very attrac
tive for a crowd of girls. This relation
ship likewise adds greatly to the oem
.ocratie spirit of the school. By thus
moving on terms of equality with ail,
the teachers cause pupils to do like
wise.
Under such an argument, with ev
eryone in the college home well ac
quainted with everyone else, there is
little formality and little clannishness
and snobbery. Everyday association
with everybody doesn’t allow much
room for the development of the feel
ing of social superiority. The smalt
size of the student body, furthermore,
allows an easier direction of the so
cial life. If much direction of this
sort is possible in the large college, lit
tle is ever given. The social life of
the pupils is almost entirely of their
own direction. Teachers in the small
school can ever be on the lookout to
protect the manifestation of class dis
tinction. Snobbery, which is so com
mon in many quarters, may be almost
entirely eliminated.
Opportunity For Uplift.
Not only are there some phases of
the intellectual and social life which
may be better provided for in the small
school than in the large, but there are
also some phases of the spiritual life
which find their finest field in the small
boarding school. Nowhere may there be
such an opportunity for spiritual up
lift. The greatest lessons of life are
learned and the greatest inspiration is
caught, not from printed page nor from
the words of preacher or lecturer, but
from the lives of other people with
whom we daily come in contact. It is
the contact of personality which is of
most vital importance.
Few boys and girls ever find such
associations anywhere as they do oft at
school. The pick of the land are there.
To associate with them is a privilege.
Never will any boy or girl have such
an opportunity for intimacy as is af
forded in dormitory life. One will
not find such an opportunity for inti
mate association with them. It nat
urally follow's that pupils will never
have such a chance to be uplifted in
that way that most uplifts come,
through the contact with noble per
sonalities.
The faculty of a girls boarding school
is usually composed of the highest type
of men and women. Their equal can
scarcely be found anywhere. Pupils
have the priceless privilege of asso
ciating intimately with them. What
an opportunity for the quickening cf
all that is high and noble in a pupil
through this contact with such per
sonalities!
Good Chance at Small College.
Perhaps the best explanation of the
marked superiority cf the products of
the small college* is that such institu-
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tions give the best chance for contact
between their pupils and the nobler
personalities of those in charge of their
work. The great university in the me
tropolis gives finer opportunities for
getting in touch with scholarship and
for making original Investigation. One
can delve there into the deepest recess
es of the most minute branch of hu
man Knowledge. This can not be cone
in the small boarding school. But,
somehow, in the great institution of
learning, one often misses the touch of
men. His teachers and fellow stu
dents barely know him. the president
has never heard of him, he is lost in
the multitude. All efforts seem to be
directed toward the developing of his
scholarship; very little is done toward
the making of his manhood.
The small school may have very lim
ited laboratory equipment and compar
atively few elective courses. But it
may have and usually does have true
men and women guiding the destinies
of those committed to its care. By the
contact of the personalities of these
teachers with those of their young
charges may be produced as noble a
work, as true an education as is possi
ble in any school in all the world.