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Show During these years of teaching, I have been convinced that stress should be laid on improvement over one's own record in scholar-, ship rather than superiority over other pupils in different conditions of life. I emphasized this idea at one period, by giving prizes of five dollars each to pupils who made the greatest improvement in two successive semesters over their previous" average standing. Many educators have endorsed this form of distinction. President Eliot, of Harvard, however, dissented. He wrote me that the business of education is to select leaders. In my judgment, that is more true of the college, but in the high school our task in the great cities is to keep pupils from becoming discouraged and indifferent. Some have made most remarkable improvement over their own records and I regard this as a fact to be made prominent. ' Aside from efforts to exert a helpful influence over pupils as they come before the teacher in class recitation by skillful choice of topics for essays or discussions, topics which bear upon life as it exists and must exist, I have tried to apply my father's spirit 20 |