ality in education became an acute professional
one. Particularly was this true in large city
school systems, where the mere bigness of the
situation obscured both the individual teacher
and the individual child.

Of course there have been other forces con-
tributing to this awakening to the need of con-
serving and developing individuality. Great
institutional movements are far too complex
to be explained simply,--one set of forces sel-
dom operates without assistance from many
others.

The growing belief that the education of all
children is a public duty initiated difficulties
that forced attention to the need of individual
treatment of children. The schools of an older
generation took care of a selected group. Those
children to whom a more or less formal and ab-
stract intellectual life appealed went to school
and remained; the others either did not enter
school at all or soon left for more congenial em-
ployment. The traditional methods of school-
room procedure were adapted only to a picked
lot of children. The effect of compulsory educa-

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