In such cases, the “managing committee” is clearly not what is wanted. Here are weighty words from a head-mistress, who must take highest rank among the “experts”— “No one knows how much of one’s health and energy is lost to the school by the anxieties of getting those who do not understand the complicated machinery not to interfere with things with which the head alone ought to deal. “Governors have no idea of the worries head-mistresses have, when hysterical girls invent absurd stories; when parents and doctors attribute every illness, real or imaginary, to lessons; when teachers get wrong, or when they suddenly disappear, take head-mistress-ships elsewhere, and draw away their friends and pupils. “Then, again, the governing body will blame for the inevitable, or a head will deal with ninety-nine intricate cases, and in the hundredth will make a mistake; they naturally know nothing of the former, but of the latter they hear, only to condemn.” This is one very important side. The head clearly has very definite rights. But, there is also the other side, and the members of the council have also their rights. Even the “mere amateur” is not without rights, as a person who, in combining special interest in education, with wider and more varied experience than can be enjoyed by the professional educator, is therefore of use on the council in his power of seeing things from the outside, and thus bringing to bear on them a judgment not warped by mere professional bias. Even on the most haphazard council, the persons elected are at least supposed to have some power of help. These “amateurs” are consequently persons who are more used to lead than to follow, to take the active rather than the passive attitude, and to whom mere acquiescence is as uncongenial as it is unaccustomed. It is therefore easy to imagine such a council growing restive, even under the most competent leading, and asking, “Is it really our whole duty to sit here simply to register the decrees of the head-mistress?” To strike the happy mean between tyranny and subjection is the duty alike of the governing body and of head-master or mistress. The governing body must not rule; nor, on the other hand, must its members be too passive, or acquiesce when they ought to oppose. If they are bound to follow competent leading, they are no less bound to dismiss the incompetent. The captain of a ship gives place to a duly accredited pilot, but he is none the less bound to judge whether the ship is making for the straight course or not. To give up his command into unskilful hands is, on the one side, as foolish as it would be to tie the pilot to the mast, and let the ship go down, whilst the crew dispute for the right to steer.