The development of the child / by Nathan Oppenheim.

  • Nathan Oppenheim
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The development of the child / by Nathan Oppenheim. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    should be carefully selected for this great responsibility by both training and natural fitness. The more chari- tably minded may hold that parents by the very fact of parenthood come to possess a special faculty for the training and care of their offspring. But with the teacher, who cannot pretend to have any reason for such a faculty, quite a different idea must be in force. With her, the matter is and should be merely that of a business, a vocation, at the most, a well-loved vocation. Therefore, she should have every possible advantage which may enable her to prosecute her duties in the best possible manner. If this is true of the ordinary teacher, a similar train of thought will more impera- tively apply to the superintendent of an institution for children. But it is with the greatest rarity that one finds the position conferred on any such principle of choice. The ordinary incumbent is a man who has had political training and political influence, or a superior sort of workman who has shown some manner of prac- tical ability, or a relative of a person in authority in the management. Among some of the superintendents of whom I know, there are retired or unsuccessful busi- ness men, a retired insurance agent, a carpenter, a for- mer watchman, an assistant matron in a hospital, two former teachers and two clergymen. While it is pos- sible that all of these persons may be active and zeal- ous to do what is right, — as far as they can see the right, — nevertheless, I seriously doubt that they have