capacity.  It is all incidental and supplementary in form, but of inestimable value to the pupils and the school.  A further service that is far more unusual than difficult may be performed by the pupils who are not new, in the way of removing strangeness for those who are entering what seems to them a sort of new esoteric cult in the high school.  The girls of the Washington Irving High School[55] of New York City recently put into practice a plan to give a personal welcome to each entering girl, and a personal escort for the first hour, including the registration and a tour of the building, in addition to some friendly inquiries, suggestions, and introductions.  The pupil is then more at home in meeting the teachers later.  Here is the sort of courtesy introduced into the school that commercial and business houses have learned to practice to avoid the loss of either present or prospective customers.  Some day the school must learn more fully that the faith cure is much cheaper than surgery and less painful as well.

3.  GREATER FLEXIBILITY AND DIFFERENTIATION REQUIRED

The recognition of individual differences urged in section 1 necessitates a differentiation and a flexibility of the high school curriculum that is limited only by the social and individual needs to be served, the size of the school, and the availability of means.  The rigid inflexibility of the inherited course of study has contributed perhaps more than its full share to the waste product of the educational machinery.  The importance of this change from compulsion and rigidity toward greater flexibility has already received attention and commendation.  One authority[57] states that “one main cause of (H.S.) elimination is incapacity for and lack of interest in the sort of intellectual work demanded by the present courses of study,” and further that “specialization of instruction for different pupils within one class is needed as well as specialization of the curriculum for different classes.”  There must be less of the assumption that the pupils are made for the schools, whose regime they must fit or else fail repeatedly where they do not fit.  Theoretically considerable progress has already been made in the differentiation of curricula, but in practice the opportunity that is offered to the pupils to profit thereby is curtailed, because of the rigid organization of courses and the uniform requirements that are dictated by administrative convenience or by the college entrance needs of the minority.  The only permissible limitations to the variables of the curriculum should be such as aim to secure a reasonable continuity and sequence of subjects in one or more of the fields selected.  One of the chief barriers to a more general flexibility has been the notion of inequality between the classical and all other types of education.  This assumption has had its foundations heavily shaken of late.  The quality of response which it elicits has come to receive precedence over the name by which a subject