EDUCATIONS BY MAIL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8493, 23 July 1907, Page 6

EDUCATIONS BY MAIL.

THE INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS.

An increasing number of intelligent people are asking what the International Correspondence Schools, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, are doing, what niethods they employ, and what is the character of the results attained. An explanation of the wide interest in this enterprise is found in the remarkable increase in the number of students enrolled. The Schools were organized 15 years ago. At the end of the fifth year the students numbered 8,500; at the end of the sixth year, they numbered 37,000; in the four ye«rs that f0110wed,225,000 new names were added. At the present time, the total enrolment since the organisation of the Schools is nearly one million students and from 10,000 to 12,000 are added every month. It is well-known that if an untrained student is left to his own resources he will not persist in his studies, even though his text-books are in every way admirable. By a method similar to the study- and-reci-tation plan of the class room, he must be reached and aided from day to day. There must be some one of easy access to watch his progress, to help him over the hard places, to encourage him in his work, and to test him at frequent intervals. If provision is not made to give him such assistance, he will promptly lose interest and abandon his studies. After he has acquired a habit of study and a fair nucleus of learning, he if able to go on alone, and not before. The School's method of instruction was so planned and organized as to furnish this intelligent guidance. The text-books are sent to the student in short serial parts, one or two at a time. Accompanying these are very full and careful directions for studying, and many practical suggestions proved by long experience to be helpful. The learner is told also how to obtain help when he needs it. Envelopes addressed to his instructor are sent to him, and blank forms on which he may indicate his exact difficulty. While the Schools encourage him to rely on his own efforts they assure him at the same t ; me that assistance will not be withheld, however often he may require it; that he cannot possibly exhaust the patience of his instructor; that, if he fails, it shall not be the fault of the Schools. If he should be very slow, and should require several years to do what is ordinarily done in as many months, his instructor still follows" his work with a solicitude and interest that nothing can tire. In case a student is very slow in mastering difficulties, he is assigned to the care of some specially skilful instructor in a department organized for helping students of this kind. His instructor never thereafter loses sight of him, and soon learns to help him in the most effective manner possible. It will be seen, then, that the School's method does not consist in merely sending text books to the student,and then leaving him to inevitable discouragement and failure. It is a method by which his interest is kept alive, his difficulties are smoothed away, his progress is carefully followed, and proved by examination, and his final success is 1 .boured for with a faithfulness noc' surpassed by that of the most cor.sciantious teacher in the schoolroom. Further information concerning the Schools can be obtained on application to Mr J. B. Rue, Masterton, who is the Wairarapa representative.