to rise to the occasion by conceiving such questions as she might ask;
but even after the questions are put, they are overcome by a strange
mental lassitude and make little response. The stimulus to work must
come from within rather than from without, if one's state is to be
healthy.

Furthermore, just as the children must do a larger part of the work in
class, the teacher must do less. One follows as a consequence of the
other. The old-fashioned country school neglected its pupils so much
that knowledge was poorly digested. The modern school very naturally
proposes to correct that evil. Accordingly, the "good teacher" of to-
day lives very close to her children. In many a school she does not
leave them to themselves five minutes in a whole day. With her keen
eye she detects their very state of mind, and by the sharpest of
questions reveals their slightest error. As a result, their knowledge
is much more thorough than it used to be, more of it is acquired, and
it is acquired with less effort.

But, meanwhile, new evils have crept in. The teacher, in spite of her
better preparation, is working harder than ever, much too hard. She
does more thinking in class than any one of her pupils, and more
talking than all of them put together. At the same time, she is
undermining their independence. The old-fashioned school, by leaving
the pupil alone a good share of the time, threw him upon his own
resources enough to develop a fair degree of self-reliance. It
possessed the merit at least of not preventing the exercise of
independence. The modern school, by providing a helper close at hand
every moment, tends in the opposite direction. The gain on the whole
is questionable.