reate.

Error on this point is very common. Many teachers, even among those who
have taken high rank through the success with which they have labored in
the field, have wasted much time in attempting to do what never can be
done, to form the character of those brought under their influence after
a certain uniform model, which they have conceived as the standard of
excellence. Their pupils must write just such a hand, they must compose
in just such a style, they must be similar in sentiment and feeling, and
their manners must be formed according to a fixed and uniform model; and
when, in such a case, a pupil comes under their charge whom Providence
has designed to be entirely different from the beau ideal adopted as the
standard, more time, and pains, and anxious solicitude is wasted in vain
attempts to produce the desired conformity than half the school require
beside.

(5.) Do not allow the faults or obliquities of character, or the
intellectual or moral wants of any individual of your pupils to engross
a disproportionate share of your time. I have already said that those
who are peculiarly in need of sympathy or help should receive the
special attention they seem to require; what I mean to say now is, do
not carry this to an extreme. When a parent sends you a pupil who, in
consequence of neglect or mismanagement at home, has become wild and
ungovernable, and full of all sorts of wickedness, he has no right to
expect that you shall turn your attention away from the wide field
which, in your whole school-room, lies before you, to spend your time,
and exhaust your spirits and strength in endeavoring to repair the
injuries which his own neglect has occasioned. When you open a school,
you do not engage, either openly or tacitly, to make every pupil who may
be sent to you a learned or a virtuous man. You do engage to give them
all faithful instruction, and to bestow upon each such a degree of
attention as is consistent with the claims of the rest. But it is both
unwise and unjust to neglect the many trees in your nursery which, by
ordinary attention, may be made to grow straight and tall, and to bear
good fruit, that you may waste your labor upon a crooked stick, from
which all your toil can secure very little beauty or fruitfulness.

Let no one now understand me to say that such cases are to be neglected.
I admit the propriety, and, in fact, have urged the duty, of paying to
them a little more than their due share of att