SETTLING BUT UNSETTLED

"Effort without interest is dulling and yields little; but interest without effort has little permanent value for the mind". These words of President Lowell in his address at the Boston University graduation yesterday reiterate, by antithesis, the proper relation of teacher and student. The effective teacher can make learning attractive but cannot remove its intrinsic difficulties. The pupil without will to break his co coon cannot comprehend the most lucid of expositions.

There are stones on both sides of the fence. And at one moment it is more proper to rail at the method of instruction than the conduct of the student, or vice-versa, because either the one or the other is more flagrantly misfit. But in the long run no criticism of instruction is sound which does not also recognize that the formal instructor is responsible for very few of the personal aptitudes and aversions of the individual student; and no execration heaped upon the head of students is just without the knowledge that artless instruction can bar the progress of many an incipient aptitude.

Yet although black is black and white is white, in the construction of an educational system, as in the construction of most human institutions, the painters carelessly overlapped their colors so that the borderline is grey. Suffice it to say that the only thing left for the analyst to do is to begin with the plain colors and work towards the point where they blend. The learned teacher must more and more render himself approachable as well in mind as person. The student must assimilate formal education into the unity of his existence and expect adventures there as else where. Meanwhile where the stratified process hinders rapprochement, technical amends are in order.