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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at|http: //books .google .com/I HARVARD UNIVERSITY UBRARY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION f> NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS AND ADDRESSES OF THE THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING HELD AT BUFFALO, N. Y., JULY 3-10, 1896 PUBLISHED BY THE ASSOCIATION CHICAGO Cfie Mnihttfilts of OTticago ^itM 1896 1. ' ' ■S I ■ / Cfie {9n{bet0tts of Ctlicago t9re00 having very large fonts of Type of the Choicest Faces, is prepared to execute orders in High- class Bookmah'ng of every description. Our facilities in making Scientific and Educa- tional Works in Greek, Latin, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Nestorian Syriac are unsur- passed. Our collection of accents, many of which have t>ein specially cut for us, is most complete. We solicit correspondence from Universities, Colleges, Educational Institutions and Scientists, tCbe tnniveretti; of Cbica^o pre«0 CHIOAOO. ILL. CONTENTS PAGE. Constitution, - -- - - - - - -i By-Laws, -_'-.-.--_ ^ Act of Incorporation, ------.-5 Calendar of Meetings, -------- 6 Officers for 1895-* 96, - - - - - - - - 7 Officers for i896-*97, ----.--- 10 Treasurer's Report, -----..-14 Report of Board of Trustees, - - - - - 17 GENERAL SESSIONS. Journal of Proceedings, - - - - - - -18 Report of Committee on Revision of Constitution, . . . 23 Minutes of Meeting of Board of Directors, - - - - - 33 Minutes of Meeting of New Board of Directors, - - - - 38 Addresses of Welcome, - - - - - - -42- Responses, --------- 47 Addresses on Horace Mann, - - - - 52, 63, 64, 67, 68, 69 Horace Mann at Antioch College, ------ 72 Presidential Address — Do Our Public Schools Meet Expectations ? - - 75 Democracy and Education, ------- 86 American Literature, - - - -- - - -gg The Teaching of English Literature, With Special Reference to Secondary Schools, -------- 104 Literature in Elementary Schools, - - - - - -iii School Out of School, - - - - - - - - 117 Nature Study and Moral Culture, - ..... 130 Nature Study, - - - - - - - - * - 139 The Function of Nature in Elementary Education, - - - - 141 Discussion, - - - - - - - - 152 The American Public School, -- - - - - -158 The Teacher and the School, ------- 162 Demands of Sociology Upon Pedagogy, - - - - - 174 The Pupil as a School Factor, - - - - - - 184 Discussion, -------.- igo Country Schools and Country Roads, ..... jqq Government and Popular Education, ...... 201 The Negroes* Citizenship, ------- 208 Memorial Addresses, -------- 218 iii iv NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE (JACKSONVILLE MEETING). Secretary's Minutes, -------- 231 Address of Welcome, -------- 237 True Function of Supervision, ------ 242 Discussion, --------- 247 The Grade Meeting, - - - - ..- - - 251 Discussion, --------- 258 Sociological Factors, -------- 261 Discussion, --------- 270 University and State in the South, ------ 278 Five Co-Ordinate Groups of Studies, - - - - - 287 Discussion, -------- 296 Advisable Correlations, - -- - - - - - 299 Discussion, -------- 307 Concentration of Studies, ------- 309 Discussion, - - - - - - - - 315 Isolation and Unification as a Basis of Study, ----- 316 Discussion, -------- 324 Organic Relations of Studies in Human Development, . - - 325 Courses of Pedagogical Study, ------ 338 What Should the Elementary School Do for the Child ? - - - 345 Discussion, -------- 353 What Should the High School Do ? - - - - - - 354 Discussion, .-.--..- 362 The Graduate of the High School, ------ 36^ Some Practical Results of Child Study, ----- 372 Influence of the Kindergarten Spirit on Higher Education, - - - 378 State Superintendents' Round Table, ----- 3^1 NATIONAL COUNCIL. Constitution, --------- 3gi Officers for 1 895-' 96, ---.---- 397 Officers for i896-*97, -------. 3^7 List of Members, -------- 3g7 Honorary Members, - - - - - - - - 3^8 List of Members Deceased, ------- 398 Standing Committees, - - - - ... - - 399 Secretary's Minutes, -------- 404 Report on Moral Education, ------- 407 The Ethical Value of History in Elementary Schools, . - - 410 The Incidental Method of Moral Instruction, ----- 414 Discussion, -------- 418 Report of Committee on Technological Education, . - . . 421 Discussion, -------- 427 Report of Committee on Higher Education, ----- 428 Discussion, -------- 438 The Will and the Intellect, -...--- 441 Discussion, -...---. 447 CONTENTS. PAGE. Report of Committee on School Sanitation, ..... 449 Report of Committee on City School Systems, . . . - 465 Discussion, --...---- 469 KINDERGARTEN DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, -------- 471 The Purpose of the Story in the Kindergarten, ... - 473 Discussion, -------- 479 Child Study for Fathers and Mothers, ------ 480 Discussion, - - - - - - - - 487 The Children of Our Cities, ------- 491 Discussion, - - - - - - - - 49^ Psychology of Descriptive Cestui e, ------ 497 The Allies of the Kindergarten, ------ 504 The Problem of the City Kindergarten, - - - - - -510 ELEMENTARY -DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, - - - - - - - - 5^5 Opening Remarks, - - - - - -51 7 The Place of Nature Study in Primary Work, - - - - 5^9 Discussion, --------- 526 Some Applications of Correlation, ------ 529 Discussion, --..-..-- 537 Vertical Writing. ...--.-- 541 Discussion, --------- 548 Discussion of Paper Upon Art Education, - . - - 554 SECONDARY DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, - - - - - - - - 557 Translation from Greek and Latin, ------ 563 Discussion, --------- 572 Recent Changes in Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages, - - 575 Discussion, --------- 585 Round Table — History, ------- 586 Discussion, --------- 587 Economy in Mathematical Instruction, ... - - 588 Discussion, --------- 595 Principals' Round Table, ------- 597 Congressional Work for Youth, ------- 604 What is a Secondary School ? - - - - - 613 Discussion, - - • - - - - - -618 HIGHER DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, -------- 620 How to Secure the Interest of Colleges, etc., ----- 622 History in the Secondary Schools, ------ 623 Entrance Requirements — The Chicago System, - . - - 631 Entrance Requirements of Yale College, ----- 635 vi NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION NORMAL DEPARTMENT. PAGE. Secretary's Minutes, ----.... 5^2 Professor Rein's Practice School, ----_> 5^ Discussion, -------., 550 The Practice School as a Public School, - - - - - 651 Discussion, -------.. 55^ ART DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes. -------- 555 President's Address, --.-.--. 553 Art for the Eye, ---...-. 5^0 Art in the Schoolroom Through Decoration and Works of Art, - - 678 Discussion, ---.--.. 5^2 Art Education in Relation to Public Education, .... 5^^ Art Not the Servant of Science but its Complement, ... yo2 Shall Art be the Servant of Science ? - - - - - - 708 Discussion, .-.-.... ^ig MUSIC DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, .-.-..._ yjg Natural Methods in Teaching Music, ..... ^^^ Good Music Makes Good Citizens, ...... ^22 Discussion, ........ -^28 Music as a Study in Public Schools, ...... 730 Discussion, ........ ^^5 Music in Education, -......_ ^^7 Thinking Sounds, Directly or Indirectly, ..... 741 Discussion, ----..... ^^g Development of Music Theory Through Practice, - - - . 74Q MANUAL AND INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, .-...._. 754 Need of Manual Training for Girls, ----.. 755 Physical Effects of Sloyd, ....... ^50 Discussion, ........ ^55 Manual Training in Smaller Cities, ...... 768 Manual Training and the Course of Study, .... 773 The Aesthetic Principle in Manual Training, ----- 786 BUSINESS DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, ------.. 7^1 Correlation and Co-ordination of Business Branches, ... 7^^ Discussion, ........ 803 A Course of Study for Business High Schools, - - . - . 804 Discussion, -..-.... 809 Value of a Standard of Attainment, .-..-. 812 Report of Sub-Committee on Bookkeeping, .... gj^ CONTENTS. vii PAGE. Discussion, - -------- 820 Practical Writing, - - - - - - - - 825 High Grade Business Schools a Public Demand, - . . . 832 Discussion, -------- 834 CHILD STUDY DEPARTMENT. 55ccrctary*s Minutes, -------- 836 Child Study Up to Date, ------- 837 Work of the Illinois Society for Child Study, ----- 844 Minnesota Child Study Association, . . - - . 846 Child Study in the Tompkins Observation School, I, - - - - 850 Child Study in the Tompkins Observation School, II, - - - 852 Scientific and Non-Scientific Methods in Child Study, - - - . 856 Child Study Work at Clark University, - - ... 860 Child Study a Part of the Teacher's Art, ----- 864 Interests in Childhood, - - - - - - - 873 V Relation of Child Study to the City Superintendent, ... - 881 What Children Want to Do When they are Men and Women, - - 882 The Result of Child Study in Country Schools, - . - . 887 Some Musical Phases of Child Study, ..... 891 PHYSICAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, ---.---. 893 President's Address — The Status of Physical Training, - - . 895 Physical Deterioration Resulting from School Life — Cause: Remedy, - 899 Physical Training as a Factor in Character Building, - - 911 Discussion, - - - - - - - - -918 Should We Have Military Training in the Schools ? - - - 920 Discussion, --..--... ^26 The Nervous Force of the Teacher, -.--.- 929 SCIENCE DEPARTMENT. Secretary's Minutes, -.-.--.. Q^y President's Address — Science and Culture, - ^ . . ^3^ The Humanistic Element in Science, ...... ^3 The Teaching of Beginning Chemistry, - - - - - 951 Discussion, - - - - - - - - -957 Zoology as a Factor in Mental Culture, . . . . . ^5© DEPARTMENT OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION. Secretary's Minutes, --.--..- ^53 The School Board Convention Idea, _ . . . _ g^Q School Boards — What and Why, - - - - - - 973 The Relation of the Board to the Superintendent, - - - . qSo Discussion, --.--.... g87 Shall Teachers be Pensioned ?------ 988 viii NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. LIBRARY DEPARTMENT. PAGE. Secretary's Minutes, -------- qq^ The New Library Department, - - - . - Qg8 Discussion, --------- 1004 MISCELLANEOUS. Active Membership List, ------- 1007 Index to Active Membership List, - - - - - 1062 Statement of Securities, ------- 1071 Statistical Tables. -------- 1072 Inventory of Publications, ------- 1074 General Index, ----- --- 1075 CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION PREAMBLE. To elevate the character and advance the interests of the profes sion of teaching, and to promote the cause of popular education in the United States, we, whose names are subjoined, agree to adopt the following CONSTITUTION. ARTICLE I.— NAME. This association shall be styled the National Educational Association. ARTICLE II.— DEPARTMENTS. Section i. It shall consist of fifteen departments: First, of School Superin- tendence; second, of Normal Schools; third, of Elementary Schools; fourth, of Higher Instruction; fifth, of Industrial Education; sixth, of Art Education; seventh, of Kindergarten Instruction; eighth, of Music Education; ninth, of Sec- ondary Education ; tenth, of Business Education ; eleventh, of Child Study ; twelfth, of Physical Education ; thirteenth, of Natural Science Instruction ; fourteenth, of School Administration ; fifteenth, for the Education of Defective Classes ; six- teenth, the Library Department; and seventeenth, the National Council of Education. Sec. 2. Other departments may be organized in the manner prescribed in this constitution. ARTICLE III.— MEMBERSHIP. Section i. There shall be three classes of members, namely, active, associate, and corresponding. Sec. 2. Teachers and all who are actively associated with the management of educational institutions, including libraries and periodicals, may become active members. All others who pay an annual membership fee of two dollars may become associate members. Eminent Educators not residing in America may be elected by the Directory to be corresponding members. The number of corres- ponding members shall at no time exceed fifty. Sec. 3. All persons who have been members of the association for any 2 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. two years previous to or including 1895 may be admitted to aqtive membership without payment of the enrollment fee. Any person eligible may become an active member upon application indorsed by two active members, and the payment of an enrollment fee of two dollars and the annual dues for the current year. All active members must pay annual dues of two dollars, and will be entitled to the volume of proceedings without "coupon" or other conditions. If the annual dues are not paid within the fiscal year, membership will lapse, and may be restored only on payment of the enrollment fee of two dollars and the annual dues for the current year. All life members and life directors shall be denomin- ated active members, and shall enjoy all the powers and privileges of such members without the payment of annual dues. Associate members may receive the volume of proceedings in accordance with the usual "coupon" conditions as printed on the membership certificate. Corresponding members will be entitled to the volume of proceedings without the payment of fees or other conditions. Sec. 4. The names of active and corresponding members only will be printed in the volume of proceedings, with their respective educational titles, offices, and addresses, the list to be revised annually by t|ie Secretary of the association. ^ARTICLE IV.— OFFICERS. Section i. The officers of this association shall consist of a President, twelve Vice Presidents, a Secretary, a Treasurer, a Board of Directors, a Board of Trustees, and an Executive Committee, as hereinafter provided. Sec. 2. The Board of Directors shall consist of the President of the National Educational Association, First Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and one additional member from each state, territory, or district, to be elected by the association for the term of one year, or until their successors are chosen, and of such Life Directors as are in office. All past presidents of the association, now living, and all future presidents at the close of their respective terms of office, and the United States Commissioner of Education, shall be life directors of the association. The President of the National Educational Association, First Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, shall constitute the Executive Committee. Sec. 3. The elective officers of the association shall be chosen by the active members of the association by ballot, unless otherwise ordered, on the third day of each annual session, a majority of the votes cast being necessary for a choice. They shall continue in office until the close of the annual session subsequent to their election, and until their successors ate chosen, except as hereinafter provided. Sec. 4. Each department shall be administered by a President, Vice-President, Secretary, and such other officers as it shall deem necessary to conduct its affairs ; but no person shall be elected to any office of the Association^ or of any department^ who is not^ at the time of the election^ an active member of the Association, Sec. 5. The President shall preside at all meetings of the Association and of the Board of Directors, and shall perform the duties usually devolving upon a pre- siding officer. In his absence, the first Vice-President in order who is present shall preside; and in the absence of all Vice-Presidents a/r^ tempore Chairman shall be appointed on nomination, the Secretary putting the question. Sec 6. The Secretary shall keep a full and accurate report of the proceedings of the general meetings of the association and all meetings of the Board of Direct- CONS TJTUTION. ors, and shall conduct such correspondence as the Directors may assign, and shall have his records present at all meetings of the association and of the Board of Directors. The Secretary of each department shall, in addition to performing the duties usually pertaining to his office* keep a list of the members of his depart- ment Sec. 7. The Treasurer shall receive, and under the direction of the Board of Trustees hold in safe keeping, all moneys paid to the association ; shall expend the same only upon the order of said Board ; shall keep an exact account of his receipts and expenditures, with vouchers for the latter, which accounts, ending the isl day of July each year, he shall render to the Board of Trustees, and, when approved by said Board, he shall report the same to the Board of Directors. The Treasurer shall give such bond for the faithful discharge of his duties as may be required by the Board of Trustees ; and he shall continue in office until the first meeting of the Board of Directors held prior to the annual meeting of the associ- ation next succeeding that for which he is elected. Sec. 8. The Board of Directors shall have power to fill all vacancies in their own body ; shall have in charge the general interests of the association, excepting those herein intrusted to the Board of Trustees; shall make all necessary arrange- ments for its meetings, and shall do all in its power to make it a useful and honor- able institution. Upon the written application of twenty active members of the Association for permission to establish a new department, they may grant such permission. Such new department shall in all respects be entitled to the same rights and privileges as the others. The formation of such department shall in effect be a sufficient amendment to this constitution for the insertion of its name in Article II., and the Secretary shall make the necessary alterations. Sec. 9. The Board of Trustees shall consist of four members, elected by the Board of Directors for the tern- of four years, and the President of the association, who shall be a member ex-officio during his term of office. At the election of the Trustees in 1886, one Trustee shall be elected, for one year, one for two years, one for three years, and one for four years ; and annually thereafter, at the first meet* ing of the Board of Directors held prior to the annual meeting of the Association, one trustee shall be elected for the term of four years. All vacancies occurring in said Board of Trustees, whether by resignation or otherwise, shall be filled by the Board of Directors for the unexpired term ; and the absence of a Trustee from two successive annual meetings of the Board shall forfeit his membership therein. The Board of Trustees thus elected shall constitute the body corporate of the association as provided in the certificate of incorporation under the provisions of the Act of General Incorporation, Class Third, of the Revised Statutes of the District of Columbia, dated the 24th day of February, 1886, at Washington, D. C, and recorded in Liber No. 4, "Acts of Incorporation for the District of Columbia." Sec. 10. It shall be the duty -of the -Board of Trustees to provide for safe-keep- ing and investment of all funds which the association may receive from donations; and the income of such invested funds shall be used exclusively in paying the cost of publishing the annual volume of proceedings of the association, excepting when donors shall specify otherwise. It shall also be the duty of the board to issue orders on the Treasurer for the payment of all bills approved by the Board of Directors, or by the President and Secretary of the association acting under the authority of the Board of Directors ; and, when practicable, the Trustees shall invest all surplus funds exceeding one hundred dollars that shall remain in the hands of the Treasurer after paying the expenses of the association for the previous year. \ NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. ARTICLE v.— MEETINGS. Section i. The annual meeting of the association shall be held at such time and place as shall be determined by the Board of Directors. Sec. 2. Special meetings may be called by the President at the request of five Directors. Sec. 3. . Any department of the association may hold a special meeting at such time and place as by its own regulations it shall appoint. Sec. 4. The Board of Directors shall hold their regular meetings at the place and not less than two hours before the assembling of the association. Sec. 5. Special meetings may be held at such other times and places as the board or the President shall determine. Sec. 6. Each new board shall organize at the session of its election. At its first meeting a Committee on Publication shall be appointed, which shall consist of the President and the Secretary of the association for the previous year and one member from each department. ARTICLE VI.— BY-LAWS. By-laws not inconsistent with this constitution may be adopted by a two-thirds vote of the association. ARTICLE VII.— AMENDMENTS. This constitution may be altered or amende^ at a regular meeting by the unanimous vote of the members present; or by a two-thirds vote of the members present, provided that the alteration or amendment has been substantially proposed in writing at a previous meeting. BY-LAWS. 1. At each regular meeting of the association there shall be appointed a Com- mittee on Nominations, one on Honorary Members, and one on Resolutions. 2. The President and Secretary shall certify to the Board of Trustees all bills approved by the Board of Directors. 3. Each paying member of the association shall be entitled to a copy of its proceedings. 4. No paper, lecture, or' address shall be read before the association or any of its departments in the absence of its author, nor shall any such paper, lecture, or address be published in the volume of proceedings without the consent of the association, upon approval of the Executive Committee. 5. It shall be the duty of the President, Secretary and Treasurer of the associ- ation to appoint annually some competent person to examine the securities of the Permanent Fund held by the Board of Trustees, and his certificate, showing the condition of the said fund, shall be attached to the report of the Board of Trustees. ADOPTED BY THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS. The establishment of a special fund from surplus receipts, after the expenses of the association have been paid, to be known as the ** Emergency Fund,'* was recommended by the Board of Trustees, submitted to the Board of Directors at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., July 12, 1892, and the following resolution was adopted: ACT OF INCORPORATION, Resolved^ That there be established, as soon as the current expenses of the association will warrant, an Emergency Fund not to exceed $4000. Said fund shall be subject to expenditure by the Board of Trustees in accordance with votes of the Board of Directors at any regularly called meeting. The said fund may be used for the purpose of meeting deficiencies of income of the association, and for such additional investigations and publications as may be determined by said Board of Directors. ACT OF INCORPORATION. At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Educa- tional Association, held at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., July 14, 1885, the following resolution was passed : Resohfedy That a Committee of Three be appointed to secure articles of incor- poration for the National Educational Association, under United States or state laws, as speedily as may be. N. A. Calkins of New .York, Thomas W. Bicknell of Massachusetts, and Eli T. Tappan of Ohio, were appointed such committee. Under the authority of the resolution quoted above, and with the approval of the committee, and by competent legal advice, the Chairman obtained a CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION. We, the undersigned, Norman A. Calkins, John Eaton, and Zalmon Richards, citizens of the United States, and two of them citizens of the District of Columbia, do hereby associate ourselves together, pursuant to the provisions of the Act of General/ Incorporation, Class Third, of the Revised Statutes of .;he District of Columbia, under the name of the "National Educational Association," for the full period of twenty years, the purpose and objects of which are to elevate the char- acter and advance the interests of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of popular education in the United States. * * * To secure the full benefit of said act, we do here execute this our certificate of incorporation as said act provides. In witness whereof, we severally set our hands and seals this 24th day of February. 1886, at Washington, D. C. Norman A. Calkins, [l. s.] John Eaton. [l. s.] Zalmon Richards. [l. s.] Duly acknowledged before Michael P. Callan, notary public in and for the District of Columbia, and recorded in Liber No. 4, Acts of Incorporation for the District of Columbia. CALENDAR OF MEETINGS. NATIONAL TEACHERS ASSOCIATION. 1857.— PHILADELPHIA, PA. (Organized.) Jambs L. Enos, Chairman. W. E. Shbldcm, Secretary. 1858.— aNCINNATI, OHIO. Z. Richards, President. J. W. BuLKLBY, Secretary. A. J. RiCKOFP, Treasurer. i8sQ.— WASHINGTON, D. C A.J. RiCKOPP, President. J. W. BuLKLBV, Secretary. C. S. Pbnnbll, Treasurer. i860.— BUFFALO, N. Y. i. W. BuLKLBY, President. . Richards, Secretary. O. C. Wight, Treasurer. i86x, 1863. — ^No session. 1863.— CHICAGO, ILL. JOHN D. Philbrick, President. AMBS Cruikshank, Secretary. L C. Wight, Treasurer. X864.— OGDENSBURG. N. Y. W. H. Wbixs, President. David N. Camp, Secretary. Z. Richards, Treasurer. 1865.— HARRISBURG, PA. S. S. Orbbnb. President. W. E. Sheldon, Secretary. Z. Richards, Treasurer. 1866.— INDIANAPOLIS, IND. J. P. WiCKBRSHAM, President. S. H. Whitb, Secreury. S. P. Batbs, Treasurer. 1867. — ^No session. 1868.— NASHVILLE, TENN. J. M. Gregory, President. L. Van Bokkblbn, Secretary. Jambs Cruikshank, Treasurer. 1869.— TRENTON. N. J. L. Van Bokkblbn, President. ' W. E. Crosby, Secretary. A. L. Barber, Treasurer. 1870.-CLEVELAND, OHIO. Danibl B. Hagbr, President. A. P. Marble, Secretary. W. E. Crosby, Treasurer. NAME CHANGED TO NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 1871.— ST. LOUIS, MO. J. L. PiCKARD, President. w. E. Crosby, Secretary. John Hancock, Treasurer. 1878.— BOSTON, MASS. E. E. Wnm, President. S. H. Whitb, Secretary. John Hancock, Treasurer. 1873.— El^IRA, N. Y. B. G. Northrop, President. S. H. Wkftb, Secretary. John Hancock, Treasurer. t874.— DETROIT MICH. S. H. White, President. A. P. Marblb, Secretary. Jo^ Hancock, Treasurer. Z875.— MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. W. T. Harris, President. W. R. Abbott, Secretary. A. P. Marblb, Treasurer. X876.— BALTIMORE, MD. W. F. Phblps, President. W. D. Hbnklb, Secretary. A. P. Marble, Treasurer. 1877.— LOUISVILLE, KY. M. A. Newell, President. W. D. Hbnklb, Secretary. J. Ormond Wilson, Treasurer. 1878. — No session. i879.-~PHILADELPHIA,PA. ToHN Hancock, President. W. D. Hbnklb, Secretary. J. Ormond Wilson, Treasurer. X880.-CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y. • T. Ormond Wilson, President. W. D. Hbnklb, Secretary. E. T. Tappan, Treasurer. 1881.— ATLANTA, GA. Jambs H. Smart, President. w. D. Hbnklb, Secretary. E. T. Tappan, Treasurer. X889.-SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y. G. J. Orr, President. W. E. Sheldon, Secretary. H. S. Tarbbll, Treasurer. Z883.— SARATOGA SPRINGS. N. Y. E. T. Tappan, President. W. E. Sheldon, Secretary. N. A. Calkins, Treasurer. Z884.— MADISON. WIS. Thomas W. Bicknbll, President. H. S. Tarbbll, Secretary. N. A. Calkins, Treasurer. 1885.— SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y. F. Louis SoLDAN, President. W. E. Sheldon, Secretary. N. A. Calkins, Treasurer. 1886.— TOPEKA, KAN. N. A. Calkins, President. W. E. Sheldon, Secreury. E. C. Hkwett, Treasurer. X887.— CHICAGO, ILL. W. E. Sheldon, President. J, H. C^NPiBLD, Secretary. E. C. Itewbtt, Treasurer. 1888.— SAN FRANCISCOrCAL. ' Aaron GovB," President. J. H. Canfibld, Secretary. E. C. Hbwett, Treasurer. 1889.— NASHVILLE, TENN. Albert P. Marble, President. J. H. Canfibld, Secretary. E. C. Hbwbtt, Treasurer. 1890.— ST. PAUL, MINN. Jambs H. Canfibld, President. W. R. Garrett, Secretary. E. C. Hbwbtt, Treasurer. iSgt.— TORONTO, ONTARIO. W. R. Garrett, President. E. H. Cook, Secretary. J. M. Greenwood, Treasurer. i8<)2.— SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y. E. H. Cook, President. R. W. Stevenson, Secretary. J. M. Greenwood, Treasurer. 1893.— CHICAGO, ILL. (International Congress of Education.) Albert G. Lane, President. Irwin Shepard, Secreury. J. M. Greenwood, Treasurer. 1894.— ASBURY PARK, N. J. Albert G. Lanb, President. Irwin Shepard, Secreury. J. M. Greenwood, Treasurer. 1895.— DENVER, COLO. Nicholas M. Butler, President. Irwin Shepard, Secretary. I. C. McNeill, Tieasnrer. 1896.— BUFFALO, N. Y. Newton C. Doi;chert\', President. Irwin Shepard, Secretary. I. C. McNeill, Treasurer. NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES. OFFICERS FOR 1895-96. GENERAL ASSOCIATION. NEWTON C. DOUGHERTY Peoria. Ill President. IRWIN SHEPARD Winona. Minn Secretary. LCMcNEILL Kanaai City. Mo Treasurer. VICE PRESIDENTS. Nicholas Mvbkay Bm.BR. New York City. E. B. McElroy, Eugene, Ore. Mas. A. J. Pbavbv. Denver. Colo. C. G. Pbarsb. Omaha, Neb. W. H. Bartholoiibw, Louisville, Ky. Henry R. Pattengill, Lansing, Mich. N. C. ScHABPTKB, Harrisborg. Pa. R. H. Halsby, Oshkosh, Wis. W. N. Smbats, Tallahassee. Fla. T. B. Lbwis. Ogden, Utah. Henry Sabin. Dea Moines. Iowa. Miss Estbllb Reel. Cheyenne, Wyo. BOARD OF TRUSTEES. See Art. IV., Sees. Q and to of the Constitution. N. A. Calkiks Chairman 134 E. 80th St., New York City. Zalmon Richarx>s Secretary 1301 Corcoran St., Washington, D. C. A. G. Lamb Chicago. Ill Term expires July. 1899. N. A. Calkiks New York City Tenn expires July, 1898. H. S. Tarbbix Providence, R. I Term expires July, 1897. ZALMOif RiCRAKDS Washington. D. C Term expires July. 1896. Newton C. Doimwerti' Peoria, 111 Ex-Officio. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. See Art. IV., Sec. 2, of the Constitution. Newtom C. Dougherty Peoria, 111 President. Nicholas Murrav BtrrLER Columbia College. New York City. First Vice President. Irwin SHvrARD Winona, Minn Secretary. I. C. McNbxll Kansas City. Mo Treasurer. N. A. Calkins New York City Chairman Hoard of Trustees. BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Directors Ex-OfiRcio. See Art. IV., Sec. 2, of the Constitution. Nbwton C. Dovghbrty. Peoria. 111. Irwin Shepard, Winona, Minn. Nicholas Mitrbav Butler, Columbia College, New I. C. McNeill. Kansas City, Mo. York City. N. A. Calkins, New York City. Life Directors. Mary H. Hunt, Boston, Mass. Lbboy D. Bbown. Sanu Monica. Cal. A. V. Jbwbtt. Abilene, Kan. L. W. Day. Qeveland. Ohio. T. Marcellus Marshall, West Charleston, W. Va. Newton C. Dougherty, Peoria, 111. Chas. I. Parker, South Chicago, 111. George T. Faxrchild, Manhattan, Kan. J. Pike. Jerseyville, 111. H. A. Graham, Ontonagon, Mich. Andrew J. Rickopp, Berkeley, Cal. J. M. Grbbnwood, Kansas City, Mo. C. C. Stratton, University Park, Ore. Aabom Gove. Denver. Colo. A. R. Taylor, Emporia, Kan. Caleb G. Hall, New Beriin. N. Y. Chas. G. White, Lake Linden, Mich. 8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. Directors by Election. North Atlantic Division. Maine M. C. Fernald Dover. New Hampshire C. C. Rounds Plymouth. Vermont Alfred Turnbr Rutland. Massachusets Ray Greene Huling Cambridge. Rhode Island Horace S. Tarbell Providence. Connecticut George B. Hurd New Haven. New York Charles R. Skinner Albany. New Jersey » J. M. Ralston Asbury Park. South Atlantic Division. Pennsylvania Charles Db Garmo Swarthmore. Delaware A. N. Raub Newark. Maryland E. B. Prettyman Baltimore. District of Columbia Z. Richards Washington. Virginia E. C. Glass Lynchburg. West Virginia Robert A. Armstrong Morgantown. North Carolina B. Smedes Raleigh. South Carolina D. B. Johnson Rock Hill. Florida Oscar Clute • Lake City South Central Division. Kentucky James McGinniss Owensboro. Tennessee Frank Goodman Nashville. Georgia Otis Ashmore Savannah. Alabama F. M. Roof Birmingham. Mississippi R. B. Fulton University. Louisiana Warren Easton New Orleans. Texas H. C. Pritchett Huntsville. Oklahoma D. R. Bovd Norman. Arkansas Junius Jordan Little Rock. North Central Division. Ohio W. J. White Dayton. Indiana D. K. Goss Indianapolis. Illinois John W. Cook Normal. Michigan S. Emory WnrrNBY Detroit. Wisconsin D. D. M ayne Janesville. Iowa F. B. Cooper Des Moines. Minnesota C.B.Gilbert St. Paul. Missouri John R. Kirk Jefferson City. North Dakota Emma F. Bates Bismarck. South Dakota George M. Smith Vermillion. Nebraska W. H. Skinner Nebraska City. Kansas John MacDonald Topeka. IVestern Division. Montana James M.'Hamilton Missoula. Wyoming A. L. Putnam Newcastle. Colorado J. H. Van Sickle Denver. New Mexico Charles E. Hodgin Albuquerque. Arizona T. D. Comstock Tucson. * Utah W. R. Malone Salt Lake City. Nevada J. E. Stubbs Reno. Idaho F. B. Gault Moscou'. Washington F. J. Barnard Seattle. Oregon J. H. Ackbrman Portland. California Earl Barnes Stanford Univ. DEPARTMENT OFFICERS. National Council. H.S. TARBELL President Providence, R. I. EARL BARNES Vice President Stanford Univ., Cal. Miss BETTIE A. DUTTON Secretary Cleveland, Ohio. CHARLES De GARMO Executive Committee Swarthmore, Pa. D. L. KIEHLE Executive Committee Minneapolis, Minn. J. R. PRESTON Executive Committee Jackson, Miss. JAMES M. GREEN Executive Committee Trenton, N. J. OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIAT/OX. Kindergarten. Mi*s AMALIE HOFER Presidgnt Chicago III. Mks. S. S. HARRIMAN Vice President Providence, R. 1. Miss WILHELMINA T. CALDWELL .... Secretary Denver, Colo. Elementary. S. T. DUTTON President Brookline, Mass. J. K. STABLETON Vice President Lexington, Neb. Miss HENRIETTA B. AYRES Secretary Denver, Colo. Secondary. E.L.HARRIS President Cleveland, Ohio. F. L. BLISS Vice President Detroit, Mich. C.H.THURBER Secretary .... .'. Morgan Park, 111. Higher. JAMES H. BARER President Boulder, Colo. DABNEY UPSCOMB Vice President Agricultural Coll., Miss. JOSEPH SWAIN Secretary Bloomington, Ind. NormaL JOHN W.COOK President Normal, 111. GEO. R. KLEEBERGER Vice President St. Cload, Minn. A. G. BOYDEN Secretary Bridgewater, Mass. Superintendence. L. H.JONES President Cleveland, Ohio. J. H. PHILLIPS First Vice President Birmingham, Ala. CHAS. W.COLE Second Vice President Albany, N. Y. R. E. DENFELD Secretary Duluth, Minn. Manual and Industrial. CHAS. H. KEYES President Pasadena, Cal. W. H.MAGRUDER Vice President Agricultural Coll., Miss. MissABBYL. MARLATT Secretary Providence, R. I. Art. WALTER S. GOODNOUGH President Brooklyn, N. Y. Mas. M. E. RILEY Vice President St. Louis, Mo. Miss MYRA JONES Secretary Detroit, Mich. Music. CH.CONGDON President St. Paul, Minn. P-C. HAYDEN Vice President Quincy, 111. MjssLINN M. HAWN Secretary East Saginaw, Mich. Business. FRANK GOODMAN President Nashville, Tenn. D. W. SPRINGER First Vice President Ann Arbor, Mich. W. A. WOODWORTH Second Vice President Denver, Colo. C. H.PIERCE Third Vice President Evansville, Ind. J. W. WARR Secretary and Treasurer Moline, 111. Mbs. SARA A. SPENCER Chairman Executive Com Washington, D. C. Child Study. EARL BARNES : . . . . President Stanford Univ., Cal. O.T. BRIGHT Vice President Chicago, 111. E.R.SHAW Secretary New York City. Physical Training. Miss R. ANNA MORRIS President Cleveland, Ohio. ED. P.HERMANNS Vice President Denver, Colo. Miss N. D. KIMBERLIN Secretary Detroit, Mich. Science. CHAS. E. BESSEY President Lincoln, Neb. WILBUR S. JACKMAN Vice President Englewood, 111. CHAS. S. PALMER Secretary Boulder, Colo. School Administration. GEORGE R. FOWLER President Boston, Mass. D. R. CAMERON Vice President Chicago, 111. J.B.MORETON Secretary Sah Lake City. Utah. WM. GEO. BRUCE Chairman Executive Com Milwaukee, Wis. NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES. OFFICERS FOR 1896-97. GENERAL ASSOCIATION. CHARLES R. SKINNER President Albany, N. Y. IRWIN SHEPARD Secretary Winona, Minn. I. C. McNeill Treasurer West Superior, Wis. VICE PRESIDENTS. NBWTxnf C. DovcHBRTY, Pcoria, 111. Miss Emma F. Batks, Bismarck, N. Dak. W. H. Bastholombw, Louisville, Ky. Jambs K. Powbrs, Florence, Ala. J. N. Wilkinson, Emporia, Kan. C. G. Pbarsb, Omaha, Neb. T. A. Futball, Marianna, Ark. J. H. Collins, Sprin^eld, III. W. W. Stbtson, Augusu, Me. Thomas B. Stockwbll. Providence, R. I. Oscar H. Coopbb, Galveston, Tex. J. T. Mbrrill, Cedar Rapids, la. BOARD OF TRUSTEES. See Art. IV., Sec*. Q and ro, of the Couttitutien. AlbbrtG. Lanb Chairman Chicago, 111. Nicholas Mubbav Bltlbr Secretary Columbia University, New York City HoRACB S. Tabbbll Providence, R. I Term expires July, 1897. Nicholas Murray Buti.br New York City Term expires July, 1898. Albbrt G. Lanb. Chicago, 111 Tenn expires July, 1899. J. Ormond Wilson Washington, D. C Term expires July, 1900. Charlbs R. Skinmbr Albany, N. Y Bx-Officio. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. See Art. iV., See. 2, of the Constitution. Charlbs R. Skinnbr President Albany, N. Y. Nbwton C. Douchbrty First Vice President Peoria, 111. Irwin Shbpard Secretary Winona, Minn. I. C. McNbill Treasurer West Superior, Wis. Albbrt G. Lanb Chairman Board of Trustees. . . Chicago, 111. BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Directors BB-OfBcio. See Art.fV., Sec. 2, of the Constitution . Charlbs R. Skinnbr, Albany, N. V. Irwin Shbpard, Winona, Minn. Nbwton C. Dol'chbrt\', Peoria, 111. I. C. McNbill, West Superior, Wis. Albbrt G. Lanb, Chicago, III. Life Directors. See Article /K., Section 2, of the Constitution . BiCKNBLL, Thomas W., Providence, R. I. Hall, Calbb G., New Berlin. N. Y. Brown, Lbroy D., Sanu Monica, Cal. Harris, W. T., Washington, D. C. BuTLBR, Nicholas MxnutAV, New York City, N. Y. Hunt, Mary H., Boston, Mass. Canfibld, Jambs H., Columbus, Ohio. Jbwbtf, A. V.« Abilene, Kan. Cook, E. H., Flushing, N. Y. Lanb, Albbrt, G., Chicago, 111. Day, L. W., Cleveland, Ohio. Marblb, Albbrt P., New York City, N. Y. Douchbrty, Nbwton C, Peoria, 111. Marshall, MarcbllusT., Hyden, Ky. Fairchild, Gborcb T., Manhattan. Kan. Northrop, B. G., Clinton, Conn. Garrbtt, W. R., Nashville, Tenn. Parkbr, Chas. I., South Chicago, 111. Graham, H. A., Ontonagon, Mich. Phblps, W. F. St. Paul, Minn. Grbbnwood, J. M., Kansas City, Mo. Pickard, J. L., Iowa City, Iowa. GovR, Aaron, Denver, Colo. PrKB, J., Jerseyville, III. 10 OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION, II Richards, Zalmom, Washinctoo, D. C. RiCKOFT, Andiikw J., Berlcekj, Cal. Shbldom, W. E.« Boston, Mass. Smart, Jamss H., Lafayette, Ind. SoLOAM, F. Lotns, St. Louis, Mo. Strattom, C. C, Univeraity Park, Ore. Tayu>k, a. R., Emporia, Kan. Whitb, Ckas. G., Lake Linden, Mich. Whitb, E. E., Columbus, Ohio. Wilson, J. Ormond, Washington, D. C. Directors by Blection. hfortk A iloMiie Division . Maine }oaH S. Lqckb Saco. li^ Hanpshiie C. C. Rouni>8 ^ Plymouth. Vennont Mason Stonb Montpelier. Massachusetts Charlbs F. €^r]K>ll Worcester. Rhode Island Oilman C. Fismbr Pawtucket. Connecticut Gborgk B. Hurd ^ New Haven. New York A. B. Blodgbtt Syracuse. New Jersey James M. Ralston Asbury Park. South Atlantic Division. N. C. Schabppbr Harrisburg. A.H.BsRLkM Wilmington. HbnryA;Wisb Baltimore. John Eaton Washington. E. C. Olass Lynchburgh. J. L. GooDKNiGHT Morgantowu. , Charlbs D. McIvbrs Greensboro. W.H.Hand Chester. Fkmda W.N. Shbats Tallahassee. Pennsylvania Delaware Maryland District tk Columbia Virginia West Virginia North Carolina Soudi Corolina Kentucky Geoqpa ... Alabama.. Mississippi Lonisiana .. Oklahoma Arkansas . South Central Division. McHbnrv Rhoads Frankfort. Wharton S. Jonbs Memphis. EulbrB. SMriH Athens. F. M. Roor Birmingham. A. A. KmcANMcm Jackson. Warrbn Easton New Orleans. H. C. PRrrcHBTT Huntsville. David R. Bovd Norman. J. H. Himbmon PineBluff. North Central Division, Ohio J. J. Burns Canton. Indiana Mary £. Nicholson Indianapolis. IlIinoM F.D.Thompson Galesbu^. Michigan S. E. Whttnbv Detroit. Wisconsin , L. D. Harvbv Milwaukee. Iowa F. B. CooncR Des Moines. Minnesota C. B. Gilbbrt St. Paul. Missouri John R. Kirk :. Jefferson City. NoitbDakota Emma F. Batbs Bismarck. Soodi Dakota Gborgb M. SMrm Vermillion. Nebraska Frank A. Barton Lincoln. Kansas John MacDonald Topeka. Montana . . . . Wyoming ... Cok»rado.... New Mexico. Arisona Utah Nevada Idtto Western Division, J. M. Hamilton Missoula. A. L. Putnam New Castle. J. H. Van Sicklb Denver. Hiram Hadlev Albuquerque. T. B. CoMSTocK Tucson. W. R. Malonb Salt Lake City. J. E. Stubbs Reno. F. B. Gault/. Moscow. Washington Mark W. Harrington Seattle. Oregon M. G. Royal Weston. California Earl Barnes Stanford University. 12 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. DEPARTMENT OFFICERS. National Council. B. A. HINSDALE President Ann Arbor, Mich CHARLES DeGARMO Vice President Swarthmore, Pa. Miss BETTIE A. DUTTON Secretary Cleveland, Ohio. HORACE S. TARBELL Executive Committee Providence, R. L JAMES M. GREENWOOD Executive Committee Kansas City, Mo. WILLIAM E. SHELDON Executive Committee Boston, Mass. WILLIAM F. KING Executive Committee Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Kindergarten. Miss CAROLINE T. HAVEN President New York City. Miss ELLA C. ELDER Vice President Buffalo, N. V. Mrs. M.J. B. WVLIE Secretary Buffalo, N. V. Elementary. Mbs SARAH C. BROOKS President St. Paul, Minn. E. B.COX Vice President Xenia, Ohio. Miss IDA C. BENDER Secretary Buffalo, N. V. Secondary. C. H. THURBER President Morgan Park, 111. FRANK L. FOSDICK Vice President Buffalo, N. V. Miss IDA B. H ASLOP Secretary Pueblo, Colo. Higher. JOSEPH SWAIN President Bloomington, Ind. J. G. SCHURMAN Vice President Ithaca, N. Y. GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP Secretary Providence, R. L Normal. A. G. BOYDEN President Bridgewater, Mass. Z. X. SNYDER ,. . . Vice President Greeley, Colo. E. A. STRONG Secretary Ypsilanti, Mich. Su perintendence . C. B. GILBERT President St. Paul, Minn. A. B. BLODGETT First Vice President Syracuse, N. Y. W. S. SUTTON Second Vice President Houston, Tex. LAWTON B. EVANS Secretary Augusta, Ga. Manual and Industrial. OSCAR CLUTE President Lake City, Fla. Mrs. NELLIE S. KEDZIE Vice President Manhattan, Kan. JUDSON E. HOYT. Secretary Menominee, Wis. Art. MARK MAYCOCK President Buffalo, N. Y. LANGDON S.THOMPSON Vice President Jersey City, N. J. D. R.AUGSBURG Secretary Salt Lake City, Utah. Music. F. E. HOWARD President Bridgeport, Conn. Miss J. ETTA CRANE Vice President Potsdam, N. Y. C. W. WEEKS Secretary Ottawa, 111. Business. A. N. PALMER President Cedar Rapids, Iowa. J. E. KING First Vice President Rochester, N. Y. C. H. CHILDS Second Vice President Holyoke, Mass. ALLAN DAVIS Secretary Washington, D. C. DURAND W. SPRINGER Chairman Executive Com Ann Arbor, Mich. Child Study. FRANCIS W. PARKER President Chicago, 111. H.E. KRATZ Vice President Sioux City, Iowa. MARGARET SCHALLENBERGER .... Secretary Stanford Univ., Cal. OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATIOX. n Physical Trainini^. Miss R. ANNA MORRIS President Cleveland. Ohio. J.N. WILKINSON Vice President Emporia, Kan. H. RBOYCE Secretary Trenton, N. J. Science. CHARLES SKEELEPALMER President Boulder, Colo. ALBERT H. TUTTLE Vice President Charlottesville, Va. IRWEN LEVISTON Secretary Omaha, Neb. School Administrmtion. H. L. CETZ President Marshalltown, Iowa. L. A. SATER First Vice President Syracuse, N. V. W. H. BENNETT SecondVice President Milwaukee, Wis. R. L. YAEGER Third Vice President Kansas City, Mo. WILUAM GEORGE BRUCE Secretary Milwaukee, Wis. Library. MELVIL DEW^EY President Albany, N. Y. j. H. VAN SICKLE Vice President Denver, Colo. Miss MARY EILEEN AHERN Secretary Chicago. 111. TREASURER'S REPORT TO THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION July i, 1895. to July i, 1896. MEETING AT DENVER, COLO.. 1895. I. C. McNeill, Treasurer, in account with the National Educational Asso- ciation : Dr. To balance from last report - $ 61.70 To balance of Emergency Fund in Treasurer's hands ... 300.00 To moneys from Chairman Board of Trustees : Balance of Emergency Funds from last report $ 3iS'39 Interest on Permanent Funds - 31O33.59 Copyright, Committee of Ten - 158.35 Copyright, Committee of Fifteen - 91.10 Redemption of bond (belongs to Permanent Fund) - 300.00 3.898.43 Memberships collected at Denver — 2,256.00 Other cash collections .18 Memberships collected by Secretary 1,262.35 Memberships collected by Treasurer - 10.00 Memberships collected by Railroads - --. 20,361.25 Memberships collected at Cleveland Meeting Department of Superintendence 340.00 Sale of volumes by Secretary and Clerk of Board of Trustees - 193-90 Total $28,683.81 Cr. By preliminary expenses in connection with Denver meeting, July, 1895: Printing memberships, J. J. Little & Co. (645) -. $ 85.76 Printing certificates (601) - 46.00 President's expenses (603) - _ 145.88 Treasurer's expenses (600, 606) - 139*19 Secretary's expenses (605, 631) ._ 244.41 Acting Treasurer's special services (644) 200.00 N. A. Calkins, balance of expenses (578) 75- 16 $ 916.40 By expenses Department Superintendence. Cleveland meeting: W, H. Maxwell, President (602) $ 102.48 J. M. Greenwood, Treasurer (604) 75-70 $ 178.18 By expenses incurred during Denver meeting: Stenographer for reporting proceedings (60S) .- $ 131.50 Treasurer's clerks at Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo (607) 914.20 14 TREASURER'S REPORT. >5 State Managers (609, 610, 611, 612, 613, 614, 615, 616, 617, 6x8, 619, 646, 657) 766.87 Departments (621, 622, 623, 624, 625, 626, 627, 628, 629).. 122.95 Incidental to Treasury Department (639) I5'43 Incidental to Joint Agency (643) 5.45 H. D. Mann & Co., printing signs (638) - 4.50 Telegrams, W. U. T. Co. (634) --. 26.07 Telegrams, Postal T. Co. (636) 9.43 Rabber Stamps (641)..— - 10.10 President's expenses, telegrams, stenographer, railroad fare, etc. (647) - 440.10 Duplicate memberships refunded (635, 648) 88.00 Carson-Harper Printing Co., printing, (637, 642)... 18.75 $2,553.35 By expenses Committee of Twelve: Dec. 2, Henry Sabin, Chairman (651) - - $ 117.55 Apr. 14, J. A. Phillips (670) 38.25 Apr. 14, Henry Sabin, Chairman (671) - 675.46 May 5, Henry Sabin, Chslirman (680) - 13.00 $ 844.26 By permanent investments, Board of Trustees (637, 674, 682, 683, 684, 689, 690, 691, 692): Noblesville, Ind., School Bonds. 5 Bonds at $1000 $5,000.00 2 1^ per cent, premium -- _-_ i37-5o 96 days' interest - 65.75 De Kalb, 111., School Bonds. 3 Bonds at $1000 - $3,000.00 2 22-100 per cent, premium 66.60 5 days' interest 2.06 Expense of shipping bonds — - 4.35 Kansas City School District Bonds, due 1901. 2 bonds at $1000. — $2,000.00 4 9-100 per cent, premium 81.80 Accrued interest and express 33- 30 Chicago School District Bonds. 2 bonds at $1000 — $2,000.00 3 125-1000 per cent, premium -- 62.50 Accrued interest .- -- 20.66 Expense 2.50 $12,477.05 By expense printing volumes, Jacksonville proceedings, cir- culars, and Buffalo memberships: Pioneer Press Co. (632, 633, 659, 667, 699, 670) $5,878.89 Jones & Kroeger(652, 661, 685, 698) -- 252.70 $6,131.59 By expense shipping volumes, etc. : United States Express Co. (653, 662, 686) 163.44 Adams' Express Co. (687, 701) 1,539.44 $1,702.88 $ 7.834-47 1 6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, By expense, officers' salaries: Secretary Irwin Shepard (655, 668, 703) $1,500.00 Treasurer I. C. McNeill (696) - 750.00 Secretary Board of Trustees, Z. Richards (678) 225.00 $ 2,475.00 By expense, Board of Trustees, stationery, postage, express, rent, traveling, telegrams, etc. : H. S. Tarbell (665, 681) 1 $ 153.60 N. A. Calkins (650) 87.04 Ella Calkins, clerical work (677) - _.- 76.25 A. G. Lane (679) .- - 84.11 Z. Richards (676, 693,694) — - 146.80 $ 547- 80 By expense. Executive Committee, stationery, postage, rail- road and sleeping car fares, telegrams, etc. : President, N. C. Dougherty (704) $ 158.40 First Vice President, N. M. Butler (603, 666) 159-52 Secretary, Irwin Shepard (654, 660, 688, 669, 702) 780.12 Treasurer, I. C. McNeill (656, 663, 672, 695) 231.41 $1,329.45 By other expenses: Rent of vault, Kansas City, Mo. (630) $ 10.00 Fidelity & Deposit Co., Treasurer's bond for $10,000 (620) 50.00 Letter file, Buxton & Skinner (640) - 7.50 285 copies * Intelligence," E. O. Vaile 14-25 Stationery, Edwin S. Hall (649) 6.00 Frank Boland, stenographer (an old account) (658) 57-12 President, Department Superintendence, L. H. Jones, expense account (664) 46.30 $ 191-17 Total-.- - $29,347-13 Summary : Total Recei pts - -- $28, 683. 8 1 Over-drafts paid by Treasnrer - _ 663.32 Total expenditures - _ $29,347.13 NoTB, — ^The numbers in brackets refer to the numbers of the orders issued by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees upon the Treasurer as authority for the payment of bills. NoTB, — ^The Union National Bank of Denver passed into the hands of a receiver last July with some of the funds of the Association on deposit. One dividend has been declared, leaving $597.59 still due. The Treasurer's report for the year ending July i, 1896, has been examined and approved. Horace S. Tarbell, Chairmatt. Newton C. Dougherty. A. G. Lane, Nicholas Murray Butler. Trustees of thf National Educational Association, REPORT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES. 17 TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES. To tfu Board of Directors of the National Educational Association: By ihe report of the Board of Trustees for July t, 1895, the permanent invest- ment of the National Educational Association is shown to have been $45,000, in the following items: Mortgage on real estate.- $ 3,000.00 School bonds - 14,737.00 Municipal bonds .- 25,200.00 Cash -- _ - 2,063.00 Total --- _ $45,000.00 Since that time $2,500 in bonds have matured and been paid. Bonds to the amount of $14,000 have been purchased, and cash remains in the hands of the Chairman of the Board of Trustees to the amount of $524.75, making the total amount of the Permanent Fund, at the present date, $54,961.75, which shows an increase of the Permanent Fund, during the current year, of $9,961.75. The amount of interest collected during the year was $3,058. 14. The invested fund is located as follows : With the Nassau Safe Deposit Company, New York $40,337.00 With the National Bank of the Republic, for collection 1,100.00 With Bentley & Hatfield, Washita, Kan 1,000.00 In Safe Deposit Vault at Providence, R. I 12,000.00 $54,437.00 Respectfully submitted, Horace S. Tarbell, Chairman. Newton C. Dougherty. Nicholas Murray Butler. A. G. Lane. Trustees of the National Educational Association, NoTB : — For the Examiner's certificate and a schedule of securities see Appendix. JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION BUFFALO, N. Y.. JULY 7-10, 1896. FIRST DAY'S PROCEEDINGS. FIRST SESSION.— Tuesday Afternoon. July 7TH. The association was called to order at 2:30 p. m., Tuesday, July 7, 1896, in the Music Hall, Buffalo, N. Y., by H. P. Emerson, Super- intendent of Education, Buffalo, Chairman of the local Executive Committee. Superintendent Emerson announced that an overflow meeting was being held in the large concert hall adjoining. He then introduced the Right Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, Episcopal Bishop of Western New York, who invoked the Divine blessing. Music by the quartet choir of the Delaware Avenue M. E. Church, Buffalo. Superintendent Emerson spoke words of welcome on behalf of the local Executive Committee. He was followed by the Hon. Edgar D. Jewett, Mayor of Buffalo, who also welcomed the association. Superintendent Emerson : The president of your association has suggested to me that as three-quarters of our audience are women it would be eminently proper for some woman to take part in these welcoming speeches: He went still further and suggested the name of the woman, and I have the pleasure of introducing to you Dr. Ida C Bender, Supervisor of Primary Work in the Buffalo Public Schools. Miss Bender welcomed the Association in behalf of the women teachers of Buffalo. Superintendent Emerson announced with regret the absence, on account of illness, of the Hon. James O. Putnam, *'the old man elo- quent,*' Chancellor of the University of Buffalo, who had been chosen to deliver an address of welcome on behalf of the higher educational JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 1 9 institutions of Buffalo. He then introduced the Hon. Charles R. Skinner, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of New York, who extended a welcome on behalf of the Department of Education of the State of New York. At this point in the proceedings Superintendent Emerson surren- dered the gavel, with introductory remarks, to the President of the National Educational Association, Newton C. Dougherty of Peoria, 111., who responded to the addresses of welcome. Hon. W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, and Professor Earl Barnes, of Leland Stanford Jr. University, Cal., also responded to the addresses of welcome. President Dougherty announced that Professor Edwin A. Alder- man, University of North Carolina, who was appointed to respond for the teachers of the South, was absent on account of sickness. Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, addressed the association on ** Horace Mann.** Following Dr. Harris' address the audience sang ** America.** Addresses on Horace Mann were given by Hon. N. C. Schaeffer, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Pennsylvania; Hon Henry Sabin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Iowa; F. Louis Soldan, Superintendent of Schools, St. Louis, Mo. ; Aaron Gove, Superintendent of Schools, Denver, Colo. ; J. M. Greenwood, Superintendent of Schools, Kansas City, Mo., and Wm. A. Bell, Edi- tor of Indiana School Journal^ Indianapolis, Ind. Adjourned to 8 p. m. SECOND SESSION.— Tuesday Evening, July tth. The convention was called to order at 8 p. m. by President N. C. Dougherty of Illinois. Music by the Principals* Male Quartet of Chicago. President Dougherty delivered the annual presidential address: Subject, '*Do the Public Schools Meet Reasonable Expectations?** Solo by Mrs. Clara Barnes Holmes of Buffalo. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, addressed the association on ** Democracy and Education.** Announcements by the Secretary. Adjourned to 9:45 a. m., July 8th. 20 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION SECOND DAY'S PROCEEDINGS. THIRD SESSION.— Wednesday Morning, July 8th. The session was called to order at 9:45 a. m., in Music Hall, by President Dougherty. An overflow meeting was held in Concert Hall, presided over by Dr. John W. Cook of Illinois. Invocation by the Rev. W. J. McKittrick, Pastor of Calvary Pres- byterian Church, Buffalo. Music by the Principals' Male Quartet of Chicago. President Dougherty appointed the following committees: COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS. F. Louis Soldan, of Missouri, Chairman. Maine - W. J Corthell. New Hampshire C. C. Rounds. Vermont Alfred Turner. Massachusetts A. C. Bates. Rhode Island W. B. Jacobs. Connecticut Charles W. Dean. New York A. S. Downing. New Jersey H. Brewster Willis. Pennsylvania Charles W. Lose. Delaware C. D. McFee. Maryland Henry Wise. District of Columbia W. T. Harris. Virginia --E. C. Glass. West Virginia -J. L. Goodknight. North Carolina ..L. D. Howell. South Carolina D. B. Johnson. Florida Oscar Clute. Kentucky -.W. H. Bartholomew. Tennessee Wharton Jones. Georgia. E. B. Smith. Alabama— J. A. Cunningham. Mississippi 1. .A. A. Kincannon. Louisiana Warren Easton. Texas -Supt. Long. Oklahoma D. R. Boyd. Arkansas J. H. Hinemon. Ohio O. T. Corson. Indiana W. A. Bell. Illinois W. L. Steele. Michigan C. G. White. Wisconsin John A. Diedricksen. Iowa Henry Sabin. Minnesota C. M. Jordan. North Dakota W. E. Hicks. South Dakota A. H. Avery. Nebraska Chas. G. Pearse. Kansas W. M. Davidson. Montana - R. G. Young. Wyoming — Estelle A. Reel. Colorado L. C. Greenlee. New Mexico Hiram Hadley. Arizona Lillian A. Rice. Utah J. L. Millspaugh. Nevada Wm. W. Emery. Idaho F. B. Gault. Washington F. J. Barnard. Oregon C. C. Stratton. California E. E. Brown. COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS. B. A. Hinsdale, of Michigan. E. A. Anderson, of North Carolina. William R. Harper, of Illinois. J. G. Schurman, of NewYork. Earl Barnes, of California. L. E. Wolfe, of Missouri. N. C. Schaeffer, of Pennsylvania. COMMITTEE ON NECROLOGY. H. S. Tarbell, of Rhode Island. Warren Easton, of Louisiana. W. E. Sheldon, of Massachusetts. J. Baldwin, of Texas. W. A. Bell, of Indiana. J. A. Cunningham, of Alabama. JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 21 President Dougherty : The greatest heritage that falls to man is the language which he speaks, and of all these the noblest is the English language. We are fortunate, I think, this morning, in having for our subject the consideration of the literature of that language, to be treated by one who in his own contributions so well represents what is good, pure, and noble in that language. I have the honor to introduce Professor Brander Matthews of Columbia University, New York City. Professor Matthews spoke on ** Literature and American Literature. ' ' President Dougherty introduced Professor W. P. Trent of the University of the South, who addressed the association on the subject, **The Teaching of Literature, with Special Reference to Secondary Schools. " Music : Autoharp Solo : Mr. £. A. Merriss of Buffalo. President Dougherty introduced Mrs. Ella F. Young, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Chicago, who spoke on the subject of ** Literature in Elementary Schools." Announcements by the Secretary. Adjourned to 8 p. m., July 8th. FOURTH SESSION.— Wednesday Evening, July 8th. The fourth session was called to order at 8 p. m., in the Music Hall by President Dougherty. Music by the iEolian Male Quartet of Buffalo. W. A. Bell of Indianapolis addressed the association on the subject, ** Horace Mann at Antioch College." Secretary Shepard: In accordance with the constitutional requirements regarding amendments, I am directed to announce to the association at this time that the Board of Directors will, at the session to-morrow morning, recommend for adoption certain amend- ments to the constitution concerning membership. These amendments are necessary for the purpose of bringing the new constitution into harmony with changes in the classification of members adopted one year ago at the Denver meeting. President Dougherty introduced the Rev. John H. Vincent, Chancellor of Chautauqua University, who addressed the association on the subject, ** School out of School.'* Adjourned to 9:45 a. m., July 9th. A reception to members of the National Educational Association at 74th Regiment Armory followed the adjournment. 22 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. THIRD DAY'S PROCEEDINGS. FIFTH SESSION.— Thursday Morning, July qth. The session was called to order at 9:45 a. m., in Music Hall. Invocation by the Rev. Charles C. Albertson, Pastor Delaware Avenue M. E. Church, Buffalo. Announcements by Superintendent Emerson and President Dough- erty. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, of New York : Mr. President attd Letdies and Gentlemen: The Executiye Committee have found that there is still some misunder- standing regarding the provisions of membership in the association as ordered b][ the constitutional amendment adopted at Denver one year ago. The effect of these amendments was lp distinguish the active from associate members of this association. Active members are the permanent participating and support- ing members of this body. They alone are eligible for election to office, either in the general association or in any of the departments. They alone are entitled to participate in expressions of opinion in the transaction of the business of the association. Those persons who are connected in any way, however indirectly, with educational work, and who express a desire to be enrolled as active mem- bers, may become such. Teachers, principals, superintendents, college professors, and trustees of educational institutions, officers of libraries, and persons connec- ted in any way with educational publications and journals, are entitled to apply for active membership. The active members pay the annual fee of two dollars, and receive in return therefor a volume of proceedings, and all other publica- tions of the association, without any formality or the forwarding of any coupons. Their names alone are printed in the list of members appended to each annual volume. Active members— or persons eligible for active membership, who have attended any two meetings of the association previous to this one, not necessarily continuous — retain their active membership by stating that fact to the Secretary or to the Treasurer at EUicott Square and paying the annual dues. Other per- sons eligible, who have not attended two previous meetings, are required to pay an enrollment fee of two dollars. These fees are receipted for on a blue receipt, and an active membership badge is- issued, which contains not only a representation of the patron animal of this city, but a book pendant against a background of blue ribbon. I make this statement at the request of the Execu- tive Committee. President Dougherty : One of the rules of our association is that no paper shall be read unless the person preparing the paper is present and reads that paper himself. This rule has never been violated ; but on the evening of June first I received a telegram from President Jordan of Leland Stanford Jr. University, informing me that he had been appointed at the head of the Behring Sea Commis- sion, and asking what should be done with reference to his paper, which was at that time prepared. I replied at once that in his case the rule of the association did not apply ; that he had been called to the service of his country and it would be rank treason upon his part to refuse to do his duty ; that this association would be glad to have read JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 23 by another, a friend of his who sympathizes with his views, the production which he had prepared. This decision of your President has been unanimously approved by the Executive Committee. I take great pleasure in introducing to you Professor Jackman of the Chicago Normal School, who will read the paper prepared by President David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford Jr. University on the subject, **The Function of Nature Study in the Culture of the Moral Powers." Principal O. S. Wescott, of North Division High School, Chicago, addressed the association on * 'Nature Study. " President M. G. Brumbaugh, Juniata College, spoke on ''Nature Study in Elementary Education." Music: "Mignon:" By Miss Caroline Eckert. Discussion of the subject by President L. D. Harvey, State Normal School, Milwaukee, Wis. ; Professor J. N. Wilkinson, State Normal School, Emporia, Kan. ; Mrs. Eva D. Kellogg, Editor of Primary Education^ Chicago, III., and Dr. G. Stanley Hall, Clark University, Worcester, Mass. Announcements by President Dougherty. Secretary Shepard submitted the following report of the Committee on Revision of Constitution with a recommendation from the Board of Directors that the same be adopted. Report of the Committee on Revision of the Constitution of the National Educational Association, submitted in advance of the meeting of the Board of Directors, in accordance with resolution passed by the Board at its meet- ing in Denver, Colo., July 9, 1895. To the Board of Directors of the National Educational Association, Gentlemen: The committee to whom certain matters concerning the further revision of the constitution were referred, at the meeting of the Board held July 9, 1895, beg leave to submit the following: We recommend that the constitution be amended as follows: Article III., Section 3: Add to line ten ''AH life members and Life Direc- tors shall be denominated active members, and shall enjoy all the powers and privileges of such members without the payment of annual dues." Article IV., Section 2: Insert after line 5, "All past Presidents of the asso- ciation now living, and all future Presidents at the close of their respective terms of office, and the United States Commissioner of Education, shall become Life Directors of the association." Section 3: Insert after "chosen" in line i, "by the active members of the association." Section 4: In line 4 change the phrase "a member of the association" to "an active member of the association." Section 8: In line 5 insert "active" between "twenty" and "members." Section 9: Lines 11 and 12 to read "The Board of Trustees thus elected shall constitute the body corporate of the association, as provided in the certificate of incorporation," etc. f Aaron Gove, Chairman. I J. M. Greenwood. Committee: •{ James H. Canfield. Nicholas Murray Butler. Irwin Shepard. 24 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. Superintendent W. H. Maxwell moved the adoption of the report as read, which motion was duly seconded, and by the unanimous vote of the association the proposed amendments to the constitution were adopted. F. Louis Soldan, Chairman Committee on Nominations, submitted the report of that committee as follows: The Committee on Nominations beg leave to submit the following report: For President^ Charles R. Skinner, of New York. Secretary^ Irwin Shepard, of Minnesota. Treasurer y I. C. McNeill, of Wisconsin. For Vice Presidents: Newton C. Dougherty, of Illinois. W. H. Bartholomew, of Kentucky. J. N. Wilkinson, of Kansas. Thomas A. Futrall, of Arkansas. W. W. Stetson, of Maine. O. H. Cooper, of Texas. Emma F. Bates, of North Dakota. James K. Powers, of Alabama. C. G. Pearse, of Nebraska. J. H. Collins, of Illinois. Thomas B. Stockwell, of Rhode Island. J. T. Merrill, of Iowa. John S. Locke, Saco, Me. C. C. Rounds, Plymouth, N. H. Mason Stone, Montpelier, Vt. Charles F. Carroll, Worcester, Mass. Gilman C. Fisher, Pawtucket, R. I. George B. Hurd, New Haven, Conn. A. B. Blodgett, Syracuse, N. Y. James M. Ralston, Asbury Park, N. J. N. C. Schaeffer, Harrisburg, Pa. A. H. Berlin, Wilmington, Del. Henry A. Wise, Baltimore, Md. John Eaton, Washington, D. C. E. C. Glass, Lynchburg, Va. For Directors: J. H. Hinemon, Pine Bluff, Ark. J. J. Burns, Canton, Ohio. Mary E. Nicholson, Indianapolis, Ind. F. D. Thompson, Galesburg, 111. S. E. Whitney, Detroit, Mich. L. D. Harvey, Milwaukee, Wis. F. B. Cooper, Des Moines, Iowa. C. B. Gilbert, St. Paul, Minn. John R. Kirk, Jefferson City, Mo. Emma F. Bates, Bismarck. No. Dak. Geo. M. Smith, Vermillion, So. Dak. Frank A. Barton, Lincoln, Neb. John MacDonald, Topeka, Kan. J. L. Goodknight, Morgantown, W. Va. J. M. Hamilton, Missoula, Mont. Chas. D. Mclver, Greensboro, N. C. W. H. Hand, Chester, S. C. W. N. Sheats, Tallahassee, Fla. McHenry Rhoads, Frankfort, Ky. Wharton S. Jones, Memphis, Tenn. Euler B. Smith, Athens, Ga. F. M. Roof, Birmingham, Ala. A. A. Kincannon, Jackson, Miss. Warren Easton, New Orleans, La. H. C. Pritchett, Huntsville, Texas. A. L. Putnam, New Castle, Wyo. J. H. Van Sickle, Denver, Colo. Hiram Hadley, Albuquerque, N. M. T. B. Comstock, Tucson, Ariz. W. R. Malone, Salt Lake City, Utah. J. E. Stubbs, Reno, Nev. F. B. Gault, Moscow, Idaho. Mark W. Harrington, Seattle, Wash. M. G. Royal, Weston, Ore. Earl Barnes, Stanford University, Cal. David R. Boyd, Norman. Okla. On motion of Dr. John W. Cook of Illinois, the secretary of the association was unanimously instructed to cast the ballot of the asso* ciation for the election of the officers named in the report of the Committee on Nominations. JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 25 The Secretary announced that the ballot had been cast as directed. The officers above named in the report of the Committee on Nomi- nations were thereupon duly declared elected as officers of the association for the ensuing year. Adjourned to 8 p. m. SIXTH SESSION.— Thursday Evening, July qth. The session was called to order at 8 o'clock by President Dougherty. Music by the Guard of Honor Orchestra. President Dougherty: We learned at the beginning of this session that the last time this association met here it was in the shadow of the great Civil War. One of the men who went out in defence of the flag was your own Gen. Stewart L. Woodford. On his return to his native state that same devotion which led him to expose his life upon the field, also led him to devote a large portion of his time to the great cause of education. He became a soldier in that peaceful army which is enlisted against vice, immorality, and injus- tice; and to-night, in advancing that cause of public education and public morals, he comes to us to speak upon the American Public School, and I take great pleasure in introducing to you at this time Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, now of Brooklyn. Address by General Woodford. Music by the Guard of Honor Orchestra. President Dougherty: Ladies and Gentlemen: We are indebted to our mother country, England, for many of the best things we have. None of the distinguished families that came to us early in our history has been more loyal or contributed more to high thinking and noble culture than that branch of the House of Lancaster which came with Lord Baltimore at the very beginning of our country's life, and which has remained with us ever since. We have with us to-night a repre- sentative, a descendant, of that House, one who has ever been devoted to the cause of higher education, and a friend of the teacher. I take great pleasure in introducing to you the Right Rev. John Lancaster Spalding, Bishop of Peoria, who will address you upon "The Teacher and the School." Bishop Spalding then addressed the convention on the subject announced. Music by Principals' Male Quartet of Chicago. Adjourned to 9:45 a. m., July loth. 26 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. FOURTH DAY'S PROCEEDINGS. \ i SEVENTH SESSION.— Friday Morning. July ioth. i '1 9 :a ••a -i ti :rei at -ft Jsii The association was called to order by President Dougherty at 9:45 a.m. in the Music Hail. Invocation by the Rev. J. N. Field, Pastor Prospect Avenue Baptist Church, Buffalo. Music : Baritone solo by Mr. E. M. Hager of Buffalo. Professor Albion W. Small, The University of Chicago, addressed the association on "The Relation of Sociology to Education.'* Professor Earl Barnes, Leland Stanford Jr. University, spoke on the subject, "The Pupil as a Social Factor." T* Music : Duet by Mrs. Clara Barnes Holmes and Mr. Raymond O. Riester. Discussion of the papers read was opened by Hon. J. M. Harper, Inspector of Superior Schools, Quebec, Canada, and continued by Dr. G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., and Dr. Wm. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education. Roy Stone, United States Engineer, spoke on the subject of ** Country Roads and Country Schools.** President Dougherty: There has been received and placed upon the platform here this beautiful floral tribute to the memory of Dr. N. A. Calkins, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, New York City. It comes from those who were intimately associated with him in work in that great city. To-day we miss his pleasant face and wise counsels, and we turn aside, at this time, from our usual themes to recall the work of that noble life. I am glad to introduce his close personal friend. Superintendent Tarbell of Providence, R. I. Dr. Horace S. Tarbell, Superintendent of Schools, Providence, R. I., read a memorial address on Norman A. Calkins, LL.D. (See report of Committee on Necrology.) President Fairchild of the Department of Manual and Industrial Education, offered a resolution which was referred to the Committee on Resolutions without reading. Adjourned to 8 p. m. EIGHTH SESSION.— Friday Evening, July ioth. The association was called to order by President Dougherty at 8 o'clock in Music Hall. An overflow meeting was held in the Concert Hall. Music by the Principals* Male Quartet of Chicago. President Dougherty: The Empire State of the West has received from the Empire State of the East many gifts which have JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 2 J added to its wealth. None of these gifts has been more highly appre- ciated than when New York gave to Illinois the President of her state university, a man whose influence is felt to-day in every township and in every school district in the great Empire State of the West. To- night, ladies and gentlemen, I have the pleasure of introducing to you President Andrew S. Draper, formerly of your state, now of Illinois. President Andrew S. Draper, University of Illinois, Champaign, addressed the association on '*The General Government and Public Education." Music : Baritone solo by Mr. W. J. Sheehan. President Dougherty: The work of this association began by a consideration of the life and work of Horace Mann. We saw on that first day how the life of that great man elevated the entire spiritual life of the nation. To-night, as the closing address of this associa- tion, there comes before us one who is doing for his own race in the South what Horace Mann did for us all. I have great pleasure in presenting to you Professor Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Normal Institute, Tuskegee, Ala. Professor Washington, spoke on '*The Educational Needs of the Sooth." Professor B. A. Hinsdale of Ann Arbor, Mich., Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, offered the following resolutions: REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS. Resolved^ That we, members of the National Educational Association, assem- bled in the city of Buffalo in our great annual convocation, feel it to be our imperative duty, as it is our great pleasure, in sending forth this our annual declaration of facts, principles and sentiments, to recognize, first of all, the efforts [hat have been made by the people of the city to make our meeting so profitable ^ad so attractive. We would recognize fully the long-continued, arduous, and multiplied labors that have contributed to this end. At no previous meeting of ie association have the local arrangements been more wisely conceived or more carefully executed. At no previous meeting has a more hearty welcome or a more i^erous hospitality, been accorded us. For these acts of considerate kindness ar thanks are extended to the citizens of the city, and to all committees and officers of local organizations that have participated in the work. Nor do we deem :: invidious to recog^nize in particular the invaluable services that have been rtndcrcd by Local Secretary Swift. Resohied That our special thanks are due, and are hereby tendered, to the icachers of Buffalo for their assiduity in raising funds to meet the local expen- ses for their admirable service on reception and other committees, and for their nanv acts of gracious politeness. To these teachers, one and all, and to their -..>^-- - — * .- .. ■^.— ■—..— . ->^. ..--...... -.^ —^ *i--^ r ' rests, we must struggle to attain it. Something may be acconiplished by precept, something by direct instruction, much by example. The words "politics" and ** politician'* must be rescued from the low esteem into which they have fallen, and restored to their ancient and honorable meaning. It is safe to say that the framers of our Consti- tution never foresaw that the time would come when thousands of intelligent men and women would regard "politics" as beneath them, and when a widespread unwillingness to participate in the choice of persons and policies would develop among the people. Yet such is, of course, the case. The people of the state of New York will in November next choose a governor. The power and dignity of the office are among the greatest in the land. About one and a half mil- lion qualified voters will be entitled to participate in the choice. Theoretically any competent person might be put forward for the office, and every individual's preference would be recorded and weighed. As a matter of fact, however, the choice of the state must be made between two persons, who in turn will be selected by, perhaps, ten per cent of the electorate, at the suggestion or dictation of not more than a dozen men. Had such a system, or anything like it, been pro- posed at the time the constitution was adopted, there would have been instant rebellion. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,*' would not have seemed worth having under such conditions. Yet, now that it has come about, there is no very great dissatisfaction with it. The system could be broken up in a twelvemonth if men really cared to break it up. It exists, therefore, by popular consent, if not with popular approval. Its objective results may be as good as those that would be reached by the ideal system, but its effect on the indi- vidual is disastrous. It induces a feeling of irresponsibility for public policy and a lack of interest in it that is absolutely destructive of good citizenship. The jfood citizen is not the querulous critic of public men and public affairs, however intelligent he may be; he is rather the constant participator in political struggles who has well-grounded convictions and a strong determination to influence, by all honorable means, the opinion of the community. Were it otherwise, universal suffrage would not be worth having, and public education would be a luxury, not a necessity. Nor do we better ourselves any or serve the public interest by berating those who do interest themselves continu- ally in politics, when their aims and their methods are not to our lik- ing. There can be no doubt that the patriotic and well-intentioned element in the community is stronger and more numerous than the self-seeking and evil-dispositioned. It has the remedy in its own hands, and it is one of the chief duties of our education to enforce this truth. Sessions.] DBMOCRACT AND EDUCATION, 93 Much of the disinclination to engage in active political life that is noticeable among a large portion of our people is due, I believe, to the evil effects upon political standards and methods that flow from the debasing and degrading system of treating public office as a reward for partisan activity, that has gained so strong a hold in the United States. The spoils system is utterly undemocratic and utterly unworthy of toleration by an intelligent people. Suppose that it ruled the schools, as it rules so many other departments of public adminstration : then we should expect to see the election of a mayor in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, or San Francisco followed by hundreds of changes among the public school teachers, made solely for political reasons. How long do you suppose that this association would permit that to go on without a protest that would be heard from Maine to Texas? Why should we, as good citizens, be more tolerant of such an abuse in other departments of the government? We have all noted with gratification the progress that is making toward the elimination of this evil. A determined band of men have kept the issue before the public for nearly a generation, and now they have the satisfaction of seeing a great portion of the national service wrested from the defiling hand of the spoils hunter. In the state of New York the people have put into their new constitution an emphatic declaration on the sub- ject. The full effect of this 'declaration, splendidly upheld and broadly interpreted by the courts, is just beginning to dawn upon the foes of a reformed and efficient public service. From this advance of sound sentiment and honest policy we may take every encouragement. But much remains to be done. Public sentiment must be first inter- ested, then educated. Efficient public service is a mark of civilization. To turn over the care of great public undertakings to the self-seeking camp-followers of some political . potentate is barbaric. We teachers are the first to insist that incompetent and untrained persons shall not be allowed in the service of the schools. Why, then, should we toler- ate the sight of a house-painter instead of an engineer supervising the streets and roadways of a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, or that of an illiterate hanger-on presiding over the public works of a great metropolis? These instances, drawn at random from recent political history, are typical of conditions that will be found widely dif- fused throughout our public service. These conditions exist because of bad citizenship, low ideals of public service, and wretchedly inade- quate moral vision. They will not be remedied until each one of us assumes his share of the task. It is instructive, too, to note that the spoils system has diverted public interest in a great measure from choice between policies to a choice between men. Two hundred years ago men would have made 94 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General great sacrifices for an opportunity to share in the making of the laws by which they were governed. Yet when in 1894, the people of this state were called upon to vote at one and the same election, for a governor, and for or against a new constitution containing many important and some novel propositions, more than a million and a quarter men voted for a candidate for governor, while less than three- quarters of a million expressed themselves regarding the proposed constitution. And this is by no means a solitary instance of the ten- dency that it illustrates. A rational and intelligent democracy will first discuss questions of principle and then select agents in accord- ance with their earlier determination. To fix our interest solely on individuals and to overlook or neglect the principles for which they stand is not intelligent. It is a serious error, too, to believe, and to spread the belief, that democracies have nothing to learn as to principles of government and nothing to improve. From the time of Aristotle the dangers that are inherent in democracy have been known and discussed. But in our time men are often too blinded by the brilliancy of the manifest suc- cesses and advantages of this form of government to be able or willing to consider carefully the other side of the picture. How long, for example, could the American Congress maintain its power and pres- tige, if its membership was split up into half a score of warring groups, as in France? How long will the American senate continue to call forth the respect and confidence of the people, if its childish methods of transacting public business and its inability to close its own debates are allowed to continue? How long would life in our greatest metropolis be endurable, if its administration be turned over permanently to the ignorant and rapacious members of a society organ- ized for political plunder? What more distressing division of our peo- ple can there be than one on sectional lines, such as took place in i860, and such as may be witnessed again in 1896? Is it possible to believe that our native optimism is all that is needed to extricate us from these dangers — dangers not imaginary, but terribly real? The difficulties of democracy are the opportunities of education. If our education be sound, if it lay due emphasis on individual responsibility for social and political progress, if it counteract the anarchistic tendencies that grow out of selfishness and greed, if it promote a patriotism that reaches further than militant jingoism and gunboats, then we may cease to have any doubts as to the perpetuity and integrity of our institutions. * But I am profoundly convinced that the greatest educational need of our time, in higher and lower schools alike, is a fuller appreciation on the part of the teachers of what human institutions really mean and what tremendous moral Sessions.] AMERICAN LITERATURE, 95 issues and principles they involve. The ethics of individual life must be traced to its roots in the ethics of the social whole. The family, property, the common law, the state and the church, are all involved. These, and their products, taken together, constitute civilization and mark it off from barbarism. Inheritor of a glorious past, each gener- ation is a trustee for posterity. To preserve, protect, and transmit its inheritance unimpaired is its highest duty. To accomplish this is not the task of the few, but the duty of all. That democracy alone will be triumphant which has both intelli- gence and character. To develop both among the whole people is the task of education in a democracy. Not then, by vain-glorious boast- ing, not by self-satisfied indifference, not by selfish and indolent with- drawal from participation in the interests and government of the com- munity; but rather by that enthusiasm born of intense conviction, that finds the happiness of each in the good of all, will our educa- tional ideals be satisfied and our free government be placed where the forces of dissolution and decay cannot reach it. AMERICAN LITER A TURE. BY PROFESSOR BRANDER MATTHEWS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY. The history of mankind is little more than the list of the civiliza- tions that have arisen one on the ruin of the other, the Romin sup- planting the Greek, as the Assyrian had been ousted by the Babylonian. The life of each of these successive civilizations was proportioned to the vitality of the ideas by which it was animated ; and we cannot estimate it or even understand it except in so far as we are able to grasp these unlying principles. What the ideas were which dominated these vanished civilizations it is for us to discover for ourselves as best we may by a study of all the records they left behind them, and especially by a reverent examination of their laws, their arts, and their writings in so far as these have been preserved to us. Of all these relics of people now dead and gone, none is so instructive as literature, and none is so interesting; by its aid we are enabled to reconstruct the past, as we are also helped to understand the present. Of the literatures which thus explain to us our fellow man as he was and as he is, three seem. to me pre-eminent, standing out and above the others not only by reason of the greater number of men of genius who have illustrated them, but also by reason of their own more 96 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General persistent strength and their own broader variety. These three liter- atures are the Greek, the French, and the English. There are great names in the other modern languages, no doubt, — the names of Dante and of Cervantes and of Goethe, than which, indeed, there are none greater. In French literature, however, and in the English there are not wanting names as mighty as these. For- tunately, the possession of genius is not the privilege of any one lan- guage, of any one country, or of any one century. Where French literature and English can claim superiority over Italian, Spanish, and German is rather in sustaining a higher average of excellence for a longer period of time. The literature of the Italian language, of the Spanish, and of the German has no such bead-roll of writers of the first rank as illustrates the literature of the French and of the English. There is perhaps no more manly instrument of precision than the Latin language, none which better repays the struggle for its mastery ; but Latin literature if not second-rate, when tried by the loftiest stand- ards, is at least secondary, being transplanted from Greece and lacking resolute roots in its own soil. Nor is any dispute possible as to the high value of Hebrew literature ; as Coleridge declared with characteristic insight, **Sublimity is Hebrew by birth;" but Hebrew literature has not the wide range of the Greek, nor its impeccable beauty. **Art is only form," said Georges Sand; and Goethe declared that the ** highest operation of art is form-giving." If we accept these say- ings there is no need to dwell on the supreme distinction of Greek literature, for it is only in Greek that we find the undying perfection of form. It is there only that we have clear and deep thought always beautifully embodied. Indeed, truth and beauty govern Greek liter- ature so absolutely that, old as it is, it seems to us ever fresh and eternally young. After two thousand years and more it strikes us to- day as startlingly modern. Thoreau, — whose own phrase was often Attic in its delicate precision, — Thoreau asked, *'What are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles that are not decayed. •» Nevertheless, the world has kept restlessly moving since the fall of Athens, and mankind has developed needs that the Greeks knew not. As Moli^re puts it pithily, **The ancients are the ancients, and we are the men of to-day." There are questions in America now, and not a few of them, undreamed of in Sparta; and for the answers to these it is vain to go to Greek literature, modern as it may be in so many ways. ^French literature has not a little of the moderation and of the charm of Greek literature. It is not violent; it is not boisterous even; Sessions.] AMRniCAN LTTBRATURB. ^y it is never freakish. It has balance and order and a broad sanity. It has an unfailing sense of style. It has lightness of touch, and it has also and always intellectual seriousness. The literature is like the language; and Voltaire declared that what was not clear was not French. And the laguage itself is the fit instrument of the people who use it and who have refined it for their needs — a people logical beyond all others, gifted in mathematics, devoid of hypocrisy, law-abiding, governed by the social instinct, inheritors of the Latin tradition and yet infused with the Celtic spirit. To those of us who are controlled by the Anglo-Saxon ideals, whether or not we come of English stock, to those of us who adhere to Anglo-Saxon conventions, no other literature can serve as a better cor- rective of our inherited tendencies than the French. The chief char- acteristic of English literature is energy, power often ill- restrained, vigor often superabundant. From the earliest rude war-songs of the stalwart Saxon fighters who were beginning to make the English lan- guage, to the latest short story setting forth the strife of an American mining camp, there is never any lack of force in English literature. There is always the Teutonic boldess and rudeness, — the Teutonic readiness to push forward and to shoulder the rest of the world out of the way, — the Teutonic independence that leads every man to fight for his own hand, like the smith in Scott's story. What we do not dis- cover in English literature, with all its overmastering vitality, is economy of effort, the French self-control, the Greek sense of form. French literature and Efiglish literature have existed side by side for many centuries, each of them influencing the other now and again, and yet each of them preserving its own individuality, always and ever revealing the dominant characteristics of the people speaking its language. We need not attempt to weigh them one against the other, and to measure them with a foot rule, and to declare which is the greater. Equal they may be in the past and in the present ; equal in the future they are not likely to be. The qualities which make French literature what it is tend also to keep the French race from expansion ; just as the qualities which make English literature what it is have sent the English-speaking stock forth to fill up the waste places of the earth, and to wrest new lands from hostile savages or from inhospit- able nature. French was the language of the courts of Europe when English was little better than a dialect of rough islanders. When Chaucer chose his native English as the vehicle of his verse he showed both courage and prescience, — a courage and a prescience lacking in Bacon, who lived two hundred years later, and who did not feel himself insured against Time WPtil Ws great work was safely entombed in 7 98 NA TIONAL ED UCA TIONA L ASSOCIA TION, [General Latin. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were more men and women in the world speaking French than there were speaking English. But now at the end of the nineteenth century, with the steady spread of our stock into the four quarters of the world, there are more than twice as many people using English as there are using French. And the end is not yet, for while four-fifths of those who have French for their mother-tongue abide in France or along its borders, not a third of those who have English for their mother-tongue dwell in England. Not only in England, Ireland and Scotland, is English spoken, and in all the many British colonies which encompass the globe about; it is also the native speech of the people of the United States. English is the language of the stock which bids fair to prove itself the most masterful, hardy, and prolific, and which seems to possess a mar- velous faculty for assimilating members of other allied st6ms and of getting these newly received elements to accept its own hereditary ideals. English literature is likely therefore, to become in the future rela- tively more important and absolutely more influential. As there has been no relaxing of energy among the peoples that now speak the English language, probably there will be no alteration of the chief characteristic of English literature, although in time the changes of environment must make more or less modification inevitable. It will be curious to see in a century how the ideals and the practices of the race will alter, after the race is no longer pent up in an island, after it has scattered itself over the world and assimilated other elements and adjusted itself to other social organizations. Here in America we can see already some of these results, for already is the American differentiated from the Englishman. We may not be able to declare clearly wherein the difference consists; but we all recognize it plainly enough. Colonel Higginson has suggested that the American has an added drop more of nervous fluid than the Englishman. It is perhaps appar- ent already that the American is swifter than the Englishman, slighter in build, springier in gait. Social changes are as evident as physical. Lowell remarked that if it was a good thing for an English duke that he had no social superior, it surely was not a bad thing for a Yankee farmer. Socially the American is less girt in by caste than the Eng- lishman. These differences, obvious in life, are visible also in liter- ature. We feel now, even if we do not care to define, the unlikeness of the writing of the British authors to the writing of the American authors. Neither man nor nature is the same in Great Britain as it is in the United States; and of necessity, therefore, there cannot be Sessions.] AMERICAN LITERATURE, ^ any identity between the points of view of the men of letters of the two countries. In time, as there come to be more writers in Canada, we shall have a perspective from yet another point of view ; and in due season others will be presented to us from Australia and from India. No doubt these future authors will cherish the tradition of English litera- ture as loyally as we Americans cherish it here in the United States, as loyally as the British cherish it in the little group of islands which was once the home of the ancestors of us all. Race characteristics are inexorable, and it is very unlikely that there will ever be any irrecon- cilable divergence between these separate divisions of the English- speaking peoples. English literature will continue to flourish as sturdily as ever after the parent stem has parted into fiwt branches. All of these branches will take the same pride in their descent from a common stock and in their possession of a common literature and of a common language. A common language, I say, for the English language belongs to all those who use it, whether they live in London or in Chicago or in Melbourne. It is not a little strange that it should now ever be needful to say that the British have no more ownership of the English language than we Americans have. The English language is the mother tongue of the inhabitants of the British isles, but so it is also the mother tongue of the inhabitants of the United States. It is not a loan to us, which may be recalled; it is not a gift, which we have accepted; it is a herit- age, which we derived from our forefathers. We hold it by right of birth, and our title to it is just as good as the title of our kin across the sea. No younger brother's portion is it that we claim in the Eng- lish language, but a whole and undivided half. It is an American pos- session as it is a British possession, no more and no less; and we hold it on the same terms that our cousins do. We have the rights of own- ership, and the responsibilities also, exactly as they have and to exactly the same extent. The English language belongs to us also; it is ours to use as we please, just as the common law is ours, to modify according to our own needs; it is ours for us to keep pure and healthy; and it is ours for us to hand down to our children unimpaired in strength and in subtlety. And as the language is a possession common to all the English- speaking peoples, so also is the literature. A share in the fame of Chaucer, and of Shakespeare, of Milton and of Dryden, is part of the inheritance of every one of us who has English for his mother tongue, whatever his fatherland. If there be anywhere a great poet or novel- ist or historian, it matters not where his birth or his residence or what his nationality, if he make use of the English language he is contribu- lOO NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General ting to English literature. To distinguish the younger divisions of English literature from the older, we shall have to call that Older divi- sion British ; meaning thereby that portion of our common literature which is now produced by those who were left behind in the old home when the rest of the family went forth one by one tp make their way in the world. Thus English literature, which was one and undivided till the end of the eighteenth century, has now in the nineteenth cen- ture two chief divisions — British and American ; and it bids fair in the twentieth century to have three more — Canadian, Australian, and Indian. Some such distinction between the several existing divisions of the English literature of our own time is needful, and it will be found use- ful. Absurd and very misleading is the antithesis sometimes made between American literature and English, since the American is but one of the divisions of the English literature of our time. Not long ago a pupil of one of the best private schools in New York maintained that American literature was just as important as English literature, producing in proof two companion manuals of the same size exter- nally, although of course internally on a wholly different scale. Such a lack of proportion in the treatment of different parts of the literature of the English language is foolish and harmful. But a comparison of American literature with the merely British literature of today might be proper enough. What we need to grasp clearly is the fact that the stream of English literature had only one channel until the end of the last century, and that in this century it has two channels. The new mouth that this massive current has made for itself is American, and so we are compelled to call the old mouth British. Through which of these channels the fuller stream shall flow in the next century no man can foretell today. It is a fact that the popula- tion of these United States is now nearly twice as large as the popu- lation of the British Isles, and not inferior in ability or in energy. But it is a fact also that in America a smaller proportion of the ability and the energy of the people seems to be devoted to the cause of letters. In a new country life itself offers the widest opportunities; and liter- ature here has keener rivals and more of them than it can have in a land which has been cleared and tilled and tended since a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. The earli- est Americans had other duties than the writing of books; they had to lay deep the broad foundations of this mighty nation. It was more than two hundred years after the establishment of the first trading post on the island of Manhattan before Washington Irving published the ** Sketch Book," the first work of American authorship to win a wide popularity beyond the borders of pur own country — before Fenimorc Sessions.] American LiTBRATURit, loi Cooper a little later published **The Spy/' the first work of American authorship to win a wide popularity beyond the borders of our own language. We may say that American literature is now but little older than the threescore years and ten allotted as the span of a man's natural life. We had had authors, it is true, in the eighteenth century, and at least two of these, Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, hold high rank; but it was not until towards the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century that we began really to have a literature. It is scarcely an overstatement to say that there .are men alive today who are as old as American literature is. But in the past three-quarters of a century American literature has taken root firmly, and blossomed forth abundantly, and spread itself abroad sturdily. Emerson followed Edwards and Franklin. Hawthorne and Poe followed Irving and Cooper. Bryant proved that nature here in America was fit for the purposes of art; and he was followed by Longfellow and Lowell, by Whittier and Holmes. During these same three-score years and ten there were great writers in the other branch of the literature of our language, in British literature, perhaps greater writers than there were here in America, and of a certainty there were more of them. There is no need now to call the roll of the mighty men of letters alive in England in the mid- dle of this century. But much as we admire these British authors, much as we respect them, I do not think that they are as close to us as the authors of our own country ; we do not cherish them with the same affection. Just as the modern literatures are nearer to us than the ancient, because we ourselves are modern; just as English litera- ture is nearer to us than French, because we ourselves speak English ; so the American division of that literature is closer to us than the British. It helps us to understand one another, and it explains us to ourselves. If we accept the statement that, after all, literature is only a criticism of life, it is of value in proportion as its criticism of life is truthful. Surely it needs no argument to show that the life it is most needful for us Americans to have criticised truthfully is our own life. It is only in our own literature that we can hope to learn the truth about ourselves; and this indeed is what we must always insist upon in our literature, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Lowell reminded us that Goethe went to the root -^f the matter when he said that '* people are always talking of the study of the ancients; yet what does this mean but apply yourself to the actual world and seek to express it, since this is what the ancients did when they were alive? ". . As we consider the brief history of the American branch of English I02 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General literature, we can see that the growth of a healthy feeling in regard to it has been hindered by two unfortunate failings — provincialism and colonialism. By provincialism 1 mean the spirit of Little Pedlington, the spirit that makes swans of all our geese. By colonialism I mean the attitude of looking humbly towards the old country for guidance and for counsel even about our own affairs. Provincialism is local pride unduly inflated. It is the temper that is ready to hail as a swan of Avon any local gosling who has taught himself to make an unnatural use of his own quills. It is always tempting to us to stand on tiptoe to proclaim our own superi- ority. It prevents our. seeing ourselves in proper proportion to the rest of the world. It leads to the preparation of school manuals in which the three-score years and ten of American literature are made equal in importance to the thousand years of literature produced in Great Britain. It tends to render a modest writer like Longfellow, ridiculous by comparing him implicitly with the half dozen world- poets. In the final resort, no doubt, every people must be the judge of its own authors; but before that final judgment is rendered every people consults the precedents and measures its own local favorites by the cosmopolitan and eternal standards. Colonialism is shown in the timid deference towards foreign opin- ion about our own deeds and in the unquestioning acceptance of the foreign estimate upon our own writers. It might be defined almost, as a willingness to be second-hand, a feeling which finds satisfaction in calling Irving the American Goldsmith; Cooper, the American Scott; Bryant, the American Wordsworth ; and Whittier, the American Burns. Fifty years ago, when this silly trick was far more prevalent than it is now, Lowell satirized it in the '* Fable for Critics" . " Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties That has not brought forth its Miltons and Dantes; I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys, Two Raphaels, six Titians (I think), one Apelles, Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens; One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens, A whole flocks of Lambs, any number of Tennysons, In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain Will be some very great person over again." And elsewhere in the same poem Lowell protests against the liter- ature that "suits each whisper and motion To what will be thought of it over the ocean.*' The corrective of colonialism is a manly self-respect, a wholesome self-reliance, a wish to stand firmly on our own feet, a resolve to survey Sessions.] AMERICAN LITERATURE, , 103 life with our own eyes and not through any imported spectacles. The new world has already brought forth men of action — Washington, for example, and Lincoln — worthy of comparison with the best that the old world has enrolled on her records. Has the new world produced any man of letters of corresponding rank? Matthew Arnold thought that there were only five world-classics, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe. This seems a list unduly scanted; but it would need to be five times larger before it included a single American name. What of it? Even if the American poets are no one of them to be inscribed among the two-score chief singers of the world, they are not the less interesting to us Americans, not the less inspiring. When an English author suggested to Saint Beuve that he did not think Lamartine an important poet, the great French critic suavely answered, ** He is important to us!" Without Lamartine there would be a blank in French literature. So we Americans may see clearly the defects of Bryant and of Whittier, and yet we may say that they are important to us, even though they, like Lamartine, are not among the foremost poets of their language or of their century. Colonialism and provincialism, although they seem . mutually destructive, still manage somehow to exist side by side in our criti- cism today. The best cure for them is a study of the two other great literatures, Greek and French. Too much attention to contemporary British literature is dangerous for us, since its chief characteristics are ours by inheritance. Matthew Arnold held that it was a work of supererogation of Carlyle to preach earnestness to the English who already abounded in that sense. For us to follow the lead of the Brit- ish in literature or in any other art is but saying ditto to ourselves. It is like the marriage of cousins — and for the same reasons to be deplored. But the study of Greek literature supplies us instantly with the eternal standards the use of which cannot but be fatal to provin- cialism. And the study of French literature, which is as modern as our own and yet as different as may be in its ideals and its methods, is likely to serve as a certain antidote to colonialism. The study of Greek literature, the greatest of the literatures of the past, and the study of French literature, the other great literature of the present, will lead us towards that American cosmopolitanism which is the antithesis of both provincialism and colonialism. An American cosmopolitanism, I said, for I agree with Coleridge in think- ing that "the cosmopolitanism which does not spring out of, and blos- som upon, the deep-rooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a spuri- ous and rotten growth.*' Stendhal, a Frenchman who did not care for France and who found himself, at last, a man without a country, had for a motto, **I come from Cosmopolis. '* A fit motto for an 104 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General Americaa author might be **I go to Cosmopolis" — ^I go to see the best the world has to offer, the best being none too good for American use ; I go as a visitor, and I return always a loyal citizen of my. own country. . As Plutarch tells us, **It is well to go for a light to another man's fire, but not to tarry by it, instead of kindling a torch of one's own." A torch of one's own! — that is a possession worth having, whether it be a flaming beacon on the hill-top or a tiny taper in the window. We cannot tell, how far a little candle throws its beams, nor who is laying his course by its flickering light. The most that we can do — and it is also the least that we should do — is to tend the flame care- fully and to keep it steady. THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SECONDARY SCHOOLS, BY PROF W. P. TRENT, UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, SEWANEE, TENN. Those of us who have read Balzac's **Une Fille d'6ve" will recall his description of the depressing education given by the Countess de Granville to her two young daughters. That she might make smooth their path to heaven and matrimony, she subjected them to a regimen that had at least one fatal defect, in that it took no account of their emotions. Its results may be learned from the story, but few thought- ful readers will refrain from asking themselves whether our educa- tional regimen of the year 1896 is not in too many cases followed by results similar in kind if not in degree. Parents and teachers of mod- ern America have doubtless quite different ideals for their children from those of the Countess de Granville, but they often make the same mistake of pursuing these ideals at the cost of their children's emotions, that is to say, at the cost of their real happiness. The ideals of the French mother were summed up in the word **conven- ance;" the ideals of too many American mothers and fathers, and, I regret to add, teachers, are summed up in the word **utility. " Neither set of ideals takes much account of those emotions which, are the highest part of our nature and are most impressionable in child- hood, for the world of the suitable and the useful is the world of fact, and fact has to be transmuted by the imagination before it can reach and act upon the emotions. It follows, then, that every educational regimen which apppeals to the mind through facts should be supple- mented by one which appeals to the soul through ideas, that is, through- facts transmuted by the imagination. Hence no educational sessions.] ENGLISH UTERATVRE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 105 system is complete that does not include instruction in religion and art — the two chief sources of appeal to the emotions. For obvious reasons we Americans have been compelled to leave religion outside the ordinary school and college curriculum, and this is practically the case with the plastic arts. We are thus reduced to rely mainly on literature and music as sources of appeal to the emotions of our youth, but we have hitherto made insufficient use of both sources. This was not the case with the best-educated people the world, has ever known — the Greeks. Literature, especially poetry, and music, werie the basis of a Greek boy's education, and education in these two arts (which it must be remembered were closely connected with reli- gion) led to the culmination of all the other arts in the Athens of Pericles. But the Athens of Pericles had its weakness as well as its strength, and the world has moved forward greatly in 2300 years, hence the basis of a boy's education should be far broader now than it was then- Yet while broadening the base and shifting its center, we should not be rash enough to cast away its old material. Poetry and music are still essential to any sound educational system, and this being so, the inquiry how they may best be taught is of great interest, and, if confined to the first named, leads us to the main topic of this paper. I use the term poetry advisedly, for it best represents the litera- ture of the imagination, and that is what we have to deal with, as we shall see at once if we will stop to do a little analyzing. What did the Greek teacher expect his pupils to get from their study of Homer? Probably two sets of good results, one affecting the mind, the other the soul. From the **Iliad'* and the **Odyssey" the Greek boy could derive much information with regard to religion, genealogy, and so-called history. They served also as reading books, and took the place for a long while of formal grammars and rhetorical treatises. In other words they were to him a storehouse of facts. But they also filled him with emotions of pleasure. They charmed his ear by their cadences; they charmed his inner eye by their pictures; they charmed his moral nature by the examples they offered him of sublime beauty and bravery and patriotism. In other words they were to him a storehouse of ideas, and this in the eyes of his teacher was doubtless their chief value. But now-a-days we need not use poetry as a store- house of facts, rftid we need to use literature for this purpose only so far as a good style helps in the presentation of facts, as, for example, in the case of history. With our long list of sciences, natural and linguistic and moral, we are in no danger of ignoring the world of facts and are therefore free to use literature, especially poetry, in order to appeal' to the emotionsof the yoiith under our charge. Hence lo6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General in inquiring how we may best teach literature, we are really inquiring how we may best teach the literature of the imagination, — that is poetry in a wide sense, — for it would seem that literature used as a storehouse of facts might be taught like any other subject in the domain of facts. But, you may ask, while all this is true enough, what has it to do with the practical teaching of literature? 1 answer that it has every- thing to do with it. If the chief reason for teaching literature be the fact that we shall thereby best appeal to the emotions of our pupils ; if literature is to be used pedagogically as a storehouse of ideas rather than of facts, what is one to'say of the amount of time given to the study of the history of literature and to those critical, philological, and his- torical annotations which fill most of our literary text-books? The his- tory, of literature is important enough, but it belongs to the domain of fact, it does not appeal primarily to the emotions. It is well for a child to know the names of great books and their authors; it is just as well that he should not say that Fielding wrote "Tom Jones* Cabin," or that Telemachus was a great preacher of the seventeenth century, as I have known university students to do. But if literary history really appealed to the emotions, if it vitally affected any pupil, would he make such mistakes? Literary history belongs to the domain of fact just as much as geography does, and the ability on the part of a. child to reel off the names of authors and their dates is just as useless as his ability to tell you the capital of Bolivia or to draw you a map of Afghanistan. A certain amount of literary history is useful, the amount given in Mr. Brooke's primer and in Mr. Matthew's recent volume on American literature, but not a bit more, for as intellectual training literary history ** simply isn't in it" with other studies, if I may be permitted to employ an expression consecrated to the use of the jaunty young professor whom Milton has the misfortune to bore. But if teaching the history of literature be beside the mark if we wish to reach the emotions of our pupils, what are we to say of criti- cism? I cannot see that we can say anything different. That pupil of mine who called Cowper's lines on the receipt of his mother's picture out of Norfolk an '*ode" made an utterly absurd mistake, but I am not at all sure that he would have been essentially better or hap- pier if he had not made it. Critical appreciation is certainly better than uncritical, but after all appreciation is the main*thing and must precede criticism. Just how much critical, philological, and historical elucidation is needed to make a poem intelligible, for of course it has to be apprehended intellectually before it can produce its full emo- tional effect, is a hard matter to decide, but I am sure that the amount varies with the ages of the pupils. The younger the pupil, Sessions.] ENGLISH LITERATURE IjV SECONDART SCHOOLS. 107 the simpler and less numerous the teacher's comments should be, for he has no business to be dealing with an obscure poem, and he must remember that he is not, or should not be, trying to teach his pupil facts. I am forced to conclude, then, •that the common practice of putting into the hands of pupils a certain number of fully annotated classics with the understanding that the said unfortunate pupils are to be examined on the numerous facts contained in the notes and introductions, whatever may be claimed for it by College associa- tions or by sinful editors like myself, is not the very best way of using literature as an appeal to the emotions of the young. Criticism, philology, and history are admirable handmaids to literature, but they are not literature, and they will not help us much in an appeal to the emotions. To make this appeal we must bring pupils in contact with the body of literature, and here is the crucial point of the problem before us. But is not this to play into the hands of men like the late Pro- fessor Freeman, who opposed the establishment of a chair of literature at Oxford on the plea that we cannot examine on tastes and sympa- thies? If we are to make a minimum use of criticism, philology, and his- tory, what manner of examination shall we be able to set for our classes in literature? To this question Mr. Churton Collins replied that we ought to examine Aristotle, Longinus, Quinctillian and Lessing, — that is to say, in criticism. A very good answer so far as university stu- dents are concerned. The history and theory of literary composition, especially of poetry, should be included in every well-organized cur- riculum, and any competent teacher can examine on them. But though these studies may chasten the emotions, they do not primarily appeal to or awaken them, and for the purposes of the elementary teacher they are almost useless. Are such teachers, then, to be debarred from making use of those departments of literary study that admit of being tested by examination? I answer, yes, at least so far as their main work is concerned. A small amount of literary history may be required and examined on, and perhaps a tiny amount of crit- icism but for the most part school classes in literature should go scot- free frpm examination. This will seem a hard saying to teachers who are enamored of school machinery, who teach by cut-and-dried methods, and regard the school-day as a clock face with the recitation hours corresponding to the figures and themselves and their pupils to the hands. But the literary spirit and the mechanical spirit have long been sworn enemies, for machinery has no emotions; so for the purposes of this paper we need hardly consider the mechanical teacher, who had best keep his hands off literature. The born teacher, the teacher with a soul, — ,o8 NATION Af. EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General and I am optimist enough to believe that many of the men and women in this country who are wearing their lives away in the cause of edu- cation belong to this category — will be glad to believe that there is at least one important study that need not and should not be pursued mechanically. The trouble will be not so much with the pupils and teachers as with the parents and statisticians who want marks and grades and that sort of partly necessary, partly hopeless, thing. Now I have not the slightest idea how a child can be graded or marked on his emotions, yet I am sure that all teaching of literature that is worthy the name takes account of these chiefly. If this be true, should we not be brave enough to let the machinery go, and confine ourselves to the one pertinent and eternal question how young souls can be best brought in contact wth the spirit of literature? If I may judge from my .experience with college work, covering several years, and from my briefer experience with school work, I am forced to the conclusion that sympathetic reading on the part of the teacher should be the main method of presenting literature, especially poetry, to young minds. I have never obtained good results from the history of literature or from criticism, except in the case o^ matured students, and I never expect to. I have examined hundreds of papers in the endeavor to find out what facts or ideas connected with literature appeal most to the young, and I have found that in eight out of ten cases it is the trivial or the bizarre. I remember a curious instance in point. . I had been using Gosse's "History of Eighteenth Century Literature,*' and I told my class to give a brief account of the life of Alexander Pope. Judge of my astonishment when I found that three fourths of a large class, had without collusion and no matter what the merits of the individual paper, copied verbatim the following sentence **Pope, with features carved as if in ivory and with the great melting eyes of an antelope, carried his brilliant head on a deformed and sickly body." Fortunately in this case the trivial facts retained were rightly applied. In another case I was gravely informed that the poet Collins died **of a silk-bag shop," information that completely staggered me, until I found that Mr. Gosse had with quite unneces- sary particularity stated that Sterne died in ** lodgings over a silk-bag shop. " Of course, I need not cite further examples of utter and ridicu- lous confusion of names, for such examples are familiar to you from your own experience. What I need to point out is that these mistakes are not due to the stupidity of our pupils or to our own bad teaching, but to the fact that the history of literature is drier than mineralogy to any one who is not fairly well read to start with. Much the same thing can be said of criticism, only the chances of making mistakes are magnified through the elusive nature of the subject. It is, of course, Se««6n8.] ENGLISH LITERATURE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS, 109 well to give a child some interesting information about great authors, and to try to teach him the distinctions between the broader categories of literature, but after this it seems to me that the primary and secondary teacher should rely mainly on sympathetic reading. Certainly this is my experience with younger students. Whenever I find their attention flagging, I begin to read and to make my comments as brief as possi- ble. In this way I have reached men that seemed at first sight to be hopeless. My most signal success was when I involuntarily set a base- ball pitcher to committing certain sonnets of Shakspere to memory when he was resting from practising new curves. I have always been proud of this achievement, but I believe it would be a by-no- means unusual one if teachers generally would criticise less and read more. Of course the teacher must read sympathetically or the result will be far from good. He must read with sincerity and enthusiasm and understanding, and with critical judgment. To try Browning's "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" on a class of freshman would be simply silly. To abstain from reading Byron to them on account of Mr. Saintsbury's recent utterances on the subject of his lordship's poetry, would be equally silly. But there is fortunately a large amount of English and American poetry that is both first class and suitable to the comprehension of young minds. Where Emerson's "Brahma" will prove incomprehensible, his "Concord Bridge" will stir genuinely patriotic emotions. You will perceive that I am throwing a great deal of responsibility on the teacher, and I think this is right, for the emotions of his pupils are like the strings of an instrument which he is to touch into life. After a while his intermediation will become less necessary, but at first it is essential in most cases. In spite of what many critics say, it is a fact that with a majority of children whatever literary apprecia- tion they may have lies dormant until it is awakened by some skillful hand. It is better that this hand should be the teacher's, if only for the reason that the performance of such a service will add a pleasure to many a life wearied with the daily rounds of mechanical duty. I am sure that there is no man or woman that hears me who would not be glad to have a half hour set apart in each school day in which arith- metics and grammars could be laid aside and some favorite volume of poetry brought out from the desk and read with sympathy and enthu- siasm. If I had a private school of my own, I should surely snatch the time for this, if I had to have fewer maps drawn and fewer exam- ples in partial payments worked. By the power of music Amphion built the walls of Thebes ; by the power of poetic harmony we can try to build up the characters of our pupils. "What passion cannot music -r^is^ gnd quell?" asked Dryden, and we may ask the same question no NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General with, regard to poetry. I have so much belief in the power of the **concord of sweet sounds** that I am inclined to say that many pupils will receive benefit from merely hearing great poetry read even though it may. not convey much meaning to their minds. Take for example this magnificent passage from **Lycidas**: Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away — where'er thy bones are hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world, Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, Sleepest by the fable of Bellerus old. Where the great Vision of the guarded Mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayonna's hold. Look homeward. Angel, now and melt with ruth. And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. For the elucidation of these eleven lines I felt compelled to give recently nearly three pages of notes — over one page being concerned with the single word**angel.** Now I do not believe that the average school boy would have any clearer notion as to who this Angel was or as to what Bellerus, or Namancos mean, but I think that the noble picture of the corpse of Lycidas washed by the sounding seas would appeal profoundly to his imagination and that he would be the better for having heard his teacher read the lines. That he would be the better for nine out of ten of the critical or philological annotations that editors feel compelled to make on the passage I see grave reason to doubt. The fact is that we have let the teacher of the Greek and Latin classics affect us by methods of minute analysis better fitted to the study of a dead than of a living language. These same classical teachers have, too, not a little to answer for on account of the slight they have, time out of mind, put on the purely literary side of their work. How many teachers of Latin when reading Vergil stop to comment on the sonorous quality of such a grand verse as Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem, or upon this verse of Horace, Cras ingens iterabimus aequor, which suggests comparison at once with Shakspere's ** multitudinous seas** or with Matthew Arnold's *' The unplumb'd, salt, estrangling sea " ? But the mention of Arnold reminds me that the stress I am laying on sympathetic reading of poetry by the teacher is but an amplifica- tion of his advice that we should keep passages of great poetry in our piinds to serve as touchstones (perhaps tuning forks would be a more Sessions.] LITERATURE IN ELEMENTART SCHOOLS. m accurate though less elegant metaphor) that will enable us to detect the presence or absence of truly poetic qualities in the verse we read. I should add also that this method of study is strictly in line with the pedagogical methods of Commenius who saw to it that his pupils were put in touch with the subject as a whole before they were set to study- ing its parts. There are many other things that I should like to say, but my time is limited. I should like to protest against the use of great literature for exercises in parsing or for etymological or philological investiga- tions— ^it ought even to be sparingly used for the purposes of reading classes. I should like to protest against the lack of judgment shown by teachers and college professors in the texts they assign for study, — two books of Pope's **Iliad'* for example in place of his **Rape of the Lock," — a matter, however, in which we teachers of English are so far ahead of our friends who teach French and German that per- haps I ought to be thankful for the progress we have made. I should like to insist finally upon what I believe will some day be generally recognized — the supremacy of literature as a study overall others that now occupy the world's attention. For when everything is said, it is literature, and especially poetry, that has the first and undisputed right to enter the audience chamber of the human soul. Painting, sculpture, music, the whole noble list of the sciences, the lower but still important useful arts, may and must continue to appeal and min- ister to the spirit of man, but artistic prose and poetry are the servants — nay, are they not rather the masters ? — on which that spirit has relied from the beginning of time, and on which it will rely till time itself shall end. If this be the true position of literature, who shall affirm that the next generation will not say to its teacher and disciple — ** Friend, go up higher?" LITERATURE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. BY MRS. ELLA F. YOUNG, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CHICAGO, ILLS. The day has passed when one needs to plead for the use of the class- ics of literature in the elementary schools. Although the young are still given the ordinary in both thought and expression with which to acquire the so-called mechanics of reading, yet the teachers are few who have the hardihood in theory to restrict those little ones to a diet of the commonplace. Here and there is found one, sufficiently flexible of mind and courageous of spirit, to affirm that the mechanical style of in 2 . J^ATTONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General reading with which children in the schools attempt to interpret the beautiful has for its foundation stones the mechanics and the common- place of the first steps in reading. There is developing a recognition of the- demand for the literary whole, not only by the mature, but also by the immature mind. There is less reading of selections which, though beautiful in themselves, are so separated from the description, the argument, necessitating their creation, that they fill no place in the minds of boys and girls having a limited experience from which to construct the omitted parts. Though the schools are moving slowly, often halting on the way, hindered here by deplorable theories based on custom, weakened there by the cause of nature stories and adapta- tions of the classics written by the non-literary, yet, thanks to those who have blazed the way to a broader and higher view, no time need now be spent in presenting the claims of literature as an element in child life. It is recognized distinctively as a subject in the course of study in the elementary schools, and as such presents two topics for consideration: First, a prescribed course in literature for those schools; second, the method of literature below the high schools. A discussion of the first topic, a prescribed course, confronts us at the outset with this question: Is there a definite, fixed sequence of subjects in literature as regards either content, or the time of appeal to the child in a regular series of culture epochs? Or, to put it in another way, should there be, in developing a taste for letters, an adherence to a formal order of procedure, as in the development of mathematical insight? Such radical changes are slowly but surely coming into the methods of mathematics with beginners as to raise doubts regarding the existence of a fixed sequence of topics in that for- mal study. For instance, geometry, with its magnitudes and their relations is now paving the way for arithmetic, instead of following in its train; fractional relations of small quantities, instead of the aggre- gations in thousands and millions, occupy the young in the school as well as on the play ground; the fixed-unit theory is giving way to that of the movable-unit. If a formal and inflexible course of study for that subject into whose conditions no unstable element enters, has been cramping and misleading, it is needless to ask what "would be the influence of the adoption of a theory of the logical sequence of subjects, or of a theory of culture-epochs in the beginning of the development of a taste for the humanities — the most comprehensive of all departments of human inquiry and enjoyment, the one in which the many and varied relations of the heart are portrayed in all the beauty and power of thought and expression. The panorama of life is not opened before us so that for a time we see the mythical only, then gaze upon fairies, then listen to nature's teachings, and finally admire Sessions.] LITERATURE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, 113 virtue coming forth triumphant from the warfare of sin. There are beautiful myths that touch the heart and the imagination of the young, but the great body of myths is no more suitable for, or interesting to, the immature minds of children than are all the truths enunciated by Euclid. Without doubt there are times when the mind prefers myth and fable to nature and humanity; but those times cannot be closely classified and graded. With varying degrees and modes of interpretation, the children in the humblest home, the child of cul- tured parents, the youth, the maiden on the threshold of life, the mid- dle-aged, those in life's declining years, — all are in touch with the thoughts, fancies, and experiences that are spread out on the pages of the world's literature. One single line of reading throughout a year, or a grade, can no more meet the needs of a growing mind than can one article of food build, symmetrically, the body which with that mind constitutes the individual. Let us approach this from another side. It is generally agreed that specialization should be made a distinguishing feature in the later, not the earlier years of school and student life. There should first be laid the foundation for a fellowship, a kinship, with plants, birds, earth, air, water, heroes, heroic deeds, and the other simple things which are the basis of all knowledge. Later, the complexity of this seeming simplicity should be the subject of investigation for those minds that are specially interested in the phase mathematical, scientific, artistic, or philosophical. Notwithstanding the general agreement as to specialization, there is throughout Ameri- ca's schools a marked tendency to omit laying the foundations in famil- iar acquaintance and fellowship, and to begin by studying minute details. The most painful illustration of this is found in the treatment of the history of our own country. Text-books on United States his- tory treat the colonization and wars of this country as if boys and girls from twelve to fifteen years of age were members of state antiquarian societies, or graduate students at West Point. A prescribed course in literature is not necessarily arranged with an eye single to a logical sequence of subjects or to culture-epochs. It may be planned with but one object in view, that of making the best a definite and developing part of the curriculum. It may consist of such prose and poetical, such descriptive and dramatic works that one in whom are combined literary tastes and a deep sympathy with child life can find no adverse opinion to pass upon it. Here and there is a syllabus prepared out of a delightful experience in the schoolroom. Such syllabi are in reality formulated accounts of interesting and suc- cessful efforts to make this great study of human life a part of the real life of the school. As suggestions of possibilities, as records of the innate love of the young for the beautiful and the true, they are 8 114 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General invaluable. They fill an important place in the teacher's professional library ; but however good may be these courses in literature for ele- mentary schools, courses satisfying the child-loving litterateur, syllabi growing out of the experience of artist teachers, they should never be prescribed for the use of any other teacher. It is here conceded, that in schools having more than one teacher, a prescribed course in mathematics, grammar, and geography is necessary. Some continuity in the treatment of those subjects must be regarded, else there is loss to the pupil in changing from one teacher to another. A hard and fast course in those subjects is not desirable; in practice it is objectionable. Yet there must be some order of presentation observed for the pupils in each given school. In literature, however, this continuity, this order of presentation, is nothing. Here then, may we have a living, vitalizing force, originating in the free play of the power of selection by the teacher. Literature reveals the possibilities of the human soul. Running through every literary production is some one of the fundamental principles underly- ing the higher life, and this principle woven into the warp and woof of the narration, the novel, the poem, the myth, the drama, suggests to the reader something farther and higher-reaching than the soul itself has yet attained. In all this there is an appeal to the nobler self. It makes that self realize its personal, its individual responsibilities. By putting a prescribed course into the hands of the teacher, this perma- nent element, the arousing the sense of responsibility through a select- ing activity, is ignored. The book, the essay, the poem, may be appreciated, but the teacher goes to the class as the bearer of anoth- er's choice; as an inferior acting for a superior; not as one who, hav- ing found a joy, a life-giving thought, must share it with the children. It may be urged in opposition to each and every teacher's being the center of this culture-study with the boys and girls committed to his or her care, that some not having a developed taste would carry an inferior grade of reading into the class to be shared and enjoyed. Does this objection imply that one deficient in taste will so treat pre- scribed readings as to develop in the pupils a love for that which fails to charm the leader? How happened it that the development never came to the teacher? May it not have been that that teacher's teacher in the humanities was an instrument, rather than a torch- bearer? However beautiful, or powerful, an artistic production may be, there develops a feeling akin to the mechanical, if year after year at a stated period one must read a particular myth, story, essay, or poem with a class, regardless of the trend of thought and feeling pervading teacher and children. Both may be in harmony with some- thing else; possibly something new and delightful has come into the Sessions.] LITERATURE IN ELEMENTAR7' SCHOOLS, 115 teacher's personal reading, but this peculiarly interesting work must be refused recognition in the very place where it would be a germ, an inspiration. The field of human thought and sympathy is so wide, has so many varieties of plant, springing up here, there, everywhere, that to keep teachers standing by artificially planned flower beds is to defeat the very end for which the short-sighted husbandman planned the bed. The necessity for courses of study in some subjects has been conceded in this paper; yet, today, that necessity demands not half so much attention from those who are close to the elementary schools, as do the narrowing and benumbing influences of minute details in those outlines. There have been written interesting accounts of broad and varied readings with classes of children under fifteen years of age. Was ever such an account written by a teacher carrying out a course prescribed by another in all its minute particu- lars, and repeated without variation year after year? So much stress has been laid on freedom of selections in this '*the study relating to human nature," because no other of the five co-ordin- ate groups presents such possibilities for self-developing activity in the teacher. The dead level to which so many of the elementary schools sink will be no more when all through the teaching corps, from the humblest to the most successful, there shall be this intelligent selection and loving sharing of that which touches the life, the heart, of both teacher and child. Then << From the mountains to the champaign. By the glens and hills along, Will come a rustling and a tramping, Will come a motion as of song.' »t The second topic suggested for consideration is the method of lit- erature below the high school. Loud are the complaints made by the secondary schools, colleges, and universities, to the effect that students come to them weak in spelling, weaker in punctuation, and weakest of all in their use of the mother tongue. So faint of heart are we as to the propriety of admitting the interesting and the beautiful into our schoolrooms that the first breath of adverse criticism makes us disown them as interlopers. The complaints coming at a time when faith in literature in the schools is just beginning to germinate, tend to weaken that faith, and to concentrate attention on the form side of language, before its use and power as an instrument for the expression of thought have been felt. That the spelling of the young people entering the high schools is poorer than formerly need alarm no one. It has always been so. The same charge was made in the days of Horace Mann, more than a half century ago. The history of this charge, that the spelling in the common schools is not so good as it used to be, Il6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General would be an excellent subject for a thesis. Doubtless the writer thereof would find that the charge originated in the first school in which English spelling was taught. The spelling, the punctuation, and more than these, the diction of the young should, be improved, but in the right way. Spelling, punctuation, forms of words, choice of words, construction of sentences, all may be grouped under the head of the technique of language. The same law holds here that prevails in other subjects. Empty forms will not generate content. The resurrection of the meaningless or stilted sentence set for spell- ing and punctuation, or paraphrases that kill the thought and imag- ery of the original, and retain the phrases and clauses arranged in reverse order, will not develop beauty and vigor of thought and expression. The seeds of thought must be implanted in the young minds and then the technique be developed out of the resulting imagery and reflection. In studying a work of literary art there is much danger of excessive critical analysis; and yet, to read with no remark, after all is finished, other than a general one about the beauty or strength of the thought and language, places this whole subject outside of the molding influ- ence of the school, relegating it to each individual. Before conversa- tion is attempted enough should be read to paint a picture in its wholeness, some phase of a thought in its entirety. This whole, acting through association, will suggest other images, will make par- ticulars stand out in bold relief, will often throw new light on some familiar truth or principle. This year, March gave us no sign of spring. Cold, northeast winds kept the blossoms back. April came bringing no showers. Sud- denly all was changed. The breath of spring was like that of summer. Longing for the beauty of water and sky, I went one sultry Sabbath morning to the lake shore. Many had been impelled to go there, and it was a remarkable sight that met the eye. There were gathered men, women, and children; some sitting, some standing, others slowly walking to and fro, but a silent throng. Conversation, there was none. Out upon that wonderful scene, a most gorgeous display of color, went every eye. A haze spread itself above the many-colored waters, so that the line where the earth and sky met was lost to view. Here and there fleecy clouds cast their shadows on the water. Families came to that beach, and as the little ones were lifted from their car- riages, they with the older children stood for a moment gazing in open-eyed wonder at that which held all entranced. Here and there a husband and wife, or friends, after long gazing far off on the deep, would exchange a glance that spoke Volumes. A father and his young son mounted their wheels, took one long, lingering look, and then with- Sessions.] SCHOOL OUT OF SCHOOL, II7 out a word rode quietly away. The next day I said to some friends whom I had seen on that beach, '*What a wonderful sight that was." Then conversation began. One spoke of the ever-pressing thought that there were as many scenes as there were minds enjoying it, so varied must have been the delicacy of sense and the depth of experience com- ing from the different homes represented there ; or, in other words, said he, the material world is what the mind and its reaction makes it. Another remarked that she did not think so much about this world; she had been realizing that there were things invisible to her, yet seen by a finer type of being. These two threads were taken up and found to be parts of the same idea. After the threads had been woven into the same strand, we closed our conversation with a return to that beautiful whole. Two children talked of that scene. The little girl told her brother of her tender fear because she knew she could not think the thoughts that mamma had. The boy talked of the great worlds he was going to see when he could cross not only Lake Michi- gan, but the ocean. And they finally came back to that beautiful scene. This interchange of thought was the result of the dynamic power of that scene. Torn to pieces by questions on isolated details, immediately upon the appearance of a color, or a shadow, merely indifferent, monosyllabic replies would have come of it in a forced con- versation. As this picture, painted from nature^s gorgeous display, and viewed in quiet meditation, acted upon our minds, so the thoughts, fancies, and experiences of mankind, read from the classic page and absorbed in thoughtful repDse, will enrich and ennoble the soul of teacher and child. SCHOOL OUT OF SCHOOL. BY REV. JOHN. H. VINCENT, CHANCELLOR OF CHAUTAUQUA UNIVERSITY. Under the flag of the republic we have a population of about 70,000,000. There are in all kinds and grades of schools — public, pri- vate, professional — ^in round numbers 16,000,000 students. There are therefore out of school at least 54,000,000 people in the United States. It is my mission to-night to speak in behalf of the 54,000,000. It would be carrying coals to Newcastle for me here to define and to defend the institution we call the school. It is the institution for the promotion of formal training, providing time and place, with a beginning and an ending, with many beginnings and endings, with prescribed courses of study, with teachers of scholar- ship and tact to guide, restrain, help over hard places and inspire Ii8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General with right ambition; with students thrown together in rivalry, in friendship stimulating each other to be and to do. The school pro- motes the habit of intelligent observation. It guides to self-discovery, develops natural gifts, teaches laws of adaptation and expression, develops character, promotes a knowledge of human nature, and fills young life with the joy of thinking. The school opens out wide hori- zons. It makes recreation possible and profitable. It gives signifi- cance to recreation. It kindles living memories that spring from the old school house, college hall, and campus, like a fountain of delight dropping over the arid plains and the rough places of later life in showers of blessings. It imparts honor and prestige in credits, diplo- mas, degrees, and enduring reputation. The in-school population, how interesting it is. What good times it has! Here souls find out the laws of life, of adjustment and ser- vice, gaining power with the passing years. Here are the leaders of tomorrow in all departments of active life — in the home, the shop, the field, the school, the church, the state. Well may our enthusiasm be stirred as we think of the 16,000,000 under the dome and flag of the American school. Ah! if only they could be kept in school for a longer time! If only we could learn the secret of carrying young life over that perilous period between twelve and sixteen years, turning indifiference into enthusiasm and youthful restlessness into unflinching purpose! What regrets would be saved, what lamentations silenced, what higher levels of life and culture attained! But what of the 54,000,000 who are out of school? To you the educators of the peo- ple,— of the whole people, — I speak tonight in behalf of the 54,000,000. Your conviction and policy will determine whether or not from the ranks of the 54,000,000 out of school shall come additional millions under your immediate direction. And your treatment of the 16,000,000 must of necessity react upon and influence the 54,000,000. Let us look at the out-of-school multitude. The vast majority, who are they? Many of them are those who have taken full courses and after courses in college and university; all the college and university grad- uates, the products of the professional schools are included in the out- of-school multitude. Here are thousands who have begun but never completed the college course, millions who have never finished the secondary-school course, millions who have never even entered the grammar school. Some of them have been taught that wealth is a greater power than learning and do not know that although it has greater temporary influence, true learning endures, and perpetuates itself. Some of them suppose that the college course interferes with a man's success in practical life. Sessions.] SCHOOL OUT OF SCHOOL. Hp What is practical life? The gain of gold, or place, or sensual gratifi- cation? Is it not important that a man should be practical as a son and husband and father and friend, a gentleman in society and a member of the church? Is not this as important as that he should be able to make money in the shop, in the field, in the bank? And millions of the out-of-school multitude I am sorry to say, who have never been in any school whatsoever, these must support, or help to support the family. They have never supposed that education belonged to their class. To read, to write, to cipher, they have accounted privileges for even a higher class than themselves, and as for the higher education they have been taught to understand that it would be bad for them as a class, unfitting them to serve, to occupy the humbler spheres of social life from which they might look up to their superiors and sovereigns in church and state. They were never brought up to understand that priests and presidents are their ser- vants, and that the lowly, ignorant, and despised are inheritors of all natural rights and of all the possibilities of culture which endowment guarantees them, never knew that the stars over their heads are their stars and the landscape theirs. They have not been taught that the great object of life is to grow into the nobility of being and to be fitted for the eternal inheritance of light and liberty, and the joy of life — the rapture of life. They have thought that to dig and delve, to pay taxes, fight the common foes of vegetation and serve the masters of civilization fulfill their mission. Alas for the stupid, the ignorant, the servile, the blind, the downtrodden masses even in a republic. Men differ in endowment, relations, and responsibility, but they are men and all are members of families and of society; all are citizens; all are immortal souls and all have some endowment — one talent, or two, or ten. Every man has a right to know all that he can know, to be all that he can be, to do all that he pleases to do so long as in the exercise of this right he does not prevent his fellowmen from the enjoyment of precisely the same privileges. No man and no class of men have the right to predict hopeless inferiority of other men so as to assign them to continued ignorance and subjection. No man and no class of men have the right to deprive any man of the development and satisfaction which comes from culture and thought. The mere circumstance of wealth and social position do not determine the limits of a man's intellectual opportunity. Culture does not unfit for honest labor. All men may live and think, and read and talk, so as to become more interesting to their own children ; they may all come to look with more intelligent delight on fine pictures and lovely prospects and to say pleasant things about them in their own simple, unaffected speech. Every man by a measure of culture entirely possible to him 120 National educational association. [General may gain in attractiveness and helpfulness to some other souls and thus enrich his own and other's lives. Every soul on the planet, how- ever low and limited, has a right — is in duty bound — to read and think, to aspire and resolve and attempt. And every man who has made any gain is also in duty bound to help to the same and more every man below him. Away with the aristocracy of learning which looks with contempt on the unlearned, and which would so restrict * the opportunities of culture as to leave any man or any class of men under the bondage of ignorance and superstition. By pressing upon men the loftiest ideals, the largest possibilities, the number of think- ing self-asserting, self-respecting men and women will be increased. The boundless expanse of the azure and the wealth of the midnight glory that fills it would pay if only one soul were awakened to the splendor of his inheritance. I would ensphere every humblest, weak- est human life with the boundless and radiant heavens. The problem now before us is to reach the out-of-school multitude ; to put as many as possible of them in school; to provide for the others — for every one of the others — a school out-of-school. They may not go to the ** little red school house" nor to the ward schoolhouse. They may not go to the academy, the college, the university. School out-of-school is possible to all of them. I*. We must bring into school the children who are now allowed by their parents to neglect it. The whole community must be a commit- tee to enforce the law of compulsory attendance. Personal appeal must be made to the girls and boys themselves. Parents must be awakened to a sense of their responsibility. Laws must be enacted and executed. We must keep hold especially upon the boys who are in danger of leaving the public school before they are competent to form a correct estimate of its value, and who, when it is too late to retrace their steps, awake to the greatness of the blunder they were permitted to make. I regard it as one of the important problems of the age: How to retain in the public school boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen. How shall we overcome the indifference of this period of young life? How develop ambition and purpose? If this were accomplished, personal appreciation and enthusiasm would send mul- titudes into the higher schools who are now doomed to lives of hopeless regret and often of self-contempt. 2. I plead tonight for the out-of-school people to whom a period in the schoolhouse is now out of the question. We must teach them that life itself is a school, and that every man, however busy with what are called practical affairs, may easily subject himself to training under plans of self-improvement. He may become a pupil with books, Sessions.] SCHOOL OUT Oi^ SCHOOL, lil teachers, terms, vacations, habits of thinking, reading, conversation, observatories, laboratories and other facilities for the promotion of education. I cling with tenacity to the old doctrine that every man's life is subject to the divine care and government, that under this con- trol he may turn every day to good account in his personal improve- ment, and that the forces of the universe are pledged to aid the man who with firm resolve seeks personal strength and culture. 3. We must teach adults, who form the vast majority of the 54,000,000 out-of-school, to appreciate the educational possibilities of mature life. Michael Angelo, after he was eighty years of age, was seen standing in front of a cathedral, inspecting with intentness certain architectural lines and forms. Some one asked him what he was doing. The old artist replied: **I am still at school." It is a great mistake to assume that because one is no longer young and susceptible he is no longer subject to the powers which mold, change, exalt, refine and ennoble the human soul. In fact men and women of mature years are more likely to appreci- ate education than are the young. They have gained by observation masses of knowledge more valuable, a great deal, than the mere knowl- edge gained in books. Their minds are more vigorous. They have been compelled to give attention in some directions determined by the necessities of practical life, and are thereby the better qualified to give attention to other and higher subjects. Adults need hope and confidence. They need emancipation from the old doctrines which tend to pessimism and despair, taught them sometimes by the church and forced upon them through the misapprehensions of young people, and what they need now above everything else is self-confidence. Let us exalt the formal institution, but that missed, all is not lost. Remember Abraham Lincoln, Washington Irving, William Shakes- peare, Samuel Drew, Elihu Burritt, Herbert Spencer, Robert Brown- ing, and a score besides, who have learned even outside the univers- ity, the elements of true education; the beginnings of knowledge; capacity to know more; ability to know more; insatiate desire to know truth ; wisdom in the application of the knowledge gained ; and a well-balanced character. Said Sir William Jones, "With the fortune of a peasant I gave myself the education of a prince. ' ' Let us remember that the best students are full grown men and women from thirty to sixty. President G. Stanley Hall declares that the human brain reaches its maximum size or weight at sixteen or fif- teen, but it is unique among the organs in that it takes a decade longer with vast modes of changes in its action and increased power before it reaches full functional maturity. Plato said that "mind touches its zenith at forty-nine.'* There are men who linger in the a 2 NATIONAL Educational association, [G^ntxA zenith for decades. Every man should be a student all his days. On the tomb of John Richard Green, the historian, is this epitaph : '*He died learning.** Who is the poet who sang: " But why, you ask me, should this tale be told To men grown old or who are growing old? It is too late! Nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty ; Sophocles Wrote his grand CEdipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers When each had numbered more than four-score years; And Theophrastus at four-score and ten Had but begun his characters of men. Chaucer at Woodstock with the nightingales At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales ; Goethe at Weimar toiling to the last Completed Faust when eighty years were passed. These are indeed, exceptions ; but they show How far the Gulf Stream of our youth may flow Into the Arctic regions of our lives When little else than life itself survives. ** Shall we then idly sit us down and say, The night hath come ; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come ; we are not quite Cut off from labor by the failing light ; Some things remain for us to do and dare ; Even the oldest one some fruit may bear: For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.'* 4. I am here to insist that for such people, the middle-aged, the old people of the community, the out-of-school multitudes of society, courses of reading and study should be provided. General and spe- cial suggestions should be given and provisions made by competent leaders. They should be aided in the selection of books. There should be provided for grown people organizations, societies, clubs, institutes, assemblies, with lectures, studies, readings in literature, art, science — in all the sciences. This course should be selected by the scholars who know the people. The course should not be long or elaborate. It should not be too short nor superficial. It should cover a very broad and comprehensive field, and, if possible, it should be the field which the preparatory and college course covers. It should kindle a taste for reading of the better kind. It should reveal to every man his aptitude and delight, and should then supply advanced courses of reading. This provision for the out-of-school Sessions.] SC//OOL OUT OF SCHOOL, taj adult should cultivate the esprit de corps^ kindling the pleasure of fra- ternal fellowship, giving to the older folks a taste of the sentiment which adds so much to the life of the college. There is nothing this age needs more than play, recreation, the kindling and stimulating of the ideal. The humdrum of life deadens. I plead for the awakening of the imagination, the spirit of hope, confidence, in the possibility of change in the ruling motive even of an old man's life, and visions of ascent and power. Mr. Charles Whibley in **The Nineteenth Cen- tury," wrote a foolish thing when he characterized one of the popular movements of our day *'the farce of University Extension.** We want provisions for education in all lines, for all peoples of all ages, in all wise ways. We want the spirit of the school in the home, that the authority, influence, and example of the home may be felt in the school. 5. This suggests the thought that there should be promoted among all out-of-school people a hearty co-operation with existing educational institutions. We must make more of home. In it must be awakened the true ideals of education. Here must be laid the foundations of character, self-control, habits of observation, the anticipation of real life in the outside world, and the appreciation of all that makes for solidity, stability, and righteousness. The kindergarten must be put into every family. The best work that the kindergarten can do is a work for mothers. All the educational factors must co-operate — the home, the public school, the church, the local press, the lyceum, the public library, the museum, the summer assemblies, reading circles, and whatsoever else makes for the culture of the people. This co-operation is needed to promote more discriminating and effective teaching in nursery and kindergarten; to economize time at home and at school; to increase the number of students in the advanced schools and colleges; to widen the teacher's sphere and sa^e him from the dwarfing effects of his pro- fession; to bring into mutual sympathy and assistance, teachers and parents and the non-professional educators of the country; to exalt the teacher's profession in the estimate of the best society and to increase popular faith in the public school, the college, and the uni- versity. When college men come to understand the people, their sense, their teachableness, their earnestness, their real intellectual strength, their knowledge of hunian nature, the college will respect the people more, and be itself helped by closest intercourse with them. It is in this way that the ''correspondence system" of education, so often condemned by the scholars, so often a boon of inestimable value to the people, accomplishes so much good. There are in this correspond- 124 NATIONAL BDVCATtONAL ASSOCIATION. [General ence system these useful features: (i) a prescribed course; (2) one subject taken up at a time ; (3) a lesson outlined and forwarded to the student; (4) lesson reports by the student returned to the teacher, by him corrected and returned to the pupil; (5) the complete recitation, every part, every proposition of the lesson being studied by one pupil ; (6) in this system there is no undue haste; (7) no personal embarrass- ment; (8) access is had to the best of teachers; (9) it is a system financially economical; (10) the student under this system is likely to be mature and eager; and (11) supplemental work is practicable, including local teachers selected by the student himself from the best brains of the community, and with the possibility of local lectures. It is by this unpaid voluntary band of teachers in the community that the noble conception of Principal Fairbairn may be realized : **The student of letters who longs to be the servant of men." 6. There is a power which would promote more thorough co-oper- ation, stimulating adults to the pursuit of knowledge, interesting the home to a greater degree in educational processes, in literature and in the higher ends of living. This power we greatly need in the republic, and although it does not seem at first thought to be as po- tent as my emphasis indicates, it has really more to do with the cause of out-of-school culture than any other. We all know the power of atmosphere. We all know how much more intellectual work can be accomplished when our conditions are harmonious and full of sympa- thy and hope. I have insisted upon co-operation. But the only basis of effiective co-operation is in sympathy, mutual good will, a sense of brotherhood filled with patriotic ideas and impulses. We need a pronounced American spirit, patriotic, loyal, and filled with the spirit of harmony and good neighborship. To promote this, prejudices must be overcome, rigid partisan feeling mollified, and our people become broadened with toleration, illuminated and warmed with char- ity. The American people, who should* be the most generous, are often the most bigoted ; and divisions exist between classes and think- ers, representatives of political parties and of schools of religious thought, which prevent sympathetic co-operation. We must put an end to political and sectarian feeling in the public school system. I believe firmly in the power of religious opinions and religious aims in giving earnestness to life and making every man eager to attain his best. I believe in the conviction of so many of our people that relig- gion and education should go hand in hand and that the crown of intel- lectual culture is ethical and spiritual character. But the differences among us in matters of religion more or less limit the possibilities of a true culture, and prevent the perfect harmony which is necessary to perfect co-operation. Sessions.] SCHOOL OUT OF SCHOOL, 125 There are men and women who make no religious profession, who have nothing to do with the church, who have large influence in many ways over the young people of society. Because they owe no alle- giance to ahy church the great body of church members virtually repudiates them and counts them out when considering plans for social and educational improvement. The men and women to whom I refer believe in what they call **common sense" and in a general way in what we call goodness and righteousness. They do not, however, make nice theological discriminations. They do not care for theology. They do not stand for ecclesiastical institutions. They neglect and some- times repudiate them. But most of these people have pronounced ethical convictions. Why should not all these non-evangelical, non- religious, so-called skeptical elements, on the one hand, and the most pronounced religious and ecclesiastical elements, on the other, co- operate at least to some extent in the promotion of the things in which they all believe? Why should they be required, or why should they consent to give up the ethical insistence even though they cannot agree upon the antecedent religious doctrines out of which our stand- ards of ethics spring? Why should they not stand with us? Why should not we be glad to have them stand with us in the interest of our young people, — of all our young people — that among them we may jointly promote reverence, truthfulness, sobriety, purity, econo- my, good will, courtesy, manly strength, womanly grace, propriety of deportment, and a score of qualities and virtues which, whether you call them Christian or not, belong to the highest and best culture. Whether we find incentive and inspiration to these best things in a Presbyterian church, at a Roman Catholic altar, in a Methodist revival or in the freethinker's school of ethical culture, why should we not be willing to stand together and try to promote the qualities which all approve? The ideal and aim are worth something, and if there be any radical defects in the hypothesis or the process by which any one class or school of thinkers seeks to secure its object, the experiment in good faith will in due time sufficiently show where the antecedent theoretical defect lies and lead gradually and finally to its correction. What I insist upon is that we should all co-operate generously and with sympathetic toleration in trying to make practical and effective these larger ideals of national, associated, educational, personal life. Why shall we not make use of everyday, worldly men who make no religious profession, and yet who have standards of righteouness, uprightness, and wise deportment which they are as much bound to pro- mote among our young people as are the most spiritually minded and professing Christians, and which they are perhaps as anxious to promote a.^ many people of more formal, emphatic, and outspoken faith? And 126 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General with what practical sense such men may reach and influence the boy of our age! Let us work with sturdy, everyday men as far as we pos- sibly can. In very many cases these so-called worldly men, in the church and out of it, would stand by teachers and other citizens in dis- couraging bad habits in children and in promoting a real religious faith and the virtues which make for social progress and national security. Every such sympathetic impulse on the part of non-Christian men, and every such effort to advance the better things of social life will make them the more eager personally to enjoy the literary opportuni- ties of the country and of the age. In the furtherance of this common end, the public school system of America must serve no sectarian interest. Methodists, Unitarians, Roman Catholics, Jews, Baptists, agnostics, should have equal oppor- tunity, and no representative of any form of religious faith in the republic should at any time justly be grieved or made sore by allu- sions, references, policies, or influences exercised in the schoolroom. We must avoid bitterness. We must cultivate good will. We must stand by the public school as the representative of the nation and of the people. We must be generous in speech. We must promote true brotherhood among the most diverse elements of our population, and when the time comes and the issue is made,every genuine American must stand for the defense of the public school and the protection of the public treasury with an emphasis which anti-American elements in our population cannot misunderstand. Even in such a conflict as that we must avoid undue severity of speech. There is one place where Americans can express themselves, their convictions, their feelings, their purpose. Concentrated indignation and unflinching purpose put into a silent ballot is worth a hundred inflammatory resolutions of wrath and the glow of a thousand flaming effigies. Let us have justice, righteousness, but let us have good will and good neighborship, and we thus create an irresistible power of popular opinion and purpose which must tell not only on the schools themselves, but upon the mul- titudes who are out-of-school. May I venture to suggest that a positive religious influence entirely free from everything sectarian may be exerted by these everyday, so- called worldly men and by day-school teachers who are scrupulously careful not to obtrude denominational teaching. Boys may be reached by teachers who are genuine in personal character and who use words without cant and charged with profound conviction. How wisely Thomas Hughes in **Toni Brown's School Days' *\§ets forth, for example, the power of careful speech, the use of a few woi^ds by the right man at the right time, in that scene which no one cctfi Sessions.] SCHOOL OUT OF SCHOOL. 127 ever forget where Tom's father accompanies him on his way toward Rugby. They stop at the Peacock in London, have supper together, and before the boy retired his father said to him: **And now, Tom, my boy, remember that you are going at your own earnest request to be chucked into this great school like a young bear, with all your troubles before you — earlier than we should have sent you, perhaps. If schools are what they were in my time, you will see a great many cruel, black- guard things done and hear a deal of foul, bad talk. But never fear, you tell the truth, keep a brave and kind heart, and never listen to or say anything you would not have your mother and sister hear, and you will never feel ashamed to come home, or we to see you.** **The allusion to his mother made Tom feel rather choky, and he would have liked to have hugged his father well if it had not been for the recent stipulation that kissing should now cease between them. As it was he only squeezed his father's hand, and looked bravely up and said, 'I will try, father.* ** *I know you will, my boy.* Tom went upstairs, and still think- ing of his father's last words and the look with which they were spoken he knelt down and prayed that come what might he might never bring shame or sorrow on the dear folk at home." The stroke which pleases me most in connection with this period in Tom's history is the statement that the Squire all the way up to London had pondered what he should say to Tom by way of parting advice — something that the boy could keep in his head ready for use. It pays one to read the meditation which the squire conducted before he finally decided what to tell the boy. I have no time now to read that part of this most interesting story. Of course no man or woman will undertake to teach boys who has not read carefully **Tom Brown's Schooldays." In all this work of incidental or indirect religious teaching, in all this attempt to cultivate a common sympathy among the divers classes of our population, with the public school teacher, is the initiative. He should have in his mind all the while not only the intellectual gain but also the moral and spiritual growth of the pupil before him; and not only the pupil but the parents and the home which the pupil represents. How much might be done toward popular education where this large body of popular sympathy is secured, by the recommendation of books for the pupils and parents to read at home. How much the public school might do if it were to give personal suggestions and appeals, and send to the homes of the pupils literature touching the practical questions of domestic life which affect health, economy, comfort and true recreation! Think of the effect if the public 128 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General schools of America were wisely to enter protest against the annual waste of money by selfish indulgence in so many slight matters, in things themselves harmless as well as those that are injurious, and think how economy might be promoted by which home libraries might be built up, and rational, educating, and delightful recreations enjoyed. When once the people out-of-school become students and popular sympathy and co-operation are obtained, how certainly must society be improved. Thus we shall give to poor and busy people a larger world to live in, worthy ideals to inspire them ; exalted associations with the best characters in literature and in active life; the horizon enlarged and illuminated ; the weariness and monotony of daily occupation relieved ; true aspiration and personal influence intensified; the lowliest labor transformed into a lofty and dignified ministry; millions of people rescued from self-contempt, frivolity, and folly; the drudges of soci- ety, the overworked masses, finding the new joy which comes from a love of literature and science, and interest in history, and delight in art; children learning how from humblest homes broad avenues reach out into the highest places; plain homes made centers of beauty, decorative art in humblest places contributing to a genuine aesthetic training. Thus the education of the people out-of-school must tend to the dignifying of labor. Have you never thought that there are two distinctly marked classes of very poor people ; that one, though desperately poor, may belong to the highest and most aristocratic society in the land, while the other, raised in poverty, feeling the bitterness of it, may be per- sonally reduced by it, humiliated, degraded, and full of self-contempt? But a family may be raised in poverty and its members never know that they are poor. They must work. They must all work. They must work very hard. But they have high thoughts, much love, few books, but good books, lofty aspirations, unfailing self-respect. The pictures on the wall are cheap but they are good. Little memorials are found here and there, coming perhaps from another generation, souvenirs, — a bit of Parian marble, fine china, a costly book, a piece of old furniture, a few faded letters, — but the intelligence of two gen- erations or more throws its spell over the present, and the children of the family grow up to recognize themselves as belonging to the very best society. They never think of nioney having anything to do with determining whether society is good or not. It may be some dear old grandmother sits in her chair chattering about better days; tells sweet stories of the past; and keeps always at that fireside images Sessions.] . SCHOOL OUT OF SCHOOL, I29 of life in a home where literature, art, and piety were appreciated. Thus the education of the people in the past has its effect on the family for generations. We must train the people to understand that no trade is degrading when pursued by a man or woman of true ideals, pure motive, and holy purpose. Do you remember the Man of Nazareth, who washed the feet of his disciples? Who ever thinks of his act as a degradation? See the ministry and meaning of it all in the statement of the his- torian who records the fact: "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came forth from God and goeth unto God, riseth from supper and layeth aside his garments ; and he took a towel and girded himself* and washed the feet of his disciples. A man can afford to do what the world accounts the basest service if only his alliances are divine and his consciousness replete with the knowledge of his infinite relationships. **Do you think,** said a poor sewing girl to the daughter of a wealthy citizen in one of our enterprising American towns — **Do you think that your father would let me come at some time to your house to look at a fine copy of one of Raphael's Madonnas which, I am told, you have? Some one told me that when your father was in Europe he bought many good pictures, and that among them he has a fine copy of one by Raphael. I have been reading and studying about Raphael, but have only engravings and photographs to aid me. I should so much love to see a good copy in color. The original I may not hope to see.*' The daughter of the millionaire replied: "Why of course you can come. My father would be glad to have you look at the pictures. We have lots of pictures. I do not know whether we have any copies of Raphael's or not, but we have lots of pictures. Nobody looks at them at our house. They hang on the walls. They decorate the rooms beautifully, but I never give any attention to them as pictures. Of course, father would be glad to have you come." One day the sewing girl modestly calls at the home of luxury. She is ushered into the parlor. The windows are opened to give her the best light. She stands before the one of which she has read so much. She studies it carefully. Critically as she stands there she reads pas- sages from art critics, which she has read over and over again. She discovers tone, touch, expression, and a charm which the millionaire and his daughter never thought of looking for. She goes away inspired. She carries the picture in her thought into her daily labor. She is invited to come whenever she pleases, for as the daughter of the millionaire says: "Nobody here cares for these things except as decorations for the parlor. You will always be welcome." Will you 130 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General tell me who owns that picture in the parlor of the millionaire? Who owns it? Is it the millionaire or the sewing girl? In this way the architecture of the town, of its public buildings, and of its private mansions; the libraries, the museums, the gardens, and all the provisions of our increasingly generous civilization belong to the people themselves. To the people who know, who think, who have taste, who love, who live to be and to know and to do, and who constitute the true aristocracy of the republic. In your efforts, O teachers of this royal generation, apply your- selves with diligence, fidelity, and enthusiasm to the 16,000,000 within the school, but every day in your thought, in your aspirations, in your endeavors, remember that you also are charged with the responsibility of teaching and bringing into a school of their own the 54,000,000 out-of-school ! NATURE STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE, BY DAVID STARR JORDAN, PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JR. UNI- VERSITY, CALIFORNIA. In making a plea for nature study as a means of moral culture, I do not wish to make an overstatement, nor to claim for such study any occult or exclusive power. It is not for us to say, so much nature in the schools, so much virtue in the scholars. The character of the teacher is a factor which must always be counted in; but the best teacher is the one that comes nearest to nature, the one who is most effective in developing individual wisdom. To seek knowledge is better than to have knowledge. The essense of character building lies in action. Precepts of virtue are useless unless they are built into life. At birth, or before, **The gate of gifts is closed." It is the art of life, out of variant and contradictory materials passed down to us from our ancestors, to build up a coherent and effective individual char- acter. Character-building is action, not imitation. The chief value of nature study in character-building is that, like life itself, it deals with realities. The experience of living is of itself a form of nature study. One must, in life, make his own observations, frame his own inductions and apply them in action as he goes along. The habit of finding out the best thing to do next and then doing it is the basis of character.. A strong character is built up by doing, not by imitation, nor by feeling, nor by suggestion. Nature study, if it be genuine, is essentially doing. This is the basis of its effectiveness as a moral agent. To deal with truth is necessary if we are to know truth when we see it in action. To know truth precedes all sound morality. Sessions.] NATURE STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE, tjl There is a great impulse to virtue in knowing something well. To know it well is to come in direct contact with its facts or laws; to feel that its qualities and forces are inevitable. To do this is the essence of nature study in all its forms. The claim has been made that history treats of the actions of men, and that it therefore gives the student the basis of right conduct. But neither of these propositions are true. History treats of the records of the acts of men and nations. But it does not involve the action of the student himself. The men and women who act in history are not the boys and girls we are training. Their lives are developed through their own efforts, not by contemplation of the efforts of others. They work out their problem of action more surely by dissecting frogs or hatching butterflies than by what we tell them of Lycurgus or Joan of Arc. Their reason for virtuous action must lie in their own knowledge of what is right, not in the fact that Lincoln or Washing- ton or William Tell or some oher half-mythical personage would have done so and so under like conditions. The rocks and shells, the ^ frogs and lilies always tell the absolute truth. Association with these, under right direction, will build up a habit of truthfulness which the - lying story of the cherry tree is powerless to effect. If history is to be an agency for moral training it must become a nature study. It must be the study of original documents. When it is studied in this way it has the value of other nature studies. But it is carried on under great limitations. Its manuscripts are scarce, while every leaf on the tree is an original document. When a thousand are used, or used up, the archives of nature are just as full as ever. From the intimate affinity with the problems of life, the problems of nature study derive a large part of their value. Because life deals with realities, the visible agents of the overmastering fates, it is w«ll that our children should study the real, rather than the conventional. Let them come in con- tact with the inevitable instead of the made up; with laws and forces which can be traced in objects and forms actually before them rather than with those which seem arbitrary or which remain inscrutable. To use concrete illustrations, there is a'greater moral value in the study of magnets than in the distinction between shall and willj in the study of birds or rocks than in that of diacritical marks or postage stamps, in the development of a frog than in the longer or the shorter cate- chism, in the study of things than in the study of abstractions. There is doubtless a law underlying abstractions and conventionalities, a law of catechism, or postage stamps, or grammatical solecisms, but it does not appear to the student. Its consideration does not strengthen his impression of inevitable truth. There is the greatest moral value as well as intellectual value in the independence that comes from know- 132 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General ing, and knowing that one knows and why he knows. This gives a spinal column to character, which is not found in the flabby goodness of imitation or the hysteric virtue of «5uggestion. Knowing what is right and why it is right before doing it, is the basis of greatness of character. The nervous system of the animal or the man is essentially a device to make action effective and to keep it safe. The animal is a machine in action. Toward the end of motion all other mental pro- cesses tend. All functions of the brain, all forms of nerve impulse, are modifications of the simple reflex action, the automatic transfer of sensations derived from external objects into movements of the body. The sensory nerves furnish the mind of man all knowledge of the external world. The brain, sitting in absolute darkness, judges these sensations, and sends out corresponding impulses to action. The sensory nerves are the brain's sole teachers, the motor nerves and through them the muscles are the train's only servants. The untrained brain learns its lessons poorly and its commands are vacil- lating and ineffective. In like manner, the brain which has been mis- used shows its defects in ill-chosen action, the action against which nature protests through her whip of misery. In this fact that nerve alteration means ineffective action, lying brain and lying nerves, rests the great argument for temperance, the great argument against all forms of nerve tampering, from the coffee habit to the ** protracted meetings." The senses are intensely practical in their relation to life. The processes of natural selection make and keep them so. Only those phases of reality which our ancestors could render into action are shown to us by our senses. .If we can do nothing in any case we know nothing about it. The senses tell us essential truth about rocks and trees, food and shelter, friends and enemies. They answer no prob- lems in chemistry. They tell us nothing about atom or molecule. They give us no ultimate facts. Whatever is so small that we cannot handle it is too small to be seen. Whatever is too distant to be reached is not truthfully reported. The ** X-rays" of light we cannot see, because our ancestors could not use them. The sun and stars, the clouds and the sky, are not at all what they appear to be. The truthfulness of the senses fails as the square of the distance increases. Were it not so we should be smothered by truth. We should be over- whelmed by the multiplicity of our own sensations, and truthful response in action would become impossible. Hyperaesthesia of any or all of the senses is a source of confusion, not of strength. It is essentially a phase of disease, and it shows itself in ineffectiveness, Sessions.] NATURE STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE, 133 not in increased power. Besides the actual sensations, the so-called realities, the brain retains also the sensations which have been and are not wholly lost. Memory pictures crowd the mind, mingling with pictures which are brought in afresh by the senses. The force of sug- gestion causes the mental states or conditions of one person to repeat themselves in another. Abnormal conditions of the brain itself fur- nish another series of feelings with which the brain must deal. Moreover, the brain is charged with impulses to action passed on from generation to generation, surviving because they are useful. With all these arises the necessity for choice as a function of the mind. The mind must neglect or suppress all sensations which it cannot weave into action. The dog sees nothing that does not belong to its little world. The man in search of mushrooms 'tramples down oak trees in his walks." To select the sensations that concern us is the basis of the power of attention. The suppression of undesired actions is a function of the will. To find data for choice among the possible motor responses is a function of the intellect. Intellectual persist- ency is the essence of individual character. As the conditions of life become more complex, it becomes neces- sary for action to be more carefully selected. Wisdom is the parent of virtue. Knowing what should be done logically precedes doing it. Good impulses and good intentions do not make action right or safe. In the long run action is tested not by its motives but by its results. The child when he comes into the world has everything to learn. His nervous system is charged with tendencies to reaction, and impulses to motion, which have their origin in survivals from ancestral experiences. Exact knowledge by which his own actions can be made exact must come through his own experience. The experience of others must be expressed in terms of his own, before it becomes wisdom. Wisdom is knowing what it is best to do next. Virtue is doing it. Doing right becomes a habit if it is pursued long enough. It becomes a **second nature'' or a higher heredity. The formation of a higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right and doing right is the essence of character-building. The moral character is based on knowing the best, choosing the best, and doing the best. It cannot be built up on imitation. By imitation, suggestion, and con- ventionality, the masses are formed and controlled. To build up a man is a noble process, demanding materials and methods of a higher order. The function of individual education is to break up the masses. Only the robust man can make history. Others may adorn it, disfigure it, or vulgarize it. The growth of .man is the assertion of individuality. The first relation of the child to external things is expressed in 134 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General this: What can I do with it? What is its relation to me? The sen- sation goes over into thought, the thought into action. Thus the impression of the object is built into the little universe of his mind. The object and the action it implies are closely associated. As more objects are apprehended, more complex relations arise, but the primal condition remains. What can I do with it? Sensation, thought, action, this is the natural sequence of each completed mental process. As volition passes over into action, so does science into art, knowl- edge into power, wisdom into virtue. By the study of realities wisdom is built up. In the relations of objects he can touch and move, the child comes to find the limita- tions of his powers, the laws that govern phenomena and to which his actions must be in obedience. So long as he deals with realities these laws stand in their proper relation. **So simple, so natural, so true,*' says Agassiz. **This is the charm of dealing with nature herself. She brings us back to absolute truth so often as we wander.*' So long as the child is led from one reality to another, never lost in words or in abstractions, so long this natural relation remains. **What can I do with it," is the beginning of wisdom. **What is it to me" is the basis of personal virtues. So long as a child remains about the home of his boyhood he knows which way is north and which is east. He does not need to orient himself, because in his short trips he never loses his sense of space direction. But let him take a rapid journey in the cars or in the night and he may find himself in strange relations. The sun no longer rises in the east, the sense of reality in direction is gone, and it is a painful effort for him to join the new impressions to the old. The process of orientation is a difficult one, and if facing the sun-rise in the morning were a deed of necessity in his religion, this deed would not be accurately performed. This homely illustration applies to the child. He is taken from his little world of realities, a world in which the sun rises in the east, the dogs bark, the grasshopper leaps, and the water falls; and the rela- tions of cause and effect appear simple and natural. In these simple relations moral laws become evident. **The burnt child dreads the fire," and this dread shows itself in action. The child learns what to do next, and to some extent does it. By practice in personal respon- sibility in little things, he can be led to wisdom in large ones. For the power to do great things in the moral world comes from doing the right in small things. It is not often that a man who knows that there is a right does the wrong. Men who do wrong are either ignor- . ant that there is a right, or else they have failed in their orientation and look upon the right as wrong. It is the clinching of gocxl pur- Sessions.] NATURE STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE, 135 poses with good actions that makes the man. This is the higher heredity, that is not the gift of father or mother, but is the man's own work on himself. The impression of realities is the basis of sound morals as well as of sound intellect. By adding near things to near, the child tends to grow into wisdom. ** Knowledge set in order*' is science. Nature study is the beginning of science. It is the science of the I child. To the child training in method of acquiring knowledge is more valuable than knowledge itself. In general throughout life sound methods are more important than sound information. Self- direction is more important than innocence. The fool may be inno- cent; only the sane and the wise can be virtuous. It is the function of science to find out the real nature of the uni- verse. Its purpose is to eliminate the personal equation and the human equation in statements of truth. By methods of precision of thought, and instruments of precision in observation, it seeks to make our knowledge of the small, the distant, the invisible, the mysterious, as accurate as our knowledge of the common things men have han- dled for ages. It seeks to make our knowledge of common things exact and precise, that exactness and precision may be translated into action. The ultimate end of science, as well as its initial impulse, is* the regulation of human conduct To make right action possible and prevalent is the function of science. **The world as it is" is the pro-- vince of science. In proportion as our actions conform to the condir tions of the world as it is, do we find the world beautiful, glorious, divine. The truth of the '*world as it is" must be the ultimate inspiration of art, poetry, and religion. The world, as men have agreed to say it is, is quite another matter. The less our children hear of this, the less they will have to unlearn in their future develop- ment. When a child is taken from nature to the schools he is usually brought into an atmosphere of conventionality. Here he is not to do but to imitate ; not to see or handle or create, but to remember. He is moreover to remember not his own realities but the written or spoken ideas of others. He is dragged through a wilderness of gram- mar, with thickets of diacritical marks, into the desert of metaphysics. He is taught to do right not because right action is in the nature of things, the nature of himself and the things about him, but because he will be punished somehow if he does not. He is brought into a medley of words withotit ideas. He is taught declensions and conjugations without number, in his own and other tongues. He learns things easily by rote, so his teachers fill him with rote-learning. Hence grammar and language have become stereo- 136 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General typed as education without a thought as to whether undigested words may be intellectual poison. And as the good heart depends on the good brain, undigested ideas become moral poison as well. In such manner the child is bound to lose his orientation as to the forces which surround him in life. If he does not recover it, he will live in a world of mixed fancies and realities. Nonsense will seem half truth, and his appreciation of truth will be vitiated by its lack of clearness of definition, by its close relation to nonsense. That this is no slight defect can be shown in every community. There is no intellectual craze so absurd as not to have a following among the edu- cated men and women. There is no scheme for the renovation of the social order so silly that educated men will not invest their money in it. There is no medical fraud so shameless that educated men will not give it their certificate. There is no nonsense so unscientific that men called educated will not accept it as science. It should be a function of the schools to build up common sense. Folly should be crowded out of the schools. We have built costly lunatic asylums for its accommodation. That our schools are in a degree responsible for current follies, there can be no doubt. We have among us many teachers who have never seen a truth in their lives. There are many who have never felt the impact of an idea. There are many who have lost their own orientation in their youth, and who have never since been able to point out the sunrise to others. It is no extravagance of language to say that diacritical marks lead to the cocaine habit, nor that the ethics of metaphysics points the way to the higher foolishness. There are many links in the chain of decadence, but its finger posts all point downward. ** Three roots bear up dominion, knowledge, will, the third, obedi- ence." This statement which Lowell applies to nations belongs to the individual man as well. It is written in the structure of his brain — knowledge, volition, action, and all three elements must be sound if action is to be safe and effective. But obedience must be active not passive. The obedience of the lower animals is automatic, and therefore in its limits measurably per- fect. Lack of obedience means the extinction of the race. Only the obedient survive, and hence comes about obedience to ** sealed orders", — obedience by reflex action in which the will takes little part. In the early stages of human development the instincts of obedi- ence were dominant. Great among these was the instinct of conven- tionality by which each man follows the path others have found safe. The church and the state, organizations of the strong, have assumed the direction of the weak. It has often resulted that the wiser this direction the greater the weakness it was called on to control. The Sessions.] NATURE STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE, 137 ** sealed orders " of human institutions took the place of the automa- tism of instinct. Against *' sealed orders" the individual man has been in constant protest. The ** warfare of science" was a part of this long struggle. The Reformation, the revival of learning, the growth of democracy, are all phases of this great conflict. The function of democracy is not good government. If that were all, it would not deserve the efforts spent on it. Better government than any king or congress or democracy has yet given could be obtained through the automatic processes of competitive examinations. By this we could get along with one-half our number of rulers and at one-fourth the present cost. Even an ordinary intelligence office or employment bureau for statesmen would serve us better than we are served by caucus and convention. But not for long. The people who could be ruled in this way would be a people not worth saving. But this is not the point at issue. Government too good, as well as too bad, may have a baneful influence on men. Its character is a secondary matter. The function of self-government is to intensify individual responsibil- ity, to promote abortive attempts at wisdom, through which true wis- dom may come at last. Democracy is nature study on a grand scale. The republic is a huge laboratory of civics, a laboratory in which strange experiments are performed, but by which, as in other labora- tories, wisdom may arise from experience, and having arisen may work itself out into virtue. **The oldest and best endowed university in the world," Dr. Park- hurst tells us, '"is life itself. Problems tumble easily apart in the fleld, that refuse to give up their secret in the study or even in the closet. Reality is what educates us, and reality never comes so close to us with all its powers of discipline as when we encounter it in action. In books we And truth in black and white, but in the rush of events we see truth at work. It is only when truth is busy and we are our- selves personally mixed up in its activities, that we learn to know of how much we are capable or win the power by which these capabilities can be made over into effect." Mr. Jack man has well said: ^'Children always start with imitation, and very few people ever get beyond it. The true moral act, how- ever, is one performed in accordance with a known law, that is just as natural as the law which determines which way a stone shall fall, The individual becomes moral in the highest sense when he chooses to obey this law by acting in accordance with it." Conventionality is not morality and may co-exist with vice as well as with virtue ; for the obedience which lasts is the product of individ- ual knowledge and will. It is the progressive response to higher and higher laws as the individual comes to recognize them in his own J 38 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General experience. The welfare of man is not primarily security from decep- tion and evil influences. It goes with the growth of his power to recognize illusions and to base his action on realities. Obedience induced by deception cannot be permanent. Wrong information, it is true, may lead to right action, or falsehood may secure the obedi- ence to a natural law which would otherwise be violated. But in the long run, men and nations pay dearly for every illusion they cherish. For every sick man healed at Denver or Lourdes, ten well men will be made sick. Faith cure and patent medicine feed on the same victims. For every Schlatter who is worshipped as a saint, some equally harm- less lunatic will be stoned as a witch. This scientific age is beset by the non-science which its altruism has made safe. The development of the common sense of the people has given security to a vast cloud of follies which would be destroyed in the unchecked competition of life. It is the soundness of our age which has made what we call its decadence possible. It is the undercurrent of science which has given security to human life, a security which obtains for fools as well as for sages. For protection against all these follies which so soon fall into vices or decay into insanity, we must look to the schools. A sound recogni- tion of cause and effect in human affairs is our best safeguard. The old common sense of the **un-high-schooled man,'* aided by instru- ments of precision, and directed by logic, must be carried over into the schools. Clear thinking and clean acting, we believe, is a product of the study of nature. When men have made themselves wise in the wisdom which may be completed in action, they have never failed to make themselves good. When men have become wise with the lore of others, the learning which ends in self and does not spend itself in action, they have become neither virtuous nor happy. **Much study is a weariness of the flesh." Thought without action ends in intense fatigue of soul, the disgust with all the ** sorry scheme of things entire," which is the mark of the unwholesome and insane philosophy of pessimism. This philosophy finds its condemnation in the fact that it has never yet been translated into pure and helpful life. With our children the study of words and abstractions alone may in its degree produce the same results. Nature studies have long been valued as a ** means of grace" because they arouse the enthusiasm, the love of work, which belongs to open-eyed youth. The child blase with the moral precepts and irregular conjugations, turns with delight, to the unrolling of ferns and the songs of birds. There is a moral training in clearness and tangibility. An occult impulse to vice is hidden in all vagueness and in all teachings meant to be heard but not to be understood. Nature is never obscure, never occult, never Sessions.] NATURE STUDY. \y^ esoteric. She must be questioned in earnest, else she will not reply. But to every serious question she returns a serious answer. ** Simple, natural, and true," should make the impression of simplicity and truth. Truth and virtue are the opposite sides of the same shield. As leaves pass over into flowers, and flowers into fruit, so are wisdom, virtue and happiness inseparably related. NATURE STUDY, BY O. S. WESTCOTT, PRINCIPAL OF NORTH DIVISION HIGH SCHOOL, CHICAGO. The moral man and the intellectual man and the physical man constitute indeed the same man. Psychologists and intellectual phil- osophers, from time immemorial, have found it impossible to stay upon the ground supposedly their own, as witness the paper of Presi- dent Jordan we have just heard, without constantly trenching upon the premises, each of the other. In our modern treatment of the physical basis of life, of the developing convolutions of the brain, of the functions of the gray matter of the same, we find ourselves, with marvelous frequency, crossing and recrossing the bridge, that once seemed over a far wider stretch, to connect the intellectual with the physical man. Even with the broadest preparation, then, it is evident that it would be extremely difficult to treat of men as a triple-entity, but rather as a unit. That, as we were told last evening, the brain matures many years after the cranium has attained its full dimensions, is only another indication of the same difficulty. The old adage of the pedagogues, **Nonmultasedmultum," is in nature study more hon- ored in the breach than in the observance. Indeed, a new phraseology, **Non multum sed multa," is sure to become the motto of the devotee of biological science. When two-score and more years ago many of us were contending with the tasks set us in school, nothing was deemed of greater difficulty than the deciphering and interpreting of some of the choruses in the old Greek tragedies. And yet, I undertake to say that, if difficulties surmounted are at all indicative of intellectual strength gained, the mere identification of strangers in zoological sci- ence by the discrimination of characters on which this identification depends is often a more perplexing task than anything we met in the Greek tragedians. When we reflect that in the maturity of manhood we find ourselves, in nature study, confronting tasks so difficult, and remember that in our callow youth the other tasks indeed were not insurmountable, the comparison is rendered still stronger. The moral 140 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General quality which we designate truthfulness is also, in its exercise, an intellectual gratification, preceded, as it must be, by careful and accurate observation, supplemented by scientific deduction. To illustrate: When the Mormons were driven from Nauvoo, III., many years ago, it happened that at about that time there was almost a plague of a certain neuropterous insect, which, in its early stages, lived in the Mississippi river. This insect, appearing in countless numbers at this time, was dubbed by the people **the mormon fly," and, in some localities, it has retained the name ever since. This insect is also abundant in Lake Erie, and in many of our northern fresh waters. Coming from Niagara Falls last Tuesday, I found one on the window of the car on which I rode, and, presenting it to a friend, asked him to examine its mouth. Though I furnished him with a good Bausch and Lomb achromatic triplet, he was unable to locate its mouth. I submitted it to several others of my acquaintance on the car, but usually with no result. As I anticipated, however, one searcher alleged that he had discovered it. The truth was that the insect had no mouth, and that the last gentleman was deceived by or easily imposed upon by his vision. This result is not uncommon, especially with adults whose powers of observation have not been skil- fully developed. Now here is a burning curiosity excited to know why this particular insect should be unprovided with mouth, or masticatory apparatus. The fair inference that its Hfe is of necessity brief is in the line of a cultivation of the reasoning faculty, and if the tyro assumes the insect to belong to the family of Ephemeridae, he will not be very far from wrong, as the Phrydaneidae to which family the insect belongs are near neighbors of the Ephemerids. The imagination is surely susceptible of cultivation in thinking of this curious denizen of nature's vast storehouse. The memory is exercised in recalling its form, particularly its face, and other charac- teristics, and finally the man is sure to be spurred by the determining will to make researches in similar directions, with a view to new dis- coveries. With the young there is no more stimulating study than that of nature. It is per se attractive, and with an informed and enthusiastic teacher, the influence of the study is beyond comparison. There is no question in my mind but that the attendance in one high school in the city of Chicago for the past two years has been vastly better by reason of the interest excited and maintained in a sensible and attrac- tive method of teaching the subjects of zoology and botany. Such study is illimitable. It remains with the student during life. Its attractions are irresistible. Send a pupil from school with his eyes opened to the beauty of the natural world, in any department, and Sessions.] NATURE IN ELEMENTARr EDUCATION. 141 they are never thereafter closed. Teach him the use of the compound microscope, and it is always at the service of his intellect and his soul. In what better field, pray, may the fifty-four thousand of whom we heard last evening be educated and developed and expanded in intellect and heart and soul, than in the limitless field of nature? Here, surely, may the five points of Bishop Vincent's ambition be beautifully developed. Here in observation are surely the desired "beginnings of education." Here is his "capacity for acquisition" constantly enlarged. Here his "insatiate desire "must, of necessity, follow^. The resulting "wisdom in application" can hardly fail to be realized, and the "well-balanced character" follows as surely as the day the night. Witness Thoreau, Bryant, Agassiz, John Burroughs, and a host of others, ancient and modern, whose characters have been formed through nature by nature's God. THE FUNCTION OF NATURE IN ELEMENTARY EDU- CA TION. BY M. G. BRUMBAUGH, PRESIDENT OF JUNIATA COLLEGE, HUNTING- DON, PA. The gift of the Renaissance was a new content in the curriculum of existing schools. It was the gift of humanism as opposed to dogma and scholasticism. But humanism was a half-truth in the educa- tional world. Bacon and Comenius gave fullness to our concept of educational matter by demanding a place for the investigation of objective nature. Realism became the rival of humanism; and the war of the centuries since has been waged for supremacy of the one as opposed to the other. Assuming that nature has a content of sufficient value to make it worthy a place in the curriculum of the elementary schools, it is the purpose of this discussion to indicate how this content may be most happily utilized by the teacher for the child, and by the child for himself. The spirit of Spencer and Rousseau had given to education in the decade between 1870 and 1880 a distinctly scientific trend. Nature was to be studied, but only in formulae. The objective world was to find report through classification. The investigation of things was to be made by the scientist for the child, but not by the child for itself. The text-book was to be learned, but the sermons of science, much less those of nature, were never heard by the child. A teacher talked to the child ; and the singing stream, the chatting crow, the murmuring pines, the articulate silences, were commanded to 1^2 NATIOr^AL EbVCATIOl^AL ASSOClATtOK, tGencral be still. Children consumed precious time committing senseless form- ulae about things, and nature was parsed and analyzed as logically as a sentence from Caesar or Homer. The child in school sat at a dinner of husks, yearning for the ripe kernels of truth that had feasted his hungry soul and satisfied it before he had been transformed from a ranger at will to a bondman without will. This craze for classified knowledge and formulae has run its day, and the lingering influence of its riotous career may still be seen in the over-systematic presentation of almost all sorts of knowledge — in the so-called topical method of teaching, by which the child learns outlines without any corresponding content; in the divisions and subdivisions, headings and subheadings, sequels and far-fetched moral applications of all forms of knowledge as presented in the text-books for children, and in the overwrought classification and mathematically exact gradations in our systems of schools. Today one hears little of this systematic craze, and too little against it. Object lessons have given way to ** nature study," and the new term is coming more and more to stand for an appreciative contemplation of nature, and less and less for a critical analysis of technical terms. We are changing from a scientific to an artistic study of nature; and the transition marks an epoch in our educational progress greater than one might suppose. It indicates a feeling of unrest and a desire for new lines of approach to what must necessarily be, for all time to come, a content of the greatest moment to our edu- cational work. What is nature's message to the child? Have we interpreted this message? Thomas Wentworth Higginson, with something of inspira- tion, has, it seems to me, touched the heart of the matter from the literary side. '* Under the present educational system we need gram- mars and languages far less than a more thorough outdoor experience. Flowery banks and ripple-marked shores are the true literary models. A finely organized sentence should throb and palpitate like the most delicate vibrations of the summer air. Tried by the outdoor stand- ards, there is as yet no literature, but only glimpses and guideboards; no writer has yet succeeded in sustaining through more than some single occasional sentence that fresh and perfect charm. '* '*Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire to what end is nature." Thus writes Emerson, and in answer to his own question he points out her fourfold function: 1. Her commodity value. 2. Her beauty value. 3. Her language value. 4. Her discipline value. Sessions.] XATVRE IX ELEMEXTARV EDUCATION. 143 Nature's commodity value — her value to the physical man — is '*the quality that appeals to nations in their childhood, to men in their crudity, and forms the subject of the lower phases of physical sci- ence." It is the study of nature in the spirit of gain. It is the debasement of nature to a mere dollar-and-cent basis. The child from this point of view is taught to regard the objective world as representative potentially of a vast amount of wealth, and he is led to feel that his highest service to the race and himself is performed by changing this possible wealth to actual wealth. Nature becomes the object of study in a purely selfish way, and value attaches to things in proportion to their ratings in financial exchanges. The child unconsciously opens a stock exchange, and deals in objective things as a broker does in stocks. The market is ** bulled" or ** beared" and the values fluctuate as his interests fluctuate. Nature comes to have no fixed value. To enhance her value nature is formulated, cata- logued, classified, and systematized after all sorts of schemes; and the command, '*subdue the earth," is made to read, '* subdue the earth for gain." We shall, of course, never be able to rid the world of this attitude. The modern scientific spirit lays yearly greater stress upon it. Our civilization renders this aspect of nature paramount. The public school has two vital truths to keep in mind in dealing with this char- acterization of nature. 1. Children at an early age are utterly unable to interpret this les- son fairly. If persisted in, it must result in false impressions, in entire misunderstanding of the relation of the self to its environment. The young child cannot adequately grasp the message of science. Herbert Spencer, the chiefest of sinners along this line, admits that the orna- mental precedes in point of time the useful, both in the race and in the individual. Unfortunately the utility value is frequently the only value the child is ever asked to regard. 2. The out-of-school and after-school influences all emphasize this aspect of nature and render unnecessary the great emphasis too often placed upon it in the curriculum. The public school has a perfect right, has indeed the obligation, to take into account this tendency, and where great stress is laid by influences at work out of school, the teacher can well afford to place less stress than where such influences are not at work. The public school, it seems to me, should face problems broadly, and read its mission in the principles of the profes- sion it fosters, rather than in the narrower demands of the money- mad clamor of an inconsiderate populace. I do not undervalue the practical side of an education ; I do not decry the study of science in our schools; I simply protest against 144 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General narrowing the outlook of childhood to a single aspect of nature, and thereby putting a false bias upon his career. The giant oak and the graceful elm may represent potentially so many feet of lumber and so many cords of wood ; the waving gold of the summer grain may stir no emotion save that of physical content; the mountain stream wooed from its moss-mantled couch, moving in showers of silver and clothed with rainbows, may excite no response in the youthful beholder; but it ought not to be so. The public school has traduced its high mission if it is so. The report of the Committee of Fifteen recognizes this tendency in elementary educa- tion, and properly raises protest in the following statement: *'A child overtrained to analyze and classify shades of color — examples of this one finds occasionally in a primary school whose specialty is 'objective teaching — might in later life visit an art gallery and make an inventory of colors without getting even a glimpse of the painting as a work of art. A parallel to this would be the mason's habit of noticing only the brick and mortar, or the stone and cement, in his inspection of the architecture, say, of Sir Christopher Wren.'* A further parallel was noted at the World's Fair. Two women came suddenly upon that matchless painting, the work of a late and lamented Pennsylvania genius, called ** Breaking Home Ties." After consulting their cata- logue, and ascertaining its name and author, they examined the paint- ing critically and one remarked to the other, **Well, what old-fash- ioned wall paper." To their critical but soulless gaze, one is led to apply the truth of Wordsworth, **A primrose by the river's brim, a yellow primrose was to him — and it was nothing more." The beauty value in nature seems to me to be too much neglected in our elementary schools. **Our American life," says an eminent follower of Thoreau, "still needs, beyond all things else, the more habitual cultivation of outdoor habits." These habits, instead of interfering with the real work in science, will give the very basis essen- tial to good scientific work. For the formulated study of things in the high and normal school every rational mind must plead. But the basis for this^ laid broad and deep in the early life of the child, is artistic, not scientific. The eye that is informed and re-enforced by a sympa- thetic heart is better prepared for true investigation than the eye that moves in obedience to a cold and calculating intellect. Professor Laurie well says, *'All thinkers will now admit that up to the age of puberty, at least, subjects which appeal to the senses and connect a boy with external nature, ought to take precedence of all others except the vernacular language and arithmetic." But Professor Laurie stops at the parting of the way between humanism and sense- realism. He says an "undisputed thing in such a solemn way." Sessions.] NATURE IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION, 145 The real point at issue is deeper. How shall the boy be connected with external nature? My contention is that the first touch should be sympathetic, not systematic; that the child loves to classify only where he first loves ; that the artistic basis is the best preparation for real scientific work. John James Audubon had his boyhood home in a cave on the banks of the Perkiomen creek, in Montgomery county, Pa. It was here that his soul was filled with rapturous love for bird life. It was this love that led him for a quarter of a century into the secret haunts of hum- ming bird and oriole. First an artist, then a scientist. It was self- directed research after his own plan, investigation prompted of love, that made possible the growth of the first ornithologist of America, perhaps of the world. And this is typical of the process in each life. It is a great moment in a boy's life when he first meets in the world of things the object for which his soul yearned — when he finds the things he loves and the things that link him lovingly to the great world without. A pupil of mine, dull and listless in his work for a year, was finally persuaded by his teacher to study botany. He did his text-book work in an indifferent and* listless manner. Early in June, on a rainy afternoon, he accompanied his class to a private haunt of the orchid family. Here the boy unexpectedly found a rare specimen, and, throwing himself upon the wet ground beside the beautiful flower, wept for joy, and between his sobs called alternately to his teacher and to his God in his moment of supreme exaltation. That boy found the thing he loved. He loved all its associates, and became one of the best botanists Juniata college ever produced. It seems to me of vital importance that each child should early in life be given the opportunity to form intimate, sympathetic associa- tions with some object of nature. It is not so important to determine for him what that object shall be or what the manner of the associa- tion, as that some association be formed. Allow his own taste to select and his own emotions to direct his nature companionships. The boy that has never been led to be on speaking terms with some objective thing has not taken the first lesson in real educational pro- gress. I know how difficult it may seem to the city teacher to accept this proposition as a practical one. But I assure you that it is eminently practical. Within convenient reach of every schoolroom and home in the city are priceless associations for every child. In the words of another, every child may be led to assert his own experience: **Who could be before me, though the palace of Caesar crack and split with emperors, while I, sitting in silence on a cliff of Rhodes, watched the sun as he swung his golden censer athwart the heavens?" Bom 10 146 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General within sight of miles of silence, still waters, and green shores, it is fatal to all great advance to shut this vision from the life of any child. Every pupil should seek out and appropriate to himself some secret retreat, all his own, where in the midst of loveliness he may lie down and enjoy. Is not, after all, the secret of the country child's greater resources in the exigencies of life to be found in the fact that such an association has been formed? The city school affords superior train- ing. The country school in many cases produces a superior product. The companionship of free air and wide vista has developed a largeness of soul so marked that Mary Lamb reports Wordsworth as holding it **doubtful whether a dweller in town had a soul to be saved.** The city school can do for the young child the highest service by aiding as far as possible in creating in each young life a special fondness for nature. The splendid work being done now in many high schools and training schools is a just recognition of the laqk of this work heretofore, and of the value of it to the teacher who goes into the elementary schools to quicken a like fondness in each child. The success of this work is conditioned only by the intensity of the love in the pupil-teacher's heart as she approaches, in the crowning years of her training, the true formulation after scientific models of that which her soul sincerely loved from childhood. It is a wonderful experi- ence in the child life to plant a single seed, study its germination, its growth, its bud, its leaf, its flower, its fruit, — to see in this single growth a type of the season when ** frosts are slain and flowers begot- ten," " And in green underwood and cover Blcssom by blossom the spring begins. The full stream feeds on flower of rushes, Ripe grasses trammel a traveling foot, The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes From leaf to flower and flower to fruit: And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, And the oat is heard above the lyre, And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root." Let educators recognize this artistic basis for true scientific work, and boards of control will unite with teachers and superintendents in granting the teacher the right to take, not a holiday, but a holy-day of enthusiastic and genuine educational research out under the spread- ing trees, along our beautiful streams, among the companionship, of flowers and birds, beyond the valleys that laugh as they are covered with the gold of God, and where the shouts of His happy multitudes ring around the waterfalls. No child is sincerely fitted to pursue systematic study who has not Sessions,] NATURE IN ELEMENTARr EDUCATION. 147 felt a homesickness for field and forest. I count among the best experiences of my life days spent in one of the numerous nooks among the mountain fastnesses of our own grand state, where, in years agone, Wild roved an Indian f^irl, Bright Alfa rata. Where sweep the waters of The blue Juniata. Here I have seen the morning sun crown the tallest pine on the mountain's crest with a wreath of gold. The bird choir led the tri- umphal march from tree to tree, until the valley, flooded with light, hung out its leafy banners to herald the approach of day. I have seen the morning mists, purple with the tinge of vine and leaf, creep sullenly to the shadowy recesses of the spirit-haunted hills. I have seen these same shadows at eventide leap from their lair and drive the lingering light of an autumn day up the eastern slopes and hold the valley enthralled in a double darkness of night and shadow. Wandering along a mountain stream that leaps from the open sky into twilight pools, one may hear in its murmurs all the songs of human life. It sings of the meadows beyond, where a fortnight ago it slept between fern-fringed banks and dreamed of stars. Again it sings in plaintive notes a song that has in it all the remembrance of the lullaby that, half in sorrow, half in hope, leaped from my mother's lips and made my young soul yearn for the sorrowless song of heaven. When fretted by the moun- tain storm it will roar a hoarse response to the crashing thunder, and defy the lightning's flash. Along its narrow channel will be found rock barriers that forbid one's onward progress. But woo them, and they too will reveal to you, through green-curtained portals, secret haunts of rare flowers and rarer birds. Here the rhododendron veils the jagged rocks, and mantling mosses put their fingers upon the sorrow- ing stream that just beyond leaped from the sunlight, with a rainbow in its bosom, and woo it into silence. There is no voice here. The insect whisperings are stilled. The soul is in nature's holiday haunt. Here one imbibes the spirit of rest and breathes the air that nature meant only for her own. A day in such a labyrinth of varied beauty — and such scenes are within the reach of almost every child — will enhance a thousandfold the value of all subsequent study. A child should be encouraged to love a tree. I recall now a grand old maple that lifts its perfect cone of green from the plains of Ohio. It is to me an object of almost human interest. Its photograph stands on my desk side by side with that of other benefactors among the teachefs of my life. There is, on the campus of the grand old University of Louisiana, at Baton Rouge, a mammoth live oak, whose 148 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General perpetual crown of green has for a century been an object of instruc- tion and of inspiration. It is today one of the most honored mem- bers of the faculty of that institution. Nature has a third value in education, namely her symbolic or language value — **the revelation through type and symbol of an eter- nal spirit, beheld shining through the veil of outward form by the mystic of all ages, from Plato to Carlyle." There are dreamy child- ren in almost every school whose life light is burning low from the lack of opportunity to exercise this vision. The scientific appeal and the artistic appeal will not touch every child. The teacher must be con- versant with this aspect of nature to awaken slumbering possibilities in some of the rarest minds of the schoolroom. This is the avenue through which to reach the sensitive and reflective spirit. It is the expression of the artistic impulse on the poetic as opposed to the scientific side. One finds here, in nature's symbolisms, the influence that defies classification, and ministers, through suggestion and analogy, to what we are accustomed to call the unusual and the unnatural child. I have known children to whom the objective things were mere types. They found the realities in nature's suggestions and were delighted, in a quiet way, with occasional revelations of the things they sought. In this aspect of nature one finds the real inspira- tion of the poet. It led Bryant to feel that To him who in the love of nature, holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. It was under this revelation that Shakespeare found Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. Wordsworth felt this spell and sang, Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy ; But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy ; The youth who daily from the East Must travel, still is Nature's priest. And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away. And fade into the light of common day. With which one should compare the following lines on childhood from Vaughn's ** Retreat:" Sessions.] NATURE IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION, 149 When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour. And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity, Oh, how I Icng to travel back, And tread again that ancient tracks From whence the enlightened spirit sees That shady city of palm trees ! But ah ! my soul with too much stay. Is drunk, and staggers in the way. Here, too, Byron, the restless, found peace **in mingling with the universe" — To feel what I can ne*er express. Yet cannct all conceal. And Coleridge, in the presence of the snow-crested Alps, exclaims: I gazed upon thee Till thou,' still present to the bodily sense. Didst vanish from my thoughts entranced in prayer I worshipped the Invisible alone. I have quoted thus at length to give emphasis and meaning to an aspect of nature study that too few teachers recognize the value and significance of, when it possesses the child spirit. Still fewer teachers, I fear, regard such tendencies in the child as of any special worth. Indeed, it seems just to assert that any such yearnings are promptly suppressed, and the student is cautioned and admonished to pay attention to the more practical things of life. Nature's fourth value — her discipline. **The functions of nature as the great teacher, who, through the sternness of multiform law, the tenderness of multiform suggestion, molds her child, aeon after aeon, into the likeness of a perfect man," is rarely recognized as of any special utility in the child life. While it does not seem reason- able to substitute the rigid economy of nature for the equally rigid, but more purposeful and reasonably adjustable discipline of a trained human spirit, still nature does, in many of her aspects, give point and suggestion to the discipline of the growing child. He learns from her that the best things are most difficult to obtain, and is thereby encour- aged and incited to greater perseverance in the trying moments of his advance. He learns, too, that processes unfold in sequence, and that great success at any point of advance is achieved only by carrying with him every fact and principle gathered in his earlier efforts. Thus his knowledge becomes not only clear, but also distinct; by which one is to understand that he is to master facts in a two-fold manner. He is not only to see the given j^rinciple, truth, or fact, as distinct from others, but he is to see it in its relations. Thus be prepares l5o NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General himself by clear knowledge to advance to correlated knowledge. He learns, moreover, that values in education are to be measured by intensity, not by extensity; that//7w^r results from seeing in a given compass what has heretofore escaped discovery; that efficiency results from seeing newer and deeper relations in old lines of inquiry, rather than in endeavoring to create a craze by proclaiming a new sort of content for educational research ; and that quasi-meaning to a large number of concepts is infinitely infertor in every respect to richness and depth of meaning to a limited number of terms. The function of nature is, therefore, fourfold: and gives sugges- tion, method and material for molding predisposed childhood into the scientist, the artist, the mystic, or the sage. For one of these mes- sages every normal child is specially fitted. To compel him to follow one of these lines when his entire life trends along a different one results too often in stupidity and enervation. Here, then, is the secret of true specialization. The child should be lead in his investigations along what is to him, not to the teacher, the line of least resistance. Regarding this as a center in his educational increase, he will natur- ally and readily widen his area of inquiry and eventually comprehend nature in her fullness. It will be a comprehension centered in love and in interest, and will give the child an organized and systematized outlook upon the entire field of objective facts from his self-selected centre; thus his mind will compass the same range of truth as his fel- lows, but it will be a distinct and individualized outlook. His person- ality will be recognized. His knowledge will be unique. His interest will be self-maintained. His place in the social relation will be enriched. His usefulness will be enhanced, and, what is of vital moment to him, he will come to realize more and more as his life sweeps onward to its culmination, that he has focused the realm of his knowable truths upon his own field of inquiry; he was born for a purpose. Education aided him to realize that purpose. He has learned that a man is not a complete man until he is an educated man. The system of public education will merit and receive his life-long support and respect, and the character of his education will set at rest, forever, the widespread discontent with existing methods in our schools. The schools can win by their own process their entire inde- pendence. There follows, therefore, certain truths which the teacher must come to accept and follow in the work of the schoolroom: I. That every child can be reached and enthused: that, as Mr. Payne says, ** every child can be educated into the consciousness of power accompanied by the consciousness of pleasure." Sessions.] NATURE IN ELEMENT ART EDUCATION. 151 2. That there is a line of approach to each mind along which the labor of education is reduced to a minimum. 3. That a teacher by the study of a child's native endowments should be conversant with all these lines of approach ; that, in short, the teacher must have realized in his own experience and training vastly more than any one child can attain in the school ; and that he cannot give to the child clear and distinct knowledge unless his own knowledge has in it at least the additional element which, for want of a better characterization, I must call the element of adequacy^ which is understood to mean analytics beyond the analytic power of the immature mind, and which results' in what may be regarded as ** reserve force" in the teacher's equipment. 4. That the child unreached and unenthused is a living witness to the inefficiency and lack of breadth in the scope of the school work. 5. That by far the largest number of children are touched by the first, or commodity, value of nature, and that, therefore, science must be a prominent, if not the most prominent, element in the curriculum. 6. That the life career of the average child emphasizes this aspect of the study of nature on the practical side. 7. That science will achieve its most perfect results where an artistic and appreciative preliminary training is given, and conse- quently that formal scientific work should begin in the high school and the normal school. 8. That biological study, including laboratory work and personal investigation of objects in their natural environments, is the connect- ing link between the concrete and unformulated nature study in the elementary schools and the formulae and generalizations of the higher grades, including the college and the university. 9. And, finally, that scientific training shall be paralleled in the secondary schools by a careful and critical study and construction of language based upon nature's models, to the end that the child's life may be linked with his natural environment broadly and richly — that humanism may rest in nature lore for its models. Nature will thus be given her true setting among the other ele- ments of the content in our educational processes, and the child will grow into a living realization of the legend, "In the midst of the light is the beautiful, In the midst of the beautiful is the good, In the midst of the ^ood is God, the eternal One.'* I I 152 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General DISCUSSION. L. D. Harvey, President of the State Normal School, Milwaukee, Wis. — I shall confine n;iyself to a few statements made in the paper prepared by Dr. Jordan. He tells us there that action is the essence of '* character-building." Is that true? I challenge that proposition. If action is the essence of charac- ter-building, then the action of the tadpole could result in character-building. There must be something more than action to develop character. There must be something more than that to develop moral power. If I were to coin a phrase, I should say that the essence of character-building is in motive which finds ex- pression in action. The keynote of the whole paper as I see it is summed up in the single sentence, " The purpose of science is to eliminate the personal equa- tion and the human equation in the statement of truth." Is that the purpose of science? If it be the purpose of science, then let it occupy its field, but let us not forget that the human equation is here not to be eliminated but to be solved. The presence of this magnificent concourse today, gathered from the whole ter- ritory of the United States, is a protest against the elimination of the human equation in the statement of truth. Let us have that equation solved. I be- lieve that there is in the field of science ample scope for the consideration of the human equation, and just to the extent to which it is eliminated, to that extent is science's teaching limited in its influence and force on moral power. He tells us again that the individual who knows the right is not likely to do the wrong. The poet has said: " We know the right and we approve it too. Condemn the wrong and still the wrong pursue." That is poetry. Possibly the other is science; you may take your choice. But I beg of you to remember this, and appeal neither to scientist nor to poet except as you appeal to the one or the other in your own personality, and an- swer me the question, whether your doing is on a par with your knowing. Again, there is another statement which I am not quite clear upon: " Know- ing a thing well is a powerful impulse to virtue." I would concede that, but I think it equally true that knowing a thing well is a powerful impulse to vice. If you challenge my proposition, appeal to your own experiences; appeal to your own observation. If I know well how to copy the handwriting of another man and am in a position where the doing of that will furnish an opportunity to ac- cumulate wealth without further effort, is the knowing of that thing well an impulse to virtuous action? If I possess the knowledge which enables me to pick a lock, is that an impulse to virtuous action? No, my friends, the impulse to virtuous action is not in the mere intellectual power of knowing; there is some- thing more than that. Mark you, I am in hearty accord with very much that is in the paper. I believe most emphatically in knowing things well and in knowing why we know them well. I am not opposing that proposition, but I am opposing the proposition that that means virtue. He tells us again that morality, or moral power, results from action ; not from imitation; not from suggestion. I put against him the Great Teacher who on the shores of Galilee was the first one to pronounce that statement which was a command to imitation, in his " Follow me." That statement which has come on dQwn through the centuries, that example, (hs^t lif^, ths^t section of Sessions.] DISCUSSION. 153 ■■ ■ ■ - .. ■ , ■ ■ . ■ . ■ . , , his influencing men's motives, and through their motives their actions, has done much for the world, aye, even more than has the study of nature. It may be true that the study of the frog, or the study of the wonderful processes by which the male spider makes himself attractive to the females of his society, may be of more value than what is known of Joan of Arc or of some other ancient charac- ter, but is there not a little implication there that the alternative lies between the Joan of Arc and the other. I submit this is not a necessary alternative. I sub- mit, if we can not have the frog that we can have something more in the field of human interests than even Joan of Arc. I am in hearty sympathy with him when he speaks so feelingly of diacritical marking. I have been there. I have recovered from the habit. I have discov- ered that it is possible to have a considerable content in a scheme of education, outside the field of icience, even if diacritical marking be left out. I want to suggest just this, that there is a very practical question which con- cerns us as teachers in the consideration of this subject of nature study. It is that the best thing to do at any time is the thing which can be done. Not the thing you would like to do and can't do, and try to do and fail to do; but the thing you can do, that is the thing to do. Now, when we undertake this busi- ness of nature study, when, as Dr. Coulter would have told you had he been here, that nature study means the elimination of text-books and the study of things only, we come to a proposition that what is needed in nature study is teachers with enthusiasm like Dr. Jordan and Dr. Coulter and these other men who have made science their life work. We can't get them for $40 a month. That is the proposition that confronts you, a plain, practical business proposition and I sub- mit that as a question for your determination. The nature study which has been done, — I am not mistaken here, — the nature study which has been under- taken and carried on throughout this country is practically a failure, in every large city and every small one where it has been attempted. There may be exceptions, but I think the results will bear out the statement and will show that the mental as well as the moral training is far inferior to what is claimed for it; that there is the same mental quality involved in dealing with some other things that may be involved in dealing with science. That we find the child interested in the works, conditions, and relations of men, and that in their study as high an order of intellectual activity is involved and more effective incentives to moral action found than in the field of nature study. The question is then, in view of the fact that nature study cannot be carried on successfully, and I think it cannot be controverted that it has not been done up to the present time, except in those rare instances where thoroughly trained and enthusiastic teachers are presenting it, shall we attempt to push it into the schools before we are ready for it? Or shall we give further attention to training our teachers so that we may have teachers who shall do it not only with enthusiasm but with intelligence, intelligence not only as to method but as to matter as well. Prof. J. N. Wilkinson, State Normal School, Emporia, Kansas. — My interest lies chiefly in the subjects discussed by President Harvey, of Wisconsin. So much has been claimed for nature study that its advocates are in danger of giving the impression that they would exclude everything else from the schools. It goes without saying that we who object to some of Dr. Jordan's extreme statements, have nevertheless no disposition to disparage nature study so far as its true value has been presented. We fear, however, that nature study is not sufficient for oar salvation, I s^m not ready to concede that we have not done a great deal 154 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General of nature study in the rural districts. We have had more of nature study than of anything else, but not exactly according to the canons of the universities. I will not assume, however, to say that we of the rural districts, we of the West, who are in contact with nature so much, will arrogate to ourselves on that ac* count any very great superiority in moral culture. However close we get to the truths of nature as exemplified in the world of rocks and flowers and birds, hu- man life and actions will always retain their power of inspiring men whether you^g or old to attain greater moral excellence. To declare that what is of moral value in literature and history is nature study is a begging of the question that is raised in regard to these subjects. The nature-study method of seeking truth is very far-reaching, but there are many truths beyond the field of nature study proper. We are told that if history is to be of any value we must study original documents. I am not sure that I see the force of that remark. I am not ready to concede that the nature study about the race as highly developed animals has greater moral value than the study of the history of its thoughts and deeds. We have some interesting records of na- ture study. In ancient times when astrology was the chief subject of study — and it occurs to me that the history of that study has done more for the race than the study itself has done — there was no phenomenal manifestation of moral power. What history has done to record the mistakes of nature study must in itself be a great moral influence. We have had many educational delusions, and nature study itself has at times given wrong impressions. The nature study people base more of their belief on hypotheses, on plausible guesses, if you please, than do the students of recorded history. Now, it occurs to me that the history of moral phenomena through the whole experience of the human race is full of many valuable lessons for us. It is conceded that human experience, the inspiration that comes from human life, may be in its aspects as nature study, of great value, and may give a certain moral power. But I submit to you teachers who are, in all the schoolrooms over this country,doing something in imparting moral power, the question whether the influence which goes from you to the child to build him up in moral strength, is best exercised through the methods of nature study. No,the mysterious influence of nature study is not the secret. Rather is it not the case that there is an inspiration in human character which appeals from heart to heart and does not go by the methods of systematic analysis or the processes of vivi- section? We are told of the very great moral power that is to come from dissecting the frogs. I maintain that whatever of moral power comes from work of this kind comes from the spirit of the teacher and the student. I maintain that the dissecting-room, that the laboratory, that vivisection, for instance, before a class of pupils in the school may, unless discreetly managed, be a means of moral degradation, a means of stultifying the nobler feelings and impulses, a means of lowering rather than elevating the moral sentiments of the child. I suppose that of all the parts of the human race with which we are conversant, the sav- age, perhaps, is the best example of the specialist iti nature study, and yet it oc- curs to me that the savage, who is developed solely by his contact with nature, who gets no sort of inspiration or guidance from history or literature, is by no means the best example of moral power. Every one of his numerous medicine men holds a sway more complete than does an occasional such man as Schlatter the healer. If nature study is to be the chief means of moral culture, then the child is to be excluded from the benefit of the vicarious experiences of his ancestors. If we ac- cept the clainis of the paper under discussion we must rank art and sculpture and Sessions.] DISCUSSION. 1^3 masic as forms of nature study. Surely nature study should not claim all the in- fluences that build up strong moral character. The closing thoughts of the paper are that knowledge and will are the things that make moral power; but I take issue with the statement that nature study is the best means of strengthening the will. It seems to me, fellow teachers, that while nature study as a mental training, while nature study as a means of enthusiasm, while nature study as a means of fixing processes and dis- covering the truth, is to be encouraged by us, is to be used by us in our schools, we must, nevertheless, recognize that above and beyond these things are the elements of personal influence, the incentive of interest in a personality which, notwithstanding all that may be said about hypnotic suggestion, shall, neverthe- less, be a power for moral strength throughout all the growth and history of the race. Mrs. Eva D. Kellogg, Editor of Primary Education, Chicago. — The function of nature study in the culture and rejuvenation of the teacher of little children — let us consider that a few minutes. As the teacher, so is the quality of nature study in our elementary schools. As she absorbs, grows finer, tenderer, truer, more sympathetic and sunshiny un- der the influence of nature study and contemplation, so will the schools reflect fineness, tenderness, truth, and sunniness under her influence as the transparent, dancing sheet of water catches the shifting sky-tints above it. Show faie a school that takes up the period for nature study with an air of in- different matter-of-factness and it .needs no clairvoyant vision to see the teacher of that school preparing for that lesson. Microscope and Gray's Botany, opened at the fine print pages, before her; pencilings of statistics on her note pages; a scholarly scowl, indicative of determined, conscientious research; earnest eyes that look out mechanically upon a scientific world made up of plant families, correctly classified. Another schoolroom ! See these faces brighten as the hour for nature study draws near. Notice that indiscribable something about these children that be- tokens *' a good time coming.'* And their teacher? She is not ignorant of the technique of her work — O, no ! but her inspiration for this hour is drawn from the humble '* flower in the crannied wall." And the spirit with which she brings this to her classroom finds its best interpretation in the immortal lines: '* If I could understand — little flower — What you are, root and all and all in all, I should know what God and man is." To which teacher will nature study be a means of culture and refreshment and to which class of children will it bring the truest good? It is a matter of congratulation that there is one subject in our public schools for which the best preparation is found in " green pastures and beside still waters." The very nature of the subject demands the laying aside of wearisome routine and the going forth free and unfettered to find nature's ways of doing things. And it is marrellons how the discovery of every secret of her wondrous handiwork brings to the seeker a healthful buoyancy of spirit and how each uste of beauty from tinest flower-cup is a draught for the slacking of soul-thirst! Such study and investigation means culture and refreshment for the teacher, but it can only be obtained when she is permitted to teach nature in the true way — a »ay that does not admit of an examination lor tangible results. When we can fonnnlatc Ibc method by which a little vine clambers and twines its tendrils into 156 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General festoons of infinite grace and loveliness ; when we can estimate the amount of brightness and beauty which sunlight and moisture have brought to plant life in a single day; when we can count the notes in one joyous bird-thrill — then it will be time enough to require our children to give back to us in words and figures that which they have absorbed from nature study. Do we remember when nature study was first introduced into our schools how much we hoped from it, how much we dared to anticipate for its influence upon the entire school curriculum? But the power of habit was too strong. So long had we tabulated education and gauged its progress by statistics that, before we at all realized it, nature study itself had fallen into the clutch of materialism, and Shylock was demanding his " pound of flesh." Submissively we yielded. Me- chanically we fell into line. We began counting stamens and petals, measuring the diameter of flower stems, giving a mathematical twist to tiny twigs to bend them to purposes of correlation, finding the per cent of rose buds, the ratio of average terminal growths, and the nice proportions of rainbow tints on a butter- fly's wing. Let us away with all this attempt to materialize the spiritual in nature study. Let us have one thing in our schools that stands for simple beauty, its " own ex- cuse for being," — one thing that cannot be analyzed, diagrammed,'memorized, added, subtracted, multiplied, divided, partitioned, or measured; but is as free as' the air and as beneficent as the sunlight of heaven. If we ever rise to the height of confidence in our teachers to say to them, " Teach beauty," what soul-expan- sion will result. Beauty and ethics, remember, are one and inseparable. The good, the true, and the beautiful ! A trinity forever. We bring art into our schoolrooms and Hecorate our school walls. We do well. But let us remember that the sense of beauty must first be cultivated, and restored to our children as a lost birthright before art can open to them her treasures. It will be useless to point out the human sentiment and sympathy in Landseer's masterpieces till they have learned to recognize that look in animal life about them ; or to call their attention to the tranquil pensiveness of a Corot, or the wondrous sky and charming foliage of a Claude Lorraine, till they have learned to see the beauty of real foliage, and to feel the mystic charm of the sky above them. Neither can we expect them to see ought of the rich, dreamy beauty of Gothic architecture till they have come to look up with reverent admiration to the crowning arch of the interlacing tree-tops over their heads. "Art," says Ruskin, "goes to the cataract for its iris; asks of the sea its intensest azure, and of the sky its clearest gold." When our children shall learn to see the iris in the cataract, the azure in the sea, and the gold in the sky, then, and only then, will their eyes be opened, and their hearts be made ready to com- prehend the highest significance of nature study. Who shall reveal to them all these things? Their teachers. They must be nature's interpreters. Dr. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, Worcester, Mass. — .4s I sat in my corner, during the reading of the last paper, I asked five or six gentle- men on each side of me to interpret a type, I suppose, of nature symbolism, which has troubled me during the session of this association. If you cast your eyes to these marvelous, many-colored spheres which cover the walls and ceilings of this room, I think anyone with an artistic mind will feel discouraged at the in- terpretations given by my friends. One said it must be the " music of the spheres " in some way represented there. Another suggested, — " Why, it is a den)onstration in astronomy conceived by an infant mind." Another believes It Sessions.] DISCUSSION. 157 is somehow or other connected with chemistry, but my own impression is — I won't say it is mine for it really was suggested — that it somehow or other symbol- izes the many ways in which nature study has been interpreted by the speakers here this morning. I do not care a copper whether you begin in one of these ways or the other, or what interpretation you put upon nature, provided only that you make as the first postulate of every kind of nature teaching that it must begin, and have for its chief object, a love of nature. It is making bricks without straw to attempt to instill automatically, through all the nomenclature of your teaching, a love of nature study without a long course of the poetical, of the mythological love of nature. I believe that in the normal school in Chicago and various other places, the right end of the true thread in this complicated labyrinth has been at last found. The whole thing, as I look at it, is this, — What are the four branches of education from the kindergarten to the university. Science comes somewhere in the course, no matter which is first, then art, literature, religion. These four can summarize the types of education, and where do they all begin. In nature study, every one of them. Science rests upon the love of nature. It is idle to attempt to inculcate a love of nature in the university or in the college unless the child has been taught to love her forms in the fields, gardens, hills, and valleys as country children generally do. It is the basis, then, of science. There is no other research or discovery in the world, and nev^r has been, in astronomy, phy- sics, chemistry, biology or any of the rest of the sciences that was not nourished by a genuine love of nature. Back in mythology, where all literature originated, you find the charming dreams of those students of natural phenomena. Third, in religion the basis of all is love. All religion when rightly taught is a love of nature. All forms of religion, whether natural or revealed, are the same and find their truths in the world about them. To conclude, then, I think that we can sum up all the discussion of this topic, which to my mind is by far the most important of all the topics to come before this meeting of the association, by saying that every department of knowledge must be taught by inculcating in every possible way the love of nature. For what is nature? The great Mother of us all, the reservoir of every kind of force, the force that makes the electric light, that makes my heart pulsate, my food di- gest, that makes my voice, that makes my thought, that makes anything, every thing. Nature is not dirt ; it is not material. There is no scientific man today in all the universities of the country — save perhaps two or three, as far as my invent- ory goes — that is a materialist as that term is sometimes used. Materialism is as dead as dirt. It is entirely lost and the student has been elevated by a study of nature. The study is regarded as purely dynamic — this is spiritual and from the study of nature the student has come to worship at her shrine. By and by there will be a revelation of her great mysteries. There is a very current error among people that the humanities are arrayed against nature — not at all. The history of the race, the psychology of the child, shows there is nothing in primal life save the child and the man, the culminating flower of nature. Does not all nature center in man? Is not everything summarized? Does not every perfect flower find its consummation in the child, to minister to which is the highest of all human service and the most perfect of all religions? Don't you realize, fellow teachers, that we are living in a time of great earnestness and interest in nature study? Go into any bookstore and ask what books are sold there mostly during the last five years and they will tell you nature books and all those countless books of flies and moths and leaves and butterflies and astronomy. I am told by the booksellers that they are astonished at the eagerness with which people are going back again to the primal sources of life. 158 NATIOKAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General Finally, I remembered with religious sacredness, as I came the other day from the old church where I sat in the country as a boy, listening to revival sermons from that good old clergyman long since dead, I remembered how my nerves used to thrill when he brought his sermons to a close and when he said, " Now, my friends, are you and you and you Christians? Do you and you and you really love the Lord Jesus Christ? " It sank deep; it made its impression, and I don't care what your theology or religion or non-religion is, I say today before I take my seat, with no less divine commission than that clergyman had, and with no less earnestness, and no less solemnity, — Fellow teachers, do you and you and you individually love nature in this day of great awakening? Do you really love her in any aspect of her manifold manifestations? Is this great movement that is passing over the entire world yet to touch your souls, or are you to be hardened against this higher, this new movement of the Holy Spirit? Why will you be strangers to this great love? I know of no better analogy of nature than that phrase of the poet who said of his ladylove: " I cannot see your countenance, love, for your soul that is so much purer." So we say today of nature, we can- not see her countenance for her soul. Love nature. Infect the children with it and you will lay deeper than in any other way, than in all the other ways, the foundation for which the school and the church exist. THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL. BY GEN. STEWART L. WOODFORD, BROOKLYN, N. Y. [stenographic report.] This week witnesses the gathering of three great conventions. At Washington, the representatives of a large section of the Christian church are met to take counsel together for good citizenship and for the prosecution of Christian work. Here in Buffalo, the teachers of the nation are met together; and a little farther westward on the lake, there is a gathering of the representatives of a political party which numbers within its membership nearly half of the voting population of the nation. These three conventions typify and represent three great forces: the force of Christian civilization, the force of educa- tion, and the force of politics as applied to the practical problems of citizenship. Without suggesting anything that bears upon the parties in this great gathering of citizens, every thoughtful teacher and citi- zen must realize that the force of a political party for good, or for evil, depends upon essential (not sectarian) religion — the effect and control that essential religion and thorough education have upon that political party. This great nation of ours, ruled by the votes of our own people, will be ruled wisely so long as the essential purposes of the Christian church and of the public school control the political action of the nation. But, as certain as death comes to the individual, so sure is it that death will come to the nation, if the home, the Sessions.] THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL. 159 churchy and the school fail in their purpose of elevation and of in- struction. Your committee were very kind when they relieved me from spend- ing any time in selecting a text. They gave me **The Public School," they added the words that are a speech in themselves, '*the nursery of American patriotism." I feel a diffidence in talking to a body of teachers. I am conscious that I need to learn so much, and am able to instruct so little that I crave indulgence for the very primary, or rudimental form in which I shall put the little that I have to say to you tonight. The public school, with the home and with the church, is the nursery of American patriotism. Any thought which puts the school above the home seems to me radically wrong. The nursery of abso- lute patriotism in every land, in every age, and under every flag, has been the home. There never has been, and I think there never will be, an enduring nation, with all that makes a nation strong and great, that is not based upon pure homes, loving mothers, wise fathers. The essential training of childhood begins in the home and' the nursery of the home. But, next to the home, must forever come the school. These things, I suppose, are trite to you, and yet in a varied experi- ence of an active life the thought has been forced upon me continu- ously, that the preservation of the higher elements of national life depends upon you, who are the teachers, not upon the politicians, not upon the statesmen. You meet the children at the beginning; if you train in them what makes for good citizenship, you have made citizens ; and in making citizens you have made a nation and you have glorified the flag. The public school brings the children of the masses and the children of the classes in close touch, at a time when character is formed. I doubt whether the academy, with high-priced tuition, wel- coming within its borders or circle only the children of what we erro- neously call the upper classes of society, — I doubt if that academy can ever be an effective nursery of a true citizenship. But, in the school, where the boy of the banker and the girl of the blacksmith meet; where the boy of American parentage and the girl of German parent- age associate; where the children of all classes and conditions are brought together, — it is there the children learn each other's work. They learn that brawn and will and intelligence, and not pocketbook and social distinction, constitute the essence of life, and of true girl- hood and boyhood, — of manhood and womanhood. The children of a democracy, in the public schools, are brought upon one platform, and upon one level of common effort and common aspiration. It is that which makes the child essentially self-respecting, and a representative citizen as the child grows up. The public school gives him an intelli- l6o NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General gent instruction in the real resources of the land, the geography and the history of the country, which will feed patriotism from the begin- ning. But a few weeks ago, Mr. President, it fell to my lot, as a member of an examining committee, in one of the institutions of higher learning in our country, to test young people who had just applied for admission, in their knowledge of geography, of the physi- cal resources, and the history of this country. I found a girl, who had passed her examination for one of the leading female colleges in these United States, who could not bound the state of Iowa; who could not tell me the capital of Nebraska, and who was absolutely ignorant of the main products of the state of Kentucky. Now an education at an academy that has produced a scholar in French and German, who was well taught in the rudiments of several of the sci- ences, and yet utterly and painfully ignorant of the civil geography of our own country, that education would never be a aursery of Amer- ican patriotism anywhere. I do not know how you would train your children, but I shall have been paid for coming to Buffalo, and you will have been paid for giving fifteen minutes in listening to me, if you see to it that every child from ten to fifteen, under your training, before the next springtime, comes to understand the geography of the United States. Being a little surprised at the peculiar results of this investigation in the matter of geography, I asked of the next young man who was subject to my inquisition, **who was the second presi- dent of the United States," and was astonished to find that Andrew Jackson held that position in the records of the nation. I asked, **Who was the first secretary of the treasury," who framed the finan- cial system under which the nation lives today, and was told **it was Robert J. Walker." Now an academic training for a university admission that permits such ignorance of essential historic facts, and essential historic personages, in this* republic, can never breathe nor foster a stalwart American patriotism. If you would make the school do its work in relation to the state, let your children know what the state is in which they live. Let them know something of the history of the country in which they live. Let Washington be to them a fact and not a mythological character. Let Hamilton be to them a teacher, and let Jefferson be a living inspiration. My friends, the citizens of this country are essentially honest, whether a man calls himself a populist, a democrat, or a republican. The average citizen in this republic loves the republic and honors the flag and seeks to vote so as to honor and strengthen the nation and the flag under which he lives. When men err in political action, it is more frequently because of ignorance than it is through sheer self- Sessions.] THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL, l6i ishness or lack of patriotism. If I could reach every teacher in this great audience tonight, with an earnest appeal, it would be — train your children in the rudiments that make for citizenship; train your children in that larger cultivation that stands for patriotism. Put the flag above every schoolhouse, as you would put the cross above every church. Put the schools of this country into the politics of this country, and keep the politics of the country out of the schools of the country. You have listened patiently. I fear that I have reached the limit of the time that your president assigned me; and yet in parting let me tell you a little incident that illustrates, better than words of mine can, the value that a good citizen puts upon the school and the teacher. In my city of Brooklyn there dwelt for years after the close of the war the greatest soldier whom New York gave to the armies of the Union, General Henry W. Slocum, who commanded one of the wings of Sherman's army in its march from Atlanta to the Sea. He had been honored with distinguished offices, alike in the state and in • the councils of the nation. A few months before his death, meeting him on Clinton Avenue, near his home, we feU into a chat about old array days. I told him how pleasant it must be as the snows were beginning to fall upon him, to live in the honor and love of his fellow citizens of Brooklyn. He stopped me for a moment, and then said, '*! have been very fortunate in life, and yet there is one thing more that I want. The mayor will soon have to appoint a board of educa- tion in our city; I should not like to ask for anything for myself, but you know the mayor well, and when he comes to make his appoint- ment, will you suggest to him that I would like to spend the last years of my active life as a member of the school board of Brooklyn, for I feel that I can do more good in helping the cause of education for the children, than I ever did even in command of a wing of Sherman's army." That was the estimate that this great soldier put upon edu- cational work. Oh, teachers, value it, respect your work, respect yourselves; you are doing more than to fill great offices; you are doing more than to accumulate great wealth. All that we do for others we carry with us into the larger life as a part of the eternal possession. All that we do selfishly for ourselves we lay down when we cross the brink of the grave. And now, dear friends, with cordial thanks for this kindly greeting here, and with sincerest wishes that your work may make for good character, for good living, for good citizenship, for the welfare of the nation, and for the honor of our flag, I bid you good night. II 1 62 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General THE TEACHER AND THE SCHOOL, BY RT. REV. JOHN LANCASTER SPALDING, BISHOP OF PEORIA. Public education is a people's deliberate effort to form a nobler race of men. It is of paramount importance, because other thmgs which the national life fosters, as growth of population, increase of wealth, abundance of food, comfort, facility of travel and transporta- tion, political, social and religious freedom, are but means to the one end of human effort, which is to make man himself wise, strong, lov- ing, reverent, pure and fair. India and China have half the popula- tion of the earth, but we care not for them, because their life is unintelligent, unprogressive, and uninteresting. We look to kind more than to numbers and magnitude. Microbes are more numerous than men, trees are larger. When we consider the universal stream of matter, the human race appears to be of little more importance than the insect tribes which fill the air of a summer evening. The earth spins on in its double whirl, the stars gleam, the heat glows, the rain falls, the rivers flow, the seasons come and go, bringing life and death to the children of men as though they were but flowers which bloom in the morning and die at evening. But when we deepen our view, we perceive that the thought and love of man give to matter its spiritual element, its truth and beauty, and that he therefore is of a higher order and of more worth than all the orbs which fill the limitless expanse of the heavens. In the same way, when we look at the human race itself, the individual appears to be insignificant, but when we come closer we are made aware that it is the individual who guides the mass to weal or woe. He founds religions, molds heterogeneous tribes into nations, creates civilization, art, literature and science. He undermines faith and hope, or uplifts and holds the multitude to the consciousness of God's presence in the world and in the soul. The race forms the individual, the individual gives rank and importance to the race, which exists and acts only in and through him. Hence the highest functions which a people can perform is to assist the individuals of which it is com- posed, to bring forth within themselves the qualities which make them human, which make them true and good and fair and wise. This is each one's life task, which is never finished, for it means ceaseless effort, strong and great-hearted striving for the best. This is what religious minds teach when they tell us that it is man's duty to grow like to God, — God who is power, wisdom and love, in unimaginable excellence, the perfect being, the highest of which it is possible to Sessions.] THE TEACHER AND THE SCHOOL. 1 63 think. This is what philosophers affirm when they declare that a man's proper business is to make himself reasonable, virtuous and humane ; that he may become self-active in the service of truth, beauty and g^oodness. The ideal is human perfection ; the means whereby it is approached is self-activity. We are men only so far as we are self- active. It is this that makes us capable of thinking, observing and feeling; it is this that gives us power to speak, to do, and to control our action. It is by rousing us to self-activity that God and nature work upon us, and it is by doing this that the teacher educates. The activity which nature, when left to itself, calls forth, is chiefly physi- cal and animal. Savage tribes have dwelt from immemorial ages beneath the splendors of sun and moon, have seen the dawn and the gloaming and the starlit heavens, have walked by the sounding ocean and by wide rivers, have looked on the glories with which the season*s clothe the mountains and the plains, and yet their spiritual nature has remained untouched. They have continued to lead the lower life, groping in the darkness of ignorance and passion. It is not possible * to give what we have not, and as nature is without thought and love, it can not, of itself, awaken thought and love. This only the thinking mind and loving heart can do. Only they, who are developed, edu- cated, and formed, can develop, educate and form others. Each one's educational influence is measured by the knowledge and culture which he has made his own ; and since knowledge and culture are vital and genuine in those alone who strive seriously and with perseverance to improve themselves, it follows that only they are true educators who are all the while busy upbuilding their own being, by increasing their power of knowing and doing, by deepening and purifying their power of hoping and believing and loving. No good work is ever done by men who do not put their heart in the work. Best work is possible . only to those who take more delight in doing the thing well, thor- oughly well, than in any reward they may receive. Men of genius create master-pieces because they throw their whole life into the task, believe in it and love it with all their might, heedless of what impress- ion it may make upon others. Their art is for them a religion, an integrant part of their being, in which if they do not live, they die altogether. They never cease to strive, because they are guided and ruled by an ideal perfection to which, however great their gifts or their performance, they never attain. They feel that they may yet do better things, and hope and confidence keeps them fresh and strong. They become and find themselves in their work. They grow with it, and rise with it toward the truth and beauty of which it is the symbol and expression. Though every teacher cannot have genius, every real educator works in this spirit. He is a lover of human per- 164 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General fection in himself and in others, and he has a living and abiding faith in education as the great means whereby this highest end may be attained. Reflection and experience have taught him that what he is is of vastly more worth and import than what he knows; that it is not his knowledge, his eloquence, his tact and skill, which are the true educational forces, but himself, his mind, his character, his will. If the young are to be led to yearn for teaming, and to become self- active in the pursuit of excellence, his personality more than his words must be their inspiration and guide. If in the matter of education they are to be believers, and not infidels, their faith must be fed and sus- tained by his own. If he hopes to inspire them with high and generous sentiments, he must trust to his life not to his own words. Truth and goodness are life, and they propagate themselves only through the lives of those in whom they have become incorporate. The believer makes believers, the striver makes strivers, the lover makes lovers. The orator, it was said of old, is a good man who is skillful in speech. The educator, we may say, is a good man who loves human perfection, and who with faith and hope and tender patience labors to bring it forth in himself and in his disciples. He must be a genuine believer in education, in its 'power to uplift and transform men. He must cherish it for this power, that is, for itself; and unless he work in this spirit, he may be a trainer, but not an educator. The question of education is much simpler than we imagine. And most of what is written and spoken on the subject serves but to obscure that which is plain. Its object is to produce vigor and activ- ity of body, mind and conscience. To this end the whole process of teaching and discipline should be made subservient. In the primary stage, up to the age of fourteen, the leading idea should be nutrition of feeling. Help the child to see and hear and feel; to wonder, admire, and revere; to believe, hope, and love. The whole material world lies open for those who know how to look and listen; awe, admiration, and reverence, are elementary feelings which touch the source of all higher life ; faith, hope, and love are the living waters wherein young" souls delight to bathe. Power of believing is the measure of human power. Israel believed in God, Greece in culture, Rome in law, more than any other people that has existed, and for this reason they have played the chief r6les in the history of the race, and are still alive wherever men think and strive for better things. In the real sense of the word, truth is never learned at school ; but minds rightly educated there, learn it later through their own self- activity and through experience of life. Whatever the child is taught, whether it be reading or writing or arithmetic, or something else, has educational value only in as much as it rouses and develops his spirit- Sessions.] THE TEACHER AND THE SCHOOL. 165 ual nature. There is no abstract education as there is no abstract love. It is a process of life, a contact of living beings, acting and reacting upon one another. We may train a child as we train an animal, but when our work is done, we have only a trained animal. If we would make him a man, we must teach him to look and listen, to admire and revere, to think and will and love. Far more depends on what we love and what we hate, on what we hope and believe, admire and revere, than on what we think and know. Education itself is promoted by willing rather than by knowing. He who has a live steadfast will to learn and love whatever is high and true and good and fair, has within himself the principle and power from which education proceeds; and they who rouse and strengthen the will to strive through a lifetime for truth and justice and freedom and light, alone deserve the name of teachers. How can we will that of which we are ignorant? Through faith, through an instinct akin to that which leads the herd to springs that lie hidden in the midst of deserts; and to awaken and guide this is the teacher's great task. There are ideas and sentiments, and aims and hopes, which are held to be true and good by all men. They lie at the root of human life and character, and to turn from them in the process of education is not to educate but to prevent. He who awakens and confirms the faith of his pupils in the priceless work of intellectual and moral power, is the best educator; for thus he turns all their energies to the life work of self-education. This is the highest aim, for whoever is self-active in learning and doing what is true and good and beautiful, in his private as in his public life, has education and continues to educate himself. It is impossible to desire that of which we feel no need ; and one can not rouse the young to faith in the supreme worth of knowledge and virtue except by making them conscious of their infinite need of them. Shall we hope to entertain with accounts of the heroic struggles of the great and good those whose only idea of pleas- ure is sensual and brutal? Shall a prize-fighter take interest in a philosopher; a mammonite, in a poet? Desire begets desire, hope inspires hope, faith creates faith ; and if the teacher is to be an educa- tor, he must be a striver for knowledge and virtue, a lover of human perfection, a believer in the efficacy of rightly directed effort. Exam- ple has greater educational value than any possible verbal instruction, and a wide, strong, cheerful, patient, punctual, and loving man or woman in the school can do more than a consummate orator could accomplish there. As the mind is the man, so the teacher is the school, the material structure being comparatively unimportant. The greatest educator who has appeared on earth, instructed and found his disciples while he walked along lonely roads, or while he sat by the l66 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General well, or on the hillside, or while he stood in the bow of a fisherman's boat. And Socrates, the world-teacher whom we place next to him, taught wherever he found hearers, whether on the street corner or in the gymnasium or on the public highway. Such a teacher, too, was St. Paul, the great heroic heart, whose deep and awful conviction of the life-giving and indispensable nature of truth, had made him truth's bondsman. Give the right man or the right wotnan a log cabin and divine work shall be done; place formal and callous teachers in marble palaces, and they shall be caught all the more hopelessly in the machine which destroys life. In taking visitors through our towns we point with pride to our large, imposing school buildings. We are like rich men who show their libraries, that they may boast of the binding of the books and the editions de luxe. Here, if anywhere, we should look not at the vessel, but examine its contents. The great house concerns us little, the kind of life found and fostered there is the all in all, and of this the material structure can give us no proper conception ; or may I not say that these large buildings, where five hundred or a thousand children are gathered are a hindrance to the work of teachers and pupils? Whoever has driven through our western states has noticed the little schoolhouse, standing alone in the corner of a field. There is not a tree to shelter it, not a flower to smile upon it. The farmer's barn half a mile away is more finely built and stands on a more favorable site. Do he and his neighbors give more thought to the breeding and raising of cattle than to the education of their children, as they are more attentive to the strain where there is question of their domestic animals than where their own offspring are concerned? It may be so. At all events, that little schoolhouse, hardly bigger than a dry goods box, above which no bough waves, around which no flower blooms, near which no brook flows, is as it stands there by the dusty or muddy road, in solitude and nakedness, weather-beaten and discolored, a belter place for education, whether we consider the teacher or the pupils, than one of our great factory-like structures. It is in the country; and it is better, where there is question of health and growth of body and mind, to be a country boy and to be allowed to play with freedom, about the face of nature in all her moods than to be the nursling of a palace in a great city, just as it is better, from the educator's point of view, to study the habits of an insect, even, than to gaze at the display in a shop window. The closer we come to nature the nearer we approach the source whence spring life and truth. In cities education is most difllicult. City populations are deca- dent, and would die out if they were not reinforced from the country. There the home, which is the fountainhead of the life of a civilized Sessions.] THE TEACHER AND THE SCHOOL. 167 people, is less potent and less sacred. Parental authority is under- mined. Fathers and mothers, seeing that their influence is weakened by their environment, become careless, and since the state provides free schools they throw the responsibility for their children's edu- cation upon the state, and flatter themselves that in sending them to school they have done their duty. They, who are the true God- appointed teachers, neglect their office, and, like all the neglectful and incompetent, they are quick to find fault with others. They inculcate respect for the school neither by word nor example ; and therefore the authority which the state has assumed, and which they have gladly delegated to it, its teachers are unable properly to exer- cise. In abandoning the care of their children's education, they give up all thought of their own. The primary duties of the family are not performed, and the family degenerates. The children are idle, unpunctual and heedless. Their attendance is irregular and the aver- age for the school is low. The teachers are at a disadvantage. Their classes are overcrowded ; they find neither respect nor appreciation, and since they see that the parents take no genuine interest in the education of their children, they feel that they labor in vain. It is futile to strive to awaken a desire for knowledge and virtue in those whom conceit or callousness makes self-satisfied. They find it impos- sible to perform their tasks with glad hearts and fresh hopes, like sowers and reapers who sing at their work, and they must have excep- tional courage if they do not sink to the level of drudges and hirelings. Thring says that the life of many teachers vad^^^ compared to that of a man digging, knee-deep, in a muddy ditch, with banks high enough to shut out the landscape, in a hot sun, with a permanent swarm of flies and gnats around his head. We are, doubtless, far away from the time when the pedagogue was a slave, far from the later ages when he was paid and treated no better than the lowest menial. It has, indeed, become the fashion to extol, in sonorous phrase, the dignity and importance of the teacher's calling. We recall with pleasure, the names by which it has been made illustrious. Did not the Savior of men teach as well as he wrought? Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Seneca and Quintilianj St. Augustin and St. Thomas of Aquinas, Bossuet and Fenelon, Milton and Locke, Kant and Hegel, — immortal names, who dwelt upon the summits of intellectual and moral power, were teachers. In truth all great men are teachers, in word or deed. The hero, the saint, the philosopher, the poet, the orator, the statesman, the warrior, whether by their example or by their utterances, rouse men from sluggish and animal life, to high thoughts and aims, to noble sentiments and resolves. They are leaders in the way of progress, and from the 1 68 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General heights which they have ascended, athwart innumerable obstacles, their voices ring out to cheer those who struggle in the plains below. In the present century education has become a science, and teach- ing an art as well as a profession. The schoolmaster has risen to the rank of the physician, the lawyer, and the minister of religion. The social importance of his function is widely recognized, and the public, it would seem, looks, theoretically at least, with more favor upon him than upon the physician, or the lawyer, or the minister of reli- gion. He is believed to be more unquestionably a public benefactor. He is a developer and shaper of life and destiny, and, as Horace Mann says, **One right former is worth a thousand reformers.** It is indeed difficult to exaggerate the worth of a true teacher, of one, who, loving children with a love akin to that which glowed in the divine heart of Christ, is wise and strong, watchful and patient, who, while he awakens and holds attention is able to enter the child mind to make it active and conscious of itself by rousing the thousand images of truth and beauty which slumber there; who has faith in education, and knows how to inspire his pupils with a genuine belief in it, as the one power given to man whereby he may lift himself to higher and higher planes of life; who, being a genuine lover of human perfection, strives to make himself as well as them perfect in body, mind and heart. One who approaches, even, such an ideal, would be God-like, would be a glory, not of his profession only, but of his country and his race. The profession does not honor the man, but the man the profession; nor does the profession disgrace the man, but the man the profession. But lest we lose ourselves in the contemplation of the ideal, let us descend and draw closer to the facts of life. No serious thinker who has given attention to pedagogics, will deny the importance of right methods, of good text-books, and of a proper choice of the subjects to be taught, in the light of the relative educational values of the dif- ferent branches of knowledge; and if one should permit himself to be controlled by what he reads and hears in books and magazines and meetings, devoted to questions of education, he would be led to believe that these and like matters are of primary and paramount importance. This would be a fatal error. It is, in fact, an error as widespread as it is fatal, one which obscures the central fact, and leads away from vital truth into quagmires and quicksands. Methods and other devices are mechanical, and machinery is as powerless to educate as to propagate life. One of our worst superstitions is the belief that we can develop, strengthen, and ennoble mankind by machinery and by talk about machinery, and so we argue about it and about it, and keep far away from the inner source from which all life Sessions.] THE TEACHER AND THE SCHOOL. 169 and truth and goodness proceed. Mechanical minds are the cause of half our woe and misery, and we have all had opportunity to observe that they who most abound in words have little depth of thought, little strength of conviction, little power of will. The teacher is the school. What the soul is to the body, what the mind is to the man, that the teacher is to the school. A good teacher will find or devise good methods, and will employ them with discern- ment, dealing with each pupil as an individual soul, unlike any other that exists or has existed. His very presence commands attention, solicits interest and suggests thought. He is alive, and he awakens life. His pupils learn to feel that it is good to be where he is, and they follow him as gladly as though he led them into the balmy air of spring along the flowery banks of limpid streams. The question of education is a question of teachers; and the problem to be solved is how to induce the best men and women to become schoolmasters and schoolmistresses; for such men and women alone can do good work, whether in primary schools or in colleges, or in universities. They are as indispensable for the child who is learning to read and write as for the youth who is studying science and philos- ophy. In every stage of the educational process development of faculty, strength, and skill are the object, while knowledge is second- ary. The teacher must know how to deal with human minds, and his chief concern, therefore, can never be with imparting anything to them, however valuable it be, but his study must be how to open them to the light, how to give them flexibility, how to make them attentive and self-active. His work is a wrestling of mind with mind, and of heart with heart; and if he simply drills his class as a whole he fails as a teacher. He is a trainer and not an educator. If the teacher's labor is important and sacred, his task is severe. lyo NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General most aspiring, the most active and the most capable minds among our young men and young women, will choose teaching as their calling? If we except a few eager and brilliant natures who will climb and sparkle, whatever their occupation or profession may be, what hope of advancement is there for the tens of thousands of the teachers of our common schools? Or if advancement is possible, is it not so uncer- tain or so slow or so inconsiderable that it stirs no glad anticipations? Teachers, like all of us, must live on hope, and if their calling gives them little nourishment for hope they will look away from it to some more promising source of joy and happiness. Teaching will not be followed as a vocation, as a life-work, but as an expedient. Why is there an almost total lack of male teachers in our primary schools? Is it not because yonng men understand that while the teacher's task is severe and ungrateful, his reward of whatever kind is smaller than that of other professional men, insignificant, if compared with what he might expect in becoming a politician or a merchant or a banker? Why are nine-tenths of the teachers in the primary schools women? Is it not because they, being either shut out from the other professions or finding access to them very difficult, and being unable for the most part to become politicians or merchants or bankers, are driven by the force of circumstances into the schools? And then, though their salaries are small, they earn better wages as teachers than they would receive for most other kinds of work which women do. Women rarely get the same pay as men for the same work. This doubtless is chiefly due to their exclusion from so many occupations, which results in an over-supply wherever there is a demand for their work. Whatever the cause may be, the fact is that in the fields in which large numbers of women are employed, labor is cheap ; and it is the cheap- ness of their labor, and not their superiodty as teachers, which makes competition with them for positions in our primary school^ so difficult. That this is a very grave evil is obvious. They who are content to accept cheap work in the school can "have no idea of the meaning of education. They would degrade it to a mechanical process, and imagine that the teacher does his whole duty when he makes his pupils learn to read and write, and gives them some knowledge of arithme- tic, geography and history. They believe that those who pass an examination and show that they know enough to do this are worthy to be entrusted with the teacher's office. They fail to see that the important thing in the primary, as in every other school, is not what the child learns, but development of faculty and acquisition of habits. If he is made active in his spiritual nature, his mind will become supple and vigorous as the body is made supple and vigorous by exercise. Being makes action possible, and the kind of being determines the Sessions.] THE TEACHER AND THE SCHOOL. \>jx kind of action. The intellectually active alone can rouse the intellect, the morally active, the conscience; the religiously active, the soul. The lower cannot call forth the higher. He who \% not a thinker cannot make others think, who is not a lover cannot make others love, who is not a doer cannot make others do. A liar cannot lead truth, or a boor gentlemanlike behavior. If we are to have good schools we must fill our homes of education with such men and women as we desire our children to become. The teacher's personality far more than his learning determines his value as an educator. The very presence of a brave, noble, gener- ous and cheerful man illumines and strengthens. He compels recog- nition and obedience though he neither speaks nor commands, and they who have known him never lose faith in human nature, or in the worth of knowledge and virtue. The ideal to have educational powers must gleam through the concrete. The ethical ideal is the ideally ethical man, the intellectual ideal, the ideally intellectual man, the religious ideal, the ideally religious man. If we would move and influence the young in a pro- found and lasting way, let us acquaint them with the ideal incarnate in the persons of the teachers whom we place over them. But how shall we ever hope to make approach to this end, if we look upon the teacher as a piece of mechanism whose cheapness is an important consideration? All schemes, plans, systems, and methods, prove futile in the hands of the incompetent. Inferior teachers make inferior schools. An edu- cated man is never boastful, nor is an educated people; but if we must extol ourselves, let us remember that hitherto the school has been but an incidental factor in our progress. Much of it is due to the spirit of our race, much to our Christian home, much to the churches, much to the conditions of a new country, in which freedom and unlimited opportunity stimulate to self-activity, much to the fact that the young and the enterprising have for more than half a century been coming from Europe in multitudes to our shores. Professor Laurie, who is a competent and an impartial judge, says: ** America is an uneducated country as we now understand education. It possesses no national system ; it has not even the machinery whereby education could be given in the sense in which it is given in Great Britain or Germany.'* Listen to the conversation which one may hear on the street or in the cars, read the newspapers of our towns and of some of our great cities even, and it will be difficult to deny that there is at least a degree of truth in this assertion. Corrupt and incorrect language mean that there is no education or a faulty educa- tion. Debased speech is evidence of debased mind. Inaccuracy 172 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General proves that the powers of attention and observation, which it is the purpose of the school to cultivate, are undeveloped. The lack of patience, of perseverance, of faith in the power of obstinate and long- continued effort to transform one's being, the absence of the nobler kinds of ambition, in our young men especially, are proof that in the school their higher nature has not been touched and made self-active. It is a happy omen when the best minds in a nation occupy them- selves seriously with questions of education. This is what happened in Germany at the close of the last, and in the early part of the pres- ent century. Kant, Goethe, Fichte, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Richter, Krause, Herbart, and other men of genius or talent, threw themselves into the subject with enthusiastic zeal and confidence. The result was a reawakening of the people a rebirth of the national spirit, and a general desire for broader and deeper culture. With us the school question seems to be a matter of interest chiefly to declaimers and politicians, who make it a popular cry wherewith to drown the voices of earnest and enlightened thinkers. They rally round the little schoolhouse, plant the flag on it, and, like Barbara Fritchie, look out the window, expecting to see the waving of rebel banners and to hear the tread of armed hosts marching to its destruc- tion. They are clowns who play to the rabble, or selfish and design- ing men, who make use of shibboleths, to discredit and ruin their compatriots and fellow citizens. When educated and serious men, who strive to see things as they are, as all cultivated, minds must strive to get real views of whatever they contemplate, utter their hon- est opinions on this subject, a clamor is raised against them, which would be of small account, were it not for the fact that it tends to make the calm and enlightened discussion of this, our greatest national problem, difficult and ineffectual. Our public thought crystallizes in the mold of party and sect and clique and faction, and they who refuse to narrow their minds, but resolutely believe that it is possible to live in the wide and tranquil realms of truth, appear to be visionary and idle, or even perverse. Original and profound thinkers are rare among us, because our ablest men are consumed by politics and busi- ness, or driven into the noise and confusion of endless controversy, or sacrificed to one or the other of our many schemes for reforming the world and doing away with all evil. It is Emerson, I think, who said that he would cross the ocean to talk with one great man rather than to see all the monuments and the treasures of art of Europe. Life is the subject of supreme interest. Everything depends on quantity and quality of life. The school, however perfect the system, however admirable the devices, can do the best work only when it is in the hands of the best men and women. Sessions.] THE TEACHER AND THE SCHOOL, lyg Education is, in a word, the stimulation of life, the rousing of endow- ments to the activity which produces faculty. As life proceeds from life, so life is developed by life, and the kind of development depends chiefly upon the kind of life by which it is promoted. The problem which most deserves the serious meditation of the lovers of human protection, who are also necessarily lovers of God and country, is how to make the teacher's calling attractive to the men and the women who possess, in a high degree, quantity and quality of life, so attractive as to be followed as a life-work, and not taken up as an expedient until something more pleasant, or more secure, or more lucrative is offered. How this may best be done is a subject which will be found more and more worthy of deliberation in these annual meetings of the National Educational Association. Its appellation is a good omen, for it implies that our school system should be a national system. A national system would enable us to remove the schools from the tainted air of politics, it would raise the standard of the teacher's pro- fession, it would make his position more secure, and the recognition of his work more certain. It is said that a people has the government which it deserves. Let us, coming down to a lower plane, content ourselves with affirming that a school board has the teacher which it deserves ; would the directors cross, not the ocean, but the township or the county line in search of a real teacher? If it takes a hero to know a hero, it takes an educator, or at least an educated man or woman, to know an educator. Inferior teaching in the primary schools implies inferior education for the masses of the people, and for those even who enter the colleges and the universities. School barracks which contain five hundred or a thousand pupils, with class rooms into which sixty or eighty children are crowded, are not places of education, but places of repression, confusion and perversion. In such environment neither the teachers nor the learners can do good work. There is no indifferent school ; the school is good or bad, it improves or perverts. Another matter which deserves attention is the number of schoolhours. Not length of time, but intensity of application, is the important thing in all spiritual effort, and to attempt to do mental work when one is mentally weary, is not merely useless, but hurtful. Study prospers only when the mind is vigorous, and the heart fresh. Tired children exhaust the teacher, as a dull and heavy teacher wearies' the class. The young are most sensitive to fatigue of mind, and if kept too long in the class-room, they become inattentive, indifferent, and careless, and a distaste for study and a dislike for the school and the teacher grows upon them. A real teacher will accomplish more in four hours than he could accomplish in six. His pupils will come to school with glad hearts, will apply 174 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General themselves industriously and will not leave the class-room like released prisoners. Plato found an argument for the belief that our souls have lived in other worlds, in the quickness and eagerness with which the boys of Athens learned. If we would labor effectively to develop a nobler race of men here in America, let us work for the teachers, let us strive to raise the standard of their professional life, to render their position more secure, their task more pleasant, their reward greater and more certain, that the teacher's calling may appeal not to the most active and intelligent young women alone, but to the most active and intelligent young men as well. Then, indeed, shall the boys and the girls of America learn with quickness and eagerness, and when they quit the school, they shall quit it, as true lovers of intellect- ual and moral power, who are resolved to spend a lifetime in unfolding and upbuilding their own being and in helping their fellow men. DEMANDS OF SOCIOLOGY UPON PEDAGOGY, BY PROFESSOR ALBION W. SMALL, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. At the risk of seeming to reopen a closed incident of ancient his- tory, this paper will take its departure from some passages in the report of the Committee of Ten. The present aim is to define a point of view quite different from that of the committee. In empha- sizing the ends to be gained in education, rather than the means to be employed, the writer wishes to be understood as having in mind the whole school career. It is impossible within the limits of this paper to discuss laws or principles of variation which from this point of view should adapt methods to the learner's needs at different stages of mental growth. **The principal end of all education," says the Conference on History, Civil Government, and Political Economy, **is training" (p. 1 68). The sociologist develops this noncommittal response of the oracle into the following: The end of all education is, first, completion of the individual; second, implied in the first, adaptation of the individual to such co-operation with the society in which his lot is cast that he works at his best with .the society in perfecting its own type, and consequently in creating conditions favorable to the development of a more perfect type of individual. The Committee of Ten seems to have stopped at conclusions which tacitly assume that psychical processes in the individual are ends unto themselves. To be sure there are signs of a vague looking for of Sessions.] DEMANDS OF SOCIOLOGT UPON PEDAGOGIC 175 judgment from the tribunal of larger life upon the products of this pedagogy; but the standards of a real test seem to have had little efifect upon the committee's point of view. We are told (p. 168) that the mind is chiefly developed in three ways: (a) by cultivating the powers of discriminating observation ; (b) by strengthening the logical faculty . . . (c) by improving the processes of comparison, i. but there is no apparent conception of the cosmos of which these * subjects are abstracted phases and elements. Nowhere in the report do I find recognition that education, when it is finished, is conscious conformity of individuals to the coherent cosmic reality of which they ^ are parts. Until our pedagogy rests upon a more intelligent cosmic philosophy, and especially upon a more complete synthesis of social I philosophy, we can hardly expect curricula to correspond with the essential conditions to which human action must learn to conform. 176 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General A graduate of a leading eastern university, who is now making an impression upon American pedagogy, said recently that when he took his diploma, about ten years ago, history to his mind was a collection of material which he had studied under Professor A. ; political econ- omy another independent body of information which he studied under Professor B. ; psychology, another isolated subject which he had studied under Professor C. ; and so on through the curriculum. Not until six or seven years after graduation did it dawn upon him that each of these details of representation is an aspect Of one reality which the pedagogy of the college had concealed in making the fragments prominent. The most serious consideration about this pedagogical perversion is not that it limits knowledge alone. It distorts the whole attitude of men towards the world. Instead of introducing men to reality it tricks them into belief that an unorganized procession of pedantic abstractions is reality. The report of the Committee of Ten presents to the sociologist, therefore, this anomaly: It is a whole made up of parts, every one of which may possibly be accepted by sociology; but the totality, as presented by the committee, sociology must peremptorily reject. It is hot on the trail of pedagogical and sociological truth, without actually coming with'n sight of the truth. Human personality is not doomed to struggle forever seriatim with a long list of detached groups of facts in order to get its psychic and social development. The world of experience is one, not many. Pedagogy and sociology are discovering this unity by different processes, and as a consequence of their perception that educational material is efsentially one, not many, pedagogy and sociology are bound to combine their demands for a complete change of front in education. The proper educator is reality, not conventionalized abstractions from reality. Hence the demand of the new pedagogy, supported heartily by the new sociology, that schooling, particularly in its earlier stages, shall be changed from an afflictive imposition upon life to a rationally concentrated accomplishment of a portion of life itself. Hence the correlated demand of the new pedagogy, also seconded by the new sociology, that, so far as conscious effort is made by instructors to supplement the education of action by the education of cognition, the objects of contemplation shall be kept real by being viewed constantly as organic parts of the one reality. They must no longer be made unreal through analytic segregation which leaves them standing apart as independent realities. Having thus by negation challenged some of the implicit conces- sions of the Committee of Ten to the old dogmatic pedagogy, and to presociological concepts of reality, I pass to a positive definition o£ Sessions.] DEMANDS OF SOCIOLOGY UPON PBDAGOGT, 177 the outlook of sociology. I believe it to be also in the line of the pedagogy that will prevail. Human experience is concerned with three knowable elements; First, man's material environment, inanimate, and animate; second, man himself as an individual, in all his characteristics, from his place in the animal kingdom, through his special physiology, psychology, and technology; third, man*s associations or institutions. Sociology is the systematic attempt to reduce the reactions of these three ele- ments— nature, man, institutions — to scientific form and expression. The inclusive reality which sociology finds comprehending both the processes and the products of these reactions is society, 1. e, , individ- uals in association, within the conditions imposed by the material environment and modified by human achievement. The task set for each individual when he finds himself participant of this reality, is to accommodate himself to prevailing conditions in such a manner that he may both accomplish and enjoy a maximum share of the development which his stage in social evolution is empowered to accomplish. This life task of men consequently sets the pedagogical task of teachers. The prime problem of education, as the sociologist views it, is how to promote adaptation of the individual to the conditions, natural and artificial, within which individuals live and move and have their being. It would not be in point to discuss here the relative place of action and cognition in progress toward this end. That belongs to pedagogical technology. I assume that both action and cognition are unchallenged means of modern pedagogy. With their proportions, and with the appropriate sequence at different stages of culture, sociology is not directly concerned. Sociology has no toler- ance, however, for the pedantry that persists in carpentering together educational courses out of subjects which are supposed to exercise, first, the perceptive faculty, then the memory, then the language faculty, then the logical faculty, etc., etc., etc. On the contrary, every represented contact of a person with a portion of reality sooner or later calls into exercise every mental power of that person, proba- bly in a more rational order and proportion than can be produced by an artificial process. Our business as teachers is primarily, therefore, not to train particular mental powers, but to select points of contact between learning mmds and the reality that is to be learned. The mind's own autonomy will look out for the appropriate series of sub- jective mental processes. In the second place, our business as teach- ers is to bring these perceptive contacts of pupils* minds with points of objective reality into true association with all the remainder of objective reality, /'. ^., we should help pupils, first, to see things, and 12 1^8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General second, to see things together as they actually exist in reality. In other words, the demand of sociology upon pedagogy is that it shall stop wet-nursing orphan mental faculties, and find out how to bring persons into touch with what Objectively is, as it is. The mind itself will do the rest. In pursuance of this demand, sociology necessarily becomes an active partisan upon one of the pedagogical doctrines over which edu- cators are divided, viz. : sociology denies that the rational center for the concentration of studies is any science or group of sciences. The rational center is the student himself. Personal adaptation to life means the given person's organization of his contacts with reality. In other words, pedagogy should be the science of assisting youth to organize their contacts with reality; and by this I mean to organize these contacts with reality by both thought and action, and for both thought and action. Relatively the world stands still during the school-age of any person. The pupil himself changes visibly almost every day. The reality with which the pupil can have conscious contact is defined therefore by the pupil's own powers and opportunities. At each stage, however, him- self on the one hand, and nature, men, institutions, on the other hand, are the subject and object of adjustment. A changing self has the task of adaptation to a surrounding frame of things, which daily dis- plays new mysteries and complexities. The teacher's task is to help the individual understand this environment, of which the pupil for a long time seems to himself to be the center. It is the teacher's busi- ness to help the pupil understand this whole environment as it is related to himself. Presently, if the pupil's perceptions grow more penetrating and comprehensive, his own personal interests cease to seem the pivot on which the world of experience turns. His person- ality becomes extended, and at the same time his egoism gets balanced with the personal equation of others whose interests appear. The child finds the complement of his egoism in the family, the school, the group of playmates, the community, and at last, if his education is complete, in society at large. Yet, at each varying diameter of comprehension, life, of which the child is at first to him- self the center and circumference, and later life as a whole, of which to the last the individual is to himself in the final resort the most interesting part — life, either individual or social, is the ever-present reality which summarizes all that men can positively know. This central and inclusive reality varies, in re-presentation, from socially unrelated individual life to a conception of individual life enlarged by evolved social consciousness into a function of the more abiding reality. This human career, either as pursued for himself by the Sessions.] DEMANDS OF SOCIOLOGT UPON P ED AGOG T. lyg socially unconscious individual, or as a mingling of the individual with others associated by force of circumstances in pursuing purposes which none perfectly comprehend, — this life of men alike in nature, within conditions, imposing common limitations upon nature, — is the whole of man's range of positive experience and scientific observation. Sociology consequently demands of educators that they shall elaborate available aids, first, to perception by the individual of the relation of part to part in this inclusive reality — the life of men in society; second, that educators shall perfect influences to promote adjustment of individuals to their appropriate functions within this whole. The part of the problem which I have at present in mind is the proper direction and organization of the pupil's perceptions. So far as the subject-matter of sociology is concerned, everything knowable and worth knowing is a fact or a relation helping to make up this complex- ity which we call society or social life. The important claim of sociology in this conection is that this reality, like poverty, we have always with us. This reality as a connected whole, related to the pupil, is always the natural and rational means of education. A sequence of studies, in the sense that the pupil is to be enjoined from intelligent contact with portions of reality until other portions have had their turn, is a monstrous perversion of the conditions of educa- tion. All reality, the whole plexus of social life, is continually con- fronting the pupil. No ** subject" abstracted from this actual whole is veracious to the pupil unless he is permitted to see it as a part of the whole. It is a misconstruction of reality to think and accordingly to act as though one kind of knowledge belongs to one age and another to another. The whole vast mystery of life, in all its pro- cesses and conditions, confronts the child as really as it does the sage. It is the business of the educator to help the child interpret the part by the whole. Education from the beginning should be an initiation into science, language, philosophy, art, and political action in the largest sense. When we shall have adopted a thoroughly rational pedagogy, the child will begin to learn everything the moment he begins to learn anything. Am I demanding a pedagogy which presupposes one philosopher as teacher and another as pupil? Certainly. Every teacher ought to be a philosopher. Every child already is one till conventionality spoils him. More than that, he is also scientist, poet, and artist in embryo, and would mature in all these characters if we did not stunt him with our bungling. I would revive Rousseau's cry, **Return to nature!" but in a sense of which Rousseau never dreamed, — not nature in the burlesque of our ignorant preconceptions, but nature l8o NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General scientifically explored, nature, the universal law of which is to own the sway of rational mind. I am not asserting that grammar,and geometry, and geography, and geology, and history, and economics, and psychology, and ethics, as such, should be taught in the nursery. I am asserting that in the cradle the child begins to be in contact with that nature and society of which all these are phases and products, and reports. Sociology demands for the child, from the cradle to his second childhood, opportunities for such frank contact with life that its various aspects will confide lo him their mystery in its real relations with the other elements of life. Sociology demands of the tutors and governors who lead the child through the formal part of education, that they shall pilot Wilhelm Meister so discreetly through his years of apprentice- ship that he shall learn his world at the smallest expense and with least cause for regret both to others and to himself. Whether this citizen of the world shall ever learn to construe life in terms of the conventional sciences is an entirely secondary matter. The main thing is that, from the beginning, he shall learn to know himself and his world truly — so far as he knows at all, — in all essential relations. This involves the learning of such sciences as he does acquire in the character of excerpts from the whole book of knowledge, not as self-sufficient knowledges. I repeat that sociology values subjects of study for reasons quite different from those traditionally alleged. Physical, biological, and social science, with the products of human thought deposited in liter- ature, are worthy of study not because they are tonics for various kinds of mental impotence, but because they are, and only in so far as they are, revealers of man himself and of the life of which he is both creator and creature. Without alluding further to other departments of knowledge, I may apply what I have said to the subject-matter of the social sciences in particular. Sociology demands with equal confidence: first, that for every- body the study of society shall begin with the nursing bottle, and con- tinue so long as social relations c'ontinue; second, that for most peo- ple the study of sociology shall never begin at all. If the argument thus far has provoked expectation that I shall recommend the intro- duction of sociology into the curriculum of the lower schools, as the needed corrective of educational defects, the inference is decidedly at fault. Only exceptional pupils should study sociology earlier than their senior year in college, and probably these few would do better to defer the study till after taking the bachelor's degree. While soci- ology proper is not a desirable subject for young pupils, our educa- Sessions.] DEMANDS OF SOCIOLOGY cTPON PEDAGOGY, i8i tional methods will be miserably inadequate to their social function till every teacher, from the kindergarten on, is sufficiently instructed in sociology to put all his teaching in the setting which the sociolo- gical view-point affords. This implies, of course, that the function of education must one day be taken so seriously that only men and women who have more than the bachelor's preparation will be entrusted with its direction. The study of society which we may reasonably demand in our schools and colleges today must and should be chiefly in connection with the subjects physiography, political geography, anthropology, ethnology, history, civics, and economics. The sociological demand with reference to these subjects is that instruction in them shall be rationalized in the same way that the teaching of geography has been reformed during my recollection. I was not the boy who spent his first week in algebra trying to find out the value of x^ but my most lasting recollections of the study of geography cluster around some cabalistic representations of the plane of the ecliptic. To this day I am not perfectly clear about the meaning of those ghostly figures which lent weird interest to the earlier pages of the book. They produced in my youthful mind vague conceptions of uncanny gyrations among celestial bodies, presumed by the author to be the proper medium for introducing youth to a knowledge of the earth's surface. This is not intelligent correlation of whole and part. It is arbitrary creation of a whole to which the pupil's experience does not yet correspond. In another view it thrust upon the pupil's attention a part which he has not differentiated from the whole. I presume that every parent and every teacher who has liberty to use his own judgment now begins the teaching of geography with that spot of terra firma which is next to the home or the schoolhouse. Whether the plane of the ecliptic ever gets mentioned is a matter of very slight concern. A similar change in the social sciences is well in progress, but it is not yet a prevalent policy. At my graduation from college I passed a respectable examination on the constitution and by-laws of the government at Westminster, but I knew practically nothing, and was never told that it was worth while to know anything, about the government of the town in which the college was located. My knowledge of the British constitution has never yet found any practical application, but for a decade, as citizen and petty office- holder JO,.that college community, I was obliged to study and use the towa charter and ordinances, which were not worth the notice of my former instructors. Sociology, like charity, ought to begin at home; but, like charity, it ought not to stay at home. The rational method of observation, recognizing the real concentration of life around each l82 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General member of society, explores the concentric circles of social activity from the actual standpoint of the observer. The child should begin to study economics literally, — the law of the household, — he should learn the civics and ethics and history of the household, in the prac- tice of normal household relations. The economy and politics and ethics and history of the school, and then of the parent's shop, and then of the neighboring factory, and later of the whole town, are the best educational material that the sociologist can recommend. In other words, the social desideratum is that the developing member of society shall become analytically and synthetically intelligent about the society to which he belongs. The precision of his social intelli- gence in general depends upon the exactness of his knowledge of details in the life which he most intimately shares.* Observation of the structure, functions and forces of life in one's own community is the normal beginning of true and large social intel- ligence and action. Even history should begin with the present, not with the past. Just as Gibbon interpreted the tactics of the Roman legions by the knowledge he gained in the British militia, so every student of history is prepared to reconstruct the past only as he pos- sesses correct and adequate conceptions of the present. Sociological analysis of the anatomy, physiology, and psychology of society furnishes the alphabet to spell out the lessons of history. The only change in school methods which I am urging is the intro- duction of this laboratory study of the social facts, processes, and forces nearest at hand, as exhibiting typical social relations in all nations, times and places. This is not as a substitute for the present subjects in the social sciences, but as a method of approaching present subjects. One more demand is urged by sociology upon pedagogy, viz. : that all direct or indirect observations of society shall be organized under at least three great categories: first, interdependence; second, order or co-operation ; third, progress or continuity. f Unless social infor- *Note. Small and Vincent's "Introduction to the Study of Society*' is the first attempt to furnish a laboratory guide for this sort of study. It is not a text-book in sociology, but a pathmaker in methods of observing and arranging societary facts. Variations of the method are possible to fit. different needs, from the kinder- garten to the seminary. The University of Chicago Press has just issued a typi- cal study of the City of Galesburg, upon this plan, an adaptation of the method of Schsffle, by Mr. A. W. Dunn. Such work can neither displace nor be displaced by another kind of work upon societary material, as represented, for example, by two recent text-books on sociology, Giddings' " Principles of Sociology," and Fairbanks' " Introduction to Sociology." f I hope it is superfluous to add that the use of these terms, or of any verbal substitutes, is not what I am contending for, but the arrangement of ideas in conceptual form for which philosophers may find above designations convenient. Sessions.] DEMANDS OF SOCIOLOGT UPON PEDAGOGY, 183 mation can be construed in at least these three forms nothing can save it from frivolity and barrenness. The categories are not logically exclusive, — the fault of the things themselves. By the first category, interdependence, I mean the universal fact that every act or event in human life has been made possible or neces- sary by other acts or events connected with other lives both past and present, and that it helps to make or mar the lives of others. Begin- ning with the family, and extending to the compass of the race, society is a network of interdependences. One of the -discoveries which pupils should be aided to make, in their study of any time, or nation or human process, should be that the particular men concerned exemplified the truth **No man liveth unto himself." By the second category, order or co-operation, I mean the machine- like interplay of actors and actions in every minute social group as well as in large societies. The relation is so clear that Mother Goose reported it genially, yet it is so obscure that society is daily dissipat- ing its resources because the relation is not understood. From the factory whistle that rouses the workmen at five o'clock to the curfew bell at the close of day, the waking and the working and the resting of a town tell the truth of human welfare resting upon some form of established order. Wherever men have been associated, even in the most temporary society, the measure of stability in their relations has been preserved by an institutional order, as real while it lasted as though it were defined by the iron decrees of Medes and Persians. A mode of temporary equilibrium is one of the forms in which human association must be thought, if thought truly, whether in the society of Ivan the Terrible or of Grover the Inscrutable. When the learners read of any epoch of the past, one of the forms in which they must be helped to represent it, if it is to reveal truth to them, must be the reconstructed balance of influence and action in which the lives of that past time preserved their motion. The biographical method of teaching history frequently violates this canon. Instead of being made to appear as one of the workers an]ft)ng whom the labor of their generation is divided, the great man in whom the story of his age is told seems to fill a sphere apart from ordinary men, affecting their destinies by some undetermined process of long-distance induction. By the third category, progress or continuity, I mean the concep- tion of men and events as always working out new individual condi- tions and social arrangements, the truth, on the one hand, that •'the roots of the present are deep in the past," on the other hand, that the present cannot escape responsibility for the future. When historical acts are recalled they should always be considered at last I §4 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General , . . » in this third aspect. What motives and impulses led to them? What consequences and effects did they set in motion? This is the scien- tific attitude of mind toward the past. It is the genuinely social attitude toward the present and the future. It is the purely intel- lectual condition of the co-operative constructive temper which is the last and best product to be demanded of education. Yet I have known courses in history to be conducted under the highest institu- tional sanction, with no discernible reference to historical cause and consequence. Search and emphasis were entirely for the facts. Specialization of that sort is falsification. Facts cannot be told truly except in their relations. Sociology demands of educators, finally, that they shall not rate themselves as leaders of children, but as makers of society. Sociol- ogy knows no means for the amelioration or reform of society more radical than those of which teachers hold the leverage. The teacher who realizes his social function will not be satisfied . with passing children to the next grade. He will read his success only in the record of men and women who go from the school eager to explore wider and deepei* these social relations, and zealous to do their part in making a better future. We are the dupes of faulty analysis if we imagine that schools can do much to promote social progress until they are motived by this insight and this temper. THE PUPIL AS A SOCIAL FACTOR, BY PROFESSOR EARL BARNES, LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY. In presenting this paper I should like to inquire, first, what is there peculiar in the mind or character of a pupil or child, that makes him a social factor distinct from the adult; secondly, how does soci- ety try to take advantage of these peculiarities for the realization of its own purposes; and lastly, how does the pupil actually react upon ^ society and affect it. • Anyone who has worked much with children must have been impressed with the fact that they are, in some of their views and activities, extreme radicals, in others extreme conservatives. These two tendencies are seldom mixed, but a child is a radical now, a con- servative two minutes later, and a radical immediately afterwards. In children's traditional games we have an illustration of the way in which they cling to the form, even of words and jingles, long after all meaning has faded out of them. So the stories which they love must be repeated exactly, without the omission or change of a word, or the - » - •> Sessions.] THE PUPIL AS A SOCIAL FACTOR. 185 child complains. On the other hand, in matters of ethics, sociology, and philosophy, the child is an extreme radical and pushes his logical conclusions to final consequences. The wise old grandfather may tell of the glories of the war and the greatness of Prince Eugene, — **But what good came of it at last?" quoth little Wilhelmine. How can we explain this curious two-sidedness of the childish mind? A study of the history of civilization seems to show that there are three ways in which the race has achieved and in which we may achieve what we call knowledge. We may accept what we are told — authority; we may reason things out — rationalism, or, we may laboriously build up our knowledge by increments — experience. The Middle Ages rested in authority, the eleventh and twelfth centuries rested in logical processes, and we rest in experience. Now, a child must at first rest in authority; his very preservation depends upon it ; and if he is well trained he comes to feel the satis- faction of strong and secure support. A dogma in fields where he does not know — and there are few fields where he does know — is as restful to his eager, searching mind as his father's strong arms are to his body. The fact that his baby brother was brought in the night by a stork relieves his mind of its struggle to know — gives the blessed rest of belief, and sets the child's nature free for self- realization in other directions. So after an hour of unorganized play with his comrades, where he has been distracted and tired with all the conflicting impulses of the little group, the child turns with relief to **Here comes three drakes a-roving," and insists on its being played with perfect fidelity to every detail. This gives him balance, rest and freedom for self-realization in some special parts of his nature. But there is in every child a natural tendency toward logical activity. As his muscles or his vocal organs tend to move in certain related series, so his mind tends to work in logical sequences; and just as the exercise of the body gives him pleasure, so the exercise of his mind produces a certain satisfaction. This activity certainly exists in children from a very early age, but various recent studies point to the age of ten to thirteen as the period of its great activity. Thus in a study of the theological beliefs expressed by a thousand California children, I found that they generally accepted what they were told without serious questions until about the age of ten or twelve, when they often indulged in such reasoning as, *' Trees cannot grow without air; the air is only six miles thick around the earth. I can see six miles and I cannot see heaven, so heaven must be outside the air, so trees cannot grow in heaven and the bible must have made a mistake." 1 86 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General In my own experience I remember arguing with my father through the long winter evenings about the white men's right to this country. A thing belongs to the one who has it first; the Indians had America first, so the white men have no right here. I remember growing very much excited over this problem, and I felt that we were robbers. All history seemed to me a strange medley of wrongs because it followed neither authority nor logic. This logical tendency rises with most children to the highest philosophical questions. A little girl acquaint- ance eight years old said not long ago: ** There are two things that puzzle me, who made God, and what comes after the end of time." 'Helen Keller raised the same questions, and all children reach out intellectually for the ultimate meanings of things. As children pass into maturity they find that knowledge resting in authority does not fit the conditions of their own life. It is not up to date. The child also finds that the knowledge derived from pure logic does not fit a world filled with warring personalities; and so, for authority and rationalism, he gradually substitutes an eclectic half- knowledge which he calls experience. After a time the adult comes to find in this common sense, this experience, these half truths of expediency based in necessity, a certain rest and satisfaction. He is no longer either radical or conservative, — he is practical. He wor- ships at the shrine of necessity. But against this practical world, this eclectic resultant of experience, the child is always in rebellion. He cannot understand how his father who so fiercely denounced Grant a month ago, can accept his presidency so calmly now that the election is passed. He cannot understand how the community can go on quietly about its business and allow an old money grinder who has a mortgage on a poor widow's farm to foreclose it and turn her into the street. He cannot understand how his mother can say it is wrong to lie and then say she is out when she is in. The enthusiast and the reformer are simply grown-up children who retain their earlier modes of thinking, according to authority or logic. The child either accepts higher knowledge by direct gift or rea- sons out conclusions for himself. The hardened adult lays aside authority and doubts logic and simply accepts cold facts of experience. Who cannot recall his childish pains in adjusting his mind to the ill- fitting garments of experience? With children as with adults, it is doubtless true that we are most conservative concerning things that are immediately related to our daily lives. Radicalism deals with distant things. The conservative Puritan New Englander was very radical concerning southern slavery, and eastern men are very radical or rational concerning the Chinese question in California. Intimate experience overbears logical reason- Sessions.] THE PUPIL AS A SOCIAL FACTOR, 187 ing, be it ever so perfect. On the other hand, little matters of every- day experience quickly become habits in our minds, and are little amenable to pure reason. Thus it comes that the child is a conserva- tive in the matters of his own everyday life, and a rationalist, or radical, touching things more removed from his common life. If this analysis is correct, the pupil as a social factor will be a conserver of forms in details touching his own life ; and of beliefs in fields where he has no experience, providing these beliefs can be har- monized with the logical tendencies of his mind. But in all matters touching the larger social life around him — where he has had little experience and where half-truths of expediency based in seeming necessity have come to prevail — he will prove an anarchist through the logical energy of his mind. Now, how does society take advantage of these peculiarities in the child's subjective life? The attitude of society toward children or pupils will always be determined by what society wants done, and by its theories concerning the nature of childhood. Society says: What is the nature of this new creature, this on-coming generation of children, and what do we want it to do? The chief function of society is to carry along, protect, and develop a man of accumulations which it calls civilization. To society this civilization is the Ark of the Covenant which must be maintained with the most sacred care. It is the foundation of existence, and if this civilization were disturbed society believes it would straightway perish. Hence, society from the point of view of what it wants done must train each on-coming gener- ation of children to carry this civilization along gently and undis- turbed. To accomplish this, society loads the minds of children with authoritative beliefs, frightens down or leads astray their logical activities, and makes them suspicious of experience. The tendency of children to seek self-organization and freedom through relegating the little details of life to forms and habits has been eagerly seized upon by society and used to form the mind and character in authoritative molds. Thus all partly civilized people make the ceremonial of daily and religious life the basis of education. The Aztecs or the Chinese well illustrate this. They teach the child how to behave toward his parent, his teacher, his neighbor, his king, his priest, and his mental energy is so absorbed and used up in this ceremonial exercise that the logical faculties never awaken, and the voice of experience is drowned. The child, decked out in the cere- monial of life, becomes a safe servant to bear the civilization of the past. Attempts have been made to accomplish the same results by seiz- ing boldly on the radical tendencies of youth and leading the logical 1 88 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General powers out along lines where they would do no harm, with a view to ultimately, using these powers in the service of supporting the old civilization. The Jesuits tried this, but such men as Descartes escaped from the most skillful leading and brought disaster to the burden of ideas society was trying to protect. The Russian govern- ment, through its support of universities, is trying the same dangerous experiment today, and she is sure to destroy herself. The only safe way for society to protect her civilization unchanged from this ever new force of childhood is to seize the natural tendency toward conser- vatism in the small matters of daily life and smother logic and exper- ience under a burden of forms. Within these last generations many prophets have arisen who have maintained that children could be safely developed on all sides of their natures, but practically almost no one believes it. The church, the state, societies and individuals — all use the school to teach mon- archy, republicanism, American patriotism, German patriotism, French patriotism, Catholicism, protestantism, temperance, or what- ever other beliefs it is felt ought to dominate those who are to uphold civilization. In the last place let us inquire what is the actual effect of the pupil upon society. Biologists often raise the question whether the human animal can be modified fast enough so that he can maintain the accumulating and rapidly developing mass of civilization which he is trying to carry today. Our hope in this direction lies with child- ren. Each new generation must start afresh and in taking upon itself the accumulated burden it tends to drop those parts which experience shows that the passing generation found too heavy. The results of our studies of hygiene, or ethics, or art, are applied primar- ily to pupils. The old smoker is allowed to smoke, but the child must be protected. The father who has had a childhood of toil tries to give his son a more leisurely youth. And so in a thousand ways, each generation that passes tries to give to the on-coming generation a more reasonable load of civilization than it has carried — and here lies the hope that biological adjustment may keep pace with advance in civilization. At the same time, this constant return to purely logical activity with each new generation keeps the world supplied with visionaries and reformers — that is to say, with saviors and leaders. New move- ments are born in young minds, and lack of experience enables youths to eternally recall civilization to sound bases. If each generation started where the last one left off, imagine where Lord Chesterfield's sons would have been today. The passing generation smiles and cracks its weatherworn jokes about youthful effusions on commence- Sessions.] THE PUPIL AS A SOCIAL FACTOR. 189 ment days, but this ever-new, ever-hopeful, ever-daring, ever-doing * youthful enthusiasm, ever returning to the logical bases of religion, ethics, politics, business, art, and social life — these are the salvation of the world. And this salvation must be wrought over by each new generation. The influence exerted by the pupil upon society is not to be sought alone in the fact that the pupils are the coming generation and » that when they are grown they will be society — but the pupils have at once and immediately a profound influence. The father and mother, inclined to sink into mere time-servers following lives their experiences have taught them to be safe, are constantly shocked into new life and new action by the radical views naturally presented by the children less bound in by experience than they are themselves. '» Then, too, all that is newest in the schools in religion, in social and political thought, in literature and art, is brought home and given to the parents through immediate contact. If my immediate problem were to educate the adult population of the United States I should approach the people through their children. The man of business who would scoff at religious, artistic, or ethical ideas presented by an adult listens with sympathy and respect to the same ideas presented by his child. The very efforts he makes to avoid robbing his child of what he may consider childish enthusiasms lays him open to the influence of these same enthusiasms. And so the pupil with his tendency to preserve the little forms and ceremonies of daily life, and to go ever back to logical sources for his beliefs in the larger fields, is preyed upon by society which wishes to form and shape and mold him to be the preserver of what it considers ; of transcendent value. In China, society succeeds and civilization stands still. With our larger freedom the child throws off some part of the useless burden, expresses anew the external ideals of life and even reacts upon the adult so as to retard his hastening decadence, and civilization advances steadily onward. With increasing freedom in the study of realities, and in living schools our pupils will bring us still larger life with the birth of each new generation. 190 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General DISCUSSION. Hon. J. M. Harper, Inspector of Superior Schools, Quebec, Canada. In these days there have come to be so many ways of looking at things that one has to be careful in making his selection of a direction in which to look ; and this possibility of bewilderment is perhaps becoming as imminent in our educa- tional investigations as in any other investigations. The teacher, in his novitiate, when he thinks to deal with the being of the child as a unit, finds no difficulty, at least often imagines there is no difficulty, in laying down a simple basis for his operations in school work. The begin- ning and end of school work is the improvement of the child's mind, the storing up of knowledge, the furbishing and furnishing of the memory ; and the method which secures this along the lines of the least possible resistance is the only true method. Is there anything more simple as a science than this? Is there anything in any art so easy to get at as such a pedagogy? Even when there comes to the young teacher the revelation of the trinity in himself and in each of his pupils, when he becomes convinced of the wider scope his pedagogy must take, he is still able to circumscribe for himself a simple basis for his professional operations, for his practical investigations of child nature. The body, the mind, and the ego, and their inter-relationships, have been the theme of all educationists — a simple theme in itself — and, as the young teacher used to think, one easy to be understood as a safe guidance in school work. But is it not a fact that so widely —I was almost going to say so wildly — have we continued to discuss this same trinity and its relationships, that our teachers are beginning to beseech us to simplify rather than amplify our pedagogic disquisitions. In a word, the query that stares us in the face at a convention such as this is to be found in the cry of the young teacher: Has the science of education in these later times come to be the endless chain of the seer; is there any limit to the sphere of its theories : are we ever to find rest for the soles of our feet? The discussion which the preceding papers are likely to provoke brings to my mind an article I once wrote, in which an endeavor was made to strike an analogy between society as an organism and the tripartite being of the child. The steam- engine, taken as an exponent of the manufacturing arts and physical comfort- promoters of the times, indicates in its effects the marvelous physical develop- ment of the world, just as the printing press may be taken as an exponent of intellectual progress, or just as the Christian religion may be considered as the highest type of the moral forces that are guiding mankind towards a higher ground of right doing. As the pupil has to be subjected to his three drills — body drill, mind drill, and soul drill — in order to secure for him an even development of his whole being, so has the world or society been subjected to three great social forces or processes, to bring about its nineteenth century development. In this sense, God stands as the first of schoolmasters, our Great Ensampler. Education means the fullest development of the whole being of man. As a branch science of sociology the scientia scientiarunty its history may be likened to the history of science itself. Science had its birth in the investigation of the physical, or the fixing of a Cosmology, when men, surprised to find that a fish had weight in water as out of water, though a king thought for the moment to declare otherwise, began to run away from a faith-reading of the spheres ; and education Sessions.] D/SCUSSIOAT. 1 91 as an oiffgy had its beginnings in the mere physical arrangements by means of which the old pedagogue was said to run a tidy school with a moderating use of the thong. But refusing to stop short its identifications of natural'law in the physical constitution of things, while tabulating them in the sub-sciences of physics, chemistry, geology, astromony. Science saw man himself and his environment affected by the forces of heat, light, and electricity, and finding in these the evolvers from a lower to a higher condition of life, from the jellyfish to the kings of men, laid the foundation lines of a new branch of science and called it Biology; and so in the same way, education, having tarried for long near the outs and ins of empiric methods, came to discern its foundation lines in the "new education," in the psychology that was ready to father the true pedagogy, and took to indenti- fying the natural laws that affect the mind on its way from a lower to a higher activity. With cosmology as a classifying knowledge of the world in its physical aspects and with biology as a knowledge of the laws of nature found in the activities of its vital order, science had to take a further step in advance when it came to see that the present was but a developed or the past an undevel- oped future, when it came to detect the laws within us and without us but not of us, that are said to work for righteousness ; and that step, it is needless to say, was the movement in favor of the " new philosophy" that fathers the science of sociology. In these three great families of sub-sciences, cosmology, biology, and sociol- ogy, we have the right-hand terms of a second striking analogy between the developing stages of the world's knowledge, and the developing stages of the sub- science of education. And as sociology may be looked upon as the crowning glory of all science, in which the function of the individual is identified as the issue of a natural law, co-ordinating with the other social energies in the environment, so may the moral value of the individual be considered the most seriously important of the problems the educationist has ever been called upon to consider. Socio- logy is the science of the sciences, including cosmology, and biology, just ac character-building includes physical culture and mind development. The close interrelationship is undeniable in both cases. A sound mind in a sound body is a necessary part of moral responsibility. The three go hand in hand. A/ens Sana in sano corpore is a good enough adage to force us to keep always in view the necessity for physical culture in school, be it vocal drill or calisthenics. And as I have another adage, with a reform twinge about it to guide me in the right, while working for an improved mental activity in the young, namely, "It is not that which goeth into the child's mind that educates, but the manner of its coming out," so have I, while seeking to raise the standard of school morals, urged upon all, "to follow the argument, (that is, the right of it) wherever it will lead." These three adages I would inscribe on every teacher's heart and soul. They embody the all and the be-all of education. A great principle in each, they are the three greatest of all principles ever laid down in the hearing of teachers. Repeat them to yourselves, repeat them to others, repeat them everywhere, until you feel as if you were guilty of mortal sin in not having at work the best of plans, invented or borrowed, to mature through school work the value of -the individual, physically, intellectually and morally. It is with the moral aspect of education that I am personally most seriously engrossed at the present. I have been doing my best to introduce into the schools down oar way a series of school exercises or drills that have for their object an improved physical and intellectual development among the children, and it is my intention, with the co-operation of my teachers, to introduce this coming year some definite processes for improvement in applied school ethics. There is not 192 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General a boy or girl in our schools who has not to learn the Ten Commandments and the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. Our schools are neither separate, sectarian, nor godless. They are public schools in which the Bible is read and studied as the best of all moral codes. Hence our boys and girls are expected to learn by heart large portions of the sacred volume. They are expected to know the Ten Commandments thoroughly and the prominent precepts of the Christian religion as well. And yet I do not know that the standard of our morality is any higher than it is elsewhere. Down our way, just as over your way, we have men who have been to school who worship the mammon of unrighteousness just as sedulously as their forefathers worshiped the only living and true God, who bow down in their whole being before the idols of some palatial way of living, who swear like troopers; who fijh on Sunday, who worry some poor unfortunate creditor of theirs to the death ; who joke over the sacredness of the marriage vow and in worse ways show their disrespect of it, who take advantage of their neighbor every time, and laugh over their own smartness in doing so; who daily utter falsehoods more hideous than those of Ananias or Baron Munchausen, and who arc as full of jealousies and all manner of unsavory prejudices as a neglected ^gg is full of noisomeness. They know that Christ said "an eye for an eye" ought to have no place in a civilized world, and yet "tit for tat" is one of the first principles of their lives. They know that the keynote of Christ's message was and is "Love your enemies," and yet they continue to be better haters than Philip II. or Bluebeard. Nor are these people tabooed by society. They are respectable people. They are invited out everywhere. The governor-general complacently receives them, and the /liU drink tea with them. They are not moral by any means. Indeed they make no pretensions to religion, or even a mediocre morality, beyond going to church on Sunday or sending a female proxy. What does it matter to them whether a man's soul is nasty or nice as long as its outward adhesion to the respectabilities of society is all that society demands? No, they are not moral, though they have been to school. But they are intelligent. They are heirs to wealth through birth or marriage, or they have succeeded in- their tradings. No, they are not all politicians, though many of them are possessed of even less than a moiety of the morals required for that professional way of living. They are not even the heathen at home. They have been to school. They have had a moral training in school, and now all that we can say of them is that they are sociological forces at play with other sociological forces. Whether for good or bad we know each has his value; and it is for us as educationists to find out what that value is, in order that we may put some estimate on the moral training given to them while at school, to find out how it works for good or bad, and how it may be revised or revivified, how it may be converted into a means toward an end — the end being the enhancing of the value of the individual in the economy of nature. This enhancing of values is the legitimate work of edu- cation, and applied school ethics is the force that will bring about the enhance- ment. In a word, as far as education has to do with sociology as one of its sub- sciences, its work is to define the maximum value of the individual, and to form- ulate and foster methods that will raise the citizen to the highest ethical stand- ard of communal worth. I do not think that the individual as a force co-ordinating with other social forces can ever work only for good. Sociology teaches us that, of necessity, that is not the way of the world. Good and evil are necessary to the sociological order of things, the world assimilating the one and excreting the other. The maximum value of the individual is therefore variable. There is no mathem- atical certainty about it. And this arises as much from the within as the without Sessions.] D/SCl/SS/OJ^. ip3 of the man. As a creature of circumstances, whh himself as one of them, his function is not always at its fullest tension for good or for evil. A man is neither all bad, nor can he be all good. The conscience grows by absorption, and so does the tree, but a maple is not a beech nor is a birch an oak. There is within every living organism an individualizing force, a force within us and not of us that makes for righteousness, that makes for good or evil, for growth or decay, for beauty or rottenness in all that we see around us; and we teachers and educationists are ever longing to lay hands on this nucleutic force, eager to fashion in our own way this fashioner of fate, notwithstanding the lion in the way. Which came first, the egg or the bird? Answer me, and I will tell you which came first, man or his environment. And when we see society saturated with so many false beliefs, when we see a false coin examined so scrupulously and an unworthy opinion allowed to go scot-free on its way of evil, when we see the lesser logic hurrahed over, while the groundwork of the truth of things is only listlessly thought of, the task of discovering the general solvent of ethics becomes the task of the alchemist when science was in its babyhood. Is it a natural law that men for the most part love the things they ought to hate? Is the doing of things we ought not to do and the^eaving undone things we ought to have done a fixed decree necessary for the safety of society? Is it a sociological principle that people should so seldom make the most of their mind and moral energies? Is there none good? No not one, and why? Does wrong- doing always hurt some one? Does right doing ever hurt any one? Does the leaven of good leaven more than the leaven of evil? What is moral force? Is there a conservation of moral energy as there is a conservation of physical energy? What is a belief? Is it a cause or an effect? What is a dogma? Is it a product or a creator? What is a motive? Is it primary or derived? These are problems, sociological problems, which the "new education" has to investigate with fear and trembling. Why is that girl of a pouting temperament? Have you seen her mother? Why is that boy so stupid or evil-disposed? Have you seen his father? Why is this school worse to manage than another? Have you any knowledge of the community? Have you seen the homes of your pupils? Have you met the fathers and mothers at church and market? The law of heredity lurks in every one of these queries, and the teacher who knows not how to come into close quarters with that law, to wrestle with it as part and parcel of the law within, working in the individual for good and evil, has not yet leari\ed the alphabet of his calling, knows nothing of education as a branch of sociology. As the whole duty of man is to love one another, so the whole duty of the teacher is to enhance the value of the individual, with all the elements of the environment in hand, during the process of school training — in other words, to train up the child, by example and precept, to lead a clean life. And let us be careful to know this which John Tyndall has said in the true spirit of the truth-seeker: Facts rather than dogmas have been the ministers of human development, hunger and thirst, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, fervor, sympathy, shame, pride, love, hate, terror, awe, — such were the forces whose interaction and adjustment throughout an unmeasurable past wove the triplex web of man's physical, intellectual, and moral nature, and such are the forces that will be effectual to the end." Dr. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, Worcester, Mass. — If anything can give a modicum of poise and consolation to the Secretary and your President, who asks me to attempt to assist in closing this discussion, it 13 1^4 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General is the glimpse of the transcendent peace that always comes to me when I know that I am to be followed by the great moderator of my sentences, the alkali for all my acids, my honored friend, Dr. Harris. Sociology has had a marvelous development in this country within the last few years, and you could hardly have listened to men who have done more to define what I believe to be the true lines of sociology than the two gentlemen who introduced the first two papers. A striking illustration of the growth of sociology was furnished lately in an incident related to me of a famous geologist. He was just concluding a long survey in the far West. Although warned that he had better get out quick, for the Indians in that locality were getting hostile and were sure within a very few days to make an attack, he nevertheless persisted in staying a day or two too long. The very last day, as he sat alone in his tent, having sent out his servant, he was startled by looking up and see- ing in the doorway of his tent, a young Indian brave, majestic, with his war paint, with his tomahawk in one hand, and a mighty club in the other. The Indian stood still, and Mr. King, knowing that was his only safety, kept per- fectly quiet, and they remained eyeing each other for half a minute. At last the silence was broken, and the Indian brave said in accents which King said he never should forget, "Can you tell me where I can get the latest edition of Mulford's 'Commonwealth of God?' " He was a graduate of Yale, but had gone back to his tribal relations. It is a marvelous growth, this development of sociology. I think the relations between sociology and psychology are getting now ex- tremely close, as you have seen from these papers, and also extremely profitable for both. I hardly know which has been benefited or is likely to benefit the most from this conjunction. The fact that the biological alone, or at least I call it so, which began perhaps with Lillianfeld long ago and is represented at the present time by Professor Small, and so well represented now by the very latest book of Giddings of Columbia. That movement which is so distinct an^ trans- forming, places the subject on a surer foundation than ever before, and we are amazed at the relation between psychology and sociology. I do not exactly know where the one ends and the other begins. In fact their relation is, perhaps, well illustrated by a fact that occurred in my own town of Worcester, Massa- chusetts. During last winter a mother and her married daughter, who lived in the same house, both had babies born the same day and at almost the same hour. They werfe by some inadvertence placed upon a bed in a room together, and in sonre manner left in the room, and those babies got mixed up, and now nobody can tell which is the aunt and which is the niece. That is the condition between individualism and sociology — altruism, I should say. It seems to me it has often been wrongly placed. The history of civilization and a history of this science shows that sometimes individualism has been accented, over- accented, and then the altruistic, socialistic side has been over-accented. Then the sociological phase has been carried down even to limit the free development of childhood. But I think we are now, owing to this true basis which has been reached, arriving at a more healthful equipoise, where each great subject shall receive its just due. And the point of union, in my opinion, or at least from a psychological aspect of these two great sciences, is to be formed in the develop- ment of adolescence. It is but a few years since we began to study this strange phenomenon. We now know it is a period of second birth, physiologically and psychologically. We know that during this transforming epoch from thirteen, fourteen on to sixteen and seventeen years of age — and indeed adolescent fer- ment is not complete until well on to twenty or more, or at least a man isn't fully Sessions.] DISCUSSION. Ipj nubile before thirty, some at twenty-six and twenty-eight perhaps. But the latest information is that ferment goes on along to this time; and the significance of it all is that it is the birth of love in the largest Christian sense, psychologic- ally free from all selfish motives. And the development of that is, I believe, the true philosophy, or the true psychology, in education, and as educators we have come to learn the appalling fact that we have no philosophy in education. I believe that we have the germs of a philosophy of education, and that, I believe, I can make plain to you in two minutes or three at the most, and before I sit dowr. The main outlines of it are that in the history of education, in all countries, every- where, among savages and civilized races, education begins in the consecration, rites and ceremonies, in early adolescence, to puberty. The crucial importance of that period has always been felt. There is no savage tribe in this country, and none of the savage tribes in other parts of the world that do not bring the most solemn and consecrating influence of the older to bear upon the younger genera- tion during these critical years. The new philosophy of education is that man- kind, with one accord, has felt that the birth and development of this great func- tion of altruism, and love of others, — whatever you call it, that is the central thing, — that at this period of adolescence men are vulnerable to all kinds of temptation, and that the older generation must at this time give the younger its most con- summate care. Civilizations are judged and weighed by nothing so crucial as by the way they have treated adolescence. The Greeks carefully watched the young on entering this period. The Romans developed the natural pugnacity and initiated the youth into the secrets of war, and the Persians appealed to this age with great expectations. So the modern church — this is the time when the Greek church, the Catholic church, the Lutheran church, the Episcopal church, confirm. And it is the time when statistics show that most conversions are had among those denominations that believe in conversions. The reason of it is because it is the time when the soul grows most and fastest. It is the time when men's and women's sympathies reverberate the widest. It is the time when the heart pours its rich transforming flood through the body. Biologically, this period consists simply in this: Whereas, before, the child has been selfish, and the normal child has perhaps inherited physical and mental traits from the father or mother, or perhaps one or two grandparents, at this critical period the floodgates that con- nect him with the past are down, and all the seven rudimental organs of the body and more of the soul, are most active. You know we all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and if you figure it back to the time of William the Conqueror, you will find we have something like twenty-three mil- lion ancestors. This is a very great supply from which to draw an inheritance at this period. That is why the individual is susceptible of culture and development at this period. It is the natural dawn of the educational instinct, the culmination of religious and parental care which alike develops slowly upward toward the university, as civilization advances, and slowly down toward the kindergarten, as civilization advances. This gradual development is best measured I knew, by civilization. There is one important factcr which I must mention here before I sit down, because it has an important bearing upon altruism and upon sociolo- gical study, and that is this, — the laws of biology show that whenever two ancestors, two parents, are pretty nearly alike in organism, this period is short and brief; but when the parents are from a different line of stocks, when they differ widely, as they do in this country, yet not too widely, then this period of adolescence is very greatly prolonged, and the consummation of body and soul is more uncertain. For instance, pure stocks, like the Germans, have a very differ- ent history for this period than mixed races — I was going to say mongrel — 196 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General like some American stock, where very often blood from different races unites in an individual, from the father and mother. That heterogeneous condition causse this period to grow immensely. You knew that man has the Icngest period of immaturity, in comparison with the total period of life of any known animal, with one exception. Alongside of that great doctrine which is so important in all its educational implications I now place this which is just as great, if not greater, that just in proportion as civilization advances, and new ideas come in from all sources, and as there comes this mixture of blood, it all means that this second infancy, adolescence, is prolonged to an uncertain time, and must receive consum- mate care. With the mixed blood there are infinite possibilities for manhood and womanhood, and these possibilities are infinitely extended, and in this lies the hope of America. There is no country in the world where so many diseases, moral and physical, prey upon the young adolescent as in this country. No country where there are so many forms of mental and physical arrest as here; but there is no stock of blood in any country in the world where, when these dangers are avoided and complete immunity is attained, manhood and woman- hood is so perfect as in this land. This perfection consists in love, or, as I said, the adolescent period consists in self-sacrifice, in an instinctive subordination. The true education will transform the old selfishness into an ardent self-sac- rifice, and you will find that the spirit of altruism will be just as deep and strong with those who have passed the meridian of life as the instinct of selfishness was before. So while sociologically imitation should come late, as I believe Professor Small thought, it should be preceded by a long period of complete individual development. Then the ground is prepared, and not until then is the individual ready for this higher superstructure which makes man Christlike. Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education. — It has been a motto of my theory of education for a great many years, that educa- tion is founded on sociology, and for a convenient definition or synonym of soci- ology I say, "Sociology is the science of civilization; the science of a combination of men into social wholes." We have the civil society combined for the supply of human wants, and the equalizing of ages, sex, and strength in locality. We have the city social whole that exists for itself and endows the individual with freedom and a larger knowledge, and thus comes enlightenment to the individ- ual. We have these great societies over us, and education comes in that which takes the child, the youth, and places his hands in the band of the great social whole, and thus is he led towards his fruition. So that each individual shall reap what the whole produces, and each individual shall place in the hands of the whole his small infinitesimal product. This brings us to the point of the question of freedom. If the individual exists for the social whole alone, and is not endowed with the beneficence of the whole, we have slavery. When we look at the indi- vidual as receiving the gift of the whole, and the whole handing to it what all has produced, we have freedom. This brings us to the point that education occupies in that large school. Education there, is for the emancipation of the individual, the prevention of his being swallowed up by great substances of the social whole. Loose organizations, loose forms, do swallow up the individual. The individual never attains to separate independence and free existence ; never feels that the whole exists for him, so that he uses the whole as his instrument, by which to gain possession of the world. Education, I say, makes free. And the special topic which your president asked me to speak on this morning is the teacher as a social factor; the teacher as an element in the social whole. I say as education relates to the making free, so the teacher has the finest Sessions.] DISCUSSION. 197 opportunity of any person in the community, with the exception of the clergyman, to bring about the fruition of this highest relation of the individual to the social 11 hole. Speaking of clergymen, we have in New York Bishop Vincent, a man who has shown us what the clergyman is as a factor in the social whole, as a factor making for freedom of the individual, looking abroad and seeing the indi- vidual in society stop growing after his little turn at school, perhaps in the ele> mentary school only. In considering the possibilities of the individual for growth, in helping the individual find out where he is and what his possibilities are, in stim- ulating him to attempt to do something that will help towards making him wiser, in encouraging a study of books, in carrying out this most ingenious and effective system, this clergyman has accomplished a great deal. It is a field that can be occupied by the teacher, for the teacher has children passing through his hands all the time. The children come from the families into his hands and begin to learn letters and symbols of communicaton, the symbols by which he may partici* pate in the widdom of the race and render himself able to take possession of what the social whole hands to him in a free manner. He has these children passing through his hands, as I say, going on into society. What is so easy for the teacher, even in the most elementary schools, as to keep some sort of inventory of these pupils, their tastes and habits, and to look after their reading afterwards. What is so easy for the teacher, who must, in all true culture, be growing himself. He is never fit to be a teacher unless he grows, continually grows, grows on towards new freedom away from his environment. Education, the getting an insight into these things, frees and emancipates us; and this great movement of child study of which you have heard, is now growing into a constitutional whole. That great movement looks towards finding out new methods by which the individual can be brought into this great social whole, which acts like a substance, swallows him up, so that he may become a distinctive part of the social whole. The great movement is towards freedom, towards emancipation of the child. Eman- cipation and freedom lie along that line of study . Without the study of sociology you would not have your ideas, you would not see what this tendency towards freedom is. Child-study is not a substitute for sociology, and sociology is not a substitute for child-study. Sociology helps us to find what the individual is. He is at his highest when he finds institutions, when he takes hold cheerfully and humbly at the lowest round of an institution and works in it and allows himself to ht absorbed in it, holding his freedom and, through his insight and his interest in the great work as a whole, feeling the spirit in it. Every step of civilization teaches us this lesson. From Plutarch we learn what there is of the human will; from the history of religion we see what the great religious leaders have done in the way of emancipating whole peoples, in spite of all the influences dragging them down. Every state in civil society, every stage of civili- zation has formed and is forming for each of these institutions, a civil society. The lower forms of religion work against the higher forms of religion so much that in looking back into the history of Christianity, we find how the Christian church has moved along from a lower to a higher plane, and produced its influence upon the governments with which it came in contact. The history of the develop- ment of people into institutions and the gradual growing of a freedom in those institutions, the application of the sciences, the conquest of nature, — all these things belong to the state, to society, to the social whole. We get our ideals from thera. After we have our ideals, without child-study we force them upon the child. We do not utilize these things to the development of his freedom and we leave him a stunted individual. We leave him, as it were, a sort of civilized automaton, which is not very flattering to civilization> But child-study takes an 198 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General inventory of the child. Some look back into history to find a pattern, to see if they cannot find a Moses who will lead the people out of the bondage of Egypt. They can find Platos and Aristotles. But in the child there is a field for intelligent study and great culture. The true pursuit of child-study will give us higher and better institutions and a higher and better civilization. I say that the teacher has the finest opportunity to elevate, by his profession, the women and men engaged in teaching; to lift his profession up to the point where it will be recognized as a profession, through this study of sociology; through this study of how to bring the child rationally to this point, and through special investigation into art and literature, and science and philosophy. Take the youth after they have left school and interest them, as young mothers and fathers, in keeping up their study of the great works of natural and revealed sci- ence and religion. They can make life where they live by studying these things; and sooner or later, to the teacher and the pupil so instructed, life will come to have a new meaning and be well worth the living, when they find that they can grow into'these great things; and soon the time will come when the teacher's pro- fession will be recognized in the community. COUNTRY SCHOOLS AND COUNTRY ROADS, BY ROY STONE, UNITED STATES ENGINEER. . We come to you for help in a work which appeals to the teachers of America from the standpoint of every interest in the land — moral, intellectual, and social, as well as material. A southern editor states it perfectly when he says: ** Every mile of good road built in the country will increase values, improve morals, elevate citizenship, stimulate trade, beautify the country, promote education, raise the standard of religion, and add to the wealth, health, and happiness of the people. ' ' We do not come to you, however, for help till we have put our own shoulders to the wheel. Four years ago a few of us organized at Chi- cago the National League for Good Roads, and spent $10,000 in hard- raised money to begin our campaign. Before that was gone we had gained the ear of congress, and we have had a little national aid for our work ever since. We found ahead of us in the field, active, untiring and efficient, that splendid body of young men, the League of Ameri- can Wheelmen. We have worked with them and they with us ever since, and today we have the country so roused to the need of better roads that we may safely say to you that if you will throw the weight of your powerful organization and the ubiquitous influence of your personal leadership into this movement, we can promise you a success that will not only be grand in itself but will advance every other fea- ture of your noble work. I will not waste your time nor mine in arguing for good roads; what you do not know about bad roads is not worth the telling. I will come at once to the question which I trust is Sessions.] COUNTRT SCHOOLS AND COUNTRY ROADS, 199 on all your lips: **How can we help?*' There are three ways in which you can help individually. 1. You can preach the '* gospel of good roads" and carry the glad tidings that already in America, in many places in America, and in the most unpromising places, that gospel has borne fruit, and the people are even now enjoying its blessings. If any of you will take up this work we can furnish you with chapter and verse for your ser- mons, and applications and illustrations without number. I will give you one topic to carry home with you. The cost of bad roads in the United States has been variously estimated by competent authorities and the lowest estimate of the bad-roads tax, that of Professor Latta of Purdue University, collated from the certified experience of practical farme/s in forty counties of Indiana, amounts to 77 cents per acre annually, or $500 per square mile of farm area, and there are 1,000,000 square miles of farm area in the United States: $500,000,000, or three times the cost of all the common schools in the country, utterly wasted. What could not be done for education if this vast sum could be saved! 2. Not only can you preach good roads but you can teach a little road building in all your schools. No knowledge would be more valu- able; it would be taken home from school and discussed in every family. It is a practicaL concern cf everyday life, and will interest parents as well as children, women as well as men ; attention will be called to every defect in the location, construction, and care of the roads directly about you. You will need no text-books, for no high- class technical knowledge is necessary to teach the rudiments of road construction and repair. We can furnish you from Washington with our printed circulars giving all the information you will need to impart; and if any of your pupils desire to go beyond the stage of primary instruction in this matter, it will not be long before the higher schools, and especially the agricultural colleges, will be teaching road building in all their higher departments. 3. But better than teaching and preaching, you can do much to actually improve the roads of the country. The great need of our country roads is daily care. For want of that care a trifling depres- sion which a shovel full of gravel would fill, fills with water instead, and deepens, widens, and lengthens with every wheel that dips into it till it becomes an impassable mud hole. For want of that care when a rain storm comes a little stream of water which the stroke of a hoe would turn aside, follows the wagon track down a long incline, grows into a torrent, and makes a dangerous gully or a stony hill face ; for want of care and a little work loose stones accumulate in the wagon way and stay there till the annual season of road repair, while fast 200 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General ones grow out of the ground apace for want of a hammer stroke to knock off the first point that shows; weeds and rubbish choke the ditches and sluiceways, and costly washouts occur, or standing water soaks the roadbed and turns it into a quagmire. In the absence of care every defect grows by geometrical progres- sion; the worse it gets the faster it grows. $40,000,000 we spend every year on road repairs and make the roads no better. We roll the great stone up the mountain with 40,000,000 days' work, and then we let it go to the bottom to be rolled up again next year. What is the cure for this state of things? The trouble itself is nothing new. Every thinking farmer knows it of old and has puzzled his brain for a remedy. The daily care of all the roads by paid laborers would be a tax absolutely unbearable; the travel to and fro to do the little work required would cost ten times as much as the work itself. What, then, can we do? When you have interested parents in your district in the subject of road-improvement, and taught your scholars something of the proper methods of carrying it on, why not take advantage of the fact that all your roads are traveled twice a day by boys old enough to take the ordinary daily care of them if they have the means to do it? Why not organize your own road-leagues among the older boys and persuade your township road authorities to supply each league with a few light tools to be kept at the schoolhouse and carried home when needed for road repairs, or used at recess on the roads near the schoolhouse? And why not persuade these authorities to offer a prize for that school district which does the best work in this direction? The effect of daily care would show so promptly in preventing the deterioration of the roads after each annual season of repairs as to offer great encouragement for the general betterment of the highways, and by these means you will not only be conferring an instant and visible benefit upon every resident in your district, but you will be training up a generation of better road builders for the future. So much you can do individually. Collectively, if your powerful organization will interest itself in this subject, make it one of its active departments in connection with rural schools, put some of your best workers at the head of it, and, finally, co-operate heartily with all the state and local road-improvement organizations, the League of American Wheelmen and the work of the general government, you may have the satisfaction of helping to raise country life in America to a level of comfort, happiness, and prosperity with that of the old world where good roads prevail. Sessions.] GOVERNMENT AND POPULAR EDUCATION. 201 THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND POPULAR EDUCATION. fiY PRESIDENT ANDREW S. DRAPER, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. No one can rightfully say that we have not a very great system for extending popular education in the United States. But surely it is a very unsystematic system. It is thoroughly characteristic of a youth- ful but great people. It is the product of pioneers whose numerical increase has been phenomenal, whose energy has been intense, whose ambition for self-improvement has been exceptional, and whose rapid development of general, quick- wittedness and institutional life has challenged the admiration of the world's intelligence. The system was not imported. Of course popular action in the New World was influenced by popular thought acquired and popular customs estab- lished in the Old World, but the contacts between many people of different nationalities and widely opposed traditions, opinions and habits, soon evolved new life which did not long hesitate to defy the thought and the customs which had been brought from over the sea. The system was not erected upon a preconceived plan. It has grown as the towns have grown. It has reached out as the states have acted upon the theories which must underlie government by the common suffrage. It has now come to be a universal system, but it has every- where partaken of the habits of mind and the manner of life peculiar to the different sections. The greatest conservatism is found in the Far East. New England started with the fundamental ideas which had become common in Old England. They were truly great ideas which had already made a profound impression upon world history, and which were bound to make a no less profound impression upon the history of the new world. Her Calvinistic faith, her inbred regard for constitutional rights, and her promptness in setting up colleges and preparatory schools for the purposes of the church and state, according to the English plan, quali- fied her for leadership in the evolution of a new nation, insured her a well-ordered life, and enriched her with a wealth of culture which is everywhere recognized and of which all Americans are exceedingly proud. The common run of English thought upon matters educational,, irresistible at that early day and lasting until the present with contin- ually weakening force, coupled with the prejudices of the Puritan fathers against Baptists, papists, and all others who were not of their religious faith, made her a little slow in starting elementary 202 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General schools common to all. Her idolatrous worship of the idea of govern- ment by town meeting, and her contention with revolutionary stoicism that the public school is purely a local institution, that teachers must be examined, certificated and superintended, as well as employed, by a single authority — a committee chosen at random from the voters of the town — puts her at variance with the doctrines of the American public school system, which are everywhere else universally accepted; and the great cosmopolitan population which she has acquired within the present generation seems to be putting her at variance with her- self. But the potent influence of her many institutions of higher learning, the frequency and the temerity with which she ascends the mountain top and lays claim to all the glories of history, the grace with which she embellishes and the patriotic glow with which she intensifies her story, all combine to afford her sufficient security while she gradually and artistically adjusts her old theories to her new con- ditions. If two heads are better than one in determining a wise course of action, so two nationalities co-operating together are better than one in deciding the trend of national life. New York plainly shows the Dutch as well as the English influences upon her educational career. The former were stronger than the latter, until after the Revolution at least, and they were very much more democratic. The reasons for this arc historic and easily traced. If the English had a stronger con- ception of national unity and a stronger sense of constitutional organ- ization, the Dutch had a deeper love of religious freedom, quicker appreciation of the rights of the individual, and a readier grasp upon the doctrine of universal popular education. This fact gave rise upon her soil to the first elementary schools in America, supported at the common expense, managed by common authority, and free to all. But it did very much more than this. It combined with English thought, soon after the attainment of statehood, to make the first state school organization in the new world. It was not only the first, but it is the most. comprehensive and the best state school organization in the country. The position of the state superintendent is authoritative, and it gives him the right of leadership and, if necessary, the right of direction. A very general and complete system of teachers' training classes in the secondary schools, a magnificent dozen of purely pro- fessional normal schools, teachers' institutes under a continuously employed corps of conductors, a well organized system, uniform throughout the state, of examinations for teacher's certificates — all these things supporting each other under the direction of a state superintendent, supplemented by a statutory provision that no one shall be certificated in the cities and villages who has not had a high-school Sessions.] GOVERNMENT AND POPULAR EDUCATION. 203 as well as a normal course of instruction, and all upheld and empha- sized by a complete supervisory system, are fixing and advancing the status of the teaching force more uniformly and rapidly than is being done in any other state. But this is only half, and perhaps not half. The great system of regents' examinations, the bringing of all the secondary schools and colleges and universities into interdependent relations under the inspection of the board of regents, the systematic regulation of the whole matter of college degrees, the punishment as a crime of the unauthorized use of the term ** college" or ** university," the arbitrary direction and the moneyed support given to the school and public library systems of the state, as well as to all scientific research and investigation, the unhesitating determination of the condi- tions of admission to the professional sudies which now almost exacts a college course and is slowly advancing — all these things are stimula- ting and uplifting the higher educational. and professional life of the state. Taken all together, the educational organization set up by this state is very much more complete than that of any other, and the educational work which the state government is carrying on directly is very much more general, exact, and effective than anywhere else in the land. In the central and western states there is a warmth and energy of school life not found in the east. All the people are interested in the schools, and in all of the schools. They believe in the kindergarten, and the state university is as much a part of the public school system as are the elementary schools. There are fewer private schools and the children of the wealthy homes attend the common schools more than in the east. A miscellaneous company of teachers from the elementary schools of Illinois will discuss the history and philosophy of education, when such a company of teachers in New York would have little interest in such matters. The qualifications and the spirit of the average teacher in the public schools of Cleveland, Indianapo- lis, Chicago or Minneapolis, are higher and better than in Philadel- phia, New York or Boston. The school tax is paid more cheerfully than any other tax. Individualism among the people is marked. Everyone entertains the highest expectations. There is a smooth and continuous road from the primary school up to and through the uni- versity, and all the boys and girls seriously consider whether they cannot pursue that road to the end. There is more zest and ardor in public education. There is more intensity in the teaching force. There is more pride in a complete and symmetrical public school sys- tem. The endless resources of the people are more thoroughly pledged to the support of such a system in the old Northwest Terri- tory and beyond than anywhere else in the country. \ 204 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General • We were all gratified and possibly surprised, the other day, at the showing of Commissioner Harris at Atlanta, touching the development of common schools for both races in the South. The fact that the school attendance in that section has increased more than twice as fast as the population, and the value of school property advanced from sixteen to fifty-one millions in twenty years, is sufficient justification for his assertion that **they are indeed building a *New South* and its corner stone is the school.** Facts might be multiplied were it necessary, to indicate hpw very different the educational situation is in the different sections. While there is unprecedented progress upon the general field, and many things to commend everywhere, we could easily find much to deplore in all the sections. If we were to analyze all the circumstances we should find the conditions in the different states altogether unlike ; indeed, we should find the conditions in different parts of the same state very dissimilar, and we would search in vain for any unity of educational plan throughout the country. The reasons for this are obvious. The public educational system has grown up in the different sections. There has been no central or authoritative leadership or management except by states, and very few of those have aserted themselves. At the time of the formation of the Federal Union there was no recognized responsibility for popular education. In the opinion of statesmen and in the • thought of the multitude the responsibility for the education of children rested upon parents or guardians. The extreme to which popular thought had then gone was that government ought to encourage the people to educate their children, and make some provision for the very poor on the ground of public charity. The public school system, cornered upon the taxing power of the state, had not been conceived, and of course it had no consideration in the convention which framed the Federal Constitution. The responsi- bility for the support and supervision of public education is with the several states, but not by reason of any determination to that effect in national council. It has resulted from the fact that it has never had any authoritative consideration, and from the operation of the general principles that the sovereign authority not specially ceded to the United States is reserved to the several states. As a result the general government has never exercised any authority touching the public educational system of the country. It has made gifts of public lands in aid of education, and it has said that if its gifts were accepted certain conditions must be complied with ; but it has made its gifts to the states and it has always recognized the rights of the states to manage their own educational affairs. It has Sessions.] GOVERNMENT AND POPULAR EDUCAT/ON 205 set up a national bureau of education, but it has given it no power, for apparently it had none to give. This bureau may collect informa- tion when correspondents will send it in, and having secured it in one way or another, it has the high privilege of sending it out. But it cannot join an issue, it cannot exact compliance, it cannot enforce a request. This is not saying that the bureau has not exerted an influence. The vast difference between power and influence is readily recognized. Without power, it is true, that it has exerted no inconsiderable influ- ence, but that has been because its habitat is at the seat of govern- ment, because it has the semblance of representing the federal power, and perhaps, more than anything else, because of the personal emi- nence of the men who have held the office of commissioner. It is exerting more influence to-day than ever, and a high and commanding influence it is; but that is because the man at its head is a man of large experience in affairs, a'student of people and conditions, a sta- tistician with discriminating sense, a popular speaker of great force, the brightest scholar we have, and the most profoundly philosophical writer upon educational themes in the world. With indomitable energy, these qualities have been exerting a telling and lasting influence upon the progress of popular education. The thought and effort of this man have not been confined to the operations of the schools alone. With a clear view of the innumerable ways in which the numberless instrumentalities by which the average of intellectual acumen and of moral sense may be advanced, he has laid hold of all the ropes within his reach for the good cause of popu- lar enlightenment. His writings have stimulated every educational interest and uplifted every teacher from ocean to ocean. He has been in the midst of all the great educational gatherings in the land to advance new doctrines. But he has been very much more than a preacher of doctrines, he has been a veritable knight-errant in the world's battle for the highest intellectual freedom. He has been aggressive and he has shown resisting power. He has joined issues and waged combats. His thought has been so deep and his force so great that a contest in which he enlisted has never been in doubt; while his wit has been so quick and his words so gracious that the brightest men in the educational work of the generation have strug- gled with each other for the honor of a brief bout with him in the face of inevitable overthrow. But we must not be misled by the work of a great man. The man will in time give way to another, and what sort of another we do not know. It is pertinent to ask also, whether he might not have accom- plished more if he had been at the head of a department and a member \ of the cabinet, rather than the chief of a bureau. It cannot be out of 2o6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [General order to raise the question for serious consideration, whether the pop- ular educational interests of the country are not of sufficient impor- tance to justify the demand that the bureau of education shall be / enlarged, given greater prominence and dignity, and that a closer supervision by the general government shall be extended over this whole subject of such pre-eminent consequence in the affairs of the nation. A bill was introduced in the last congress to create a department of commerce and manufactures, and to make its chief executive officer a member of the president's cabinet. Commerce and manufactures are already measurably provided for in departments already estab- lished, but the sagacious men who are promoting these interests see how much clcser care they would be likely to receive, and how much more dignity they would be certain to attain if they were elevated to the rank of a separate department. Is not the same thing true of » the educational as of the commercial interests of the country? Could not a national department of education be created, which would supplement without embarrassing the present situation? In all the states the schools are left, as far as they may be with advantage, to local support and supervision. The states legislate with a view to insuring a school within reach of every home and then leave it to the people to determine what sort of schools they shall have. It seldom goes farther than this. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it might go much farther with advantage to all the interests con- cerned. Could not the federal government come in and help the weak, or in general do what the states leave undone? In a few moments we shall hear with pleasure a representative (Mr. Booker T. Washington) of a distinctive line of educational work, who, like Lord Byron, the morning after the publication of **Childe Har- old," has become famous all at once. His fame rests not so much upon his educatipnal ability and his power as a public speaker, although those are greatly admired, as upon the fact that he has shown discerning sense as to the true lines upon which the greatest educational and sociological problems of our country may be worked out. What could not the federal government do in the way of aiding and supporting the states of the South in that mighty undertaking? And while it was doing so how it would bring the people together, not only by strengthening the constitutional cords which bind us together in one nationality, but by developing the institutional life which must make us one people. But there are states, not in the South, which stand in need of outside assistance and some direction in the work of popular education. The United States has given much public land to public education and it has more to give, perhaps more Sessions.] GOVERNMENT AND POPULAR EDUCATION, 207 now than it will ever have again. What it gives to education is so much clear gain, not only for what it will accomplish, but for what it will prevent. All that it can be led to do in this direction will not only help the interests it aids directly, but will promote its own efficiency at home and enhance its honor abroad. We must all confess that the general government, as a rule, does well whatever it undertakes to do. Its regular army is respecte.d and trusted for its discipline and efficiency. When the people are threat- ened with an insurrection at our doors they spend less time in studying the constitutions than in throwing up their hats for the regular troops. Our postal system is a model of authoritative sagacity and efficiency. The civil service of the government is vastly superior to that of any of the states, for it is more permanent, more complete, more substan- tial. The federal courts attain a dignity gained by none of the state courts. The administrative functions of the United States are per- formed with exactness and certainty. She accomplishes very com- pletely what she undertakes. Those who violate her laws feel her heavy hand, and every citizen of the republic has added security and deeper love for the flag because it is so. Should not the popular educational interests of the country have much greater advantages than they now have from the general and authoritative operations of this great power? Would not its exercise make our great system of popular education more systematic and more uniformly effective? This is not a new question, but it has never been very much con- sidered. Indeed it has never been considered at all in any authorita- tive quarter. Suggestions have from time to time been made in the direction indicated, but the reasons for and against them have never been adduced. The subject has never been up in congress or in the press. It can hardly be supposed that if the imperative necessity of universal popular education has been recognized, if the status of popu- lar education had been anything like what it is now at the time of the formation of **a more perfect union," that the subject would not have had much consideration in the constitutional convention. It is brought up to-night, not with any thought of presenting it very closely, and with regret that there is no opportunity to discuss it now, but in the belief that the time has come when the popular educational interests of the country need more support, more management, more leadership from authoritative centers, and that if the government of the United States shall be invested with the right and charged with the duty to render this assistance the result will be a great advantage to all of the high interests concerned. My confidence is great that this course would not lessen but stim- ulate, extend and direct the manifest and gratifying tendency towards 2o8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General J individual initiative among the people, while it would solidify and harmonize our public educational system and give greater freedom, higher tone, stronger virility and more substance to the intellectuaj resources of the Republic. When it was doing this at home it would be gaining us added respect in the world and exalting us among the nations. And let us not be unmindful of the value of that. While unwilling to accept doctrines at variance with the trend and spirit of our national life let us have none of that abhorrent self-conceit which must make us heedless of the experience or indifferent to the highest admiration of all the constitutional governments of the world. THE INFLUENCE OF THE NEGROES' CITIZENSHIP. BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, PRINCIPAL OF TUSKEGEE NORMAL INSTI- TUTE, TUSKEGEE, ALA. [Stsnographic Report] . % Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: rlht discussion of the educational needs of the South would not be cbmplete without a con- sideration of the condition and the needs of the seven millions of the race which I have the honor to represent. It is interesting to know the number of suggestions that have been made within the last thirty years looking towards improving the condition, or getting rid of the negro in this country^ I remember about a year ago when a ship set sail from the port of Savannah, Georgia, bound for Liberia, Africa, that the news was flashed from one end of this country to the other, **Now the negro problem will very soon be solved in this country as the negroes have decided to return to Africa, the land of their fathers." But those persons who reasoned thus forgot that that same morning down south, before breakfast, at least six hundred more negro children were born. And so the problem will not be disposed of in that way. I was on a train in the west a few days ago and sat by the side of a gentleman who was very earnest in his endeavor to convince me that the negro after all was fast disappearing in this country; that he was fast being swallowed up by the white man; that he was fast becoming bleached out, as it were, and that after a while there would be no such thing as a negro in America. Now, I do not know as you have noticed it, but the moment it is proven that a man has even I per cent, of African blood in his veins, he becomes a negro; he falls to our pile; in the count we claim him every time. The 99 per cent, of Anglo-Saxon blood is not strong enough to overcome the i per Sessions.] THE NEGROES* CITIZENSHIP, 209 cent, of African blood ; the 99 per cent, counts for nothing and we claim the man. So you see we are a stronger race than you are; we have a greater power of attraction and absorption, and at that rate we will ultimately absorb you. I have a good friend down in Georgia who argues very strongly from the platform, and in the press, that the way to solve the negro problem is to set aside a territory in the West, and put him into it, and let him grow up a race unto himself. Now, there are two slight difficulties about that suggestion. In the first place you would have to build a wall about that territory to keep the black men in ; in the second place you would have to build a much higher wall to keep the white man out. In fact, if you were to build ten walls about South Africa, you could not keep the white man out of there if he heard there w^s any gold in it. No, my friends, none of these suggestions will do. I There is but one way to solve the negro T problem, as there is but one way to solve all problems. Treat the negro as a Christian gentleman, no more, no less. If you educate his head and hand and heart, he will take care of himself. J But there are reasons why we have some rights here. We are the only people, when you come to think of it,' we are the only citizens of this country who ever came here by a special invitation and by a special provision. Your race came to this^country against the protests of the leading citizens at that time. (Having been so important to the prosperity of this country that we had to be sent for at great inconvenience and expense on the part of yourselves, do you think we are so foolish as to leave now? No, we have a mission here and part of that mission is to help lift you up; to help make you bet- ter; to help you live Christian lives, and wherever you lack civiliza- tion to help give it to you. I suspect you think we have a pretty hard job on our^hands. But we are not discouraged by any means, j But seriously,Yat Tuskegee, in connection with the work to which - I have given my nTe, we have from the first tried to make a thorough, systematic study of the actual condition and needs of the people by whom we are surrounded, and shape our educational work in a way to improve and bring up the condition of the people about us. Now, the temptation is, I think, witli educational work, as in all work, to do that for the people which has been done for people for thousands of years , very often forgetting the actual need and conditions of the people by whom we are surrounded?) I remember that I was in Bos- ton some time ago and there talkea to a young colored man who was studying medicine in one of the New England medical colleges. I asked this young man what branch of medicine he was giving special attention to and I remember his reply that he was ** making a specialty of the study of nervous diseases," I asked him where he expected to '4 2 TO NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [General practice medicine after he finished, and he said he was "preparing to practice medicine among the colored people down in the Mississippi bottoms/* I said to him, '*My friend, did it ever occur to you that not one black man in a hundred thousand ever has any trouble with his nerves ? Did it ever occur to you that the race in the Mississippi bot- toms has not yet advanced to that delightful stage of civilization where he is troubled very much with nervous prostration?' ' Now, do not under- stand me to say that in the future we are not going to be just like you, afflicted with nervous prostration and everything else. We may have it, just as you do now, fifty or a hundred years to come; but for- tunately or unfortunately we haven't gotten there yet. ^ut what are the actual needs of the people in the black belt of the South? I refer to those who are on these large cotton, rice, and sugar plantations, rather than those in the cities and larger towns. (a large majority of the people on these plantations are ignorant, without habits of thrift. They are industrious but they are in debt; they have mortgaged their crops to keep them alive and they are attempting to pay a rate of interest that often ranges from 15 to 40 per cent., and, of course, they ccjme out at the end of the year in debt/ r The schools in the plantation districts are rarely in session more than three months. The scholars are often taught in places which bear little resemblance to anything like a school building. Each colored child in this cotton district receives this year from the puBlic fund for his education about ninety cents. -|I^do not know how it is in this state, but I* think you will find in the state of Massachusetts that each child has spent on him for his education each year between $18 and $2oJ Ninety cents for the black boy of Alabama, and $18 for the white boy of Massachusetts Now, as to morals arfa religion. During slaver/ the people rea- soned something like this, **My body belongs to my master, and taking master's chickens to feed master's body is not stealing." One old colored man whom his master caught stealing his chickens said to the master, **Well, now, massa, you *s got a few less chickens, but you's got a good deal more nigger." * Now our people are attempting to apply something of that same kind of logic to this mortgage system that obtains in the South, and it is not hard for you to realize some of the results of that kind of reasoning. \It is not hard for you to understand something of the moral and the religious condition of the people where so large a propor- tion of them are forced to be born, to eat, sleep, drink, cook, to get sick and die in one room from year to year. [But what is the remedy for that condition of things. If in the providence of God the negro got any good out of slavery, he got the habit of work. In that Sessions.] THE NEGROES' CITIZENSHIP, 211 respect he is different from most of the races among whom missionary effort is madey I know we have a class of people around the railroad stations and the corners of the streets and in the bar-rooms just as you will find among any people. We have some black sheep in our flock as there are in all flocks/ 1 mean to say thatuhe rank and file' of our people on these plantations of the South aVe working along from year to year, but without advancement by reason of their ignor- ance and want of sliill. Their labor is confined to the lower formsk A\t Tuskegee we are trying to develop the head, and hand, and heal4 of 800 young men and women in such a way that they will also be able to do what is called higher forms of wprk. I know in this country it is everywhere regarded as all right for the negro to work at the lower forms of work) There is no trouble about his raising cotton in the Mississippi bottoms; but the trouble comes when the negro attempts to work that cotfon — to follow it from the field through the gin up into the factory, and from there up into Massachu- setts where it is woven into the higher fabrics. (\Vhenever the negro attempts to enter the shop or factory in the state of Massachusetts where the cotton is manufactured into the form of fabrics, the door of that factory is likely to be slammed in his face. The same thing is true in Georgia and Alabama, so far as these higher forms of the man- ufacture of cotton is concernedj (There is a law or custom, in some parts of the South, that prevents the^ack man from riding in a first- class car, even when he has a first-class ticket. Let that same black man apply in a shop of the North, where that same first-class car is manufactured, and they will put the black man out of that shop if he attempts to take a part in the manufacture of that first-class can) Clhere is no trouble about the negro working in the pig iron or getting- it out of the mine in its raw form, but the trouble comes when he attempts to follow that pig iron until it gets into the form of watch springs. Then the door is shut in his face. We want to bring about such skill, such intelligence all over this country among the black people, that their labor will not be confined as it is at present, to the lower forms only\ ^nother trouble is that after the negro works he does not know how to utilize the results of his labor. What he earns gets away from him, on these plantations, for whiskey, snuff, cheap jewelry, and in a hun- dred other ways which I have n*t time to mention. I have often gone into these one-room cabins where I have found clocks for which these people have paid, on the installment plan, as high as twelve or four- teen dollars, while everything in that cabin aside from that clock would not be worth that much money. In nine cases out of ten there 212 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General would not be a single member of that family who could tell nine o'clock from twelve o'clock by that timepiec^ , ^repeat, what is the remedy for that condition of things? Ten years ago in AlabamaJT could have shown you a community just such as I have attempted to describe, where7tl^e people were in debt, mort- gaging their crops, living from hand to mouth, with school three months in the year, taught in a rough-looking cabin. But ten years ago there went out from our institutions men trained in head, and heart, and hand, and they went there at their work in a plain, simple way. These graduates taught these unfortunate people [to come to their weekly meetings, and in these meetings taught themj how to economize and save money instead of paying it out for whiskey and snuff. . Every one of them began, and soon they were building bet- ter houses ; then they byilt a school house and had school more than three months in the year/ And so that work has gone on during these ten years. (I wish I could take you into that community and show you these people almost out of debt, owning their own homes to a large extent; living in houses of three or four rooms with well-cultivated farms and the advantages of church and Sunday school.) I could there show you a community that has been revolutionized in its educational, moral, and religious life. No one gave these people a single dollar from the outside with which to bring about this improved condition^ Every improvement took place by reason of the fact that these people had these leaders, these guides, who induced them to make a change in their methods ; showed them how to take their money which had hitherto been scattered to the winds for mort- gages and whiskey and snuff, and usie it in the direction of their £wn civilization. [My friends, if I know anything about this problem/in the South, it is that this kind of work is what we have to look to for our salvation^ I was in one of these communities six months ago and "I saw not only a change like that, but in addition to thatQ saw one white man in that community, a southern white man who forty years ago owned at least loo slaves. That white man had been so won over to believe in education that he had taken $400 that year out of his pocket and contributed it towards building an excellent school- chouse for the colored people in the community^ u. was on one of these cotton plantations some time ago and I saw an old man, at least seventy years of age, living in misery, filth, and poverty. As I glanced about that old man's surroundings and saw how he was living in a crude log cabin, I said, **My friend, it seems to me that if you were worth your freedom you would have improved during the thirty years that you have been free." And the old colored man looked up into my face and said, **Mr. Washington, I want to improve, I want Sessions.] THE NEGROES' CITIZENSHIP, 213 a change, I want to have something for my wife and children before I die, but, Mr. Washington, I do not know how; I do not know what to do first." That old man looked up into my face and said that, and as I looked into his lean and haggard countenance I realized as I had never realized before, the terrible curse of slavery upon my people. The greatest injury slavery did us, as a race, was to deprive us of the opportunity to exercise the little executive power that we might have had; a slavery, which, had it continued, would have been the destruc- tion of the Anglo-Saxon race. For 250 years we have been taught to depend on somebody else, for food and clothing, for shelter, and for every move we made in life. You cannot expect habits with a growth of 250 years to be gotten out of a race in twenty-five or thirty years^ Unless we can educate the children and give the older ones the benefit of good example and wise counsel, you will find little change in the future. However, you will find a great improvement has taken place, within the last few years in these communities in the south. (Now, some people have had the idea that all that was needed in the South was some one to organize a Christian church on one of these plantations, and another on another plantation, and they felt that the problem would thus be settled on those plantations. But it was not; no substantial improvements can be accomplished in that way. I will tell you, my friends, that in Alabama — I do not know how you find it here — but in Alabama it is a mighty hard thing to make a good Christian of a hungry man^ You know as a race, we are rather raiotional ; we have a good deal of feeling about us, and we feel our religion in a way that you do not. I believe the average black man can feel more religion in ten minutes than the average white man can in a day. You beat us in some things, but I believe when it comes to feeling we can beat you. Down south when a person gets converted, we look for him to exhibit a great change in his conduct and make some manifestations of it in a visible form. If he does not do that we become skeptical about his religion and we say, **He has got the white man's religion." Now, this emotional side of our nature rather tempts us to spend a good deal of our time preparing in a certain way to live in the next world, which is all right. But I notice you not only prepare for the next world, but you take good pains to prepare for this world also. That is one of the differ- ences between us. The average sermon you hear preached to the people on the cotton plantations is made up of an imaginary and vivid description of heaven. Our preachers like to preach and sing about living in a great, big, white mansion — that is, these people who live in little log cabins down in this world. They like to think and sing about wearing golden slippers in the next world while they trudge along 214 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General bare-footed in this. On the sugar plantation down in Louisiana they have a song they like to sing which says: *' O, give me Jesus and take all this world — " and the white man in Louisiana generally takes the black man at his word. The white man down there gets about all the negro has except his •hope and his religion. I do not speak with irreverence ; yet,^fter eating and sleeping with my people and coming into contact with them under all conditions and circumstances night and day "for, fourteen years on these plantations of the South, I think I have learned this, that the way to* teach them to have the most of Jesus in a permanent form is to teach them to mix in with their religion some practical ideas which will bring about an improved material condition. Give them the benefit of well-directed industry, a house with two or three little rooms and a little bank account. The negro can appreciate that as well as a white man does, and in proportion as they mix these things with their religion you will find they have a practical Christianity that is worthy of the name. These are some of the lessons which we are trying to push forward at every opportunity, although we meet with some prejudice/\ ^t one time the late Hon. Frederick Douglas was making a great speech in the South and he began to warm up to his subject as only Frederick Douglas could do.j There happened to be in an out-of-the-way corner two persons who seemed unusually inter- ested in what Douglas was saying. One was an American, and the other an Irishman. The Irishman said, *'Be jabers, who is that mak- ing such an eloquent speech?" The American said, **That is Frederick Douglas, the great negro orator. ' * You do not mean to say a negro can speak like that, do you?** Oh well, he is not a negro, he is a mulatto, a kind of half negro.** Be jabers, if a half negro can speak like that what in the world can a whole negro do?** Now, my friends, I claim that during the last thirty years in which we have been in partial possession of our freedom we have not had an opportunity to become even half men and women. But if we meet with the same help, the same encouragement in the future that we have in the past, we are not only going to become whole negroes, but, what is better, we are going to become whole, helpful American citi- zens. But what of your white brethren in the South, those who are still suffering the consequences of American slavery for which you and they are responsible? ^What was the task you asked them to perform — to return to their desolate homes after years of a relentless war, to Sessions.] THE NEGROES' C/TIZENSHIP. 215 face blasted hopes, a shattered industrial system and devastation everywhere. You asked them to add to their burdens that of prepar- ing, in education, politics/ and economics, for citizenship, four mill- ions of their former slaves. That the South staggered under the burden, made mistakes; that disappointment in a measure has been the result need surprise no oney n'his country has never yet realized,T has never yet comprehended^ its duties to the millions of people in the South known as the poor white people. It needs no prophet to tell the condition of the future when the poor white boy in the country districts of the South is in school but three months a year, and your boy is in school nine or ten months; when the poor white boy in these country districts often has but one dollar's worth of education and your boy $20 worth ; when in the south he enters a reading room or library perhaps two or three times a year, while your boy finds a read- ing room or library in every hamlet, almost every house. The poor white boy of the south hears a lecture not more than once in two or three months, while your boy can hear a lecture or sermon every day of the yeaK My friends, there is no escape from it, you must help us raise th^-^aracter of our civilization or else you will be lowered with it. Wo member of your race, in any part of this country, can harm the weakest or meanest member of my race without the proudest and best blood in the Anglo-Saxon race being degraded. When the South is poor you are poor. When the South is ignorant, you are ignorant. When the South commits crime, you commit crime/) Mere abuse will not bring a remedy. It seems to meQhe time has come when we should arise in this matter above party or race or section into the atmos- phere of the duty of man to man, Christian to Christian, cilizen to citizen ; and if the negro who has been oppressed and denied rights in a Christian land can help you. North or South, to rise into this better atmosphere of unselfishness and Christian brotherhood, he will have indeed a sufficient recompense for all that he has suffered at your hands. So long as there is ignorance among the poor white people of the South, so long there will be crime against the negro and crime against, our boasted civilization/ In considering this matter I thank God that I have grown to the point through the opportunity which your generosity has given me and those like me;/ 1 have grown to the point where I can sympathize with the white manias much as I can sympathize with the black man. I always tell our students when they go out into the world to work, never to feel themselves above the white man. I thank God that I have grown to the point where I can sympathize with the southern white man as much as I can sympathize with the northern white man.' To me "A man's a man for a' that." 2i6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [General G I believe, as a race, we strengthen ourselves at every point in extending this symmetry, for no race can go on cherishing hatred and ill-will toward another race without being lowered and degraded in all of those elements that go to perpetuate a strong, growing, and generous manhood and womanhood. I propose, in other words, that no r^ce or individual shall drag me down by making me hate him.J vl^his problem will work itself out in the South in proportion as the negro's skill and intelligence and character can produce something the white man wants or that the white man respects; hence the value of industrial education. One race respects another in proportion as it contributes to the markets of the world- ^BsLhen you consider that question closely, one white man don't care a great deal about another white man unless he has got something that he wants in the way of culture, or influence, or property, or sometimes a daughter. The black man who has a mortgage on a dozen white men's houses will have no trouble in his intercourse with the white meny The black man who spends $10,000 a year in freight charges with one of the south- ern railroads can select his own seat in the railroad coach, or else a Pull- man palace car will be put on for his special accommodation. When the black man develops to the point whereby reason of his knowledge and > improved skill" in agriculture he can produce forty bushels of corn alongside of the white man producing but twenty in the same kind of soil, then the white man will come to the black man to learn. [jThey will sit down and talk about it, and I believe the black man will be a good friend to the white man^ When the black man has $50,000 to loan, he i^lL never want for friends and borrowers among his white neighborsJ(lt is meet, it is right that all the privileges guaranteed to us by the constitution be sacredly guarded; but it is vastly more important that we be prepared as a race for the exercise of these priv- ileges. [Those who suffered and fell on the field of battle performed their duty faithfully and well. But a duty remains for you and meT^ The mere fiat of law could not make a dependent man an independent man; could not make an ignorant father an intelligent father; could not make one race respect another. These results will come to the negro as to all races, by beginning at the bottom and gradually work- ing up towards the highest civilization.J My friends, by reason of ignorance, by reason of our freedom beginning at the top instead of at the bottom, the burden has been too heavy for many to carry; the opportunities have been too great. TWe have spent time and money in political conventions, making idle political speeches, that could have been better spent in becoming leading real estate dealers and leading carpenters and truck gardeners, and thus have laid an imperial foun dation on which we could have stood and demanded our rights. A Sessions.] THE NEGROES* CITIZENSHIP, 217 In conclusion, my friends, I make no selfish appeal; it is a plea to save yourselves. H^he negro can better afford to be wronged in this country than the white man can afford to wrong him. We are a patient, humble people; we can afford to work and wait. There is plenty for us to do away up in the atmosphere of patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and goodness^ There the workers are not many and the field is not overcrowded; If others will be little, we can be great. If others would be mean, we can be good. If others can push us down, we can help push them up. If ever there has been a people in this world who have observed the Bible injunction, **If thy brother smite thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also,** that people has been the American negro. MTo right his wrong the Russian hurls his dynamite, the French-- man applies the torch as in the French Revolution, the Indian flies to hi« tomahawk; but the negro must lie by, must be patient, must forgive his enemies, and depend for the righting of his wrong upon his mid- night moans, upon his songs, upon his four-day prayers, and upon an inherent faith in the justice of his causeJ If we may judge the future by the past, who will dare say that thr negro*s course is not the better one. Think of it, my friends ;(we went into slavery a piece of property and we came out American citizens; we went into slavery pagans, we came out Christians; we went into slavery without a language, we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue ; we went into slavery with the slave-chains' clanging about our wrists, we came out with the American ballot in our hands^ Progress is a law of God and progress is going to be the negro's eternal guiding star in this fair land. flDemotial Hbbresses^ CONSTITUTING THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON NECROLOGY FOR 1896. NORMAN A. CALKINS, New York City. BY HORACE S. TARBELL. ALSO BY EDWIN C. HEWETT DANIEL B. HAGER, Salem, Mass. BY WILLIAM E. SHELDON. JOHN KRAUS. New York City. BY HORACE S. TARBELL. florman H. Calftins, XX.2). BY HORACE S. TARBELL, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PROVIDENCE, R. I. The National Educational Association owes a great debt to Nor- man A. Calkins. Early in the life of the association he became one to whom its prosperity was dear and in whose hands its interests were safe. Many aged men have been members of this association, but few have been its fathers. -Norman Allison Calkins was born at Gainesville, Wyoming Co., N. Y., September q, 1822. He was the third son of a pioneer settler of that town. His parents were born in Connecticut. His father's ancestors settled in that state as early as 1651. The first of this family in America was Hugh Calkins, who landed at Plymouth, Mass., in 1640, coming from Monmouthshire, England, on the border of Wales. As so many noted men have done, young Norman Calkins went to a country district school in his boyhood days and in his youth attended an academy for several terms. At the age of eighteen he began to teach during winter terms, but returned to his studies between the terms of teaching. He became principal of the Central School in his native place, and at the age of twenty-three was elected town Super- BBT Memoriam] NORMAN ALLISON CALfClNS. 2I9 intendent of schools. After re-election he resigned and went to New York where he engaged in educational work, including the editing and publication of a paper called **The Student and Schoolmate.** For several years he conducted teachers* institutes in the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In 1862, being then forty years of age, he was elected assistant superintendent of schools in New York City, which position he held by successive re- elections until his death, December 22, 1895. During those thirty-three years the gfeat work of his life was done. How great the influence of such a man for such a length of time in a position so prominent ! It is no reflection on others to say that for a generation Dr. Calkins has stood in the eyes of the school men of the United States as the chief representative of this great system of schools. In 1864 he was appointed instructor in methods and principles of education in the Saturday Normal School. At the opening of the Normal College of the city of New York in 187 1, he was appointed professor of methods and principles of teaching in the Saturday ses- sions, which position he held until 1882, when the Saturday sessions were discontinued. In 1861 he published ** Primary Object Lessons,** a book of great merit, which has been read and re-read and made the guide of daily work by many thousand teachers of the United States — a book lying at the foundation, both from its character and the date of its appear- ance, of the great body of pedagogic literature published in America. This remarkable book has been translated into the Spanish and Rus- sian languages and is used extensively in Europe and South America. In 1881 **Manual of Object Teaching'* was published; in 1889 **Ear and Voice Training.** Dr. Calkins was the author also of a series of **Phonic Charts** and ^'Schooland Family Charts.** He arranged the material and prepared the plans for ** Prang's Natural History Series** and the accompanying manual; also for the ** Aids for Object Teaching — Trades and Occupations. ** Besides these books he has written many articles for the educational press. For twenty-six years he was treasurer of the Congregational Church Building Society. He served as trustee as well as treasurer, and was chairman of the finance committee at the time of his death. When we consider the varied lines of his activity and realize what he accomplished in each, we shall be most impressed with his mental resourcefulness and wonderful power of steady work. What a personality he was in New York City! Thirty-three years a superintendent of schools, eighteen years delivering week by week, to appreciative teachers, th^ rich results of profound thought and 220 NATFOJfAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIOX. [In ripe experience on the foundation principles of education and their most profitable applications. He was a leader in educational thought and was one of the first among us to make the study of the child the found aton of pedagogy. He knew the child mind, and all his educational thought and work have been along lines that must abide because drawn upon a sure foundation. He was a man that children loved, and teachers knew to be a friend wise and true. He could not be otherw'ise than prominent for he was a leading spirit in any body of men among whom he had a place. Not because of any self -assert iveness, for he was far from self-assertive, but because on all the themes which he discussed he thought clearly, investigated carefully, and decided broadly. Besides this, he had that capacity for details, that patience for work, which made him safe, always sure of his facts, always trustworthy in his conclusions. Furthermore he had a commanding presence, a genial manner that was the natural expression of a kind heart. He had no rivalries. Others brought to him without his seeking all the honors that his ambition craved. These honors he appreciated and enjoyed. They were to him no mere payment of a debt due to ability and service, as to some men such things come. He felt that they were tokens of the good will of his friends, and therefore had their greatest value in their source rather than in any special lustre of their own. When he had received all the honors which this association has to bestow, he did not retire within himself nor nurse his greatness in solitude, but was still as ready as any to do work, to take pains, to spend wearisome nights for the sake of the association. Witness to this his work as editor of the Chicago proceedings of this association. Here was a mass of matter entirely beyond the means of the associa- tion to publish, all of it good and worth publishing, but some parts better than the rest. Who should read all this mass of matter, select the best from the good, prune the selected papers of the common- place and unessential portions, read the proof and attend to the details of publication? Who could be trusted to be both kind and just, discriminating of merit, cognizant of educational thought, judi- cious, courageous to do the wise thing though it might cause heart-burn- ings among distinguished men, and who was, above all, known through- out the United States and the educational circles of the world to possess these qualities? Who but Dr. Calkins could do this? What busy man possessing these qualities and this reputation would spend for months the spare hours of a laborious occupation to do such a work? He looked for no honors therefrom ; but some one must do it, and the thoughts Mcmoriara.] NORMAN ALLISON CALKINS. 221 of all were directed to him. This for him was enough. He accepted the task and performed it as all knew he would. This is not one of the greatest of his services but is a convenient illustration of the ability and character of the man and of the confidence reposed in him. He was a conspicuous figure among us for many years. To many of us the pleasure of meeting Dr. Calkins at these annual gatherings has been one of the attractions to draw us hither. We were sure he would be present, and sure of a warm hand grasp, a kind inquiry, an hour of gratifying intercourse with a man who was great in intellect, ripe in experience, wise in advice and sympathetic in spirit. ^ Dr. Calkins was prominent in the affairs of this association for many years before he became one of its conspicuous officeholders. From its very beginning he had been a constant attendant upon its meetings and influential in its management. In 1883 he was elected treasurer of the association and re-elected in 1884 and in 1885. In 1886 he was President of the association at the meeting held in Topeka, Kansas. One of the greatest services rendered by Dr. Calkins to this asso- ciation was his work as chairman of the board of trustees, which posi- tion he held from the organization of the board to the time of his death. He has had more to do with the policy and action of this board than all the other men who have honored the office or been honored by it. Beginning their work when no funds existed, it has been the duty of the trustees to assist in the creation of funds, and especially to care for and invest the funds accumulated in prosperous years. The care of these funds is a labor of considerable amount and requires constant exercise of business judgment. For all the years during which a fund of $50,000 has been accumulated this work has been done, this care exercised, this responsibility assumed by Dr. Calkins without thought of any reward but the consciousness of ser- vice to the association. Not even credit has come -to him for this beyond a small circle of men most interested in the association. And yet so strong was his regard for the association, so complete his devotion to our interests, that he willingly did all this; and I suppose the only feeling that ever entered his mind in reference to this work was one of gladness that he could do this service. I have dwelt upon his connection with this association and our indebtedness to him. To most of us it was in his capacity as an oflScer here that he was best known. Yet this is not, could not be, the place where his greatest service has been done. In the schools of New York City he stood for progress, he was a leader of teachers 222 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [In seeking to follow nature's laws. To them he was the bearer of the new light that pedagogic science quite as much as any other sheds abroad. He was the teacher's friend and counsellor. What higher encomium can any man have? But great as will be the record of the good he has done on other fields, I feel confident that his service to the world has been greatest in the books he has written. Before I ever met the man I had read and read again one of his books In publisher's parlance we hear of epoch-making books. In profes- sional parlance may we not say that Calkins* *' Primary Object Lessons," was an epoch-making book? To judge of its merit and in- fluence we must consider when the book was issued and how meager at that time was the teacher's professional library. The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by Marietta College, Ohio, in 1891, and yet he was not primarily a literary man. It was as a teacher and as a man of affairs that his laurels were won, and it is thus we shall remember him. Let us cherish his memory. Too early, though seventy-three years of life were allotted to him, has he gone from us. We need his leadership. We miss his great heart and warm hand, his unselfish devotion to the cause of education and his faith that this association may be made a powerful means for its advancement. BY EDWIN C. HEWETT, BLOOMINGTON, ILL. [Read before the National Council of Education.] At each of these annual gatherings some faces that we have been wont to see are missing, some friendly voices are silent; and the saddest thing about it is the knowledge that we shall see these faces and hear these voices no more. We put on record a few appreciative words, and then go on our way more lonely, yet with tender memories and fond recollections. Every year, for many years, with only two or three exceptions, we have met one whose clear-cut, kindly face was familiar to all, and whose able leadership all acknowledged. But we meet today with the sad thought that he will not be with us again. And it is made. my melancholy, yet sadly pleasing duty to present to you a few words in his memory. Norman A. Calkins was born in Gainesville, New York, on Sep- , temberQ, 1822; he \yas the third son of a pioneer settler of that town. He died at his home in New York City, on Sunday, December 22, 1895. He was married to Miss Mary Hosier in 1854. His widow survives him, with an unmarried daughter, Ella, and a son, Hiram C, who is an engineer in the dock department of the city. He was edu- cated in the district and classical schools of his native section, and at the age of eighteen years began to teach in the winter months. In Mcmoriam.] NORMAN ALLISON CALKINS, 223 1845 he became superintendent of schools in his native town. In the fall of 1846 Mr. Calkins came to New York and took the editorial charge of the ** Student and Schoolmate," which remained under his direction for some time. I well remember this excellent publication which I took and read for several years. Through his writings in its pages I gained my first knowledge of Mr. Calkins. For several years he conducted teachers* institutes in the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In the fall of 1862 he was selected by the board of education as assistant superintendent of schools of the city of New York, he entered upon the duties of this office January i, 1863, and by subse- quent elections he continued in the same position till the day of his death. His work here was wholly with the primary grades from first to last; he was known as superintendent of the primary departments. In this work, we are told, he wrought many valuable changes in the methods of instruction in the city. At first he stood almost alone in his advocacy of what was then termed ** object teaching," but which he regarded as observation-teaching or culture. He endeavored, and with much success, to put the principles of Pestalozzi into daily prac- tice in the schools. At the time of his death, one of the leading papers of the city said of him, **No superintendent ever equalled him in popularity among the teachers or excelled him in the work of the primary schools." He was made instructor in the principles and methods of education in the Saturday Normal School in 1864, and the attendance upon his lectures was greater than that upon any others. In 1 87 1 he became professor of methods and principles of teaching in the Saturday sessions of the Normal College ; he held the position until 1883. He was also the author of six or eight books on educa- tional topics, which are very valuable and widely known. On June 24, 1891, Marietta College conferred upon Mr. Calkins the degree of LL.D. His was pre-eminently a busy life, and his work and influence in the educational world survive him. The New York Schoolmasters* Club, of which Mr. Calkins was a charter member and a director, at a meet- ing on February 8, 1896, ordered a memorial notice to be entered upon its records, from which I extract two or three sentences. **For upwards of a generation he devoted himself to the development of primary school education. His experience made him acquainted with the child mind, his manner attracted children, and his uniform kindness to child and teacher secured for him sincere and lasting friendships in the schools. That which lends lasting value to his work is the fact that he examined every educational problem from the child's point of view. As difficulties presented themselves in the 224 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [In pathway of the learner he studied the conditions and prepared the methods best calculated to insure substantial progress. Hence it is that Dr. Calkins never developed fads or sensations.'' But the members of this body are most concerned with the work of Dr. Calkins as a member of the National Educational Association and of this Council. For more than twenty years he held a most prominent place among us, and it would not be easy to overesti- mate his services. In 1876 he was fifth vice president of the association. From 1879 to 1882 he was vice president of the department of superintendence. In 1882-3 he was president of that department. He became a life member of the association in -1879; and in 1880 he became a member of this council. From 1883 to 1885 he was treasurer of the associa- tion. In 1886 he was its president. And from 1886 till his death he was the wise and efficient chairman of the board of trustees. He was always quiet and courteous, a genuine leader, but in no sense a **boss,*' and so quietly and unostentatiously was his work done that I doubt whether half our members knew what a beneficent force he was among us. It was my fortune, for several years, to know somewhat intimately what his work for us was. I served the National Educational Association as its treasurer five years, from 1886 to 1890 inclusive. During the first of these years Mr. Calkins was president of the association, and during all of them he was chair- man of the board of trustees. Since 1890 I served with him four years on that board, so that, for about ten years, I was pretty closely associ- ated with him in his work for this association. While I was treas- urer he was the auditor of my accounts, and I can assure you he performed that duty in no merely formal or perfunctory way. He gave days of labor of the most careful and efficient sort to these important matters. And how ably, unweariedly, and conscientiously he wrought in devising plans for the improvement of the association, and in guarding its finances, investing its funds and caring for them I know very well. The service he thus freely rendered would be worth thousands of dollars, simply on the basis of ordinary pay for time and labor expended. •In the record of the Schoolmasters' Club, to which I have already referred, I find these words: **His knowledge of finances and his experience as a man of affairs made him custodian of first, the debts and deficiencies, and afterwards the abundance with which his pru- dence blessed the National Educational Association, and made possi- ble the outlay which culminated in the publication of the reports of the Committees of Ten and Fifteen. A few days before his death he said to me, **We returned from Atlanta in 1881 $500 in debt, we now Mcmoriam.] NORMAISi ALLISON CALKINS. 225 have a fund of over $50,000, and I have never lost a cent of the prin- cipal or interest in any investment." The National Educational Association was once weak ; it is now strong; it was for years constantly in debt; it now has abundance; and to no man is it indebted more, for these changed conditions, than to Mr. Calkins. I think no one will dispute this statement ; in my own opinion it might be made even stronger. We owe him a debt of gratitude which these words express but feebly. For some years his health had not been very firm, but he went on his way without complaint, performing every duty faithfully and well. I am informed that his health began seriously to fail in January, 1895; yet he continued in the discharge of his official duties till the close of the school year in June. After his return from the summer outing he was able to leave his home only twice. His sufferings were very great, but he was not confined to his bed until he was seized by pneu- monia only the day before his death. As a genial friend, as a teacher, as a wise and faithful adminis- trator, as a true Christian gentleman he deserves to be held in lasting remembrance by all who knew him. And we are sure that the mem- ory of his sunny, benignant face will remain as a benediction to hun- dreds who knew him only by sight. When such men have served their generation it needs be that they must "fall on sleep," but the world can ill spare them. REMARKS IN MEMORIAM. B. A. Hinsdale, Ann Arbor, Mich. — It is well on occasions like this one for men to speak who have stood in different relations to the man commemorated. Unlike the gentlemen who have spoken, I was never associated with Dr. Calkins tn official duties and responsibilities. My relations to him, which began about the year 18S4 or 1885 and were limited to our great annual gatherings, were wholly personal. He did not impress me so much by virtue of unusual intellect- ual force or great scope of learning or knowledge, as by virtue of a much higher class of qualities. To me Dr. Calkins was the man of sound judgment, clear common sense, nice perception of what is due to men, clear recognition of the fitness of time and place — the man of pure heart and life, of kindness and eleva- tion of spirit — the gentleman of personal cultivation. Not wholly, but very largely, these are ethical or spiritual qualities, and it is almost needless to observe that they are far more valuable than great intellectual vigor or wide range of intellectual attainments. I speak relatively, not intending at all to underrate Dr. Calkins' intellectual gifts. It is fitting for us to recall the last time that we saw him among us. It was at Asbury Park two years ago, and I am sure that all who were there will recall, as in a picture, his gracious bearing and benignant presence as he moved through the corridors of the hotel, met his friends and acquaintances on the wide veranda, and mingled in the throng of the convention hall. To Denver last year there came the sad report that he was in feeble health ; and I recall with pleasure some kind words that his associate, Mr. Ferrall, spoke to me, which were almost a personal message from him. I shall 21 226 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [In long retain this last impression that Dr. Calkins made upon my mind. It is that of a man who, in a pre-eminent sense, showed in his face, manner, and bearing the great qualities that gave character to his life. William E. Sheldon, Boston, Mass. — It was my good fortune to know Mr. Calkins quite intimately for more than thirty years. He was from the beginning of the National Council a faithful and devoted member. In 1883 he succeeded Eli Todd Tappan, as treasurer of the National Educational Association, which office he held for three years, when he became president of the National Educational Association, and presided over the meeting of the association held at Topeka in 1886. As secretary of that year, I was brought into close official rela- tions with him, and cannot permit this occasion to pass without bearing my tribute and testimony to his noble life and work, for many years, in behalf of education. He was a clear and able writer on elementary methods of instruction, and his contributions and addresses on educational topics were of an eminently helpful and practical character. But to me Mr. Calkins was a man whose life and character were of unusual purity and sweetness. His countenance indicated the serenity and beauty of his inner life. He impressed everyone as a wise and discreet friend, and a safe adviser. I shall ever cherish the memories of the many years of official and friendly intercourse with Mr. Calkins as among the richest blessings of my educational life. To know him was to honor and love him. Daniel S. Kager* BY WILLIAM E. SHELDON. Daniel B. Hager, Ph.D., died at Sharon, Mass., August 4, 1896. In the death of Dr. Hager the educational interests of the country have lost one of their best representatives. Dr. Hager was born at Newton Lower Falls, Mass., in 1820. His elementary training was gained in the public schools of Newton, and at the then famous Seth Davis Academy at West Newton. His special preparation for college was made under the guidance of able private tutors. He entered Union College at Schenectady, N. Y., at the age of nineteen, and graduated with high honors in 1843. 9^ was the commencement orator and won fame as a speaker on that occa- sion. Three years later he received the degree of A.M., and in 1871 the degree of Ph. D. from his alma mater. He began his lifework as a teacher while in college, and taught village schools at Schuylerville and at Kingston, N. Y. His eminent success led him to choose teaching as his profession. Immediately after graduation he accepted the principalship of the Canajoharie Academy, in New York, and remained at the head of that institution for five years. Subsequently he took charge of the Norwich Academy, New York, and after a brief service there he decided to return to his native state and accepted the mastership of Eliot (public) High School at Jamaica Plain, Mass. His interest in public schools was awakened Mcmoriam.] DANIEL B. HAGER, 227 early in his career as a teacher, and he served two years as superin- tendent of the public schools at Canajoharie, while teaching in the academy. He remained for sixteen years the principal of the Eliot High School, and by his eminent success became one of the foremost educators of New England. He early joined the American Institute of Instruction, and his lecture before that body at the meeting held in Keene, N. H., on "School Supervision" was regarded as one of the most valuable papers ever heard by that association. It was printed in pamphlet form and sent to every part of the country. He urged the careful inspection of every public school and of the work done by teachers, by competent experts in methods of instruction. Unques- tionably the influence of his presentation of this important factor in public school work led to the almbst universal adoption of the present system of school supervicion. Dr. Hager from the first felt the importance of teachers' organization^, and became an active worker in them. While in New York state he was the president of the Mont- gomery County Teachers* Association, and was also president for two years (1853-54,) of the Norfolk County (Mass.) Association. For three years (1856-58) he was president of fhe State Teachers* Associa- tion of Massachusetts, and was among the leading men in promoting the establishment of teachers* institutes and normal schools in Massa- chusetts. For many years he appeared annually before the legislative committees to urge liberal appropriations for public school purposes and especially for normal schools in which ** teachers should be prop- erly trained for their work.** He was a self-sacrificing and devoted friend of educational journals. He served as one of the editors of Th^ Massachusetts Teacher from 1852 to 1856, and again from 1865 to 1870. From his pen came many of the most helpful and practical articles The Teacher contained. In the early days of its history he not only wrote for it constantly, but as one of the board of directors of the Massachusetts Teachers* Association that published The Teacher as its organ, he actually performed much of the manual labor of wrapiping and mailing it to the subscribers. While Dr. Hager was a true friend of genuine progress and in favor of many radical reforms in educational work, he was inclined to hold firmly to prin- ciples and practice which he deemed, indispensable and which had been tested by actual experience. He believed in hard study and intelli- gent, individual application on the part of pupils, as the only sure means of securing the highest attainable success in scholarship. He was the author of a series of mathematical text-books based upon these ideas. He was one of the most popular lecturers of the day before the Massachusetts teachers* institutes, and also in county and state associations for many years. His great personal magnetism and rare 228 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [In humor, both as writer and speaker, made him a general favorite with the great body of common school teachers. His ripe and exact scholarship combined with his generous and manly characteristics made him the friend and active co-worker with such men as Horace Mann, George B. Emerson, Gideon F. Thayer, Cyrus Pierce, William Russell, Lowell Mason, George S. Boutwell, John D. Philbrick, Gov- ernor Washburn, David H. Mason, and others of that great group of lead- ers in educational work that molded the present system of public in- struction. He had a great facility for work ; and he made his activities felt in many fields of educational enterprise. He was -a broad-minded man, and his heart was in sympathy with every agency that looked toward the promotion of all that was good in humanity. It was this spirit that led him to join most heartily in the establishment of the National Teachers* Association in 1857. At the inaugural meeting in Philadelphia he was one of the leading spirits, and served as chairman of the committee to prepare a constitution and by-laws for the associ- ation. He wrote, in one of the rooms of the Continental Hotel, on a sultry August afternoon, the remarkably concise and comprehensive preamble to the constitutit)n which stands to-day unchanged, and clearly expressed the conception he had of the work to be promoted by this organization. It is as follows: **To elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching, and to promote the cause of popular education in the United States." May it ever stand as a memorial of the purposes of the founders! In 1865 he was called to the principalship of the Salem State Nor- mal School as the successor of Professor Alpheus Crosby, and retained that position until June of the present year, when failing health caused him to resign. He had covered a term of continuous service of thirty-one years, and had sent out to enrich the teaching force of the state more than 3,500 young lady graduates. He was honored and beloved by his associate teachers, and esteemed as a true friend and wise guide by all of his pupils. He had the entire confidence of the State Board of Education and its Secre- taries, Messrs. Boutwell, White and Dickinson, during his long period of service. In the world of **good works" he was a trusted leader and helper. In Salem he was the one man universally sought for when wise counsel was needed. He served as president of the local Young Men's Chris- tian Association, and held a high place in the councils of the Protes- tant Episcopal Church in New England. During his years of educational work he probably declined more positions than any other man in the state, among which was that of Mcmoriam.] JOHN KRAUS, 229 state superintendent of schools of Rhode Island, a Boston supervisor- ship, and the superintendency of several large cities. Being always of rather unsound health he realized his limitations, and was content to labor in the niche of usefulness and honor in which his lot was cast. He was an earnest Christian patriot, and took a lively interest in state and national affairs. Had he possessed sound health and an ambition for public office, he could have readily secured almost any official honor in the gift of his fellow citizens. Outside of educational circles the only office he ever held was that of United States presidential elector of the Republican party for Massachusetts in 1884. His home life was very dear to him, and his seven surviving children are prominent in the East and in the West as good citizens. No man was more congenial and companionable as a friend, and none was more uniformly sought for when wise counsel was desired. 3obn 1{rau0* BY HORACE S. TARBELL. • Professor John Kraus died in New York, March 4, 1896. He was a pioneer in this country in the introduction of kindergarten principles, methods and schools. He was born in Nassau, Germany, February 2, 181 5, and came to this country in 185 1. Before that time he had graduated at a noted seminary for teachers, and spent ten years of his life with much honor in teaching in his own comntry. He was a fol- lower of the theories of Diesterweg, Froebel, and Pestalozzi. He was personally acquainted with Diesterweg and Froebel. At the time of his leaving, the government gave him credentials **in appreciation of his advanced ideas and judicious manner of solving the question of religious instruction of different denominations, and for his inde- fatigable zeal for the humanization of his pupils." During the civil war he lost by fire in Galveston, Texas, his library, his manuscripts, and all his property. When the bureau of education was founded in 1867, Dr. Henry Barnard, the first commis- sioner of education, invited Professor Kraus to become connected with the same. The earliest articles in America on the kindergarten system of education were written by him; also in Barnard's volume on the kindergarten and child study, is a history of the rise and pro- gress of kindergartens, prepared by Mr. Kraus to strengthen the posi- tions and recommendations of Mr. Barnard's special report on public instruction in the District of Columbia. In that report the kinder- garten, the connecting link between the home and school, continuing the work of nurture and development, and beginning the work of 230 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, instruction on the school inspection and perception of real objects was made the basis of a system of public instruction for the District. Mr. Kraus' inquiries cover the whole field of early training, the supple- mentary agencies for orphan and neglected children, and particularly all institutions based on the views of Diesterweg, Froebel, and Pesta- lozzi. In the report of the commissioner for 187 1, is an article prepared by Professor Kraus on "The Object of the Kindergarten," with sched- ules of exercises for summer and winter. In 1872, at the Boston meeting of the National Educational Association, Professor Kraus was appointed one of the ** committee to inquire into the form in which Froebel's principles of education may be most efficiently applied to the educational wants of our country." In 1873 he established, in connection with his wife, Maria Boelt^- Kraus, a pupil of Froebel's widow, "The Kraus Seminary for Kinder- gartners, the Model Kindergarten and Adjoining Classes. " Being convinced that the basis of true kindergarten activity can be built up only upon the reform of the family, and that the kindergarten consti- tutes the strong point of all subsequent study and should therefore not be interrupted at the proper school age, but that Froebers princi- ples should be applied to elementary classes, they established classes for mothers, also for nurses, and in their elementary classes adopted the special characteristics of the ** school garden" as developed by Dr. Erasmus Schwab of Vienna, Austria, thus forming the organic link between the kindergarten and the school, Professor Kraus was an honorary member of the General Educa- tional Union in Dresden, Germany, and in 1879, he became a life member of the National Educational Association. He prepared papers upon kindergarten subjects for the meeting for the National Educational Association in Elmira, 1873, in Baltimore, 1876, in Louisville, 1877, at Chautauqua, 1880. He also lectured before the American Institute of Instruction at Fabyans, in 1879. He gave numerous courses in kindergarten work in summer schools. His great- est work, however, is a book entitled "The Kindergarten Guide," prepared in connection with Mrs. Kraus, and published in two vol- umes. Professor Kraus was a learned man with progressive ideas, having a remarkable memory and being an authority on all points connected with infant education. He was a man of genial simplicity of manner and full of enthusiasm, an enthusiastic follower of Pestalozzi, Diester- weg and Froebel. He was worthy of note both in what he was himself and in what he has had the fortune to represent — the introduction of kindergarten methods and principles in America. DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE. JACKSONVILLE MEETING. SECRETARY'S MINUTES. FIRST DAY. MORNING SESSION. —Tuesday, Feb. i8, i8q6. The Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association met in annual session at Jacksonville, Fla., in the new city hall, at 9.30 o'clock. The President, Superintendent L. H. Jones of Cleveland, Ohio, presided. After an invocation by Rev. T. W. Veale, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, the address of welcome on behalf of the city of Jacksonville was deliv- ered by Hon. D. U. Fletcher, ex-mayor of the city. Hon. W. N. Sheats, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Florida, fol- lowed with an address of welcome in behalf of the State Teachers' Association. President Jones responded to the addresses in behalf of the department. A paper on the subject "What is the True Function or Essence of Supervis- ion?" was read by C. A. Babcock, Superintendent of Schools, Oil City, Pa. Then followed a discussion of the paper by Superintendent F. Treudley, of Youngstown, Ohio, and by Superintendent J. H. Phillips, of Birmingham, Ala. Assistant Superintendent Edward C. Delano, of Chicago, 111., presented a paper on "What Is the Best Use that Can Be Made of the Grade Meeting?" This paper was discussed by Superintendent H. E. Kratz of Sioux City, Iowa. The department then adjourned. AFTERNOON SESSION. The session had under consideration the general topic, "How Shall the Best Schools be Brought to the People in the Rural Districts?" Dr. B. A. Hinsdale, of the University of Michigan, presented the first paper, "Some Sociological Factors in Rural Education in the United States." Superintendent Lawton B. Evans of Augusta, Ga., followed with a paper on the same subject. The interest awakened by these papers made it necessary to limit the speakers to three minutes each. Among those taking part in the discus- sion were W. W. Pendergast, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Min- nesota ; £. B. Prettyman, State Superintendent of Schools, Maryland ; Nathan C. Schaeffer, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Pennsylvania; Superin- tendent H. G. Weimer, of Allegheny County, Maryland; Superintendent A. D. Worthington, of Harford County, Maryland; Superintendent Whitcomb, of Lowell, Mass.; Henry Sabin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Iowa; Superintendent Eugene Bouton, of Pittsfield, Mass. The discussion was very animated. The lateness of the hour prevented others from taking part. 232 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. Dacksonvillc EVENING SESSION. At 8 p. m. President Jones called the department to order. After announcing that at the morning session of Wednesday the committees on nominations and resolutions would. be made known, he introduced Dr. J. G. Schurman, President pf Cornell University, who delivered an address on "The Vocation of .the Teacher.*' Professor Edwin A. Alderman, of the University of North Carolina, followed with an address upon "The University and the State in the South." SECOND DAY. MORNING SESSION. —Wednesday, Feb. 19, 1896. The department was called to order by President Jones at 9:30 a.m. The president then announced the following committees. COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS. President C. C. Rounds, Plymouth, N. H. Dr. D. L. Kiehle, Minneapolis, Minn. State Superintendent J. M. Carlisle, Texas. Superintendent £. H. Marks, Louisville, Ky. Superintendent H. P. Emerson, Buffalo, N. Y. COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS. Superintendent F. Louis Soldan, St. Louis, Mo. President George H. Cliff, Philadelphia, Pa. State Superintendent E. B. Prettyman, Maryland. Superintendent A. S. Whitney, East Saginaw, Mich. Superintendent A. R. Whitcomb, Lowell, Mass. The selection of place for holding the next meeting of the department was then taken up. Prior to receiving invitations the following resolution was offered by Superintendent C. B. Gilbert, of St. Paul, and carried: Resolved^ That the vote about to be taken, for a place for the meeting of this department in 1897, be merely a vote of preference, and that the final selection be left with a committee consisting of the officers of this department and the Secretary of the National Educational Association; provided, that this committee shall be guided by the vote of this body in case the city receiving a majority of the votes offers as favorable accommodations and rates as any other. Superintendent W. E. Robinson, of Detroit, Mich, then extended an invita- tion to the department to hold its next meeting in Detroit. This was followed by an invitation from Superintendent A. T. Barrett, of Chattanooga, Tenn., to hold the next meeting at Chattanooga. Superintendent D. K. Goss, of Indian- apolis, Ind., next invited the department to Indianapolis. His invitation was vigorously seconded by the secretary of the Commercial Club of Indianapolis. The balloting gave the following results: Indianapolis 7a Detroit 45 Chattanooga 14 The president then declared Indianapolis the choice of the department accord- ing to the terms of the resolution previously adopted. A paper on "The Necessity for Five Co-ordinate Groups of Studies in the Schools" was read by Dr. W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education. Then followed a discussion of the paper by Dr. Herman T. Lukens, of Clark University, Massachusetts. Next, a paper on "What Correlation of Studies Seems Advisable and Possible in the Present State of Advancement in Teaching" was read by C. B. Gilbert, Superintendent of Schools of St. Paul, Minn. In the absence of Superintendent W. P. Burris, of Bluffton, Ind., the discus- sion of the papers was taken up by President J. G. Schurman, of Cornell Univer- m^i^ Superintendence.] MINUTES. 233 > sity; Superintendent F. L. Soldan, of St. Louis; Professor McMurry, of Normal, 111.; Dr. B. A. Hinsdale, of [the University of Michigan; Professor Walter L. Henrey, of the New York College of Teachers; Superintendent Gilbert, and Dr. W. T. Harris. The last paper of ihe session on "Concentration of Studies as a Means of Developing Character," was read by President Charles DeGarmo, of Swarthmore College, Pa. AFTERNOON SESSION. The session opened by the reading of a paper on "Isolation and Unification as Bases of Courses of Study," by Dr. £. E. White, ex-Superintendent of Schools, of Cincinnati, Ohio. In the absence of State Superintendent Inglis, the discussion upon this paper was opened by Dr. Frank McMurry, of Buffalo, ,N. Y., and Professor Chas* McMurry, of Normal, 111. Dr. White closed the discussion. Then followed a paper on "Organic Relations of Studies in Human Learning," by Dr. W. N. Hailmann, Superintendent of Indian Schools, Washington, D. C. A paper was then read by Professor J. M. Guilliams, Principal of Normal School of Jasper, Fla. Superintendent W. S. Sutton, of Houston, Tex., read a paper on "Courses of Pedagogical Study as Related to Professional Improvement in a Corps of City Teachers." The session then adjourned. EVENING SESSION. Hon. J. L. M. Curry, agent of the Peabody Fund, addressed the department on "Some Educational Questions Pertaining to the New South." THIRD DAY. MORNING SESSION. —Thursday, Feb 20, 1896. The department was called to order by the president at 9:30 a. m. Miss N. Cropsey, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Indianapolis, Ind., read a paper on "What Should the Elementary Schools Accomplish for the Child?" The paper was discussed by Superintendent F. Treudley, of Youngstown, Ohio; Superintendent Aaron Gove, of Denver, Colo., and Superintendent Car- roll, of Worcester, Mass. Then followed a paper on "What Should the High School do for the Graduate of the Elementary Schools?" by Superintendent F. Louis Soldan, of St. Louis, Mo. The same topic was discussed by President Joseph Swain, of the Indiana University. The last paper of the morning session, on "What Should the College and University do for the High School Graduate?" was read by James H. Baker, President of the University of Colorado. The following resolution was then introduced by Superintendent W. B. Powell, of Washington: Resolved J That a committee of nine be appointed to prepare a report on methods and courses of work that will promote a vital connection between the education and physical development of the child; and that the directors of the National Educational Association be requested to appropriate a sum not exceeding $xooo to defray the expenses of the committee. The resolution was laid on the table for further consideration. 234 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville Superintendent F. Louis Soldan then introduced the following resolution rela- tive to the death of Dr. Norman A. Calkins, of New York. IVkeretu, Since the last meeting of this department, Dr. Nonnan A. Calkins, the President of die Board of Trustees of the National Educational Association, has passed away, this department desires to put on record its testimony to the aid he has been to it snd to the cause of education, and their recognition of the loss that has been sustained by his death. Dr. Calkins was the President of the Board of Trustees of the National Educational Association from x886 to the time of his death, a member of the Executive Committee, and an influential adviser in die councils of this department and of the general association. Dr. Calkins was bom in Gainesville, N. Y., in xSai, and began teaching in the district schools. It was early seen that he had an unusual apprehension of the underlying principles of education. He became a valuable instructor in the teachers* institutes. He removed to New York City, and about x86o began to pub- lish a paper entitled the Student and SckoolmeUe^ the main object being to broaden the scope of stndy, which was then very narrow. In 1863 ^ v>s appointed an assistant superintendent of schools in New York City, which position he held until his death, December ax, X895, a period of thirty- two years. Dr. Calkins was untiring in his efforts to find and to put in operation the best methods of education. He advocated the Pestalozzian methods, commonly called "object teaching," at a time when they were held in disfavor by the profession generally. When these methods as expounded and practiced at the Oswego Normal School were attacked before the National Educational Association, and a committee was appointed to investigate and report concerning them. Dr. Calkins, as a member of this committee, reported in favor of the Oswego methods, as being a logical outcome of Pestalozzian principles. Dr. Calkins prepared several volumes on educational subjects; of these Primary Object Lessens and the Manual of Object Teaching had a wide circulation. All his writings show him to be a moat practi- cal and yet a most thoughtful teacher. He was held in the highest esteem by the teachers in the primary schools of New York City. Dr. Calkins became early identified with the National Educational Association, and in x886 was made chairman of its Board of Trustees. At the meeting held in Saratoga Springs in X885 he was chosen as its President. He held the office of Treasurer from 1883 to 1885. He exerted a salutory influence on all he met, for he had a kind and lovable nature. This department has been the recipient of his unselfish counsels and advice ever since it was organized ; be it therefore Resolved^ That we have been greatly pained to hear of the death of our beloved fellow member and associate, Dr. Norman A. Calkins, assistant superintendent of schools in New York City. We recall his long period of membership, beginning in x866 (a life membership beginning in 1879) ; his uniform readiness to counsel and aid the progress of the department; his broad and sound ideas on educational matters; his charming mannen and unfailing courtesy; and above all, his high Christian character and purposes. We desire to assure his bereaved family of our heartfelt sympathy. A good man has gone to his well-earned reward. This resolution was unanimously adopted by the department. In the absence of the chairman of the Committee on Nominations, Superin- tendent H. P. Emerson, of Buffalo, N. Y., made the following report for the committee, recommending as officers for the department for the ensuing year: President— C. B. Gilbert, St. Paul, Minn. First Vice President— K. B. Blodgett, Syracuse, N. Y. Second Vice President — W. S. Sutton, Houston, Tex. Secretary — Lawton B. Evans, Augusta, Ga. The report of the committee was adopted. AFTERNOON SESSION. This session was devoted to round tables. CITY SUPERINTENDENTS* ROUND TABLE. City Superintendents met in the council chamber. City Hall. Superintendent A. K-. Whitcomb, of Lowell, Mass., acted as leader in the discussion of the following topics: 1. What methods are desirable and what have been successful in informing a community of the truth with regard to the management and control of schools? 2. How far is it practicable and desirable for a city superintendent to determine the methods of instruction in a system of city schools? 3. How can a superintendent best improve himself in his work? 4. Should the reading of the Bible be a part of the exercises in the public schools? Superintendence.] MlNVTBS, 235 5. How may a city saperintendent of schools best increase the efficiency of a corps of teachers? 6. How may we best develop and foster the mother element in the teacher? 7. Science work in the grades — what and how much? 8. How can incompetent teachers best be removed from a corps of city teachers? Those taking part in the discussion were Superintendent L. C. Miller, Lima, Ohio; Superintendent D. L. Abbott, Macon, Ga. ; Superintendent Barringer, Newark, N. J. ; Superintendent A. B. Blodgett, Syracuse, N. Y. ; Superintendent H. S. Tarbell, Providence, R. I. ; Superintendent H. A. Wise, Baltimore, Md. ; ' Superintendent W. H.- Baker, Savannah, Ga. ; Superintendent W. R. Harper, Americtts, Ga. ; Superintendent E. H. Mark, Louisville, Ky. ; Superintendent Hobbs, Mount Dora, Fla. ; Superintendent Griffiths, Utica, N. Y. ; Superintendent C. F. Carroll, Worcester, Mass. ; Superintendent Aaron Gove, Denver, Colo. ; Superintendent A. G. Lane, Chicago, 111. ; Superintendent H. P. Emerson, Buf- falo, N. Y. STATE SUPERINTENDENTS' ROUND TABLE. State superintendents met at the Board of Trade rooms. This meeting was presided over by Charles R. Skinner, State Superintendent of Public Instruction of New York. The following topics were discussed: 1. Interstate recognition of state certificates and the interstate distribution of documents. 2. What consideration should enter into a plan for the equitable distribution of school money? ' 3. What are the essentials of successful institute work? Those discussing these topics were State Superintendents H. R. Corbett, Nebraska; A. B. Poland, New Jersey; J. Q. Emery, Wisconsin; J. M. Carlisle, Texas; O. T. Corson, Commissioner of Education of Ohio; Mrs. A. J. Peavey, Colorado; W. W. Pendergast, Minnesota; W. N. Sheats, Florida; J. R. Kirk, Mis- souri; D. M. Geeting, Indiana; Professor Stout, New York. COUNTY SUPERINTENDENTS' ROUND TABLE. The county superintendents met in the rooms of the Seminole club. This meeting was in charge of County Superintendent Joel D. Mead, of Duval county, Florida. The discussions followed the line of the administration of duties belonging to the office of county superintendent. The following states were represented in the discussion: Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. NATIONAL HERBART SOCIETY. The National Herbart Society convened in the Elks' lodgeroom, under the leadership of Dr. Charles De Garmo, in the absence of Dr. John Dewey. Dr. Charles A. McMurry, of Normal, 111., opened the discussion, based upon the second supplement of the "Herbart Year Book" for 1895, considering the subject of "Interest as related to will, "by Dr. Dewey. Dr. Harris, Dr. Brown, Dr. White, and Superintendent Treudley participated in the discussion. SPELLING REFORM ROUND TABLE. The round table of "Spelling Reform" met |n the parlors of the Seminole Club, under Professor Edward R. Shaw of the School of Pedagogy, New York, who directed the discussion along the following lines: 236 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, Qacksonville 1. In teaching spelling how may the necessary series of associations and memories be best established? 2. Can apperceptive methods be employed in teaching spelling? 3. Should a spelling book be employed, or, should the list of words be taken from the reading and science lessons? Those entering into the discussion were Superintendent C. B. Gilbert, of St. Paul, Professor Keppler, of Jacksonville, and Dr. Sanford, of New York. EVENING SESSION. The last session of the department was called to order at 8 p. m. by President Jones. A paper on "Some Practical Results of Child Study" was read by Superin- tendent A. S. Whitney, of East Saginaw, Mich. Then followed an address by James L. Hughes, Inspector of Schools, Toronto, Ont.. on "The Influence of the Kindergarten Spirit on Higher Educa- tion." After this address the report of the committee on resolutions was read by Superintendent A. K. -Whitcomb, of Lowell, Mass., acting as chairman in the absence of Superintendent F. Louis Soldan, of St. Louis. Resolved — ^That the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association extends to the citizens of Jacksonville, her representatives, and particularly her school officers and teachers, its thanks for the care they have bestowed upon the preparations for this meeting, and for their hospitable and cordial welcome. The department returns its thanks to the press for the support which it has lent to the meetings by full and faithful reports of the proceedings. To the various railroad lines the department expresses its appreciation of the courtesies extended by the granting of reduced rates, which have facilitated a large attendance. The department tenders its sincere thanks to its retiring officers for their labors in connection with the meeting, whose signal success is in the first place due to the care with which they prepared the programme and the tact and efficiency with which they have conducted it. The resolution of W. B. Powell was then taken from the table, and after some discussion was amended by motion of Dr. W. N. Hailmann, to read as follows, and passed as amended: Resolved J That a committee of three be appointed by President Jones to submit at the next annual meeting of this body a plan or plans for collecting data as to methods and courses of work pursued at different points in primary schools, with a view to promoting a vital connection between school studies and the educa- tional development of the child. The following committee was appointed under the above resolution: W. N. Hailmann, chairman; W. B. Powell, Miss N. Cropsey. President Jones in introducing President-elect Gilbert, spoke as follows: Before we part, one grateful pleasure remains for me to perform. I wish to introduce to you your new presiding officer, whom you have chosen to guide the future deliberations of your body. President Gilbert, it gives me great pleasure to hand you this, insignia of your authority. These children of ours [pointing to the large audience] are asking you to teach them, and to you I gladly resign the pleasing task. President Gilbert, in accepting the gavel, said: I have been placed in two tight places in this meeting. One was when your honored leader made me a bumper between two of the heavyweights on the programme, and the other was when you called me to be your President. This is the most potent educational body in this country, if not in the world. Into its hands is given the work of shaping the educational future of the United States. When I thought of the responsibility of presiding over the deliberations of such a body of men, I was overwhelmed ; but I accept the responsibility. I have sat among "these children of ours," and have been one of them. I shall be one of them, and shall sit to leara, as before. President Jones then declai^pd the department adjourned. R. E. Denfeld. Secretary. Soperintendcncc] ADDRESS OF WELCOME, 237 ADDRESS OF WELCOME. BY HON. W. N. SHEATS, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUC- TION, FLORIDA. Mr, President^ Members of the Department of Superintendence ^ Ladies and Gentlemen: As the representative of the people and teachers of the state, it gives me unbounded pleasure to give you welcome to Florida. The same cordial greeting is extended to you who have journeyed almost across the continent from north to south as to our immediate neighbors, wrestling with problems and conditions similar to our own. We come together in council to confer about matters alike dear to us, and, since the country is to be what the schools shall make it, to determine how we can best secure the perpetuity of our republican institutions, and render wiser and happier the people of every condi- tion in our common country. We admire the educational enthusiasm of our brethren from the north, expect to profit by learning their way to success in popular education, and ate especially glad of the opportunity to reciprocate some of the kind treatment enjoyed at their hands while among them on occasions similar to this. After visiting your section and learning more of your people, we have always found ourselves more in sympathy and in love with you. We now rejoice that we have been able to entice so many of you down into the far south, where we will arrange for you to come often in mid- winter unless the designs of some of us fail, hoping that you may be affected by a better knowledge of the South and her people, and the peculiar problems confronting them, as we were by a better knowl- edge of you. The white people of every section of our great country are proud of a common ancestry who fought side by side to leave to us the heritage of the best government the world ever saw ; and it is now worthy the ambition and efforts of teachers, who are responsible for the intelligence and largely the prejudices of the next generation, to look to the protection of American institutions, and see that the sons are as united as were their fathers. The welfare of no other race or nationality should entice the South into any alliance detrimental to the North, nor should the North forget the Anglo-Saxon blood of the South in her efforts to promote the interest of any people under the sun. 238 ' NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, Qacksonvillc What matters it that our immediate fathers had a family difficulty? Many families have their little dissensions, and are all the more loving when the quarrel is over. Relying too confidently upon the wcrk of her colleges and the old private academies, the south, it is true, lagged behind for a time in the matter of public education. This backwardness was due in part to the existence of another institution incompatible with popular edu- cation, and in part, also, to the sparseness of population. But the cannons of civil war had hardly ceased to roar before the people in the midst of poverty and misery which their own children and few at the North will ever comprehend, finding themselves unable to educate otherwise, began taxing themselves for the education of their own children and for that of their former slaves. They paid for schools for both races, and it was too often the case that the white boy ploughed to pay the tax while the negro boy sat in the school. Under such conditions you could hardly expect the public-school system to develop rapidly; but it delights us to inform you that **the schoolmaster is abroad in the land" today, and it is being invaded by an army of school teachers whose silent, yet powerful tread, is shak- ing to the earth the walls encircling the Jericho of old prejudices and overthrowing the strongholds of error and ignorance. The South cannot boast of the present status^ but it is exceedingly proud of the progress made in the past fifteen years. Our honored Commissioner of Education, by his address at Atlanta, now published in the Proceedings of the National Educational Association of 1895, has placed the whole South under a debt of gratitude to him which we know not how to pay, unless it be to petition the next president to retain him in the position he has filled' in a most masterful way. While extremely grateful for our part of the exposition of the facts showing the progress of the South in education, Florida is yet a little ambitious to be contrasted with the general showing that is made when she is grouped with her larger sisters south of the Ohio, and extending from Virginia to Texas. It may not be known that Florida, though sparse in population and feeble in taxable resources, yet arrogates to herself leadership in her section on many important counts in common-school education. I was informed by our President that the picket line must fire their small arms quickly and fall back to make room for the unlimbering of the heavy artillery, but I believe this audience will accord me five minutes to make good the claim of Florida by a recital of some statis- tics reduced to as few figures as possible. The record of the school year 1892-3, the latest date obtainable, as published in the report of the commissioner of education, is used. Sometimes the data for Superintendence] ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 239 Florida is taken from the report of the year 1893-4, as the report of the year previous is not full and complete. Another fact to be remembered is that the school age of the group is reduced to the basis of five to eighteen, while that for Florida is from six to twenty-one ; evidently a disadvantage in the showing, as only a small per cent over eighteen years of age go to school. For the sake of brevity I will merely mention the points of com- parison, the average per cent made by the group of ten states, includ- ing Florida, and the average made by the latter alone. The ten states are North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana. The first number in every case refers to the group, the latter to Florida alone. 1. In the number of pupils enrolled in the common schools in every hundred of population the showing is 61 to 66 — the latter more than. Rhode Island or New Jersey, and nearly the same as Pennsylvania. Divided as to race, the showing would be 74 for the whites and 57 for the negroes. Counting the whites alone, it is five points higher than the average for the United States. If it be desired to do justice to the whites of the south, the fact must always be borne in mind that the poverty and indifference of the negro discounts all statistics on questions of merit. 2. Average attendance of pupils as compared with the enrollment is 62 to 66— the latter a small fraction larger than the average in the United States,and greater than in Connecticut, New York, or New Jersey. 3. Average length of school term in days, 87.3 to 105; that is, Florida gave her children within a fraction of eighteen days more schooling in a year than did the whole group of states. 4. Percentage of female teachers, 47.1 to 56.7. This fact may show that the children were taught more conscientiously and indus- triously in the latter, because a larger percentage of Florida's teach- ers were females. 5. On account of blanks in the reports of three of the states, it was impossible to make a just comparison of the salaries paid teachers. Suffice it to say, that the average monthly salaries paid females, white and colored, in Florida, was greater than the average salary paid in either of the seven states reporting, and was only $4.46 less than the average salary paid females in the United States. Monthly salary paid males in the seven states, $31.68, to Florida, $35.50. 6. Amount of school fund raised per taxpayer, $3.86 to $5.08. 7. Amount of school fund raised per capita of school population, $2.53 to $3.76. Lest our own people become too well satisfied with this exhibit, I give the amount raised per capita of school population 240 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [JacksonviUe in three Other states — in Massachusetts $17.91, Montana $21.50, Colo- rado $22.98. 8. Average yearly expenditure for common schools per capita of population, 0.836 cents to Florida, $1.25. Average for the United States, $2.47. 9. Average yearly expenditure per pupil, $6.40 to $8.82. I also read, to prevent too much local pride : The above aver- age for the United States is $18.45 ^^^ Massachusetts $33. 24, Montana $43.44, Colorado $41.34. These latter facts so completely over- shadow the small satisfaction of leading our immediate sister states that we cease the comparison. It was not our aim to boast of the little that has been done in our state, but to call attention to the facts, liable to be overlooked, because Florida is not yet one of the populous and wealthy states of the Union. The public-school system in this state was legally twenty-seven years old the thirtieth day of January last, but it gave little evidence of life and did not begin to take root and begin to grow into the affections of the people until ten years later, so it is today but in its swaddling clothes. As late as 1876 it may be said that there was not a school for higher education in the state, though there were two seminaries in name that were practically graded schools. We have no Harvard University, but a State Agricultural and Mechanical College, East and West Florida seminaries, two state normal colleges (one each for white and black) the South Florida Military and Educational Insti- tute, two independent normals, and three denominational colleges — John B. Stetson University (Baptist), Rollins College (Congregation- alist), and the Florida Conference College (Methodist) — all giving higher education and enrolling altogether about 1200 students. Our public-school system is unique and adapted to the conditions prevailing in our state. I would like to give its main features, but the injunction to be brief continually rings in my ears. Suffice it to say that ours is the county system, allowing certain district features. Except as to the constitutional one-mill state tax, the county is the financial unit — all citizens bearing equally the burden of taxation, except when a district votes to levy a special tax in supplement of the apportionment received from the country. The county school levy is fixed by the constitution between a minimum of three and a maximum of five mills. The maximum dis- trict levy is three mills. As evidence of the willingness of the people to be taxed for schools, a majority of the counties levy the maximum of five mills, only three being satisfied with the minimum. Superintendence.] ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 241 Many districts levy the special tax, thus paying nine mills tax for educational purposes, including state tax, and apply to the same pur- pose all poll taxes, the payment of which is made a prerequisite to voting. Large numbers of the brethren in black deny themselves the right of suffrage by refusing to contribute one dollar toward the education of their children. The right to fix salaries, assign teachers, in fact, nearly all power is vested in a county board of three members, the executive officer of which is the gounty superintendent of public instruction. The state uniform examination of teachers is in successful opera- tion, and is doing much toward raising the standard of teachers. Summer schools under state auspices are held yearly, and monthly county institutes are conducted in most of the counties, both helping to improve our teaching force. All concede that the negro should be educated, and the people bow gracefully to receive and cheerfully carry the load of taxation for the education of all. It can be truthfully said that there is not a child in the state, white or black, but that is within reach of a school and can obtain from sixty to 120 months' schooling at public expense if he will only avail himself of the privilege. The negro is treated more than fairly in the matter of education as statistics will prove. Some are skeptical as to the value he will derive from it. At any rate, we do not desire the help or intervention in his education of persons knowing nothing practically of the race, and who do not propose to live with the condition of affairs they would create. They must be educated in their own separate schools. Their future in the South is a difficult problem that must be solved by the South; and there is in her enough patriotism, enough humanity, enough Christianity, and sufficient wisdom to solve it on the princi- ples of philanthropy to the best interests of the race and to the good of the common country. We pray that no fanatic be encouraged to intermeddle for our molestation and the injury of that people. I should like to tell you of some of the difficulties we have to con- tend with; but, as that would be making public family secrets, I desist. Suffice it to say that here, as elsewhere, like the poor, we have always with us the inefficient officer, the indifferent and unquali- fied teacher, the meddling politician, and the legislatures **born short" on questions of public school economy. Again I bid you welcome to our growing state, our beautiful city, our genial climate, and to the warm hearts and outflowing hospitality of a generous and noble people. 16 242 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS. WHAT IS THE TRUE FUNCTION OR ESSENCE OF SUPERVISION ? BY C. A. BABCOCK, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, OIL CITY, PA. The superintendence of all kinds of work seems to divide itself naturally into two parts. First, the general direction of the effort must be determined — the object to be gained must be conceived ; and secondly, there must be a guidance along the way — the means neces- sary to the attainment of the end must be discovered and used. The true function of school supervision consists in the formation of a right ideal of education and in the use of the best means to realize that ideal. The ideal accepted will determine to a great degree the character of all the means taken to reach the end, just as knowledge of the destination will control even the first steps of a journey. Is it not evident that those who would direct aright even the beginnings of the educational process should have a comprehensive view of the end sought? **Our reach should be wider than our grasp." Many, per- haps the majority, regard education as of value only for its utility, and would limit it to those subjects that are of immediate use in the practice of some craft, or to the knowledge that is essential to the car- rying on of business. Arithmetic, reading, writing, and geography are necessary to the world's commerce, for without these it must cease. Astronomy and the mathematics for their application to navi- gation and to the measurement of land, and the physical sciences, for their utility in manufacturing, are also recognized as needed branches of knowledge. Further examination might prove the value for use of many, if not of most, of the subjects of study. The trouble with the argument for utility is, that it can never con- clude. It leaves its advocates at different points of the ascent, each with his theory limited to his own particular range of vision. What he cannot see to be of use he does not think worth acquiring. It thus begets an economical habit of thought concerning knowledge, and tends to a narrow view of life; at the best, a kind of tinker's philoso- phy, which considers the man of less importance than his job. Superintendence.] TRUE FUNCTION^ OF SUPBRVTSfON, 343 But there is another doctrine, and a better one. It regards the man of more significance than any special work he may do, and there- fore makes it the province of education to develop him. It seeks by training to give to the mind the full possession of its own powers. It regards the attainment of knowledge as in itself valuable, shows its necessity, and is therefore most vigorous in its pursuit. The utilitar- ian argument drops out of sight, because it is found that the knowl- edge which is sought most eagerly — as if its acquirement were the only end in view, its mere possession the sole reward of the effort — is more useful, produces more power, than that which is obtained for some special application. Confronting every human being is the unknown world. To com- prehend this world in terms of its own thought is the task fate sets for every soul. Only as the child becomes acquainted with the objects around him, and begins to know them, does he begin to live. Only as the man discerns the thought underlying the objects of the material world, and makes it his own, does he acquire any power over that world or does it hold any meaning for him. The world of the present or of history has no existence for him who does not re-think it. There are, it is true, inherited tendencies, but there is no inherited knowledge. Each mind has only what it conquers for itself, and each conquest is a larger realization of itself. This movement of life to still larger life, when it is once fairly begun, is felt to be necessary. Its sway over humanity is as sure and as universal as the uplift of the moon upon the sea. Each mind also feels the necessity of struggling for- ward ; is continually prompted to appropriate greater truth by identi- fying itself with it. Whatever touches the life of man — his inner spirit — to finer issues, helps forward the incessant effort to reach better, more complete life, is culture. Culture is not a completed product or possession. It is rather a tendency or habitude of the mind. We believe that education to be the true one which aims at culture, or the promotion of the cultural tendency. It will not seek to develop a few special aptitudes, but will consider all the needs of the man from the widest generalizations of experience and of philoso- phy. It will picture a cultured intelligence, **full summed in all its power," as the crown of all educational effort, and though at times it may give more minute attention to other things, it will still keep this picture in sight. Secondly, it is the function of supervision to use the means neces- sary to the realization of the ideal ; or to organize courses of study, and to see that they are adapted by instruction to the varying capaci- ties of children. This requires, first of all, a knowledge of children. 244 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. OacksonvUlc A good deal has been accomplished in child study recently by the experts. Supervision needs not only to know the results of this study, but to verify them. A knowledge of childhood which is built up simply of general terms, each involving many experiments that are performed by others, will probably be as vague and indistinct as Comenius' pic- ture of the soul in his **Orbis Pictus." It may have form, but not much content. The results of child study will be available only to him who studies children. Great caution should be exercised in form- ing general conceptions about **the child," or any such general con- cept as "the child." There is no child in general, anymore than there is a horse in general. Without attempting to settle the old dis- pute between the nominalists and realists, we will say that if there is a general horse, containing within itself the properties of all horses, no one has yet seen or driven it. So, children we may know and teach, but **the child" never. That is a shadowy term; a kind of metaphysical spook, whose claims to consideration must always give way before the children. Childhood is a distinct period; as different, almost, from that which immediately follows it as the blossom is from the unripe fruit. Children are almost as much a part of nature as the squirrels or the birds; almost as much at one with her. It is a time ''of splendor in the grass; of glory in the flower." Nature makes a delight for the child out of what would be otherwise a hard task — the development of his physical and mental powers by continuous and vigorous exercise. She does this by calling it play. It is doubtful if the common achieve- ments of the first four years of childhood have ever been surpassed by the greatest genius, in the same time, at a later period. In that time most children have learned a language which they will speak well or ill according to the models they have had, and they have learned many of the properties of the most common things. All things are new to the child, and therefore his interest is intense in them. He sees everything in the halo of the morning light. Every day is indeed an epoch to him. He pursues every investigation which has received the impulse of interest with the industry of a detective. As an illus- tration of how much children will accomplish when excited by curi- osity, permit this description of the experience of a three-year-old boy in learning to read, as told by his mother: **Upon the wall of the storeroom some one had scratched *M\ and Lucius was very desirous to know what it was; also, what it was for. I evaded telling, not intending that he should know for some time that there were such things as letters. But one day I told him the name, and to his further query told him it was a part of some Superintendence.] TRUE FUNCTION OF SUPERVISION, 245 word — ^the first part of * mamma,* — and was used in other words. He then wanted M for *Lucius,' but I told him that would not be right. *What would be right?* I answered, *The first letter of Lucius is *L.' 'Make it, mamma.' I did so, hoping his curiosity would be satisfied. A few days later he announces he has found 'M' and *L' on the hearth of the stove, and a whole lot more. *What are these other letters?' Being some little distance from me his questions contained descriptions. *What is the round one? Round one with a hole in one side ? Another round one with a hole in its side and a mark on it?' Without much hesitation 1 replied, *0, C, G.* *Here is one round at the bottom and open at the top ; another one open at the top but not round at the bottom.' It is not strange that he easily remembered U and V since he had noted their peculiarities and compared them with the others before asking about them. **One day he said, *Why are O and I and L together so many times?' He had seen them in papers and on so many places that he thought there must be a why.' I tell him the word and soon he has the word *gas' in the same way. These two were the first he knew as words, but they. were soon followed by many others, though I think no one encouraged him or gave him any help he did not well earn. **His attention was soon attracted to the small letters. *What are these others, and why are they so different?' he asked. He was told that there were two kinds of letters, and he began the same process of hunting down the small letters that he had pursued with the capitals. Now, after about three months of quizzing his mother, he can read fairly well, though he makes some queer mistakes in pronunciation. Care was taken never to give him any information that was not first sought by him." This is not given as an illustration of the most desirable method of teaching reading, but of how great progress a child may make along the line of his interests. Undoubtedly if learning to read had been forced upon him it would have proved irksome, and the same result would have been reached after a great deal of worry and with a much greater expenditure of force. Supervision must so direct the teaching force that it will feel the necessity of knowing children, of learning what they know, how they may be influenced, and what they care for before it attempts to guide them. The interests of children furnish the surest clue for their guidance. If they were set to studying objects for which they care — and to find such is not difficult, for they are intensely interested in all natural things — almost the whole primary course of instruction would grow easily out of this study. They would learn to observe accur- ately, to verify their observations, and to record them correctly. 246 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jackso&TiUe They would learn to read, impelled by the natural desire of gaining information. By the side of this work would naturally belong the humanistic studies — the lives of great men, the early history of our own country, and how it came to be what it is; and, finally, literature as the art of expression, the voicing of truth and emotion in fitting forms. Besides its own intrinsic value, this course of work also furnishes the most appropriate introduction to the secondary schools. Courses of study also need revision. The old common school course, consisting mainly of the three R's, has been called a narrow stream, but one which flowed with a strong, deep current. Whether it was strong and deep or not, it was certainly narrow. Compared with it many modern courses may be said to have broadened out or to have flattened out into swamps. There must be condensation; some branches must be dropped, and only those retained which natur- ally assist each other and which are necessary to the cultural needs of the learner. The course may also be shortened as a whole by sub- stitution. Much of the work in arithmetic is more difficult and abstract than some of the work in algebra, and these may properly change places. Considerable of the time spent upon technical gram- mar might be much more profitably spent upon French and Latin, as recommended by the Committee of Fifteen. We have great hope of help in this direction from the attention which is now being given to the composition of courses as determined by the relations of the sep- arate studies. It is also the function of supervision to look after the interests of the individual whi^e dealing with masses. Companies of learners can- not march through a curriculum and all arrive at the same time. The course of studies may be ** nailed to the calendar," but the child- ren should not be. A certain amount of work may be assigned to each grade or year's work, but the pupils in each grade may be divided into groups, the greater number of groups being formed in the lowest grades and diminishing to two in the upper grades. The individuals of each group may be changed as often as may be neces- sary. Each group progresses as rapidly as it is able, passing the yearly limits when the work is done, and not necessarily at the end of June. If it be objected that this plan of grouping means short recita- tions, the reply is that a child of six years of age or less will learn as much of one subject in a short time as he would were he to devote all day to that subject. His mind refuses to act very long in any one direction; for him **change is rest.** As the child advances in years or progresses in the course, the time of the recitation will be length- ened. Superintendence.] P/SC t/S3/OJS^, ±^tj The plan proposed arranges for five classes or groups in the first year, four in the second and third, three, in the fourth, and two in each of the succeeding. This would in a large measure do away with the discouragement which often results from sending a pupil back to do over again a half or a whole year's work because he has failed at the end. Finally, it is the essence of supervision to so organize instruction that the efforts of both teachers and pupils may harmonize and secure to the learner the highest results in culture. The course which makes culture its aim is the best preparation for life which tho'se students can get who do not complete it tut who are compelled to drop out at different stages pf advancement. Their faces are set in the right direction, and they have been guided awhile along the true path. DISCUSSION. Superintendent F. Treudley, Youngstown, Ohio. — It may be a common- place statement, and yet I do not know how better to express my thought than by saying that the function of supervision is to realize in practice the ideals of the supervisor. In this respect it is like all work to which the race puts its hands. The business man sees in his growing business the realization of long-cherished ideas. The scientist works out the dim visions that come to him and at last gives to them tangible form. The artist, whether he be a poet, giving to his dreams "a local habitation and a name;" a sculptor, impressing upon marble the forms embodied by his imagin- tion; an architect, rearing to heaven his splendid conception of what is fitting in God's worship; a painter, setting forth his thoughts of life and death; a musi- cian, delighting the ear with matchless harmonies — all these, alike, are engrossed in the sole aim of realizing, in tangible forms, what they deem of most worth. In this respect the work of supervision is in common with all other occupa- tions. From many, however, it differs widely, both in the agencies with which it works and in the material upon which it works. It differs in the agencies, for those of the supervisor are men and women, varying in aptitude and capacity for their work. And hence, as a pursuit, the work of supervision is difficult, bafflng, uncertain ; peculiarly prone to yielding ground for discouragement, because one cannot always clearly determine what he has accomplished or the degree to which the products of manhood or woman- hood belong to him, or to the teacher, or to the many agencies engaged, by divine appointment, in the education of youth. The supervisor's work belongs to a realm less visible to the eye than that of occupations engaged upon a different material. He deals with that which is more delicate and refined. But herein is lent a worth of peculiar quality, imparting an almost divine aspect. Because, whereas in other pursuits the work once done is done forever (an immortal work of art may be a discovery, an invention), the work of the teacher, the supervsior grows, changes into more beautiful forms as the soul co-operates all through life — and, may be, through eternity — with tbai 248 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jackaonvillc influence which at an early stage sought to mold it. For life can pass into life to quicken it, invigorate it, enlarge it, uplift it, speed it on its work of self-fulfill- ment A teacher may impress upon his pupil a form of life into which he will grow, not as a statue out of marble, but rather as an oak tree out of an acorn — a work of Deity. And herein life seems to share in the possession of creative power. I have answered thus imperfectly the question, in part, from the standpoint of my view ; for the function of a faculty or power is defined as its natural or as- signed action. It is the function of the eye to see. It is the function of super- vision to realize in human life its ideals. What more is vital to this question? Two elements are of infinite importance. 1. The quality and worth of the supervisor's ideals. 2. Whether, these being worthy, he can incorporate in praotice the thought embodied in these words of Lowell, " Endurance is the crowning quality and pa- tience all the passion of great hearts." And first, let me remark upon the ideals of the supervisor. Does one ask what is the crowning evil or weakness of supervision? I will answer in a word. It is the combination of power with low ideals as to the pur- pose of education. I have heard many times the tribute — and a just one, too — paid in this department to the influence of the superintendents of this country upon the future of public-school education. But often it may be said of teachers, when one thinks of what stands for supervision over them," Thou art mated to a clown, and the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down." I recall Arnold's statement to the effect that he knew no sight more pitiable than the yok- ing of a bright, gifted boy to the neck of an incompetent teacher. I recall the words attributed to Napoleon, " Better an army of deer led by a lion than an army of lions led by a deer." Now, briefly, what are some worthy thoughts of the supervisor's work? That power is more than knowledge? Agreed. That character is the end of life? Agreed, if it be modified to meet the saying of Richter, " I have made out of my life all that the stuff would admit of." But what is character? Who are educated? One has said, " We are the residuum of all that we have done, or felt, or thought," implying that the end of education is the securing of a noble residuum. To come down to more concrete and minute examples. Our pupils are said to be able to read perhaps fluently, but not tenderly, thoughtfully, appreciatively. They are said to know the forms of things; not to realize their contents. They are said to have "eyes which see not; ears which hear not;" it having been forgotten that eye and ear must be attached to the soul if they would perform the work for which they were created. Are these commonplaces? Granted. It is the business of life to invest the commonplace with significance. Education means the conversion of one's seeing "in a glass darkly" into the "seeing as face to face." Education means the realization, as by Peter of old, that "what God hath cleansed" we are not to call "common or unclean." And what is common or unclean upon which his hand has rested? Nay; true educa- tion is identical with religion as defined by Jonathan Edwards, consisting of "ability to know what things are really great; what things are really small." True education is the cleansing of the world for man. It is the taking of nature out of the commonplace and making it glad with intelligence, with thought, with love. It is the peopling of streams, of fountains, of woods, of meadows with greater than the divinities of Grecian mythology — with God him- self. It is the investiture of man with the glory of his birthright; for, if one turns to human relations and human endowments, education is again the ideas of Her- Superintendence.] DISCUSSION 249 ban, those ideas of freedom, of efficiency of the will, of good will, of equity, of justice, which, once gained, make their possessor immortal and earth a vestibule of heaven. The fact is our best teachers stand round about us on every side. It is but the simple truth that principalities and powers stretch out toward heaven from every individual. Archimedes once said, " Give me where to stand and I will move the world." Is there such a place? Verily. Where a man stands is the place of power or weakness. And Emerson expressed it when he said that if we would make our- selves sound and self-sufficient we would be felt to the uttermost parts of the universe. Suppose, now, that by thought, meditation, the reading of great books, com- munion with noble souls, praying to a great Father— not a being dragged to the human level but the Maker of heaven and earth, and one who has said," If a man lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men liberally and up- braideth not, and it shall be given," — the supervisor comes to his kingdom, what then? What then? The world becomes invested with significance and life filled with perennial interest and charm. Then childhood begins to receive its proper investiture. Possibilities expand. Self-complacency, conceit, narrowness, pride — the pride which Emerson called the soul's curse — fly out of the soul as bats out of lighted chambers. Then what does the supervisor become? He becomes a healer of souls ; a bringer of sunshine ; one whose feet are as the feet of messengers of peace upon the mountains; a presence with anointing oil summoning some ruddy shepherd boy from the flock, and sending him along a career, shining more and more unto the perfect day. This is the very essence of supervision, for here is power. It is the power which transforms the world; better yet, transfigures it. It is the power that Dante felt when treading with Virgil the Inferno; that power mani- fested when thought and will are one. What more can be said? Many things. But these two must be said, viz. : First, that the great objective point of the supervisor's art and power must be the teacher, for whom he must have sympathy, and to whom and to whose work he must apply the law of compensation, remembering that, while to some are given gifts of intellect, so that they can "rightly divide the word," to others are given the power to apply truth, and possessed of a grace of manner and a charm of disposition, are able to realize the notable utterance, "Out of the heart are the issues of life." All this, for "as the teacher so the school." And second, and lastly, it must be said that the supervisor, in common with the teacher, must dwell with children if he would receive perennial strength. There is a deep and abiding truth in Dr. Parkhurst's description of teaching as being an incarnation, a descent to narrow limits in order to lift life up, in illus- tration of which he cited the Oxford professor who so loved his little child of feeble mind that, daily, he descended to his narrow limits until he lifted him up to bear oflf a prize at Oxford. We speak reverently here, but we speak truthfully. The power of the Great Teacher was anticipated in Socrates surrounded by Athenian youth. It was illustrated in Pestalozzi kneeling beside the beds of his orphan children at Stanz and teaching them until they fell asleep. It was illustrated in the person of Dr. Howe, when he descended through a single sense into the nar- row life of Laura Bridgman, and led it out into a marvelous light. But, ah, the reward of it, the glory of it ! Life here and life forever with Him who set the great example, and who gave to us this saying, " Unless ye become as little chil- dren, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." 250 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville Superintendent J. H. Phillips. Birmingham, Ala. — The spiritual element as an essential characteristic in efficient supervision has been eloquently presented and f6rcibly emphasized in the discussion of this topic. To all this we most cor- dially assent, but we should not overlook the fact that the essence of school su- pervision implies other and more practical phases. I wish, therefore, to call attention briefly to the practical element in supervision. Contact with actual conditions as found in the average school system, managed by an average board of education, is not calculated, I fear, to develop the spiritual nature of the aver- age superintendent. The topic as given in the programme would suggest that there is some one essential function or essence that must characterize all school supervision, in- cluding that of several provinces widely differing in their requirements, such as state supervision, county supervision, city supervision, and the supervision of a single school. If we eliminate all elements of difference in these several spheres of supervision, and reduce those requirements common to all into a single essence or function, what shall that function be denominated? It would seem to me that the essential essence of all school supervision is intelligent, sympathetic, and conservative leadership. This characteristic must be a primary qualification in every sphere of school supervision. If we undertake to describe more in detail the practical phases of this essen- tial element, I would point out, first of all, what I may call the pedagogical func- tion. The superintendent must be able to lead his teachers in the actual work of the schoolroom. Professional skill and practical common sense are here indis- pensable. In the next place may be mentioned the executive function. The superintendent must commend himself to the school authorities as well as to the public by his business qualifications. He must have the ability to manage, if necessary, the business affairs of the school in a thorough, efficient, and also In an economical manner. He must be a good business man. Again, I would mention, with some degree of diffidence, a phase that most superintendents are compelled to recognize —the political function. The superintendent of a city school system, or of a state school system, if he be successful in accomplishing anything, is forced to be, within his particular sphere, a tactful politician. He must come in contact with politics in its various forms, and must have force of character, tact, and energy, in order to protect and advance the interests of the school. He must, from his position, advise and direct his board of education, and in order to gain and retain their confidence he must not be afraid to assume responsibility. Boards of education, as a rule, are precisely what superintendents make them. When a board of education assumes the entire control of the schools without consulting the superintendent; when it examines and appoints teachers, examines and promotes pupils, constructs courses of study, selects text-books and dictates methods, it is because some feeble superintendent, too weak or timid to assume responsibility, has shirked his duties and placed them in the hands of the board. History shows that when power is once acquired by any body of men that power is yielded with great reluctance. Boards of education must, as a rule, get their conceptions of school management through the superintendent, and su- perintendents are responsible largely for the deplorable conditions found in many school systems. The school superintendent, if he is fitted by nature and educa- tion for his position, must meet the conditions and requirements of educational leadership, and must be courageous enough to assume the responsibility such leadership entails. Saperintcndence.] THE GRADE MEETING. 251 WHA T IS THE THE BEST USE THA T CAN BE MADE OF THE GRADE MEETING? BY EDWARD C. DELANO, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CHICAGO, ILL. It may seem unnecessary to state that the purpose of education is physical and spiritual growth. On this point there is practically per- fect concentration of opinion. While general unanimity as to purpose exists, unanimity as to the processes and methods of education is far from being a universal fact. While all desire and seek the same end, there are disagreeing, if not conflicting theories concerning the means by which the end sought may be most successfully and expeditiously attained. During the present decade educational minds have been exceed- ingly active in the attempt to raise all forms of educative work to a higher plane, more completely in accord with the accurately deter- mined and clearly expressed psychological ideas^f the day. It is one of the most hopeful signs of the times to the leaders of thought in the educational world that the study of mind, in all its varied forms of activity, is so earnestly and generally pursued on account of its prac- tical bearing on the work of the schoolroom. The natural order of mental development, the action of the mind under the influences of its more or less fixed or ever-changing environment, its tendencies in different stages of development, the regulation and proper direction of its ceaseless activity, especially during school life, have become subjects of absorbing interest and of paramount importance to a con- stantly increasing number of teachers in the elementary schools of our country. It may still, however, be safely assumed to be true, that a large proportion of elementary teachers, even in cities, has received but little instruction of a strictly professional character as a prepara- tion for rational and efficient service. Normal schools and schools of pedagogy are becoming more numerous, but their graduates, though annually increasing in number, constitute at present but a small fraction of the great army of teachers employed in our public schools. The deficiency in normal or pedagogical training must be supplied, if supplied at all, by the supplementary work of other agen- cies having in view a similar purpose. Among the notable instru- mentalities of the improvement of teachers and increasing the value of the work done in elementary schools may be mentioned university extension, the summer school, the state association, the county insti- 252 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville tute, and the teachers* reading circle. These agencies, working in different ways for accomplishing the same end, have inspired many teachers with a desire for progress and self-improvement, which have acted very beneficially on the schools with which they are connected. At this hour I have been requested to consider the teachers* grade meeting as a means of modifying and improving educational work. Education, it is true, is a continuous process from the beginning to the end of life, and the multifarious influences, direct and indirect, which make for education in one form or another are continuously active, more especially during the period of childhood and youth. There is a natural sequence in the development of mental power to which all educational methods and processes must conform if the great purpose of education is to be accomplished even to a moderate extent; and the division of this most important period of intellectual growth into subperiods, each requiring mental action in kind and degree appropriate to the developing soul of the pupil as suggested by a close and accurate observation of nature, is based upon a world- wide experience. The arrangement of pupils in grades is followed by a correspond- ing classification of teachers when practicable. As in the industrial world, so in the sphere of educational activity, the division of labor has come to be recognized as of paramount importance. Whether the application of this principle, so efficient in the production of material things, to educational work is wise or unwise is, in the minds of many competent judges, a question not yet satisfactorily answered. But the grades we have ; grades of pupils, grades of teachers. Has the graded school attained the highest degree of efficiency, or is there a plane of nobler achievement than that on which the best of such schools now stand? If our graded schools are to become more efficient in the produc- tion of results most to be desired, the grade teachers upon whom the work of instruction chiefly devolves must become more thoroughly acquainted with the true principles and the natural methods of teach- ing. Not only must knowledge of educational principles be more widely diffused, but skill in their successful application much less rare than it is now. The great and rapidly increasing body of elementary teachers must also be inspired with a desire to perform their work more efficiently and to utilize to the utmost every available means, every accessible source of power, for the realization of that desire. Before considering the utilities of the grade meeting as a means of rationalizing — perhaps, revolutionizing — the processes of teaching pre- valent in many graded schools, it may be well to survey hastily some of the marked defects observable in such schools. Superintendence.] THB GRADE MEETING, 253 With all the obvious and manifold advantages of the graded sys- tem, defects exist which must be corrected or eliminated before the system can produce satisfactory educational results. One of the prominent defects which the intelligent observer perceives in the graded school is the want of unity of purpose, the lack of continuity of effort, of many teachers through whose hands pupils pass in their progress from grade to grade. This defect is one of serious import. It happens too frequently that the results of the excellent work of one teacher (excellent because based on well-established psychological principles) are largely neutralized by the unscientific methods of her successor in the grade above, to whom her pupils pass by promotion. A second defect in graded work arises from the observed tenden- cies of teachers to become isolated, independent factors in the system of which they form a part. They survey, not the whole field of instruction, as defined by the course of study, but only a limited part of it. They perceive no sequence of steps determined by the laws of mind. They perceive n9 connection between the work of their grade and that of preceding and succeeding ones. They fail to recognize the educational relation which one period of school life bears to another. The combined work of such teachers is fragmentary, and its results in every way unsatisfactory. Much of the inefficient work existing in graded schools must be attributed to the inefficient preparation of grade teachers in scholar- ship and professional training. Skill in teaching requires not only a knowledge of educational means which may be supplied by a broad and deep scholarship, but an eminent ability to use such means wisely and efficiently, which may be secured in a large measure by proper professional training. Without further digression, let us seek to ascertain in what way these and other defects of our elementary schools may be corrected and their work be made continuously good from its inception to its close. As is the teacher so is the school. If the schools are to be improved, such improvement must come through improved teachers. Prominent among the agencies for the improvement of teachers, more extensively employed than any other, is the grade meeting. Its ele- ments are homogeneous. The work to be performed by its members is practically the same in scope and detail. All deal with minds in about the same stage of development, and may pursue virtually the same educative course, unless individual peculiarities make deviation desirable or necessary. No situation could be more favorable for developing and communicating educational ideas and methods. The grade meetings of any system of schools are under the imme- diate supervision of the superintendent. In' them he finds the most 254 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION QacksonviUe favorable medium through which to infuse his own spirit into and impress his educational views upon his teachers. The best results of his study, observation, and experience may be set forth here in the most effectual way, with a reasonable assurance that they will be cor- dially received by those whom he seeks to benefit, and materially improve the schools under his direction. He may call into the service of the meeting the brightest and best of his own corps of instructors. He may summon to his aid colaborers from other educational fields whose enthusiasm and ability fit them to inspire with energy and love of progress all with whom they may come in professional contact. The richest fruits which the grade meeting is capable of yielding cannot be secured in the absence of sympathy between the superin- tendent and his teachers. There is no place in the field of educa- tional work in which concord of sentiment and purpose is more essential to success. Sympathy here is as necessary as in the school- room between teacher and pupil. The want of it begets lack of inter- est and failure more or less complete. Henqe the leader of the grade meeting should seek to bring into unison with his own mind the minds of those through whom he would raise his schools to a higher level of educational efficiency. Many a grade meeting has closed without inspiring those in attendance with a nobler purpose or empowering them to do a broader and more effectual work. Through want of sympathy the benefit that might accrue from the varied experience, the extended observation, the profound study of the leader cannot be realized. The purpose of the grade meeting should be clearly defined, and its plans systematically formed. The leader's knowledge of princi- ples, methods, and management should be such as to command the respect and approval of those whose efficiency he aims to increase, whose service as educators he purposes to render more valuable through the application of more rational principles and the adoption of more scientific methods. He should secure and retain the earnest co-operation of those with whom he works. His instruction should be clear and intelligible. He should neither soar to heights unat- tainable nor journey to regions inaccessible to many of his audience. The rich fruitage he would have them gather must not hang too high. Grapes, however luscious, beyond the reach of those who would pluck them are always worthless. The leader's manner should be persua- sive, conciliatory, winning. His criticisms of defective skill, the use of wrong methods, the misapplication of right ones, which may have come under his observation, should be earnest and frank, but so sym- pathetic as to excite rather than extinguish hope. It should be assumed that all present have learned valuable lessons from experi- Superintendence! THE GRADE MEETING. 255 ence, furnishing an excellent basis for better work in future. The grade meeting should not be an occasion for a display of the wit and humor of him who conducts it. Valuable time may be wasted, thought dissipated, attention diverted from essential matter by indulgence in mere pleasantry — entertaining, perhaps, but valueless. An earnest spirit of inquiry, a sincere desire for progress, a determin- ation to engage heartily in such intellectual work as may be necessary to accomplish the objects proposed should characterize all present. To this end the energies of the leader, in fullest and freest play, should be directed. All varieties of school work form appropriate subjects for discus- sion at the meeting under consideration. The kind and quantity of work for each grade having been determined by the course of study, the grade meeting becomes an important, perhaps necessary, means of so directing the efforts of teachers that the best results attainable may be secured. To one conductor of grade meetings it may appear most desirable that all instruction should have an immediate and so-called practical bearing on the exercises of the schoolroom prescribed by the programme. To him methods of instruction would seem to be the most appropriate subjects for con- sideration. To another the psychological principles on which all effectual teaching is based seem of first importance. Perhaps the path of greatest usefulness would be a resultant arising from due con- sideration of both of these conceptions. There can be no doubt that psychological study should form a prominent feature of the work in contemplation. Happily methods devised by others are less fre- quently than formerly presented for unquestioned adoption. The more generally approved way is to acquaint teachers so thoroughly with the laws of mental action and growth that they will be able to devise such methods of instruction as will enable them to accomplish the best results, working in accordance with individualities and with instrumentalities largely created by themselves. Another hopeful and healthful sign of the times is the general trend of thought in the direc- tion of basing all educative processes on the deductions of psycholog- ical study. The usefulness of the grade meeting may be promoted by the presentation of class exercises by teachers who, through the posses- sion of clear and practical psychological knowledge and special skill, have acquired marked success. To some teachers the observation of a little excellent practical work is more valuable than much of the most elaborate theoretical instruction. They cannot from the clear- est oral presentation of pedagogical principles construct a satisfactory ideal of class work. Without becoming mere imitators, they may be 256 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville greatly aided by such practical exhibitions of skill. With due allow- ance for the admitted evils of so-called show work, one may easily believe that valuable suggestions may be derived from such exercises. While it may be generally admitted that methods and principles of teaching should form the distinctive and dominant feature of the grade meeting, it is not difficult to conceive that one of its best uses is the enlargement of the general or special scholarship of its mem- bers. Any form of class or recitative exercise that would accomplish this result might give an impetus to study and investigation in the lines of pedagogical work that would be productive of notably bene- ficial effects on the usual exercises of the schoolroom. The services of a well-balanced specialist might occasionally be secured to supple- ment the superintendent's work in this direction and give greater utility to the meeting. A line of theoretical or practical thought may be suggested at one meeting for general consideration at the next. Pedagogic and other forms of educational literature are so numerous, excellent, and avail- able, that few, if any, imbued with a progressive spirit, will encounter much difficulty in making the needed preparation for such an exercise. The educational journals of the country teem with valuable informa- tion concerning every phase and feature of school work, and their cheapness puts them within the reach of the teacher of the remotest district, of the recipient of the smallest salary. Short talks by previously appointed members, on topics of their own selection and within the limits of their respective grades, often add interest to and increase the usefulness of the grade meeting, by bringing forth numerous suggestions of much practical value, based as they are, on the most successful experience. Nothing so develops, concentrates, rectifies thought as the necessity for the accurate and effectual expression of it. Every teacher needs this power. This feature of the grade raeeting affords an excellent opportunity to acquire a useful measure of it. The query method occasionally introduced into the grade meeting may conduce to happy results. Pertinent questions may awaken in the minds of earnest teachers trains of thought often leading to a satisfactory solution of difficult and vexatious problems. Obstacles considered insurmountable, difficulties believed to be insuperable, through a deeper penetration or more comprehensive vision produced by some happy response to a fortunate query, have been readily overcome. , As in the religious, so in the grade meeting, the experience of each may be profitable to all. This direction may sometimes be given to the meeting we are considering with singularly beneficial results. Superintendence] THE GRADE MEETING. 257 Teachers disposed to be despondent through want of success in any department of their work may not infrequently be roused to greater and more rational exertion on learning that their co-laborers have encountered similar, perhaps greater, difficulties, achieving abundant success in the end. The great variety of circumstances and methods which a meeting of this character may place before its members can not fail to furnish some suggestions that may be usefully applied in every school represented. A practical paper by an efficient principal may now and then be interesting and profitable to grade meetings. Such papers, free from the studied formalities and profound speculations of the association or convention address, often exert a beneficial influence, because replete with educational views and suggestions originating in the field of work in which the members themselves are engaged. The efficiency of the grade meeting would doubtless be considerably increased if principals more frequently participated in its exercises. What better way of expressing the sympathy so constantly needed by teachers in the difficulties and perplexities of their work? One of the most important and necessary uses of the "grade meeting is to enable every teacher to perform the scholastic work of her grade as efficiently as possible. To this end every subject in the prescribed course should be carefully and exhaustively studied, and the most effectual method of presentation be determined. The educative value of every subject should receive due attention, and methods of study and recitation deducible from the laws of mental action should occupy no small portion of the time of the grade meeting. The natural relation and sequence of subjects, their natural dependence, their relations as auxiliaries cannot be neglected here without detri- ment to the efficiency of school work. There are multifarious ques- tions concerning school management which cannot be more fruitfully discussed or more definitely settled on what may be called a practical basis than in the grade meeting. The most elaborately woven edu- cational theories, gathered by careful and extensive reading, having been subjected to the test of the schoolroom, may be presented, dis- cussed, approved, or rejected, as they have stood or failed to stand the strain imposed upon them. The newest assumed educational facts may be brought into the grade meeting, and there exposed to the scrutiny of those eager for such information as can be of practical use in everyday work. In all exercises of the grade meeting the centrifugal tendency of thought must be carefully and constantly guarded against by the leader. When all minds are vigorously held to the central idea ; when 17 ^5^ MATIOI^AL EDUCATIONAL ^55(9<:/^ T^/OM [Jacksonville every statement made tends to the elucidation or development of that idea, the value of the grade meeting is greatly increased. The concentrated attention of every member is necessary, that the content of the leader's directions and instructions may be fully and correctly grasped; that ignorance, partial understanding, or entire misconception of what is said may be avoided, and a fruitful source of subsequent evil be prevented. Educational appliances may be conspicuously absent from the grade meeting, but the presence of a body of earnest teachers, con- scious of their needs and defects, taught by experience the necessity of a better equipment for a better performance of their work, eager to improve every facility to enlarge their theoretical and practical knowledge, anxious to utilize every means by which their views of education and educational agencies may be extended, affords an opportunity for useful work rarely possessed by the professional school. DISCUSSION, Superintendent H. E. Kratz, Sioux City, Iowa. — It is evident to even a cas- ual observer that at present the trend of educational thought is from the extreme of dead uniformity, on the one hand, to the other extreme of impractical indi- vidualism. Only a few years ago the autocrat of uniformity ruled us as with a rigid rod of iron, and we bowed in meek subjection to his tyrannous decrees. System was the touchstone by which schoolroom work was tested. If it failed in this essen- tial it was, like salt that had lost its savor, good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of — superintendents. We rigidly classified the pupils according to some exact but superficial mem- ory test. We conjured up a fictitious average pupil, through whom, we fondly believed, the exact amount that a class should do could be accurately measured. We laid out an inflexible course of study, measured by the supposed capacity of that fictitious average pupil, and religiously tried to cram that course of study down the mental aesophagus of each child, nolens volens, without any special re- gard to his individual powers of assimilation. Woe unto the teacher who dared change or adapt in the slightest degree the course of study, or modify the prescribed methods of presenting each subject! We are led to exclaim, Oh, Uniformity, what crimes have been committed against the children in thy name! We are in danger now of rushing into the other extreme of impractical in- dividualism. Uniformity is apparently regarded by some as an evil per se to be rooted out wherever found. This will certainly lead to disorganization and de- moralization. A certain amount of system and order must characterize the work of our schools. I am, however, heartily in accord with the efforts recently put forth to gain an insight into the chief characteristics of each individual pupil, so that instruc- Superintendence.] I)/SC VSS/ON^. 259 tion may be adapted, not to a fictitious average pupil, but as far as possible to the peculiar mental aptitude and needs of each pupil. I also believe heartily in the view that we need more than ever before to con- serve the individuality of our pupils. The time has come in our complex and highly differentiated civilization when we must more carefully study individual traits; more carefully seek out and nurture special ?.bility and adjust students to their life work — their special niche. In order to secure these results, a course of study must be regarded as a mere outline which the teacher is to adapt, as far as possible, to the individual require- ments of each child. To give the teacher this freedom is the logical deduction of our plea for the conservation of the individuality of the pupil; and for the same reason she must be given much latitude as to the methods she employs'. In the evolution of the efficient teacher three stages can easily be traced, viz.: First, the imitative stage, which is chiefly characterized by the careful imitation of the manners, methods, and devices of some former favorite teacher. But little thought characterizes this stage. Attractive methods are industriously sought out, and eagerly swallowed without any thought of analysis or assimila- tion. Some teachers never evolve out of this tyro stage, and may be termed cases of arrested development. Second, what may be termed the irrational stage, in which there is much said about pedagogical principles and doctrines and very little done alopg the line of their wise application. We hear about "from the concrete to the abstract," but see that order frequently reversed in the schoolroom. We hear glib talk about apperception, interest, concentration, etc., but look in vain for their intelligent application in schoolroom work. This may be characterized as a hopeful, per- haps necessary, stage in their future evolution. Last comes the thoughtful stage, in which everything that enters into school work, whether it be principle, or material, or method, or device, is subjected first to most thoughtful scrutiny, to see whether it commends itself to the judgment' and then subjected to the still more critical test of results in the schoolroom. This is the stage that is characterized by enthusiasm, growth, progress, ever- increasing efficiency and power. As far as teachers' meetings are concerned, the superintendent generally tries to increase the efficiency of his teachers through three kinds of meetings, viz. : First, the general teachers* meeting, held either in sections or in one body, in which his chief purpose is to stimulate his teachers to a more energetic, thoughtful, and intelligent work through a better understanding of the child and the general principles which underlie successful teaching, to inspire them with greater enthusiasm and love for the work, and to foster a stronger esprit de corps\ second, the principals' meeting, in which he is in consultation with his principals, as his cabinet or advisers in shaping the plans of work; and last, the grade meeting. If the work of the general and principals' meetings has been carried on as indicated, then the work of the grade meeting chiefly resolves itself into the con- sideration of how the subjects of that grade in whose interests the meeting has been called shall be presented. We take it for granted that there is no need to present subject-matter in the grade meeting, except when a new subject is being introduced into the course of study. Hence the grade meeting chiefly considers the best methods of presenting to a class the subjects taught in that grades Shall the superintendent, having confidence in his own judgment, present what he thinks to be the best method of teaching a certain subject and insist 26o NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville that his teachers strictly follow his method? A great many objections can be justly urged against such a course. Suppose the subject be primary reading. Dare he, on his own judgment, and without the searching test of schoolroom ex- perience, insist that all his primary teachers must sink their individuality and rigidly follow his method? Such a course as that would almost certainly invite failure, and would indicate on the part of the superintendent a sublime confi- dence in his own infallibility. Better will it be for him and his teachers if he present a method as skillfully as he may be able, commend its merits and criticise its defects; or, better still, he can give a general outline as to what he wishes presented and hew it should be presented, and then wisely leave the exact details to be worked out by his teachers. *He should invite the freest and fullest discussion of the plan of the work, and be ready to adopt any good sugt^estions or modifications which may come from his teacheis. The superintendent needs to exercise much good sense here, so as to discriminate between criticisms aimed at his plan and those aimed at himself. The personal element must not enter here. Best of all, remembering that he has those three classes of teachers to deal with, the imitative, the irrational, and the thoughtful, he should invite one of his most successful teachers to present her plan of teaching a certain subject, or request her to instruct a class before the grade meeting. Wise choice is necessa- ry here, so as to secure a teacher of judicial temper, who will not be easily dis- turbed by the sharp cross-fire to which she will likely be exposed when her work is thrown open to discussion. The superintendent must wisely direct and shape the course of the discussion, and from his knowledge gained through schoolroom visitation thoroughly vitalize it. This I regard one of the most helpful modes of conducting a grade meeting. In the study of the best plan of teaching a subject, there are so many com- plex elements that enter into it, so many important results in the child's develop- ment that should come out of it, that I dare not as superintendent trust myself to simple theory. I dare not dogmatize where so much is at stake. When there comes a conflict between the results attained in the schoolroom and what judg- ment seems to indicate, I bow to the dictum of intelligent experience rather than to that of cold, logical theory. I am, therefore, fully convinced that that kind of teaching which has been thoroughly tested in the schoolroom, and has produced the best results there, is the teaching which should be presented as an object les- son in the grade meeting. Superintendence.] SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS, 261 SOME SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS IN RURAL EDUCA- TION IN THE UNITED STATES. BY B. A. HINSDALE, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. Education is one of the most important social functions. It is society that, employing its various agents, uses the accumulated knowl- edge and thought in its possession to form the character and direct the lives of the new members that are constantly being admitted to its ranks. In this way education acts strongly upon the social func- tions; so strongly, indeed, upon some of them that it may be said to determine their character. Nor is this all. It is equally true that the other social functions act strongly upon this one, serving to deter- mine both the quantity and the quality of the education that society furnishes its members. It is to the discussion of this second proposi- tion, limited as it is in the programme, that this paper will be devoted. First, however, we may take a broader view of the subject, for the purpose of seeing more definitely what it embraces. In the month of August, 1891, the Swiss celebrated two notable anniversaries. On the first day of the month the confederacy cele- brated the sixth centennial, and on the fifteenth the city of Bern the seventh centennial of their respective foundations. Every man who gave any real thought to these two anniversaries must have remarked that the place of Switzerland in the history of the world, and in the present life of the world, is quite incommensurate with her territory, population and natural resources, and must have reflected upon the causes that have made it so. The Swiss area falls a little below 16,000 square miles, and the Swiss population a little below 3,000,000 souls. Together Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are somewhat less in size and somewhat more in population. Among the causes of the disparity to which attention has been directed, high place must be accorded to education. The federal constitution of Switzerland con- tains these provisions: **The cantons provide for primary instruction, which shall be sufficient, and thus be placed exclusively under the direction of the secular authorities. It is compulsory, and in the pub- lic schools, free. The public schools shall be such that they may be frequented by the adherents of all religious sects without any offense to their freedom of conscience or belief." The country ranks among the foremost in the world in respect to public education. The amount of money expended on schools of various kinds is relatively high, while illiteracy in large parts of the country has been practically anni- 262 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville hilated. In the year of the two centennials referred to, primary edu- cation cost on an average forty francs, and secondary education 151 francs, to the scholar. The average expenditure for primary schools was ten francs for each inhabitant. There were, however, marked differences in different parts of the republic. The best cantons com- pare favorably with the best states of North Germany. While the German and the French cantons, other things being equal, are on the same footing, the Italian cantons fall far into the rear. The contrast between the Protestant and Catholic cantons is marked. Not only do the Protestant cantons surpass the others as a rule, but the Cath- olic ones rise higher in the scale the more they have been touched by modern progressive influences. In the full Protestant cantons the school attendance is one to five of the whole population, in the half and half cantons one to seven, while in the Catholic cantons it is one to nine. Zurich makes an excellent showing; but Zurich has an edu- cational history running back for centuries. It contains the largest of the Swiss cities; next to Geneva, it has the densest population, and it is also very wealthy. Protestant controversialists have been prompt to ascribe the superiority of the Protestant cantons in general solely to religion, but it is only fair to observe that, as a class, the Catholic cantons are the more mountainous, the more thinly populated, the poorer, and the more backward. Such cantons as Uri, Schwyz, and Unter-Walden-Nied expended but three francs for each inhab- itant on education, while Zurich, Schaffhausen, and Basle expended fifteen, sixteen, and twenty-four francs, respectively. Uri, Schwyz, and Unter-Walden-Nied, which formed the original confederacy in 1 291, all abut upon the great central lake; they are all small, infertile, thinly populated, containing no considerable towns, and are largely devoted to grazing and pasturage, Uri has the sparsest population of all the cantons, save alone the Grisons, which lies on the Italian side of the Alps. Now, in studying Swiss civilization these facts cannot be separated. They hold together. They give an excellent example of the interaction of social forces, or of the mutuality of cause and effect. Change any one of the factors, and you change more or less the whole circle to which it belongs. So much will suffice to illustrate what is meant by sociological factors in popular education. The subject as defined on the programme offers to our minds many extremely interesting phases. It will be best, however, to confine our attention to such phases as have also practical importance, holding out some promise of reform or progress. First, we will give attention to density of population. The import- ance of this element in the rural-school problem becomes obvi- ous at a glance. In populous localities fewer schools and districts Superintendence.] SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS, 263 relatively, are called for, while, at the same time, owing to the larger numbers and the more varied attainments of the pupils, the system can be more fully developed. The school and the home under the present system cannot be far apart; otherwise children will attend the school with difficulty, or not at all. Once more, the interest and enthusiasm of pupils and teachers depend directly upon the number and the ability of the pupils present. For the majority of children individual instruction, or anything closely approaching it, is not to be commended. Aristotle condemned such instruction on political grounds. It is also to be condemned on peda- gogical grounds. Children need the inspiration of numbers. Besides, there is a larger ethical element in numbers. As a rule, you can no more make a good school out of a half-dozen pupils than you can make a powerful galvanic battery with one or two pairs of plates. Then, again, the question of cost is directly involved. Where pupils are scattered and the schools are small education is necessarily very expensive, provided it is at the same time good. Generally, however, it is bad. Some twenty years ago I investigated one of the oldest townships in Northern Ohio in respect to its school condition, and with these results: Number of schools, 7; youth of school age enumerated, 191; pupils enrolled in schools, 103; average daily attendance of pupils, 71; average size of schools (number of pupils), 10; largest enumeration in any district, 85; smallest, 12; largest enrollment, 37; smallest, 3; largest daily attendance, 25; smallest, 3; largest cost per pupil in any district, $42.66; smallest, $18.56. Argument is not needed to show that this was an inefficient and wasteful system of education. How much better it would have been if the seven schools could have con- solidated, thus putting all the pupils under two or three teachers. I remember a school in Ohio within sight of my own home that was kept in session a whole summer with but two pupils in attendance, and these two were all there were in the district. My father, who was a man of close observation, was in the habit of remarking in my boy- hood that a farm of 1000 acres situated all in one school district would, as a rule, spoil the school by reducing the number of children; and I have often seen confirmation of his statement. The census office at Washington considers those parts of the country that have a population of less than two to the square mile unsettled. These parts amount to a little more than one-third of the whole, not including Alaska. In constructing its tables and maps to show density of population, the census office excludes the cities, or those centers of population containing 8,000 persons or more. In 1890, the second of the two rules excluded, 443 centers of population, 264 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jackson villc containing an aggregate of 18,235,670 inhabitants, or 29.12 per cent, of the whole. The whole country, less the parts excluded by the first rule, the census office has divided with reference to certain maxima and minima of population, as follows : a to 6 to a square mile 592,037 square miles 6 to 18 to a square mile 394,946 square miles 18 to 4S to a square mile 701,847 square miles 45 to 90 to a square mile 235,148 square miles 90 and above to a square mile 24,312 square miles Total 1,947,287 The superintendent of the census makes some interesting remarks upon the economical signification of these statistics: These limits define in a general way the extent and prevalence of various classes of industries. This group, two to six to a square mile, indicates a population mainly occupied with the grazing industry or a widely scattered farm- ing population. The second group, six to eighteen, indicates a farming popula- tion with systematic cultivation of the soil, but this either in an early stage of settlement or upon more or less rugged soil. The third group, eighteen to forty- five to a square mile, almost invariably indicates a highly successful agriculture, while in some localities the beginnings of manufactures have raised into this group a difficult farming region. Speaking generally, agriculture in this country is not carried on with such care and refinement as yet to aflford employment and support to a population in excess of forty-five to a square mile. Consequent- ly, the last two groups, forty-five to ninety and ninety and above to a square mile, appear only as commerce and manufactures arise and personal and profes- sional services are in demand. He might have introduced education with equal propriety. The statistics given throw a direct light upon school material and an indi- rect one upon school resources. Much the same may be said of churches and the intellectual and moral instruments of society gener- ally. There is, therefore, cause for deep regret that such large areas of our country are falling off in population. From 1880 to 1890 more than 400 counties, or about five times as many as there are in the state of Ohio, suffered in this way. But, secondly, the character of the population must be considered as well as its numbers. It is evident that a certain homogeneity is very conducive to public education. The children of such a community can be educated together, and hence more cheaply and more effec- tively. One system of schools suffices for all classes. But if the children must be collected in different schools according to non-edu- cational tests one of two things will certainly happen ; either public education will become expensive, or it will become inferior in quality. Looking at the subject from this point of view merely, it is unfortun- ate that, in such large portions of the United States, popular educa- Superintendence] SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS, 265 tion should be so embarrassed by the race question. In 1890 the per cents of white and colored population, respectively, were distributed in the five great divisions of states that the census office recognizes in the following manner: • White, Colored, Per cent. Per cent. North Atlantic States 98.4 1.6 South Atlantic States 63.2 36.8 North Central States 98.0 2.0 South Central States 68.3 31.7 Western States 94.8 5.2 If per cents for the states severally were given the contrasts would be still more striking. The per cent, of colored people in New Hamp- shire, for example, was .18, while in South Carolina it was 59.87. Now, there is little probability that the educational value of such statistics as these will be exaggerated. The presence of a large colored population in any community tends to affect popular educa- tion unfavorably in three ways. It increases its cost, makes' its qual- ity inferior, and lowers both the intellectual and moral level of society and its money-earning capacity. In one respect, however, the rural parts of the country are better off upon the whole, than the cities. Religious differences do not disturb popular education to the same extent. Relatively, parochial schools are fewer in number. In the third place, the wealth of society is a very important factor in education, and particularly in rural education. Naturally the per capita wealth of the several divisions of states varies greatly. In 1890 these were the averages: North Atlantic States $i> 132 per capita South Atlantic States 519 per capita North Central States 1,129 P^*" capita Soutn Central States 583 per capita Western States 2,250 per capita In the North Atlantic states the maximum was in Rhode Island, %i^^^g per capita; the minimum in Maine, $740. In the South Atlantic states the maximum was in Maryland (excluding the federal district), $1,043 /D-ri^ mj,nt Vjhe southern half of tliis Union hasjior a quarter of a centurvlbeen the battle ground of a great social conflict/^tween the forces of dn an- cient, unique, and forceful civilization, bred into the bone of the peo- ple, and the new and strenuous influences of modernism and innovatiqg/ This revolution has been comparatively free from violence and haste^ Thoughtful men at a distance and thoughtful men on the scene of action have failed to recognize the deeper meaning of the transition at play about them. They have, indeed, beheld some new and strange things, such as old leaders losing their followers and new leaders rising among the people; and they have heard a very babel of voices, some frantic, some callow, some sordid, and a few nobly and truly wise. Something out of the ordinary was needed to embody in a graphic and impressive way the permanent elements in this large movement. Those of us who were fortunate enough to stand in the plaza at Atlanta this fall, and to behold that noble display ranged about the Piedmont hills — the work of former master and former slave — felt that we were in the presence of a mighty herald crying to the world the triumphant culmination of the labor of a ruined and conquered people, and proclaiming to all men that the long slumbering land, freed from hindering tradition and the paralysis of war, had enrolled itself at a bound among. the great industrial democracies of the world, f J'he direction and elevation of this social new birth is the surpass- ing duty and function of all educational forces, and more especially of the higher education in southern HfeJ Whether there shall issue from the conflict an enlightened civiliza- tion, blending the lovableness and charm of the old with the vigor and freedom of the new, or some unhappy system made up of crudities and ancient prejudices, is the task set for this generation of southern educated manhood. Superintendence] UNIVERSITY AND STATE IN THE SOUTH. 279 Qlsolated, individual, conservative, the South of the past held itself proudly aloof from the ferments of modern society, went its own way, and created its own dominant dramatic order. ^Kis order was a sys- tem of contrasts and lights and shadows. It produced neither wealth nor lettersJ It dishonored labor, arrested immigration, minimized invention, unified industry, and exalted caste^ ^he academies and private schools of the time, conducted by scholarly and devoted men, were numerous and effective — indeed, almost perfect — instruments for the purposes of the time ; but the common schools, branded with the burning badge of pauperism, could not thrive. Yet there issued from this order the smallest, the alertest, the most powerful political force in Christendony The American Union had sprung from their brains, had been maintained by the valor of their arms, and had extended its territory under their guiding hands. By a strange his- toric paradox the causes of their weakness became as well the causes of their strength. The dangers and antagonisms of a militant labor system made them masterful in action and persuasive in speech. Baronial life, with its leisure and inherited overlordship, made them ^ as simple as shepherds and as proud as kings. In the placid afr of their enlightened mediaevalism lingered the brave old ideals of cour- age, and beauty, and gracious dignity. There was but one over- shadowing southern question then, and this for its treatment did not so much need universal thrift and the spirit of gain and growth as it did character, principle, oneness of purpose, and chivalric codes of conduct. Hence all the forces of the time concentrated on these lines, and there arose an assertive, sensitive, dauntless race of men^ esteeming life less than honor and loyalty more than gold; who wrought with a sad, titanic sincerity for their doomed cause, with- holding nothing, compromising nothing, until the mighty struggle wore to its sublime and pathetic close at Appomattox. The great war, in the mystery of historic forces, freed the white man, rolled away his burden, and enrolled the South in competition with the great industrial democracies of the world. Its problems, no longer direct and primitive, are their problems, intensified by the painful processes of social transformation. (The old individualism has — given place to combination and capitalism, servile labor to free labor, and with this the best products are to be raised, the best goods manu- factured, and the best routes to market devised. Our first work is o r — — - ' ' . ' ' '■ to possess the land and subdue \C\ The law of the passage of society <; from the patriarchal to the eccmomic stage necessitates the higher organism, the subtler brain, the more cunning hand. Hence, like a belated army, th* south is seeking to conquer a place in material civ- ilization; its dreamers become captains of industry and its doctrin- 28o NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville aires lords of trade. Under this new goad to effort we are becoming builders of cities, producers of wealth; and both the dangers and opportunities that await us are the dangers and opportunities of an industrial state. In the wake of this emancipation from the old subtle social creed that suppressed individual effort, there are other wider issues. Perhaps the very widest is the wise and just guidance of the irrepressible instinct of democracy, restrained for generations, now asserting itself in the. upheaval of the plain people — the third estate — who are every- where coming to the front, demanding their share in government and challenging the authority of the ruling class. Our untrained men are learning to govern by governing pedagogically and historically; a wise process, for that surely is better than to be governed and remain ignorant. The situation is not without great hopefulness. The rank and file of this popular uprising are the best material in the world for the making of educated citizenship. The Civil War revealed their value to the world and constituted their university. Its ntarches and dangers opened their eyes and gave them their outlook on life. They and their sons, the younger element in the movement, are men of unmixed English and Scotch-Irish blood; inheritors of the Anglo- Saxon consciousness; descendants of men who sacrificed peace and life for principle in three wars; keen-witted if untrained; their very excesses the result of boundless faith in the majesty of their govern- ment. The tasks awaiting adjustment by these men, sure to attain and hold power in the end, are enough to appall the wisest statesmen and profoundest social scientists — the remodeling of constitutions, the settlement of grave questions of suffrage and property, the reconcilia- tion of classes, and, greatest of all, the problem of the two races. The sentimentalists and partisans of the reconstruction period fancied that they had settled the question which had disturbed the dreams of Jefferson, which had perplexed and affrighted the national conscience through all its history, and which had just evoked the mightiest moral energies of the century. But their solution was no solution. It was solemn op^ra bouffe. The problem had just begun and remains the transcendent sociological problem of the age. Rant will not dispose of it, nor ignorant gush, nor race prejudice, nor the philosophy of the sentimental and the remote; but it must work itself out on southern soil by the wisdom of southern men of both races. It must pass into the region of scientific study and investigation. The southern scholar must make it his province in the still air of the university; the statesman and publicist must ponder it, and the cap- italist may well reckon with it amid his gold. What manner of men, then, does the South need in its coming life? Supcrinlendcncc] UNIVERSITY AND STATE IN THE SOUTH. 281 Perhaps in the past we set too much store by wise leaders and neglected to provide for wise followers. If so, the irony of fate is sporting with us, for now in the threatening danger of these great questions we are practically leaderless. The old type of leader, soft- ened by fortitude and idealized by woe, has passed away, canonized by love and letters. The voluntary and occult forces of the times are seeking diligently to fashion the new. Now and then we seem to get a glimpse of our leader — as when Henry Grady, with his golden tongue and free, spacious spirit, uprose upon the South — a radiait prophecy of its future manhood ; but it is only a glimpse. The mere industrial man will not answer our need, though there are lands to be tilled and factories to be built, and the madness of exalting empty political pre-eminence above the science that will dignify labor and procure food can never again curse our life. The mere orator or politician or scholar will not do. There must be a complex of all these — the man of free spirit and constructive habit, the man of insight and effectiveness, of utility and beauty, of action and con- templation. He shall, above all, have faith and sympathy with the blundering masses, and shall be endowed with that patient wisdom which can await the unfailing rectitude of public impulse and can keep its faith through unpromising days. Like Fichte at the king's council board, or Luther to the burgomasters of Germany, he shall plead unceasingly and above all for education in the colleges and schools, in the press and in the public library. If our laws and institutions are not to become the crude experi- ments of the ignorant or the bold devices of the corrupt; if the South is to outgrow years of economic misconception; if the teachers in our schools are to be true teachers, educated men rather than party chieftains or untrained place-seekers, they must lead our civilization. The potential of trained mind must constitute the test of true leader- ship in the South hereafter. The popular contempt for higher educa- tion and the popular pride in the self-made man is always widespread and strong among untrained people. The feeling is a sort of retribu- tion upon scholarship and educated power for its cowardice and sel- fishness, but it is none the less defiance of common sense. The edu- cated man may not always be in place, but he is sooner or later in power. The higher education is the dynamic element in the life of the community, invigorating the schools of the people, bravely strug- gling to elevate the common standard of living, supplying the state with its teachers in the schoolroom, the press, the pulpit, the family. Out of the universities of the world have come its creative move- ments and men — religious freedom in the old world and civil liberty in the new. Modern Germany is the child of her universities, and relies 282 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville more firmly for her permanent power upon them and their 28,000 stu- dents than upon her invincible soldiery. Blot out the influences of Harvard and Yale and the colleges of the Atlantic seaboard, and what art can estimate the loss in moral elevation, practical power, or national character? The great Columbian Fair, with its splendor and beauty, will fade away as a dream, but its neighbor, the University, will shape Western life for unnumbered generations. Wherever tyranny has sought to oppress the weak or ignorance to rule the wise; wtierever the borders of light have needed to be enlarged or ancient ancf prosperous shapes of wrong to be cleansed from the land, the gray walls of the university have yielded up its spiritual battalions — strong in the steadfast purpose and cultivated brain — discoverers of thought, conservators of truth, stimulators of mind, sowers of seed that will bear fruit in a fairer time. The feeling is instinctive that men of this stamp and quality must serve a state in epochs of down- fall and trial. Humboldt and Stein, the men of Leyden and the Eng- lish of the Reformation, felt that times of national crisis and sorrow demanded that life should attain the highest standard, not only to prevent disaster but to insure existence. The South has not failed in this feeling, as its brave efforts to establish and maintain schools and colleges for both races quite eloquently show ; but the needs of south- ern society are so great, her young men seeking training are so count- less, the work of all the colleges is such a fraction of what is left to be done, the disheartening rivalries and bickerings among the col- leges themselves are such distressing proofs of the need of higher education, that it has seemed best for me to leave the question of technique and administration to wiser men, and, even in this presence, to plead for the thing itself. We are not all of one mind as to how the great need shall be sup- plied. Shall the organized state trouble itself about this matter, or shall it be left to private initiative? There are those who insist that this vital thing is not a concern of the states, whose highest functions they declare are symbolized by the policeman's club or the law's pen- alty. And then, there are the prosperous communities, with amassed wealth and settled material skill, who say to us that we must wait upon the impulses of philanthropy or the activities of the church for our educational foundations. But the nature of the state is at vari- ance with the limitation of its powers to civic regulation, and the instinct of civic self-preservation decides against trusting wholly to individual generosity or ecclesiastical agencies for an universal social necessity. The state is not the government alone ; it is the will of the people expressing itself in beneficent institutions as well as in penal or protective codes. The protective function of a state, indeed, Superintendence.] UNIVERSITY AND STATE IN THE SOUTH. 283 may disappear as reason advances, but the loftier educational func- tion will increase as social relations grow in complexity. From the standpoint of right there is no power to which the state can delegate its duty and power to educate, for there is no higher power than the state. If there is a higher power in the state than state, then that power is the state. From the standpoint of political common sense the agent of social salvation should be at least as potent as the extent of social peril. Our social peril is superlative, involving education or migration or revolution. The most potent conceivable agent is the state, which is concerned about and surely is responsible for its own life. Therefore it is the all-powerful state- that must main- tain itself against vital danger. If it be conceded that the youth of a commonwealth have the same right to be educated that they have to be free, then it must also be conceded that the state is responsible for and alone has the power to guarantee the granting of this sacred right. To those who concede the state's right and duty to educate in the primary education and deny it in the higher, it may be answered that an argument for any education is an argument for all education. If the state has a right to educate at all, it likewise has the right to determine the extent and character of that education. All knowledge is comparative, the higher education of one age becoming the lower of the next, and there can be no dead line in learning at which knowledge ceases to be good and becomes useless. The three **R*s" are indispensable; but mere reading is not reading with profit, and the one is as indispensable as the other. Higher edu- cation simply means more education, better education, completer education for a completer life. It is not a cult for the few, nor a caste for the wealthy, nor a college for the exclusive. It is the train- ing ground for the people, and is the essence of democracy in its pur- poses and results. In my own state of North Carolina, up to the Civil War, there was a widespread feeling that the ruling class was confined to a few fami- lies of ability and wealth. In the early days of the century it was true, and necessarily true, for the influential and wealthy classes alone could command the advantages of education, and education finally rules. The enlightened policy of the modern state, knowing no class and knowing that those who most need help are least able to help themselves, cheapens the cost of this priceless thing and offers it to the aspiring of all ranks who feel within them the promptings of power and yearn for the higher life of useful action. As a result of this leveling process, introducing the higher test of fitness and ability, side by side in the various fields of endeavor and in the high places sit 284 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville men of all ranks and all degrees of wealth advancing the life of the state. Let me not be understood in pleading for the higher education as underrating the lower, for there is no essential distinction between the two. The state cannot be interested in one and not in the other, for they are one and indivisible. A system of education all universi- ties and no primary schools would be a crime, as a system all primary schools and no university would be a farce. It is simply a question of sequence. The educative impulse is from above downward and not from below upward, and the two impulses reinforce and enrich .each other. In the old southern life in every hamlet and community were to be found men and women of the rarest culture, but all around, giving color and tone to the whole, moved the untaught throng. The supremest need of the new life is the lessening of this inequality by the presence, in large numbers, in all elements of the population, of men and women of thoughtful, independent mind, of trained con- sciences and habits and hands, who can bring things to pass. This can only issue out of the higher education reacting upon the lower, lifting the whole to a higher common level. The permanent forces in this process are, first and foremost, the state universities and colleges supported by taxation and expressing the Christian tendency of the brotherhood of men, and, secondly, the endowed institutions supported by enlightened philanthropy. By universities I do not so much mean these vast and varied foundations whose chief aim is to extend the boundaries of thought, to add to the sum of knowledge, but those institutions which can aim to make broad-minded men of large views, high ideals, lofty patriotism, and scatter them over the land as salt among the people, an influence to purify and preserve — centers of independence of thought and personal responsibility. There is no call among us for a multitude of new foundations, unless it be for institutions for the training of teachers. We need, rather to expand and enrich and liberalize the old foundations. There are two obstacles in the way of this result. The popular abstract hatred of taxation which enables the enemies of the state schools to confuse the thought of the people and to make them regard all taxation as a curse rather than as organized corporate wisdom, hallowed by Christianity, struggling to secure for the children a need- ful thing beyond individual power. Secondly, the failure thus far in our development to find the golden mean between the individualism which preserves liberty and the individualism which paralyzes concerted action. Still partially Superintendence.] UNIVERSITY AND STATE IN THE SOUTH. 285 rooted in our life is the fatal thought that every man should educate his own child, or leave him uneducated if it be his will or misfortune. Emphasized by poverty, this conviction still stays the hand of giv- ing and belittles the glory and gladness of helping others to help themselves. We will do well to labor and pray for the death of this sentiment. We would be mad to cease state effort and demand endowment at the point of a subscription list. Bishop Potter, in a recent utterance, has declared that the darkest day for any people would be the day when they did not possess an ideal university. And by an ideal university he meant any group of free, simple, unhampered men seeking truth for truth's sake; '* wait- ing patiently on their bended knees before the shut doors of the Kingdom of Knowledge;" getting their only reward in the thrill of the human soul in its contact with verity; ignorant and careless of the moment when their theoretic truth merges into fact, and, in the form of mighty engines, or stately ships, or roaring looms, blesses the world. There can be no fairer picture on earth than this, and such men are indeed the aristocracy of the world. But there is one thing greater than truth, and that is humanity. The southern university may well cherish this serene ideal and incorporate in its organization the creative impulse and the spirit of inquiry and investigation, but its first thought must be about its environment, out of which it must grow, and by which it must do its duty before it can erect a beautiful aristocracy of scholarship. Once we were aristocratic in government and education, but now we are democratic in both. At this stage of our culture, when millions are to be impressed with the importance of knowledge, the southern scholar must forego his office of prophet and seer and become ruler and reformer. Southern universities and col- leges must do the work of social regenerative forces, reaching out directly into the life of the people, making known how much better light is than darkness, and how sweet it is for the eyes to behold the sun^ — ennobling the poor man's poverty and spiritualizing the rich man's gold. Let it be remembered that the future seems to belong wholly to democracy. Only a few of our universities can hope to unite both of the functions of^he true university, viz., the making of pure scholars and the making of true leaders and missionaries in the great demo- cratic crusade of arousing the intellect of a whole people. Each institution should ask in which direction its duty lies. In the South both the opportunity and duty are equally clear and plain. President Dwight, Seth Low declares, claims that Yale has always been a school for captains. Southern universities must have the same aim — captains of industry, captains of thought, of civic virtue, of 286 NATtONAL BDUCATfOI^AL ASSOC/AT/OAT. Qacksonvillc enthusiasm and faith ; who shall testify to the people the value of intellectual pursuits and the beauty of truth; who shall restrain the narrowness of misunderstood creeds, and proclaim that education is for no particular class. And, finally, our universities must interest themselves in the things which interest the people, no matter how homely or prosaic or far removed from Olympus — the negro's cabin, the factory child, the village library, the prices current, the home, the field, and the shop. We must teach the people and the people must teach us, and in this way* we may hope to see high social and civic ideals possess the minds of the great majority. I sometimes think that our brethren of the North and West do not fully comprehend how ripe the time is, and how hard the struggle for the fruitful doing of such work. Individuals and communities cannot be forced into power, or culture, or effectiveness, or skill. The desire for these good things must go before their realization. For a glimpse of the self-reliance, the eagerness, the bravery of the South, one has only to visit a southern college and see the earnest, thrilling desire for the opportunities which the people believe to be concealed in edu- cation. The influences that hinder and obstruct cannot wholly restrain or dull it, and it grows by what it feeds on. It is something of a spirit, I fancy, that lives for us in the glad, grateful words of young Ulrich Von Hutten, spoken to the bright face of Freedom in the morning of the modern world: ** Students are blooming; minds are awakening. It is a joy to be alive." It is the spirit which will cause history to place our epic period not in the heroic days of *6i and '65, when our soldiers performed prodigious feats of arms, but in the grinding days of '65 to '95, when they and their sons rose above the difficulties that followed the wake of the war. The going of a southern boy to college is no conventional, quite ordinary, stage in the life of a youth. It is always an event and sometimes a tragedy. It most frequently means that, far away, in the home, the father and mother work harder and rest less, and scrimp here and save there, eating skim milk and oatmeal, and taking counsel in the still hours of the night how they may give their child the privileges they did not know, and the entrance into the clearer, fresher, sweeter, life denied to them. I have seen a feeble woman's face set with *stern resolve and glow with ineffable love at the very thought of her boy putting on his armor at the price of her own life. The dignity and power and political value of childhood and youth as the fittest and ultimate con- cern of the legislator, the preacher, the political economist, the true statesman, has entered our life as one hundred years ago it entered the life of the French, aroused by the mad earnestness of Rousseau and aghast at the havoc of revolution, or as it entered into the thought Superintendence.] FIVE CO-ORDINATE GROVP& OF &TUDIE3, 287 of the English a generation later to the music of Wordsworth's immortal ode. Higher education in the south does not exist for its own glory, for the fame of its teachers, for the pride of sect or for any subjective or selfish reasons. Its aims must be pure public aims, and its service public service. In portentous era and with inadequate means, it stands for the beneficent force that must transmute the tumultuous, untrained life about it into self-government perfected by education — its material the youth of a new life and a new century, and its strong fortress the self- conscious state, no longer a synonym of rude force, but an expres- sion of Christian sympathy, and unity, and conscience, seeking to realize and show forth the dignity of democracy, the beauty of popular concord and justice, and the majesty of republican citizenship. THE NECESSITY FOR FIVE CO-ORDINATE GROUPS OF STUDIES IN THE SCHOOLS, BY W. T. HARRIS, UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. In the report of the Committee of Fifteen it was partly assumed that the studies of the school fall naturally into five co-ordinate groups, thus permitting a choice within each group as to the arrange- ment of its several topics, some finding a place early in the curriculum and others later. These five co-ordinate groups were, first, mathe- matics and physics ; second, biology, as including chiefly the plant and the animal ; third, literature and art, including chiefly the study of literary works of art; fourth, grammar and the technical and sci- entific study of language, leading to such branches as logic and psychology; fifth, history and the study of sociological, political, and social institutions. Each one of these groups, it was assumed, should be represented in the curriculum at all times by some topics suited to the age and previous training of the pupil. This would be demanded by the two kinds of correlation defined in that report as (i) **Symmet- rical whole of studies in the world of human learning," and (2) **The psychological symmetry of the whole mind." The first stage of school education is education for culture, and education for the pur- pose of gaining command of the conventionalities of intelligence. These conventionalities are such arts as reading and wrfting and the use of figures, technicalities of maps, dictionaries, the art of drawing and all of those semi-mechanical facilities which enable the child to A 288 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville get access to the intellectual conquests of the race. Later on in the school course, when the pupil passes out of his elementary studies, which partake more of the nature of art than of science, he arrives in the secondary school and the college at the study of science and the technique necessary for its preservation and communication. All these things belong to the first stage of school instruction whose aim is culture. Post-graduate work and the work of professional schools has not the aim of culture so much as the aim of fitting the person for a special vocation. In the post-graduate work of the universities the demand is for original investigation in special fields. In the profes- sional school the student masters the elements of a particular practice, learning its theory and its art. It is in the first stage, the schools for culture, that these five, co- ordinate branches should be represented in a symmetrical manner. It is not to be thought that a professional school or a course of univer- sity study should be symmetrical. But specializing should follow a course of study for culture in which the symmetrical whole of human learning and the symmetrical whole of the soul should be considered. From the primary school, therefore, on through the academic course of the college, there should be symmetry and five co-ordinate groups of studies represented at each part of the course; at least, in each year, although perhaps not throughout each part of the year. I have said that the Committee of Fifteen partly assumed all this in regard to the five co-ordinate groups. I meant that the Commit- tee of Fifteen had not only assumed it but to some extent argued the question, for in the detailed consideration of literature, arithmetic, geography, grammar, and history, much pains was taken to show the scope and significance of these studies. Their differences, both objective and subjective, were pointed out. It was shown that their study calls into activity different methods of observation and different trains of thought — different categories of the mind, so to speak. It was shown objectively that these branches cover different portions of the map of human learning, lying in some places contiguous to one another, and sometimes widely separated. Read in the light of this explanation, it will be seen that the Committee of Fifteen intended their report to convince the careful reader that no one of these groups could be taken as a substitute for any other, and that no one of these groups could be spared from a symmetrical whole without distorting the pupil's view of the world. If this assumption of the committee had been fully understood, and if the purpose of the report had been manifest upon the first reading, no one would have found the report lacking in a full treatment of the question of the concentration of studies, and no one would have been disappointed. For it would have Superintendence.] FIVE CO-ORDINATE GROUPS OF STUDIES, 289 needed no additional argument to arrive at the conclusion that, if there are ^\t co-ordinate groups, neither one of which can be a sub- stitute for the other, and each one of which is essential to the child's symmetrical view of his world, a concentration which subordinated one or more of these groups to another would do violence to the child's nature. It became painfully evident, however, in the course of the discus- sion at Cleveland, and subsequently, that the assumption of the com- mittee, as well as the main line of exposition in their report, had been entirely missed by many of the ablest advocates of concentration in studies. For these reasons I have gladly availed myself of the invitation of your president to present, on this occasion, in a new form, the arguments made in that report, and some statement of the reasons for what is assumed without argument in that report. I. Commencing with the outlook of the child upon the world of nature, it has been found that arithmetic or mathematical study fur- nishes the first scientific key to the existence of bodies and their vari- ous motions. Mathematics in its pure form, as arithmetic, algebra, geoDT^v. and the application of the analytical method, as well as mathematics in its applied form to matter and force, or statics and dynamics, furnishes us the peculiar study that gives to us, whether as children or as men, the command of nature in this aspect. It is all quantitative. Mathematics furnishes the instrument, the tool of thought, which gives us power in this realm. But useful — nay essen- tial— as this mathematical or quantitative study is for this first aspect of nature, it is limited to it, and should not be applied to the next phase of nature, which is that of organic life. For we must not study in the growth of the plant simply the mechanical action of forces, but we must subordinate everything quantitative and mathematical to the principle of life or movement according to internal purpose or design. But the principle of life, or biology, is no substitute, on the other hand, for the mathematical or quantitative study. The forces, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, gravitation, inorganic matter — ^all these things are best studied from the mathematical point of view. The superstitious savage, however, imposes upon the inor- ganic world the principle of biology. He sees the personal efforts of spirits in winds and storm, in fire and flowing streams. He substitutes for mathematics the principle of life, and looks in the movement of inanimate things for an indwelling soul. This is the animistic stand- point of human culture — the substitution of the biologic method of looking at the world for the quantitative or mathematical view. The bare mention of these differences will suffice for the purpose 19 290 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville of proving the necessity of separating these two groups of studies, and for giving each its independent place in the curriculum. II. The second group includes whatever is organic in nature, especially studies relating to the plant and the animal, the growth of material for food and clothing, and in a large measure for means of transportation and culture. This study of the organic phase of nature forms a great portion of the branch of study known as geog- raphy in the elementary school. Geography takes up, also, some of the topics that belong to the mathematical or quantitative view of nature, but it takes them up in a new combination with a view to show how they are related in organic life — the needs of the plant, ani- mal, and man. There is, it is true, a concentration in this respect, that the mathematical or quantitative appears in geography as subor- dinated to the organic life; for the quantitative, namely, inorganic matter and the forces of the solar system, appears as pre-suppositions of life. Life uses this as material out of which to organize its struc- tures. The plant builds itself a structure of vegetable cells, trans- muting what is inorganic into vegetable tissue. So, too, the animal builds over organic and inorganic substances, drawing from the air and water and from inorganic salts and acids, and by use o]^ heat, light, and electricity, converting vegetable tissue into animal tissue. The revelation of the life principle in plant and animal is not a mathe- matical one. It is not a mechanism moved by pressure from without or by attraction from within. It is not a mere displacement, or an aggregation, or anything of that sort. In so far as it is organic there is a formative principle which originates motion, and modifies the inorganic materials and the mere dynamic forces of nature, giving them special form and direction ^o as to build vegetable or animal structures. Kant defined organism as something within which every part is both means and end to all the other parts; all the other parts func- tion to build up or develop each part, and each part in its turn is a means for the complete growth of every other part. These two phases of nature, the inorganic and the organic, exhaust the entire field. Hence a quantitative study (conducted in pure and applied mathematics) and biology (or the study of life in its manifestations) cover nature. It has been asked whether drawing does Aot belong to a separate group in the course of study, and whether manual training is not a study co-ordinate with mathematics. There are a number of branches of study, like drawing, manual training, and physical culture, and such matters, which ought to be found in every well-regulated school, but'they will easily find a place within the five groups as far as their Superintendence.] FIVE CO-ORDINATE GROUPS OF STUDIES. 291 intellectual coefficients are concerned. Drawing, for instance, may belong to art or aesthetics on one side ; but practically it is partly physical training, with a view to skill in the hand and eye, and partly mathematical, with a view to the production of geometric form. As a physical training its rationale is to be found in physiology, and hence it belongs in this respect to the second phase of the study of nature. As relating to the production of form, it belongs to geometry and trigonometry and arithmetic, or the first phases of nature — the inor- ganic. As relating to art, or the aesthetic, it belongs to the third group of studies, within which literature is the main discipline. But besides literature there are architecture, sculpture, painting and music to be included in the aesthetic or art group of studies. Manual train- ing on the other hand, relates to the transformation of material such as wood or stone, or other minerals into structures for human use ; namely for architecture or for machines. It is clear enough that the rationale of all this is to be found in mathematics; hence, manual training does not furnish a new principle different from that found in the first or the second study relating to nature. III. The first study relating to human nature as contrasted with mere organic and inorganic nature is literature. Literature, as the fifth highest of the fine arts, reveals human nature in its intrinsic form. It may be said in general that a literary work of art, a poem, whether lyric, dramatic or epic, or a prose work of art, such as a novel or a drama, leveals human nature in its height and depth. It shows the growth of a feeling or sentiment first into a conviction and then into a deed ; feelings, thoughts, and deeds are thus connected together by a literary work of art in such a way as to explain a complete genesis of human action. Moreover, in a literary work of art there is a reve- lation of man as a member of social institutions. The nucleus of the literary work of art is usually a collision of the individual against some one of the social institutions of which he is a member; namely, a col- lision with the state, with civil society, or with the church. This collision furnishes an occasion for either a comic or a tragic solution. The nature of the individual and of his evolution of feeling into thoughts and deeds is shown vividly upon the background of institu- tions and social life. The work of art, as a piece of music, painting, sculpture, or architecture, belongs to the same group as literature, and it is obvious that the method in which the work of art should be studied is not the method adopted as applicable to inorganic nature or to organic nature. The physiology of a plant or an animal and the habits and modes of growth and peculiarities of action on the part of plants and animals are best comprehended by a different method of study from that which should be employed in studying the work of art. 292 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. Qacksonville The work of art has a new principle that transcends life. It is the principle of responsible individuality and the principle of free subor- dination on the part of the individual to a social whole. It is, in fact, the exercise of original responsibility in opposition to a social whole, a repudiation of the proper degree of subordination, that makes the content the work of art. Further discussion is not necessary to show how absurd would be a purely mathematical treatment, or a biolog- ical treatment, of a work of art. Mathematics and biology must enter into a consideration of works of art only in a very subordinate degree. It would be just as absurd to attempt to apply the method, in which a work of art should be studied, to the study of an organic form or to the study of inorganic matter and forces. IV. Our next co-ordinate branch includes grammar and language, and studies allied to it, such as logic and psychology. In the elementary school we have simply gramman Grammar treats of the structure of language. There is a mechanical side to it in orthography and a technical side to it in each of its phases. But one cannot call grammar in any peculiar sense a formal study any more than lie can apply the same epithet to natural science of any kind. Natural sci- ence deals with the laws of material bodies and forces. Laws are forms of acting or of being, and yet by far the most important content of natural science is stated in the laws which are discovered. So in the studies that relate to .man, the forms of human speech are very important. All grammatical studies require a two-fold attitude of the mind, one towards the sign and one towards the signification; the shape of a letter, or the form of a word, or the peculiarity of a vocal utterance — these must be attended to; but they must be at once sub- ordinated to the significance of the hidden thought which has become revealed by the sign or utterance. The complexity of grammatical study is seen at once from this point of view. It is a double act of the will, focusing the attention upon two different phases at once; namely, upon the natural phase and the spiritual phase, and the fusion of the two in one. Looking at this attitude of the mind, — this method of grammatical study — we see at once how different it all is from the attitude of the mind in the study of a work of art. In gram- mar we should not look to an evolution of a feeling into a thought or a deed ; that would be out of place. But we must give attention to the literal and prosaic word written or spoken, and consider it as an expression of a thought. We must note the structure of the intellect as revealed in this form. The word is a part of speech having some one of the many functions which the word can fulfill in expressing a thought. Deeper down than grammatical structure is the logical structure, and this is a more fundamental revelation of the action of Superintendence.] FIVE COORDINATE GROUPS OF STUDIES. 293 pure mind. Logic is, in fact, a part of psychology. Opening from one door toward another, we pass on our way from orthography, etymology, and syntax to logic and to psychology. All the way we use the same method. We use the sign or manifestation as a means of discovering the thought and the scientific classification of the thought. Much has been said in the report of the committee of fifteen on the abuse of grammar in the study of literary works of art. The method of grammar leads to wonderful insight into the nature of rea- son itself. It is this insight which it gives us into our methods of thinking and of uttering our thoughts that furnishes the justification for grammar as one of the leading studies in the curriculum. Its use in teaching correct speaking and writing is always secondary to this higher use, which is to make conscious in man the structure of his thinking and expression. Important as it is, however, when it is substituted for the method of studying art it becomes an abuse. It is a poor way to study Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and the Bible, to parse them grammatically or analyze them, or to devote the time to the philological peculiarities, the history of the development of language, or such matters. The proper method of studying the work of art is not a substitute for a grammatical study ; it does not open the windows of the mind towards the logical, philological, or psycholo- gical structure of the human thought and action. V. There is a fifth co-ordinate group of studies, namely, that of history. History looks to the formation of the state as the chief of human institutions. The development of states; the collisions of individuals with the state; the collisions of the states with one another — these form the topics of history. The method in historic study is different from that in grammatical study, and also from that in the study of literature and other works of art. Still more differ- ent is the method of history from those employed in the two groups of studies relating to nature, namely, the mathematical and the bio- logical method. The history of literature and science has many examples of misapplications of method. For instance. Buckle, in his ** History of Civilization," has endeavored to apply the biological method, and, to some extent, that of physics, apparently thinking that the methods of natural science, which are so good in their appli- cation to organic and inorganic nature, are likewise good for applica- tion within the realm of human nature. The reader of Buckle will remember, for instance, that the superstitious character of the Spanish people is explained by him as due to the frequency of earthquakes in the peninsula. In selecting a physical cause for explaining a spiritual effect, Mr. Buckle passed over the most obvious explanation, which is 294 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville this: The people of Spain were for many centuries on the marches or boundaries of Christian civilization and over against a Moslem civil- ization. Wherever there is a borderland between two conflicting civilizations, either political or religious, there is a sharpening of the minds of the people so far as to produce the effect of opposition and bigotry. A continual effort to hold one's religious belief uncontamin- ated by the influence of a neighboring people leads to narrowness and to a superstitious adherence to forms. Narrowness and bigotry in religion are the foes of science and the friends to all manner of super- stitions. Mr. Buckle's work has interested people very much because it is an attempt to bring the methods of natural study into the study of human history. But it cannot be regarded as anything more than an example of an attempt to substitute for the true method in history a method good only in another province. In biology the whole animal is not fully revealed in each of his members, although, as stated in Kant's definition, each part is alike the means and the end for all the others. The higher animals and plants show the greatest difference between parts and whole. But in history it is the opposite. The lower types exhibit the greatest differ- ence between the social whole and the individual citizen. The prog- ress in history is toward freedom of the individual and local self-gov- ernment. In the highest organisms of the state, therefore, there is a greater similarity between the individual and the national whole to which he belongs. The individual takes a more active part in govern- ing himself. The state becomes more and more an instrument of self- government in his hands. In the lowest states the gigantic personal- ity of the social whole is all in all, and the individual personality is null, except in the person of the supreme ruler and in the few associ- ated with him. The method of history keeps its gaze fixed upon the development of the social progress which it makes in realizing within its citizens the freedom of the whole. This method, it is evident enough, is different from the literary ; different from the grammatical ; different, also from the biological and the mathematical methods. In history we see how the little selves, or individuals, unite to form the big self, or the nation. The analogies to this found in biology, namely, the combination of individual cells into the entire vegetable or animal organism, are all elusive so far as furnishing a clue to the process of human history. The question might arise where religion would be found in these co-ordinate branches. Religion would, I think, make a sixth co-ordinate branch if it were introduced into the school, for religion wm Superintendence.] J^/VE CO-ORDINATE GROUPS OF STUDIES, 295 persistently looks at every thing and event, every feeling, thought and deed in its direct relation to the Divine Reason. This is evi- dently a method very deeply separated from the methods in any one of the five co-ordinate branches of studies that have been mentioned in this paper. It is so different, in fact, that it furnishes a ground for removing the study of religion from the school in which the other branches are studied. The method of religion is essentially the method of authority. That of the study of science is essentially that of critical alertness and personal verification. The scientific method of mind is the most hostile of all to the religious. The scientific method saps all authority as such. The mathematical is to be included under the scientific method. So, too, is the grammatical, but not so the literary and historic methods. Literature professedly deals in fiction; in ideal presentations; in artistic wholes which are not found in nature. History, on the other hand, deals with authorities for the events which it narrates. Its dealing with historic authorities resembles in some respects that followed in the study of the Holy Scriptures; but, in other respects — namely, in the treatment of the evidences — it resembles the scientific study of data derived from the observation of nature. But religion demands from first to last a com- plete surrender of the mind to the authority of revelation. On the one hand it is claimed by those who believe in separating the school and the church that religious instruction should be surrounded by the solemnities of the church, and that it should not be approached in the flippant attitude of one coming from the lesson in mathe- matics or natural science, or even literature, grammar or history. On the other hand, those who claim for the school a sixth co-ordinate branch of study, namely, religion, think that this argument for the separation of methods so widely asunder as those of religion and sci- ence has been entirely overrated. But they, too, would carefully guard against the encroachment of the religious mode of study into mathematics, botany, history, and grammar. They would admit that the co-ordination is complete, and that the separation of methods is necessary in school. Casting a hasty glance in conclusion over the course of this discus- sion, we can see what is the relation of this study of educational values to the question of child study and other topics in psychology, as well as the Herbartian principle of interest. First and foremost the teacher of the school has before him this question of the branches of learning to be selected. These must be discovered by looking at the grown man in civilization rather than at the child. The child has not yet developed his possibilities. The child first shows what he is, truly and internally, when he becomes a grown man. The child 296 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville is the acorn. The acorn reveals what it is in the oak only after a thousand years. So man has revealed what he is, not in the cradle, but in the great world of human history, and literature, and science. He has written out his nature on the blackboard of the universe. In order to know what there is in the human will, we look into Plutarch's **Parallel Lives.** To see what he has done in philosophy and science we read Plato, Aristotle, Leibnitz, and Hegel. For science we look to the Newtons and Darwins. We do not begin therefore, with child study in our school education. But next after finding the great branches of human learning we consider the child and how to bring him from his possibility to his reality. Then it becomes essential to study the child and its manner of evolution. We must discover which of its interests are already on the true road towards human greatness. We must likewise discover which ones conflict with the highest aims, and espe- cially what interests there are which, although seemingly in conflict with the highest ends of man, are yet really tributary to human great- ness, leading up to it by winding routes. All these are matters of child study ; but they all presuppose the first knowledge, namely, the knowledge of the doings of mature humanity. There can be no step made in rational child study without keeping in view constantly these questions of the five co-ordinate groups of study. DISCUSSION. Herman T. Lukens, Clark University, Worcester, Mass. — Dr. Harris is undoubtedly one of those who "know, and know that they know," and he usu- ally means more than he says. Lincoln used to begin his speeches in court by frankly acknowledging the sound arguments made by the opposing counsel, and saying, "Now, I reckon that 's true, too, your honor;" until, after yielding point after point in this way. he seemed to have no case at all. Yet Lincoln almost always won those cases. In the plan Dr. Harris has just presented, the points that I shall not only not refute, but, on the contrary, wish to emphasize, — because "they are true, your honor," — are as follows: I. Grouping of studies is the best solution of the pressing question of an over-crowded curriculum. Grouping brings out relative importance and secures proper perspective. The course of study can be expanded by differentiating the studies in each group, or it can be contracted by limiting their number, and in either case the curriculum remains organic, complete and symmetrical. The principles advocated seem, therefore, to apply equally well to the country school and the city school, the primary and the high school. II. Dr. Harris is right also in seeking for the basis of the received course of study in a classification of the external culture-material. Ever since Rome, 2T00 years ago, first exchanged her own national, indigenous curriculum and domes- Superintendence.] DISCUSSION. 297 tic education for the foreign, exotic culture of Greece, the world has been strug- gling with its inheritance of qbjective culture-material. Dr^* Harris is describing actual conditions when he says, "The pupil has a teacher to direct his studies and instruct him in the proper methods of getting out of books the wisdom recorded in them." The Chinese are one of the foremost nations in recogniz- ing this. Their very name for child or pupil means "heir of all the ages, "and the schoolmaster aims to give this wisdom in a systematic manner. III. The convincing way in which the classification of subjects relating to man is presented has something very fetching about it, and it is certainly sug- gestive of a good objective correlation of these subjects. IV. The scheme lacks^completeness.* For beside the five groups there are extras, like industrial drawing, manual training, music, physical culture, etc., which are not provided for in the classification, and which are to be taught as "information studies or as miscellaneous exercises." But this inconsistency redeems the plan, and, as Emerson tells us, inconsistency is a characteristic of wnlcb we need not be ashamed. 1. Bi^ *^\s co-ordination is merely a classification of external knowledge, and this is my first objection. I believe Dr. Harris is here laying the emphasis on the wrong side. The expression so often used, that "these five groups are five windows of the soul," seems to be misleading. They^are five external fields of knowledge, and have nothing whatever to do with the question of what mental powers are exercised in their study. It is a blunt, rough statement of fact, and a criticism of the present rather than the raising of an ideal, when we are told "the school causes its pupils to put on the forms of thought given them by the teacher and by the books they use." This condition is most surely reached by mechanical teaching, narrow views on the part of the teacher, and strict follow- ing of the text-book, and is something that all leaders in education should strive to their utmost to counteract. 2. The plan assumes without the least compunction an exact correspond- ence between"the symmetrical whole of studies in the world of human learning" and "the range of studies demanded by psychological symmetry." First, the adult field of objective knowledge is classified; secondly, it is assumed that the needs of the child mind correspond to these groups of studies; and thirdly, that the mind grows evenly or harmoniously in all essential directions at once. These assumptions are totally false, and really make the whole heart of the matter. We know that the mind, like the body, has its growth periods, and that mental growth is not symmetrical. The emotional nature does not develop evenly with the intellectual capacity; the memory and the will have different nascent periods; the best time for studying language is not the best time for studying nature. 3. This plan claims to have surveyed the whole field of actual and possible knowledge and to have "shut it in." We are told that "the completeness of the- plan is demonstrated for all time" As new fields of knowledge and action are opened up in the future, we shall find that they are all provided for in this plan, foreordained and prearranged to fit into their several places. Now, I can- not help feeling somewhat like the claustrophobiacs, who are afraid of inclosed spaces. It makes me feel as though some one were saying the apparent sky and horizon are the bounds of the universe. I believe it has an enlarging — yes, in the best sense, a liberalizing — influence on human beings to look off the earth upward between the stars into infinite space, and feel that there is no boundary, no limit, no danger of being cramped for room, no possibility of getting an idea too large to correspond with reality. 4. Contrast for a moment the cross-section of the curriculum here advo- 298 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville cated with the longitudinal section as sketched in the famous eighth book of Aristotle's "Politicst** The genetic curriculum there outlined is concerned mainly with the question of correlation of studies in sequence. First comes care of the body in infancy, with no continued studies nor compulsory work. Later, in boyhood, lasting till puberty at fourteen or fifteen years of age, the care and training of the passions and the formation of proper bodily habits receive greatest attention. At puberty three years are to be spent in severe discipline of the intellect, ttfter which a course of hard exercise and strict regimen, practical affairs of state, public and private business, are relied upon to train the will and make men of action. To my mind such a course of study raises far i^ore vital questions than any considerations in classification of external culture-material. The Greeks bad a great advantage over all that have come after them in that their culture was national and spontaneous. They sought to make education a means of aiding everyone to reach the highest possible phase of development by the unfoldment of his own inborn powers. The aim of education was to make men "love and hate aright." When the Romans borrowed Greek culture they started that dis- astrous experiment, which every nation since has followed, of making the acquirement of external culture-material the end as well as the means of educa- tion. • I do not see how any one who appreciates the difference between external whitewash and internal culture and is thoroughly in sympathy with the present movement for child-study in education can think that an objective classification of knowledge is the main question concerning the curriculum. The stages of growth in the child, its nascent periods for language, music, drawing, etc., the collecting manias, the spontaneous interests of the child, the best period for hard discipline of the intellect., — whether, as Aristotle says, just at the beginning of puberty, or as others think, later, after the first onset is past and the social emotions and expanding aspirations of adolescence hav^ begun to well up in the soul, — these are pressing questions that must yet be settled by patient, honest study of the realities with which education has to deal. Not even in manual training and physical culture are the data thus far col- lected sufficient for drawing up with any confidence a rational course in these subjects based on the physiological facts of child development. Still less is it yet possible to make such a course in the mental and moral studies. Yet for this very reason these questions are fullest of hope, suggestion and inspiration for all of us, and that is why I for one feel more interest in them than I do in staking off the bounds of human knowledge. Superiniendcncc] ADVISABLE CORRELATIONS, 299 WHAT CORRELATIONS OF STUDIES SEEM ADVIS- ABLE AND POSSIBLE IN THE PRESENT STA TE OF ADVANCEMENT IN TEACHING. BY C. B. GILBERT, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ST. PAUL, MINN. In a recent number of a leading educational periodical the distin- guished editor sadly announces the death of Apperception and pro- nounces a eulogy over Correlation moribund. For Correlation is dying; and yet, he has not been wholly unkind to us. Let us at least speak well of him beside his deathbed. I can hardly believe that our friend the editor meant quite what he said. He must have been thinking, not of correlation as a spiritual force in education, but of correlation as a catchword ; a name to con- jure with ; something for foolish radicals like yotir humble servant to talk about in gatherings such as this. If apperception were not dead, I should say that possibly he had not apperceived correlation. Or did he have that higher truth in mind, so beautifully expressed by One who lived long ago, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit"? For such is, I trust, the future of correlation. No great truth is productive until it loses its identity, ceases to be abstractly by itself, and becomes absorbed in life. Even Christianity is fruitless so long as it is merely a beautiful doctrine to contemplate, a wonderful philosophy to study, or a refined system of forms and ceremonies. It is only when it dies in these respects that it lives as a constituent and ruling force in life. Before stating what correlation of studies seem advisable and pos- sible at present, I must make clear what I deem important principles, essential to any wise correlation, the recognition of which will avoid many of the blunders which have placed correlation in a false light; for correlation has been in as great danger from its friends as from its enemies. Premature attempts have been made to crystallize it into systems, to bind it down to mechanical forms, often by those who failed to grasp its spirit aright, resulting in strange and kaleidoscopic courses of study, which have given excuse to its enemies for the claim that correlation means basing school curricula upon artificial and fan- ciful relations and disregarding essential unities within lines of study. But these things are not correlation any more than bigotry is religion or formalism Christianity. i would define correlation in courses of study as a recognition of 3O0 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville the natural relations existing among the various departments of human activity, and such an arrangement of these departments for presentation to the child that all his knowledge shall stand clearly in his mind in its true relations to the whole and to each of the parts. If the child is to go forth from school fitted for a life made up of relations, it is necessary that the knowledge he receives and the activ- ities in which he engages in the course of his preparation shall all have reference to these relations; hence courses of study which deter- mine both the knowledge and the activities must be so arranged that isolated knowledge and reasonless activities shall be impossible. For, what are the various branches of study? What determines whether a study falls within one branch or another? Merely the point of view. The same object may be studied as belonging to several of the different branches. Dr. Charles McMurry clearly pointed this out in the December number of the Public School Journal^ using the oak tree as an example, which may be studied with equal propriety from the standpoint of ths botanist, of the artist, of the lumberman, of the social scientist, of the meteorologist, of the poet; and each view obtained is but partial. His illustration might have been multiplied infinitely. Man himself may be studied, as to his body, from the standpoint of the physiologist, of the physician, of the employer of labor, of the anthropologist, of the artist, of the cannibal. As to his mind, the study of man classes him with any one of a hundred sci- ences, from insanity to theology; and there are still unreckoned soci- ology and all the other studies which treat of his relations with other men, and in none of these is he a whole man. No one represents round truth. For the most part the classifications are arbitrary, were made when the world of knowledge was vastly smaller than it is today, and do not even fairly represent existing conditions; and the child who studies them as separate and distinct branches of knowledge, which will fit him for separate and distinct activities in life, does not get a truthful impression. Dr. Harris tells us that there are five co-ordinate branches of human learning, and that it is important that all of these receive attention in a scheme of education. No doubt. But it is more important that the essential unity of them all be also recognized, for these five departments are not to be conceived of as parallel lines, extending into infinity and nowhere touching. They are rather the radii of a sphere united at the center in a vital union from which comes all the worth of each, for each is enriched with the richness of all the others. From the above it will be seen that true correlation is neither artificial nor mechanical ; it cannot be fully shown even in the best Superintendence.] ADVISABLE CORRELATIONS. 301 courses of study. Primarily it must exist as subjective in the mind of the teacher. If he grasp the essential unities of things it may, to a degree, be made objective and apparent in the course of study, and still more so in the teacher's interpretation of it; but it is more import- ant that the teacher be in himself a correlation of knowledge than that a course of study exhibit it. If teaching is a vital relation between teacher and pupil, and if the end of teaching is the develop- ment of the pupil — as Professor Tompkins puts it, **the union between the pupil's real and ideal self" — then the essential thing, so far as knowledge is concerned, is that it shall be correlated in and with the pupil's mind. If these things are true, as 1 believe them to be, the first thing which we must do is to train the teachers. They must be filled with a sense of the importance of correlation as a principle. It must become subjective in them. This means a better education for the teachers, that they may have a larger view of the truth. But it is not necessary to wait until we have a more highly educated body of teachers before we begin. The very act of grasping and administer- ing a broad and wisely correlated course of study is in itself a liberal education. In trying to introduce some of the ideas here expressed I have met with this difficulty. The teachers themselves, trained in the old way, at first failed to comprehend the relations of knowledge — the spirit- ual, vital relations — a grasp of which is necessary to success in life. But while I have sometimes been discouraged because of this inability of teachers to understand the real purpose of correlation, I have been still more encouraged by the eagerness and enthusiasm with which they have tried to seize the spiritual intent, and by the self-sacrificing devotion with which they have endeavored to fit themselves for the higher work, until I have been ashamed of my lack of faith. The old courses of study were deadening to teachers as well as to pupils; the new are inspiring truth. Teachers feel that they them- selves are growing while leading their pupils to the shrine of truth. The improvement of the teachers, both in spirit and in power, has been one of the most marked effects of improvement in the courses of study. No one can devote his energies first to comprehending and then to imparting the broad ideas implied in a truly correlated course of study without growing in breadth and power from the effort. Upon the superintendent falls the task of preparing this course of study, which shall furnish material for growth and stimulus to effort to both teacher and pupil ; and here we come to the meat of the problem, for even the most thorough students of correlation do not all agree as to what it means and as to how it is to be made effective 302 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville in schools. We are as yet seeking for truth, and need to be very honest with ourselves and to keep all our windows open. But a few things seem to me reasonably clear. The first thing which one preparing a course of study must take into account is the distinction between form and content. This seems to me vital. A correlated course of study must include both co-ordi- nation and subordination ; a co-ordination of the great fundamental branches of human thought — the five of Dr. Harris, if you will — and the subordination of those branches which are in nature subordinate. The former constitute the content, the latter the form, of a course of study; or, to put it differently, I use the term ' content as including those branches of study which possess an intrinsic and fundamental value, and form as including the means by which the essentials are realized. In a general way, the former consists in a consideration of man and the spirit world and of the world of nature, and the latter of the various arts by which man comes to a possession of nature and of himself. Of course, these distinctions are not arbitrary or exact. A distinction between form and content does not imply that they are to be treated as separate and unrelated entities; that would not be correlation, but disintegration. It rather means that they are to be so related in the teacher's mind, and are to be so presented to the child, that they will always stand in his mind as form and content. He learns to read, not that he may learn to read, but that he may be introduced to the world of literature. He learns to write, not that he may learn to write, but that he may be able to communicate the best that is in him for the benefit of others. I do not mean by this that there should not be direct and thorough drill upon the arts them- selves, but that this drill should be given after and not before the child has come to realize his need of a medium of expression. The higher end ennobles the means and makes it worth acquiring. I have been criticised for drawing this distinction, and especially for saying that the arts are secondary, and that knowledge furnishes the content. My position was not understood. There are three general divisions of the work of education. The first is creating in the child a high purpose ; the second is acquainting him with condi- tions, needs, and possibilities, and the third is furnishing him with the means for the accomplishment of his purpose. But these three are parts of one whole. The second — acquainting the child with conditions, needs, and possibilities; in other words, knowledge — stands as a mid- dle term, creating ideals on the one hand, and suggesting activity, stimulating effort to acquire the means, on the other. Hence, it forms the natural content of his education. The great reason for placing emphasis upon the distinction between Superintendence] ADVISABLE CORRELATIONS. 303 form and content is the necessity for the comprehension of this dis- tinction by the adult if he is to have a true grasp of values in life. One principal obstacle to the progress of civilization is the failure of men to comprehend the difference between 'means and ends, between form and content. The average man devotes his energies to the acquiring of that which is, in itself, only a means to a higher end. The eager struggle for money, for power, for social position, which renders so ignoble the life work of most of us, is due to the fact that we look upon these things as ends in themselves, and not as means to higher ends. But what can we expect of men whose early efforts have all been devoted to the acquirement of means as if they were ends? If the child is taught to read as if the ability to read were the end of his effort; to write, as if fine writing were the best thing that he could do, what reason have we for expecting that the man will look upon money and power and social position as means for helping his brother man? '*Life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.'* Art for art's sake is thoroughly detestable. As well might we say, food for food's sake, or the body for the body's sake. No great work of art, whether in painting, music, sculpture, or literature, was ever great merely because of the artistic skill displayed; rather has its greatness consisted in the noble thought whose expression the artistic skill made possible. This does not mean that skill is not necessary but rather that it must be kept subordinate to the theme. This alone makes it worth while. Tennyson's musical verses did not make **In Memoriam," but they made it possible. For the sake of writing **In Memoriam," of uttering the noble thought that was in him struggling for utterance, it was worth while that the poet should master all the arts of poesy. Nobility of purpose, exaltation of theme, whether in adults or in children, furnish the only true stimulants for laboriously acquiring the arts necessary for adequate expression. This, applied to education does not draw a hard and fast line between form studies and content studies, but relates them properly, so that the child always has before him the worthy aim as an inducement to the acquir- ing of the adequate means. While this subordinates reading, writing, spelling, and language drill, it does not degrade them. It rather exalts them, since thus alone do they find their true place and are ennobled by a noble purpose. Let me here say that I do not believe, nor do I mean to imply, that these subordinate branches are to be taught wholly incidentally. It is true that power to read, write, spell, draw, and in the mechanical sense, to use language, is acquired mainly by practice in the use of these arts. It is an unconscious product, just as walking is; still there 304 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, Qacksonvillc is a technique for each of them, knowledge of which adds greatly to the power to use them effectively, and this technique must be taught specifically and thoroughly, but at the proper time and in the proper way; that is, as to time, when the child feels the need of it, that he may better attain one of the higher ends of life. As to the way, the technique of this art must be so taught as to satisfy this need, so that the child may feel that he is gaining a new power to aid him in the attainment of a desirable end. The amount of attention to be given to this study of technique varies with the age of the child, as indicated by his school grade. In the primary grades comparatively little attention need to be given to the technique of expression. I am compelled to disagree with the opinion by some inferred from the report of the Committee of Fifteen, that the first three years of school life should be devoted alntost exclusively to the acquisition of this technique, with only incidental and casual attention to the content of the course of study. I would reverse the order. It is true that in these three years the child should acquire a fair possession of this technique; but at his age, when he is little able to grasp philosophical principles and to under- take effort with a view to remote results, it is all the more necessary to appeal to his interest. The young child will best acquire the necessary arts Mncidentally. The ends for which he works must be evident. Place before him a content to him valuable and interesting and immediately obtainable, and he seeks it through the medium of the necessary arts. The adult, the young man in college, may study mathematics for the sake of training his mind; the child, not so. The end that he seeks is today, and he must have the means at once. I would say, then, that in the first years the course of study should have for the child the richest content which he is capable of grasping. Thus he will best gain possession of the various necessary arts, and, what is still more important, his mind will receive a better training and will be filled with richer thoughts, and he will emerge from these years of school with a broader horizon and a more eager desire to con- tinue his education. Hence in these earlier years especial attention should be given to the study of nature and of literature — the lines of study that are at any age most broadening. As the child advances from grade to grade more attention may be given to technique, as he becomes able to see the relations between form and content; that is, to understand the reasons why certain forms of expression are better than others. I have dwelt thus upon the relations of form and content because I deem it the first and most important correlating principle. It remains to consider briefly co-ordination, or the relations of the co-or- Superintendence] ADVISABLE CORRELATION, 305 dinate branches of human learning in the course of study. As I have saidy these must all be taken into account, but not as unrelated. Here even the best of our old courses of study broke down. They aimed « at the education of the faculties, and ignored the unity of the human soul. They recognized variety, but not variety in unity. In the first place, a broad course of study should be so arranged that naturally related parts of the different co-ordinated branches may be taught at the same time. I say, naturally related; not artificially or mechanically, but spiritually, if you will. Our old courses of study were full of absurd instances of variety without unity. It is no uncommon thing for a class to be studying at the same time the geog- raphy of Africa, the history of England, the plant life of Minnesota, while having for their reading lesson the story of Peter the Great; the subjects having no relation, either artificial or natural. On the other hand there are new courses of study which are as absurd — correlation run mad, as I have heard it described. I remem- ber hearing of a day's lesson in a certain over-correlated city. The subject was the crow. The children studied the crow, read about him, drew him, wrote about him, counted him, added, subtracted, multiplied and divided him, bought and sold him, and, for aught I know, carried him out on a crowbar. Here was no fundamental or vital relation. The co-ordinating principle was trivial and unsound, and doubtless several good lessons in history, reading and arithmetic were spoiled for the sake of the crow. I have said that naturally related principles of the various co-or- dinated branches should be taught at the same time, but I do not mean that the relations are necessarily time relations. These would frequently be artificial, and not even suggest the spiritual unity ; and this, it seems to me, is one of the criticisms to be made upon a course of study concentrated about history, for the relation here inevitably is mostly a time relation, which may be best and may not. I will attempt to make my thought concrete by an illustration taken from the schools of my own city of St. Paul. A seventh grade class regularly studies the history of the United States, the geography of North America, the writings of certain American authors, and local geology. These studies may be so timed as to suggest inevitably fundamental and vital relations. To begin with, the class are taken out for a field lesson upon the banks of the Mississippi. Here they see the fundamental rock strata ; observe the great valley worn out by the waters; get specimens of rock containing the earliest fossils; see the broad plains stretching out into the boundless prairies, whose soil was deposited by the glaciers. They learn how the great Mississippi valley with its broad adjacent plains, was formed ; that is, they get a 20 3o6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville concrete knowledge of the physical geography of this part of the world. This leads both to the history and political geography. They learn not only the effect of early explorations on this river and on the Great Lakes, but they see wHy those explorations were made. They not only find out how these great plains were produced, but see in them the reasons for the migrations of so many people and for the vast civilization growing up in the great West. The struggles of the early settlers are emphasized by the poem ** Evangeline,** and the travels of Irving and others, so that a complete picture of the growth of Western civilization, with an understanding of its cause, is left upon the minds of the children. A taste has been created for investigation and a love for literature, while, also, all this rich content has served as a basis for numberless lessons in reading, writing and language. I offer this illustration hesitatingly, for fear that some may say that it is open to the criticism of emphasizing artificial relations. If any so conceives it, I am misunderstood. The relations that I would empha- size are mostly those of cause and effect, though not altogether. The aim is to produce unity of idea in the minds of the children. Each child should have a single vivid picture, including objects from all those co-ordinate branches, which would be worth infinitely more than any number of isolated facts, even though they included all of history and all of geography. Now, as to the correlating principle for the co-ordinate branches, it must be evident that I do not believe in the concentration of the course of study about any one branch. No one branch of human learning is clearly enough defined, or essential enough in itself, to be the center of a course of study for the child. No one is so much more intimately related to the child than all the others that it can determine for them their arrangement and the selection of topics from them. The only centralizing relation in the education of the child, in reference to his destiny (and, hence, the first principle of co-ordination as to its breadth), is that indicated in the Committee of Fifteen's report, namely, the relation of the child to his material and spiritual environment. Psychology, not history, not science, determines also the longi- tudinal correlation of the course of study. By psychology I do not mean the old psychology which is merely deductive logic applied to certain assumed mental phenomena, but the actual study of the child. Depending upon this, the correlated course of study of the future will determine what shall be given the child at each stage of his develop- ment. There are many things concerning correlation about which there Superintendence.] DISCUSSION. 307 is still uncertainty, but as to what we can do in the immediate future, I feel reasonably sure upon these points: 1. We must insist that the only correlation to be considered con- sists of the recognition of the natural and spiritual relations already existing in the world. 2. That these relations exist, if at all, in the human mind, and hence must become subjective in the teacher; then, in so far, as pos- sible, objective in the course of study; then, again, subjective in the child. 3. That the relations to be considered in the course of study must include both subordination and co-ordination — a subordination of form to content and a co-ordination of the essential departments of thought. 4. That the only center for a correlated course of study is the child — the child whose rights have so long been ignored, whose nature has been so blindly misunderstood, whose soul has been so dwarfed and maimed in the vain effort to accommodate him to a ready-made course of study^ and bind him down with the chains of logic, to make him fit into the form of a cast-iron frame, miscalled psychology. Yes, fellow teachers, the child must be our first study; and when all the branches of human learning with which he can be brought into touch, all the activities to which he may be stimulated, are properly correlated with the demands of his nature, we will find that they are correlated with one another, and the miracle will have been wrought. DISCUSSION, Superintendent W. P. Burris, Bluflfton, Ind. — In the statement of the question under consideration there is the implication that an ideal scheme of correlation is to be modified in its application to suit tjie limitations of teachers. We think this would be unwise, and our discussion will be largely on this point. In the first place, such a compromising attitude could only give us a carica- ture of a plan of instruction whose chief claim to recognition lies in the fact that it proposes to unify and economize effort in popular education in order to better real- ize in the individual the highest aim of life. It is not a "fad" or "novelty" to make school life temporarily attractive. It is not a "pun." It is not an accretion of a system already in practice. It calls for a new elaboration. In the light of new principles it would re-assay the world's educational ore in the crucible of reason and select only the purest gold. It offers a unity whose unifying purpose is to be seen running through the course of study like the scarlet cord through every inch of cable belonging to the English navy. It calls for reorganization, not revision. It seeks to readjust the accents, placing the emphasis where it belongs. While granting that teachers, generally speaking, are not what they should be, we believe that the adoption of such a scheme as that now proposed would be 3o8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville the most effective means of raising the profession of teaching that conld be employed. We know from observation that it is in itself a revelation to the teacher. Teachers dead in the trespasses and sins of formalism have been raised to walk in newness of life. We cannot raise the school without raising the teacher. We cannot raise the teacher without raising the scheme of instruction — without offering a higher view of the world order. The teacher cannot make study reveal that of which he is himself unconscious. In order to teach others to come into intelligent relations with their natural and spiritual environment, and understand the drama of the yet unfinished creation, it is necessary that the teacher have a well-organized knowledge of the sciences and a keen apprecia- tion of the world's culture. To teach the arts of expression he must be an artist. If we make a demand for such teachers the supply will be forthcoming. The weakness of the American teacher is his culture. He has been taught that it does not make so much difference what is taught as how. Like the sur- geon of whom you have heard, it matters not whether the life be saved provided the operation be brilliant. By all means give us the teacher of liberal culture plus his study of method; but if he cannot have both, give us the teacher of liberal culture. The system now proposed, however, will give us both. It calls for the cult- ure first, as it should do, and the demand for efficiency in instruction will give us method. We will then have teachers who, as some one has said, can both fly and walk; ffy with the seers and walk with the children. We do not think, therefore, that the greatest gain is to come to popular edu- cation by a surrender of any principle which should unify the scheme of instruc- tion. There must be unity. The same cannot be if conflicting systems are mixed for the sake of compromises. Let systems stand or fall according as they are right or wrong in principle. Otherwise we are without anchorage — without basis for the selection of all that pertains to the process of education. Is the nature of the being to be educated not yet understood? Is there no dramatic tendency yet observed in creation which is a clew to human destiny? Are we still without a central aim in popular education? Is there need of a new critique of educational values? Until these questions are answered it is too early to consider the question before us. We believe, however, that there is substantial agreement, both as to the central purpose of education and the materials for universal culture; as to what should constitute everybody's education — what common ideas and sentiments should form the connective tissue of society. The point of divergence is the basis on which the course of study should be organized; whether it should constitute a logical, philosophical, or psychological unity. All are good, but which is best is the question. In reference to the first, we can read the handwriting on the wall. The second, while regarding the true relations of thought to form, adopts too general a principle for popular education. It is the true one for the entire field of educa- tion, but if followed consistently in elementary education it would compel us to neglect the humanities for the nature studies. The last contains all the good in the other two, and much besides. It renders the iniquities of formalism impos- sible. It insures teachers of a broad culture, as none other can carry such a scheme into successful practice. It gives the child growing insight into the stream of human culture, the nature through which it flows, and the reciprocal relations of the two. It makes for moral character through instruction by keep- ing the child as the center of effort. The principles of this scheme have been considered by almost every educa- Superintendence.] CONCENTRATION OF STUDIES, 309 tional meeting — national, state, county and township — for a term of years. They have escaped the critical examination of no chair of pedagogy or educational journal. Others, still, have suspended judgment as to their value until the chain of sequences they have set in motion should be observed in the practice oi the schoolroom. We are of this class. The full tale is not yet told, but results fully warrant continuance in the path pointed out. Expression of opinion, progressive and conservative, has had free play. Both have disdained to pass final judg- ment, but each, recognizing in the other a necessary unit of force, constituting the general power which works out educational changes, has perceived that both may properly give full utterance to innermost conviction, and, in venturing to express mine, I think that the principles of the paper are substantially right. And now that the first rash rush of the Herbartian invasion is past, and some sober concessions have been made for the sins of some of its youthful exponents and some misapprehensions cleared away, this new movement is seen to be but the necessary re-adaptation which orderly progress in education demands. CONCENTRATION OF STUDIES AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING CHARACTER. BY CHARLES DE GARMO, PRESIDENT OF SWARTHMORE COLLEGE, PENN- SYLVANIA. In this topic there are involved the most perplexing problems of pedagogy and psychology. A wilderness of words have been uttered on the subject of concentration since the Cleveland meeting, and as in the days of the sophists each man seems to regard himself as the measure of truth. The problem of the development of character did not begin last year, but had its origin at least as far back as the time of Protagoras, the noblest of the sophists. The possibility of teach- ing virtue was stoutly maintained by Socrates, but who will assert that he pronounced the final word? Kant emphasized the antithesis between the intelligible and the empirical character, declaring that the seat of morality is in self-determination alone. Modern psychology has tried to learn how character grows by investigating the influence of transient and permanent interests upon the will. I have tried to reconcile experience and reason by showing that the rational, or free will, is by nature subject to evolution, like life, feeling, and knowledge. Is the doctrine of inherent interest, and with it empirical psychology in study, merely an ignis fatuus? Are the insight and disposition cultivated by correlating important knowledge in the pupil's mind to be regarded as but fragile reeds for our support? Here is indeed a mare's nest of logical difficulties, but I shall take the Anglo-Saxon's privilege of ignoring them for a few plain considerations that have a manifest bearing in the world of practical affairs. 3IO NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville It might fairly be expected that this paper would devote itself to a psychological analysis, showing just how the organization of knowl- edge may be expected to influence the growth of character. That work has, however, been attempted by others. I must, therefore, beg the indulgence of those who anticipated such a treatment, since I intend to confine myself to such considerations as appeal directly to experience and current educational thought. Assuming, therefore, what some may regard as the main proposition to be proved, viz., that a rational correlation of knowledge will favorably affect charac- ter, three things seem to me to be involved — what we shall correlate, how we shall correlate, and to what end we shall correlate; or, in other words, the kind of character the schools, and especially the city schools, should attempt to develop. It must be assumed at the outset that a civilized country will, so far as it works intelligibly, develop a character that can work effi- ciently in a civilized state of society. Persian, Grecian, Roman, Mediaeval, Puritan, ecclesiastical notions of character are no longer valid as ends, since the world has long since transcended those con- ceptions of* civilization. But if we look about us we see that on every side, in politics, education, industry, business and common living, the rule is organization. Every enterprise, public or private, is characterized by the idea of regulated co-operation. Institutions are the universal rule. Men work together for common ends in organ- ized groups, both large and small. If, now, it be asked which type of education — that of isolated or correlated branches of study — is most in accord with the methods of modern civilization, I apprehend there can be but one answer. Granted that public education is an important factor in the development of character, it can be seen that any arrangement of study whereby isolation of faculties and knowU edge and capacities is promoted works against rather than for the kind of character most desirable under present conditions. It is equally evident, on the other hand, that any organization of studies which promotes insight into modern social life and disposition favor- able to its ideals works for rather than against the realization of the institutional type of character. I cannot in this paper enter upon an extended discussion of the problem of concentration, which I conceive to be such a correlation of subject matter as will tend to make instruction more intelligible, interesting and valuable to the pupil. There is but one line of prac- tical suggestions regarding the kind of correlation available, and presumably of service in the development of character. That I desire to enlarge upon. It appertains to the formation of what may be called apperceptive centers in each prominent branch of study. Snpcrintendence.] CONCENTRATION OF STUDIES. 311 Every concrete branch of learning taught in the schools has a series of what may be called root ideas, upon which its significance depends. Sometimes, as in mathematics and the exact sciences, these root ideas are connected by casual or logical relations ; sometimes as in history, geography, and literature, no necessary sequence exists. In any case, however, the selection of topics and their sequence in pre- sentation to the child will depend largely upon psychological consid- erations. The proposition I wish to emphasize is that each topic taught shall be built up into an apperceiving center in the child's mind. An illustration may be taken from geography. The notion ** canal" is frequently met with. Upon its first prominent occurrence in the study, let some concrete illustration of the canal be mastered. Some of the prominent elements to be made vivid are as follows: the ditch, the water level and supply, and the locks , which may be represented on the board or modeled from pasteboard by the children. Then the canal boats, their structure and propulsion. Why should mules be so much used in this age of steam and electricity? Finally, the produce carried, its starting point and destination. When a concrete case has been mastered a basis of understanding and interest has been laid for all the varieties of canal in the world. Without departing much from the leading purpose of the lesson, much related information concern- ing other forms of transportation, may be taught, together with re- lated information about the configuration of the land, the sources o supply for the canal, freight, and so following. In like manner the other agencies of transportation, such as railroads, street cars, elevated roads, ships and steamboats, may be similarly presented. So of a large number of geographical ideas. Arithmetic, too, has its root ideas, as McClellan and Dewey have so well shown in their ** Psychol- ogy of Number." So, likewise, have grammar, reading, history, botany, zoology. Any teacher can select the important topics in each of these subjects, can build each up into a center of understanding and interest, and can relate these topics to each other within and without the main line of sequence. This form of correlation is assisted by the juxtaposition made natural by common principles of development, as in the theory of culture epochs for culture subjects; but it is not dependent upon such arrangement. This plan renders concentration (or correlation as I prefer to call it) a principle to be observed in the recitation, rather than a program to be followed. The former is available for every teacher; the latter, perhaps, only for the expert. The conscious building up of apperceptive centers in each subject about which shall be associated striking features of related knowledge has sey^rj^l important advantages. It encourages the teacher to make 312 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville his lessons rich with concrete matter and stimulating through their constant challenge to thought. Even the torpid mind awakes to the realization that learning is allied to life, study becomes attractive, insight and interest deepen, and gradually there is developed a per- manent healthy attitude of mind toward life and its work, its duties and opportunities. Sane views of conduct are generated; healthy modes of feeling become habits of the mind. The child becomes, in short, a citizen ; not a mere individual inhabitant. More, however, than we need to construct a theory of concentra- tion do we need to reconstruct our theory of character. This asser- tion is based on the fact that our prevailing ideals of character were formed when society in this country was in its pioneer state. At the beginning of the present century only some 3 per cent, of our popula- tion were in cities, and even then, these so-called cities were little more than overgrown towns, or groups of villages. This being the case it is natural that our conceptions of character should be based upon primitive conditions of society, which in our great municipalities no longer exist. A city represents a system of reciprocal activities, duties, conces- sions, and benefits; the country in a primitive state is a place for inde- pendent, and, in the economic sense, non-social living. The essen- tial idea of pioneer and rural life is isolation, independence, non- responsibility for others; that of the city is reciprocity, co-operation, mutual responsibility. Social co-operation in the city, with respect to health, comfort and prosperity, is a necessity; in the country the chief end is companionship. At the present time nearly a third of our population is concentrated in cities. New York and its environment contains more people than were in the thirteen colonies at the close of the Revolution. Yet even in these vast centers of population the ideals of a primitive community still prevail; for the dominant ideal of character in this country is that of an essentially non-social individualism. The European ferment during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drove the strong, independent characters out of that continent into the wilderness of the New World. Here the essen- tially primitive conditions that prevailed for 250 years developed all the initial non-social instincts among the strongest members of a strong race. Glorious as have been the past results of this personal indepen- dence in the subduing of a continent and in the defense of the nation against foreign foes or internal dissensions, we find no orator to praise, no poet to sing the glories of this spirit when brought under the condi- tions of our modern urban life. The story of our city government is one of inefficiency, rapacity, and fraud. These primitive ideals of character are found on every hand, even Superintendence.] CONCENTRATION OF STUDIES. 313 in our oldest cities, and they are almost universal in rural districts. One may see the results of this conception under city conditions best, perhaps, when we consider the influx to cities from villages and rural communities. The newcomer to the city would preserve the privi- leges of the district from which he came — a yard, a stable, a rubbish heap, perhaps, a well. But if, on the other hand, he demands privi- leges, he is equally ready to grant them. He is content to allow one man to drink milk and another whisky, nor is he disturbed if one chooses to keep a cow, and the other a saloon. Should the water supply be foul, he seeks to protect himself individually by bringing water from a* spring or by buying a filter. His neighbors may look out for themselves. Why should he trouble himself to prevent their drinking the microbes of typhoid fever or to protect them from other filth diseases? Primitive morality does what it can in charity from pure pity for the individual beggar, but it acknowledges no responsi- bility for changing the conditions that produce beggary. It is the lack of civic morality that allows political and corporate rapacity to fasten themselves upon the city. When it is proposed to have the munici- pality undertake some important work of improvement costing a million dollars, the non-social citizen is horrified at the taxes involved, and promptly votes against the proposition. But he constantly allows a corporation having the capital to make the investment and then to bleed the city for half a century. When boodlers gain control of the city machinery for purposes of extravagance and fraud, though he may grieve at the wreck of public business he never thinks of making it his own. The same non-social spirit that permits offensive sights, sounds, and smells, saloons and slums, unsanitary conditions, poor illumina- tion and transport^ation, and slovenly or corrupt public service in general, also allows hordes of children to roam the streets untouched by the refining influences of the school. An effective system of com- pulsory education that would enable us to assimilate rapidly and easily the ever-growing tide of foreign life cast upon our shores is impossi- ble, because it clashes with the non-social instincts of personal inde- pendence. The inevitable result of primitive instincts when placed in the city environment is public discomfort, the presence of infectious diseases, political corruption and corporate exaction, together with ignorance and hopeless poverty and degradation for a large part of the community. It is to the city schools that we must look chiefly for the development of what may be called civic patriotism. Primitive, non-social instincts must be supplemented by social or civic instincts. We now put much emphasis upon the development of national patriot- ism. But is the chief lack here? Is not the integrity of the nation 314 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville safe? Do not the unintelligent as well as the intelligent respond to the call of country? Did not the poor white of the south and the ignorant foreigner of the north fight shoulder to shoulder with the best men of their respective armies during our late war? Where was there ever more undaunted courage and fidelity on either side than in the Russian assaults upon the Turks at Plevna? We need now to put the emphasis upon civic rather than upon national patriotism. The latter in its non-social form is an inextinguishable instinct even of primitive peoples, but the former is the last and best product of civil- ization. A bare suggestion of war in this country can set the land ablaze with military ardor, but who can arouse a 'corresponding enthusiasm in the civic warfare against corruption, inefficiency, ignor- ance, and compulsory poverty? An illustration of what is meant by the social as contrasted with the non-social instincts is seen in the transformation wrought in the city of Birmingham by Mr. Chamberlain and his colleagues. When Mr. Chamberlain became mayor in 1874 he found a city having no parks, no public libraries or museums, no free schools, no public baths or wash-houses. Its streets were wretchedly paved and abounding in filth. The street lighting was poor in quality but high in price; the water supply was inadequate and of poor quality; the sewers were wretched and the death-rate thirty in the thousand. Worst of all, a large part of the city was given up to slums of the worst sort, where disease, wretchedness, immorality, and crime went on almost unchecked. Through the influence of the social spirit invoked by this man this condition of things has been wholly changed. The city has now ten public parks; it has free schools, free public libraries and museums of art, and public baths. The city furnishes the illumination for the streets, which is now plentiful and inexpen- sive. It erected adequate water works, paved the streets, put in an efficient system of sewerage, and reduced the death-rate by a third. It condemned and bought up the slum district, demolished the old buildings, and rented their sites to responsible persons for the erec- tion of buildings of such character as to render slums forever impossi- ble. At the end of seventy-five years all the property so developed falls to the ownership of the city itself. All these things were done without raising the tax rates, and in such a manner that the greatest expenditures will, in the course of time, pay for themselves. More- over, it is said that at the end of the seventy-five years Birmingham will be the richest city of its size in the world. So long as our present non-social ideals of character prevail, first in the school and later in the community, so long will Our municipal reforms prove to be both ineffective and transient. They are brought uperintendence.] DISCUSSION. ^le about through infinite labor of the few, only at the next election to relapse into the former state. The form of scientific temper- ance teaching has now become almost universal, yet it is largely ineffective because back of it, and largely annulling all its efforts, stands the non-social spirit of our people. We shall not get to the bottom of this or any other reform until the schools consciously go to work to supplement our excessive individualism by the insights and instincts of the social disposition. While on the one hand it cannot be expected that formal teaching or isolated knowledge will do anything to implant these new ideals, made imperative by new conditions of life, liberty, and prosperity, so on the other hand little is to be expected from an artificial concentra- tion of knowledge that does nothing to awaken mankind to the social attitude of mind, in which alone progress in that which enriches life is possible. The three essential things, then, are vital knowledge, rational cor- relation and new conceptions of character. As in the cities there is the greatest need for these new ideals, so in the cities are to be found the best opportunities for realizing them. DISCUSSION, Dr. B. a. Hinsdale. — The lines of battle are drawn hsre this morning much as they have been drawn on previous fields of discussion. It is contended on the one hand that the proper point of view from which to survey the child's education is that of the available culture-material. It is insisted on the other hand that such point is the nature of the child. Participants in the discussion emphasize respectively environment and psychology. "The course of study is of prime importance," some say ; "Psychological analysis of the child mind is what we want," others reply. I cannot think the issue is so sharp or so important as the contestants appear to think. Education is the growth, expansion, or development of the mind through its own activity. Hence the mind is a fundamental fact to be considered. But the mind acts, and so grows, only when brought ipto relation with objects capable of stimulating it to activity, and so to growth^ Hence objects of knowledge — what we may call culture-material or education-stuff — is also a fundamental fact in education. The process that we call education may therefore be examined on either side, viz., the nature to be educated and the material or stuff to be used In educating ityPFhere is an adaptation of the external world to the nature and needs of tEemind; there is an equal adaptation of the human development, or of civilization, to the same nature and needs. To deny this last proposition is to deny that the civilizations of the foremost nations are psychological ; it is rather to afiBrm that they are not genuine manifestations of man's nature, but are para- sitic growths. Hence the two points of view are correlatives, and to omit either poe is \g commit a mistake. Nearly the whole field, if not all of it, can be seen 3i6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville from either point of observation. If Dr. Harris and Dr. De Garmo were to sit down at a table to draw up a course of study they would not materially disagree, save, perhaps, in the reasons that they might assign for their respective recom- mendations. For instance, Dr. Harris would urge the study of geography because it is forced upon the child by his environment; Dr. De Garmo would urge its study because it is adapted to the development of his mind. Neither one, I feel sure, would wish to deny the validity of the other's reason. Accordingly, I appear on the field in an irenical spirit,and plead not for a compromise but for a broader view. ISOLATION AND UNIFICATION AS BASES OF STUDY. BY EMERSON E. WHITE, LL.D., COLUMBUS, OHIO. An important condition in the development of any science is the use of clearly defined terms to denote its facts and principles. This is strikingly illustrated in the development of the natural and physical sciences. The terminology of chemistry, physics, and biology has made these sciences possible. It is difficult to see how they could be presented in a language without the use of definite technical terms, not only to denote phenomena, but principles and laws. Most of t|ie terms in the present science of electricity lie outside of the vocabulary of the general scholar, and are known only to specialists in the science. The same is true, to a greater or less degree, of all the modern trades, professions, and arts. Each has a large glossary of technical terms peculiar to itself, each term having a definite meaning. It is one of the recognized infelicities of the science p cr COM 1 i 5 0 ? 5 P A W r : H W • 1 • **• Ci ^j 9 w pa 9 f: P M • rimary Instruction, including the (0 9 C. *<* with • cidental blendings; NERAL ISOLATION, f 0 • \ ■ a w §5 W w • 0 H 0 t ij n I « r 2. ^ p A < 0 1 0 4 ' \ 1 (A A 9 ^: 0 O* A $^ S S 3 2 0 9 2.*^ 9 P 2- o* ^ "o ►*. 00 H-l 0 \*. ^ R Co 2. 2 -Bo ^ 2 ^ > > 9 « « JL 2 ^ 9 2. 9 s^: H 1 2 — c 9 ^4 "^ ^ t' P n w s f- P «o 9 9 :i: • « r ? a w t C/) Ul s» t»i > •0 J^ r t •i 0 3 4 5- 5. 2. at points of c Nation, esp( • 1 n r m 0 t * ry Insi with tion 0 ate B for tZ) 1 • • — 0 3 1 ^ S- 1 n 0 n 1 • A 9 r r 1— 1 0* 9 i 0. Central Core. cidental isolatioi ranches for spec D H C c evelopment an }^rdinate Group each with a All branches united in two or three 0 0 c C/3 • a D i • • 2: > H as • 0. e. 0 •0 <^ J' > 0 % 9 g ^ 0 % 3 2 :;• ;;• 0 9 A A 9 0. n 9* A W r M H W • 0 • 31 322 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville subjects in the same group. • It also permits the isolation of the co-ordinate branches in actual instruction, and their systematic treat- ment. All this means much, for, if the principle of isolation applies to co-ordinate groups because they are co-ordinate^ it necessarily applies to all the co-ordinate groups in a course, avhatever be the number of such groups. If the attempt to subordinate mathematics to literature or history leads to fantastic results, as is conceded, the same will be true of an attempt to subordinate either physical or biological science to the so- called culture studies. Hence the argument for two or for three co-ordinate groups, each with its own sequence and development, con- cedes the whole ground; and we thus again reach the fact that no two co-ordinate branches of study can be wisely unified by making one subordinate to the other. Co-ordination excludes subordination, A glance at the outline given above will suffice to show that the third degree of unification and the third degree of isolation are prac- tically the same. They differ chiefly in emphasis, one putting the emphasis on unification and the other on isolation. Both agree in the unification of allied subjects and closely related facts, and both require the isolation of co-ordinate branches for development and drill. Neither proposes to subject one branch of study to the princi- ple of development that belongs to another, but each branch and sub- ject is to receive such separate treatment as its nature demands. Both agree that unification is most feasible in elementary instruction, where the association of facts is simple and easy. It is obvious form this survey that the application of the principle of unification falls largely within the details of actual instruction. If closely related facts in different branches are to be united in instruc- tion, it must be done by the living teacher; and hence the problem of unification be\ongs more to the art of instruction than to the curricu- lum of studies. The curriculum should, however, not only include the five co-ordinate groups of studies, but the sequence in each group should correspond with the psychical development and progress of the pupil. Since human knowledge is the result of human knowing, every branch of study has natural phases that correspond to the psychical phases through which pupils pass as they ascend in the course. A true course of study not only properly correlates the five co-ordinate groups of studies, but it cuts off a section of each in every round of its ascent. It thus adjusts, so far as this can be done in a scheme of studies, the exercises and disciplines of the school to the psychical condition and needs of the pupil. Studies are thus put in right interrelation by being put in right relations to the pupil. The child is, in this psychological sense, the center of the course of study. Superintendence.] ISOLATION AND UNIFICATION, 323 These facts suggest the mischief that may lurk in an exaggerated view of the importance of unifying all the studies of a child. The attempt, for example, to associate every fact of nature with literature may give now and then a beautiful, even striking, lesson ; but nine- tenths of the important facts of nature cannot be hitched to a poem. The attempt to establish such associations inevitably results in fantas- tic, and even ridiculous combinations. Nor can I see much promise in the effort to unify all branches of instruction by universal relations. There may be a **causal plexus" that binds all knowledge into an organic unity,. but children are not philosophic spiders that gather knowledge by excursions over a web of philosophic causation. It is seen from the foregoing survey of the subject that the princi- ple of unification cannot be made the basis of a rational course of instruction — much less of a curriculum of school studies. Its most fruitful applications are in teaching allied subjects within the several co-ordinate groups, and here chiefly in teaching the elements. It also has an important place in teaching the more closely related facts in different co-ordinate groups, known facts in one group being used in teaching related facts in another group. Here is the recognized field for the' practical application of the principle of unification, and such application promises valuable results. But the obvious principle that underlies not only courses of study but methods of teaching is the fact that every co-ordinate branch of study has its own natural sequence and development, requiring its isolation and separate treatment. Instead of the concentration of all branches of study by subordinating all the rest to one central core, there must be increasing differentiation and isolation, with proper recognition, of course, of all important interrelations. It thus appears that isolation is the dominating principle in a true course of study, unification having its place and function chiefly in the processes of instruction. One more observation seems a fitting conclusion to this study. It does not follow that facts taught separately remain isolated in the pupil's thought. The mind is endowed with the power of assimilation and unification, and this power is more fundamental in education than is dreamed of by some philosophers. Were the assimilation of knowl- edge or the unification of mental power dependent upon the philoso- phic mixing of the materials of instruction in the mind's hopper, I fear that most of us now present would be idiots. We have all been doing a little assimilating and unifying on our own account, and have actu- ally been able to see some of the simpler relations between facts not learned in the same school exercise,' or in the same day, or even in the same year. It may be true that few of us have seen many of the 324 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonrille ^'universal relations** which, according to the somewhat uncertain testimony of philosophy, bind all knowledge into one ''organic unity," but we hope to get more of these insights, at least in the next world. Nor are we much comforted with the suggestion that a child can be made to feel the oneness of all knowledge, even though he may not intellectually apprehend it. The feeling of a truth not present in the mind seems to border on mystery. It is a wise child that sees the immediate relations between the more common facts of observa- tion and experience. DISCUSSION. Dr. Charles A. McMurry, Normal, 111. — Dr. White, in his conclusion gives isolation the dominant place in the course of study. I should be inclined to give isolation and unification an equal importance in the processes of selecting, arranging, and teaching the subjects of the school course. The tendency heretofore has been very strong in the direction of isolating school studies. They have been artificially separated. There is a sequence in any subject like grammar or arithmetic that must be observed so as to bring the facts and principles into a scientific order. There is a positive advantage in set- ting a thing up distinctly so as to see it apart from others, but it is equally important to relate it afterwards to other things and to understand the relations. Analysis must always be followed by synthesis, isolation by unification; other- wise knowledge is broken into fragments and scattered. No important fact can be understood by itself. It must be seen in its relations to bring out its mean- ing. Minneapolis, for example, in not understood by stating its location on the upper Mississippi and the fact of its commerce. But call attention to the pineries of the North which send their millions of logs yearly down the Mississippi and its branches to Minneapolis to be changed into lumber and distributed to the grain regions of the West; notice also the wheat fields of the Northwest sending their millions of bushels of wheat to Minneapolis to be milled into flour and distributed to the East and to Europe and you begin to see in these relations to great producing regions, to rivers and railroads, the causes which have worked so swiftly to produce a great city. Dr. White has chosen to ridicule the causal idea, and yet it is the root out of which grows much of the best interest and insight into studies. The isolation, alone, of studies means the superficial mastery by the memory of the facts, while unification as worked out by a deeper correlation of ideas on the basis of similarity and causal connection is a deeper grasp of meanings. In the past we have neglected to trace out causal relations and connections which give greater unity and value to the knowledge that the child acquires. It is better to make children thinkers than to make them simply memorizers. We separate and isolate studies. But it is true that a child, after thus setting things up and leaving them in this artificial isolation, goes from the school into the world and does n't recognize the things he has been studying; nor is he able to make a practical application and use of the knowledge he has acquired. In the books he finds the trees and plants all beautifully arranged and isolated from other things; so also with insects, stones, etc. Out in the woods he finds together Superintendence,] ORGANIC RELATIONS OF STUDIES. 325 * the trees and insects, the sunshine and birds, the grasses and stones, all in close and even vital life relationship of dependence and mutual support. Why not make school work and studies correspond to life? Dean F. M. McMurry, School of Pedagogy, Buflfalo, N. Y. — I wish to put only one question to Dr. White. In his paper, just read, the conclusion reached is largely dependent upon his assertion that there is a necessary sequence in the arrangement of topics in each study. His thought evidently was that this sequence was so important or so necessary that each study sacrifices altogether too much by being associated with some one branch as a center. I, for my part, have never yet been able to discover the suggested necessary sequence in most of the common-school studies. I would like to ask Dr. White to show that there is such a sequence in geography, in nature study, and in literature. [Dr. White here replied, saying that any scienee presupposes a necessary arrangement of its subjeet-matter, and consequently there is this necessary sequence in the com- mon-school subjects.] In showing that there is a necessary sequence in the studies. Dr. White has assumed that the studies taught in the common schools are taught as sciences. For instance, he seems to regard arithmetic, literature, geography, nature study, etc., each as a science. I take it that in this discussion we have in mind, primarily, the common-school curriculum. I doubt very seri- ously whether any one of the com moo -school subjects should be taught as a science. If I am right in this view then the argument of Dr. White loses its basis. The necessary sequence remains unproved, and that being the case we are not at all sure that by subordinating some studies to others the former have much to lose. ORGANIC RELATIOr/S OF STUDIES IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. BY W. N. HAILMAN, WASHINGTON, D. C. I. The complexity of man, as the highest product of evolution, and therefore embodying the whole evolutionary history, renders the task of determining these relations exceedingly difficult. This diffi- culty is still further increased by the fact that in man the **everlasting wiir* has become individualized, and is attaining freedom as a final cause in shaping the life of the individual. Nevertheless, in a large way, these very difficulties indicate quite clearly the ultimate criteria that should guide educational work in the selection and use of its materials and measures. The liberation of the individual will is the aim of all educational work. This implies as the ultimate aim of human learning the knowledge of man in his origin, his evolutionary history, his relations to environment, his essential constitution, his destiny. In heredity man is established; in education he becomes free. In heredity the will preserves its achievements by the mere force of inertia and increases them'in the steady gropings of natural selection ; 326 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville I ■ ■ - education lifts the will out of the shadows of hereditary instinct into the broad day of insight, of free aspiration, of deliberate co-ordination with recognized law. Through education the selfish centripetal coils of mere self-preservation are taught to merge into generous centri- fugal spirals of self-expansion; whatever in man has been narrowly individual becomes broadly universal; static indolence is spurred into dynamic striving; the evanescent pleasures of eager interests are replaced by the deeper and more permanent joys that bless a life of love and freely followed duty. The inmost essential of the child — that by which man ceases to be a mere animal; that by which he frees himself from heredity and becomes amenable to education; that through which are opened to him the portals of humaiiity, with its infinite possibilities — the inmost essential of the child is soul. To stimulate this into activity — or, rather, to afford it every opportunity for activity in efforts to lift itself out of the limitations of lingering instinct into the freedom of a pur- poseful will — this should be the constant aim of every educational act or measure. This is the first and foremost law of educational method. The "laws of self-activity" — of ''stimulation for self-activity" — are but other formulas for this requirement, that every educational meas- ure should tend to establish the conscious self-mastership of the soul. Three phases are involved in self-activity — the stimulus which, entering consciousness and the memory, results in knowledge; the attitude assumed by the mind towards this mental income, resulting in more or less definite purpose ; and the steadfast outward following of such purpose resulting in achievement. In a narrower sense, the first of these phases is termed the head or intellect; the second, the heart; the third, the will in action, or the hand. The active unity of these three constitutes harmonious life. It is clearly not desirable, more particularly during the earlier educational periods, to separate these three in distinct efforts at independent intellectual, moral, and manual or physical training. To do this would tend to impair the integrity of the mental act which begins in experience, is established in thought, and bears fruit in action or life-conduct. As through these senses the world rushes inward to meet the instinctively eager mind- heart of man, awakening it to consciousness of life and self, so through the hand does this same mind-heart project itself outward as a deter- mining, and ultimately the determining, factor in life. At no time should the educator forget the essential unity of these three phases in the soul-life of man. Every new knowledge should stimulate new deeds. All better knowing should result directly and unavoidably in better doing. Conversely, every new achievement Superintendence] ORGANIC RELATIONS OF STUDIES, 327 should rest on increasingly clear intellectual apprehension; all out- ward life should be based on increasingly distinct insight. This is by no means vitiated by sociological requirements of division of labor or interest, of specialization of effort, and of massing individual forces. It is perfectly legitimate under this law of harmony that under certain conditions of social life the formulation of knowl- edge, the crystallization of purpose, and the achievement of purpose should be assigned to different individuals, or groups of individuals, provided only that all be in conscious harmony as to the essential oneness of their work. In fact, education should take cognizance of these sociological necessities, and should stimulate in its work such specialization and division of labor and massing of individuals in com- mon enterprise. Much has been said of the need and value of apperception in intel- lectual development, a phase in the process of mental assimilation in which the mind, on the basis of former gains, assigns to new experi- ences their proper place in its treasure-house of living knowledge, and, emphasizing in growing distinctness resemblances and differences, arrives at increasingly clearer, more definite, and more abstract con- ceptions of things and relations. These apperceptional results, however, are very superficial and flimsy affairs unless they become rooted in the heart-life of purpose and find fruitage in living achieve- ment. In order to become permanently valuable possessions they need to be intensified in another deeper phase in the process of mental assimilation, a phase for which I feel tempted to propose the name of introception. In this phase of assimilation, the new experience, after having in apperception assumed its proper place in the light of previ- ous asquisitions, becomes an integral factor in the self-expansive, out- ward life of the mind-heart of man, by which this mind-heart lifts itself out of mere seeing and doing into universal insight and creative self-assertion, which are both the crown and essence of harmonious life. Yet these two laws alone — the law of self-activity and the law of harmony — might lead men astray unless there live in every purpose the divine spark of benevolence or love. Indeed, it is possible to develop strong, self-active, individual character, possessing much clear knowledge of things and relations which it utilizes in the service of an energetic and intensely fruitful and subjectively harmonious life, yet devoid of love, immorally serving self at the expense of higher and wider life, or unmorally gratifying pleasure, keeping out of harm's way, turning life back into channels of mere self-preservation or per- verting self-expansion into greedy self-accumulation, never reaching the blessed fields of self-devotion. Out of this gehenna of hopeless 328 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville egoism, only the divine spark of love can save man; a love that teaches him in altruistic fervor to love his neighbor as himself, and that lifts him, subsequently, to a degree of insight which kindles in his soul devotion to the ideals of humanity. Thus by love is man lifted out of the egoistic life attitude, in which, as Froebel would say, he is essentially the child of nature, through the altruistic attitude, in which he is the child of man, into the humanitarian attitude, in which he is crowned the child of God. These three — self-activity, harmony, benevolence — consitute the three primary laws of method ; or, rather, the three phases of the one law of method which requires that every full educational measure should stimulate into self-active life the entire being in harmony with benevolent purpose. This law guards us against all manner of one-sidedness, fragmen- tariness, artificialness, and other sterilities. It guards us alike against the vanities of erudition and the arrogances of empiricism. It bases every educational advance on the pupil's widening and deepening experience, which it leads steadily to deeper thought, better purpose, and higher achievement. It gives to experience the drift towards thought, and to thought the thirst of knowledge which is but clearer experience. It teaches thought to seek achievement, and urges achievement to press for keener thought. It imparts to the whole being the fervor of creative effort, and sanctifies this at every step with never failing good will. Moreover, this law, which is based upon the essential unity of man in his varied life utterances, adapts itself readily to parallel unities among the various phases of human learning. A glance at a few of these unities will illustrate this. II. It seems to be universally conceded that the ultimate object of human learning, as such, is the knowledge of man in his origin, his history, his relations to environment, his essential constitution, his destiny. With reference to this all else is vestibule or avenue, material or implement. Biology, psychology, history, sociology, philology, and possibly the metaphysical sciences, on the one hand, as well as mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, and astronomy on the other hand, owe their value and dignity to the light they throw upon the life of man and humanity, or to the control they give him over his physical environment for the purpose of his enlarging life. It will be noticed in these series that each lower serves to explain its higher, and finds its justification in this fact. Thus, mathematics has no value in itself, but assumes high dignity as the key that unlocks physics and, through physics, chemistry, and the rest. Similarly would biology fall into contempt as an idle amusement were it not that Superintendence.] ORGANIC RELATIONS OF STUDIES, 329 it furnishes data for the succeeding sciences, and represents the indispensable first step in ascending to a worthy knowledge of man and humanity. This relation among the sciences is so pronounced that to many each science appears in the light of an art with reference to the sci- ences that follow in the scale. This will become transparently clear when in the series we substi- tute for the names of the sciences the names of the things and rela- tions with which they deal. In such a series we find mathematics, physics, and chemistry, dealing successively with considerations of number, form, force, and motion, both molar and molecular, and the remaining sciences busy with life, its environment, kinships, and aspirations. Taking this series at any point, it is manifest that each consideration leans for the light of analysis upon its predecessor, and owes its value to the analytic light it throws upon or transmits to fol- lowing considerations. Thus in the analysis of form, number considerations mark every step of the road; and in the related arts of measurement and drawing considerations of form are, indeed, in the lead, but would yield little result without the definiteness and precision which are brought within our reach through knowledge and control of the invo.lved number relations. The laws of matter and motion must remain forever a mystery, but for the solvent powers of number and form knowledge when applied to chemical and physical phenomena and to the intricate analyses of dynamics; and here again, in the applications of these laws to the concerns of practical life, considerations of number and form alone can secure safe guidance in the technical manipulations and arts that deal with laws of matter and energy. Similarly life — at least, in its physical and physiological aspects which relate to the conditions and tools of life — is explained in the light of established laws of matter and energy; and so well and thor- oughly is this accomplished that many thoughtful students fancied they might explain on the same ground even the psychic side of life, denying the possibility of self-active effort, which is the soul of life. On the other hand, intimate knowledge of individual life and its con- ditioning environment is indispensable in our attempts to understand the kinships of life, both sociological and historical ; and these, in their turn, throw floods of light upon the substance and meaning even of man's highest aspirations in art, philosophy, and religion. III. In applying these relations among the various branches of human learning to problems concerning the development of the child through education, as sketched in the first part of this inquiry, we are struck at the outset with the fact that as the child in his develop- 330 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville merit — individual and sociological — gradually passes from simplest to increasing complex conditions, interests, and 'activities, so also in the hierarchies of human learning do we proceed from the simplest of sci- ences, arithmetic, through increasingly complex intermediaries to sociology, the most involved of sciences. We are, therefore, justified to look in this parallelism for hints to guide us in determining the order in which subjects of instruction shall come to the child as special objects of interest, apart from the relations they may sustain to other subjects of the instruction or the share they may have in life or in human learning as a whole. However, before entering upon more detailed considerations of this and other related practical problems, it is desirable that we should fully appreciate the differences between what are termed the developing and the didactic methods of instruction and the places they hold in the work of the school. For this purpose it is not necessary to go through an elaborate analysis of the two methods of work. I content myself, therefore, with enumerating the chief points of con- trast between them. Didactic instruction in its methods is primarily and predominantly synthetic and deductive. It begins with general statements, defini- tions, axioms, principles, established systems. Developing instruction, on the other hand, is primarily and predominantly analytic. It begins with particular things, phenomena, and relations, and reaches by pro- cesses of induction, the definitions, axioms, principles and systems on which didactic instruction rests. Didactic methods are dogmatic, dialectic, static; transmitting the recorded knowledge of the race and the conventions of institutional life. Developing methods are heuristic, socratic, dynamic; finding and sifting knowledge, establish- ing attitude. Didactic instruction fills the memory; its pupil is pre- dominantly receptive and imitative; the stress is on the subject of instruction. Developing instruction stimulates self-activity; its pupil is predominantly self-assertive and creative; the stress is on his envi- ronment and experience with reference to the subject in hand and on his control of these in life. It does almost without saying, therefore, that these two methods of instruction, far from being antagonistic, are supplementary of each other. Didactic instruction begins where developing instruction ends, and in its turn didactic instruction fur- nishes the true basis for further development, adding to the experience of the individual that of the race, lifting him out of local into universal environment, out of social into sociological life, out of empiricism into science, out of interest into aspiration. On the other hand, develop- ing instruction supplies the pupil with living points of apperception for the vital assimilation of didactic income; gives him the habit of self- Superintendence.] ORGANIC RELATIONS OF STUDIES. 331 actively testing and verifying this income in practical application, as well as the attitude of placing his self-assertive and creative life into vital harmony with the life of the race. Without the vitalizing influence of mental habits and attitudes which only developing methods can establish, didactic instruction fails of its purpose, transmits only the forms and husks of knowledge, oppresses and arrests life by the sheer weight of these, leaves man stranded upon the shoals of mere erudition. Without the wealth of data and breadth of outlook which can be derived only from didactic instruction, development is liable to go astray, to be starved into self- conceit or wrecked on the reefs and bars of a narrow and wasteful empiricism. For fullest life, for the fullest realization of the purpose of educa- tion, which is the liberation of man's individual will into universal freedom, the deliberate, organic, co-operation of both methods is necessary. For this reason it would be preferable, instead of speak- ing of two methods, to speak rather of two phases of one and the same rational, progressive, or organic method, whose purpose is to enable succeeding generations to co-ordinate themselves self-actively with the continuously progressive development of the race. Even in the nursery the educational instinct of the mother prompts her alternately to stimulate her child's self-active development by more or less suggestive adjustments of environment, and then to guide his conduct, to enrich his interests, or to hasten his vague inductions by example or precept, by descriptive or narrative snatches of story or reminiscence, and by other more or less didactic devices. Still more pronounced is this in the kindergarten and further on, in the elementary school. All of this implies more or less didactic modes of procedure, entered upon with a view, however, of intensifying devel- opment, expanding the child's horizon, deepening his interests, ennobling his purposes, or enhancing his powers of achievement. Indeed, we should never lose sight of the fact that all didactic devices — so far as the nursery, the kindergarten, the primary school, and even the grammar school are concerned — are strictly in the ser- vice of development, and that they owe their value exclusively to this fact. Moreover, in the case of these educational factors this develop- ment is primarily and predominantly individual and social, although with a growing tendency toward universal and sociological phases. It is firmly rooted in the child's personal experience and environment, yet steadily growing toward the freedom of science and art. It relies largely for spontaneous fervor on the pupil's interests, which, however, as steadily expand into the freedom of aspiration. Later on, in high school and college, these tendencies begin to 332 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville assert themselves more and more clearly as the dominant factors in development. The student now should learn more and more con- sciously and deliberately to base individual and social efficiency upon sociological requirements and universal law, to control experience and environment in the light of the achievements of science and art;, and to place his life under the direction of an enlightened, liberated will. IV. In entering, now, upon a more detailed consideration of the practical problems involving the relation of the various branches of human learning to child development, we may, therefore, at the out- set, profitably distinguish between the two great periods of instruc- tion in which the developing and didactic methods successively pre- dominate, and which we may designate, respectively, as the elementary and scientific periods of instruction. Waiving the nursery, the first of these embraces the kindergarten, and, approximately, the first six years of school life; the second embraces the last two years of the grammar school, the high school and college. During the period of elementary instruction the child should deal mainly and preferably with things and relations in close proximity to him or clearly related to his immediate environment. He will, there- fore, approach his subjects from the side of the things with which they have to do, rather than from the side of the abstractions that underlie their scientific aspects. He will deal with number, form, matter, and motion; with life, its environment and kinships; with language, literature, and song, rather than with arithmetic, geometry, physical and chemical science, biology, grammar, rhetoric, and music. Moreover, he will approach these things rather from the developing than from the didactic side ; his activities will be analytic and induc- tive, rather than synthetic and deductive. He will not, therefore, at first be interested in number, form, mat- ter, and motion, as such, and apart from the living things and objects of nature and art that may have enlisted his sympathy, stimulated his interest and purposes, and aided him in the play-work of his life. Yet it is desirable that he should be brought with reasonable speed to feel an active interest in certain fundamental abstractions in relation to number and form ; at least, so that that he may be enabled to place himself in full possession of these keys to knowledge, to synthetic skill, and creative efficiency. The kindergarten appreciating these considerations, brings the child, therefore, from the start into vital intercourse in social games with other children, because these appeal most keenly to his sympa- thies and stir into activity his inmost soul. Through these, it interests the child in objects of nature and art, and in the living things in his environment which are concerned in these games. At the same time, - Snpcrintendcncc] ORGANIC RELATIONS OF STUDIES. 333 with the help of material playthings which emphasize in their con- struction fundamental relations of form and number, it enables the child to give expression to his ideas and to achieve his purposes in a half-material, half-pictorial symbolism, which stimulates in his mind a vital interest in these fundamental relations, and leads him to make them direct objects of his concern. The kindergarten places the child at once amid the rich, all-sided stimulants of full social life. From this it excludes, indeed, all that might repel or shock the child, or confuse it and lead it astray ; but it provides for every essential of social tendency. It adapts every condition to the feeble self-activities of the child, that they may be fully stimulated but not strained, and is solicitous to establish ready mutual responsiveness between the child and its environment. It takes special care to give prominence in this environment to the things and activities of life, inviting the child to respect and nurture life, and to relate himself in good will to the interests and purposes of the symbolic human world of the kindergarten of which he is a part. At the same time the kindergarten provides, as material for the child's groping, yet eager efforts to analyze the environment, simple play- things which invite the embryo student's attention steadily and defi- nitely to number and form relations in all that challenges his interest. Thus, on the one hand, the kindergarten holds the child's being fast in the most complex and spiritual interests of humanity, leading his life gently but surely toward free, intelligent co-ordination in benev- olence with these interests. On the other hand it enables him to reach speedily and in adequate clearness the simple fundamental abstractions without which he can never hope to master the condi- tions and to control the environments upon which the prosperous unfolding of the spiritual side of man depends. From the kindergarten the child passes into the primary school with his life interests intensified and strengthened ; eager to learn, to love, and to do, to co-ordinate himself with a new world on a higher plane and with wider outlook — a world less symbolic and more specific, perhaps, yet clearly at one with with the child's coming real world and nearer to it. The child is now ready to take a direct inter- est in number and form as such, still, however, from the analytic, inductive, experimental side, and with constant practical applications of his discoveries to concrete purposes in measuring, drawing, model- ing, and other manual work, yet more and more prepared, as he advances, to appreciate the value of definitions, general statements, and classifications, and (more particularly in matters of form) quite able to formulate such approximate definitions and general truths on the basis of his own experience and thought. At the same time the 334 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville increasing complexity of his number exercises (I should prefer to call them nCimber piays) renders the material symbolism of blocks and beads, as well as the pictorial symbolism of simple drawings quite cumbersome, and the child turns to the conventional symbolism of ciphers with the sense of relief that comes from increased freedom and added power. • The child has brought from the kindergarten an active sympathetic interest in the life of plants and animals, and is prepared to observe them more systematically, to care for them more intelligently, to record his observations, and to give intelligible accounts of his work and observations in drawing and coloring, as well as in the conven- tional symbolism of written characters. Naturally these observations will deal chiefly with considerations of form and color, with measure- ments of time and growth. This nature study, will, therefore, be in vital connection with number and form study, and will react favorably upon these interests. Much is to be gained at this period by the establishment of a school garden and by excursions into the surround- ing country, not only for the further development of a reverent and sympathetic spirit in the study and nature of life, but also for the establishment of a vital basis for the broader and deeper considera- tion of the environments of life, which, in due time, will lead the child's thoughts toward physical geography and related branches as specific objects of study, as well as for the further unfolding of the child's social tendencies and his interests in the occupations and insti- tutions of man, preparing him on the side of learning, for the specific study of historical and sociological subjects, and, on the side of life, for practical benevolence. In the records and accounts of his work the pictorial symbolism of drawing and coloring very soon proves inadequate, and the child turns with instinctive gratitude to tactful efforts on the teacher's part to put him in possession of the conventional symbolism of the written characters. Writing follows closely the very sounds of plastic speech, and, like the latter, expresses with equal readiness the deepest general- izations of abstract thought and the minutest details of descriptive and creative fancy. Under thoughtful teaching the child appreciates this, so that a comparatively short time will be required to induce him to take a direct interest in exercises which are concerned exclusively with the development of skill in writing, reading and language. Throughout this period the plastic material of the kindergarten enables the school, through synthetic applications of numbers and form elements in exercises akin to art, to touch the deepest springs of self-activity and benevolence in connection with every subject of instruction. These exercises, much strengthened of late by the intro- Superintendence.] ORGANIC RELATIONS OF STUDIES, 335 duction of sloyd into the work of the school, afford the children, upon their own plane of development, rich opportunities for social, as well as individual efficiency, which desiginates the proximate aim of edu- cational effort. It will be noticed that during this period the differentiation of sub- jects in human learning and related arts has made much progress. The child has learned to take a direct interest in number, form, draw- ing, natural history, writing, reading and language. Other matters are still more or less intimately involved in the general interests of the child and connected with the applied work in the differentiated sub- jects enumerated above. Physical and chemical phenomena on the one hand, afford interesting material for the practical exercise of arithmetical and geometrical skill ; on the other hand, they are closely connected with considerations of life environment in nature study. Similarly, considerations of geography and other matters of life envi- ronment, are still deeply involved in nature study, and in the anec- dotes and readings which are meant to extend the child's horizon in these matters and to stimulate historic and scientific interest. Soci- ological subjects are still latent in the practical life of the child. Yet much can be done to lift them toward objective differentiation in games and plays, in the social co-ordination of school exercises, and in suitable talks and readings concerning the social environment of the child. On the whole, the work during this period continues to be predom- inantly analytic and inductive, and concerned with the child's direct experience and immediate environment, yet with a decided leaning toward synthetic and deductive operations and frequent excursions into comparatively distant fields and relatively foreign environments, accessible to the child only with the help of imagination and the deeper apperceptive processes. The transition from the primary to the grammar grades is sig- nificant. The child has reached the age of ten or eleven and is suffi- ciently well established in mental development and analytic experi- ence to permit the school to place increasing stress upon didactic modes of procedure in instruction. He has had much practice in formulating successive results of inductive processes in approximate definitions and generalizations, so that in a number of subjects he can follow with pleasure and profit deductions from ultimate scientific statements. The organic connection of memory and the creative phases of self-activity are sufficiently assured to enable him to receive intelligently and to assimilate vitally the **recorded knowledge of the race" in more or less dogmatic and dialectic presentations by the teacher or the manuals. 336 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville The child may now approach subjects of instruction more and more definitely from their scientific side. He is prepared to study arithmetic and geometry instead of number and form; grammar instead of language ; botany, zoology, geography, and, later on, physi- ology, instead of life and life environments. In some of the arts such as music, drawing, and writing, systematic instruction, based on ultimate, technical principles and in synthetic, progressive sequences, is now fully in place. On the other hand, sociological and psychological subjects remain throughout this period in the elementary stages. The child is, indeed, prepared to interpret and to appreciate the import of myths and historical accounts, to take an intelligent interest in the economic pursuits of men, and in particular phases of institutional life, to ana- lyze motives of action and ethical impulse; but the scientific study of these things is still beyond the grasp of self-active effort on his part. For similar reasons the specific consideration of physical and chemical sciences should be postponed for a later period. The child, however, is competent to follow and make experiments bearing on these subjects, to describe these and to analyze them, to arrive by inductive processes at certain proximate general statements, and to apply these in solution of practical problems that appeal to his inven- tive genius, or to make use of them in efforts to explain contrivances and processes in the mechanic and industrial arts. The manufacture and arrangement of apparatus for these purposes afford much oppor- tunity for utilizing the child's gains from whatever manual training the school may afford. Manual training, however, should during this period still be closely and directly connected with the general development of the child, rather than form a distinct subject of instruction. The chief object of workshop and laboratory should be to afford opportunity for analytic work for the solution of practical problems connected with the work of the school and in which the hand plays an important part. The child should gain dexterity in the use of tools and material much in the manner in which he attains agility and strength in games and play. For this the way is indicated in sloyd as originally taught by Clauson, Kaas, and Cygnaeus. It can be achieved by the application to wider interests and greater scope of the principles that guided Froebel in kindergarten work, and which have since been successfully extended to the manual work of the primary school. The manual work of the kindergarten and primary school gave to the child self-confi- dence through the use of material of ready plasticity, and the results of the child's work derived their value chiefly from their symbolic signfi- cance with reference to work and achievement. In the grammar Superintendence.] ORGANIC RELATIONS OF STUDIES, 337 school material is to be selected more and more with reference to the practical purpose which the finished product is to serve in actual out- ward life. In the primary schools only the simplest tools were used, and these chiefly in order to secure neatness and accuracy; in the grammar school the use of tools in overcoming refractory material and in securing speedy work is of prime importance. In its progress, however, the manual training of the grammar school continues to move steadily on the side of knowledge towards science, on the side of utility towards the industries, and on the side of creative self-expression towards art. At the same time it continues to be the main factor in developing the social sides of the child's being, enabling him to appreciate the value and necessity of adapta- tion, of division of labor, of unity of purpose in benevolent co-ordina- tion, of the significance of institutional life. Hitherto the child has dealt chiefly with his immediate environ- ment, assimilating new experiences and achievements of his own with the apperceptional capital at his disposal. In the grammar school he learns to assimilate with his own experience the experience of others distant from him in time and space, and accessible to him only through avenues of mutual sympathy. His individual egoistic experience expands now distinctly into the altruistic experiences of his time and into the broad experience of the race ; and he passes correspondingly from a more or less egoistic life-attitude through various altruistic phases of attitude to a truly humanitarian attitude which unites and sanctifies the two. Having finished the grammar school course (at the age of fifteen or sixteen), the young people are now ready to take up some specific occupation suited to their conditions, tastes, and aptitudes, or to enter upon courses of further training in secondary or high schools, or in technical schools. Of these, only the secondary or high schools can claim our attention here. Strictly, in so far as these institutions are concerned, the period of education, in the sense of a systematic effort on the part of elders to guide character development, is at an end. It is true, character development still goes on, and it is of the highest importance that environment and instruction, example and precept should lie toward the ideals that gave direction to the work of the elementary school. It is true, too, that the high school should consciously confirm the student in the humanitarian life attitude into which the grammar school has led his thoughts; and it is equally true that this process of self-expansion should be supplemented by a process of self-revelation which the high school has constant opportunities to stimulate, and which alone can assure intelligent, spontaneous devotion to duty on 22 J38 • NATTOMAL &DVCATI0I^AL association, {Jacksonville the student's part. Yet, within these limitations, the chief concern of the high school is to furnish its students with an outfit of knowl- edge and skill which is indispensable to. them in the pursuit of the special studies required for proficiency in the liberal arts or professions for which the college is to furnish special preparation. It is needless, however, as well as inexpedient, in this sketch, to enter into details, further than to indicate that, at least in so far as the subjects of instruction are concerned, scientific treatment and didactic modes of procedure are in place throughout the entire range of work; that the specialist and the manual are not only justified but necessary; and that more or less independent research in any direc- tion on the student's part is no longer practiced for the sake of devel- oping power, but rather with a view of training him in skill to apply the rules of scientific or conventional methods of work, so that in due time he may become fitted for the freedom of the college, or to enter worthily the larger freedom of a rich, practical life, in full possession of the achievements of the race, in harmony with the best tendencies of its evolution and competent, as well as eager, to aid in its onward course. COURSES OF PEDAGOGICAL STUDY AS RELATED TO PROFESSIONAL IMPROVEMENT IN A CORPS OF CITY TEACHERS. BY W. S. SUTTON, SUPERINTENDENT OF CITY SCHOOLS, HOUSTON, TEXAS. With respect to pedagogical knowledge a corps of city teachers may be divided into three classes: The informed the uninformed, and the misinformed. Even the class first named, which is too often the smallest of the three, has need of professional improvement. This need does not show that the teachers are morally culpable, for in America we are still in the beginning of teaching as a profession. There yet abounds faith in the hoary-headed heresy that the teacher is born, not made; and this faith causes many a school board to employ men and women without professional training, and to pay scholars rather than teachers for work mere scholars can not do. The superintendent of schools knows that the resultant of the correlated forces of a school system should be a well-eqtiipped, efficient teacher in every class room, and without difficulty he decides that the highest function of his office is to help inferior teachers become good teachers, and good teachers become better teachers. Of all the means which may be used by the superintendent in the improvement of teachers, that which promises the greatest percentage Superintendence] COURSES OF PEDAGOGICAL STUDY, 335 of result, rich, sure, and permanent, is a skillfully directed, persist- ently followed, course of pedagogical study. In this paper this subject is considered in its relation to a corps of teachers in a city of fifty or one hundred thousand inhabitants. It is assumed at the outset that the regular teachers' institute to be held once a month, is something more than a mere association, and that increase of its efficiency is greatly desired. It may be assumed, furthermore, that but one course of study is pursued by a teachers' institute during any one year. This asumption at first glance would seem subject to criticism, inasmuch as, by the one-course plan, persons differing widely in knowledge and experi- ence are placed in the same class and are assigned the same work. That the criticism is not valid, and that, all things considered, a single course is best, these four truths are sufficient argument: 1. Pedagogical study on the part of those actively engaged in teaching has its limitations; it cannot take the place of a course of study in a school of pedagogy, and, consequently, it must be confined to limits corresponding with the teacher's limitations in time, oppor- tunity and general condition. 2. Every one employed as a teacher in a city school should cer- tainly possess natural and acquired powers sufficient for the achieve- ment of a normal degree of progress in the investigation of educational topics. 3. The constant aid of the more capable teachers is needed in the correction of the misinformed and in the guidance of the unin- formed. 4. The progress of the informed class, including the superintend- ent, depends largely upon the activity of its members in aiding the advance of the uninformed and the misinformed. Yet unquestionably the organizing of volunteer classes to pursue courses other than the one prescribed should be approved and still other courses, for private, individual study, should be commended ; nevertheless, one course, upon which the talent and much of the time of all the teachers may be directed, not only concentrates their power but also gives unity and consistency to their work. Of what shall the one prescribed course of pedagogical study for a city teachers* institute consist? It is obvious that the teacher's private study should not be limited to one professional subject; but it is not so plain that the institute course of study should, at any time embrace more subjects than one. While it should be the school- master's pleasure, as it is his duty, to master psychology, school management, methods, and philosophy of teaching, child study, and the history of education, yet it would be unwise for a corps of city 340 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, Qacksonville teachers to attempt the study of all those subjects at the same time. One professional subject well learned is worth a score and more of pedagogical memory gems. To scatter one's attention is to dissipate it — to destroy it. ** Beware of the man of one book," is an adage, which has universal application. It is, therefore, believed that in a city institute during any one session the course of study should con- sist of only one professional subject. If that subject be given intensive study, much valuable material belonging to correlated subjects will be likewise studied. For example, it would be time spent with little profit for teachers to give nine or ten months to the study of psychol- ogy, if its bearings upon school management, methods of teaching, child study, and even the history of education should receive no con- sideration. In the proper study of any pedagogical subject every phase of school work can, and does, receive more or less attention. The principle of correlation applied here teaches that there should be one central subject, in the mastery of which all other related subjects would necessarily be made to render positive service. Therefore, the exercising of great care in the selection of the subject to be studied is not so important as the practising of wise diligence in carrying out the course adopted. How shall a course of pedagogical study be prosecuted? Before a detailed answer is attempted, it may be well to note some general principles which teachers' even before they enter upon a course of pedagogical study will have no difficulty in accepting, and which will grow stronger and stronger as the work progresses. 1. Only the thirsty seek water. The teacher must be in the proper attitude toward professional improvement. He must know his need, else he will make no beginning in the work. If necessary the superintendent should render assistance at this point, and should demonstrate as clearly as possible that one*s attitude toward his pro- fession determines his standing therein, and that especially in teach- ing is .offered a field for infinite thought and infinite progress. It is here that the superintendent should exercise in the highest degree his power of leadership, for no wise general is willing to enter upon a campaign with indifferent soldiers unambitious of victory. 2. The casual reading of much pedagogical literature will not suffice; faithful, continuous study is the one indispensable prerequisite to success. **You might read all the books in the British museum," says Ruskin, **if you could live long enough, and remain utterly an illiterate, uneducated person; but if you read ten pages in a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with accuracy — you are forever more, in some measure, an educated person." Here, again, in enforc- ing the importance of earnest study, the precept and the example of Superintendence] COURSES OF PEDAGOGICAL STUDY. 341 a leader in honest work are advantageous in all cases, and in most cases absolutely necessary. 3. Through the co-operation of a number of people engaged in the same undertaking each will gain inspiration and strength. The work is typical of all the genuine work of civilization — all help each, and each helps all. It is this co-operative spirit that renders it easy for the will of the individual to express itself freely in right action — even altruistic action, the very foundation of spiritual life and pro- gress. It is therefore, proper, that what is studied in private should be discussed publicly in the institute, that important truths may be emphasized and Rxed in the minds of all, that non-essential ideas may be discriminated from those essential, and that principles learned may be applied to suit local conditions. This idea has been adopted by the American disciples of Herbart, whose public discussions of educa- tional topics follow private, individual study of those topics — a fact which may account for the pleasure and interest and vigor these fol- lowers of the great German manifest in debate. Any teachers' meet- ing for which there is little preparation by all concerned, is but the occasion for much random talk in which but few participate, while the great majority sadder if not wiser, 'impatiently submit to voluble persecution. It is what one carries to a meeting that determines not only his contribution to others, but also the contributions of others to himself. To develop spontaneous activity in each teacher, the super- intendent will need all his qualities of leadership. He will quietly, persistently encourage all to help and be helped in the sharing of the great spiritual wealth which the study of pedagogy cannot fail to develop. In the report of the Committee of Fifteen, Dr. Tarbell has stated the whole truth in these words: **When several capable and earnest people unite in a mutual effort to improve themselves and their work, all the conditions of progress are present." A corps of teachers believing in the three doctrines just now dis- cussed is ready to begin profitable work in an institute. At the begin- ning of the year the subject for study during the entire session should be selected by the superintendent, with the advice and consent of the teachers, and a text book treating of the subject chosen should be adopted. A definite lesson for each month's study should be assigned from time to time. Teachers should be encouraged to extend their reading to helpful books contained in public and private libraries, and especially in the pedagogical library belonging to the city schools. To quicken and develop the spirit of research, without which one is disqualified for the office of the teacher, should be the dominating purpose of all the work — the superintendent's chief concern. He will find it helpful to prepare, a month in advance of each institute, a 342 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jackson villc circular concerning the lesson assigned. In the circular may be given an outline of the topics to be discussed, questions founded upon the topics treated in the regular text, practical questions upon correlated topics, suggestions with respect to further research, and such other recommendations as may be expedient. By way of illustration, a por- tion of a circular used last year in the Houston institute is here given, the apology for giving it being that the chairman of the department requested that this paper give evidence of origin in the workshop rather than in the library : The following outline, taken from White's "School Management," will form the basis of the lesson : CONDITIONS OF EASY CONTROL. 1. The teacher should possess these qualifications. {a) Good scholarship, — thorough and fresh knowledge. {b) Skill in teaching and managing. {c) Heart power, — love for pupils. (d) Will power, — evenness and uniformity of control. {e) Good eyes and ears, — acute discernment. (/) Common sense, — practical wisdom in ordinary affairs. {g) Positive moral character and life. 2. The teacher must be given requisite authority. 3. The teacher must have the confidence and co-operation of school officers and of patrons. 4. The schoolroom and its surroundings should be attractive. 5. Desks and seats should be comfortable. 6. The schoolroom should be properly heated, ventilated, and lighted. The following statements, the first eleven of which are to be found in "White's *' School Management," rest upon a sound psychological basis, the only basis upon which a rational, permanent, and successful system of school discipline can be established: 1. Inborn gifts do not make the teacher any more than they make an artist or an artisan. Fruitful skill is the result of training, and hence it is that special training is becoming the recognized door to every skilled pursuit. 2. It is believed that more teachers are failing in discipline from inadequate scholarship than from any other one cause. 3. There are ten teachers failing in health from want of daily study to one whose health is impaired by such study. It is not overwork that impairs the health of so many teachers, but worry. (It is not over- study, but understudy, that impairs the discipline of so many teachers.) 4. Skill in turning a grindstone is readily acquired. Crank-turning in teaching is a simple process, and hence the large number of crank- turners in our schools. 5. The highest skill is always free from the "Company, front! " of the school martinet. It secures order, but an order born of an order-lov- ing spirit. (Voluntary acts have mental birth preceding physical birth. Conduct, if it is not voluntary, is not good.) Superintendence] COURSES OF PEDAGOGICAL STUDV. 343 6. It may be possible,and sometimes necessary, to restrain wayward pupils by authority, or to rule them by force; but they cannot be led except by true afifection. There is no incentive or restraint so potent as love. Love is the last word in the vocabulary of child control. 7. The teacher's love is to be shown most conscientiously toward the pupils that need it most; not to the most deserving, but to the most needy. 8. The will has the most power in school discipline when accompanied by a silent tongue. 9. The teacher's will is most effective when unsupported by a show of force. 10. It is just as easy for two pupils to sit together all day without whispering once, as to whisper all day, provided they form the habit of sitting together without whispering. 11. Another element of governing ability is good eyes and ears; the ability to know what pupils are doing without watching them; to "take in" a school without espionage. This power may be properly called present- mindedness, as weakness in this direction is called absent-mindedness. It is soul-sight. 12. Not the most eloquent exhortations to the erring and disobedient, though they be in the tongues of men or of angels, can move mightly upon your scholars' resolution till the nameless, unconscious, but infallible pres- ence of a consecrated, earnest heart lifts its holy light into your eyes, hallows your temper, breaths its pleading benediction into your tones, and authenticates your entire being with its open seal. — From Hunting- ton* s *^ Unconscious Tuition,** 13. The glory of children is unity with nature ; the glory of the teacher is unity with childhood. — G, Stanley Hall. 14. Education which takes no heed of the disorderly conduct of children would not be recognized as such by the children themselves. Besides, no lesson can be given in which the holding of the reins of government by a firm yet gentle hand can be dispensed with. — Herbart. 15. Government has only a present aim in view, — the maintenance of order; while training has in view the future adult. — Herbart, 16. I confess to have no conception of education without instruction, and, on the other hand, do not recognize an instruction that does not also ed ucate. — Herbart, 17. Interest is direct, and does not arise from emulation, or hope of reward other than that which the subject itself afifords. It is not impelled by selfishness or fear or ambition. — Herbart, 18. The shadows in the life of this remarkable man (Paoli of Corsica) were that he was imperious and arbitrary, and so over-mastering that he trained the Corsicans to seek guidance and protecion, thus preventing them from acquiring either personal independence or self-reliance. — From Professor Shane's **New Life of Napoleon,** 19. Discipline in a school, in order to be of the highest and most civilizing character, must be secured without harsh means. — Wm. T, Harris, . 20. No, it is not posssible that in introducing more liberty into the r/gime of school discipline, more light and more reason into instruction, the cause of developing moral energy has not been served. Let us not forget, indeed, that it is in proportion as we have more reason and more will that we are better qualified to display in life the virtues of character. — Compayri, 344 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville At the institute for which this circular was prepared many import- ant phases of the subject treated were considered, the method of direct questioning of individual teachers and that of voluntary discussion being employed. The fact that every teacher had been studying the lesson assigned gave all that preparation which precedes a profitable meeting. The young teacher, through independent effort, had dis- covered some truths, and had been made ready to apprehend other truths acquired ty older teachers. To the more experienced mem- bers of the corps an opportunity for thoughtful investigation had been given, for every educational question, when studied aright, presents sufficient difficulty to tempt the labor of the most intelligent, the most gifted of men. In conducting an institute lesson many commendable plans may be adopted, but no plan should be pursued to the exclusion of all others. Educational Foundations^ which is, perhaps, the only American peri- odical devoted exclusively to the field of pedagogical courses of study, furnishes many useful suggestions cohcerning methods of prosecuting this work. An examination of its files discloses praiseworthy evolu- tion. Through the efforts of its editor, Mr. Ossian H. Lang, along definite lines of development, it is to-day offering great service to- students of education throughout the country. Occasionally, as part of their preparation, teachers should write answer*; to prescribed ques- tions, and the answers should be read and debated in the institute fol- lowing. Again, at times, written tests may be made during the progress of an institute to show the results of a month's study. ** Writing maketh an exact man," says Lord Bacon, and as pedagogy, like Speaker Reed*s parliamentary law, has not yet become an exact science, written pedagogical lessons can be made to serve a good educational purpose. Short, pointed papers, upon subjects assigned for study or upon kindred subjects may with great caution be allowed at long intervals; but at no institute should the whole time, or even the greater part thereof, be given over to the presentation of peda- gogical essays, charm they never so wisely. The principle should be kept in mind that it is characteristic of human nature for one to enjoy work in which he himself takes an active part. At the close of a year's institute study a review, partly oral, partly written, is advisable. This review in some degree organizes the pedagogical knowledge gained during the year, gives a definite increase to the working capital of the corps of teachers, and emphasizes the one great truth govern- ing all spiritual enterprises: **To every one that hath shall be given; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." In addition to the pedagogical course of study which is to serve as Superintendence] THE ELEMENTART SCHOOL. 345 a foundation for institute work, there should be courses for the teach- ers of the several elementary grades, one course for high school teachers, and one for school principals. The time limit of this paper forbids a discussion of these courses. Nevertheless it seems clear that the solution of the grade meeting problem can be most easily reached through suitable, well-defined courses of pedagogical study; that similar work for high school teachers can do much to co-ordinate and unify and vitalize the teaching done by specialists; and that sys- tematic study of problems of organization, of supervision, and of school curricula can be made of the highest practical benefit to princi- pals, through whom the progress of the schools must be largely devel- oped, and upon whom the superintendent must ever rely as his trusted counselors and coworkers. The general plan outlined in this pap^r is capable of adaptation tK) cities of over 100,000 inhabitants. The superintendent of a great system of schools can have no duty more important than that of minis- tering to the professional spirit and power of the hundreds or thou- sands of teachers under his supervision. From him, through his assist- ants, should proceed the wholesome stimulus and the continuous direc- tion that influence teachers to become profound students of the science of education, and that lead them, in the practice of the art of teach- ing, to experience the joy the artist feels when he has given fit expression to the glories his soul has seen. WHAT SHOULD THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DO FOR THE CHILD? BY MISS N. CROPSEY, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, INDIAN- APOLIS, IND. It is not the purpose of this short paper to discuss the general theory of education nor to present a complete course of study, but to point out some needs of the elementary school which have not been so thoroughly considered by your committee and which seem import- ant in an ideal course of instruction. The value of the ^\^ fundamental branches is not questioned; there is no other road to the fields of knowledge. We assume that language studies are most important, because they relate the child to the civilization in which he lives and by means of which he is to work out his development. The ability to read implies all culture. All life, all experience, everything of which man can have any knowledge, may be translated 346 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville into language. We can, however, read only what we can recognize — only something which is already in our consciousness waiting to be expressed. The effort to recognize the meaning hidden in the forms of language may help to bring our dim semi-conscious notions to clearness. The school does not give an experience which will enable the child to make the best progress in reading. Even the mechanics of reading and language cannot be acquired by mere mechanical drill. In the past we have lost time in trying to teach the forms of language and reading without reference to the value of their content. We have failed to make these fundamental branches of the highest use in the development of mental and moral power. Do these five branches furnish all the material and all the condi- tions necessary for the development of power? Can they be success- fully taught without the conditions of all-sided development? When we consider that the introduction of machinery has taken from the child in the home much of the training in forethought, patience, persistence, directive power, and manual dexterity, which the primitive industries can give, and when we remember that in the rush and care and burning competition of great cities the sun may no longer ** shine into the heart of the child" but only into his eye, and that religion no longer speaks to him through his interpretation of nature nor through the art of ceremonies, we feel that the school must enlarge his opportunity for experience. We find the elementary school in the city without workshop, gym- nasium, or playground, and without the influence of art. The child in the country, by means of work in the household and on the farm, receives training through observation, experiment, and the responsibility of purposeful work. If he be so fortunate as to receive, in addition to this, thorough instruction in the common branches, he has a broader course of study than most city schools can offer, though not all that his nature demands for its highest devel- opment, nor all that civilization demands for successful living. Our civilization tends toward great centers. The old farm with its primitive industries will not remain. The problem is how to bring the advantages of city and country together. We must bring the country to the city by means of industrial training' and the study of nature. Three great teachers of men and of children — art, nature, and the industries (or useful arts) — have been too little regarded in the schools. These cannot take the place of grammar, mathematics, and history, but they have an influence of great importance. Art appeals not so much to the understanding as to the higher Superintendence] THE ELEAfENTARY SCHOOL. 347 emotions and intuition, and rests upon the mind's power to create ideals. All the fine arts speak the same language — man's ideal nature. Truth, reason, love create the form beautiful. We see the spirit of man, the spirit of nature revealed through, and yet above, the facts. Man sees himself transformed; sees nature perfected. Art says **I am yourself as you may become." The child needs to live with, and feel its influence long before we ask him to analyze it and translate his impressions into judgments. Poetry, music, painting, sculpture, architecture should be power- ful influences in the school. Each may, in a way, be translated into the other; all give a more full and complete revelation of man's nature than one alone could give. All arts have been said to form an ascending series from architecture to poetry, at each progressive stage of which there is less dependence upon the material and more power to express the spiritual. Poetry has been regarded as the highest of arts, because through its forms the greatest range of thought and feeling can be expressed. The house in which one lives has an influence, near or remote, upon one's character. Miss Peabody writes of Mr. Alcott's school : "Conceiving that the objects which meet the senses every day for years must necessarily mold the mind, he chose a spacious room and ornamented it, not with such furniture as only an upholsterer can appreciate, but with such forms as would address and cultivate the imagination and the heart. ' ' The influence of art should fall silently upon the life of the child from the time the beautiful hymn is sung over the cradle until he can understand and love the wonderful symphonies written or sung, or carved in stone. These ideals influence interests and demand expres- sion. They produce a desire to act. If beauty is cherished only as a luxurious dream, without the desire or the opportunity to put it forth into worthy effort, it may destroy instead of purifying the will — may become realized indulgence instead of the guiding light of the ideal. Art ought to give us a sense of proportion in action. I think we find some hint of this in **The Republic" in regard to the purpose of training in music : ** In selecting our soldiers, and educating them in music ^nd gymnastics, we were contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the laws in perfection — the color of their opinions was to be indelibly fixed and not washed away by any such potent lye as pleasure and sorrow, fear and desire. ' And *'in our law of rhythms we must not aim at a variety of them or study all movements indiscriminately, but observe what are the natural rhythms of a well regulated and manly life; and when we have discovered these, we must compel the foot and the music to suit them- 348 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville selves to the sense of such a life, and not the sense to suit itself to the foot and the music." I hope we may come to believe that temperance, moderation, and sound judgment are not cheap acquirements; that they cannot be learned by scientific lectures; that they are costly, and worth all they cost; that children must be placed in an environment which will demand temperance in feeling and action; that the body is to be trained, not as if it had a separate existence and were an end in itself, but as if it were indeed the outward expression of a sound, a beautiful, a highly complex and delicately balanced mind. Dancing is not classed as one of the fine-arts, though it reveals the unity and harmony of the soul through the body. Dancing, free play, and organized games should constitute a part of the physical training of little children ; but as the mind becomes more purposeful the train- ing of the will should be more severe through labor and systematic gymnastics. Music is far from being the noble discipline which it should be in the schools. We do not know half its power to idealize emotions which may become destructive; and just at a time when the uncertain and turbulent nature needs music as an influence and discipline, which may bring repose through the expression of great aspirations, the child is left to find his own forms as best he may. I think the train- ing in elementary schools should prepare pupils to sing choruses from some of the great materpieces. I would apply the same standard to music as to literature; as far as possible both should be classic. I should be glad to see the music festival a part of every school pro- gramme. Music is one of the greatest aids to perfection in reading and oratory, and if there must be contests (of which I scarcely approve), let us have them for the garland of the master-singer and the orator, rather than for the prize to the athletic expert. I need scarcely add that training by means of games is valuable, under proper restrictions, and that compelling all to take part will usually keep it within the limits of legitimate recreation. But after all has been said in praise of the value of music and other arts (and we have given but a hint of their full value), literature is the most complete expression of life, and appeals to life with most directness and power. It may not only give us a supreme moment in ideal action, but may show us the process step by step, through which this beauty and strength have been achieved. Literature is not to be used primarily as language-teaching, but for its influence upon character. This influence must speak ultim- Superintendence] THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 349 ately in noble deeds and noble language. For the reason that litera- ture is life, we can be influenced by it. The best influence of art is not through the understanding alone, but by immediate sympathy. We can by imagination make the deed or the thought our own. The taste for poetry cannot be acquired by much learning about poetry. The poetry of genius is a revelation to the higher nature; it is religious, and comes to the pure in heart through inner experiences of love and duty and aspiration. The word of the poet reveals us to ourselves. The intellect must bring the facts and conditions to the spiritual sense. The understanding must serve the spirit, but its view is par- tial compared with the view of the creative imagination. Below the high school the aim should be to get the general spirit through the incident; to read with enthusiasm and enjoy. A rough analysis into larger wholes and their relation to the general meaning is of value, but the exhaustive drill upon each word and phrase and the teaching of grammar and spelling from the master-pieces of liter- ature should be avoided. The matter should be left while children are enthusiastic, and not dwelt upon until spontaneous joy and appre- ciation are entirely lost. The time will come when the nicer relations will be seen, and when a closer study of form and meaning will bring a more conscious enjoyment. Not until we come into full con- sciousness of the meaning and purpose, does it truly belong to us. History is incidental, and it is not wise to attempt a close correlation with literature. A much closer connection exists between history and geography. The materpieces of imaginative literature belong to all times and all places. Children should leave the elementary school with a great love for the best in art. They should know the songs of genius word for word and as art wholes — not in detached quotations. If they reach the secondary school without this rich experience we know that it is very difficult to awaken interest in the best that children should know and love. The university has come to our aid in declaring that a written examination cannot be made to reveal all that a pupil knows of liter- ature ; that oral reading gives much of feeling and appreciation that cannot be expressed in a written test. This ought to have a very helpful influence upon the teaching of reading in the elementary school. Higher schools all believe that reading is not well taught in the grades below. Good reading means a high degree of intelligence and an auto- matic command of the mechanics of the printed page; in oral reading, physical organs perfectly adapted to the utterance of thought and 350 NATiONAL kDtlcATiOjtfAL ASSOCIATION. Qacksonville feeling; sympathy, courage, good temper, and vital force. It requires the training of every power of body and mind, and is there- fore the greatest discipline of powers. It calls all other disciplines to its aid. The results of training even in science and mathematics, are found in language. As the child in the school speaks more and more from interest in the subject and from real experience; as the teacher becomes a more appreciative and inspiring listener, we may hope for improvement in reading. I have tried to call attention to the influence of art in forming ideals, the influence of ideals upon interests, and their final expression in language and conduct. The creatures of the imagination remain with us longer than the things which we call realities. We know Cor- delia and Esther Summerson better than we know our best friends. The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the present, poor and bare, Can make its sneering comment. It is well understood that discipline through the common branches (reading, arithmetic, geography, history, and grammar), depends much upon preserving the right relation between thought and expres- sion; between the theory of the subject and the art which tests the pupil's knowledge of the theory. These branches are fundamental and may be made to include, in their extension, nearly all forms of activity; but, in my opinion, not quite all that are necessary at this period of development, when we consider that there is no reaction from the study of books through industrial training in the home. We have not the best conditions for the effective teaching of the five funda- mental studies. The useful arts are said to comprehend, not only those which **lie next to instinct, as agriculture, building and weaving, but also prac- tical chemistry and the construction of all grand and delicate tools by which man serves himself.** It is the **arts which lie next to instinct" which the growing child so much needs as self-expression. The art of making a box is not so fine an art as the art of reading a poem. It does not require such a high order of intelligence; it may not even require so much vital force or muscular strength. It is a rough adjustment to things com- pared with the fine adjustment to thoughts. For this reason, if for no other, it is needed for the training of undeveloped minds, and as a reaction from a finer nervous tension. It is a way of expressing pur- pose through muscular action — a training of mind through the nervous system which is valuable in itself at this period of growth, and valuable in preparing the mind and body for higher service. Its value is still Superintendence.] TkB ELEMkNtART SCH60L 35 1 greater if the motive for work be some human need, and if it be directed by some necessary relation to other studies, like mathemat- ics and physics. We look with alarm upon the life of growing boys in cities without the discipline of physical labor, without any proper purposeful expres- sion of life through physical activity, as a reaction from the tension necessary to the training of higher and more complex powers. A thorough system of industrial training I conceive to be not a mere incident in a course of study, but one of the immediate needs of the elementary school as a condition for making all instruction more effective. Instruction in the common branches should be more interesting, more thorough, more heroic. This can be accomplished not by an increase in the number of hours of daily recitation, but by shorter hours, greater skill and knowledge on the part of the teacher, and proper reaction for the children. I believe the quality of our work in the grammar schools would be much improved if the first four hours of the day could be given to the ordinary studies (with proper relax- ations) and the afternoon to the workshop and gymnasium and one period of study. This may require more teachers and may be one solution of the teacher's difficulty in preparing for recitations upon a variety of subjects. It seems to me that much of the manual work now given in high schools should be given in the elementary school, and that this work should be one element in making pupils capable of more sustained, more advanced thinking. Pupils go to the high school without material for reflection, without power of sustained effort. We have required much analysis and explanation and little information and expression. Manual work should stop short of a high degree of skill excepting where the skill is a necessary means to an end, as in writing. This marks the difference between the manual training school and the trade school. ** Church and state," says Goethe, **may have reason to declare themselves dominant, but in the sciences absolute freedom is necessary. In the study of nature it is necessary to inquire whether that which has been handed down to us from the past is really to be relied on to such a degree that we may safely build upon it in the future.*' I believe that the spirit of observation and investigation which is natural to children should be fostered ; that the habit of investigation is a training in individual freedom, and that it is helpful if directed by proper motive. Experiment for the sake of experiment is not helpful to character. Art rests upon nature and some direct experience of its influence A 352 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville is necessary to the interpretation of art. We must feel the spirit of nature in the wind, in the brook, and in the ** tempered light of the woods." To the child, and to men, one of the most valuable influ- ences of nature is the feeling of something beyond the outward appearance which **eye hath not seen nor ear heard" — the influence of the supernatural. Art has this great blessing to bring to the soul; it can take a few elements — sense objects in their isolation — and bring them into unity with life; can create the spirit, the atmosphere which gives them supernatural power. Each study has at last only a relative value. How to secure the right relation of powers in the individual is the greatest problem in education. What is the true relation of the spiritual powers to the understanding and the senses? And in the unfolding of these powers how is action to be related to reflection? No one of the factors of the child's life and growth has any separ- ate existence. His emotions and interests influence his will and forecast his behavior. His physical state conditions in some degree his knowing and doing, and the quality of his knowing may well explain the motive and method of his deed. We assume that there are higher and lower interests; or, at least, that normal interests may become abnormal, and that it is the right relation of interests and powers in our natures that makes for sanity and health. I think that Charles Dickens has done much for education by plac- ing before us so vividly the deformities of one-sided training — Richard, who had no steady purpose, no aim in life. **He had been eight years at a public school and had learned I understand, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him. He had been adapted to the verses, and had learned the art of making them to such perfection that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again, unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it." And the Smallweed family, discarding all amusements, story books, fairy tales, fictions, and fables, **were never children, but were born for several generations, lean, anxious-minded, complete little men and women." We have found no better way to learn a child's needs and his capacities than in the community — the school — of which he is a part. As a citizen he has rights and duties which must be defined — must be respected. And we must in this community provide for full living, Superintendence.] DISCUSSION, 353 and in harmony with the complex life of the community. We should ask, as he enters the secondary school, not only **What does he know?" but **What does he love? What does he reverence and obey? To what degree, and in what ways can he freely express his power?*' DISCUSSION. Superintendent F. Treudley, Youngstown, Ohio — There is one part of Miss Cropsey's paper to which special attention should be given, viz., the influ- ence of the beautiful in all its forms upon life, and the desirability of its cultiva- tion. There are certain elements of training that literally force themselves upon the schools, because they represent necessities that cannot be ignored. They are the equipments of the breadwinner, — the man of affairs, of those conditions of life into which men come whether they will or not. All know what they are. But over and above these lies the domain repre- sented by art, whose ministrations are of the utmost value to the human soul. This influence will not proceed from itself alone. The beautiful does not seem to be a necessity, and the public school must charge itself with its development. But, further let it not be forgotten that, in the higher ranges of thought, the beautiful invests very fully what in the lower stages of development seems commonplace or utilitarian in its aim. Take mathematics. It leads ultimately into the very mechanism of the universe, a mechanism whose order and form is beauty itself. Take literature. Literature may be but the artistic setting of history. It is history, as Froude most justly remarked, referring to Shakespeare. Study such a life as that of the great English painter, Sir Frederick Leighton, lately passed away. The painter's art allies itself to history, to literature, to nature. There is no such thing as complete severance. As Austin Phelps remarked, beauty, truth, and goodness are essential phases of whatever is worth study and reflection. What the schools need most of all is the taking by the hand of art the essen- tials of human instruction and beautifying them by its power and influence. What Lowell could do as an instructor upon Dante, what Emerson could do as a teacher of philosophy, what Pierce could do in the realm of mathematics, what Barker could do in the domain of physics, the teacher must do as far as in him lies with the material upon which and with which he works. Correlation ends in knowledge, but adequate knowledge embraces every element and relationship of the subject studied. Superintendent C. F. Carroll, Worcester, Mass. — In her excellent paper Miss Cropsey made reference to freedom as a necessary part of the education of children, recommending dancing as one form of physical exercise for the kinder- garten. I am not certain that it should be confined to the kindergarten, and know of no reason why children in the earlier grades should not receive the benefit conferred by such exercise. Dancing has long been taught in the kindergartens of Connecticut, and there are many in the state, and has, as I understand, been introduced into the kindergartens of Detroit. Possibly it may be found else- where. Nothing brings into play so perfectly every part ol (he body; nothing so surely gives grace and beauty to movements, 23 354 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jackson ville Miss Cropsey's discussion of the elementary curriculum suggests that all the common forms of the human knowledge should be early introduced into our schools, and that the study of nature is especially valuable because it compels both teachers and children to deal directly with the concrete. An examination of the cross-section of the course of study of any grade of school work to the fourth or fifth shows that we have, within a few years, largely increased the con- tent of the work of the schoolroom in the leading cities of this country. What we need most is that this problem should be formulated. WHAT SHOULD THE HIGH SCHOOL DO FOR THE GRADUATE OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL? BY F. LOUIS SOLDAN, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ST. LOUIS, MO. The query, what should the high school do for the graduate of the elementary school, is easily answered as regards those pupils who resort to the high school for the purpose of preparing themselves for college. Here the high school is a preparatory school and can, and should prepare the pupil for any college that he wishes to enter, by arranging a course of study that meets the college requirements. In many high schools the number of pupils intending to enter col- lege is a very small factor of the total number of the school. For by far the largest number of pupils the high school is the last step in their school education. The course of study for the college class, there- fore, cannot fitly apply to the high school at large. While elementary education has a pre-eminently psychological aim, namely, to' develop the best powers of the child, higher educa- tion, such as represented by the university, has for its aim the trans- mission of the highest culture of our civilization and of the most last- ing spiritual conquests of mankind to minds sufficiently matured to grasp them in their fullness. The high school, in its character as a last step in public education may be called the people's university, because its aim is to introduce a pupil to the spiritual treasures of the race; but it also is the people's university in regard to the fact that its teaching must be largely ele- mentary and popular. The mode of teaching the high school pupil must differ essentially from the college method, because he has not had the preparatory training which the college presupposes. The high school is a continuation of the elementary school, and its work, while of a higher range, must frequently be elementary in mode of presentation and drill. In the college the course may be elective; in the high school it should be largely prescribed. In framing the course of study of a high school, three standpoints Superintendence.] IVHAT SHOULD THE HIGH SCHOOL DO? 355 seem possible: (i) We may consider chiefly the demands of life; (2) the greatest weight may be given to proficiency in leading studies ; or(3) highest emphasis may be laid on the growth and development of the learner and his highest interests. For the sake of brevity, let us call these the realistic, the scholastic, and the ideal standpoints. It goes without saying that neither of these has ever been urged to the exclusion of the rest; but more stress has been laid occasionally on one than on the others. A purely realistic principle in the sense of preparing for a special calling would require a specializing of instruc- tion which a school for general education could not undertake. In fact, the best preparation for life is the school which develops the strongest individuality and quick-witted and thoughtful industry. The scholastic standpoint would determine the course of study of the high school by setting forth the needs of each individual study from the standpoint of the special teacher, and making the totality of such demands constitute the course of study. The danger of certain defects is imminent in a plan designed from an exclusively scholastic standpoint. The specialist will almost inevitably be driven to the conclusion that the pupil should have better preparation before he begins his work at the high school, and that a larger share of time should be given to it after he has commenced the study. If a course of study originating in this plan were introduced it would indeed be a case where in each study the left hand would not know what the right one is doing. Unity of work is all the more necessary because unlike the elementary school, where the pupil is all day long in one room and under the instruction of one teacher, he passes in the high school from room to room, and is taught by a num- ber of persons; and the personal unity of the work which the instruc- tion by one teacher implies does not exist in the high school. It is all the more necessary, therefore, that a unifying principle should underlie the whole course of study. From the third standpoint, which we have called the ideal, the aims of high school education might be thus defined : • I. The high school should communicate to its pupils the typical elements of the highest culture achievements of the race. 2. It should bring the pupil into close touch with the spiritual life of his country and his time. 3. It should awaken and widen the higher human and civic inter- . ests in the pupil, and arouse and stimulate aspirations toward an active life in their service. The psychological demand remains pre-eminent. A course of 356 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville Study must be formed not merely by the requirements of the various sciences, but by the laws and needs of the growing soul of youth. High school education differs from that of the elementary school and from that of the college, but partakes of either; it is the connect- ing link between the two radically different educational principles which the two extremes of school education, the primary school and the university, contain. All education leads the mind to seize the world and hold it in a spiritual grasp. The principle of the elemen- tary school is that the world adjusts itself to the child in order that the youth may learn to adjust himself to the world. In presenting information to little children we select, we arrange, we grade, we use all contrivances and devices which ingenuity niay indicate, to help the child seize the elements of knowledge with his yet feeble grasp. As the household adjusts itself, in a measure, to the imperious baby, so seri9us science and the rigid world of knowledge must be modified and altered and rearranged, to be suitable to the childish taste and his DOwer of assimilation. On the other end of the school career of man stands the university, where the demand is made that the student should grasp unaided the highest thoughts and systems of science or knowledge in their scientific independence. While at the beginning of man's education art predominates over matter, the art of teaching over the material of instruction (of which little can be given at a time, with much art in presenting it), there is, at the end of all scholastic life, in university teaching, much matter and less art — or rather, arti- fice — in presentation. Midway between these two extremes stands the high school. In accordance with these views, a method should prevail in the high school which, while still considering the learner's difficulty, and therefore using the art of pedagogics in presenting matter, begins to lay more and more stress on the matter of instruction and less on pedagogical devices. In the process of learning there is a double activity. Instruction makes the external world ideal, since every step in becoming acquainted with the material things in the world or the data of human relations means that, through the process of learning, facts become ideas. Learning, however, consists not only of receiving information, but in activity, which starts with an idea and gives to it external expression through language, the exercise of skill, or other work. Thus we find a second element in the process of learning; namely, the ideal within becomes an external reality without. When the mind is receiving information the external becomes internal; while any activity in writing, or drawing, or speaking, and the like, makes the idea actual and external. The proper play of these two sides consti- Superintendence.] WHAT SHOULD THE HIGH SCHOOL DO r 337 lutes the fullness of the educational process. Assimilation and activity, or receptivity and spontaneity, are the two poles around which the world of the schoolroom — elementary school or high school — must revolve. Where one factor predominates over the other too much, readjustment is needed. The studies which are most closely allied to the will, and which subserve the idea of making the spiritual within real without, are the arts of expression, and they should stand in a central place in a high school course of study, extending from one end of the course to the other. We expect as one of the results of higher education refine- ment in the modes of expression; clearer, richer, more forcible speech ; writing, more logical in thought and more correct and beau- tiful in form. As a study of expression, drawing, too, should retain its place. There is a peculiar connection between studies that culti- vate the art of expression and the life of the soul within. The physi- ological and mechanical element involved in their practice seems to open channels to the external world by which the soul finds a readier way to manifest itself and grow in strength and activity. The study of expression is of higher than merely formal value; it reacts on all the forms of receptivity, and knowledge becomes assimilated more easily and more thoroughly when there is a corresponding activity in which it is put to use. Drawing necessitates keener oTjservation ; ex- priession, through language, requires clearer ideas; thus spontaneity helps receptivity, and activity helps assimilation. As a further study in the direction of volitional training, gymnastics and calisthenics should not be denied a place. Turning now to the side of receptivity, or to the studies which the pupil is to assimilate, physiology, perhaps, should be placed earliest in the course. Its importance for the preservation of healthful life ren- ders it desirable that all high school children, even if they leave after the first year of study, should partake of this instruction. The anatomical element in physiology should be limited; and those topics most necessary for self-preservation — especially hygiene — occupy the principal place. How to take care of the body, in health and disease, together with some information concerning the treatment of ordinary accidents (and, perhaps, some ideas in connection with nursing the sick) should form prominent topics. Life interests should predominate over scholastic interests. In mathematics, algebra and plane geometry form the indispens- able continuation of arithmetic in the schoolroom. The psychological importance of algebra lies in the pure mathematical reasoning which it requires; and while objective teaching is needed at the outset — since the subject is new to the child — the emphasis must be laid on that part 358 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville which gives the peculiar and necessary training for which the study has a place in the high school curriculum, namely, strict and clear reasoning. Of natural science, botany, physics, and chemistry, together with physiology or biology, seem to form a sufficient curriculum for the four years of the high school course. On the side of the humanities gen- eral history should occupy a prominent place in the high school pro- gramme ; but I would add to it lessons in United States history of much less elementary character than the corresponding study in the elementary school. In our days, economic questions stand in the foreground. While the elements of history taught in the lower schools give a child a good idea of the growth and development of our political institutions, a maturity of mind is required for the com- prehension of the economic and civic topics that form the life interests of the day which the pupil in the elementary school does not possess, and which is too important to be omitted altogether. A one-volume history of the United States, somewhat in the style of Green's '^Shorter History of the English People," with more stress laid on the last fifty years than on the earlier history, would be a valuable addition to our pedagogical literature. The study of the elements of philosophy should have a place in the higher grades of the high school, both on account of the peculiar training which this study gives and also on account of the deeper insight which it tends to produce into those profound problems which have always formed the highest aim of human thought. If an enlightened view of the world is to be one of the results of high school education, this study may be granted a place, to advantage, in the university of the people. Connected therewith should be the lesson in ethics, including rules of conduct. Ethics will not make a human being moral, but it will deepen moral convictions by showing the nature of ethical action and by making ethical relations and principles clear and definite. The art feeling is developed in the form of music in the elementary school; in the high school musical instruction should be continued and raised to a higher level by bringing to the notice of the pupil the noblest works, as far as they can be brought into the schoolroom. There is another side of art which the high school cannot neglect — representative art. If drawing lessons form part of the high school curriculum they should be connected with the history of ornament and historical design. In addition to these features the study of the. his- tory of art, grouped around representative paintings or works of architecture and sculpture, should be embodied in the high school course; Superintendence.! WHAT SHOULD THE HIGH SCHOOL DOf 359 In one form art is studied in every high school in the country — in the form of literature — for which, perhaps, the artistic side (the sense of the beautiful) should receive additional emphasis. We have spoken of language as a mode of expression ; we shall now speak of it as a subject of information. In the high school the study of grammar should be carried on in two directions. It should rise to the study of style and the laws of rhetoric, and it should also trace briefly the historical development of the language, which gives the reason for existing forms, through a brief course of historical grammar. In the study of literature great progress has been made in the last ten or twelve years by bringing the children into contact directly with the famous authors of the English tongue. In the selection of authors a historical principle should be observed, and authors of the various modern periods of English literature should be read, reserving the few authors of older times, Chaucer and Spenser, for the senior year, after historical grammar has been studied to some extent. English litera- ture, like the Greek, has the good fortune of having one grandest representative. Just as with the Greek boy the study of Homer was an education in itself, so with the English or American high school boy or girl, the study of Shakespeare contains the elements of the grandest literary education. Shakespeare should be read not only incidentally with other authors, but should be made the special object of study for a longer period — say, for a whole year, with two or three lessons per week, in the senior class. History of literature has been justly discarded as the substitute of literature itself, and replaced by the study of authors. As a substitute the history of literature is cer- tainly objectionable: but I am afraid we have begun to fail in the other direction. When a knowledge of literature has been obtained through three years' reading of English authors, it is proper and right that the development — the law of progress in literature — should be studied. A brief history of literature is a fitting close for the reading of authors. While English stands in the foreground of linguistic training in the high school, at least one foreign language should be required. Besides the selection of studies for the high school course, and their distribution over four years, a further problem needs considera- tion, namely, what pa^t of the whole subject-matter of the study should be presented. In the inductive and political sciences, in particular, the field of knowledge is practically endless in every direction, and limitation becomes a necessity. The whole field of science cannot be covered, and some principle of selection must be found. One solution would be to single out a few leading topics — say twenty or thirty typical experiments in physics or chemistry; or, to 360 .NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville illustrate in another direction, ten or twelve authors in English litera- ture— and to teach these very limited selections with scholarly thor- oughness, rendering the limited ground that is covered by instruction the type of the whole realm of knowledge beyond, and making the method used in teaching the few facts a key by which the pupil may unlock the other chambers in the house of science. If the whole realm of knowledge cannot be conquered , a part, at least, may be so taught that the known is the type of, and becomes the key to, the unknown which lies beyond it. The study of natural science loses its value as a means of cultivating the faculties when the method employed fails to lead to the observation of, and the activity with, the objects of nature. The tools which Providence has given to man for his life in nature are his senses and his hands. Instruction in science becomes unnatural when not based on the observation and activity of the pupil. Just as necessary as the acquaintance with archetypal forms of nature by direct inspection and of the observational facts by direct experi- ments in the unifying reasoning process. Not only the typical facts but the leading lines of the whole field of the study should be surveyed by the pupil. These leading lines, however, cannot always be taught by experiments performed by the pupil himself;. but he must receive these truths at second hand and through experiments which he wit- nesses but does not perform, and by literary communication through text- book and lecture. The elimination of textbook study by labora- tory work is an extreme that does not commend itself. The individ- ual scientist knows a hundredfold more of nature than he has learned from his own personal experimenting, or he would be comparatively ignorant. Thoroughness in a limited field is not at all opposed to comprehensiveness. It is, in fact, aided by a general acquaintance with the leading lines of the subject. These considerations enable us to formulate the principle of pre- sentation in high school work. There should be, in the first place, the thorough study of detail in connection with some typical topics, limited in number. There should be, in the second place, the study of grand and leading lines and the comprehensive survey of principles and laws. This principle is of almost universal application. In the sciences it would mean the proper combination of laboratory and textbook work, with perhaps a preponderance of the latter. In liter- ature it would mean a preliminary study of authors, followed by the history of literature. In history it would imply a survey of general history, followed (not preceded) by what has been called the 'inten- sive ** study of some period. The proper selection for the latter pur- pose would be the history of the United States in its political and eco- nomic features since the adoption of the constitution. Superintendence] WHAT SHOULD THE HIGH SCHOOL DO f 361 The tone of the high school should be manly. The instruction and discipline which it imparts should be worth a man's time to give and take, and worthy of adult intelligence and effort. The high school years are the period of rapid transition from childhood to manhood and womanhood. In handing the treasures of learning to the little child of the ele-' mentary school, the teacher must stoop so that the child may be able to reach his gifts. In teaching mature youths the teacher must stand erect and cause the youth to lift himself towards the gift held out to him from the height of manhood. Thus only will he learn to grow. The lower classes of the high school still represent childhood, the older classes the youthful adult. The method of teaching should cor- respond to these conditions of nature, and rise from elementary and early beginnings to scholarly interest and effort. A manly tone should permeate the whole school. The duties of citizenship should be distinctly foreshadowed by the spirit of its discipline. While the teacher's will was largely the rule of the elementary school, the gov- erning powers of the high school should be obedience to the reason- able law of the school, based on the exigencies of the work to be carried on and a proper respect for the rights of others. The imper- sonal element of law gradually supersedes personal authority. In instruction, too, the tone should be manly. The high school pupil shows in his social life instinctively where he belongs. He gravitates naturally toward the adult. The boy or girl seeks more freely the society of older persons. His relation to his parents changes from sub- mission to eompanionship. The circle of his interests coincides more and more with that of the adult. His home life has changed, and he is charged in not a few cases with the duties arid responsibilities of a grown person. School had better recognize these facts of life, and turn its steps in the same direction. The age of the high school pupils suggests their treatment. They will be as old when they finish the course as the college graduate was a few generations ago. A glance at the biography of any of the eminent Americans of the earlier part of the century shows this fact. Motley and Bancroft graduated at the age of seventeen; Longfellow, Emerson, and Whitney, the philologist, graduated at eighteen; Webster and Charles Sumner at the age of nineteen. Whatever of current literature and thought moves the interests of the cultured world should find a ready place in the everyday work of the high school. The high school should not only prepare for lifg ; it should be a piece of the life of culture such as the best American men and women lead or desire to lead. High school education, if the unjust charge were true that it kept 362 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville youth away from the interests of life and made him insensible to its pulsations, because it locks him up in the world of the past and of scholastic and unreal abstraction, would indeed tend to unfit for life and be a failure. The opposite course is the one which the high school should pursue with the graduate of the elementary school. It should aim at bringing him into closest touch with the highest interests of current spiritual life and to fill him with a strong desire for wholesome activity in the world of reality. During the time that a pupil is in the high school the noble saying of Terence should ever be before the teacher's eye: *'He is a uan being, and* nothing that relates to humanity should be without interest to him." DISCUSSION, President Joseph Swain, Indiana University. — The question before us is of fundamental importance. Every teacher who teaches in a high school must answer this question. The answer he makes may be in a general and vague way, but it is included in the product he turns out from the high school. Colleges must answer this question by their prescribed courses of study for admission. Any answer which has thus far been made must be, in the nature of things, tenta- tive; perhaps it will always be so. Our knowledge at present is too imperfect for an answer of any other kind. There are too many variable and unknown factors to permit a definite solution. In its present form it is indeterminate. If this view is correct, what shall be done? We cannot stop the schools and the growth of the children while educational men are determining the unknown and variable quantities. The world not only does move, but it must move. ' It is easy to give a general answer. The high school should do all it possibly can, in the four years at its disposal, to develop every power of the mind and give the pupil a healthy, vigorous body. But how 'can this be done is the question. There are four prominent factors in our problem: (i) The mind of the child and its devel- opment when he enters the high school; (2) the teacher; (3) the curriculum; (4) the material equipments. We do not yet know much about the mind. Psychology is still in its infancy, I trust. I have been interested in learning that it is claimed that photography has of late developed to such a degree that the human skeleton can be photo- graphed through the human flesh; that coins can be photographed through the leather of the purse containing them. Now, I hope our psychologists will, in the process of time, give us such a photograph of the parts of the brain, with the use and with the possibilities and means of development of each part, so we may know with precision how much and what kind of brain power the pupil should derive from the study of so much language, mathematics, science, history or literature. What is the food upon which the mind best grows. Is the soul encased in a "pentagon," with a window on, each face? Does the soul grow and prosper best when it has the properly allotted time and season for sitting by each of these windows and contemplating the phenomena presented through each in turn? Or is the soul incased in some other form, with only one great bay win- Superintendence.] D/SCUSSION, 263 dow from which it gets its light and view? If the latter, is it science, or history, or some other subject which makes the great central range of view, and all else merely background, shade, and color, and side light? I hope that those who set forth the theory that the soul has five windows through which it looks* out on the world will accumulate evidence, no matter whether it be from speculation or the facts of experience. I hope that those who believe that history or science is the backbone of knowledge, and other subjects merely ribs and riblets, will continue to investigate their theories. I hope that those who think that any one of the fields of knowledge may be made a center for a correlation of subjects may work out their theories to a logical consequence. I trust in the fullness of time, out of all these theories, when our knowledge is more peffect, we may get to some view which is clearly demonstrable, and we may be able to see what is the best curriculum for an individual case, though it is doubted whether we will ever be able to lay down any one curriculum which is best for all cases, since so far as we know there are no two minds exactly alike. Meanwhile the school must go on. What shall we do? I have no quarrel with those who have already found the exact curriculum for the development of the child, but there are too many exact curricula, each having the same claims, to command general confidence in any one. For myself I am inclined to believe for the present that the high school can do most for the graduate of the elementary school by giving him as a curriculum a minimum amount of those subjects which are very generally regarded as proper subjects for his study and are representative subjects in the several fields of human knowl- edge, and leave the rest of the course to be selected from a wide range of subjects, partly by the student and partly by the teacher. An examination of a large number of high-school curricula of Indiana has led me to believe that the following, on the basis of four subjects five hours per week, is a safe course of study. At least three years of a foreign language, three years of composition and literature, three years of mathematics, two years of science, and two years of civil government and history, and the remaining three years (in one subject) may well be given to music and drawing and an extension of one or more of the above lines of subjects, as the best wisdom of student and teacher may suggest. Personally I should extend as much as possible the time allotted to language in this course. Undoubtedly, here, experience shows that childhood is the best period to learn the elements of language, whether viewed from the standpoint of psychology or viewed as a means to ai> end. The high schools should furnish the graduates of the elementary schools with more and better teachers. The high-school teacher should be in scholarship an equivalent of the college graduate,and should have one year of professional train- ing, either in a first-class normal school or in a department of pedagogv in a col- lege course. If such a teacher has studied and been taught to a purpose, he may not be able to teach some one subject as all important, but he will be able to show the relationship of each subject to all the other related fields of knowledge. He will be able to show that the general lines of study which the child pursues in ;he high school are merely the extension of study in lines already begun in elementary grades, assuming that the elementary instruction has been as it should be, and the child is brought to the highest development possible at that period. He will lead the child to see that the subjects studied in the high school are only element- ary courses in subjects, any one of which is, infinite in extent and is occupying the lifetime of the very best men the world has produced, and that there must come a time in its life, if it is to know very much about any one subject, when 364 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jackscmvillc it must be content to study other fields of knowledge only so far as they bear on the one subject which it has selected to make its own. The high schools need more teachers. There is not enough individual instruction. For example, take the subject of composition. An inquiry into the amount of time devoted to composition by high schools in my own state brought out the fact that the average teacher of composition has very little time for the correction of themes written by the pupils. Unless the teacher can give consid- erable time to the individual needs of each pupil he cannot expect to do all he should for the graduate of the elementary school. From the standpoint of a college man, I may say I do not sympathize with those who would separate the students going to college into one class, giving them a special course, and those whose schQol period ends with the hf|g^h school another course. The course which is the best preparation for life should be the best for college. The whole college course should be additional preparation for life. If the high school exists in order that the pupils may be prepared for life (and I believe it does), the college exists in order that the student may be pre- pared for life more abundantly. Let the high school insist that the graduate of the elementary grade shall at least attain a minimum standard set for admission to the high school; give him a course such as the common experience of educated people and the wisdom of the teacher and the tastes of the pupil, all combined, may suggest; give him a teacher with adequate scholarship and professional training, with personality and character adapted to his high calling; give him proper exercise and rest, and proper material equipment, and stimulate him to his highest endeavor; and give< him at the end of his high school course a burning desire and will power to take the next step, and go to the best college he can find, and the high school will at least have done some of the things that it should do for the graduate of the ele- mentary schools. WHAT SHOULD THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVER^ SITY DO FOR THE GRADUATE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL. BY JAMES H. BAKER, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO. Touching the theme of this paper, inquiries were sent to a large number of universities, colleges, and secondary schools. The first two question related to the work of secondary education, and were as follows: (i) What should the high school graduate be when entering college? (2) What does he lack of an ideal education when he enters? Considering the general character of the questions, the answers are all that might be expected, and they are valuable for the limit of their range as well as for what they express, since they show that concern- ing the main purpose of education there is nothing new to be said. In the replies the deficiencies enumerated naturally answer to the ideals demanded, and only the positive series needs to be used. I Superintendence] THE GRADUATE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL. 365 formulate the answers that represent the consensus of the majority, or appear important as individual opinions. 1. The high school graduate, when entering college, should possess a mind educated by methods that create interest and make power to think and generalize — power to do original work. 2. He should have an acquaintance with each field of knowledge, and should show a symmetrical development of his mental activities. 3. As tending to produce greater interest, knowledge, and power, he should have been trained in only a limited number of subjects in each field ; in these subjects the work should have been continuous and intensive. 4. He should have a good command of English. 5. He should be well grounded in right habits and moral principles — the practice of self-control. While this inquiry is not strictly upon the subject assigned, it shows that the difficult problems of university life are to be solved in part by the secondary schools, and that some of the failures in higher education are due to the imperfections of earlier training. It also introduces part of the discussion that follows. IDEALS OF HIGHER EDUCATION. The third question pertained to higher education — What should the college or university do for the high school graduate? Some of the more important opinions received may be expressed as follows : 1. It ^ould supplement the failures of his earlier training. There should be no chasm between secondary and higher education. 2. It should give him a liberal education. It should offer him a course that has unity and harmony. It should cultivate the power of research. It should teach him to bring all his knowledge and all his power to bear on the problems of life. 3. It should make him broad and then deep in some subject. It should start him in lines of study leading to his life work. 4. It should give him high ideals of private and civic conduct. It should make a man of him. To consider merely the subject of college ideals would be trite and unprofitable in the extreme, and I shall use some latitude in the discussion. THE COLLEGE AND IDEAL PREPARATION. The influence of the college should be felt in the work of prepara- tion. That the college should be closely articulated with the high schools is an idea of modern date, and one not yet fully accepted. An examination of the admission requirements of the college shows a variety of demands, having no common basis in principles of education 366 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville in the standard courses of high schools, or in' uniform agreement. The requirements of some colleges are imperative for specific subjects that are not fundamental, but merely rank with a series of allied sub- jects in a given field of knowledge. Often a method of work accept- able to one college would be rejected by another. Among reputable institutions the height of the standard varies by two years. That the dissatisfaction of the high schools with these evils is deep-seated and widespread can be noted in recent papers and addresses and in repeated efforts to remove them. The fault rests mainly with the col- leges and universities, and the reasons that maintain unessential distinctions are absurd in the eyes of secondary school men. If abso- lute uniformity in. college admission is not feasible, a reasonable choice of equivalents within a given department of knowledge may be allowed. At least a plan of admission may be **organized without uniformity.'* I have known a college to refuse four years' excellent work in science as a substitute for some chapters in a particular book on physical geography. In another instance, a certain scientific school, requiring two years of preparation in Latin, refused a four years* course in Latin in lieu of the prescribed number of books in Caesar. A joint committee has recently been appointed by the Department of Higher Education and the Department of Secondary Education of the National Educational Association to consider further the basis of connection between the high schools and the colleges. This committee consists of eminent and able men, who will accomplish important results if given proper encouragement and aid by the Na- tional Association, and if the various local associations co-operate in- stead of fostering organized differences. The report of the Committee of Ten did much to prepare the way for a more complete and satisfac- tory connection between the colleges and the high schools, but much remains to be done which may well be undertaken by this joint commit- tee. It is interesting to note that one of the longest sections in the report of the Royal Commission on secondary education is on the ''Relation of the University to Secondary Education," and that the importance of a close connection is emphasized and the means of securing it is suggested. The work of secondary education must be based on pedagogical principles and adapted to the stage of development which it repre- sents, and the colleges must take up the work where the high schools leave it. Whatever is best for a given period of growth, is also good preparation for what follows. There should be no saltus in the pro- cess of general education. I do not mean that the colleges are not to help determine the preparatory courses of study ; but they must Superintendence.] T^E GRADUATE OP" THE HIGH SCHOOL, 367 regard the natural order of development in grades below the college as well as ideal college standards. By a closer union with the high schools, the colleges may help to fashion their courses, improve their methods, and may suggest the importance of placing college educated men and women in charge of the various departments of high school work. The report of the Royal Commission previously referred to, discussing the preparation of teachers for the secondary schools says: **So far as regards general education, they will obtain it, and in our opinion, ought to obtain it, not in special seminaries, but in the same schools and universities as are resorted to by persons desiring to enter the other professions. The more attractive the profession becomes, the larger will be the number of teachers who will feel that they ought to fit themselves for it by a university course." The report further says: ** Whatever profes- sional education is provided for teachers ought to have both a theoret- ical and a practical side. * ♦ * Freedom and variety would, in our opinion, be best secured if the universities were to take up the task; * ♦ ♦ and if the science of education is to make good the claims put forward in its behalf it ought to be studied where other branches of mental and moral philosophy are fully handled by the ablest professors. *' Many colleges are now doing much to increase laboratory prac- tice in the high schools, to cultivate the spirit of investigation, to limit the number of subjects and secure good results. In Colorado the principle is generally recognized that a good preparatory education is also a good general education, and that every high school is therefore a preparatory school. The secondary school period is maintained at four years, laboratories are provided in all the schools, and Latin and German, if not Greek, are found in all. These results are largely due to the close relation in that state between secondary and higher edu- cation. LIBERAL EDUCATION. In the second group of opinions quoted, the philosophy is platonic rather than materialistic or utilitarian. It makes a student a man of ideal powers, possibilities, and aspirations. He possesses a nature whose development is an end in itself, whose well-being is of prime consideration. Liberal education aims to give the student a conscious realization of his powers without reference to material advantage through their use in a given occupation or profession. Through liberal education, the student acquires ideas of universal interest and essential character. He gains a comprehensive view that enables him to estimate things at their relative value; to learn the place, use, and end of each. 368 NATIONAL BD,UCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville That liberal education should remain the ideal of at least a large part of the college course, most educators agree. Were this function of the college not a distinctive and essential' one, that department of learning would of necessity be abandoned, and the direct road to practical business would be pursued. Recent addresses representing three of the greatest American universities, agree that the function of the college is to be maintained, and that acquaintance with the several fields of knowledge is necessary to the very idea of liberal edu- cation. They agree to include the field of the languages and litera- ture ; the field of the sciences and mathematics ; the subjective field — that of philosophy and psychology. In the report of the commissioner of education, just published, appears a German criticism of American education, which mentions the lack of linguistic training. The writer says: **The consequences are seen in the defective linguistic-logical discipline of the mind, which, perhaps, more than the discipline in mathematical forms of thought is a requisite of all profound intellect- ual progress be that in linguistic, or in mathematical and scientific branches." In the University of Berlin philosophy is a required subject for all degrees. The conservation of the ideals of the race is largely the work of liberally educated men. Some one has argued that, not through edu- cation, but through a higher standard of society and politics, will the youth of the land be reached ; but society and politics depend upon ideal education and the church for their own purification. The power of research is characteristic of modern university train- ing, and is essential to a liberal education, as giving one the mastery of his powers. Carlyle was not far from right when he said that the true university is a library. The ability to use a library is one criterion of successful college work. Here the student gathers his own mater- ial, uses his own discrimination, formulates his opinions in the light of numerous facts and opinions, and gains self-reliance. It is the scien- tific method as taught by Socrates applied to all fields of study. This is the kind of work that prepares the student to grapple with the prac- tical problems of the day. The opinion that some portion of the college work should be pre- scribed appears to be well founded. This view is strengthened by the fact that many high schools are weak in one or more departments of preparation. A minimum of required work in leading departments of the college will tend to supply the deficiencies of previous training. From an inspection of the latest college catalogues it appears that all colleges exercise some kind of supervision over the choice of studies, and most of them prescribe and determine the order of more than half of the curriculum. In choice of electives many require the group sys- Superinicndence.] THE GRADUATE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, 369 tem in order that consistency may be maintained and that a definite result in some line of work may be reached. The line of demarcation between college and university work is a variable, and the problem of definitely locating it is perplexing in the extreme. Many believe they see signs of segmentation at the end of the junior year, and predict that the senior year will adhere to the graduate school. There are many evidences that, somewhere along the line, the period of general education will be shortened, and the tendency to specialize before the end of the college course is one proof that the change is demanded. Historically the college in America stands as a whole for liberal education, but in its later development the standard has been advanced and the period of professional educa- tion has been lengthened until the problem presents new phases demanding important readjustments. Replies recently received from many institutions of higher learning touching this question, show a variety of opinions. One correspondent pithily says: ** Verily we are a smattering folk. I believe both the college and the professional course should be lengthened.** President Eliot advocates a three- years' course for the A.B., without disguises or complications." Estimating numerically the replies already received, something more than half favor some kind of time readjustment to the end that the period covered by the college and the professional school may be shortened one year. THE COLLEGE AND ACTIVE LIFE. While defending liberal education, it may be held that, especially while a four years' college course is maintained, it should also look toward the world of active influence and the filling of some vocation therein. The student's duties toward society must take on the mod- ern aspect, as contrasted with the self-centered interest of the mediaeval recluse. That education should aim at mere serene enjoy- ment of the true, the beautiful and the good, is an idea of the past. The mere recluse today has no meaning and no use in the world. Educated men must join the march of progress; they must take part in the solution of ethical problems; in the bettering of government and society. The world demands of them altruism, public spirit, high ideals. They should mass the forces of the past for an onward move- ment in the present. Old knowledge should reach out toward new and useful applications. To this end the college should provide for a deeper knowledge of some subject or group of related subjects. This is an essential demerit of general education, and also has a practical aim. The principles of the philosophical and social sciences should find concrete 24 370 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville illustrations in the present. And, above all, student life, should be inspired with ideas of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. ETHICAL IDEALS. A public Statement was recently made that the seniors of a well- known university had less intellectual vigor and less moral power than the average man they might meet on the streets. If the charge be true it is a matter for serious thought; but the statement should be swallowed with a large grain of salt. It may, however, serve as a text. I believe the college must assume an amount of responsibility for the character of the undergraduate student. There has been a natural reaction against some of the unwise requirements of twenty-five years ago ; but the reaction may have gone too far. One of our famous universities ten years ago adopted the policy of leaving the student to his own devices and the moral restraint of the policeman^ but the plan was condemned by the patrons of the institution, and today it exercises a wise and friendly care ovef the student's choice of studies, his attendance upon lectures, and his daily walk and conversation. Entire freedom in student life belongs only to the graduate schools, and to place both grades of students under one system can but prove harmful. The ethical problems of college life are not to solved wholly by perfunctory religious exercises, but by the spirit that pervades the whole teaching and student body, and the many ways and means that the united efforts of earnest and devoted faculties may employ. It is a favorable circumstance that the student, to an extent, can choose subjects in accord with his tastes; that his powers reach out toward some great intellectual interest — the whole being goes in that direc- tion, the soul to its object. That the spirit of education is broader, more liberal and scientific, is significant; the fact makes for truth and honesty. The historical method succeeds the dogmatic in history, social science, philosophy, and ethics. Men are better because they are broader and wiser, and are coming to a higher realization of truth. No doubt the ethical life has the deepest significance for man. The great Fichte was right in claiming that if this is merely a subjectively phenomenal world, it is a necessary creation of mind, that we may have it wherein to work and ethically develop. I believe that institu- tion will turn out the best men where the Baconian philosophy is com- bined with the Platonic, the scientific with the ideal. By some means the student should constantly come in contact with strong manhood and high ideals. It makes a practical difference whether the student believes in his transcendent nature and possibilities or in mere mater- ialism and utilitarianism; whether his ethics is ideal or hedonistic, his view of life optimistic or pessimistic. Superintendence] THE GRADUATE OP" THE HIGH SCHOOL. 371 UNIVERSITY IDEALS. If the question is made distinct, what should the university do for the student, there are some additional considerations. It is enough to say of graduate courses that they should be a war- rant for extended and thorough knowledge of a group of related sub- jects, and for original power to grasp and deal with severe problems. The candidate's knowledge and power should be publicly tested by a j^ood old-fashioned examination and defense of- thesis. The university should refuse to admit the student to the profes- sional schools until he has received at least the equivalent of a com- plete high school education. The faculties of the University of Colo- rado have recently entered upon an investigation of the standard of admission to the professional schools, the length of professional courses, and the relation of professional courses to the college. The results are not yet wholly formulated, and the discussion of the data collected is yet to follow. But some important facts are at hand. Very few schools of applied science in the universities require four years of preparation. Only three or four universities require that standard for th^r law or medical schools. Most catalogues read after this fashion: ** Admission to law or medical school — a college diploma, or a high school diploma, or a second grade teacher's certificate, or evidence of fitness to pursue the subject." Less than half of the law schools require entrance qualifications, and only twenty of them require a three years' course. All medical schools advocate a thor- ough scientific foundation (many of them in a very ideal way) and urge extensive laboratory practice in many special subjects. The most of them think the first two years of a medical course could well be spent without clinical work. Many colleges and collegiate depart- ments of universities provide electives that are accepted by some schools of theology, law, or medicine for their regular first year work. In rare instances studies covering two years are made common to the college and the professional schools. But only a few universities combine in their own organization a plan of shortening the period of college and professional study. Some of us in the West are struggling with these problems, and we look to the East almost in vain for encouragement. Some of us already require the same standard for admission to engineering courses as for admission to the college of liberal arts, and would gladly publish the same standard for law and medicine did the conditions in other sections of the country make it possible. I quote from the ** Report on Legal Education," 1893, issued by the United States Bureau of Education: ** Admission to the bar in all 372 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, Qacksonville continental (European) countries is obtained through the universities, which are professional schools for the four learned professions — the- ology, medicine, law and philosophy. In England and America the colleges and universities are chiefly schools for general culture; only a few offer provisions for thorough professional studies. While in England and America the erroneous idea is still predominant that a collegiate education need not necessarily precede professional study, in continental Europe it is made a conditio sine qua nan. ' * We are unable to understand why great and wealthy universities with abundant students cater to numbers instead of quality, and make professional education in America a by-word. Their faculties surely cannot hold the opinion that the professional school should be the shortest and easiest avenue to money-making. No one more than the lawyer needs the power of general education to grasp all the facts relating to a subject, to weigh their value, discard the unessential, give prominence to the determining factors, to avoid fallacies, to argue intelligently scientific points which may be involved in litigation. No one more than the physician needs an acquaintance with psychology and philos- ophy; with the various sciences and the modern languages. No one more needs the power of judgment in view of seemingly contradictory facts and symptoms. No one more needs the ethical quality of the noble and honorable gentleman. May we not expect aid from the greater universities to maintain the standards which in theory all are ready to advocate. SOME PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY. BY A. S. WHITNEY, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, EAST SAGINAW, MICH. As SO much literature bearing upon this topic has recently appeared from the pens of nearly all the leading advocates of this line of study, I feel unwarranted in attempting little more at his hour than to present as concisely as possible a few personal observations consequent upon the direct application of child study to the practical everyday work of the schools. In so doing, however, I desire it understood at the outset that owing to the more thorough and scientific treatment of certain long-established physical laws, it has been deemed justifiable to con- sider them within the scope of this paper, though well aware that the propriety of this classification may be rightly questioned. With this explanation, then, and craving your indulgence for refer- ring almost entirely to the work as viewed from my own supervisory standpoint, I beg leave to submit the following, somewhat in the nature of a report. Superintendence] PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY. 373 Daring the past school year it was deemed advisable, after some general preparation therefor had been made, to direct the attention of our teachers to the investigation of certain phases of child study, hoping thereby to arouse in them a deeper interest in child nature, to acquaint them more thoroughly with the child's growing powers and possibilities, to bring them into closer living sympathetic touch with their pupils, and at the same time to verify so far as possible the practical claims of its leading students rather than to collect large masses of facts and to attempt general deductions therefrom. With this end in view we first turned our attention to the investiga- tion of vision. For this purpose a supply of Snellon's test-cards was provided for the several school buildings, and all of the teachers care- fully instructed how to make the proper examination. As a result, out of the 5000 pupils whose eyes were tested, an average of between 50 and 60 per cent, was found with impaired sight. This discovery was simply astounding, even to teachers of long experience. It was one thing for them to read appalling accounts of defective vision, and quite another to realize its prevalence among their own pupils. It was also discovered that in some rooms, especially those of the younger teachers, many of the defectives were assigned to the darker and more distant sections, while those of normal powers occupied the more favored sittings. The remedy for this (readjustment) was direct and immediate, and the advantages gained very great. In extreme cases, however, this was insufficient, and the desired end was sought by informing the parents of the difficulty, and strongly urging upon them the importance of consulting a physician and, if necessary, of providing properly fitted glasses. By so doing it was found that in many instances the. parents were wholly ignorant of the existing defect, and were ready and willing to follow the course suggested; that others, failing to realize the necessity, were careless and indiffer- ent and needed enlightenment; that still others, assuming the rights accorded them as independent American citizens, had no hesitancy in informing the teachers in language more forcible than courteous that it was**their business to learn their children, and not put such stuck- up notions into their heads or make dudes out of them." But in gen- eral the appeals of the teachers — appeals such as the parents had never been wont to experience — met with kind and hearty responses, and have resulted in the relieving of distress and the opening of newer and brighter worlds to many a poor unfortunate. Standing upon the vantage ground of this experience, we next turned our attention to the examination of hearing, adopting the same methods of procedure, meeting the same difficulties, and applying the same remedies as in vision. The results were even more surprising. 374 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, (Jacksonville showing a general average of 20 to 25 per cent, of defectives. Of this number there were many of whom most pathetic tales of physical pain of stunted intellects, of crushed spirits, might be graphically related ; but to do so would simply be multiplying the already well-established evidence of our too long delay and cruel neglect. In this connection it may be of interest to state that two years ago an attempt was made at our central school to iron out some of the many wrinkles necessarily incident to a graded system by estab- lishing a new department and placing it in charge of one of our best and most experienced teachers. This department was denominated ** unclassified** in contradistinction from ** ungraded** or ** truant,*' which bears such an unsavory reputation as to stigmatize all consigned thereto. In this are placed all pupils of the grammar grades who, for various causes, are not adaptable to the work of the regular classes, hoping thereby more perfectly to adjust matter and method to individual needs and capacities than was otherwise possible. At the time of the examinations above specified the significant fact was ascertained that every pupil enrolled in this department was suffering from defective vision, defective hearing, or from both. When now we consider, in view of all this, that from a fifth to a fourth of all of the pupils in our public schools are suffering from defec- tive hearing; when we consider again the acknowledged stultifying effect of this misfortune upon the intellectual, business, and com- munity life of each, as well as upon his capacity for enjoyment; and then when we further consider what our best physicians assert, that with proper care on the part of parents and teachers this number would be reduced to 2 per cent., it requires no very great stretch of the imagination to compel the belief that vastly more practical good would redound to humanity by careful, systematized examination and treatment of these defectives than by so much religious devotion to the abstract mechanical ** drills*' of our fathers. . From the beneficial results of the eye and ear studies above described, as everywhere apparent, it was deemed vital to carry the work farther and to pursue it more systematically. Accordingly blanks, based upon the one suggested by Dr. Krohn in the December number of The Child Study Monthly, were provided for permanent record of each individual pupil, the essential requirements of which are date, grade, school, name, age, sex, nationality, postofiice address, birthplace, birthplace of father and of mother, past and present health, causes of death of father and of mother, vision, hearing, visual com- parison, and visual and auditory memory. The pupils are taken aside singly or in small groups, the various tests applied, and the facts ascertained carefully recorded. These records are then made a Superintendence] PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY. 375 part of the oflScial report of each pupil, the same as the standard items of attendance, tardiness, estimate of work accomplished, etc. While it will probably take years to realize the full salutary effect of this system, yet a sufficient amount has already been accomplished unhesi- tatingly to warrant the statement that in its influence upon the pres- ent and future status of both pupil and teacher it is intensely practical. Turning from the investigation of the senses we undertook the study of children's ideas of justice by means of the Barnes story method, taking for the first test the well-known story of the mother who gave her child a box of paints with which the little one painted and spoiled all of the parlor chairs, and then ran to her mother, call- ing out, **0h, mamma, come and see how pretty I have made the parlor!" The question was, **What would you have said or done had you been the child's mother?" , These stories are given as regular composition exercises, the teacher never revealing by look or word their real purpose, or his own beliefs regarding them. At the close of the exercise the papers are collected, studied by the teacher, and then read to the pupils, forming topics for questions and discussion. As to its practical value, I submit the following as characteristic responses to a note of inquiry addressed to the teachers: **I never knew my pupils so well before, and never had so much sympathy for them." From another: **I never realized so fully before the indi- viduality of my school, and the absolute necessity of treating each pupil as an individual." From another: ** It gives me a much more perfect insight into the homes of my pupils, and into the parents' methods of treating their children." From another: **I never real- ized so fully a teacher's responsibility, as many of my own methods are plainly seen in the replies of my pupils." From another: ** It is one of the most valuable exercises we have ever had, in that it shows that one of the most essential elements requisite to fit a child for highest citizenship — the cultivation of the moral judgment — has, through lack of proper exercise, been sadly neglected. " These reports might be indefinitely multiplied but a sufficient number have been given, we trust, to show the value of this study as viewed by the practical grade teacher. Again, we have endeavored to study the child by means of the Russell ** still hunt" plan, urging criticism upon the course of study and general management of the schools whenever and wherever not in perfect harmony with the best interests of the growing child as thereby revealed. In consequence many interesting features have been observed, particularly those bearing upon the child's physical nature — his fears, the high nervous tension to which he is constantly subjected, etc,, of which th? following from one of our teachers maybe 376 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville taken as a fair example, and may well serve to raise the question as to the advisability of sending home estimates of pupils' work, even as often as semi-annually: '*M., seven years old, is an unusually bright child, of a nervous, high-strung disposition ; quick, active, conscien- tious, and of a temperament to feel very keenly either joy, or sorrow. Her teacher. Miss K., does good work in school and is not at all unkind to her pupils. Three days before the semi-annual report-cards were given out, M. was taken sick with the chicken pox. The first afternoon of her illness her mother was sitting beside her sewing, when M. suddenly said: * Mamma, do you think Miss K. will mark me **W/* (worthless) because I staid out on account of the chicken pox?' *Why, no, M., I'm sure she won't. She will mark you just according to what you did when you were there.* Satisfied for just a moment; then she cried again: * Mamma, maybe she'll have to **mark me W.' " Another short silence. *If she did, though," mamma, probably she*d just have to do it that way because I was out, the same as I have to stay out because I got the chicken pox, and she wouldn't be to blame any more than I would. ' Again the same thought and cry kept recurring all the afternoon. In the evening the mother was called out, and I promised to look after the sick child. At eight o'clock I heard a cry from the room and ran to see what was the difficulty. I found the child sitting straight up in bed with the clothes thrown back and her black eyes blazing with excitement. She threw her little arms about my neck and sobbed out, *Miss R., do you suppose I'll get marked ** W" because I had to stay out to-day?' I took her in my arms, reassuring her as best I could, trying to quell her fear and to quiet her nervousness, and so to rock her to sleep again. Before sleep came, however, she argued with me as she had with her mother. *Miss K. will just have to, if she does, and won't be any more to blame than I am for staying out because I had to.' Awakening again and again during the even- ing, the first thought of her mind and the first cry on her lips were, *Do you think, maybe Miss K. will mark me VV? ' " This is no unusual report nor unusual incident, as every student of children knows. It is quoted simply to demonstrate that by focus- ing the attention of the teachers upon child study, it brings home to them more keenly than otherwise possible sympathetic appreciaton of the * lawfulness" of the nervous strain to which children of our schools are constantly subjected, and arouses in them earnest, thought- ful co-operation in all measures looking towards relief. Again, accepting the conclusion of Burgstein and others relative to the unhygienic effects of long sessions, we have arranged for the lowest grade periods of rest at the close of every forty-five or fifty minutes of study. These periods are from ten to fifteen minutes in Supcriniendencc] PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY. 377 length, and consist of recesses, gymnastics, marches, singing, etc., as the case and the state of the weather may warrant. At times the pupils simply slide down into their seats, relax all their muscles, and close their eyes in pretending sleep, while the teacher or some pupil sings a soothing lullaby. The results have more than met our expec- tations. The pressure is Hfted, the pupils and teachers refreshed and invigorated, and more intellectual work accomplished than before. Indeed, so great do its advantages appear from every point of view that I have no hesitancy in saying that the '*no recess" plan, a plan invented and fostered, for the most part, for the benefit of the teacher, should receive our merciless condemnation, or should be absolutely prohibited by law. Stepping into a primary room near the close of the school year, a little girl with swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks attracted my atten- tion. The teacher, observing this, handed me a beautiful specimen of penmanship, remarking as she did so: **R. worked on this specimen earnestly and faithfully, without uttering a whimper, until she had completed it, and then she brought it to me, threw her arms about my neck, cried as if her little heart would break, and shook as if attacked with a fit of ague.'* Upon inquiry it was found that a large number of th» pupils of this grade exhibited the same nervous overstrain and fatigue whenever engaged in this class of work, while an examination under a large magnifying glass of the specimens mentioned confirmed only too alarmingly the conclusions above stated. It was resolved at once, therefore, to abolish this exercise, and to conduct the work at the opening of the new school year in accordance with Dr. HalTs dis- coveries concerning the development and use of the so-called funda- mental and accessory muscles and the groups of nerve-centers govern- ing their movements. In consequence the blackboard with full-arm movement has been substituted for the fine finger-exercises of the slate and pencil, three feet of room without lines and spaces being assigned each pupil. At first it was decided to make use of the base line as a sort of a guide, and the messenger or supervisor of buildings, was instructed to cause the same to be painted. Before he had time to do so, however, our teachers had discovered, experimentally, to their great surprise, that such lines were not only unnecessary, but if used would prove an insurmountable barrier to freedom of movement — the end sought. To be sure, the pupils in the beginning did not write in a straight line; but this was quickly overcome by causing them to stand back a few feet from the board and to observe its variation. As a practical result of the application of this doctrine to the work of the first grade, as pursued in our schools, the teachers, the supervis- ors, and the superintendent are of one mind in stating that never 378 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville before have our pupils written so easily, so rapidly, and so well at this time of the year, and that, too, without a single case of nervous physi- cal or mental exhaustion apparent. In our judgment this is a grand triumph for scientific child study, and must eventually revolutionize this important branch of primary instruction. In conclusion I would say, by way of summation, that child study has had a very marked beneficial effect. First, upon the child, in that it has led to a better understanding of his growing powers and neces- sities, his periods of strength and of weakness, his physical defects and their remedies. It has also led to a keener appreciaton of the physical repression and mental stultification to which he is constantly subjected, and the enormous dangers arising therefrom, and to a more accurate, just and equitable interpretation and manipulation of the motives governing his hourly conduct. And, second, upon the teacher. On this point, I desire simply to confirm from the ordinary school supervisory standpoint, what has just been stated again and again by every writer upon this subject. As never before, child study has acquainted the teacher with the complexity of a child's physical and mental const- tution; has magnified his concept of the child's indi- viduality and emphasized the necessity of adapting instruction in both matter and method in conformity with it; and has brought him into more tender and loving sympathy with the child, into more perfect teaching relation with the child. It has also quickened within the teacher a more tender conscience, a more exalted ambition,, and a keener sense of his own powers, limitations, opportunities and responsibilities; and, best of all, it has inspired him with a deep and hallowed reverence for the little lives intrusted to his care, and has engendered in him an insatiable thirst to implant within every growing breast the sacred ideals of highest manhood and noblest womanhood. THE INFLUENCE OF THE KINDERGARTEN SPIRIT ON HIGHER EDUCA TION. BY JAMES L. HUGHES, INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS, TORONTO, CANADA. H. Courthope Bowen, the Englishman whose interpretation of Froebel's principles is most perfect sympathetically and intellectually, in his admirable work on **Froebel and Education through Self-activ- ity," says: **Froebel was possessed of large and generous views on education as a whole, and on its methods and results as wholes; but it is the work which he did for the education of infant^ between the Superintendence] INFLUENCE OF KINDERGARTEN SPIRIT. 379 ages of three and seven that chiefly demands our gratitude, so far as his aims have been realized up to the present. In the future, unless I am seriously mistaken, his greatest service will be in the reforms which his principles and methods will have forced on our schools and colleges." And again: **It argues, therefore, an absolute misunder- standing of the whole matter, to callously and indifferently admit that Froebel's ideas are true enough for the kindergarten and at the same time to deny that they have anything to do with the schools *' That Mr. Bowen's estimate of the influence of the kindergarten is the correct one is becoming more clear as the kindergarten is more widely introduced and more fully understood. The principles upon which the kindergarten is based are fundamental principles that should guide the teacher in the work of teaching and training the child throughout its school course. The application of principles should change as the child ascends through the advancing periods of its growth, but the laws of true educational development apply univers- ally in the university as well as the kindergarten. These principles have influenced the work in schools and colleges even where the kind- ergarten itself is not recognized. Many men who still speak disre- spectfully of the kindergartens are unconsciously influenced by its spirit, and are applying principles which would never have been clear to them if Froebel had not objectively revealed them by his kinder- garten methods. Dr. Harris in the preface to the ** Education of Man,*' says: ** Those who persistently read Froebel's works are always growing in insight and in power of higher achievement." There is no teacher to whom this statement does not apply. It is as true of the college professor as of the primary teacher. No other educational writings bear re-reading so well as FroebeFs, because his insights were clearer, more comprehensive, more distinctive, and therefore more difficult of general comprehension, than tho'se of any other writer. Men trained under old methods are unable fully to grasp his ideas, as they have no conceptions to which they can be definitely related. It requires exper- ience and training to prepare the minds of teachers to apperceive Froebel's ideas. The next generation, especially those who are for- tunate enough to receive a kindergarten training, will apperceive Froebel's principles more fully, and interpret him more truly than we can hope to do. What is the kindergarten spirit? The distinctive spirit of the kindergarten is the result of Froebel's recognition of the sacredness of the child's selfhood or individuality. He taught that every child has special power, and that its fullest growth and truest education cannot be attained unless this special power becomes the dominant element in 380 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville its life — the central current to which all its other powers form tribu- tary streams. By individuality Froebel meant the divine element in the child — the only element possessing power to stimulate and co-or- dinate all its physical, intellectual and moral activities. He gave to selfhood its rightful place as the guide of the child's powers. At the same time he trained the individual powers of a child he developed its individuality. Individuality and the individual powers should be clearly distinguished. Individuality is the originating and controlling element of character that starts the individual powers "to act, and guides them while at work. The motive power of character is even more important than the operative power, and should be trained more definitely. As motive power is higher than operative power it is more susceptible to training. He believed that the divinity in the child, its individuality, its originality, its distinctive characteristics, its selfhood, was the part of its nature that should be most definitely trained; because on its devel- opment he based all his hope for the child itself, and for its uplifting influence on its fellow men. He objected to every system that magnified knowle'dge at the expense of the child, and his whole life was a protest against the ** stamping and molding" processes of teachers who failed to recognize the sacredness of the child's selfhood. What he valued most was not power, but creative power. He summed up his conceptions of indi- viduality in the germ thought that **the fulfillment of man's destiny is the representation of the divine nature within him." Towards the accomplishment of this destiny by each child he constantly aimed in working out the details of every part of his educational work. This ideal made creative freedom a logical conception and gave it educa- tional value. Without it the suggestion of creative power would be absurd, and spontaneity might lead to anarchy instead of harmonious growth towards truth, justice, and perfect freedom. This foundation of educational principle — the recognition of the sacredness of the child's selfhood — led Froebel to discover the lead- ing features of his educational system. It revealed to him the vital importance of the intelligent, systematic, and persistent study of the child. It made the child, and not the knowledge to be communicated to it, the focus of educational thought. It led him to make freedom and happiness the source of productive interest and the essential con- ditions of the child development. It taught him that the divinity in the child should not be passive or merely responsive to suggestion from others, but that selfhood should be self-active — that is, active in the conception as well as the execution of an idea ; in motive as well as in deed; in originating as well as in operating; in seeing as well Superintendence.] INFLUENCE OF KINDERGARTEN SPIRIT. 381 as in doing — and realizing this he made self-activity the highest pro- cess of human development. It showed him that the divinity in the child should not cease to grow, but should increase in power through progressive stages, and on this he founded his law of evolution. It gave him a clear conception of the true function of the individual, as a perfect unifc in the universal unity. The study of the child, reverence for its individuality, joyousness and spontaneity, true self-activity, progressive evolution, perfect com- munity of feeling, and co-operation in action for the accomplishment of a common beneficent purpose ; these are the essential elements of the spirit of Froebel's kindergarten. How has this spirit influenced the higher departments of educa- tional thought and practice? Myranswer must not be understood to apply to all the higher insti- tutions of learning. The reforms wrought by the kindergarten spirit are working gradually upward from the primary through the interme- diate departments. This is natural, because at first kindergarten methods were studied nfuch more than the principles on which they are based. Until recently high school and college men could be divided into two classes; those who denied that the kindergarten had any educational value, and those who were graciously willing to admit that it might possibly possess some slight educational advantages for very young children. A great awakening has been going on in the best high schools and colleges during the last few years, and the indications are that the next ten years will do much to verify Mr. Courthope Bowen*s predictions. The springtime is here, and the life is flowing upward to the apparently dead high school and college branches. Some of them are green with fresh leaves, and white already with the blossoms of progress that give promise of rich and abundant fruit. CHILD STUDY. A deep and widespread interest has been aroused during the past ten years in high schools, normal schools, and even universities, in scientific child study. The kindergartens undoubtedly deserve the credit for arousing this general and earnest study of the child. They made the child the center of interest, and the chief agent in its own development. They became objective representations of great prin- ciples, not as theories but as vital realities in active operation. Applied principles reveal truth more definitely in an hour than the theoretical exposition of the same truth can do in a century. The kindergartens respected the child's selfhood; they elevated it above the knowledge it is intended to use; they aimed to deal with its divinity rather than its depravity; they helped to make real Emerson's ideal, that the 382 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. Qacksonvillc child is the **sun of the world;" they proved that the child is the supreme educational factor; and by making these facts and principles objective they guided the world to the study of the child, and placed educational investigation on a logical basis. DISCIPLINE. The kindergarten spirit has affected the discipline oT the schools more than it has yet influenced the methods of teaching. In a single generation it has transformed the disciplinary agencies of the school. Rev. J. G. Fitch said in his official report to the English government two years ago, that **the kindergarten had so thoroughly changed the discipline of the English schools that the disciplinary terms now used in the official instructions to teachers would not have been understood by them a few years ago.*' Even in high schools, colleges and universities the old autocratic, domineering, arbitrary, coercive, mandatory spirit has almost disap- peared. The former antagonism between teacher and pupils or stu- dents is becoming rapidly less, and the new era of co-operative har- mony has dawned in good secondary schools and universities. Froebel recognized the value of the teacher's guidance, but he realized very clearly that the teacher's influence might be too great. His profound respect for the selfhood of the child was so great that he would not allow the teacher to overshadow it or prevent its free growth by restrictive domination. Restriction dwarfs, coercion • blights, and domination destroys individuality, and therefore Froebel waged against them a war of extermination. He refused to destroy power in the effort to educate. His comprehension of the inter-rela- tionships existing between all the truly developing processes of nature made him decfde that even between essential freedom and desirable control there must be a course that produces perfect harmony, so he sought the ** perfect law of liberty" that he might guide childhood without destroying its spontaneity. He believed so thoroughly in the law of evolutionary development through successive stages of human growth that he did not expect finished character in the child. He allowed little children' a condition of liberty which shocked the martinets, and agitates some of them still. He denied that anarchy was caused by freedom, but asserted strongly that it was the natural result of coercive control, and that unnatural control, especially during unconscious childhood, made it self-conscious in the weakening sense, and led to a natural indifference or resistance to constituted authority in the subsequent conscious period. He found self-activity to be the intermediary process to produce harmony between spontaneity and control and interest to be th Superintendence.] INFLUENCE OF KINDERGARTEN SPIRIT, 383 motive that leads to self-activity when the selfhood has not been made passive by arbitrary control. With loving sympathy as an attractive power, making the teacher a friend instead of a domineering autocrat, and with the interested self-activity of the child as the central thought in the teacher's philosophy, he knew discipline would soon settle itself in a natural way. He refused to believe that children are happier when the)' are doing wrong than when they are doing right, and never doubted for a moment that they are more contented when engaged in appropriate occupations than when idle. Productivity being, according to his philosophy, the true function of humanity, he rea- soned that creative self-activtiy is the most perfect source of human happiness, and the only rational agency in truly developing discipline. But, it may be answered, all children do not like to work. This statement Froebel declined to accept. It is very likely to be true, that all children do not like to do work chosen for them by their teachers, and to which they are driven by the teacher's authority. The wonder is that there is so little rebellion against work selected by others and towards which children are driven by authority and not drawn by interest. Even when the persuasive power is the witchery of loving reverence for the teacher, work chosen by the teacher never has the maximum of power to interest or develop, and cannot long hold the attention of the pupil or make the path^of duty the path of pleas- ure. Froebel held that children do love productive work if they are trained to plan it as well as perform it. ** They yield themselves, " said he, *Mn childlike trust and cheerfulness to their formative and creative interest." The methods of most schools in the past destroyed the formative and creative interest by making the pupil passive, instead of active, receptive instead of executive. During the early, unconscious period of the child's development, Froebel would have the control of mother and kindergartner so thor- oughly in harmony with the spontaneity of the child as not to be felt by it. The highest disciplinary skill of the mother or kindergartner is shown by the transference of the child's interest from evil to good in so natural a way that the child is not conscious of the external, guiding influence in making the change, or of its own surrender of one interest for another. When the child becomes conscious of its own personality the teacher's duty is still to maintain the harmony between control and spontaneity. Now, however, both the control and spontaneity belong to the pupil. The control should become self- control, and this should be developed first by a clear recognition of the rights of others, and second by the realization of the personal advantages resulting from self-control in subordinating the undesirable to the desirable in one's own tendencies. In the higher departments 384 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Jacksonville the teacher should be the confidential friend of the pupil, and not a mere dictator to whom the pupil should render unquestioning obedi- ence. Exigencies may arise when the teacher may wisely say **thou shalt,** or **thou shalt not," as the result of the "better choice between two evils." Such an incident is always a moral catastrophe, and the wise teacher undoes the evil so far as possible when the con- ditions that precipitated the collision have passed away. As new generations of children trained in the kindergarten, and filled with the spirit of individual liberty and individual responsibility, rise through the, schools to the universities, they will expect and receive a fuller recognition of their ability to exercise self-control and share in the management and discipline of the institutions in which they are being trained. A freer race will demand and deserve still greater freedom. When perfect freedom and full responsibility for individual action are the supreme elements in the management and dis- cipline of colleges and universities, the young men and women in them will receive the best trainnig in goo.d citizenship. Self-govern- ment must create the experiences by which the mind becomes capable of apperceiving the doctrines of political economy. The kindergartens were proscribed by the Prussian government because they threatened the tyranny of imperialism. The imperious spirit of the schools fought against the child's riglit to liberty, and the tyrant schoolmaster would have proscribed it, too, if he had possessed sufficient power. But the kindergartens flourish even in Prussia, and the kindergarten spirit will soon completely overcome the spirit of imperious domination in the state and in the school. SELF-ACTIVITV. The schools are beginning to understand the meaning of FroebePs fundamental law of self-activity. When fully understood, this law is the most productive element in school work, and the surest test of true teaching. There is a wide difference between activity and self-activity; between expression and self-expression. Froebel's ideal of self-activity was distinctly his own. It includes the motive to action, as well as the action. It means more than action in response to the will or suggestion of another, teacher or parent. It is the expression of the selfhood of the child; the execu- tion of the plan of the individual who is acting. It includes the orig- inating and directing power, as well as the operating power of the child. The action of the pupil in response to the direction of the teacher is infinitely more productive than mere receptivity, but not so developing as action in response to his own definite motive. True self-activity is the only certain method of co-ordinating the Superintendence.] INFLUENCE OF KINDERGARTEN SPIRIT, 385 brain of the child and developing its motor centers, and of revealing the child to its teacher and to itself in fruitful self-consciousness. It is the only way of overcoming the great weakness of humanity, which is shown by the possession of knowledge beyond the power of execu- tion— of insight greater than the power of attainment. The highest power is the power to use power. Self-activity is the only process by which we can secure accurate thinking by our pupils. We used to believe that our pupils were thinking while we talked to them. They did sometimes think, for- tunately, about things quite foreign to the subject under considera- tion. Then we imagined that they were thinking when we showed them pictures or things, or when we performed experiments before them. Each of these successive steps was a distinct improvement, when compared with the step below it in the advancing sequence. But no good school is now satisfied even with experiments by the teacher either for the illustration or the discovery of the truth. In chemistry, physics, botany, cooking, sloyd, and all forms of manual training, each student is supplied with apparatus or tools and material with which to perform his own experiments and note his own discov- eries. This development is the outcome of the revelation of the principle of self-activity in the kindergarten. Froebel's exercises in the kin- dergarten always had two parts or stages. In the first the class fol- lowed the guidance of the teacher in gaining new knowledge or exper- ience; and in the second each child applied its own knowledge and experience in the expression of its own conceptions and purposes. This revelation of the ** inner in the outer," Froebel made the basis of the growth of selfhood and the training of operative and executive power. Nearly all schools are yet in the first stage of Froebel's process. The second stage is much more important. The knowledge and experience of the first are of little value unless they are applied in the second stage. The real growth of the individual results almost entirely from the work of the second stage. The growth of selfhood in pupils goes on to a limited extent in schools where FroebeFs idea of self-activity has never been practiced ; but its growth is not due to the schools, but to the exercise of self-activity outside of school. The teachers of the world would be startled if they could examine the brain of a man who had been compelled to submit to ordinary school processes during all his waking hours till he was twenty-one years of age. Brain growth, especially in the motor centers, and the unfold- ing of selfhood yet depend chiefly on the work and play of the children outside of school. 25 386 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Jacksonville Many schools are now making a partial application of Froebel's self-activity in some departments of sch9ol work. In drawing, the teacher is not satisfied with giving new thought or new elements of beauty to the pupils ; each child makes its own use of the new element in making an original design or an independent application of it in association with the knowledge previously • acquired. Writing and grammar are no longer taught as ends, in good schools, but as means of self-expression. Composition is no longer a dreadful formality, but is a means of revealing in visible form the conceptions of each child. When compositions have to be written as home exercises, wise teachers do not assign the subjects, but allow the pupils to select their own subjects. True self-expression means more than a statement of views in regard to questions or subjects chosen by others; it means the expression of opinions on the subject most prominent in the mind and most vitally related to the life of the writer. There is no department of school work in which a thorough under- standing of Froebel's law of self-activity will work greater reforms than in the work of oral reading. Thoughtful teachers are awaken- ing to the fact that the expression of the thoughts of others does not develop powers to express our own. The habit of thought-expression without original thought-conception prevents the development of the power to think, and destroys the natural unity between original thought and its definite expression. If a training in the full interpre- tation and perfect expression of the best thoughts of the greatest writers could develop the power of self-expression, then actors would inevitably be the best speakers in the world, as they are unquestionably the best interpreters of the thought and feeling of the masterpieces of literature. But, notwithstanding the fact that they are accustomed to appear regularly before large audiences and should therefore be free from distracting self-consciousness, few actors are able to express their own views with clearness and freedom. No subject in the whole range of school work needs to be considered by teachers more care- fully than the subject of reading. The methods now in use have sent out from the schools at least 97 per cent, of the pupils without an interest in any definite, systematic course of reading; they destroy the natural power of expression, they make pupils weakly self-conscious and they fail to give them the highest power of true self-expression. Oliver Wendell Holmes said: *'I had no instruction in grammar or language when I was at school. I learned to write by having some- thing to say, and trying to say it in the best way," Henry Irving said to the students of Harvard: **If you are true to your individual- ity, and have great, original thoughts, they will find their way to the Superintendence.] INFLUENCE OF KINDERGARTEN SPIRIT, 387 hearts of others as surely as the upland waters burst their way to the sea. The greatest opportunity for teachers to make valuable' discoveries in their professional work is to be found in extending the application of Froebel's law of self-activity in the methods of teaching. PLAY. The kindergarten, by making play an organic part of actual school work, has led teachers to regard it as an important, if not an essen- tial, educational process and has done much to change educational ideas and reveal the truth that the communication of knowledge is not the highest duty of the school. Play is now recognized as the best agency in securing the complete development of the child's physical life; but it accomplishes much more than physical growth and energy. It is the best possible process by which the motor brain can be increased in size and co-ordinated with the sensory brain. It lays the basis for energetic character. It reveals the absolute importance of individual training as an essential to the success of the club or team. Every cricket, lacrosse, football, and baseball player knows that if there is one weak man on the team the whole team is weakened. Play makes clear, also, the power of organized action. These two lessons are the most important lessons the race has to learn ,and play is the best objective, realistic, experi- mental method of revealing them. TRUE OBJECTIVE TEACHING. Froebel's use of material has done much to improve the methods of using objects in school. English and American teachers at first completely failed to grasp the aim of Pestalozzi in his objective work. His chief purpose was to define and develop the senses so that they might be reliable agents of the brain. English and American teachers saw in his object teaching but a new method of acquiring knowledge more rapidly and definitely, an objective teaching deteri- orated into formal information lessons concerning common objects. The English Education Department proved its wisdom by prohibiting what were called object lessons in England, and their reintroduction into English schools resulted from the elevation of the ideals of teach- ers as a result of Froebel's better use of material in the kindergarten. Froebel made a much higher use of material than Pestalozzi. He aimed not merely to define the child's powers, but to develop its self- hood, by allowing it to use varied materials as a means of self-expres- sion in revealing its own conceptions and in transforming its material environment so as to subordinate it to high purposes. 388 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION Qacksonvillc MANUAL TRAINING. Froebers use of material in the kindergarten has completely changed the ideals in regard to manual training. Educators now demand that all children, and not a few, shall have manual training; that manual training be given before the age of fourteen; and espe- cially that manual training shall be introduced into schools for edu- cational instead of economic or industrial reasons. There is an economic element in manual training, but it is subordinate to the edu- cational element. The greatest function of manual training is brain- making. The motor brain has been neglected in the schools; man- ual training not only develops the motor brain but co-ordinates it with the sensory brain. INDIVIDUALITY. The recognition of the divinity in the child as shown in the kin- dergarten is leading to universal reverence for the child's individual- ity. The watchword of good schools is now freedom, not coercive domination. Teachers stand beside or behind the child when they wish to educate it to its fullest limit. The old idea was to make all the pupils as much alike as possible. The new aim is to make them as unlike as possible. God's perfect harmony and true unity are based on the perfect interrelation of unlike things. Unity is not sameness. Perfect harmony in music results from complete and defi- nite expression of different tones at the same time. No two parts are alike, but if each part is perfect in its distinctive quality the unity makes a perfectly harmonious whole, and the perfection of the unity depends on the distinctive perfection of each individual part. Each child has an individuality or selfhood peculiarly its own, and its best growth and work are possible only as its selfhood is developed. CO-OPERATION OR COMMUNITY OF SPIRIT. The greatest lesson taught by the kindergarten is the need of a new morality, based on a better understanding of the teaching of Christ in regard to community of aim and altruistic purpose. Froebel saw in the perfect development of individual power as a basis for complete organic co-operation of the race the only process for the upward growth of humanity in wisdom, purity and power. The individual growth was a means, not an end. Every part of his kindergarten system leads to the higher morality of Christian community of spirit. The schools should become the great agencies in training the race in unity of higher purpose, and in defining proper conceptions of inter- relationships and strengthening interdependence. It was Froebel's aim to make the kindergarten and the school a little world, where responsibility is shared by all, individual rights respected by all, Superintendence.] INFLUENCE OF KINDERGARTEN SPIRIT. 389 brotherly sympathy developed by all, and voluntary co-operation practiced by all. When Froebel's educational principles have been practiced long enough to make them dominant elements in human character, there will be an end to the illogical socialism that demands compulsory co-operation in defiance of individual rights. Froebel's recognition of unity was so clear that it became the fundamental law of his system. He saw unity between man and nature; between man and God; between man's physical, intellectual and spiritual natures; between his receptive, reflective, and executive powers; and between childhood, youth, and maturity. He saw, too, the unity that should exist between the studies of the school curricu- lum. His kindergarten is the most perfect representation of practical correlation yet wrought out. The songs, games, stories, occupations, observation lessons, and all the work done by and for the little ones in a kindergarten, relate to one central, dominant purpose ; which has some natural vital relationship to the child's life, and varies with the conditions by which the child is surrounded. Both Herbart and Froebel saw the necessity for correlation ; but to Froebel, correlation was a part of his universal law of unity, and as usual with him, he made it a reality in his practical work, and thus the kindergarten is disclosing it to teachers. APPERCEPTION. Froebel recognized the weakness of teaching which presented knowledge to the mind, and trained the receptive agencies that they might bring it definitely to the mind, but failed to train the mind itself to make it capable of comprehending and relating the knowledge presented to it, and neglected also to stimulate the mind so that it was anxious to receive the new knowledge and add it to the similar knowledge already possessed. The primary aim of the kindergarten so far as mental development and mind storing are concerned, is to form apperceptive centers in the mind, so that all knowledge may be clearly comprehended and definitely related. Froebel secured apperception in its highest and most productive form by his law of self-activity. In self-activity the originating element is the child's own mind. Activity results from interest first aroused in the mind of the individual who acts. The mind is not responsive merely to appeals from without ; it is roused and reaches out with living interest to find and grasp the new facts or principles. In the kindergarten the child's apperceptive centers are first defined, and then enlarged by active — not passive, or merely responsive — interest. NATURE STUDY. The kindergarten is unfolding to the schools a new and higher form of nature study. Froebel led the child to study nature, not that 390 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville its store of formal knowledge should be increased, but that its life might be purified and the process of its own evolution to higher life revealed. Nature was to Froebel a temple of life. He placed the child in sympathetic touch with nature in order that it might become acquainted with life in its growth processes and in its evolution to higher life. He believed that life must be the central element in all true religious development. He knew that apperceptive centers were as essential in spiritual development as in mental growth, and he believed that the only possible way to form religious apperceptive centers in the child's nature is to bring it into loving attitude towards nature, that it may first see the life in nature, and then recognize the unseen life behind the life of nature. He would have the child reverence the life in nature so fully as not to destroy it wantonly. He trained the child in the kindergarten to sow seeds and water the plants that came from them in order that it might realize its power to start other life to grow and help the life to still higher, grander life. The consciousness in the mind of the child that it can aid plant life to greater life will by easy transition become in the mind of the man or woman a consciousness of power to aid other human lives to nobler life. This is the most productive and most elevating apper- ceptive center that can be implanted in human nature. Superintendence.] SUPERINTENDENTS' ROUND TABLE. 391 STATE SUPERINTENDENTS' ROUND TABLE. Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday, Feb. 20, 1896, 2:30 p. m. The Round Table was called to order by the Chairman, Charles R. Skinner of New York. There were present at this meeting the following named state superintend- ents: Thomas B. Stockwell, Rhode Island; A. B. Poland, New Jersey; J. M. Carlisle, Texas; Mrs. A. J. Peavy, Colorado; D. M. Geeting, Indiana; W. N. Sheats, Florida; J. Q. Emery, Wisconsin; Oscar T. Corson, Ohio; G. R. Glenn, Georgia; W. W. Pendergast, Minnesota; John R. Kirk, Missouri; Charles R. Skinner, New York; E. B. Prettyman, Maryland; H. R. Corbett, Nebraska. H. R. Corbett of Nebraska was requested by the chair to act as Secretary. The meeting was opened by Superintendent Skinner with appropriate remarks bearing upon the importance and influence of the state superintendent's office, the great responsibility devolving upon this officer in administering the public- school system, and the advantages of confidence and co-operation. The first topic presented for discussion was "Interstate Recognition of State Certifics^tes and Exchange of Official Documents." Mr. Corbett of Nebraska being called upon to present this topic, spoke of the desirability of giving proper recognition to the credentials issued by departments of public instruction in other states. The idea of giving faith and credit to the acts of one state within the bounds of another seemed to be involved. While it seemed clear that each state department should retain control of this matter without being compelled to recognize the credentials from other states, it never- theless seemed equally clear that power should be given — by the proper legisla- tion, if necessary — for the recognition of state certificates from other states. Superintendent Poland of New Jersey indorsed the views just presented, and compared the professions of law, medicine, etc., to that of teaching. He sug- gested that the same recognition of the credentials given in other studies should prevail in respect to teaching. Superintendent Emery of Wisconsin described the laws of Wisconsin in rela- tion to this matter. Superintendent Carlisle of Texas observed that a distinction between teachers' credentials and those of other professions exists in the fact that, while every individual is free to choose his own lawyer and doctor, the patrons of the school had no such choice, the teacher being selected by public authority. He deemed it, therefore, proper that more stringent regulations should prevail in the granting of credentials to teachers. He observed, further that 'the certificates and testi- monials submitted by the teacher seemed often to be misleading as to ability and scholarship. He recommended that separate credentials be issued for scholarship and for teaching ability , and that the former only be subject to interstate recognition. Superintendent Corson of Ohio objected strongly to any provision compelling the recognition of credentials by another state. He deemed it desirable, however, that the state department be authorized to indorse such as met its approval. Superintendent Peavey of Colorado, Emery of Wisconsin, and Prettyman of Maryland indorsed this view, and stated that at present no such authority existed in their respective states. 392 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Jacksonville On motion of Superintendent Kirk of Missouri, it was voted as the sense of the meeting that all documents issued by the state superintendents which were deemed likely to be of any interest to other state superintendents should be sent to each state department. The next topic discussed was, "What Consideration Should Enter into a Plan for the Equitable Distribution of Public School Money?" Superintendent Stock well of Rhode Island presented this subject. He said that no way would secure absolute justice; the basis chosen must simply approximate it as nearly as possible. He advocated making the unit, to a large extent, the district; to some extent the distribution should depend upon the school census. Superintendent Prettyman of Maryland advocated state and county tax as sources of revenue, the division to be among the districts /^r capita. He empha- sized the idea that cities are interested in rural education and the country in metro- politan education. He spoke of the value to the entire commonwealth of the leading men, who live chiefly in cities. Superintendent Carlisle of Texas indorsed the idea of state and county taxa- tion. He observed that the city is built up chiefly by its wholesale interests, thereby drawing support from the country. It should therefore help support the rural schools. Superintendent Sheats of Florida recommended average attendance as a basis rather than school census. This view was strongly indorsed by Superintendent Pendergast of Minnesota. The next topic presented was, " What Are the Essentials of Successful Insti- tute Work? Superintendent Pendergast of Minnesota emphasized the following essentials: (i) Sufficient money. (2) State control of instructors. (3) Freedom of instructors and county superintendents to arrange such courses as seemed most profitable. (He disapproved of state courses for institutes.) (4) Professional work rather than academic. Superintendent Kirk of Missouri epmhasized the importance of professional work. The institute should deal with the actual needs of the schoolroom. The place of meeting should be commodious and appropriate. Mr. Stout of New York, State Director of Institutes, presented in a pleasing and instructive manner the strong points of the institute system of New York. Superintendent Corson^of Ohio characterized the chief needs of institute work as (i) simplicity, (2) sympathy. He drew a contrast between the school systems of New York and Ohio. In the former power and authority were centralized; in the latter decentralized; yet in both the two essentials, simplicity and sympathy, prevailed; and institute work seemed equally effective in both. He emphasized the importance of a close sympathy and intimate contact of the state office with the common people. The next topic taken up was, " Special Points of Excellence in the Respect- ive State Systems. '* The free text-book law and the free high -school attendance law of Nebraska, the taxation system of Maryland, the high-school system of Minnesota, the institute system of New York, and various points of excellence were brought out. It was unanimously voted to thank the management of the Department of Superintendence for arranging the present series of round tables, and to request the President elected for the next year not only to continue the arrangement, but also, if possible, to give still more time for round-table discussions. NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATION. CONSTITUTION. PREAMBLE. The National Council of Education shall have for its object the consideration and discussion of educational questions of general interest and public import- ance, and the presentation, through printed reports, of the substance of the discussions, and the conclusions formulated. It shall be its object to reach and disseminate correct thinking on educational questions; and, for this purpose, it shall be the aim of the Council, in conducting its discussions, to define and state with accuracy the different views and theories on the subject under considera- tion, and, secondly, to discover and represent fairly the grounds and reasons for each theory or view, so far as to show, as completely as possible, the genesis of opinion on the subject. It shall be the duty of the Council, in pursuance of this object, to encourage from all its members the most careful statement of differ- ences in opinion, together with the completest statement of grounds for the same. It shall further require from the chairmen of its committees the careful preserva- tion and presentation of the individual differences of opinion whenever grounds have been furnished for the same by members of their committees. It shall invite the freest discussion of the reports of its committees, and, whenever such reports are not so amended as to embody the new|suggestions developed by such discussion, any member making such suggestion or objection may put in writing his view and the grounds therefor, and furnish the same to the Secretary for the records of the Council. It shall prepare, through its President, with the aid of the chairmen of the several committees, an annual report to the National Asso- ciation, setting forth the questions considered by the Council during the previous year, and placing before the Association, in succinct form, the work accomplished. It shall embody in this report a survey of those educational topics which seem to call for any action on the part of the Association. The Council shall appoint, out of its own number, committees representing the several departments of edu- cation, and thereby facilitate the exchange of opinion among its members on such special topics as demand the attention of the profession or of the public. ARTICLE I.— MEMBERSHIP. 1. The National Council of Education shall consist of sixty members, selected out of the membership of the National Educational Association. Any member of the Association identified with educational work is eligible to member- ship in the Council, and after the first election such membership shall continue for six years, except as hereinafter provided. 2. In the year 1885 the Board of Directors shall elect ei^ht members — four members for six years, two for four years, and two for two years; and the Coun- cil shall elect eight members — five members for six years, two for four years, and 393 394 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National one for two years; and annually thereafter the Board of Directors shall elect five members and the. Council five members, each member, with the exception here- inafter provided for (section 5), to serve six years, or until his successor is elected. 3. The annual election of members of the Council shall be held in connec- tion with the annual meetings of the association. If the Board of Directors shall fail, for any reason, to fill its quota of members annually, the vacancy or vacan- cies shall be filled by the Council. 4. The term of service of the several members of the Council, chosen at the first election, shall be arranged by the Executive Committee of the Council. 5. The absence of a member from two consecutive annual meetings of the Council shall be considered equivalent to resignation of membership, and the Council shall fill vacancies caused by absence from the Council as herein defined, as well as \acancies caused by death or resignation, for the unexpired term. All persons who have belonged to the Council shall, on the expiration of their mem- bership, become honorary members, with the privilege of attending its regular sessions, and participating in its discussions. No state shall be represented in the Council by more than eight members. ARTICLE II.— FEES. There shall be no fee for membership in the Council of Education, but each member of it shall secure a membership in the National Educational Association by becoming a life member of the same, or by paying to the Treasurer of the association the annual membership fee of two dollars. ARTICLE III.— MEETINGS. There shall be a regular annual meeting of the Council held at the same place as the meeting of the National Association, and at least two days previous to this meeting. There may be special meetings of the Council, subject to the call of the Executive Committee, but the attendance at these meetings shall be entirely voluntary. The regular meeting of the committees shall take place on the days provided for the annual meeting of the Council. Meetings of commit- tees may be called at any time by the chairmen of the respective committees, but attendance at such special meetings shall be entirely voluntary. A majority of the Council shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business at any meeting, whether regular or called; but any less number, exceeding eight mem- bers, may constitute a quorum for the transaction of business at the regular annual meeting, as defined in this article. ARTICLE IV.— COMMITTEES. The general management of the affairs of the Council shall be vested in an Executive Committee, composed of the President, Vice President, and Secretary of the Council, and four other members, all of whom are to be elected by the Council at its annual meeting. There shall be twelve standing committees, each consisting of five members. They shall be appointed by the Executive Com- mittee, and be named as follows. 1. Committee on State School Systems. 2. Committee on City School Systems. 3. Committee on Higher Education. 4. Committee on Secondary Education. Council.] CONSTITUTION, 395 5. Committee on Elementary Education. 6. Committee on Normal Education. 7. Committee on Technological Education. 8. Committee on Pedagogics. 9. Committee on Moral Education. 10. Committee on School Sanitation, Hygiene, and Physical Training. 11. Committee on Psychological Inquiry. 12. Committee on Educational Reports and Statistics. ARTICLE v.— DUTIES OF STANDING COMMITTEES. The committees of the Council shall consider the topics assigned to them, and report on the same; they may select for their deliberations such other questions belonging to their departments as they deem proper to discuss. Whenever called upon, the committees shall continue the deliberate work of the association on topics assigned to them, or prepare questions to be submitted to that body. It shall be the duty of the standing committees to observe the new educational experiments and original investigations within the scope of their assigned topics, and report the same from time to time to the President of the Council. ARTICLE VI.— DUTIES OF MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEES. The members of the Council shall render active service and assistance in the work of the committee to which they have been assigned, and further the general work of the Council as much as is in their power. They shall give their atten- tion to the questions submitted to them, and communicate their conclusions in writing to the Chairman of the Committee. Meeting of Committee for Special Work, — A half day at each annual session shall be set apart for "round table" discussions, and each standing committee may conduct its own meeting separately, inviting, at its pleasure, experts, origi- nal investigators, or other persons, to present their eJcperience or theoretical views before it, for discussion. ARTICLE VII.— DUTIES OF THE CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES. The Chairman of each committee shall communicate the questions which are to be discussed to each of the members of his committee, and send them such other communications as may assist them in their work. He shall arrange a suitable plan for an exchange of opinion, and embody the conclusions arrived at in a brief report. He shall, from time to time, inform the Secretary of the Coun- cil of the progress made by his committee. He shall, with the consent of the other members of his committee, arrange special meetings at a convenient time and place. He shall see that the communications, sent in turn to each member of his committee, are promptly forwarded. He shall state distinctly (in the form of questions, when feasible) the topics on which he desires to have a brief expres- sion of opinion from the members of his committee, and embody the substance of their answers in his report. ARTICLE VIII.— THE WORK OF THE COMMITTEES. The work of the committees of the Council shall be carried on in the regular meetings provided for above, and in such special meetings as can be arranged 396 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [National from time to time, according to the pleasure of the committee, and principally in writing, by an exchange of briefly expressed opinions. It shall be the duty of each Chairman to devise a plan for the latter. Each member may be required to report on a part of the subject : or the whole topic may be submitted to each member, together with the opinion of the other members that have considered the subject before. ARTICLE IX.— DUTIES OF THE COUNCIL. It shall be the duty of the Council to further the objects of the National Asso- ciation, and to use its best efforts to promote the cause of education in general. The Council shall assign work to each committee, and receive a report on the same; it shall cause to be published such reports of committees, or parts of the same, as in its judgment should be brought to general notice; it shall present, through the President of the Council, an annual report of its work to the National Educational Association. Arrangement of Annual Program, — The President, in making up the annual program of exercises, may select any of the twelve standing committees which will, in his opinion prepare work for the Council of the most timely and vital character, and he shall not be limited in his choice by considerations of routine. The committee thus reporting may introduce before the Council such speci- alists, experts, original investigators, or inventors of new methods as they may deem essential to present effectively their subject-matter before the Council for discussion. ARTICLE X— AMENDMENTS. This constitution may be altered or amended, at a regular meeting of the Council, by a two-thirds vote of the members present, and any provision may be waived at any regular meeting by unanimous consent. By-laws not in violation of this constitution may be adopted by a two-thirds vote of the Council. J Council.] OFFICERS- MEMBERS, 39^ OFFICERS FOR 1895-96. HORACE S. TARBELL. Providence, R- 1 President, EARL. BARNES Stanford University, Cal. Vice President. BETTIE A. DUTTON Cleveland, Ohio , Secretary and Treasurer, RjcecMiive Committee, — ^The President, Vice President, Secretary ; Charles De Garmo, Swaithmote, Pa.; D. L. Kiehle, Minneapolis, Minn.; J. R. Preston, Jackson, Miss.; James M. Green, Trenton, N. J. OFFICERS FOR 1896-97. B. A. HINSDALE Ann Arbor, Mich President, CHARLES Db GARMO Swarthmoie, Pa Vice President, BETTIE A. DUTTON Cleveland, Ohio Secretary, Ejcecntive Committee. — The President, Vice President, Secretary; H. S. Tarbell, Providence, R. I.; J. M. Greenwood, Kansas City, Mo.; W. £. Sheldon, Boston, Mass.; W. F. King, Mt. Vernon, Iowa. MEMBERS. Note: — ^The letter *'A" following a name denotes that the member is of the class elected by the asso- ciation ; the letter "C,** by the Council. Term Expires, Term Expires. *W. T. Harris, Washington, D. C A 189' •C. B. Gilbert, Newark, N. J A 189 *John E. Bradley, Jacksonville, 111 A 189 *EarI Barnes, Stanford Univ., Cal A zSg J. G. Schurroan, Ithaca, N. V A 189 *CharIes De Garmo, Swarthmore, Pa C 189' *L. H. Jones, Cleveland, Ohio C 189 *Elmer E. Brown, Berkeley, Cal C 1897 ♦S. G. Williams, Ithaca, N. V C 189 ^Nicholas Murray Butler, New York City. . . C 189 *C. C. Roundi, Plymouth, N. H A 1900 J. H. Phillips, Birmingham, Ala A xgcx) Z. Richards, Washington, D. C A 1900 *James H. Baker, Boulder, Colo A 1900 *Oscar H. Cooper, Galveston, Texas A 1900 *Aaron Gove, Denver, Colo C 1900 *Wm. E. Sheldon, Boston, Mass C 1900 *Irwin Shepard, Winona, Minn C 1900 *Lucia Stickney, Cincinnati, Ohio C 1900 *H. H. Seerley, Cedar Falls, Iowa C 1900 ^Richard G. Boone, Vpsilanti, Mich A 1898 James M. Green, Trenton, N. J A 1901 *F. Louis Soldan, St. Louis, Mo A 1898 ^Augustus S. Downing, Albany, N. Y A 1901 •Walter L. Hervey, New York City A 1898 A. R. Taylor, Emporia, Kan A 1901 •Joseph Baldwin, Huntsville, Texas A 1898 W. H. Payne, Nashville, Tenn A 1901 James H. Canfield, Columbus, Ohio A 1898 J. R. Preston, Jackson, Miss A 190X *A. S. Draper, Champaign, 111 C 1898 Geo. P. Brown, Bloomington, 111 C 1901 •William H. Maxwell, Brooklyn, N. Y C 1898 *Bettie A. Dutton, Cleveland, Ohio C 1901 •James H. Van Sickle, Denver, Colo. C 1898 Chas. H. Keyes, Pasadena, Cal C X90X •B. A. Hinsdale, Ann Arbor, Mich C X898 •Wm. L. Bryan, Bloomington, Ind C X90X •N. C. Dougherty, Peoria, III C 1898 •Wm. F. King, Mt. Vernon, Iowa C X90X •W. H. Bartholomew, Louisville, Ky A X899 •Edwin C. Hewett, Normal, 111 A X909 •Frank A. Fitxpatrick, Boston, Mass A X899 ^Albert G. Lane, Chicago, III A X909 •Henry Sabin, Des Moines, Iowa A X899 •Euler B. Smith, Athens, Ga. A 1909 •E. Oram Lyte, Millersville, Pa A 1899 •Charles A. McMurry, Normal, 111 A 1902 •J. M. Greenwood, Kansas City, Mo A X899 *J' P* Millspaugh, Salt Lake City, Utah A 1909 •Wm. A. Mowry, Salem, Mass C X899 •Charles M. Jordan, Minneapolis, Minn C x9oa John Dewey, Chicago, 111 C 1899 •E. W. Coy, Cincinnati, Ohio C 1909 •Nathan C. Schaeffer, Harrisburg, Pa C X899 •Horace S. Tarbell, Providence, R. I C x9oa David L. Kiehle, St. Paul, Minn C X899 •Edward R. Shaw, New York City C X909 •Mary E. Nicholson, Indianapolis, Ind C 1899 •John W. Cook, Normal, III C xgoa •Present at the meeting of the Council in Buffalo, 1896. 398 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National HONORARY MEMBERS. Heniy Barnard, Hartford, Conn. *Wi]]iam N. Barringer, Newark, N. J. Newton Bateman, Galesburg, 111. John T. Buchanan, Kansas City, Mo. D. Bemis, Spokane, Wash. Thomas W. Bicknell, Providence, R. I. ^Albert C. Boyden, Bridgewater, Mass. Anna C. Brackett, New York City. Edward Brooks, Philadelphia, Pa. Matthew H. Buckham, Burlington, Vt. David M. Camp, New Britain, Conn. Aaron L. Chapin, Beloit, Wis. Clara Conway, Memphis, Tenn. Matilda S. Cooper, Nyack. N. Y. *William J. Corthell, Gorham, Me. J. L. M. Curry, Richmond, Va. V. C. Dibble, Charleston, S. C. John W. Dickinson, Boston, Mass. *Larkin Dunton, Boston, Mass. John Eaton, Washington, D. C. Chas. W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass. *Geo. T. Fairchild, Manhattan, Kan. William W. Folwell, Minneapolis, Minn. W. R. Garrett, Nashville, Tenn. Daniel C. Gilman, Baltimore, Md. James C. Greenough, Westfield, Mass. John M. Gregory, Washington, D. C. W. N. Hailman, Washington, D. C. ♦G. Stanley Hall, Worcester, Mass. Ira G. Hoitt, Sacramento, Cal. J. George Hodgins, Toronto, Canada. James H. Hoose, Pasadena, Cal. George W. Howison, San Francisco, Cal. James L. Hughes, Toronto, Canada. Thomas Hunter, New York City. Ellen Hyde, Framingham, Mass. John S. Irwin, Fort Wayne, Ind. E. J. James, Philadelphia, Pa. Henry N. James, Tacoma, Wash. H. S. Jones, Lincoln, Neb. £. S. Joynes, Knoxville, Tenn. Thomas Kirkland, Toronto, Canada. Henry M. Leipziger, New York City. James MacAlister, Philadelphia, Pa. ♦Albert P. Marble, New York City. Francis A. March, Easton, Pa. . . Lillie J. Martin, San Francisco, Cal. Thomas J. Morgan, Washington, D. C. Lemuel Moss, Minneapolis, Minn. Birdseye G. Northrop, Clinton, Conn. John M. Ordway, New Orleans, La. ♦Francis W. Parker, Chicago, 111. Warren D. Parker, River Falls, Wis. S. S. Parr, St. Cloud, Minn. Selim H. Peabody, New York City. John B. Peaslee, Cincinnati, Ohio. William F. Phelps, St. Paul, Minn. Josiah L. Pickard, Iowa City, Iowa. John T. Prince, Boston, Mass. William H. Ruffner, Lexington, Va. Elian C. Sabin, Milwaukee, Wis. H. E. Shepard, Charleston, S. C. Edgar A. Singer, Philadelphia, Pa. James A. Smart, Lafayette, Ind. Homer B. Sprague Cal. J. W. Steams, Madison, Wis. ♦Thomas B. Stockwell, Providence, R. I. ♦Grace Bibb Sudborough, Omaha, Neb. John Swett, San Francisco, Cal. W. R. Thigpen, Savannah, Ga. H. S. Thompson, Columbia, S. C. L. S. Thompson, New Wilmington, Pa. Julia S. Tutwiler, Livingstone, Ala. Emerson E. White, Columbus, Ohio. Delia L. Williams, Delaware, Ohio. ♦J. Ormond Wilson, Washington, D. C. H. K. Wolfe, Lincoln, Neb. C. M. Woodward, St. Louis, Mo. ♦Present at the meeting of the Council in Buffalo, 1896. DECEASED MEMBERS. Robert AUyn Israel W. Andrews . N. R. H. Dawson . . Norman A. Calkins Samuel S. Greene . . Daniel B. Hager . . . John Hancock William D. Henkle. Elnathan £. Higbee George Howland . • • 1894 Merrick Lyon xi 1888 James McCosh 1894 1895 M. A. Newell 1893 1895 Edward Olney 1886 1883 Gustavus, J. Orr 1888 1896 John D. Philbrick 1885 1891 R. W. Stevenson 1893 i88a Eli T. Tappan 1888 1889 Charles O. Thompson 1885 1893 James P. Wickersbam 2891 Council.] STANDING COMMITTEES. 399 STANDING COMMITTEES. Buffalo Meeting, 1896. The committees from which reports were received in 1896 are Nos. II., III., VII., X., XL, and XII. The topics already reported on will be found in Italics, with the years of the reports in parentheses. I. — On State School Systems. SUB-TOPICS. 8. State^ County^ City and District Super- vision (1892). 9. The Ungraded School {\%K^^. N. C. Schaeffer, Harrisburg, Pa., Chair- 1. Organization (1883). 2. Supervision (1885). 3. Licensure of Teachers (1889). 4. School Revenues. 5. Compulsory Education (1891). 6. Tenure of Office of Teachers (1887). J. H. Canfield, Columbus, Ohio. 7. Supplying the Schools with Text J. R. Preston, Jackson, Miss. Books. J. R. Schurman, Ithaca, N. Y. Henry Sabin, Des Moines, Iowa. wan. II. — On City School Systems. SUB-TOPICS. 1. Organization. 2. Supervision (1884, 1890). 3. Superintendency. 4. Qualification of Teachers. 5. Classification of Pupils (1886). 6. Ungraded Schools. 7. Business Side of City School Systems (1888, 1889, 1890, 1896). 8. Promotions and Examinations. 9. Evening Schools. 10. Enriching the Course of Study below the High School. 11. Graded Course of Study on Ilerbartian Principles (1895). Aaron Gove, Denver, Colo., Chairman. L. H. Jones, Cleveland, Ohio. Ellen C. Sabin, Milwaukee, Wis. Oscar H. Cooper, Galveston, Tex. N. C. Dougherty, Peoria, 111. III. — On Higher Education. SUB-TOPICS. 1. Higher Institutions Required {^ZZ^. 7. The Seminary Method of Instruction. 2. Harmonizing of Higher^ Secondary ^ 8. Professional and Technical Instruction in the University (1894). J. E. Bradley, Jacksonville, Ind., Chair- man. and Elementary Schools (1882). 3. Admission to College (1884). 4. Elective System (1888). 5. Higher Life of the American College William F. King, Mount Vernon, Iowa. (1896). James H. Baker, Boulder, Colo. 6. What Should Precede the Univer- A. S. Draper, Champaign, 111. sity? S.;G. Williams, Ithaca, N. Y. 400 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National IV. — On Secondary Education. SUB-TOPICS. 1. High Schools (1882). 8. Difference Between College Methods 2. Academies (1885). of Instruction and High School 3. Preparation for College {^\%%i^. Methods. 4. Relation of High Schools to Colleges (1887). W. H. Bartholomew, Louisville. Ky. 5. Opportunities of the Rural Population F. Louis Soldan, St. Louis, Mo. for Secondary Education (1889). H. H. Seerley, Cedar Falls, Iowa. 6. Schools by Correspondence. John T. Buchanan, Kansas City, Mp. 7. Uniformity in Requirements for Ad- Horace S. Tarbell, Providence, R I. mission to College (1891). V. — On Elementary Education. SUB-TOPICS. 1. Course of Study (1882). 9. The Uses of Literature in Elementary 2. Oral Teaching {\%^^. Education {i^g2). 3. Text-Books (1886). 10. Economy in Elementary Education 4. Waste in Elementary Education (1888). (1895). 5. Kindergarten. Geo. P. Brown, Bloomington, III., Chair- 6. Language Lessons in Elementary man. Schools. William E. Sheldon, Boston, Mass. 7. Science Teaching in Lower Grades. Zalmon Richards, Washington, D. C. 8. Essentials in Elementary Education J. H. Phillips, Birmingham, Ala. (1890). Bettie A. Dutton, Cleveland, Ohio. VI. — On Normal Education. SUB-TOPICS. 1. Kind of Normal Schools Required. 7. Normal School Extension. 2. Academical and Professional Training 8. The Kind and Amount of Practice- Work (1883,1889). and Its Place in the Normal School 3. Practice Departments (1885). Course (1895). 4. City Normal Schools (1891). R. G. Boone, Ypsilanti, Mich., Chairman. 5. Teachers* Institutes (1887). Irwin Shepard, Winona, Minn. 6. The Relation of the Normal School to James M. Green, Trenton, N. J. Other Institutions of Learning William L. Bryan, Bloomington, III. (1892). John G. Cook, Normal, 111. VII. — On Technological Education. SUB-TOPICS. 1. Technical Training in Public 7. The Preparation of Manual Training Schools (1881). and Technical Teachers a Function 2. Preparation for Institutes of Tech- of the Technical College (1896). nology. C. M. Woodward, St. Louis, Mo., Chair- 3. Pedagogical Value of the School Work- man, shop (1886). Selim H. Peabody, Chicago, 111. 4. Agricultural Colleges (1888). Euler B. Smith, Athens, Ga. 5. Summer Schools of Science. William H. Payne, Nashville, Tenn. 6. Relation of Technological to Liberal Charles H. Keyes, Pasadena, Cal. Education (1894). Council.] STANDING COMMITTEES, 401 VIII. — On Pedagogics. SUB-TOPICS. I Cfunr 0/ Pedagogy in Colleges (1882). 10. Scope and Character of the Pedagogical 2. Pedagogy as a Science (1884). Work in Universities (1892). 3. Pedagogical Inquiry. 11. The Laws of Mental Cottgruence and 4. Function of Public Schools (1886, Energy Applied to Some Pedagogical 1887). Problems (1895). 5. Educational Value of Manual Train- Nicholas Murray Butler, New York City, ing (1889). Chairman, 6. Moral Education. David L. Kiehle, Minneapolis, Minn. 7. Pedagogical Terminology. A. R. Taylor, Emporia, Kan. 8. The Education of the IVill {iSgi). Charles A. McMurry, Normal, 111. 9. Distinguishing Ideas in the Her- B. A. Hinsdale, Ann Arbor, Mich. bartian System of Pedagogy. IX. — On Moral Education. [Changed from — '*0n the Education of Girls f*' 1891.] SUB-TOPICS. 1. Coeducation (1883, 1890). 7. Moral Instruction in the Elementary 2. Technical Training for Girls (1886). Schools (1896). 3. What Education is Best {1%^^). Emerson E. White, Columbus, Ohio., 4. The Education of Girls (1891). Chairman, 5. Practical Culture of the Moral Vir- Charles De Garmo, Swarthmore, Pa. tues (1892). Lucia Stickney, Cincinnati, Ohio. 6. Direct and Indirect Moral Teaching. Charles C. Rounds, Plymouth, N. H. J. F. Millspaugh. Salt Lake City, Utah. X. — On School Sanitation, Hygiene, and Physical Training. [Changed from — **0n Hygiene in Education^** 1891.] SUB-TOPICS. 1. Sanitary Exercises and Appliances in 6. School Room Hygiene {1%^, Public Schools (iSSs). William A. Mowry, Hyde Park, Mass., 2. Recesses (1884, 1885). Chairman. 3. Relation of Mental Labor to Physical Mary E. Nicholson, Indianapolis, Ind. Health (1887). Joseph Baldwin, Austin. Tex. 4. Harmonious Development (1889). F. A. Fitzpatrick. Boston, Mass. 5. Physical Education (i%^\). C. B. Gilbert, Newark, N. J. XL On Psychological Inquiry. [Changed from — ^* On Educational Literature ^^ 1891.] SUB-TOPICS. 1. School Reports (1885). 7. How the Will Combines with Intellect in 2. Books on Pedagogy (1%^%). the Higher Orders of Knowing (i^()6), 3. Use of General Libraries (1887). E. O. Lyte, Millersville, Pa., Chairman, 4. Educational Literature {i%qo). William T. Harris, Washington, D. C. 5. Relation of Mnemonic Systems to the N. A. Calkins, New York City. Cultivation of the Power of Edwin C. Hewitt, Normal, 111. Thought (1892). Earl Barnes, Stanford University, Cal. 6. The Psychology of the Imitative Func- tions in Childhood {i^<)^. 402 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. XII. — On Educational Reports and Statistics. [Changed from — **0n Educational Statistics^** 1891.] sub-topics. 1. Reforms in Statistics (1885. 1887). J. M. Greenwood, Kansas City, Mo. 2. What Statistics Should be Collected E. W. Coy, Cincinnati, Ohio. (1889, 1 891). A. J. Rickoff, Berkeley, Cal. William H. Maxwell, Brooklyn, N. Augustus S. Downing, Albany, N. Y. Y., Chairman. Note: — The committees for 1897 will be organized and announced to mem- bers by the President of the Council, at an early date. NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATION. SECRETARY'S MINUTES. FIRST DAY. OPENING SESSION.— Buffalo, N. Y., July 3, 1896. The Council assembled in the People's Church, and was called to order at 9:45 a. m., by the President, HorsCce S. Tarbell. Twenty-five members of the Council were present. President Tarbell stated that E. E. White, Chairman of the Committee on Moral Instruction in the Elementary Schools, was absent on a foreign tour, and called on William T. Harris to introduce the subject. Mr. Harris was followed in discussion by C. C. Rounds, Charles De Garmo, B. A. Hinsdale, John £. Bradley, Larkin Dunton, William N. Barringer, and George T. Fairchild. Papers were presented by members of the committee — first by Miss Lucia Stickney of Ohio, entitled, "The Incidental Method of Moral Instruction," and second by J. F. Millspaugh of Utah, on " The Ethical Value of History in Elementary Schools." C. C. Rounds of the committee continued the discussion, which was closed by Mr. Harris. The Council adjourned to 3 p. m. AFTERNOON SESSION. The Council opened its session at 3 p. m. In the absence of the entire com- mittee on Technological Education, the discussion of a paper on "The Preparation of Manual and Industrial Training Teachers a Function of the Technical School," sent by Charles H. Keyes of California, a member of the committee, was opened by George T. Fairchild of Kansas, and continued by William £. Sheldon of Mas- sachusetts, C. C. Rounds of New Hampshire, S. G. Williams of New York. The Council adjourned at 5 p. m. SECOND DAY. MORNING SESSION.— Saturday, July 4TH. The Council met at 9:45 a. m. On motion of C. C. Rounds, seconded by William F. King, committees were appointed. 1. Committee on Membership of the Council. C. C. Rounds of New Hampshire, 6. A. Hinsdale of Michigan, C. B. Gilbert of New Jersey. 2. Committee on Nomination of Officers, John £. Bradley of Illinois, Miss Lucia Stickney of Ohio, S. Q. Williams of New Yorki ^04 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National 3. Committee on Railroads. William E. Sheldon of Massachusetts, E. W. Coy of Ohio, Charles De Garmo of Pennsylyania. On motion of William £. Sheldon, members presenting papers were requested to furnish reports of the discussions of the same through the remaining sessions of the Council. The subject for the morning's discussion was presented as a report of the Committee on Higher Education, by the chairman, John £. Bradley of Jackson- ville, 111., in a paper entitled, " The Higher Life of the College." The discussion was opened by Charles De Garmo and continued by B. A. Hinsdale, S. G. Williams, William A. Mowry, N. C. Schaefifer, Larkin Dunton, William N. Barringer, C. B. Gilbert, Aaron Gove, and James H. Baker. Mr. Bradley closed the discussion and the Council adjourned to 3 p. m. * AFTERNOON SESSION. The Council convened at 3 p. m., and listened to the report of the Committee on Psychological Inquiry, in an address by William T. Harris entitled, "How the Will Combines with the Intellect in the Higher Orders of Knowing." Questions were asked and the topic continued by Messrs. De Garmo, Hinsdale, Dunton, Sheldon, Baker, Soldan, and Fairchild. Mr. Harris made the closing remarks and the Council adjourned at 5 p. m. THIRD DAY. MORNING SESSION.— Monday, July 6th. The Council was called to order at 9:45 a. m. President Tarbell presented President Viele of the University Club, who invited the gentlemen of the Council to make use of the rooms of the Club while in Buffalo. A motion of acceptance by Mr. Bryan was unanimously adopted. Cards of invitation to the Council to a reception at the Chapter House were received from the secretary of the Woman's Teachers' Association, in behalf of Superintendent and Mrs. Emerson, and the Principals' and Teachers* Associa- tions. On motion of Mr. Bradley, seconded by Mr. Sheldon, the invitation was accepted. The report of the Committee on School Sanitation, Hygiene, and Physical Training was presented by the chairman, William Mowry of Massachusetts, in a paper on "Schoolroom Hygiene." The discussion was led by Mr. Williams and continued by Messrs. Gove, Greenwood, Bryan, Gilbert, Sheldon, Barringer, Jones, Schaeffer, Baldwin, Dunton, Hinsdale, and Hewett. Mr. Mowry closed the discussion. AFTERNOON SESSION. The Council convened at 3 p. m. The report of the Committee on City School Systems was presented by the chairman, Mr. Aaron Gove of Denver, Colo., in a paper entitled "The Business Side of City School Systems." Speakers continuing the discussion of this topic were limited to two minutes. Remarks were made by Messrs. Dougherty, Draper, Greenwood, Harris, Gilbert, Hinsdale, Mowry, Schaeffer, Sabin, Soldan, Dunton, and Jones. Mr. Gove closed the discussion. Mr. Tarbell expressed the thanks of the Council to the Local Committee for the very excellent arrangements for the meetings throughout the Session' Council.] MII^UTES. 405 On motion of Mr. Bryan a committee of five was appointed to consider the advisability of organizing a General Committee on School Hygiene. President Tarbell named the committee as follows: William L. Bryan of Indiana, Larkin Dunton of Massachusetts, H. H. Seerley of Iowa, L. H. Jones of Ohio, N. C. Schaeffer of Pennsylvania. The President introduced Superintendent Emerson of the Buffalo Schools, who tendered the freedom of the superintendent's office, with copies of annual reports and courses of study. Mr. Bartholomew, chairman of the Committee on Secondary Education, explained the absence of the report from his Committee, and the topic assigned fcr Tuesday a. m. was substituted. President Tat bell announced a change of time for Tuesday's session to 9 a. m., and the Council adjourned. FOURTH DAY. EXECUTIVE SESSION.— Tuesday, a. m., July yxH. The Council was called to order by President Tarbell at 9 a. m., and on motion of S. G. Williams of New York the memorial to Dr. Norman A. Calkins was presented by E. C. Hewett of Illinois. Brief tributes to the memory of Dr. Calkins were also offered by C. C. Rounds of New Hampshire, W. E. Sheldon of Massachusetts, B. A. Hinsdale of Michigan, Joseph Baldwin of Texas, and E. W.Coy of Ohio. On motion of Mr. Coy the paper presented by Mr. Hewett was adopted by the Council and directions given that it be printed in full in the proceedings. On amendment by John W. Cook of Illinois the remarks of the other members were included. (See report of Committee on Necrology.) A motion was made by Miss Nicholson of Indiana that the president for 1897 be requested to provide on his program for a discussion on "^Esthetic Education." Mr. Gilbert of New Jersey offered an amendment that such com- mittee be substituted for the Committee on Educational Reports and Statistics. Mr. Rounds of New Hampshire suggested the liability of the Council being too much bound by committees; that freedom of work allowing introduction of such topics as the Council may choose is desirable. Mr. Hinsdale believed the work of the Committee on Statistics was valuable and should be continued. Mr. Sheldon referred to the action of the Council at Toronto in 1891 and agreed with the position of Mr. Hinsdale. Further remarks were made by Messrs. Mowry, Coy, Barnes, and Gove. Mr. Gilbert withdrew his amendment. Miss Nicholson's motion was carried, and on motion of Mr. Hewett, Miss Nicholson was invited to make the report. ^ ' Superintendent Gilbert offered the following amendments to the constitution: Art. VII. Amend by inserting after "iCommittee *' in first line "selected by the President for a report,** and after "shall" the words "not later than Jan. zst preceding the meeting of the Council at which such report is to be presented.** Art. IX. Add to Sec. II, "and shall announce such selection to the Chairman of the committee selected not later than Dec. xst preceding the meeting of the Council at which the reports are to be presented.** The resolution by Mr. Gilbert to adopt the amendment offered was lost. The Committee on Rural Schools appointed at Denver reported progress and the following resolution, offered by Chairman Sabin, was approved. : Resolvtd^ That, in order to enable the Committee on Rural Schools, appointed at Denver in July 1895, to make a thorough and exhaustive report such as the importance of the subject demands, the Board of Directors of the National Educational Association be requested by this Council to set apart an additional $xooo from the funds of the National Educational Association for the use of said committee under the same restrictions as were imposed when the original appropriation was granted at Denver. 4o6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National The report of the Committee on Hygiene was called by the President and was presented by N. C. Schaeffer of Pennsylvania. Members of the National Council : Your committee appointed to consider the advisability of or^znizmg a general committee on School Hygiene respectfully recommend, That such committee be organized by the appointment of five members of this Council who shall have power to invite the co-operation of experts in the various sciences touching School Hygiene. That the committee be instructed to make this report in 1898. That the Council request the Trustees of the National Educational Association to appropriate $9500 to pay expenses necessary in connection with the work of the committee. N. C. SCHAEFFKR, Chairman. Mr. Sheldon objected to the appropriation of $2500. Mr. Hinsdale did not object to this committee, but believed enough committee-work was already in hand, and moved that the motion be laid on the table until the next year. Carried. Mr. Harris asked permission to introduce Mr. McVicar to present a question of Southern education. This request was granted and following Mr. McVicar*s remarks Mr. Harris offered the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted : Resolved^ That the chairman appoint a committee of five to report at the next meeting of this Council on the question of the Education of the Negroes and Indians, and make recommendation as regards the appointment of a special committee for a more thorough consideration of the subject. President Tarbell appointed the following as such committee: F. Louis Soldan, St. Louis, Mo., Chairman. Oscar H. Cooper, Galveston, Texas. J. H. Phillips, Birmingham, Ala. Euler B. Smith, Athens, Ga. W. H. Bartholomew, Louisville, Ky. The report of the Transportation Committee being called for, the committee asked further time in order to confer with railroad officials relative to rates. This request was granted and on motion of Mr. Gilbert the committee was continued. The Committee on Membership of the Council reported as follows: To the National Council ; The Committee on Memberships of the Council submit the following report; It is found that the following vacancies exist : — Terms expiring in 1896. John T. Buchanan, H. S. Tarbell, E. W. Coy, Ellen S. Sabin, John W. Cook. Membership lapsing according to the constitution by absence from the meeting of the Coundl for two successive years : — C. W. Woodward, E.E. White, S. H. Peabody. The committee would nominate: C. M. Jordan, to succeed John T. Buchanan; term to expire 1903. H. S. Tarbell, to succeed himself; term to expire 1909. E. W. Coy, to succeed himself; term to expire 1902. Edward R. Shaw, to succeed Ellen S. Sabin, term to expire 190a. John W. Cook, to succeed himself; term to expire 1903. Elmer E. Brown, to succeed C. W. Woodward; term to expire 1897. James H. Van Sickle, to succeed E. E. White; term to expii« 1898. John Dewey, to succeed S. H. Peabody; term to expire 1899. Respectfully submitted, C. C. Rounds, B. A. Hinsdale, C. B. Gilbert. The report was adopted and the new members declared elected. President Tarbell expressed special appreciation of the work of the members of the Council who were present at its opening session and whose attendance and attention had been constant throughout the entire sessions. Bettie a. Dutton, Secretary. Council.] REPORT ON MORAL EDUCATION, 407 PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON MORAL EDUCATION —MORAL INSTRUCTION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. BY EMERSON E. WHITE, COLUMBUS, OHIO, CHAIRMAN. The vital function of school discipline is the training of the pupil in habits of self-control and self-direction, that is, in self-conduct; and to this end the school must be made, as the French programme puts it, **an apprenticeship in right living.** But the essential principle in self-conduct is self-determination, i, ^., the souFs determination of its deed, by the free exercise of its inherent power of choice and voli- tion. Indeed, the existence of a moral act depends on the soul's freedom in willing. When an act is determined or necessitated by external conditions over which the soul has no control, such act has no moral quality. The ability not to put forth an act is essential to responsibility, and a sense of freedom is essential to a sense of respon- sibility. In the absence of freedom in choice and volition there can be no moral action. We thus reach the important fact that moral training is essentially will training — the training of the will to act habitually in free obe- dience to duty. But the will acts in view of motives, and the moral character of an act depends primarily on the motives which are back of it. But motives are not external forces which dominate the will and thus necessitate the deed. There is no more fundamental error in philosophy than the assumption that human action is determined by motives over which the soul has no control — motives floating in a stream of external causation. This assumption makes moral training impossible. The soul creates for itself the motives which occasion its action. They are subjective, not external. This is seen in the fact that motives are feelings, the strongest of the motive feelings being the desires. But desires arise in the soul in response to intellectual con- ceptions, and these conceptions are under the direction of the will. By its free action it may divert the mind from that which occasions a certain desire and direct its attention to that which awakens a differ- ent, even an opposite desire. A malevolent feeling, for example, may be supplanted by a benevolent one by directing the mind to those acts and qualities in the being disliked, which awaken admiration and 4o8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National love. This play of feeling is one of the most obvious facts of our conscious life. Emotions, affections, and desires are awakened by presenting to the mind those objects which occasion them, and this may be done by voluntary action. The soul thus becomes the occa- sioner of the emotions which are back of its deeds. It controls its desires by controlling the intellectual conceptions that occasion them ; and it controls the deed by controlling, not only the desire, but its response to it. The will frees itself from bondage to low and selfish desires and interests by forming for itself high and worthy motives, and then conforming action thereto by its free choice. This view makes moral training possible. The foregoing facts show that the question of motives, or incen- tives, is fundamental in pedagogy. The moral efficiency of school training depends primarily on the character of the motives by which its ends are attained. It is not enough that external ** right living" be secured, but this must flow from right feelings, from high and worthy motives. In all this training there must be present the sense of freedom and consequent responsibility. The pupil must never be looked upon as a machine running in grooves formed by heredity and environment. The school must at all times appeal to the pupil as a free moral being, and as such responsible for his conduct, and this freedom must be to the teacher a reality, not an illusion. In the light of these principles the importance of instruction as an element of moral training is evident. It is not enough that the pupil's conduct be right externally, but such conduct must be inspired by right motives; and, to this end, the pupil must be able to set up such motives for himself. The three guiding facts here are (i) knowledge awakens feeling; (2) feeling solicits the will; and (3) the will determines conduct. It is thus seen that conduct when free is reached by knowledge through feeling; and this involves instruction. These facts also indicate the nature of such instruction in the ele- mentary school. I. The first end or purpose of moral instruction is to awaken right feelings — to touch the heart. It must awaken a love for what is good and true, and this affection must supplant low and selfish desires. It is not enough that the pupil has an interest in virtue. This interest must pass over into an abiding affection. Human experience shows that mere interest is a transient feeling. What interests the child may have little interest to the youth, and what interests the youth may have no interest to the adult. Even sudden changes in interest is a common experience. Indeed, interest seems to be more a condition than an end of instruction. It is abiding only when it passes into a higher motive or principle. Council.] REPORT ON MORAL EDUCATION. 409 2. The second end of moral instruction is to quicken the con- science— to make acute the moral sense. The conscience, like every other power of the soul, is developed by its appropriate activity. A degree of this activity of the conscience may be secured by right instruction. 3. The third end of moral instruction is to train the moral judg- ment— to develop clear moral ideas. Human conduct is often, if not usually, complex, and it is not always easy to discern its efficient motive, and thus determine its rightness or wrongness. This is not only true of past conduct, but present duty is not always simple and clear, even when not obscured by passions or prejudices, or selfishness. No exercise in ethical training is more fruitful than the careful study of conduct presented concretely, or in story, biography, etc. Such study not only sharpens the moral sense, but it trains the moral judg- ment, just as the observing of colored objects develops the power to discriminate colors. A common principle underlies the three ends of moral instruction, as stated above. Right feelings are awakened, the conscience quick- ened, and the moral judgment best trained by means of concrete examples. This principle indicates that elementary instruction in conduct should begin with the concrete, not the abstract. The primary law of intellectual training, "the concrete before the abstract," is also the law of moral instruction in elementary schools. The fact that all primary ideas must be taught objectively is no truer in teaching natural science than in teaching duty. The primary facts of science may be early- acquired by observation, but science proper must be deferred until a later period in the child's mental growth — the so-called scientific phase. The same is true in moral instruction. The feelings, the conscience, and the moral judgment are best reached by concrete examples. The science of ethics belongs to the higher grades of school — the high school and the college. It is true •that some didactic instruction in morals may be wisely given a child, but such instruction should be exceptional, not the general practice. Some one has said that a universal desire indicates a universal need. The universal interest of children in stories that picture human con- duct shows that such stories meet a universal need of childhood. Besides, truth thus presented not only touches the child's moral nature, but it falls more readily within his comprehension. * 'Truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors.*' It may also be noted that the effectiveness of examples is increased by their beautiful expression. The aesthetic emotions support and strengthen the ethical feeling. This fact gives the classic storv an 4IO NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National advantage over the commonplace incident, and it also explains the charm of noble deeds when beautifully told in poem or song. But I must leave to other members of the committee the discus- sion of the materials to be used in moral instruction. I can only add that the virtues thus to be taught are many and important, and that instruction in duty should have a recognized place in the programme of all elementary schools. The central duty of the school is effec- tive and vital moral training. THE ETHICAL VALUE OF HISTORY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. BY J. F. MILLSPAUGH, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH. The knowledge of what men and nations have chosen to do under the force of circumstances in which they have found themselves, and an intelligent comprehension of the results for good or evil which have fol- lowed such choices must constitute for successive generations the most valuable instruction in conduct which it is possible to obtain. But such intelligent comprehension of the relations between results and their causes is a necessary condition of securing from history any really serviceable result, either for nations or for individuals. The fact that the first Charles met his death at the hands of his own people, and the other fact that the patriots were without shelter and clothing and food at Valley Forge, as they stand alone, are pieces of informa- tion absolutely valueless for guidance or inspiration either to English- men or Americans. But when these bare statements are preceded or followed by others necessary to a full comprehension of the respective cases, the hereditary love of liberty is quickened in the hearts of Englishmen, and patriotic emotions are stirred in the breasts of Americans. This illustration furnishes a hint of what could easily be shown if it were not already generally admitted, namely, that historical nar- rative possesses guidance value in relation to moral conduct only as it presents side by side with the fact or event the human considera- tions which led to it, and the application of the lesson to self or to present condition. **A11 history," says Emerson, **is subjective. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know." I repeat then, that, interpreted thus in the light of cause and effect by persons mature enough to understand its lessons and take them to heart, history furnishes moral instruction almost incomparably valuable. Council.] HISTORY IN ELEMENTART SCHOOLS, 411 But how is it with the child during the first four years of his school life? Is he able to discover and properly estimate the relations between the voluntary act, constituting the ultimate cause of an event, and the effects which result? for only as he, in some degree, consciously apprehends these relations and appreciates their teaching will the recorded facts have for him ethical value. The child learns what things are right and what things are wrong in his own home. That, for the time, is his little world, in which he experiences the rewards of good conduct and the pains of evil doing. Almost his only troubles, and his joys, as well, are those which grow out of his association with his brothers and sisters ; and as he becomes older the circle of contact is merely widened to include his playmates of the neighborhood. Thus life to the little child is simply a round of association and contact with persons, and apart from them his interests are few and trivial. Dolls and pets are christened with the names of persons and made to repeat all the moral experiences, enjoy all the commendation, and suffer all the disapprobation which have fallen to the lot of the little master or mistress. He is fond of stories,both of truth and fiction; but the stories must always be about people. For him stories of nature, even, possess little charm, unless he thinks of the inanimate objects described as clothed with the attributes of personality. The great story-tellers of childhood, like Andersen and brothers Grimm, have always well understood this, and all their bears and lions, their eagles and swans, their pine trees, and daisies, use the thoughts and the language of children. From these considerations I believe it will appear that history has value for children in proportion only as it falls within the circle of their interests and corresponds with their experiences. We are, then, interested to inquire concerning the range of histor- ical subjects that are capable of thus awakening the interest of the child, and hence of arousing his moral judgment. It is hardly neces- sary to remark that this range is a very limited one. Motives which determine the acts of nations differ in many respects from those which govern individuals. The relations existing between man and man require no such nicety of adjustment and their maintenance is endan- gered by no such merely technical considerations as those which determine the peace of nations. Reasons which from the point of view of government may, in time of war, justify the detention, imprisonment, or execution of persons of irreproachable private char- acter, may, at the same time, be utterly indefensible from the stand- point of individuals. In like manner the property of a hostile nation may be seized or destroyed, territory may be invaded, and cities may be bombarded regardless of the fate of the people residing in them. 412 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [National The Tightness or wrongness of such acts can only be determined by appeals to the moral code of nations. But of this children can have no knowledge. As has been shown, their experiences have been with individuals only, and the opportunities for consideration of motives which affect masses of people have been few. From the main events of history, then, those in which considerations affecting large aggre- gates of people or states predominate, the child can extract but few ideas capable of serving him for moral guidance. The same reasoning which leads us to believe that the impersonal events of history are of little ethical value would also make it proba- ble that this study, in proportion as the individual, personal element predominates, is capable of exerting over children a strong moral influence. In the stories and myths of the nursery, the child finds illustration of his own expe^ences, and every such illustration con- nects with it inseparably a demand for moral approval or disapproval. As the range of contact and association with his fellows enlarges he gathers from the stories of national heroes more perfect examples of the operation of motives similar to those which he himself has experi- enced. Not only does he find in such stories the exemplification of his own observations and experiences, but in the historic perspective produced by the remoteness of time and place there is less confusion of circumstances, emotion is tempered, motives are better defined, and hence ethical judgments are more easily formed and more reli- able. Through the examples brought before the child the strength of volition is also increased. What he hears or reads of the desires, the temptatiqns, the resolves, the struggles, the sacrifices, and the moral victories and defeats of the men and women, and especially of the youth, of history, tends strongly to fortify him against vain allure- ments and to reinforce his own resolution. Thus his own experiences of every day, which of themselves might serve to impress no valu- able lesson, are emphasized by their larger application in the careers of those whose acts have made them immortal. It is not so much history, then — with its relations of time and place and circumstance, its search for ultimate causes and remote effects — as biography that is capable of calling forth the moral judgment of children and stimulating resolu- tion. True as it is of all of us, it is especially true of children, that abstract principles of conduct do not strongly affect the will ; but the story of what others have done enforces comparisons with self and arouses to imitation and emulation. ■^I do not need to say that between children of the primary and those of the grammar school there is no sharp line of demarcation. Pro- gressively dependence upon the concrete diminishes and ability to deal with abstract and general ideas increases from infancy to maturity. Council.] HISTORT IN ELEMENTART SCHOOLS, 413 If in early primary gradesthe child's attention cannot be attracted by the recital of events entirely disconnected with his own experiences, in grammar grades the condition is not essentially different; but in the latter the range of experiences has been so enlarged and the ability to analyze and combine facts so increased as to render the larger facts and generalizations of history more intelligible. Simi- larly, if in his first years of school life the pupil is mainly attracted by accounts of the adventures and fortunes of individuals, in the higher grades of the elementary school the personal element has lost none of its charms for him; but his own enlarged perception and insight enable him to discover the hand of man where before it was not visi- ble, and to trace human agency in results which before he had regarded as the product of chance. Where before the child could see himself pictured in the individual only, could trace correspondences between his own motives, resolutions, and acts, and those of some other dis- tinct personality, now in some degree he is able to see himself in the race of men and to measure his own powers and limitations by the acts of nations. In grammar grades, therefore, while the function of biography in moral instruction is by no means diminished, the ability of pupils to read the ethical lessons of history in its larger sense is increased. The extent to which the pupil's instruction in history will quicken moral perception and strengthen moral judgment will depend very largely upon the development of these qualities in the teacher. Under thoughtless, impulsive, and, therefore, vicious teaching, the study has the same capacity for harm as under right instruction it has for good. The habit of discussing the moral issues of events flip- pantly; of reaching conclusions hastily and carelessly; and, worse than all, of searching for historic examples of evil and evil deeds to beget a misanthropic and nihilistic spirit in the pupil — this habit, by no means uncommon, results in a most dangerous perversion of the power of history. On the other hand, when pupils are taught to sus- pend judgment until by careful, conscientious study, the circum- stances surrounding the facts of history have been examined ; when events and conditions are studied in comparison or contrast with cases of recent occurrence ; when example and incident, the rewards of vir- tue and the penalties of evil doing, are all employed to stimulate a sense of right and duty and love of country and humanity — then the instruction becomes a most efficient means of developing moral judg- ment, of furnishing guidance for conduct, and of begetting healthful emotion, which, as Dr. Klemm suggests, is the right soil for healthful volition. The motive power of history has its source in example. In case of 414 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National the young, especially, this operates as a forceful constraint. In his- torical biography, then, rather than in the story of impersonal events, we are to seek for the most potent influences tending to stimulate children and youth to right conduct. THE INCIDENTAL METHOD OF MORAL INSTRUCTION. BY Miss LUCIA STICKNEY, CINCINNATI, OHIO. The author of the best book on the subject of moral instruction says that **the school should not be to the pupil an inteUectual drill ground, but a second home.** And we learn from the editor's preface of the same book that ** habits without ideas do not deserve the title of moral in the best sense.** It has come to be pretty well established that the moral influence of the school must be purposed rather than incidental, and that system and method are as desirable in giving a rational underpinning for moral as for intellectual practice. We are all right in the convention, but from the school there still comes the Macedonian cry. The makers of the course of study and the program still find no room for definite moral work. The monthly teachers* meeting has all it can do to look after delinquents and send home reports of failures, and the normal graduates leave the training school with a well-filled notebook, it is true, but with a more definite vision of the sharpened slate pencil and the forming in line than **of the means of creating in children those habits which are essential to the safe guarding and unfolding of their moral life." Psychology is a distinctive feature of the normal school, but ethics and the plan and purpose of character building is not a prevailing ideal of normal work. The school still goes on with the clockwork method, forgetting the individual insight side of the question, and diligently striving to bring to perfection the side of the mechanical virtues. In every corner of the curriculum we have system. The grammatical analysis of an ordinary sentence requires a page of fools- cap and a diligent half-hour to get it on paper, and when done it is so exact in design and proportion as to look like an architectural draw- ing of an expert. Everything shapes itself to the coming examination. The answer is spaced and arranged and the important ifords under- scored to suit the convenience and eyesight of the teacher, and we should be well pleased with the result if, with this perfection of exe- cution, there were not too often a deficiency in the application of principles and a lack of right ideas. Council.] THE INCIDENTAL METHOD. 415 The point to be made in this report is that with all this strict attention to details, which is in itself admirable and valuable, unless in the training of the teacher and the work of the school there is incor- porated a regular plan and method of developing moral ideas and principles, that which is most valuable must be crowded out; that while with the work in the hands of the free and high-souled teacher the best things will be said and done, yet with many too little will be accomplished, and with all the result wiU be too indefinite. The moral and religious idea forms the very basis of structure in the kin- dergarten ; why should the training work for the elementary and sec- ondary school lose sight of that idea? If in reviewing the work of moral instruction as it is being done in the incidental way, one says that it is already good or excellent, we answer that we wish to bring it to perfection. There is, it is true, in our present scheme a place for moral lessons everywhere. The lesson of the higher life makes eloquent and inter- esting the study of the development of the lowest organisms into one with the simplest locomotive organ, and the lesson goes on with each new step of development. The teachers of botany and zoology are given the opportunity to bring in with this exquisite object lesson of struggle for the higher life of self, the illustration of the ** life-giving principle of society, the struggle for the life of others." The Herbartians, in discussing relative values, **harp upon history and literature because they contain the rich moral and social culture, influences which they wish to see redeveloped in every child." We have in hand a sort of composition exercise in which the pupils in the third year give a review of the things they have found good and help- ful in their course of study. They bring from Gray and Pope and Wordsworth, from Cowper, George Sand and Virgil and Goldsmith, and always from their beloved Joan of Arc, the lessons of fortitude, patience, courage and self-sacrifice, of sympathy, compassion and piety, and they testify that through their nature studies they **have come to appreciate the works of God." Yet it is a fact of some sig- nificance that twenty out of fifty of these pupils confess, some with seeming regret, that they do not recall any lesson in their course of study which has been of practical benefit, and the suggestion is made in at least one instance that ** morals should be considered as a science by itself." The young ladies themselves are a better evidence of the moral value of their course of study than their own statements, the composite tone and color of which are indirect and impersonal. It is said in a recent school journal that **the study of literature gives mainly exalted pictures but imperfectly connected in the pupil's mind with the planning of his own everyday life." We come to them 4i6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National always in this incidental method, from the objective side, and in their moral maxims and literary gems we give them handfuls of pearls with nothing to string them on. We may expect that the recitation of a' heroic act in a history lesson, especially if the recitation is to be marked, will have as little practical effect upon the student as did a moving scene upon the Russian lady who wept at the theater while her coachman was freezing to death outside. It would seem that at the risk of trying to teach too many things, we should seek to find for those who have derived from their history and literature a goodly store of objective moral illustrations some work which may deal with moral principles from a more subjective point of view. Since the last meeting of the Council there has come to hand a little book which seems to have grown from a conviction of the author that the human mind has qualities that would interest the average person, whether young or old. His book, which bears the title ** Psychology and Psychic Culture,** makes eminently practical the lessons on the cultivation of the mental powers and is suggestive of ethical applications in every lesson. These lessons, the author says in his preface, in order to be most effective for self-improvement should be studied while the brain is still plastic, and hence earlier than has been customary hitherto. The lessons, with their mirror-like illustrations, present to the pupil under the guise of a new science, himself as he is making himself. The physiology of habit and attention, the cure for mind wandering, the influence of the imagination on the heart, of thought culture on character, the development of the altruistic feeling by thought, of the aesthetic feeling by withdrawing the thought from self, the control of passionate emotion by the repression of its expression, the need of learning early how to be happy, and best of all the secret of will power, are all lessons so fascinating and so intensely practical, that we may believe that the fourth-year pupil who has been set to work upon them in his regular study hour will be as sure to go home and begin to reconstruct his brain paths, and tear down his castles in Spain, as was the first-year pupil, after his lesson on oxygen and car- bon dioxide in the blood, to go home and open his window at night. The story of the chivalry of the Black Prince who waited on his prisoners, the king and nobles of France, with his own hands arouses a noble sentiment in the heart of the boy student, and it is hardly likely that the teacher will care to cool his enthusiasm for the history lesson by dwelling on the fact that this chivalrous prince killed off the com- mon people like sheep, or stole from them their crops, their animals, and their labor. Take up the same story under the head of accurate concepts, as we find it in this book,'^and the lesson that true nobility Council,] THE INCIDENTAL METHOD. 417 considers the lowly born and humble finds its place in the boy's material for self-structure and is pigeon-holed and labeled for future use. There may be some apostles of unconscious influence and the incidental method who still object to the pigeon-hole and label, but we believe that accurate concepts of honesty and honor, of esprit de corps and comradeship, are as appropriate topics for a school lesson as are those of base, rate, and percentage, or the three departments of United States Government, and we would at least suggest that the concepts of these cardinal virtues, should be so well defined in the mind of the normal graduate as to get definite shape in the year's lessons, whether the boys and girls are in the first or the twelfth year of the school course. Mr. Halleck's book on Psychology and Psychic Culture may be commended here without fear of suspicion that this report is made in the interests of the book company, and it is with just as little hesita- tion that we say that the book does not completely satisfy the pleader for a system of moral instruction. The author finds room for only a brief paragraph on conscience, and a corner of the chapter on emo- tions for the moral nature. The work is well done as far as it goes, but after this is done there is still need in the course of study for a simple theory about right and wrong, and a definition of duty which shall send home the lessons that have been already given. Princi- ples of obligation should be formulated, which the boy and girl, whose moral consciousness has been quickened, will be ever ready to apply to new cases which may come to them in after life. Doctors in council may forget, but schoolmasters never, that many pretty good and conscientious pupils keep for their convenience two standards of right, one to use in the school, the other out of it; and that we send our boys to the university prating of their conscience that will not allow them to enter a compact against cheating in exam- ination, and still hugging the creed that what others do is nothing to them provided they keep themselves straight. The advocates of incidental moral instruction may claim for their trophies the earnest and sweet girl graduates, but there are among these graduates those who will say that it never occurred to them to correct their habits of day dreaming or to discipline their will, until it came to them in their psychology lesson, and we have the testimony that ought to hold in court that a lesson on the Ten Commandments which sought to turn and make them over for everyday wear was the best of all the year. We do not find the class or the pupil that does not enjoy a straight moral talk, provided it does not reveal some by-end to be served. We know of one teacher who civilized a class 27 41 8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National of forty roisterers by reading to them each morning a chapter from Professor Everett's ** Ethics for Young People." Dr. White's "Mater- ials for Moral Lessons'* have been dealt out to others, already civil- ized, to their evident profit and satisfaction. We believe that the best teachers will give the ethical lesson as often as the overcrowded class and programme and the examinations in technicalities will permit. We admit that the great part of charac- ter building is inherent in the general work of the school, but, that character may be better built, we believe that the normal graduate should be more thoroughly imbued with its plan and method, and we believe that whether our high school graduates go to the normal school, to the university, or out into the world they should take with them some well-defined principles which shall save them from moral asceticism, which shall enable them to form a just estimate of the claptrap of stage heroics, which shall give them everywhere a single standard of right, and above all shall incite them to keep well-defined and well honored, well molded and burnished, the God-given voice — the voice of God himself **that ever asserts right and ought in the realm of choices and intentions," the voice that we call conscience. Elevate teaching by elevating the teacher. We are making teachers, throughout our school course, and we should keep up the process from the start. DISCUSSION. [Reported by the Secretary.] Mr. C. C. Rounds. — Among the ends to be sought in moral instruction in the elementary school, I would name, first, the development of a clear, spiritual perception, the perception of the inexorableness of the majesty of the moral law, and such an elevation of ideal of character that no temptation of selfish interests would lead one to violate his conscience by doing an unworthy act; and, second, such a cultivation of the moral judgment by the careful consideration of cases of conduct as would enable one to think more and more accurately along these lines, to tell more and more surely what is right and wrong in the conduct of life. The picture of the moral condition of these times as given by the daily press enforces the necessity for an awakening along this line. Granted that there is much of good which herein finds no mention; yet it remains true that the press but administers to the public demand in filling its columns with the daily record of the evil, and that any daily journal risks failure by refusing to admin- ister to this depraved public taste. The studies ruling courses of instruction treat of laws, to be sure, but treat of these as the unvarying successions and relations of phenomena. I fear that an adequate conception of a spiritual uni- verse has well-nigh died out in the minds of large masses of our people. To cultivate a higher spiritual consciousness is necessary if we would make sure of the American citizen of the twentieth century, and for this cultivation there is Council.] DISCUSSION, 419 no means so practicable and so sure as more careful attention to moral instruc- tion in the elementary schools. Mr. Charles De Garmo called attention to the prevailing disposition of the school to emphasize the purely individual or subjective phases of moral train- ing, and urged that the objective or social phase should receive more attention. He said that many have what may be called a divided conscience, t. ^., they have one rule of morals for the home, but a different one for business or politics. People whose characters are of irreproachable integrity for private intercourse deliberately hoodwink and defraud the public in their business, or deliberately rob the community when entrusted with its afifairs. In reply to a question by Mr. Hinsdale, inquiring whether the causes for a divided conscience lie most in the individual or in the conditions under which the individual must work, Mr. De Garmo said that he thought that they lie largely in the external conditions, and that for this reason we must make our moral training of a more positive social character, showing how co-operation with others may change the environment in such a way that the need for a divided conscience will no longer exist. To a remark by Mr. Harris to the effect that this is a reason for laying emphasis upon the transcendental will, thus helping the person to defy the conditions under which business is done, Mr. De Garmo urged that though each age has its martyrs, whose blood is said to be the seed of the church, yet mankind as a whole has advanced because of changed condi- tions, so that if we wish to enable large numbers to live by a single code of morals we cannot do the things that will make it possible for them to live under other conditions than those offering the alternative of unmoral practices or ruin. Mr. B. a. Hinsdale: — It is but a platitude to say that the subject under discussion is one of great practical importance ; however, it may be observed that only things of great value ever become platitudes. I am persuaded that what the great majority of the teachers of the country need, especially those in the ele- mentary schools, is a more definite, specific, and practical discussion of the prob- lem of moral training than we have ever had. These teachers hear much, and they read much, of the value of moral training: they listen to much exhortation as to their duty in that matter, but the difSculty that they encounter is this; they do not \ery clearly see just what they are called upon to do. The questions that trouble them are: What is the problem of moral training? What are the ele- ments of morals? Where does moral training begin, and by what steps does it proceed? In my view these matterc need to be discussed with a thoroughness that they have never yet received. For example, we have heard much this morning about the social will and the transcendental will. What is the social will? What is the transcendental will? What is the relation of the one will to the other, if we may speak of the will in the plural number? Still further, how is the social will to be trained? How the transcendental will? Our friends who are saying so much about interest, are, no doubt, telling us some things that we very much need to hear, but when they attempt to iron out, or spread out, interest until it covers the whole ground that is proximate to action they are flying in the face of the dictionary and cutting loose from some facts and principles that are of the very greatest importance. At the same time the question is, How is the moral will to be trained? Is it to be trained merely by beaming on, to use an agricultural metaphor? This is another question that needs to receive more attention. Once more ; something has been said about the relation of moral theories to 420 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National energy of character and to life. There is an optimistic view of life, also a pessi- mistic one. What is the relation of either of these to life? It is thought that a pessimistic view would lead to indolence and inertness, and, no doubt, that is often the case; at the same time it cannot be denied that pessimists have often exhibited surprising energy of character. Fatalism — absolute, stark fatalism, is the core of the Mohammedan religion. The Mohammedan believes that the hour of his death is predetermined, and that when that hour comes he will die, no matter where he may be or what he may be doing. Still, we all know per- fectly well that the early history of Mohammedan ideas was marked by an energy that has never been surpassed in the history of the world. I am inclined to think that the effect of optimism or of pessimism upon life depends largely upon the tone of the character. Some people are enervated by optimistic views; they think everything will pome out all right anyway. Other people are energized by such views. They see great opportunities, and seek to realize them. Again, some people are weakened by discouragement; others are strengthened by discouragement. We must, therefore, go from the intel- lectual theory to the character itself. How that is to be explained, or how it ori- ginates, is a question quite apart from the line of these remarks. Still, I do not wish to be understood as saying that whether a man is an optimist or pessimist is a matter of indifference. All I mean is that you cannot determine whether a man is an energetic character or not by simply taking account of his theory of the world, whether optimistic or pessimistic Mr. John E. Bradley said that the specific problem which every teacher meets is how to secure the moral training or the up-building of her pupils. It is not a question of theories of ethics, nor is it merely one of instruction, nor how best to impart it, but rather how to bring the will, the disposition, of the child into sympathy and harmony with that which is right and fitting in moral con- duct. There is much moral instruction in elementary schools which reacts and does harm rather than good. What is needed is such prevailing influences in the schoolroom that the child shall grow into uprightness and integrity of char- acter and life. 1 The child comes to the teacher in the primary grade as crude and uninformed morally as he is intellectually, often more so; for, while his wits have been sharpened by daily companionship and environment, he has not been brought into sympathy with the true ends of moral culture. How shall the childish impulses be gathered into right choices and habits of action? Certainly not by dogmatic instruction. And yet in thousands of schoolrooms all over the land this miracle is perpetually performed. Children, whose spontaneous interest is in things wholly apart from the ends of the school, often violently opposed to those ends — incarnate tempests and terrors among their companions, and even in their homes — such children are gradually transformed and brought into sympa- thy with the good order and self-restraint of the schoolroom, and its atmosphere of obedience and industry, through the molding power of a true teacher. But the work is gradual. The child's will must be aroused and made efficient in the direction of good things. A child who has thus been won to the co-operation and right choices of the school has been too often found to be utterly incapable of carryng his self-restraint and kind feelings with him to the playground or the home. But little by little this change of interest, this power of self-direction, the regard for what is good and true and right becomes embedded in the charac- ter. Right habits are established. Permanent preference is given to the good things ; that which is evil or unseemly is rejected. Council.] REPORT ON TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION, 421 Thus moral training is necessarily slow — a work of time and patience and love. Moral instruction is of no value, except as it takes root and brings the will and the a£fections into harmony with that which is for the common good, and enables the child to become in daily life an expression of his best self. Mr. Larkin Dunton. — The beginning of moral education is knowledge of what should be done. This, e\en in the case of young children, should be followed by action. The motive at first may be affection or authority ; and even if the motive is largely affection, it should be accompanied by the idea of necessity, so that prac- tice in doing the right will be early established. Many people, in much of their conduct, never go beyond this stage ; and if habits of right action are fully estab- lished pretty good citizens may result. But, later, actions should be revealed to children as right and wrong. They should be instructed in their duty to themselves, their fellows, and to God ; and the ground of duty should be clearly shown. Their necessary dependence upon others and the consequent duty to contribute to the general good should be made clear, as well as the specific effects of particular actions. So, too, children should be taught the possibiltiy of improvement of self through personal effort. It should be made clear that one's ultimate power of doing good to others and of personal happiness depends upon the child himself, so that self-improvement will be felt as a duty. One of the commonest faults in moral education, in my opinion, is the neg- lect of a constant appeal to the conscience. Many educators, teachers as well as parents, act as though they believed children h&d not eve'n the germ of a conscience. An appeal to duty is always accompanied by an appeal to self-inter- est. It is too often said: "If you do right, you will be happy," as though the sense of duty was not reason enough for action. The end of moral education is the habit of subordinating all motives to the sense of duty, and of yielding immediate obedience to its promptings. To secure this end, right action must be secured, at all events; knowledge of right must be clear, and a habit of right action must be formed by acting right. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION— THE PREPARATION OF MANUAL AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING TEACHERS A FUNCTION OF THE TECHNICAL SCHOOL. BY CHARLES H. KEYES, PASADENA, CAL. Manual training, whether viewed as a subject or method of instruction, is yet in its infancy. It has established its right to a place in our educational system, and shown that its general introduction is but a question of time. We have reached the period when a new bear- ing of the subject confronts us. For some decades consideration of the question has divided us along the lines of advocacy or opposition, until at last the truth has triumphed, and justification is accomp- lished. 422 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National This very work, however, has brought about a keen appreciaton of the elements of weakness in the new method of education. We4oQg ago learned that the only way to elevate teaching was to elevate the teacher; that the central school problem was simply the teacher prob- lem. Hence our training schools, normal schools, and departments of pedagogy. With the introduction of every new subject into the school curriculum we have had to learn this lesson anew. Drawing never amounted to much until trained drawing teachers took the place of mere artists. Music was never what we hoped it might be until music teachers took the place of mere singers. So manual training will continually fall short of realizing the desired results until trained teachers take the place of merely skilled artisans or inexperienced engineers. The teacher demanded for this service should be, first of all, a teacher, and not an artisan or an engineer. His specialty should be, first of all, education, and not some branch of mechanical art. To be a teacher is to be possessed of such moral, physical and intellectual health that all one's contacts with youth make for uplift. To be a teacher is to be possessed of such culture and power as shall inspire the young to desire strength and cultivation for themselves. To be a teacher is to possess such mastery of the subject of instruc- tion, such art in imparting knowledge, as to make certain that youth shall transform that knowledge into the wisdom which alone is power. To be a teacher is to know books well and boys better. But to be a manual training teacher who shall truly advance the cause of industrial education is to be all this and something more. To the equipment for general instruction must be added technical art; mastery of tools, processes, and materials, through contact with which shall be developed conscious, skillful energy, through experience with which every other faculty shall be reduced to the dominance of the 'will. The manual training teacher, too, needs rather more of general culture than does the teacher of the grammar school or the high school. This is necessary for the removal of the impression which is to-day the chief hindrance to the general introduction of manual training into our scheme of popular education. There is a popular impression that manual training is teaching boys carpentry, black- smithing, etc. ; that this work must be done by men who are simply carpenters and blacksmiths; that such men are usually comparatively illiterate ; that their contacts do not, accordingly, make for the refine- ments of higher living. There is a belief that a man who has educa- tion, art, and culture enough to teach anything else would not teach tool work. The boy goes to his first meeting with his teacher of Council.] REPORT ON TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION. 423 » English, mathematics, or history, expecting a man of some culture. He is disappointed if he finds it not. On the other hand, he goes to the sloyd room, forging room, or turning room expecting to meet a man of limited education and little culture. He is surprised if he \ finds there a cultivated, scholarly gentleman. When such surprises 1 become the rule, there will be no oppositon to manual training, and \ the public will recognize manual training teachers as belonging to the very highest rank of our profession. The desire for their services ' will simply be the desire for the best in education. The only way friends of manual training can so improve and elevate that work as to make it sought for by the best peot)le in every community is to labor for the improvement and elevation of the manual training teacher, with especial emphasis on the man and the training. The manual training teacher, too, needs rather more of the teach- ing art and the philosophic training which alone can give the power to study human development accurately, because his must, in the nature of things, be largely individual work. He is compelled to address himself to the true problem. He needs to know books well, tools better, and boys best. At this juncture it becomes necessary to notice the present sources of supply for manual training teachers. At the outset we are con- fronted with the fact that there are but five institutions in America that offer courses for the special and professional preparation of man- ual training teachers, and in at least three of these no adequate liter- ary or academic requisition for admission is made. Fortunately the classes have, heretofore, been small, and there is an evident tendency to require for graduation as manual training teachers, in the future, as generous professional training, and at least as much academic train- ing as is required for graduation from full courses of the best normal schools. Omitting, then, these schools, which as yet furnish but a meager proportion of the whole number of manual training teachers, we find but two sources of supply — the technical colleges and the manual training schools themselves. The former give a train- ing involving less of culture than a college course, but represent- ing, perhaps, almost an equivalent in power. Their graduates, like those of other colleges, are about as well prepared to successfully practice law or medicine or preach the gospel, as to teach. They can learn to teach by teaching; but even in this work of getting one's professional training by practicing on innocent classes of youth they are seriously handicapped by the fact that the point of view of the technic^A school is totally different from that of the training school. The aim of the former is strictly economic, and that of the latter as strictly educational. The former looks at the joint, the model, the 424 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National piece of work ; the latter at the boy, and the reflex influence of the exercise upon him. The standard of excellence for the technical school is perfection of the wood or metal model, and that attained in the shortest possible time. The experienced manual training school teacher, on the other hand, knows that many a mechanically perfect model, expeditiously turned out, means less development, less training, than some imperfect ones upon which much more time may have been spent. The character and sequence of exercises and models are entirely changed in the training school. In the technical college the exercises seek the quickest possible mastery of the tools, machines, and processes. In the training school the model must furnish incen- tive and mental development. The young graduate of the technical college must then, when he enters the manual training school as teacher, almost totally abandon the aims and methods of his alma mater. To make himself the needed teacher of manual training, he should proceed to supplement his general training by a systematic study of physiological psychology, history of education, and methods of teaching. This will enable him to develop principles which will determine for him correct practice. Without this study he must sim- ply teach by authority, adopting the methods of others or teaching as he himself was taught. The graduates of the manual training high schools, who, in turn, take places as teachers in such schools, labor under an additional dis- advantage. They are not only without professional training for the work of teaching, but have had from three to four years less academic culture than the graduates of technical colleges. The line of study necessary to make a professional teacher out of a technical-school graduate must, for the manual-school graduate, be strongly re-in- forced to make up for lack of general education. He possesses one definite advantage over the technical-school graduate, in that he already has the method of the training school. With all these limitations upon special preparation of manual train- ing school teachers, we have, nevertheless, a large proportion of skilled instructors who have, through private study, as above indi- cated, come to be artists in their profession. These are re-inforced in number by those who have had the training of normal school and college, and who, after years of experience, have taken special courses to gain technical skill. For the future some things seem definitely settled. First, the teacher of elementary manual training must also be available as the teacher of the common school. For the mass of scholars no^special teacher of manual training will be possible. This being the case, the institutions which provide us with the great body of trained teachers Conncil.] REPORT ON TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION. 425 for the district school, to wit, our normal schools, should provide instruction in elementary manual training. This should include, at least, work in sloyd, free-hand drawing, clay modeling, and wood carving. The special teachers and supervisors of manual training in other elementary, secondary, and normal schools, as well as the teachers of manual training schools, must get their training in specialized institutions. These institutions should furnish opportunity for the comparative study of the various forms of manual training. This is necessary to prevent narrowness. The teacher whose only contact is with the so-called Russian manual training is sure to be known by the flippancy with which he disposes of all other systems, and the cynicism with which he refers to sloyd as an infantile indulgence in whittling and sandpapering small blocks. The teacher whose only experience has been with the Swedish system is apt to think of wood sloyd as the only valuable educational manual training yet developed. He is sure that the modified Russian system, so commonly in use in American manual training high schools, is all wrong. All this is obviated when the training institution offers the aspiring manual training teacher, as his daily educational clinic, successfully operated classes in the various forms of elementary and secondary manual training. If these can be contrasted with the workings of the technical institute, so much the better. Such opportunity for the preparation of teachers must be provided before the best manual training will come to be a common thing. Then we will cease to have illiterate manual teachers. Then lack of ordinary culture and scholarship will be as intolerable in a teacher of cooking, or sewing, or drawing, or forging, as in a teacher of history, or science, or literature. Then lack of professional training will be as impossible in the teacher in charge of woodshop, machine shop, or carving room, as in the physician or the lawyer. We must remember that, no matter what the subject of instruction, the teacher is but giving to his pupils the best that is in himself. No matter how infinite the literature or how profound the science, we are simply giving our best selves to the youth who come in contact with us. The humbler the medium of that giving, the more the necessity for the greatness of the gift. The teacher of forging or sloyd needs more to be good, and great, and wise, than does the teacher of his- tory. He need not fear the magnifying of his calling; he cannot have too much respect for himself or for the teaching art. In fine, the technical colleges should undertake this training as one of its functions for five reasons: I. Such institutions have already approximately the equipment 426 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National and the experience with which this work should be done. But little addition needs to be made to the shops, tools, and other appliances of the technical college to enable it to furnish such instruction. It is little more than a change of method and point of view that is required. 2. No other institutions can even begin to do this work in any broad way without an investment involving many thousands of dollars. This alone will indefinitely delay, if not permanently postpone, the inauguration of such courses in other institutions. 3. The graduates of the technical colleges, in large numbers, do and will continue to seek and secure employment as manual training teachers. The number needed for such service is increasing year by year. This branch of the profession, as heretofore indicated, needs professional training. This condition demands such training courses for this body of workers. 4. The introduction of such courses in the college of technology will react healthfully upon the work done in their shops, draughting rooms, and laboratories for the training engineers. The instruction in the general departments cannot fail to be stimulated by such juxta- position. Just as the establishment and maintenance of a live depart- ment of pedagogy in a university results in a revival of true educa- tion in all departments not permanently fossilized, so will the accept- ance of this new responsibility by the institutes of technology improve their efficiency in traditional directions. 5. Since the ranks of manual training teachers are being more liberally recruited from the body of technical-school graduates than from any other source, and, since the success of every new movement in manual training contributes directly to the spread of this method of education, the introduction and maintenance of such courses in the technical colleges will be a most potent move toward ccmpassing a desired end. Supply of anything good and useful always creates its own demand. Such supply of professionally equipped teachers of manual training will not only result in the more general introduction of manual training in our cities and towns, but it will thereby divert from the already crowded engineering walks a body of talent sadly needed in the service of education. Council.] D/SCUSS/ON. 427 DISCUSSION. [Reported by the Secretary.] Mr. George T. Fairchild of Kansas said that the training of teachers in the line of work indicated is one of the most difficult problems, and referred to a skeptical sentiment which had formerly prevailed as to the value of the devel- opment along lines of special industry. Technical schools must develop ingen- uity in the students themselves as to the methods of meeting the demand for liv- ing, for the betterment of all around them, development of energy, life, thought — in short, of a larger life. The good man, the man who studies his pupils, gets best work from his pupils. Every teacher in this line must become "a teacher of teachers," as he realizes the broadening of the world's thought.. The specialist needs especially to remember that he is constructing the methods by which others shall work; and the question must ever in his mind be, '\How shall I reach this life given me to develop? " Mr. Sheldon of Massachusetts asked the question, "Is there that in the manual training school which has in it real disciplinary power and worth, and how do the results of its courses compare with those of other courses of study? " Mr. Fairchild replied, " The laboratory, the thinking-shop, is prime as a means of growth ; and graduates from the technical schools compare well with those of any other schools in all that makes for manhood." Mr. Rounds, in response to the question concerning results, referred to recent testimony of Professor Dolbear with reference to science teaching, in which Professor Dolbear had stated that the teaching of science as done in schools does not lead to scientific methods of thought. Mr. Harris, referring also to Professor Dolbear, stated that science as taught in the schools makes for power. Mr. S. G.Williams, of Cornell University, remarked that he had read with some care the report which was under discussion, and that it was a plea for the prepar- ation of a better class of teachers for the manual and technical work so widely introduced in schools of every grade, coupled with the suggestion that the techni- cal colleges should undertake this pedagogic work as a legitimate part of their duties. With the desire expressed in this report, that the manual training teachers should be gentlemen, men of good, all-around culture, as well as skill- ful artisans, the speaker wholly agreed. If manual training is to have a place in our schools, it should certainly be as well taught as any other branch, and by as superior a class of persons. He had for some years been wont to divide school subjects into five groups, and to insist that all should have their proper proportionate amount of time assigned them in school programmes. In these five groups, including languages, mathematics, science and history, the manual training should be included in a group whose function is to train the physical capabilities and develop taste, ranking with writing, singing, drawing, and mod- eling. It seems obvious, therefore, that the manual teacher should be a man of such aesthetic culture that he may develop and encourage the artistic capabilities of his pupil, and that he should be able duly to correlate his work of the hand 428 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National with any of the school subjects that may be illuminated thereby. Such teachings of the manual capabilities demands a man of liberal culture, to which manual dexterity has been added, and the report of the committee urges this view with great force. The question was asked whether any educational results other than mere physical efficiency should be expected from manual training. To this the speaker replied that he believed it to be highly important in the training of the will. The best and most efficient means within the reach of the schools for train- ing the will is through the control gradually gained by the will over bodily move- ments in school exercises, in sports, in athletic contests where many must co-op^ erate to a common end, and in tasteful manual work. A useful preparation may thereby be made for that enfranchisement of the will wherein man takes supreme command of himself in every function of life, and makes his will the able and conscious ally of duty. To a question of Mr. Barringer as to what kind and order of manual work should be undertaken in schools generally, the speaker remarked that he did not feel qualified to advise on that point, but would leave it to the other members of the Council who had given it attention. He was glad, however, to endorse the positions of the report as valid and well-urged. Mr. Barringer asked, "Are there certain brain-tracts that can best be culti- vated by the use of manual training?*' Mr. Sheldon replied, "Cornell has recently shown considerable skill in exercises witnessing to the training of the will." In reply to further questioning, Mr. Williams stated that about one-half of the athletes were above the average in scholarship, one-fourth maintained the general average and one-fourth fell below. In response to questions, Mr. Rounds related observations of the effect of sloyd in one of the Boston schools under a skilled teacher, as one of the effective means of discipline, and by request gave an account of the development and the results of manual training in the schools of France. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCA- TION—THE HIGHER LIFE OF THE COLLEGE. BY JOHN E. BRADLEY, JACKSONVILLE, ILL. The transition from the home to the college marks a significant change in the life of a young man. Independence and self-direction must now replace parental care and wisdom. Habits and principles are now to be tested and settled. Prevailing tastes and preferences are to be revealed. Every power of mind and heart is given a new direction and a new vigor. A grave responsibility rests upon the col- lege which thus receives a youth at so critical a period of his life, and substitutes its own molding influences and its inspirations for the love and watchfulness of the home. No one will deny that this responsibility has been, in the main, well met. Tested by any method, the average young man or woman Council.] REPORT ON HIGHER EDUCATION, 429 in college is better and safer than the average young man or woman out of college. From the day she receives them, shy and homesick boys and girls, till she sends them forth, liberally educated men and women, the college exerts a "beneficent influence upon her students. Every one who is familiar with student life in the better class of American colleges will, without hesitation, affirm that higher stand- ards and ideals prevail in them than are found in almost any other communities, and that these ideals are improved and more and more fully realized as students advance from class to class. Every good col- lege succeeds in arousing new intellectual life, new interest, new con- victions of right, new loyalty to the truth, among her students, from year to year. The highest class will often present a marked contrast to the lowest class in these respects. But while all this, and much more, may be claimed for the college, the friends of higher education and of strong manhood have some reason to inquire whether the college wholly fills its place in our educa- tional system, and whether the trend of its recent progress has been wholly in the right direction. The college has been, from the dawn of our history, so important a factor in our national life that we cannot too jealously guard and foster its growth . But the good work of yester- day will not atone for the mistakes or neglect of today. It must be as true in the future as it was in the days of Cotton Mather that the best thing that has been produced in this country is the American college. All living institutions are subject to change. During the last twenty years the colleges have been largely transformed. Their stand- ards of admission have been raised ; their courses of study have been greatly extended ; larger freedom has been granted in the choice of studies and in personal conduct; social fraternities and athletic and musical organizations have changed the prevailing interest; new methods of instruction and investigation have been introduced, and many other changes have occurred which affect the organic and social life of the college and influence the aims and ideals of its students. At no period have these changes been more rapid than at the present time. In the main they yield, no doubt, substantial progress and enrichment, especially in matters relating to the immediate aim of intellectual instruction. But the indirect and unconscious influence of the college life and atmosphere upon the minds and characters of its students has not always been fully estimated. No one will ques- tion the fundamental importance of the tastes, the habits of thought, the principles of conduct, the ambitions and prevailing purposes which these so largely help to form. They are the product principally of what has been called the higher life of the college. And as, among 430 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National men, that which pertains to them as husbands and fathers, as neigh- bors and friends and citizens, is often more significant than that which relates to their ordinary profession or employment, so the influence which the college indirectly exerts is often more important than the instruction which it specifically gives. This report will consider the work of the college principally with reference to the higher elements of character, and will point out cer- tain conditions of symmetrical growth which have sometimes been overlooked. It will first take a general survey of the work and aim of the college; the latter portion of the report will relate to certain unfavorable influences which often arise. The true purpose of college training is power. New institutions with divers aims have arisen in recent years to meet new wants. But the one great need of the world today, as it was a generation ago, is trained and symmetrical manhood. How to live completely is the problem. As Spencer says: **Not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense — the right ruling of conduct in all direc- tions under all circumstances. To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge.** The best education is the highest development of the individual in all his powers. The college should yield, for each life which it helps to fashion, strength, culture and character. Its aim is not specialization or profes- sional equipment, but well-rounded manhood. I. The first requisite in a leader is strength. Weakness retreats to the rear; strength begets courage and confidence. It is the pro- vince of the college to train the thinkers and leaders in every commun- ity. Its graduates should be men and women to whom others may safely turn — upon whom they can rely. Clear and strong in intellectual grasp, quick to distinguish truth from error, able to solve the perplexing problems of life with ease and certainty, they should be an inspiration and a support to those about them. The college should be a place where young men and women will learn to apply themselves; where they will acquire habits of industry, of concentration, of earnest work; where intellect and purpose will grow strong by surmounting obstacles and pressing on to higher ends. Our youth gain this power of appli- cation very slowly; too many never gain it at all. The world is full of men who have no power of persistent effort. The college has often failed just at this point. It should not only inform the mind but also invigorate the will. **The backbone of an education," says Froude, **must always be the ability to do something.'* We have too many men that drift. We need more that can stem the tide. The student needs to learn the value of earnestness — of a great overmastering pur- pose ; to hold steadily in view the end to be attained, and to patiently Council.] REPORT ON HIGHER EDUCATION. 431 labor for its accomplishment; to subordinate ease, and prejudice, and preference to the claims of justice and of duty. That training is best which, in the felicitous words of Mr. Depew, ** enables a man to. do difficult things easily and irksome things cheerfully." The development of the will is intimately related to intellectual habits. Methods of instruction may enthrone and they may enfeeble this power. They should help a student to overcome his dislike of work and his disposition to do things carelessly. He who has con- quered difficulties once will more easily succeed a second time. Power developed and applied in one instance is availale for another occasion. Self-reliance and self-control are prime requisites in a college training. The student must believe with Cicero that '*more men are ennobled by study than by nature." If a college is to have alumni whom it will delight to own and honor, it must give them, while students, a course of study which will compel their respect. It must help them to find a purpose, and to throw heart and soul into it. No one can touch the lives of others until he has a positive life of his own. If college trained men are^to be leaders in their respective communities, they must be men of earnest purpose — men of strength. Nor should it be overlooked that strength of intellect and of will are at their best when they spring from a well-trained body. If enthusiasm for football and boating shall make the present generation bold and strong of will; if it shall give them hard muscles and a bounding pulse, we need not grieve over the wasted time and misdi- rected energy. No college can meet the educational requirements of the present day without a well-equipped gymnasium. Mental disci- pline must unite with systematic training of nerve and muscle if we would produce robust and wholesome manhood. 2. But intensity alone tends to narrowness. Strength of body, of intellect, or of will, does not in itself constitute a symmetrical man- hood. The man of one idea may be impractical ; he cannot be broad and catholic. Education must do more than train specialists. Who has not admired the skill while he has pitied the limitations of such men? Their concentration of interest disqualifies them for the broader aspects of life. Principal Shairp says, in his ** Culture and Religion," that **what the Romans expressed naturally by the word humanitas^ we, less hap- pily, try to express by the artificial word * culture. "' The term is inexact, but it denotes more fully perhaps than any other single word a certain breadth of information and of interest which should charac- terize the liberally educated man. ** Beware of the man of one book," says Montaigne. He who reads one book may be a hard man to 432 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National encounter; his precise and positive knowledge may be irresistible along its own line ; but the interest and sympathy will be as narrow. Napoleon appointed Laplace, the great mathematician, minister of finance. He failed. Napoleon said of him that he carried the spirit of the infinitesimal calculus into every affair of state. He could look at a subject from no other standpoint. Such a man may be an expert in his own department, as quick and sharp as a needle ; but, like the needle, his keenness is the result of his narrowness. The college should yield an education which will broaden life by enlarging one's sympathies as well as his knowledge, preparing him for a gener- ous appreciation of that which is best in every department of effort. A vigorous mind must have its storing period. You can draw no water out of an empty cistern. In youth the capacity for the absorp- tion of knowledge is enormous. Facts and ideas, apparently swal- lowed whole, are really cunningly stowed away in the mind, awaiting the use which will sooner or later be found for them. The office of the college is to direct this accumulation. Better that a young man should read too many books than too few. Better that his interest should flit from theme to theme than that he should train himself to apathy and indifference. Foster his intellectual cravings, and minis- ter to them with the best which science and literature afford. The student can learn his own capacities and aptitudes only by experience. He must prove himself along various lines of study, and not merely in the one to which his boyish fancy may happen to impel him. He must study the humanities; learn the lessons of history; grasp the truth which science reveals. The college should help the student to catch the spirit of the great masters of thought, to enjoy their com- panionship, and to survey the events of our daily lives from their exalted standpoint. Its aims should be expressed in the graceful words of James Russell Lowell, spoken at the celebration of Har- vard's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary: **Let it be our hope to make a gentleman of every youth who is put under our charge. Not a conventional gentleman, but a man of culture, a man of intellectual resource, a man of public spirit, a man of refinement; with that good taste which is the conscience of the mind, and that conscience which is the good taste of the soul." 3. The final requisite of a symmetrical manhood is character. Force and culture, strength and beauty, will fail of their highest realization if a worthy motive is lacking. By character we mean integ- rity , moral uprightness. We mean spiritual uplift — the reaching out of the soul towards God. We also mean that quality in a man which begets confidence and respect. It is related by Emerson that, when- ever Lord Chatham spoke, those who listened felt that there was CouncU.] REPORT ON HIGHER EDUCATION. 433 something finer in the man than anything which he said, and addi- tional weight was thereby given to every sentence which he uttered. The power of such men is in one sense latent. It is not consciously displayed and asserted, but it makes itself felt without effort, and often by unseen means. It has been said that **the measure of character is the resistance of circumstances," but it is also the felicity of this power to create circumstances, or so to shape them that the crisis never comes, and the battle is won before it is visibly joined. It is the work of the college to foster and ennoble this transcend- ent power. The college trains to self-reliance; it trains to integrity and genuineness. It teaches a student to be himself; to despise imi- tations and shams. It teaches him to investigate thoroughly; to be loyal to his convictions; to recognize and to obey the voice of duty. It teaches him that the government of oneself is the only true free- dom, and that manly independence demands conscientious self-direc- tion. The best support of character is in habits formed under beneficent influences. Purposes and convictions need to be confirmed in out- ward conduct. In no other way can stability of character and perma- nent uprightness be secured. We have had no abler student of college organization in this country than Mark Hopkins, for so many years the honored and beloved Presi- dent of Williams College. In an address at the fiftieth anniversary of becoming President, he said: **A college should be so handled as to bear upon character without sectarianism. If a man is to be educated physically and intelligently because he has a physical and intelligent nature, why should he not be educated and trained morally and spir- itually because he has a moral and spiritual nature? This broad con- ception of education has been that which has prevailed in this college in the past. If not personally recognized, it has pervaded its atmos- phere, and has been an uplifting power. I trust it will continue to prevail. If not, the glory of the college will have departed. ' If this college shall drop down into a merely secular spirit, in the training of the lower parts of man's nature, so that it shall cease to be in sympa- thy with Him whose object is to train to a perfect character that world which is symbolized on the missionary monument, it will no longer be Williams College. ' ' The highest manifestations of moral growth is the Christ-like spirit. College education falls short of its true end if the learner does not sit at the feet of the Great Teacher. Religion does not consist in senti- ment, nor in emotion. It is an upward movement of the whole nature. Therefore the college says to every youth : '* Choose the best. Yield 28 434 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National your heart to the power of the truth. Ponder those aspects of it which will strengthen your hold upon unseen things. Pursue an edu- cation that will give you strength, broaden it that it may yield in you the graces of culture and kindly sympathies, and let it bring forth in your spirit and in your life the fruit of Christian character." With this statement before us of what a symmetrical training should yield, let us now turn to consider the adaptation of the college to secure it. I. We see how subordinate a place must be given to the mere accumulation of knowledge. Unquestionably the four years of a, college course should yield goodly acquisitions of well-related facts. But these facts, and the study and research in which the student engages that he may obtain them, are merely instrumental to his own upbuilding. Whatever views we may hold concerning the educational value of different subjects, all will agree that it is less important what one studies than haw he studies. The college should foster good intellectual habits, yielding the ability to acquire rapidly, to grapple vigorously with unwelcome tasks, to investigate patiently till a safe conclusion is reached. Especially should it stimulate the ambition of the student and fill his mind with high ideals. Hence the importance of the personal element in the relation of student and instructor. The trite saying that the teacher makes the school, applies with added emphasis to the college. More important than its libraries and its laboratories; more important than all its material equipment, are the manhood, the character, the ability of men who compose its corps of instruction. Your committee fear that, with improved facilities and increasing numbers, some colleges are losing sight of this great truth. The strength of the early American colleges was in their poverty — in that they were compelled to make up by good teaching and personal helpfulness for what seemed to be lacking in material equipment. But this lack enabled them to recognize the value of man rather than of things, and made them schools of character rather than of lower aims. No one will question the value of ample endowments; but more than one institution is illustrating the fact that money alone does not determine the worth of a college. The personal element is the principal factor. The living teacher is more important than the text-book or the apparatus which he uses. The student is influenced far more by the professor than by the subject which he teaches. Rev. Dr. Parkhurst says: **The one influence in my college life to which I owe more than to anything else was the personal pressure upon me of Professor Julius H. Seelye. While the books can teach, personality only can educate." Therefore in the selection of instructors the first test of fitness should not be attainments but manhood. It was not Council.] REPORT ON HIGHER EDUCATION. 435 Arnold the teacher, but Arnold the man, that formed the character of the Rugby graduate. If the tendency in college administration today is to emphasize scholarship in the choice of instructors, it is well. If there is a corresponding tendency to disregard other elements of fitness, especially the capacity to impress moral and social ideals, it is to be deplored. The college professor should be first of all a man, able to command the respect, and even the admiration of his students. He should be a model for them in his love of the truth, his scorn of meanness; in manly spirit and gentlemanly demeanor. He should help to associate in their minds fine scholarship with well-rounded manhood. The college organization and methods of work should enable him tb know personally the various students whom he instructs. They should look to him as a friend, interested in all that pertains to their welfare. The parents of every college student have a right to expect that the faculty will be as much interested in his true manliness as in his knowledge of Greek or mathematics. They should know whether he is studious or lazy, ambitious or indifferent, genuine or deceitful, pure or licentious, coarse or refined ; and they should not hesitate to commend, encourage, or admonish, with the utmost friendliness and confidence, each student under their care. In the upper classes there is less occasion for personal oversight, but throughout his course every student should feel that, without espionage or needless restraint, the college officers take a genuine interest in all that pertains to his welfare. 2. If, as we have seen, the true aim of college training is develop- ment rather than knowledge, provision must be made in the course of study for the different tastes and aptitudes of different students. In most college classes a considerable number will be found who dislike a part of the work. In mathematics, for example, a few enjoy the study; some are indifferent; some simply detest it. To a large extent this like or dislike of certain studies is determined by the abil- ity and enthusiasm of the instructor; but much is also due to consti- tutional differences among students. If we wish to secure good work from indifferent students, we must give them studies in which they can be interested. Better to yield somewhat to their preferences if we can thus improve the quality of their work. Better to cultivate in them a wholesome enthusiasm for one department of study than indifference to all. But while considerable freedom of election should be permitted, two dangers are to be avoided. First, the loss of will power. The student should acquire the ability to do distaste- ful work. He must not be governed by interest alone. While we avail ourselves of his natural tendencies in order to secure his vigorous 436 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National mental activity, we need also to teach him the lesson of self-mastery, and faithful performance of specific work, be it easy or hard. Sec- ond, we need to guard against the attempt to specialize too early. The electives of the college course should not be so arranged as to allow a student to narrow it down to one line of work. That is a misuse of electives which permits one sophomore to study nothing but history and another nothing but biology, as happened in a certain institution during the past year. Still less should that be termed a liberal education in which all the study is directed to the acquisition of a profession or industry in the shortest possible time. One is tempted to compare the standard which is thus set with the definition of a university given by James Russell Lowell as **an institution in which nothing useful is taught." While, then, such choice of studies should be permitted as will help to secure the best work on the part of the student and contribute to his growth, short and narrow courses, which subordinate the ideal of well-rounded development to a blind utilitar- ianism, should be steadfastly resisted and excluded. In this connection your committee note as worthy of thought the successful attempts which have been made in several colleges to admit students to participation in college government. A college senate, or student council, in which all the classes have representatives, elected by themselves, has in some instances been found effective in securing harmony and co-operation between faculty and students and prevent- ing misdemeanors which require discipline by the college authorities. The influence of this auxiliary to college government must be of great value in training students to manliness and self-control. 3. The typical American college has been the best example which the world affords of a true democracy. Merit has been the sole ground of preferment. Unworthy aims and motives have been held in contempt. Plain living has been joined to high thinking. There is reason to fear that many colleges are losing this sim- plicity. They have not only shared in the general tendency to elab- orateness which has come into our social and domestic life, but they have also taken on many other and peculiar features. That much of this change is inconsistent with the best results in the higher life of the college can hardly be doubted. Grant that some of thfe stu- dents in these colleges came from luxurious homes. Do they not spend money in college more freely than is necessary — more freely than when at home? Would it not be better for them to curtail some of their expensive habits? When a college dormitory is erected at a cost of half a million dollars; when it charges students from $125 to $250 a year for room-rent; when the average annual expenses of a class are $939 in freshman year, $1,041 in sophomore year, $1,105 in Council.] REPORT ON HIGHER EDUCATION. 437 junior year, and $1,215 '^ senior year, that college can scarcely claim that its influence favors plain living; and when one of its freshmen pays $250 in one evening for floor tickets, box tickets, carriages, and flowers on the occasion of the junior promenade, there is reason to doubt whether he is making much progress in the art of high thinking. It will be a sad day for the higher life of the American college when it substitutes ease and luxury and social gayety for simple tastes and vigorous thought. Yet who can doubt that that day is ominously near when the average sum given by the students of a whole college for the support of athletics last year was $15.41; when some of its students pay $1,000 for suites of rooms; and when in hundreds of ways — cred- itable, discreditable, and even shameful — students fritter away large amounts of their fathers' money? In this connection your committee are glad to express their belief that college athletics, properly cultivated and restricted, are favorable to the higher life of the college. The conclusion seems to be estab- lished that the discipline, the regularity of life, the perseverance required of contestants in athletic sports, tend to make athletes more efficient in all respects. Training for honors in sportsmanship has much in common with training for honors in scholarship. It has, at least, the merit of directing the surplus vitality into innocent channels and helping to produce vigorous, self-reliant manhood. But some of the influences springing from athletic contests are most unfavorable. Besides the wasteful use of money, they lead to familiarity with betting and gambling, to tricks and sharp practice in the arrangement and conduct of games, to fraud and dishonor in playing men who are not honestly eligible. These evils are already generally recognized and resisted, but must be effectually stamped out if our colleges are to have the benefit of clean athletics. The ele- ment of play can never be eliminated from college life. It is essential to the best development of youth. It has been said that it is work that transforms a boy into a man ; but it is also to be said that the boy of promise plays. A boy who does not play and does not love to play is not a healthy boy, mentally, morally, or physically, no matter what his scholarly attainments may be. But the provisions for social amusements or athletic sports should not involve risks or needless dis- order. The great intercollegiate games have often been the occasion for discreditable exhibitions of hilarious spirits which shock the friends of education, and even interfere with the rights of many others. Thus it was said that after a recent thanksgiving football game in New York, disturbances occurred in many of the hotels ^nd theatres in consequence of excited and disorderly behavior on the part of the students who were gathered in the city to witness the game. If inter- 438 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National collegiate games necessarily lead to excesses and disorders they had better be given up. Your committee are optimists. They gladly acknowledge all the progress that has been made in higher education in recent years. They believe its future progress should be even more rapid. To this end faults and deficiencies should be recognized in order that they may be removed. Especially should we guard ourselves against losing sight of the grand comprehensive purpose in a liberal training — the development of strong and well-rounded manhood. It has been our task to point out some of the influences which often impair the sym- metry and the strength of college training. We cannot too carefully guard against these tendencies. But as the evils of cramming and mechanical drill have been eliminated from the lower schools by emphasizing the fact that it is the child, rather than the lesson, in which we are interested, so we may hope to eradicate the evils which threaten the higher life of our colleges by remembering that character is more important than learning. An education which is truly liberal will afford not merely a body of well-assimilated knowledge but will also adorn the life with the graces of refined and religious character and will open the mind to all truth. For the committee, John E. Bradley. William F. King. James H. Baker. A. S. Draper. S. S. Williams. DISCUSSION. [Rsportbd by John E. Bradley, of Illinois.] Mr. Charles De Garmo, of Pennsylvania, in opening the discussion, said that he desired to point out some of the tendencies which prevail, largely under the leading of the Eastern colleges. One of these was an advance in the average age of students entering college. Formerly it was 16 or 17; now it is 19 or 20. The requirements for admission have been correspondingly advanced. Another tendency, growing out of this, is for young men of limited means to cut short their general training, and go directly from the high school to the professional school. Now it is highly desirable to get back to the early condi- tions. But how to do it is the problem. Philadelphia has just changed her high school into a college by merely adding one year to its course. Perhaps the desired solution will be in the line of city colleges. Boys are now kept marking time in the preparatory schools because they are too young to leave home to go to college. Mr. B. a, Hinsdale doubted whether the solution of the problem proposed by Mr. De Garmo would prove effective outside of the cities. The great universities Council.] DISCUSSIO!^. 439 have large numbers of undergraduate students. They do not wish to diminish their enrollment by dismissing a thousand or more students. It is undoubtedly true that boys can be fitted for college younger, but is it well for them to go to colleges away from home at too susceptible an age? The subject of college expenses is one of great importance. Garfield told the speaker that he was troubled to see how college expenses had increased. He believed the ideal given in the report, of plain living and high thinking, should be maintained in college life. The type of the American college has gradually cbanged from the cloister life of the old-time English university to the organi- zation of the present day, which is more nearly on the German plan. Mr. C. B. Gilbert believed the colleges of today are doing excellent work. He thought President Garfield must have been misinformed. Individual cases no doubt occur of extravagance in college, but his college-mates, as a whole, lived economically. He spent all he cared to in college, and his expenses were only $600 a year. The increase of expense is exaggerated. The golden age is in the future, not in the past. Referring to the remarks of Mr. De Garmo he did not believe we ought to go back to the old standards of admission. The present standards are'none too high and the students are none too old. Mr. William A. Mo wry did not believe extravagance prevailed among students. Expenses have increased everywhere. Neither did he think the length of the college course should be shortened or the requirements for admission lowered. Life demands more than it did fifty years ago. Mr. Gove said that we do not care to live in the past, or gauge our expendi- tures by the standards of the past. A boy in college ought to spend $1000 a year if he can have it. Because I endured hardships and struggles, due to conditions forty years ago, is no reason why my boy should suffer the hard- ships of bygone days. Mr. S. G. Williams of Cornell University expressed his obligations to Mr. Gilbert for putting so forcibly a protest he had intended to make against an idea that it is becoming more difficult for poor but talented young men to get a college education. As a college officer he had occasion to know that this is not the case, but rather the contrary ; for great numbers of scholarships and fellow- ships are now open to such men which in earlier days were little known. While as a member of the committee he heartily endorsed all that it had said, he was inclined to emphasize more strongly than the committee had done, as highly influential elements of the higher life of colleges, the agency of those voluntary associations of students which exist in most colleges, such as the Christian, philosophic, and scientific associations, and the congresses which have so usefully superseded the old debating clubs, and afford so effective means for becoming familiar with civics. While agreeing with the committee in its estimate of the value of personal relations of students and faculty, he believed there should be careful avoidance of all that would interfere with the independent initiative and self-direction of students. A young nian should carry away from his college experiences the habits of self-reliance and self-guidance which can be gained only by leaving him in all usual cases to make his own decisions, and to abide by the conse- quences. He was also inclined to think that the Greek letter fraternities were playing, la the main, a beneficent roU iq the higher life of the college; for (he noteworthy 440 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National decline in the silly brutalities once so prevalent in colleges seems to be largely due to the fraternity influence. Possibly quite as much is due to this as to the student's participation in college government of which guarded mention is made in the report. Mr. Barer said the question of the length of the college course was very important. It was one in which he was deeply interested. He had corresponded widely with reference to this matter, and he had found a widely prevalent senti- ment in favor of a shorter course. He would not attempt to decide where it should be, but somewhere, it might be in the lower, or it might be in the higher departments of study, the work will be curtailed. He earnestly believed the influence of the college should be as urged in the report, strongly in favor of broad Platonic culture. Premature specializing and utilitarianism should be discouraged. He would not fetter the influence of the college by requiring attend- ance upon perfunctory college exercises. Mr. Dunton. — My observation does not cover the whole range of human experience, but I have observed enough to warrant the induction that a mere change of name does not change the nature of the thing named. I have had that conclusion verified since I have been in this good city. Milk in small pitch- ers is called cream, but I find that milk by any other name is just as thin. If I am right in my induction, it follows that if a high school is called a college, and even if the degree of A. B. is given, the work remains the same — it is just as thin — and the real difficulty continues. You have merely re-named the high school and omitted the college. HOW THE WILL COMBINES WITH THE INTELLECT IN THE HIGHER ORDERS OF KNOWING. BY W. T. HARRIS, UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. PREFACE. The most important portion of psychology for the teacher is that part which relates to the different orders of knowing. There seems to be a scale of powers of thought. Some would call these faculties. The weakest stage of development is connected with mere sense-per- ception; the highest stage of thinking is that which deals with the necessary conditions of all being. Education in the course of its progress should broaden and deepen the intellect; it should make possible the thinking of greater and greater combinations. Hence the teacher should be familiar with the scale of thought, and know how to recognize a higher order from a lower order. Moreover, he should know how the higher order develops from the lower. In psychology these stages are commonly named sense-perception, understanding, and reason, technical terms derived from Coleridge or from Kant. Older psychology named them, from Aristotle, sense-perception, discursive reflection {dtavoia)^ and theoretic knowing, or the knowing of the Council.] THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT. 441 divine {^opttv). In more recent psychology we may find the three steps described as (i) sense-perception, (2) a knowledge of the rela- tivity of things or the correlation of forces, and (3) a knowledge of the absolute — ^ which, however, is described as a knowledge not possible for men. In the following paper I have described six stages of knowing. First, simple passive reception of impressions without the action of the will ; second, the first direction of the intellect by the will, pro- ducing attention; third, the second action of the will, using attention repeatedly and guiding its successive acts — analysis; fourth, the third intention of the will, which, through analysis, discovers relations to other objects or beings, and thus discovers relativity or the relation of dependence upon other things. This last is called synthesis. The general name, reflection, is given for the union of synthesis and analysis, and this is our fifth step. Up to this point we have traced the orders of knowing from the simplest sense-perception up to the highest scientific knowing. There is a sixth order of knowing which considers the action of independent beings or wholes and formulates the necessary truths concerning the totality of relative beings which belong withift it. I shall omit all reference to the activity of the soul known as feel- ing, considering only the other two activities, namely will and intellect, except in so far as to say here that feeling may be considered as the embryonic form of both will and intellect. On the side of desire feeling moves towards the will. On the side of sensuous impressions feeling relates itself to the intellect. It is evident that feeling cannot be educated directly in itself, but only mediately through the intellect and the will. The will is trained by forming habits; the intellect is trained by developing higher orders of knowing. When a habit is formed and a theoretical view is reached by the intellect which cor- responds to that habit, it will happen soon that feeling will come to contain the contents of the willing and knowing in the form of imme- diate impulse Or unconscious tendency. Therefore the feeling can be cultivated, and is cultivated, in fact, with the growth and develop- ment of the intellect and will. THE SIX ORDERS OF KNOWING. I. It is usually taken for granted that the mind is at its lowest stage of self-activity in sense-perception ; that is to say, when it is simply receptive of the impressions of the senses. The moment it attempts to guide these impressions, or to reflect on them, the mind ascends to higher forms of activity, and limits the scope of its pas* sivity. 442 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. TNational When at this lowest point of activity, the infinite manifold of objects before the senses engrosses the entire attention. One object succeeds another in controlling the focus of attention. This condi- tion of mind is very nearly that of the idiot, who is successively attracted by one object after another, and never reflects or connects these objects by the thought of causality, or attempts to guide his perceptions and make them a consistent whole. The contents of his mind are, therefore, a mass of sense-perceptions, without connection between them. 2. Intellectual culture begins when the will first commences to act on the senses. Its first action produces what is called attention. Attention selects one subject out of the manifold and collects the vari- ous impressions made upon its senses, while it willfully neglects the multitude of other objects that are in its presence — it inhibits the consideration of these others. Attention, then, may be regarded as the name of the first union of the will with the intellect. It turns the chaos of sense-impressions into a system by connecting them about a focus arbitrarily chosen. • 3. Attention gathers, one after the other, the sense-impressions that proceed from the particular object, and it discriminates these. And by this discrimination it separates and defines the object from other objects. Hence the first product of attention is analysis, and we may therefore call analysis the second product of the union of the will and the intellect. By analysis the sense impressions are properly grouped and carefully discriminated, and through them the object is defined. 4. Continued analysis discerns in the isolated object the influence of other objects. To recapitulate: The object is isolated by atten- tion ; analysis discriminates and deflnes its properties and qualities. Analysis is composed of repeated acts of attention. The will isolates the object and excludes others from it; then again it selects a portion of this object for its minuter attention, excluding the rest of the object; again and again narrowing its attention down to more and more limited flelds of observation, it approaches the simplest ele- ments. This is analysis. But in taking account of the simplest elements of the object it discovers it;s (object's) complication with other objects. It notes the reaction of other objects upon the object it has chosen for its attention ; it notes evidences within the object of reaction upon other objects. This result of repeated analysis is synthesis. Thus we have analysis as the result of repeated acts of attention, and we have synthesis as the result of repeated acts of ana- lysis. 5. Synthesis, then, is the discovery of connections, of reciprocal Council.] THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT 443 actions, of the action of the object upon other objects, and of the reaction in turn of these objects upon it. Synthesis, then, results in the discovery of relativity — a system of relations in which the object stands to other objects. The continuation of this process is called reflection. Reflection consists of analysis and synthesis — the descent to the elements and the ascent to the complex interrelations which form the constitution of the object. Here I use analysis and synthesis as applied to objects of experience. This activity of reflection and of its separate elements of analysis and synthesis is called the under- standing by some schools of thought. Again, naming these in a different way, we can say that these are the potencies of the mind, the first potence being attention simple ; the second potence being analysis; the third potence synthesis; the fourth potence reflection. Still further, if we regard the essential personality as will power, we can describe the various stages of growth thus far considered as the directing of the will or personality upon its intellect, overcoming its passivity, and directing it actively towards the mastery of the world. 6. There is another step of the intellect above that of reflection just described. We may call it insight, or philosophic knowing. Just as each of the other stages of knowing arises from the persistent and systematic use of the lower orders of knowing by the will, so the high- est, or insight, arises from the systematic use of reflection through the will. Reflection follows out relations of dependence and acknowl- edges relativity as its highest category. Its doctrine is that each thing depends on everything else. It holds that all knowledge is relative because all things are relative, existing in a system of mutual depend- ence. The flnal result of this process of reflection is to reach a whole of mutually dependent beings. This is evident when one considers that when reflection arrives at the conclusion that dependence is everywhere present among things it is able to state its principle in a universal form ; and hence it now has before it a whole — to it there is one system of interdependent things in time and space. This is the summit of the understanding. But now it becomes possible to discern some facts regarding the whole as a whole. This order of knowing is called reason by some psychologists. For illustration of the character of its knowledge, take as an instance, flrst, the insight that the whole cannot be dependent on another whole. The whole must be independent. Second, it fol- lows that the whole must be self-active, because it cannot by any pos- sibility receive its causal influence from another; and, on the other hand, it must originate activity within itself because there is within 444 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National it a constant process of dependence and interrelation, causing changes or metamorphoses of integration and disintegration. This predicate of self-activity, applied to the whole, is the most important conclusion reached in this higher kind of knowing. It is very important to get this clear. And yet it must be noted as a fact that the scientific stage of mind, which may be called the analytic and synthetic or reflective stage, holds itself back determinedly from thinking the totality. It inhibits that thought. Those, on the other hand, who take up this stage of thinking have definitely adopted the method of philosophical thinking. The following review of the points named will assist in making clear the necessity of this insight into self-activity. Interrelation or dependence among all objects in time and space necessarily implies the unity of the whole. The whole is one being. Destroy any por- tion of it, and you change all of the constituent parts by shutting out a portion of influence that exercised an effect upon these. Sec- ondly, bearing in mind that the whole is not dependent upon any- thing else, one may see that it is essentially the originator of the movement of action and interaction going on between the beings which compose this whole. If one should attempt to avoid this by supposing that simple mechanical interaction, a sort of persistent motion or persistent force, is constantly and eternally active within the whole, then consideration must be invited to the character of this kind of perpetual motion. Any force, as we know it, is a running down of some tension that has been wound up. Any force is therefore essentially dependent upon an opposite force. The correlation of forces, therefore, as a whole, has the form of a series in which the running down of the first force (the same being transmitted to each successive member of the series) finally winds up the last force into action, and that one winds up the first. It is a contrivance of such a kind that the running down of a force effects its own winding up, although through a long series of other forces. Now such a thought as this is absurd from the standpoint of mere relativity, but it is an admission, on the other, hand, of self-ac- tivity as the principle of the whole. Self-activity can always reproduce a new tension of force ; that is to say, it can forever wind up its ten- sion when collapsed. The doctrine of correlation of forces therefore has (coiled up in it as an implication) the idea of self-activity to make it possible. Hence the stage of knowing which deals with the nature of a whole regards self-activity as the principle of explanation, if it is logically- consistent. Council.] THE WILL AND THE INTELLECT, 445 REMARKS. 1. It is to be admitted that this progressive series of stages of knowing, arising from the action of the will upon the intellect, would at first be supposed to lead away from reality towards abstraction ; or, in other words, from the concrete to the abstract. But, in fact, it is otherwise. The higher members of the series of knowing are more adequate and reach the concrete truth, while that kind of knowing which merely knows impressions without taking cognizance of relations is an abstract knowing, because it deals with mere dependent things, properties, and qualities, without seizing them in their true relations, whereas, the reflective knowing seizes things in their causal relations, which make them possible and sustain them in being. It is a more concrete kind of knowing, therefore. But the kind of knowing which I call insight — which explains the dependent things by the independ- ent whole — is philosophic or theologic knowing. Its aim when real- ized enables one to see each thing in God's final purpose in the uni- verse. Hence what we call insight deals with moral purposes. 2. It is true that the psychological theory of these kinds of know- ing is apart from and unnecessary to the realization of the kinds of knowing themselves. That is to say, a person may be engaged in analysis without knowing that it is analysis, and without any special information regarding the nature of analysis. Physiology and hygiene give one an insight into the processes of digestion and respira- tion, but are not necessary for the performance of those functions. One breathes and digests quite as well without a scientific knowledge of the nature of the process. But such scientific knowledge is indis- pensable to the pathologist. So, too, one pays attention, analyzes, reflects, and reasons, without knowing scientifically what is involved in such acts. But the science of psychology is necessary for settling all questions of educational criticism. To see the complexity of the physiological process of digestion or breathing astonishes us. Still more does it astonish the psychologist when he for the first time traces out the complexity of the most ordinary mental processes. The accumulation of one act upon another, each higher one acting upon a lower one, is a continued process of involution which seems at first wholly incomprehensible. But complete self-knowledge implies this knowledge of processes. 3. To recapitulate briefly, the will unites with the intellect to pro- duce attention, analysis, synthesis, reflection, and insight. We have suflSiciently discussed the necessity of the will in order to makepossible the first three of these activities. It is obvious enough without fur- ther discussion that reflection is possible only by holding back through 446 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [National the will the mind from the action of impressions upon the senses. It inhibits direct sense-perceptions and confines itself to the analyzing and combining past sense-perceptions recalled by the memory. But the action of the will upon the intellect is most manifest in the fourth order of knowing, to which we have given the name insight. For the inhibition of the will is here most complete and thoroughgo- ing, for the will drops the entire field of experience, together with its data of sense-perceptions, and commences from the other extreme of the order of being. It inquires what must be the nature of a whole or total, and finds these categories of independence and self-activity. It uses these, and applies them to the contents of experience as ulti- mate explanations. 4. Science may ascertain that a thing is, and expound its interrela- tions with other beings, but philosophy and theology have not explained an object until they have shown its place in the purposing will of the Absolute First Principle of G6d. That is to say, philoso- phic knowing begins with the highest presupposition of a being, and not with its immediate presentation to the senses. Science thus pro- ceeds from the incomplete to the more complete and towards the absolute, while philosophy and theology proceed from the complete towards the incomplete, following, the creative purpose. 5. The most important thing to be noticed in the theory here pre- sented is, that the will as a self-determining power, uniting itself with the intellect in the ascending series of attention, analysis, synthesis, reflection and insight, approaches at each step nearer and nearer to an adequate knowledge of itself. 6. Insight, the completest order of knowing, may be said to have as its object pure will; for a self-active whole is precisely a will. Hence insight is self-consciousness in the full meaning of that term, for the self as will perceives, will, or a self, as the fundamental being and final explanation of things. It is only this kind of knowing (which may be called theistic knowing) that can recognize truly what is involved in freedom and responsibility. The lower order of know- ing, here named reflection, which deals with analysis and synthesis, and arrives at nothing beyond universal relativity, cannot consistently admit the idea of freedom or responsibility. It does not entertain the idea of a whole or a self-active being, and hence cannot conceive of will as a form of being. Council.] DISCUSSION, 447 DISCUSSION. Mr. Harris remarked by way of introduction to the printed report: This paper does not attempt to do anything with empirical psychology ; it is a study in rational psychology. Rational psychology and empirical psychology are not. substitutes for each other; both are essential. An important thing in rational psychology is knowledge of the different stages of knowing. This knowledge is necessary for the teacher as a canon by which to judge the stage of the child's advancement, and in order to avoid over-emphasis of lower stages. Mr. Harris then reviewed the several points in the report. Mr. Hinsdale. — Do I understand Mr. Harris to say that attention is always associated with will, and, if so, what does he say to automatic attention? Mr. Harris. — I put the automatic attention with the first, the least rational stage of knowing. Mr. Hinsdale. — Is not the tendency of the mental life toward automatism, and, if so, what becomes of the will? Mr. Harris. — The whole direction of mental development is away from automatism. Mr. Baker. — Wc should give principal attention in this direction to the upper end of the ladder. We are all substantially agreed about the lower stages. We differ in opinion about the sixth step. The sixth kind of knowing should be emphasized in university teaching, and recognized in the requirements for ad- vanced degrees. Mr. De Garmo. — This ladder might apparently be a guide for a recitation, for a day's work, or for a lifetime. I should like to know the time relations in the use of this scale. Mr. Harris, referring to the earlier stage of his discussion, called attention to the fact that Mill and Bain stopped short of Spencer, who, in turn, stopped short of the sixth step of knowing. Replying to Mr. De Garmo, Mr. Harris said: Some people remain practically in the first stages of knowing all their lives. Some men arrive at the sixth stage of knowing after fifty. This paper was not, however, written to supply a pro- gramme, but to furnish a canon for the judgment of mental growth and methods of development. Mr. De Garmo. — Are not all these stages of knowing present in every one every day? Mr. Harris. — Not in those who have not reached the higher stages. Mr. Hinsdale. — In dealing with subjects which do not attract interest there is at first a comparatively intense effort of the will. Later on these processes involved become easier. Is this greater ease a result of the strengthening of the transcendental will, or is it the result of acquired automatism? We want to develop a certain amount of automatism, but we want always to strengthen the will in the interest of freedom. Mr. Harris. — Automatism is an important thing, but it does not affect this ladder. 448 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National Mr. Hinsdale. — How are we to get the values of automatism, and at the same time grow toward freedom? Mr. Harris. — Automatism does not belong in this discussion. Mr. De Garmo renewed his question as to the time relations of the scale, which he thought important in relation to the question of correlation. Mr. Harris agreed with the view that the higher stages of knowing are to be found in asso- ciation with the lower. Mr. Soldan distinguished between definition of will as exemplified in a con- scious volition which is always preceded and associated with an idea, and the Schopenhauer view of will as force in nature and impulse in men. He did not understand the paper to deny place and importance to automatism. With regard to the sixth stage of knowing, he said: Without denying the reality of the trans- cendental will, I am not sure of the inference by which one would proceed from the fact of such a transcendental totality to its self-activity. Mr. Dunton. — I have been pleased with Mr. Harris's paper and with his able extemporaneous elucidation of the doctrine which the paper sets forth. I find no trouble in translating his paper into the nomenclature of my own pedagogical instruction. I believe a clear insight into the different kinds of mental action and their dependence upon one another is the very foundation of the science of teaching. Many teachers confuse their pupils by requiring them to attempt a reversal of the natural order; but a clear knowledge of the doctrine of this paper keeps them in a consistent course. There is a natural order in the unfolding of the mind and in its grasp of the truths of any subject; and this order must be followed, if the pupil is to see clearly. The relation of the action of the will to intellectual action cannot be too strongly insisted upon. It is not what we decide for the pupil that sets him forward in his development, but rather the voluntary effort that he himself makes. Keep him at the work for which he has the power and keep him self-active, and the conditions are fulfilled for his most rapid progress in knowledge and the formation of character. Mr. Fairchild asked what stage the scientist has reached who constructs the atomic theory. Mr. Harris replied that atomism is the philosophy which makes the sensible world transcendental. It is the philosophic idealization of the lowest kind of knowing. Mr. Hinsdale restated his question concerning automatism. Mr. Harris — We must use each step as a means to the next. To this end each step becomes in turn automatic. In conclusion Mr. Harris said that to each of the three main stages of know- ing there corresponds a philosophy: to the first the philosophy of Atomism; to the second the philosophy of Substance, as, for example, that of Spinoza; to the third the philosophy of Personality. Council.] REPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION. 449 REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCHOOL SANITA- TION, HYGIENE, AND PHYSICAL TRAINING. BY WILLIAM A. MOWRY, HYDE PARK, MASS., CHAIRMAN. We are living in an educational age. The electric light is turned in full blaze upon the schoolroom. The American system of public schools is under discussion and subject to criticism everywhere. Within a few years past great changes have taken place,, and important improvements have been introduced which have affected all grades and all phases of educational work. The curriculum has been materially modified. The colleges are enlarging and developing their work on every side. They have demanded a more extended prepara- tion from the secondary schools. In turn, the high schools and academies have required larger and better preparation from below. The ** enlargement and enrichment" of the course of study in the ele- mentary schools has been the result. These transitions are hardly yet settled into permanence. In methods of instruction the changes have been, if possible, greater still. The preparation of teachers has received renewed and enlarged attention. School architecture, especially in the large cities, has been greatly improved, and the work of supervision has now entered upon new lines, where its importance is beginning to be prop- erly appreciated. It will thus be seen that within the present generation important improvements have been made all along the line of public school work. It is remarkable that with all the discussion and all the improvements in these different directions, so little progress has been made in school sanitation. The public is not yet awake to the fact that the laws of health should be regarded as the basis of the entire work of education. In the new palatial schoolhouses lately built, much attention has been given to lighting, heating and ventilation, but the old schoolhouses are vastly in the majority, and they remain just as bad, and a little worse, than formerly. It is greatly to be feared that but few, even among the educators themselves, are aware how horrible the hygienic and sanitary conditions are, all over the country. Here and there a few thoughtful persons observe the facts and speak out plainly and forcibly. Too often, however, their words are as the idle wind. Sometimes nothing is done ; often only spasmodic efforts are put forth to improve the situation. In the city of Boston the present mayor has lately inquired into the hygienic conditions of the schoolhouses, 29 450 TtATIONAL BDVCATIONAL ASSoClATlOhT, [National and has found them so objectionable that he has recommended borrow- ing the money and making an appropriation of $300,000 to secure for them better plumbing, heating, and ventilation. The city council has already voted the sum of $75,000 for this purpose. Throughout the whole country the deplorable hygienic state of the schoolhouses is such as to demand serious attention and prompt relief. It may not be deemed improper just here to state that this report embodies the results of somewhat careful and extended study of this subject for many years, especially in respect to ** Floor space and air space," ** Quantity of light,** and ** School desks and seats." TOO LITTLE FLOOR SPACE AND AIR SPACE. Some years ago statistics were obtained from the large cities of the country concerning the amount of floor space and air space, per pupil, in the schoolhouses. In one large eastern city, having more than 1200 schoolrooms, it was found that the average of all the rooms gave less than seven square feet of floor space and less than ninety cubic feet of air space to each pupil. Several cities showed an aver- age of less than ten square feet of floor space and less than 100 cubic feet of air «pace to each pupil, and only one or two cities at that time, in the whole country, gave, on an average, sufficient floor space or air space. Those who have inquired into the existing conditions in these respects know full well what a crying evil this is. Little child- ren huddled together six hours a day in the schoolroom with only five, six, seven, and eight square feet of floor space to each one, breathing the air from fifty to one hundred cubic feet of air space allowed to each one, with a totally inadequate supply of fresh air from all sources is a crime against nature, and the conditions are aggravated by com- pulsory laws in many states obliging the children to attend the schools. The authorities of Paris twenty years ago claimed that each pupil should have from 250 to 280 cubic feet of air space,- with a change of from 400 to 500 cubic feet per hour. This estimate is far too small. They also stated that **any heating apparatus that does not provide for regular change of air in some form is injurious to health.** Dr. Buck of New York asserts that **we expire from fourteen to twenty cubic feet of air per hour, requiring 200 times that amount of fresh air to dilute it to a health basis, or 3,500 cubic feet per hour.** The lead- ing modern writers vary in their estimate of the amount of the fresh air supply needed, their figures ranging from 2,000 to 3,500 cubic feet per hour for each person. It is now generally agreed that the neces- sary floor space for each pupil in a schoolroom should not be less than twenty-five square feet, and with the best ventilating appliances every schoolroom should furnish 300 cubic feet of air space per pupil. Council.] REPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION, 451 The overcrowding of children into small schoolrooms with alto- gether insufficient ventilation is a crying evil which has been often mentioned and frequently discussed, yet very little relatively has been done to correct it. A father called at a schoolroom one day to see his little girl. She was not a strong child ; had weak lungs and was otherwise delicate. The father had endeavored to keep the best hygienic conditions about her. He had taken particular pains to have her sleeping-room well ventilated, and to keep her as much as possible in the open air. Of that schoolroom the father afterward said: ^'It makes me sick to think of that odor now ; and my little girl had been in there breathing that air three-quarters of an hour. The teacher did not know the air was insufferable. No, indeed, she had been breathing it with the rest, and was used to it; but to one going in from the pure air out of doors it was simply horrible; and how could it be otherwise? There were per- haps fifty pupils there, breathing the same air over and over, some of the children were not over-clean, and some affected with incipient diseases that made the exhalations from their lungs dangerous." Yet even in such vile conditions the teacher must expect her pupils to be attentive and quick of understanding. QUANTITY OF LIGHT. It goes without saying that every schoolroom should be well lighted, yet everybody knows that not all schoolrooms are well lighted. Even at this late day we are not all agreed as to what constitutes the best lighting for the schoolroom. 1. We shall all doubtless agree that there should be no windows in front of the pupils when studying at their desks. 2. Many believe that there should be no windows behind the pupils, which would thus face the teacher's desk. Those who would allow such windows generally limit the light entering from the rear to one-third of that entering from the side. 3. Some experts insist that the best lighting requires windows at the pupil's left side, and only on one side of the schoolroom. Then as to the quantity of glass. Very few schoolhouses have too much light. It is generally conceded that the surface of the window- glass should be equivalent to 10 per cent, of the surface of the floor, and that no pupil should sit more than thirty feet from the windows. The location of the windows is also a matter of importance. No schoolroom should be less than thirteen feet in height, and the top of the windows should be within one foot of the top of the room. The windows should then be from eight to nine feet in height. A serious evil, frequently found is the custom of using Venetian I 452 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [National shades, or blinds with swivel slats. Nothing can be worse for the eyes than partially cutting off the light while allowing narrow beams of it to stream in through the slats. . The best method of shutting out the sunlight is by semi-opaque curtains, and blinds with fixed slats. Severe charges are frequently made by oculists against the schools. They assert that studying injures the eyes, and that the schoolroom is responsible for numerous cases of defective eyesight. Doubtless in many instances these charges are true. Hence it has come to be quite generally admitted that the work of the schoolroom is neces- sarily antagonistic to good eyesight. It is believed, however, that under proper conditions the reverse is true. The evils complained of are chiefly the result of wrongly constructed schoolhouses and bad seating. Many illustrations of this statement could be given. In a school of 200 boys located in one of the.'eastern cities, examinations were made some years since which tend to show that under proper conditions school work is not deleterious to the eyesight. A new schoolhouse had been built with due regard to proper light. In every room the light came in upon the left side of the pupils. The surface of the window glass was equal to 10 per cent, of the surface of the floor. No seats were placed more than thirty feet from the windows. The top of the windows was twelve feet from the floor. An eminent oculist examined the eyes of the 200 boys, and made a careful record of their condition. Two years later a second examina- tion, and two years after that a third examination was made. The result showed that in general, the condition of the eyes was better at the end of the four years than at the beginning. A few cases of myopia existed, but the increase of the difficulty during these four years was less than is ordinarily the case with boys of the same age. It is highly desirable that such examinations of the condition of pupils' eyes should be made from time to time, in the various cities of our country. HEATING AND VENTILATION. Much attention has been given of late years to the methods of heating and ventilating schoolhouses. As to the matter of ventila- tion, while a few principles have been established, yet, in the main, we are all afloat and out on an open sea. Nobody yet understands ventilation, and that is one of the arts to be developed and carried to perfection by those who are to come after us. It is now gemerally agreed that some permanent and constant power is essential to the successful ventilation of buildings. No system should be employed which does not furnish a proper supply of fresh air to each room. Council.] REPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION. 453 What the proper supply should be has already been indicated under the head of ** Floor Space and Air Space.** In regard to the heating of schoolhouses it ought to be laid down as a principle and agreed to by every educator, that no system should be employed which does not furnish the heat by indirect radiation. Whether from furnaces, steam pipes, or hot water pipes, fresh air should be heated and sent into the schoolroom in sufficient quantities to answer the demands both of heating and ventilation. It must, of course, be borne in mind that if fresh air is introduced into the school- room there must be ventiducts sufficiently large to carry off the viti- ated air. Mr. Ross Turner says: *'As a rule, I have found school- houses i/;7^<^r^/^a;2 and overheated,'^ The overheating of schoolrooms is altogether too common, and frequently is the fault of the teacher. Ordinarily the temperature of the schoolroom should be kept not over sixty-eight degrees. CLEANLINESS. If an artist like Mr. Turner is in the habit of visiting schoolrooms he will certainly say that they are **underclean.'* Indeed, if cleanli- ness is next to godliness, it is to be feared that God has been banished from many schoolrooms. This uncleanliness is proverbial, yet we go right along keeping the schools year in and year out in these same unclean houses. Can any question be more important than this: **How to make our public schools cleaner and more wholesome, and our school children happier and better mannered?" A committee of the Society of Collegiate Alumnae has recently made a report upon this subject, in which they say: '* Eighty per cent, of the methods of ventilation are reported as not working well. * * * In a few cases the shafts from sanitaries and classrooms have their outlets at the same point, with the conse- quent result that back drafts bring the doubly vitiated air back to classrooms. * * ♦ Fifty-nine schoolhouses had never been washed since built, in a period of years ranging from fifty down to five. * ♦ ♦ Skirts and underclothes are filthy at the end of one day." A superintendent of schools in an eastern city, on visiting a school- room one day, found the air too much heated. On speaking to the teacher about it, she said she could not help it. **Can you not close the registers?" "They are closed," she replied. **Can you not open the windows?" It is not allowable; the pupils will take cold." Then march them around the room while the windows are opened, until the air is changed." 454 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National a I cannot," she said. Why not?" It will kick up such a dust that we cannot breathe." The superintendent replied, **I think we will try it." He did. The windows were opened, and the scholars were marched arotrad the room until such a dust was created that coughing was the rule and not the exception. It was an old schoolhouse, perhaps fifty years old, and the superintendent said he had never known the floors to be washed. Let it not be supposed that this state of things exists only in one section of the country. Look into the matter, good friends, in your neighborhood, and it is to be feared you will find the same evils to some extent existing there. It is not the purpose of your committee to discuss all the branches of this great subject, but rather to call attention to a few points where the remedy is easily apparent and a marked improvement ought by all means to be made. They desire to give the greatest promi- nence to the following topic — **School Desks and Seats" — and to make it the principal subject of their report: SCHOOL DESKS AND SEATS. The proper seating of the schoolroom is to-day certainly a matter of great importance. Perhaps it should not be regarded as of greater consequence than lighting, heating and ventilation; but possibly just here the educators of America and the people at large are mor© back- ward aild less successful in the discharge of the duty they owe to the rising generation than in all other matters relating to school hygiene. It is now more than sixty years since Dr. Samuel A. Eliot, the father of the present president of Harvard University, made a report to the Boston School Board on school hygiene. In that report he said: **More care is given to the health of the convicts in the penitentiary than is bestowed upon the health of the children we send to our schools." He insists that *Mt is the duty of parents, and those who act for them, to take care that the schoolroom shall be a place where children may acquire the use of their intellectual faculties without having their physical organizations disturbed or their vital powers debilitated by a constrained position or an impure atmosphere." It is to be feared that the sixty years which have passed since this report was made have not entirely remedied the difficulty which at that time seemed so great. Forty years after Dr. Eliot's report Superin- tendent Philbrick insisted that **we ought to aim not merely to avoid injuring the health of pupils while carrying on their instruction in our schools, but to increase their physical health, strength and beauty; for complete physical health and development is essential to the truest and best intellectual results in education." Very much of the school Council.] REPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION. 455 seating now employed in the United States may truthfully be charac- terized as execrable. We have doubtless begun to improve; indeed, the beginning was a long time ago ; but today we have only made the beginning. The peapfe would appear to be in entire ignorance upon the question, and eicperts in education are sometimes but little in advance of the people. The difficulties in the way of any rapid improvement in this direction are various. The greatest sin is the sin of ignorance, of which all are guilty. Teachers and superintendents may know far more concerning these matters than the people, but their knowledge is nugatory because it is discredited. It is seldom that they are allowed to say how a schoolhouse shall be built or how a room shall be seated. Dr. Charles L. Scudder, in a pamphlet upon the "Seating of pupils in the Public Schools," published four years ago, described the method ordinarily pursued at the present day, of providing seats and desks for new schoolhouses. This is what he says: A schoolhouse is built and ready for seats. The commissioner of public huildings, or his assistant, having ascertained the grade of the school and the number of pupils to be accommodated in each room, sends an order to the manu- facturer of school furniture who is fortunate enough to hold the contract for the current year to seat and desk the building. The manufacturer, knowing approx- imately the ages of the children who will attend a school of the given grade, provides desks and seats as he sees fit, furnishing one, two, or three sizes to a single rqom, as he is inclined, or as may have been suggested by the head master of the school. How does the manufacturer determine the sizes that shall be sent to meet the requirements of certain ages? After corresponding and talking with those who have supplied for many years large cities, including Boston, with school furni- ture, I find it impossible to learn how the standard of the height of desk and chair has been determined. Some of the recent manufacturers have a scale of desks which is arbitrary, and based on no accurate data whatever. The scale is ar- ranged with convenient differences in size, and assigned to different ages, irre- spective of height and growth. We have discarded the long desks and long plank seats behind them, and have adopted the single desk and single seat system. We shall never discard the single desk and seat. Within a few years atten- tion has been turned both in America and Europe, to the production of adjustable desks and seats. This is a great gain. The adjustability, however, as yet has proceeded only so far as the height of the seat and the height of the desks are concerned. Adjustable desks and seats ought to be provided everywhere. It may not be economy to displace all existing desks and seats and replace them with those which are adjustable, but at least a few of them might forthwith be placed in every schoolroom. The adjustable seat and desk is an important invention, and the manufacturers are entitled to great 456 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National credit for producing them and urging upon the community their adop- tion. Go into almost any schoolroom in the land, and you will find child- ren sitting upon seats entirely unsuitable. Some are too low, so that they cannot sit with comfort. Often the seat is too high, and the little children's feet are dangling in the air. Still further, if the seat should happen to be adapted to the pupil, the desk may not be. The height of the seat should be governed by the distance between the floor and the knee, and the height of the desk above the seat by the length of the body, or rather by the position of the elbows when the forearm is placed upon the desk. Children with long lower limbs will require higher seats, but only those with long bodies will need higher desks than others. The adjustability of desks and seats has as yet been attempted only in one direction — simply the height. It leaves entirely out of consideration all the other questions pertaining to school seating. Dr. Scudder, in his report already referred to, after careful consideration of the subject, comes to the following conclu- sions: 1. That the present method of seating is at fault, in that children are com- pelled to sit in desks unsuited to them. 2. That this method of seating tends to the production of permanent deformity of the spine. 3. That the poor seating in our schools has not been hitherto sufficiendy emphasized by orthopedic surgeons as a cause of spinal deformities. • 4. That a larger number of different sized desks and seats, or adjustable desks and seats should be provided for each schoolroom. 5. That the teachers of the public schools should be impressed with the fact of the importance of maintaining erect positions, both in sitting and standing. 6. That having greater variety in sizes of seats and desks, and recognizing the danger of malpositions in sitting, great care should be used to seat each child before a desk and in a chair as nearly as possible the proper size. 7. That the desk should be low enough to just allow the bent elbow to touch it when the hand is raised to write without raising the shoulder or tilting the trunk. 8. That the chair should permit easy contact of the whole sole of the shoe with the floor when the child sits well back in the seat. 9. That foot-rests should be used more than at present, not only to support the foot and leg, but to give a feeling of support to the whole trunk, and to pre- vent the slipping forward of the buttocks upon the chair, causing one of the com- monest of bad postures. 10. That the present system of gymnastics in use in the public schools will help to overcome slight tendencies to deformity which might go unchecked and lead to disastrous results. These results do not all flow from the simple matter of height of desk and chair. A very important point is the distance between the back of the chair and the edge of the desk. Throughout the whole Council.] REPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION, 457 country, with but few exceptions, this distance is too great. The average child of five or six years requires a space between the back of the chair and the desk of seven to eight inches. In order to have freedom of movement, this space, for the youngest children in school, should be nine inches. Many a primary schoolroom in various parts of the country will show this distance to be twelve inches and over, and in not a few instances even as great as sixteen inches. In acade- mies and high schools the largest distance ordinarily required between the back of the chair and the edge of the desk should not exceed thir- teen inches. The true scale, therefore, from the primary school to the high school, would range only from nine to thirteen inches. Think of a little child, whose body from front to back measures but eight inches, sitting upon a seat with twelve or fourteen or sixteen inches space between the desk and the chair back. How shall the child sit? If he is to sit back in the chair, as he ought to sit, he will be too far away from the desk for study or writing. If he brings his body into a proper position for using the desk, either in writing or as a rest for his book, he must sit upon the mere front edge of his seat. More- over, what temptations this condition of things offers for sliding the body downwards under the desk, and sitting with his shoulders only against the chair back. The attention of the members of this council is respectfully called to this great evil. If the seat were as near the desk as it should be a large proportion of the evils resulting from incorrect seating would • be obviated. The children would not only be compelled to sit upright, but would find this position more agreeable. Your commit- tee are convinced that a large part of the curvature of the spine which physicians charge upon the schoolroom would be prevented if the seat were placed sufficiently near the desk. THE SCHOOL DESK — ITS USES. It should be distinctly borne in mind that the desk in the school- room has several different purposes. In the first place, it is used for placing upon it the paper, the book, or the slate for writing, and its present construction is evidently with this primarily before the mind. Its top is flat, and inclined toward the pupil at just that angle which is considered the best for writing. But, in the second place, the desk is even more constantly used to hold the book in studying. It is just here that the ordinary construc- tion fails to meet the purpose required. It has not the adjustability for this purpose. If the book be placed flat upon the desk the child must bend over in order to read the page. If he sits upright, he must hold the book upon the desk or against its edge with his hands. In 458 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [National this case, the book may be too near the eye, or too far from it Hence, for this purpose, the construction of the desk is faulty. The effect of work in the schoolroom upon the eyes has already been considered. The deleterious strain upon the eyesight arises principally from abnormal conditions. Whenever the book is used, it should be held at a proper distance from the eye, perpendicular to the line of vision, and at a proper height to secure the best effect of the light upon the page. The ordinary school desk fails in every particular to meet these requirements. Here is a necessity for adjust- ment of more importance than the regulation of the height of seat and desk. It would seem necessary to transform by some ingenious process, the writing table into a reading desk. If some educator who is endowed with the proper inventive mechanical instinct will present to the public a simple and successful device which shall easily and thoroughly make this transposition, so that the new desk shall hold the book at the right distance from the pupil's eyes, at the right height and at the right slant, at the same time inclining him — ^in fact, compelling him — to sit upright in a natural and healthful position, he will be a public benefactor. Is it not strange, that, with all our committees of ten and of fifteen, we have never had a committee of experts on school desks and seats in our country. If the school men, the doctors, and the manufactur- ers of school furniture could be induced to work together for this end, this valuable invention would not long be delayed. Dr. E. M. Hart- well, in a recent report to the Boston School Board, says: The failure of American manufacturers of school furniture, hitherto to keep pace with their European confreres seems largely due to the fact that they have received but little aid and stimulus from the studies and recommendations of American surgeons, oculists, mechanical engineers, and school officials; all of whom have devoted comparatively little attention to the problem of school seating. Several devices of this kind, none of which have proved quite satis- factory, have already appeared. The Chauncy Hall desk, in Boston, has been in use in that school for twenty years or more. Dr. Hart- well, in speaking of this desk, says: ** Though a marked improvement on its predecessors, and most of its contemporaries, it has had little or no effect upon manufacturers and inventors, and seems to have been absolutely ignored by school authorities." A desk of peciiliar construction has also been in use, in the Eng- lish and Classical School at Providence, more than twenty years, and has been regarded with favor by those who have seen it. This desk has a box and lid, and the top conforms in appearance to the ordinary high school lid-desk. When it is to be used for study the lid is trans- Council.] REPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION, 459 formed by a simple but ingenious device into a book rest. The lid, which is raised in the ordinary manner, is cut into two parts by a break, crosswise of the desk, with hinges underneath. Let the lid be raised and the front part doubled downward till it strikes the top of the desk. A little book rest from within is moved upward into place, against which the lower edge of the book is placed. The front part of the sloping lid holds this book in its proper position, at the right distance from the eye, the right height, and at the right slant. A simple edge upon the book rest holds the leaves back. The pupil is inclined, for his own comfort, to sit upright, his back properly sup- ported by the back of the chair, his feet squarely upon the floor, his hands at liberty to turn the leaves, and the book is invariably held in the best position for the healthful use of his eyes. It is but fair to say that the school heretofore mentioned, where, after four years* experi- ence, the oculist found the condition of the pupil's eyes improved, was supplied with the desks here described. Both of these desks were made for the special schools indicated, and have never been placed upon the market. SCHOOL SEATS. The ideal school seat has not yet been invented. None of the seats or seat backs in common use today are unobjectionable. One which is largely used is much like a piece of a settee sawed off and placed upon iron supports. In this case both seat and back are unsatis- factory. Another style in quite general use may be described as a piece of plank hollowed in the middle, to which slats are attached for a back and which is supported upon an iron pedestal. Possibly this one, properly constructed, is the best seat we have today; that is, it is the least objectionable. It is to be hoped, however, that somebody will improve upon this before long. In the old times the shoemaker was accustomed to sit upon his bench the whole day long. The bench seat was of very simple con- struction. A large round hole was sawed out of the plank which formed the bottom of the bench, and this opening was covered by a piece of strong leather. Perhaps this shoemaker s seat was the easi- est and best that he could have. At all events, it has come down to us from past ages, and no improvement has ever been made upon it. PROGRESS ALREADY MADE. While it must be confessed that in matters of hygiene and sanitary arrangements we have not made the advance which is so apparent in various other directions, and are in many respects far behind some of the countries in Europe, it must not be supposed that we have made no progress. Some of the criticisms made in this report are more particularly applicable to one section of the country than to another. 460 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National The hygienic conditions in the new cities of the west are far better than in the older cities of the east. Indeed, it is difficult to make such a report as this fit equally well every part of a land so broad as ours is. But it is to be feared that too large a part of the evils herein mentioned are not confined to one section only, but need to be observed and remedied everywhere. The American Institute of Instruction was organized in 1830. Francis Wayland was its first president. At its first meeting Mr. Wil- liam J. Adams* read a paper on **The Construction and Furnishing of Schoolrooms." In it he says: The most modern construction [of school desks and seats] appears to be that of detaching the seat occupied by each pupil both from the desk behind and from the other seats, the desks thus remaining continuous as before. The seats are made without backs, and behind them is a passage for walking. In this way each child is insulated, is perfectly accessible, and can leave his place at any time without interrupting his classmates. This arrangement is favorable to the cool- ness and general comfort of the pupils, as well as to the preservation of order. Each seat should be about eight inches distant from the next in the same row, and the passage behind should be twelve inches wide. The seat itself is from a piece of plank nine inches by twelve, with the corners rounded off, and nailed upon a firm pedestal; or it may be simply a box without a cover, made to stand upon one end and fastened to the floor. The open side is in front, and within it is a hook for hanging a hat. To the plan just described there is still one objection, namely, the want of some support for the back. This want may be supplied by the upward continua- tion of the board which forms the rear of the box, perpendicularly, so as not to encroach upon the passage behind, and so low as to reach only the hollow of the back of the child, without touching the shoulder blade. Let us be thankful that we have made some advance upon the conditions of 1830. In reference to the distance between the back of the seat and the the desk some progress has been made. In 1839 influential writers in England recommended that the edge of the desk be three inches in front of the edge of the chair, but even before that time Dr. Alcott of Hartford, proposed separate desks and chairs, and that the chairs should be **set at a zero distance for each pupil;** that is, the front edge of the chair should be directly under the edge of the desk. A few superintendents and school directors can now be found who have learned that for younger children the edge of the desk should overlap the front edge of the seat. The thing to be looked after is the dis- tance between the back of the chair and the front edge of the desk ; that is, the space where the child is to sit, and it is of very little ac- count about the plumb line of the desk edge and edge of chair. *Mr. Adams, at a later date, was conspicuous as the only one of the thirty-one Boston masters who refused to sign the famous document attacking Horace Mann's "Seventh Annual Report." He was master of the Hancock School. Council.] REPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION. 461 Ordinarily the chair (for younger children) will extend a few inches under the edge of the desk. Separate desks and chairs were first introduced into this country in 1848. Their first use was in the Quincy School, Boston. When Dr. Edward Everett Hale was a pupil in the Boston Latin School, **All the seats were of the same height, for boys six feet high or for boys four feet high.'* Dr. Hartwell asserts: It cannot be denied that municipal sanitation and school hygiene are more highly organized and successfully administered in the leading cities of Europe 'than in the leading cities of America. Indeed, school hygiene has no place or standing among the arts and sciences in America. There appears to be no department of public health so miserably endowed, so incompletely organized, so well-nigh universally neglected by publicists, scientists, and publishers, as school hygiene. * * * The public schools are organized, maintained, and regulated by the state, which clearly owes it to itself to take adequate measures to prevent the school population from contributing to the spread of epidemic diseases, and thereby endangering the public health. * * * The school boards as at present constituted and teachers as at present trained for their pro- fession are unequal to organizing or administering a genuine and effectual system of school hygiene such as the times demand in city schools. Experts in medicine, sanitation, and hygiene are necessary — nay, indispensable — for such a purpose. He further says: If the public health is to be effectually guarded, the schools and those who frequent them should be subject to inspection by properly trained representatives of the board of health, which board should have a voice in the selection of school sites and in matters relating to drainage, plumbing, heating, lighting, and venti- lation of schoolhouses. * Frequent quotations from Dr. Hartwell have been made in this report, both because he is excellent authority upon these matters and because he has given, within a few years past, quite as much atten- tion, perhaps, to the topics here considered as any man in the country. It is very clear that some progress has been made in recent years in matters of plumbing, heating and ventilation. This improvement, however, is principally confined to new school buildings, while the ancient schoolhouses, as has already been said, are decidedly in the majority. Has not the time fully come when municipal governments should establish a careful system of medical examination in the schools? This has already been done in at least one instance. On the ist of November, 1894, the city of Boston first introduced into this country systematic medical inspection of all the schools. A few cities in Europe had previously begun this practice. Since November, 1894, Boston has employed forty-nine physicians who, in person, visit every schoolhouse every day in the year when the school is in session. If any cases of illness appear, especially any suspicious of infectious or epidemic diseases, the pupils are sent by the teacher 463 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Katlonal to a separate room in the building to be examined by the physician in charge. There is no interference with the family physician. Sick children are sent home by the teacher. Objectionable diseases, defective hearing and eyesight, receive their proper attention. The physician reports daily to the board of health. There has been, thus far, no difficulty in securing good talent for this purpose at a small salary. Each physician is paid for this service merely $200 a year. The work is considered as new, popular and scientific. Many old physicians become interested in this kind of service as a matter of scientific study. During the first year's experience 9, 188 sick cases were exaihined by these physicians, of which 5^053 were of throat troubles. One thousand seven hundred and forty-five sick children were sent home from the schools, 1,466 cases required the attention of the family physician, and 437 cases of contagious diseases were found. This new method of medical inspection of the schools has already proved important in preventing the spread of contagious diseases, and has been a great relief and aid to the teachers in their oversight of the children. Dr. Durgin, the chairman of the board of health of Boston, is enthusiastic in his approval of il. In a recent address he referred to the dust ** which for years had been accumulating upon the floors of the schoolrooms," and he added that ''good air and cleanli- ness are so lacking as to be abominable." It is customary in many colleges, universities, and academies, to have a resident physician, who, in all cases, should be an expert in matters sanitary and hygienic. In this custom we are merely fol- lowing English precedents. The last number of the London Journal of Education^ in speaking of school doctors, says: The head of every school knows how much depends on the school doctor, on his skill to detect disease and sagacity to know when strong measures must be adopted. But no schoolmaster can know what such ability has saved, for it requires medical knowledge even to guess at "what's prevented.*' Many heads of schools, moreover, do not realize how much it rests with them and their system to determine what opportunities of prevention the school doctor shall have. The same article quotes from Dr. Dukes, who for a quarter of a century was the physician at Rugby School, as follows: During the whole of the twenty-five years I have been physician to the Rugby School I have visited, with the utmost regularity, every boarding house where the members of the school reside^ starting at exactly the same time (8:15 a. m.) every week day during every term, and on Sundays at 8:45 a. m. The members of the schcol are housed in nine boarding-houses, and the number, varying from year to year, gives an average of just over 400; at the present moment there are 500. In consequence of this regularity, and by the use of a little moral persuasion, both with rei^ard to each house-matron and the boys themselves, I am usually able to see the beginning of all illnesses; in fact, I CoBocU.] RBPORT ON SCHOOL SANITATION. ^63 doubt whether anyone, except where the same system is in force, has ever had such a unique opportunity, amongst such a number, and extending over so many yeais. I am continually instilling into the matrons and the boys the importance of my seeing invalids in the very earliest stage of not feeling well, hours before one can definitely diagnose the ailment which is causing discomfort. CONCLUSION. The preceding discussion by no means covers the whole ground of school hygiene, but is designed merely to call the attention of this Council to several important defects in the present working of our school system, and to suggest concerted action along a few lines only, looking toward a remedy for existing evils. Your committee would therefore beg leave to make the following suggestions : 1. It is high time that the authorities in the large cities should inaugurate a system of expert examinations with reference to the hygienic and sanitary conditions of their city schools.* 2. We would respectfully represent to the several state depart- ments of public instruction that, in our judgment, such departments can render no better service than by causing to be made, by a com- petent commission, wisely appointed, an exhaustive report upon school • hygiene, to be widely circulated, and giving to the community infor- mation universally needed. Such a report should be the result of the most careful study and inquiry into the various questions constantly arising concerning school sanitation and hygiene ; and it should give due attention to the wants of both country and city schools — large schoolhouses in towns and one-room buildings in rural districts. 3. We would urge, with strong emphasis, the leading manual train- ing schools, technical schools, and universities in our country to incor- porate into their courses the careful study of school sanitation and hygiene. 4. Your committee would further distinctly emphasize the impor- tance of more extended instruction for the teachers of the public schools of our country upon this subject of school hygiene, such instruction to be particularly given in teachers' institutes, summer schools, and normal schools. 5. The best results will not be accomplished until cities shall extend the proper power and authority and place the needed responsi- bility for better results in these directions upon the city superinten- dents. William A. Mowry, Chairman, Frank A. Fitzpatrick, Mary E. Nicholson, Joseph Baldwin, C. B. Gilbert, Committee, 464 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON CITY SCHOOL SYS- TEMS—THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. BY AARON GOVE, DENVER, COLO., CHAIRMAN. This committee has twice since the organization of the Council presented reports relative to the business conduct of city schools. It should be understood that in the preparation of this, the third report, only cities of 200,000 people, or less, are in mind. Such differentiation of administrative duties becomes necessary in the fifteen cities in our country of over 200,000 people that for that class of cities a special consideration is necessary. Faith in the American common-school idea has become so vital a part of the character of the people that to the schools themselves the greatest concessions have been made. Devotion to them is most •earnest, and promptly develops into* violent antagonism upon any appearance of attack. School laws are enacted and approved which give tremendous power to school boards, upon the theory that intelli- gent, honorable, and honest citizens are to be members of the direc- tory. Such power has been given to no other department of public government, except possibly to the higher courts of justice. This unprecedented confidence, which the people have placed in a repre- sentative executive board, with accompanying great powers in finan- cial and educational matters, has brought about the common-school systems of our larger towns and cities a horde of camp followers, impecunious politicians, adventurers and reformers, who, cormorant- like, would appropriate all to personal use, regardless of public weal. In later years no measure in the social, political or financial world has been initiated in this country without an appeal in some form having been made for assistance through the instrumentality of the schools. As a result of this popularity hundreds of towns have enthusiastically incurred enormous school debts, and have given freely vast sums of money for the maintenance of this highly prized institution. Fortu- nate it is for our nation that patriotism takes so noble a form ; but unfortunate is it for our communities that the manipulation of these financial interests is frequently delegated to selfish, ignorant, or unprincipled officials. A consideration of city school systems, especially of those west of Ohio, naturally, then, demonstrates the fact that many of them are carrying a great debt, to meet the annual interest of which compels Council.] REPORT ON CITT SCHOOL STSTEMS. 465 an excessive direct tax levy. The expenditure of large sums of money for interest on loans directly hampers the school administration, and sets it in an unfortunate light in the community. It is not the purpose of this report to call attention to the mistakes — to use no severe word — that have been made in assuming a great bonded indebtedness; but comment thereon may be instructive to persons who occupy positions of city superintendents of schools, and serve to remind them that an important duty connected with their position is a participation in the councils of those who direct the expenditure of public funds for common schools. The financial reverses throughout the' country, which commenced in 1893, have sensibly embarrassed the administration of all public, and especially educational affairs. The prosperity preceding that time led, in many cases, to imprudent outlay — to extravagance — in addition to an expenditure which popular favor had already made too generous, if not lavish, in private as well as public matters. The older Eastern towns can scarcely realize the conditions in the newer parts of the country with regard to municipal expenditure. Those cities whose streets are paved, sewers laid, public buildings completed, parks established, are so differently situated from cities in the Mississippi valley and West, where all these improvements are yet to be made and paid for, that any comparison between them with regard to school expenditure needs to be carefully considered. The true basis upon which to calculate expense of public educa- tion is that of cost per capita per pupil ; but it will be found that the mass of the people have little disposition to base their opinions upon figures of that kind. The popular mind gives heed, first, to the total amount of tax for all purposes ; and, second, to the total amount of tax for school purposes. The typical citizen has little disposition or time to analyze the expenditure of public institutions. It is for the superintendent, then, to meet the people on this financial plane, and to be able and willing to explain the relations of one public fund to another. It would seem that a reasonable limit should be stated for direct taxation for public schools. In undertaking to learn the amount con- tributed from their total wealth by the people for public use in differ- ent cities, one is met by the unfortunate and pernicious custom of extending inaccurate property-values on assessors' books — a custom which makes it difficult to establish a common ground for comparison. One finds in Providence, R. I., the estimated real value of tax- able property of the city to be $169,000,000, and turning to the assess- or's books of that city one reads that a direct tax is levied upon the same amount, namely, $169,000,000. Were the tax-collecting affairs 30 466 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [National of Other cities in the country conducted in the same manner, compari- son would be easy; but, unfortunately, while the statutes throughout the country, as a rule, require property to be assessed at its real value, the law remains generally unexecuted ; and custom has declared that one-half, one-third, or even one-ninth, of the true value only shall be returned by the assessors. One city in Illinois has property to the cash value of $50,000,000; the same property is extended on the assessor's books at $8,000,000; as a result the public documents of that city show a tax levy the present year, for all purposes, including city, county, state and schools, of 9 per cent., while it will be noticed that it really is about 1.5 per cent, on the real value. What most concerns the school authorities in rendering an account to their constituency is the relative amount raised by direct tax for schools as compared with the total amount similarly raised for all other purposes. Your committee find that in Peoria, III., the schools are allotted one-third; in Milwaukee, Wis., one-fifth; in Galveston, Tex., one-third; in Providence, R. I., one-sixth; in Cleveland, Ohio, one-fourth; in Denver, Colo., one-fifth. One cannot form an intelligent opinion as to the causes of these great differences until the local conditions are comprehended and the amount of moneys received from other sources is ascertained. While the national grant for the support of schools in states west of Ohio has been munificent, the manipulation of it by legislation, ignorant and wicked — and one is as disastrous as the other — has produced re- sults by no means satisfactory. Indiana has a state school fund of nine millions, Minnesota of twelve millions, Nebraska of fifteen mil- lions, Texas of a still greater amount, and Colorado of less than two millions, and in each of these states the demand for direct taxation for the support of schools will, of course, greatly vary. The purpose of this report will be largely accomplished if the attention of city superintendents is so drawn to their duty as to lead them to give intelligent counsel and insistent advice concerning the amount of money to be expended for schools, thereby modifying by increase or decrease the school tax levy in every department. That superintendent errs who approaches the board as a partisan. A superintendent of schools should occupy quite a different posi- tion from that of the congressman who appeals to the government for a special appropriation for the district which he represents, and retires with a gratified feeling of conquest when his demand is granted, regardless of other national interests. The superintendent's knowl- edge of the entire field compels him to refrain from occupying the attitude of a special pleader. He is bound to remember the varied interests, and he should avoid occupying such a position as will pre- Council.] REPORT ON CITT SCHOOL STSTEMS. 467 vent him from retiring with dignity when he fails to obtain that for which he asks. Indignation should be his, only when unwise or imprudent expenditures are advised ; but never when appropriations are refused, even though the granting of them would tend to accomplish what he believes to be for the best interests of the schools. It should be his duty as well as his prerogative carefully to review the work of the architect; to be conversant with the money spent for supplies; to be consulted as to the location of the real estate purchased; to know the worth in the market of a teacher's Services, and to approve the value thereof. It is not meant that conclusions should rest with the city superintendent; but that he should insist upon knowing what is doing by the constituted authorities and be permitted promptly to give expression, if occasion warrants, to condemnation of ignorance or imprudence. The pursuance of such a course of action will at first, with ignorant and prejudiced people, render his position of insecure tenure and make his office open to violent attacks from corrupt persons; but in the end it will redourid to the prosperity of the schools, and so to the welfare and honor and influence of the school community. The superintendents, in a number of cities, have been asked for an opinion as to what is a reasonable tax levy for the support of the schools — one which could give all returns that the most ambitious city would ask, and yet one to which people would agree. The replies have been singularly unanimous, — that upon a cash value of all the property in a community a tax levy of one-half of one per cent, on every dollar valuation would be abundant. A little calculation demonstrates that no community expends that amount legitimately on the conduct of schools, even including the erection of buildings in a rapidly grow- ing city; and observations show that where the tax levy has been greater than this — and therefore excessive — there are to be found that recklessness and ignorance on the part of the school boards which, as your committee suggest, could have been corrected by the intelligent meddling of the superintendent. Your committee believe that most of the embarrassments and retrograde movements in the public schools can be traced to unfor- tunate financial management. Nearly every American city is willing and can afford without embarrassment, to maintain and support the best system of schools possible. But no city succeeds in so doing save when every dollar of expenditure returns a dollar's worth of results. One can readily name cities which illustrate inadequate returns through imprudent expenditures. Your committee points with emphasis to the older communities of the East, where the greatest amounts of money taken directly from 468 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National the pockets of the people, being spent for free schools, insure the greatest prosperity. The reports of the commissioner of education for the last twenty years will show, upon study, that those cities that pay the most money per capita for the free education of the people are the cities that are most prosperous in a material way. In some cities, like St. Louis, where the school boards are elected by the people, the direct control of the assessment and collection of money for school purposes lies in the board, limited only by law; while in other cities, like Boston, the school boards are limited by the action of another body, usually the municipal government. In the first case the power and responsibility are greater and the tendency to abuse correspondingly greater. In the latter the power of the munici- pal government tends to check unnecessary and sometimes necessary investments. While it is questionable at the present time which method of con- stituting boards is the better for schools, it would seem that the municipal government is, in the main, a wholesome check upon any dangerous tendencies towards extravagance of the school board. The schools need all the advantages that must ensue from the study and knowledge of philosophy. There is another side in this active American life, viz., the busi- ness side, which is emphatically a large part of our civilization ; it may be gross, it may be too material for sentiment, but its existence stares us in the face and compels us to acknowledge its existence as one of the forces in social life ; to this side we call attention. Too many young and vigorous cities are today resting or falling back in common-school interests on account of the lack of attention to the business conduct of their school systems. This must continue until the men best able from their position, knowledge, and office take a hand in giving direction to that essential aspect of the institution. City superintendents occupy a middle ground. On the one hand are the experts, philosophers and thinkers, whose theories must pre- cede any healthful progress. On the other hand are the people who make up the mass of the active forces of the community; ever ready and willing to trust to the philosophers, the men of thought among them, for the underlying principles of their educational sys- tems, and both unwilling to investigate, and unable to apppreciate, philosophical methods. Between these two are the superintendents; men who are giving their lives to the study of the practical side of this great interest; men who should be well aware of the business demands of the schools in thir charge, and of the money needed from year to year to maintain them. Occupying this middle ground it is the superintendent's privilege Council.] DISCUSSION. 469 to appropriate from the one side that wisdom, skill, and art which he learns from the students , the professors of pedagogical science ; and from the other side those grosser, more material forces without which progress is hindered. Aaron Gove, Chairman, L. H. Jones, Ellen C. Sabin, Oscar H. Cooper, N. C. Dougherty. DISCUSSION, [Rbfortbd by Aaron Gove.] Mr. B. a. Hinsdale — There are three or four points presented in the report on which I wish briefly to comment: In the first place, I think there can be no doubt that there has been a certain amount of wastefulness in the school expendi- tures in large sections of the country, particularly in the Western states. To a very great extent this wastefulness has been occasioned by what may be called the "boom spirit," which manifested itself in public education as it did in all other things, public and private. Many towns and cities in the West, in a spirit of excessive hopefulness, have expended extravagant sums of money with a view of promoting their growth. Sometimes enterprises of alleged public benefit have been parts of real estate speculation. Not infrequently have courthouses, jails, churches, colleges, schoolhouess, etc., been built, either where they were not wanted, or they have been built upon a scale that nothing in the experience of mankind would at the time justify. I have myself seen a commodious and costly schoolhouse in a small Indiana town, entirely out of proportion to any immediate or prospective wants of the community. In fact, the schoolhouse was so large that it was not even used for school purposes, but, for the time being, was tenanted only by spiders and bats. No doubt this is an example of what has been done in many other places, in whole or in parL How far the school board or school superintendent could have arrested the tendency to undue expenditure, is a serious question. My own opinion is, that if in this case the superintendent had attempted to stand against the current he would simply have been carried off his feet and have been swept down stream. No doubt, too, there has been a certain amount of dishonesty in many places in connection with school expendi- tures, just as there has been in connection with all other matters of a public character. At the same time that I recognize these facts, or whnt seem to me to be facts, it is still my opinion that the characterization of the recklessness of many school boards is over-rigorous or severe. In the second place, the proposition that school expenditures should be reg- ulated by 2l per capita rule seems to me to be preposterous. School expenditures must have constant reference, not merely to the number of people, but to what people are able to pay for the schools. In the state of South Carolina, for example, the average wealth per capita is less than $400, while in the Pacific states it is more than $2000. Such facts as these will declare themselves in the field of school expenditures; and not only will they declare themselves, but they ought to declare themselves. 470 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [National In the third place, let us consider the question what the norm or type of school superintendent should be. Hitherto the superintendent haff combined many vocations and performed many duties. This is the case at the present time also. Some superintendents attend more to the educational side, and some more to the business or administrative side of the work, and no doubt this will be true to some extent in time to come, and there is no reason why it should not be so. Still the question occurs: In what direction shall the main stream or tide set? Should the superintendent be more of a leader of his teachers and of the community in respect to educational matters, or should he be more of a business man or administrator? Those who are familiar with my ways of thinking on these subjects will riot expect me to hesitate in deciding for the first of these courses. Now, in the fourth place, in respect to politics: What has been said about politics relates to partisan politics, or politics as Republican or Democratic. No doubt Republican and Democratic politics have done harm in the educational field; at the same time my own opinion, based upon some observation, reading, and reflection, is that what may be called school politics has done, and is now doing, vastly more harm. It is not so much partisan politics. Republican poli- tics, or Democratic politics, as it is the application of the politician's methods to school afifairs. For example, teachers' positions are not infrequently considered spoils, and the spoils system is thus introduced into the public schools. In my view "School Politics" is the great devil that needs to be cast out. Mr. Dunton — No man knows everything, not even a school superintendent, or a school committeeman. The work of conducting schools should be divided and properly distributed. The purely educational questions should be left to educational experts — to the superintending officers — and with power. Over these matters boards of education should have no control. Purely business matters should be in the hands of able business men who should constitute the body of school committees. With their department the superintendent should have little to do except to indicate what the schools need. The construction, heating, ventilating, lighting and furnishing of schoolhouses should be under the direction of an expert in this department. School boards and school superintendents are usually not qualified for the duties of an expert school architect. Millions of dollars are wasted and thousands of lives sacrificed, annually, because the structure and equipment of the schoolhouses are entrusted to men who do not know what is needed. As a condition of progress we must learn that a mere election does not qualify one either to direct education or to furnish the proper conditions for its pursuit. The functions of committees, superintendents, and architects should be differentiated to a greater extent. DEPARTMENT OF KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION. SECRETARY'S MINUTES. FIRST SESSION. Buffalo, N. Y., July 8, 1896. The first session of the Kindergarten Department, National Educational Association, at Buffalo, was held at Temple Beth-Zion, Wednesday, July 8, [896, at 3 p. m. The meeting was opened by Mrs. M. J. B. Wylie, president of the Buffalo Kindergarten Union, who introduced Miss Amalie Hofer, the depart- ment president. A brief address of greeting from the President followed. The first paper of the afternoon, "The Purpose of the Story in the Kindergar- ten,*' was by Miss Sara £. Wiltse, West Roxbury, Mass., Secretary of the Inter- national Kindergarten Union. ^ This paper was discussed^ by Miss Frances E. Newton, of the University of Chicago Settlement. The second paper, "Child Study For Fathers and Mothers," was given by Professor M. V. 0*Shea, of the School of Pedagogy, Buffalo, N. Y. Miss Anna K. Eggleston, of the New York State Board of Public Instruction, discussed the paper. The President announced the absence and tendered the regrets of the Vice President, Mrs. Susan S. Harriman, of Providence, R. I., and the Secretary, Miss Wilhelmina Caldwell, of Denver, Colo., and appointed Miss Ella C. Elder, of Buffalo, N. Y., as acting secretary. Announcement was made of the kindergarten headquarters at the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union, to which place visiting kindergartners were cordially invited. Further announcement was made of a reception to visiting kindergartners, tendered by the local kindergartners, to be given on the evening of July 8th, from 9 to II. An address followed on "The Children of Our Cities," by Miss Mary E. McDowell, of the University of Chicago Settlement. This address was discussed by Professor Earl Barnes, Leland Stanford Jr. University, Cal. The following committees were appointed: NcmtnaitMg CommitUe: Mn. Ada Marean Hughes, of Toronto, Ont. Miss Jessica E. Beers, of Buffalo, N. Y. Miss Frances E. Newton, of Chicago, 111. CemmitUton Resolutions: Mrs. Elisa A. Blaker, of Indianapolis, Ind. Mrs. Emma A. Beebe, of Chicago III. Miss Sara A. Stewart, of Philadelphia, Pa. Meeting adjourned until Thursday, July 9th, 3 p. m. 472 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Kindergarten SECOND SESSION.— Thursday, July 9, 1896. The second session was held in Temple Beth-Zion on Thursday, July 9th, at 3 p. m. The first paper was presented by Professor £. H. Clark, of the Univer- sity of Chicago, the subject being "The Psychology of Descriptive Gesture.** This was followed by a paper on ** Allies of the Kindergarten Movement," by Miss Caroline T. Haven, of New York City. This paper was discussed by Mrs. Fannie Schwedler Barnes, of New York, Miss Newcomb, of Fredonia, Miss Laws, of Toledo, and Mrs. Hughes, of Toronto. In the absence of Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, of Chicago, who was to have given a paper on " Organization, a Social Ideal, an Educational Ideal,** the time was occupied by President G. Stanley Hall, who explained his *' Kindergarten Syllabus of Child Study** and urged that kindergartners answer the questions therein proposed. Mrs. Hughes made a brief presentation of the claims of the International Kindergarten Union, and the advantages of membership therein. The last paper of the session was by Miss Bertha Payne, of Chicago, the sub- ject being '* Problems of the City Kindergarten.*' The report of the Committee on Resolutions was presented by the Chairman, Mrs. Eliza A. Blaker, as follows: Resolved^ That the officers and members of the Rinder^arteii Department of the National Educational Association express their sincere appreciation of the hospitalities extended by the local committee, by Miss Tuck, of St. Maiigarets School, and by the residents of Buffalo. We also wish to acknowledge the welcome given to this department by Mrs. M. J. B. Wylie and the members of the local kindergarten committee. To the Buffalo press we are indebted for careful reports; to the trustees of Temple Beth Zion for the use of their beautiful rooms; to Miss Ella C. Elder for supplying the place of the absent secretary in so able a manner; and to the directors of the Educational and Industrial Union for the use of their convenient and delightful house for the kindeigarten headquarters. Resolved^ That this department recognites the importance of mothers' meetings and classes, not only as a part of the private, the public, and the free kindergartens, but as an essential factor in the work of the pri- mary grades of the public schools. Resolved^ That the consideration given to child study and kindred subjects is of the utmost value, not only to kindergartners but to teachers and parents. Eliza A. Blaker, Emma A. Beebe. The report was unanimously adopted. The Nominating Committee submitted the following report: For President, Miss Caroline T. Haven, New York, N. Y. For Vice-president, Miss Ella C. Elder, Buffalo, N. Y. For Secretary, Mrs. M. J. B. Wylie, Buffalo, N. Y. This report was adopted. Notices were read of a meeting of the International Kindergarten Union at the Women's Union on Friday, July loth, at g a. m.. and of the conference of Kindergarten Supervisors at the same place at 9:30 a. m. Miss McDowell urged, in response to Miss Payne*s paper, that kindergart- ners demand public playgrounds for the children and some live stock for the playgrounds, to familiarize city children with the common domestic animals. Mrs. Mumford, of Philadelphia, told of the opening to the children of the schoolyards in her city, and their supervision by kindergartners. As her closing words to the department, the retiring President made an appeal for the Elizabeth Peabody Memorial. It was moved and seconded that Miss Haven and Mrs. Hughes draft resolu- tions expressing the sympathy of this body and a desire to co-operate in the estab- lishment of the Elizabeth Peabody Memorial. Meeting adjourned sine die, Ella C. Elder, Secretary, Department.] THE STORY IN THE KINDERGARTEN. 473 PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS. THE PURPOSE OF THE STORY IN THE KINDER^ GARTEN. BY MISS SARA E. WILTSE, WEST ROXBURY, MASS. In our consideration of the use of the story in kindergarten, I beg leave to emphasize the fact that the story is not used as an isolated part of kindergarten training, although in this paper I shall have to treat it as if the kindergarten were a sort of story mill. Its purpose, however, as I understand it, is the same as any one study in the later school life; not the imparting of facts or stimulation of fancies for their own sake, but for their value in character building. The story has been used from time immemorial, consciously or unconsciously, in the training of citizens as such, or the instruction and entertainment of children and adults alike. Educators have always differed and may always differ, about the kind of story that should be used just as doc- tors disagree about the treatment of disease ; but it is a blessed relief to believe that none of us can do our will in all these things for there, is a boundary of individualism in the soul of each child over which neither we nor our story can pass. When I hear teachers lament that attention is so difficult to keep, I often give devout thanks that children are thus clad in the very armor of God, which renders them proof against some of our assaults. We should not abate our efforts nor wrap ourselves in any mantle of irresponsibility, but having done our duty conscientiously we may rest our hearts in tlie conviction that He who gives the increase has made some provision against the worst mistakes even of Paul and Apollos. But for this saving faith I might head a crusade from Buffalo this very day to go out and destroy half the story-writers in the land if, indeed, I did not first consider the motes and beams in my own eyes and straightway hang myself. I am optimistic, however, and believe we shall find the Path Beautiful in education, through the story, if we turn our attention in future to the children first and then to the story. The main obstacle in the way of the teacher of literature in the higher grades is in the crippled imagination of the children, and in the dry hearts of the teachers. We are falling into shorthand methods, and if dry rot has not touched literature itself, it has attacked some of the teachers even in kindergarten. Let us go back 474 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten to the life-giving myths, though some of us will need to bathe in that Jordan seventy times seven times before we are fit to say to any little child **Come, let me tell you a story." I believe we should use the historical method in telling these stories, saying not only **once upon a time," but once upon a time people believed, or some people still believe. I have been observing grammar school children, and I found an attractive girl who had passed from a day nursery to a kindergarten, and through the primary school to her second year in grammar school who had no more poetic notion of the starry heavens than that afforded by a piece of blue calico with polka dots. I feel that every teacher who had this child under her influence missed an opportunity for conferring upon the child the highest good. Let us rebel against routine, if routine is to blame; against our own apathy if that is responsible, but let us not impute it to the child. We built our blocks over her head in kindergarten, befuddled her brain with books in school, and robbed her of her birthright in the sacred name of a public school education. Science, with its inexorable laws, its fascinating presentation of eternal truths, has almost throttled our legend, and for a time benumbed our our poetic instincts; grammarian fiends would throw out idiomatic forms of speech ; sticklers for fact who cannot see that truth is larger than fact, would confine us to the barest statement of his- torical events or scientific data; even the story teller would chop a classic myth into mincemeat for an exercise in reading; reducing literature to the old-time primer sentences based on the worn out text, **I see an ox." Even the advance-guard of our educational army would make a mistake, if through a study of children's favorite stories they should send out many books like those interesting ones recently published in San Jos^. We need to keep in mind the mistakes so recently made by medical men, who went mad on the subject of steril- ized milk, and too strongly condensed foods, by which babies died of starvation before we learned that the Creator made no mistake when giving us digestive organs that could dispose of some waste material. I wish, however, to devote the remainder of this paper to the con- sideration of myths and fairy stories. The word **myth" meant all that which educates the sentiments as over against the word ** logos," which meant science and reason. Its purpose now should be to give sympathy with nature. Mytholo- gical heroes are nearly all personifications of heavenly bodies, clouds, winds, water, trees, and flowers. Its foundation is the unity not only of all life, but of all existence with which it seeks to bring the soul into sympathetic relations. Its personifications and animisms lay the Department.] THE STORT IN THE KINDERGARTEN, 475 deepest of all bases for science, art, religion and literature. These all, as Vignoli has well shown, are but refined and developed forms of myth. To seek to inculcate love of these without that deep feeling of unity with all that is the special function of the myth to develop, is to work handicapped with a constant advantage. The best of these old superstitions lie so near and warm about our hearts that they give an interest which nothing later can possibly supply. Better even, the lowest form of superstition than the sterilizing gradgrind doctrine, that recommends nothing but exact and literal facts for children. But while I have strong convictions about their use and abuse, I beg you to hear them with unbiased judgment, for I pray to be deliv- ered from the danger that besets every kindergartner who has strong, and, for her individual work, necessary confidence in her own way; her danger being that she may grow dictatorial and impose her notion upon some younger teacher who is as divinely commissioned as herself to find a way or make it. Nevertheless, I hold my opinion so tena- ciously that I shall try to have you adopt it, not as mine, or because I have grown to it through years of experience, but because your own thoughtful study of children first, and the story second, makes my theory your very own. If we find that any story in our sacred book produces fear in a degree that endangers the health of a child, if we find a story, I care not who invented it or how long it has been preserved in folklore or in print, that tends to weaken personal responsibility for one's own acts, if we know a story that tends to give false notions of life, like a belief that one may be idle or tricky, and some well-disposed fairy will aid the lazy or shield the trickster, if we have a story of an angelic child that is oppressed and downtrodden by a stepmother who repres- ents all feminine vices, I am convinced that we have no right to use such stories for any purpose whatever in our training of children. I know that even such an authority as Miss Blow defends the presenta- tion of evil, as she says, to offset and accentuate the good, referring to Goethe, Dante and Milton, to support her theory. The fallacy of this argument for introducing the child to Mephistopheles and Satan seems apparent. Neither Dante, Milton, nor Goethe wrote for children of kindergarten age, and to force a child out of childhood in moral life to any contemplation of evil acts that belong to a later stage of develop- ment, is as harmful to its proper moral development as it would be to its physical growth to feed it on the pastry and salads that its father may eat. Froebel emphasized doing, doing, doing. The child must grow into moral manhood very much as he grows to the physical stature of a man. We should only make him ridiculous, perhaps, if we clothed 476 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten him in his father's dress suit while he should yet wear kilts, but who can estimate the injury done a child by boosting him up the tree of knowledge before he can safely stand alone. There are sins that beset the child, as there are temptations pecu- liar to youth, and others that only threaten us in more mature years. The mistake we too often make is in projecting our moral struggles into the lives of the children, insisting that they shall fight our foes, while those that assail their tender souls are ignored or even a laughed at. Take the myths, for instance, that fill the childish heart with ter- rors more or less definite. In his admirable book upon the Psychol- ogy of Fear, Professor Mosso says: **The one who brings up a child represents its brain. Every ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain, like minute splinters in the flesh, to torture him all his life long." Fear is one of the most elementary emotions, its manifestations in the infant are studied today and compared with what we know of the mind of primitive man, and physician and psychologist alike tell the mother to protect her child from all unnecessary fears as she would guard him from contagious diseases. Every child comes into the world with a pack of inherited fears that manifest themselves in starts, cries, and shudders that are a constant menace to sleep and health. Weak and inefficient parents have always used these fears to supplement their authority, and few, even among the educated, but must plead guilty to some cruelty in the use of fears in family govern- ment. One can have some patience with an overworked, ignorant mother, who gets obedience from her children by threats of the bogy- mart, or the police, but what can be said in defense of a kindergartner who tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood to any child as a help in its training to obedience? I have heard it defended because stu- dents of mythology have settled its place in literature as a sun myth, but why it is any less harmful on that account is not clear to my mind. Let us see, however, of what use it is in enforcing the moral law of obedience to parents. I have found children of ten years liking it because of the red cloak and hood of the fair-haired girl. Others like the final rescue of the girl, and seem to forget the grandmother. I have not been able to discover any of the value attributed to it by adults. As for my own childish lesson from it, there is everything to regret and nothing to remember with pleasure. From it I received my first fear of an animal from which I was in no danger whatever. Worse than this, however, I took an unreasoning and unconquerable fear of an inoffensive and affectionate old woman whose front teeth Department.] THE STORY IN THE KINDERGARTEN. . 477 ■ seemed to me to have been accurately described by the author of the story, who, I supposed in the innocent optimism of childhood had taken this way to warn me of a dangerous creature which might at any moment become a wolf to devour me. Previous to this warning, I had slept in this woman's arms many a night, but when I had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge, childlike, I refused to tell anyone of my newly acquired wisdom, but suffered in silence as most children do, for some as yet mysterious reason. I must do my parents the justice to say that the story was not used by them in this attempt to train me in the way I should go. I do not condemn the story for older children, who are healthy in body and imagination, but I would reserve it, and all like it, until the child can understand some general historical sketch of the growth of myths. I know some educators object to any deviation from the ancient form of all these stories, arguing that time, which has preserved them, has thereby set its seal upon their worth, and it is not for the individ- ual to assume a wisdom greater than that of the race. One of the wisest moral teachers of the present day says it is a kind of laziness that prevents people in general from close weighing of even Bible stories with moral scales, it being easier to accept or reject in a whole- sale manner, than to sift and discriminate. Those who defend giving stories of bloodthirsty giants and horrid ogres, tell us that evil is always set over against the good to enhance the brightness of virtue ; the vicious stepmother is thus defended on the ground that she represents evil, which is a sort of stepmother of the soul, and not a blood relation; but such symbolism misses its point and deepens a prejudice that sadly interferes with home happi- ness. I have known mature women who confess that they hated and defied their stepmothers because they had gathered from fairy stories that stepmothers were the invariable enemies of children. Those who cry most loudly for the preservation of the ancient myths intact, seem to forget that when they were accepted as national literature, and were being made, they were the property of men and women, and not relegated to the nursery, if one may be allowed to use nursery to represent a stage of life in primitive times. We can trace the descent of some games, showing that children now play what young ^en and maidens played a century ago, but this is not as harmful as to give the babies stories just as they were told by men to men in olden times. There is a safe rule of judgment about any story, ancient or mod- ern. If it contains anything calculated to induce fear in a little child, do not use it. Even if fear is good for exceptionally sluggish children, like whipping and hell fire (which I do not for a moment admit), the 478 • NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten • majority of modern, and especially city-bred children, have nerves too highly sensitized for such severe tonics. I know some one will say: **But the children dote on blood-curd- ling stories and love to shiver!*' True, but only so far as they ai*e perverted in taste and unhealthy in imagination, and such inclinations are no more to be indulged than an acquired taste for alum, quinine, and soda, such as recent stujiies of children's appetites show some of them to possess. It is without doubt true that fear in some degree is needful to men- tal growth, but we need not attempt to supplement providence in a distribution of fears sown broadcast into the lives of the children, whom it is our sacred duty to protect as far as possible from the mis- takes of our honored progenitors. Wisdom may have begun with them, but I for one, am not willing to believe it died with the last myth-maker, any more than it is best preserved by the savages of darkest Africa. Why should not the kindergartner avail herself of the latest studies in the language of the children, and add wisdom to insight by giving play to the organs of speech in Mother Goose Rhymes, Lear's Nonsense, and Riley's inimitable Rhymes of Childhood? At present we are in error, I believe, in our language lessons, prostituting our stories instead of letting them minister to growth in all directions. We need more pure fun in kindergarten, we need to work with nature through the story instead of against her, letting the children's tongues play with our approval instead of tying them with rules of grammatical construction, and then listening at keyholes, wondering why children never chatter like that when we are about. The latest study of children's ideals, temptations, and fears, emphasizes the great moral value of St. Paul's injunction: ** Whatso- ever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things." It is-^ood to remember that St. Paul added in the next paragraph a good pedagogical rule, viz. : Do these things. Department] D/SCl/SS/O/iT, aijq DISCUSSION. Miss Frances E. Newton, Chicago, 111. — I have not ceased to wonder why our honored President appointed me to lead in -this discussion, for she definitely knows my point of view upon this subject; and being wise in her day and gen- eration must also know Miss Wiltse's point of view, and, therefore, that there is no chance for discussion, if discussion means opposition; for I agree heartily with nearly all that Miss Wiltse has said. There remains nothing, therefore, for me but to emphasize one or two points which she has made. In the matter of the revision and adaptation of stories, I would suggest the need of great care, lest we, in adapting the outward form, touch that of which the myth is but the expression — the life principle, that essential something which was born in the experiences of generations of people, and which we can no more revise than we can revise our own souls — our own inner, essential, immortal being. We cannot dilute a life principle, as the high-potency doctors do their medicines, and make it harmless for the child ; we can only wisely select the myths in which the child can see his own experiences pictured — the cause and effect of things — and then give them to him in the broadest, most graphic way as he himself would tell them or as he would draw a picture giving just the barest outline without high light Qr low light or shading. We may develop the story as he adds to his picture objects and incidents ; and this process may be followed for months and years until he is old enough to comprehend the beauty of the myth as a whole or consciously recognize therein not only his "pygmy" but also his "colossal** self. It seems to me that this is the only legitimate adaptation or revision of our world-old stories. I would also plead with you, as has Miss Wiltse, for more of this time-proven, eternity-stamped literature, and for less of , the puerile sentimental stuff which is foisted upon the souls and minds of little children which is not only an insult to their dignity and divinity, but is degrading to the man or woman who does it. The people who write it need to sit for awhile on some majestic mountain peak alone with a little child and learn of God and him what a child's soul is and that we never can talk down to it. Now just a word about the purpose of the story which, perhaps, Miss Wiltse has not brought before us definitely, her paper having dealt mostly with the kind of story we should tell. There may be many purposes according to the circum- stances at the story-telling time: but they may all be summed up in one'purpose, namely, to quicken into activity love which is life, that life which is more than meat, whether it be for body or for brain ; that life which knows itself — an eternal thing ; that spiritual love or life which never can conceive of decline or decay of individual or nation, such as is being talked of in another department of this congress, but which grows conscious continually into an ever-achieving, ever- widening existence. The purpose of the story is to quicken into activity that love or life which feels itself one with all life, past, present, and future; with nature, humanity, and God ; and, feeling it, gives expression to it. This love, I take it, is not a sentimental something confined to words — a sort of cant, wrongly supposed, oftentimes to belong to Sunday schools and churches, to philanthro- pies and religion. It is the most practical thing alive, adding graciousnes^ to life, and joy and purpose to being, and in the activity of which we find the only 480 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Kindergarten true development of that thing talked about so much — character. The men and women of character are the men and women who actively love, and in so doing have apprehended an amount of life, of vitality, of virility, that the man without love knows nothing about, and, what is worse, does not know that he knows nothing about it. This is the purpose of the story, I believe, as well as of all other educative materials, and must be the test of their educative power. Love is the fulfilling of the law in all departments of life — self-sacrificing, self-renounc- ing, consecrating, aspiring love. ' In ihe matter of stories it only remains for us, after having chosen them wisely, and adapted them carefully, to take care that thej fall not short of this great purpose, through the meagerness of our own lives in this respect. I feel confident that Miss Wiltse will agree with me in this, and as I agree so largely with her, whoever wishes to oppose the paper in question will have two instead of one with whom to battle. CHILD STUDY FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS. PROF. M. V. O'SHEA, SCHOOL OF PEDAGOGY, BUFFALO, N. Y. I. Every day the wonder grows that such great interest and enthu- siasm in child study should have overtaken, all sorts and conditions of people in so brief a time. But one who is accustomed to delve into the past for an explanation of present intellectual and social interests will experience no great difficulty in tracing the roots of this marvelous growth of the last decade. Whatever else be characteristic of the age in which we live, it may at least be fairly said of it that it has the highest regard for the methods of inquiry, and the results of inductive science. The Baconian departure of a few centuries ago has stirred modern civilization to its very center. The father of induction thought to learn of the invariable processes of physical nature by the most careful, unprejudiced observation of her varied moods and manners. No statement should henceforth be made con- cerning her until it has been warranted by the testimony of manifold concrete examples. This method, which was at its birth applied only to the study of inorganic things and processes, was gradually extended into the realms of life, and the structure and function of living organisms became objects of investigation according to the principles set forth in the Baconian formula. Nor were the minds of men long satisfied with the study of creation as it was revealed to sight at any given moment ; they must know how things came to be as they were, what experiences they had passed through in the earlier life his- tory of the world; and, as the fruit of this relentless ambition, has grown the great principle of evolution, to the regard for which the whole scientific world is now committed. Yet one step further and Department] CHILD STUDY FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS. 481 we behold this method of inductive, evolutionary science applied to the study of the human spirit, and the newest term for this most recent of intellectual interests is child study. We are looking these days with eager eyes to see how the individual human organism, body, mind, and soul, originates, grows, develops. Child study, then, in a part of its meaning at least, is one manifes- tation of the abounding enthusiasm and faith that the world now has in inductive, evolutionary science. By this new mode of inquiry it is hoped to establish a substantial body of knowledge concerning the growth and development of human beings. Such a science would be so great a boon to humanity that every laborer who gives promise of usefulness is eagerly drafted into the service of fact gathering; and perhaps we should search the world's records in vain to find an instance when there have been so many volunteers to gladly labor in a new field. It is, though, not so peculiar to child study that it is now passing through an era of great enthusiasm in the gathering of concrete and more or less isolated facts of every kind and quality. All branches of science have had a similiar experience, although most, if not all the older ones, while still in the inductive period, have yet their side of application to the affairs of daily life. Botany has contributed to the improvement of agriculture. Chemistry has brought rich treasures of knowledge to medicine, and has reached down so far, or perhaps up so high, as to put intelligence into the culinary department of our homes. Mathematics has utterly changed the features of mother earth with her engineering wonders. But when we ask what child study has accomplished that will make the life of the home happier and sweeter, and its training more intelligent and efficient, we are often told that it is too young to be of service to humanity, and that we should bide our time in patience and expectancy until it attains to the full stature of manhood. Meanwhile all who can labor must apply themselves diligently to building the foundation upon which this new structure is to be reared, and in the end it will stand, with others of its kind, as a treasury of goods for human needs. We shall here regard all working people as separated into two dis- tinct groups. In the one are congregated fact gatherers, theorists who amass data without great concern as to their immediate bearing upon any of the problems of daily life ; while in the other we may find practical people, those «vho are responsible for making things go in right directions, and who are interested in facts only in so far as they can apply them to some definitely useful end. The botanist is a the- orist, while the gardener and the farmer care about the science of plants only as this will teach them how to make the fruits of the soil more 31 482 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Kindergarten luxuriant and abundant. It is a curious enough phenomenon, but one which seems to be true to our common nature, that the theorist can- not usually make things work — the botanist is not often the successful farmer; while, on the other hand, those who are considered competent agriculturists do not generally distinguish themselves as scientific men. In the realm of human growth and development the theorists or pure scientists include the biologist, the psychologist, and the economist; while those concerned with the practical direction of affairs, with the welfare and conduct of individuals and society, are the parent, the teacher, the minister. If the principle that the finest exponents of theory are not generally the most ready and skillful in its detailed applications were universally true, then it would be of no value to us here in designating the kind of child study that would be most bene- ficial for the parent. Without attempting an answer, now we may say in passing, at any rate, that its manifest wide application to the affairs of daily life constrains one to think it may also apply to the important topic which engages our attention. II. The statement may be ventured here that a parent's relation to his child should ever be determined by the latter's future well- being, spiritual and physical, rather than by any present or future advantage of parent, church, or state; and, unfortunately, there sometimes appears to be an antagonism between these several claim- ants for recognition. In older civilizations than our own, children have been regarded from the standpoint of their probable efficiency in promoting the interests of the state; while in modern homes they not infrequently seem to be looked upon simply as playthings for the entertainment of parents and older members of the family, or, saddest of all, sometimes as burdens not gladly to be endured. With such attitudes toward children there is no paramount need to know how they most healthfully and wholesomely grow into perfect manhood and womanhood, each coming at maturity into inheritance of the full pos- sibilities of body, mind and soul. But if the parent's duty be con- ceived of as solely to provide in the largest measure possible for his child's future welfare, spiritual and physical, we at once see a neces- sity for endeavoring to find out how this end may be attained in the most complete aud satisfactory manner. In the hope of realizing this aim, some earnest parents, here and there, are attempting to study their children by the methods of inductive science, and there appears to be an increasing anxiety to undertake such work. It is thought that careful, unprejudiced, systematic observations on the developing life of the child will enable the parent to comprehend the nature of his charge more truly and deal with it more wisely. It is argued further, that the elaboration of a science of child nature demands the Department.] CHILD STUDY FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS, 483 co-operation of parents, since they alone are so circumstanced that they can furnish the required data. But the question must be raised from the standpoint of science whether the parental and the pure scientific attitudes of mind toward childhood are in any way incompatible. Will the constant observing and recording of minute details of child activity without the intermix- ing of feeling, of emotion, between the items of the record, which science requires — will this make the parent more intelligent and efficient in the discharge of his great responsibilities? One considera- tion stands out in bold relief here, and its importance is testified to by the very constitution of nature and the course of history — that whatever other relations should exist between parent and child, they must at least always be united by bonds of deepest sympathy and affection. Beyond all else, and above everything else, the parent must be a moral guide; he must establish character and disposition, and that he may reap rich success in this he must not only bear infinite love to his child, but must ever claim sincere affection in return. This affection gives insight; it breeds patience and long-suffering and courage; it makes instinct more keen and certain; and no intemperate winds should ever chill its ardor or stifle its most frank and spontaneous expression. In no other way, by no other course, can the child mind and heart grow to be sympathetically, keenly responsive to the mind and heart of him who is to instruct and direct. Now will continual watching with a scientific eye for the most subtle signs of expression in a child with the purpose to record faith- fully and preserve without the creeping in of feeling or interpretation of any kind — will this be most congenial for the growth of that all- absorbing, unconstrained affection which the observer should have for the one observed? In the concerns of daily life, for the most part, pure science and rich, spontaneous emotion may not be seen walking hand in hand. The one does not nurture or develop the other, although in their essence there can be no antagonism. If it should be true in the affairs of the home also that the methods of pure sci- ence are not best suited to nourish parental affections, it will doubt- less be discovered in right season by those worthy parents who are seeking to be scientists with their children ; but it may not be out of place here to offer a humble opinion as to a possible source of disap- pointment which such study may entail. Even when the parent has observed his facts scientifically, how is he to interpret them? What signifieth to one charged with directing the welfare and conduct of a child's daily life, no matter what it may mean to the scientist, this infinitude of seemingly disparate things in his development? Will it be possible to affect his moral growth 484 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Kindergarten materially by taking heed of the most minute of them? Suppose it be granted for the moment that the parent's observations may be of possible use in rearing a science of childhood, still is not his first duty to train his individual child rather than be concerned with a science of any kind? And is it not significant that in other phases of scien- tific work it is frequently demonstrated that absorption in the details of fact gathering blinds one to a view of the entity, the life, the mean- ing of what he studies, and renders him incapable of ready action when occasion demands? It would doubtless be contrary to experi- ence, though, to say that a parent's observation of his child must always lessen his parental affection, or paralyze his power of doing, but it would probably be true in the majority of cases where the observations are greatly beneficial that they are made primarily for the good of the child, and not for the promotion of science. The observer in the latter case will see his facts only in their meaning for the well-being of his child, and his personal interests will surcharge them all with richest feeling, with helpful interpretation. And this seems to be the natural and appropriate vocation for the parent, and withal a most necessary and profitable one — to observe for the sake of interpretation that he may attain greater wisdom in shaping the conduct of an individual child. It follows, then, that he must eagerly seek all knowledge and power that will lead him to com- prehend more clearly how childhood normally develops and that will make him ready and more skillful in the application of his knowledge to the upbringing of his own children. In this way he gathers infor- mation for the purpose of rightly guiding those for whom he lives, treating each according to his peculiar necessities; and he is not mindful of minutiae of every sort, but sees only the larger things that are really vital and that will enable him to judge wisely of the manner and temper of his training in special cases. There may be some grounds for fear in these days that too great concern with isolated and partial facts and opinions on the part of the parent, may be more detrimental than beneficial, to that ever-ready and spontaneous action which best becomes one who is in any way responsible for the training of the young. III. Granted, then, that fathers and mothers wish to know, that indeed they must know, the large, vital facts in child development, and how best to become familiar with these? Now that science has turned its brilliant search-light upon human growth and development, we may anticipate, from day to day, the illumination of important truths that have never yet been revealed to mind or heart; and parents will be eager to know what these are as soon as they are clearly apprehended. It is most gratifying and encouraging to see that in all parts of our Department.] CHILD STUDT FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS, 485 land steps are being taken to accomplish this aim by the formation of parents' clubs and round tables, devoted to a study of the problems of training children ; and it is through the medium of these organiza- tions that a science of child study, as it shall be elaborated by special- ists, may hope to receive interpretation and practical application in the homes of the land. To these clubs the scientist may bring his knowledge and the parent his problems, and the one should illumine and vitalize the other. Here the parent may learn what science has to say, from time to time, upon the large questions of child growth, such, for example, as nourishment, its physical, mental, and moral significance — its importance not only in building a sound, capable body, but also in giving form and shape to the disposition and charac- ter. How very, very sadly parents need instruction upon this topic. What an infinite blessing it would be to humanity if those who have the care of children would appreciate how largely the wel- fare of mind and soul, as well as body, depends upon the fulfillment of the laws of nature in the proper nutrition of brain and muscle; fatigue, its prevalence in home and school, its effects on mind and body, the causes therefor, the signs; the remedies, periods of rapid and retarded growth and the changes in mode of life which these necessitate; peri- ods in which the different organs and powers of the body develop, and the injury which is often sustained by forcing development before the organ concerned is naturally ready for it; adolescence, the important transformations that occur during this period, and the modifications in training made necessary thereby; defective senses, the limitations, mental and moral, which these impose upon a child, the methods of detecting them, the remedies; play, the meaning of this divinely appointed agency for calling forth the powers of body, mind, and soul. Again, such practical questions, as practical for parent as for teacher, as, the at least partial parallelism between individual and race development, and the clear light this may throw upon the per- haps inevitable appearance of prominent traits of mind and character in the progress of childhood, from birth to maturity; children's expression through art in its various forms, through language, through physical signs, and the art of reading these skillfully; the native inter- ests of childhood at different stages of development; imitation in childhood, and so on. These are only a few of the large topics which the scientist and the parent may most profitably study together; and if the scientist is not available, his writings may be a partial substitute. If there be no leader, who is so simply because of learning and experi- ence, then individual members may be charged with the responsibility of each presenting a single topic, and it should be a duty as well as a privilege to find out all the best and richest thought upon any special 486 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten question. If this be freely and frankly discussed, and its practical, detailed bearing inquired into by all the members of the club, experi- ence has shown that much substantial good will be reaped by every one interested. It seems to the writer, as it seems to others who have traveled widely in these fields, and whose opinions he has sought, that this is the character of work in child study most to be preferred by fathers and mothers. This will open the mind to important mat- ters which simple, unguided instinct, however keen and perfect, must fail to discern ; it will afford explanation ofttimes of unaccountable conduct in children which is a source of great grief to parents, but the causes for which may be removed when rightly understood. It will cause parents to deal with children as individuals, not as masses; and it is not too much to hope that it will save many a child from a wretched personal and social existence, because it will put into the hands of those who train the young, instruments to detect the causes for shortcomings and means for remedying them. Another most commendable form of child study, and one which may be pursued with ease and profit in these clubs and round tables, has to do with the study of the leading principles of modern educa- tion, beginning with the youngest in the kindergarten and ending not short of the oldest in the grammar school. The parent should, by counsel and study with the teacher, seek in the spirit of a learner to comprehend what heights she is striving to attain in her daily instruc- tion, and what difficulties and barriers beset her in her progress. Is it not a condition of things to be deplored that so frequently in our midst the home stands opposed to the school in its introduction of new means and methods into the class room? Ignorance here falls not far short of crime. Where the teacher should receive the most hearty sympathy and co-operation, she ofttimes now must be content with the exact reverse, and, meanwhile, the child is the principal sufferer. Let no one complain that the teacher is at fault because she does not take the initiative and constrain the parent's attention. Nature has set her limits to mental and physical possibilities in our constitution, and these are already reached by most of those who faithfully dis- charge the multifold duties of the schoolroom. By all the principles of justice and duty it is imperative upon the parent to seek in a sym- pathetic spirit to know what the teacher does, and why, so that he may be a source and fountain of aid and comfort rather than a cynic to chill by his indifference or kill by his criticism. Again, if it be right to say that parental responsibility must be determined by considerations of the child's future welfare, then that kind of child study should also appeal to fathers and mothers which consists in so simple, but yet so important a matter, as to preserve an Department.] DISCUSSION. 487 — — — — - II account of those facts in the life of the child that will be of material interest and benefit to him in maturer years. Into this record should go those items that will be guiding maxims to the young voyager when the mapping of his course falls to his own hand and brain — such items as the diseases that may have overtaken him in childhood and youth, and any lingering after effects; outcroppings of ancestral traits; absorbing interests at different stages of development ; leading traits of character, and matters of this kind. There need be no burden of details here, either, only the larger and more significant facts. For the most part the child should leave the parental roof with habitual actions so fitted to his nature, so appropriate to his special needs, and so firmly implanted within his being that they may be trusted to bear him safely along the right, course in later life. But all of us come, now and again in adult years, to times when there is breaking up of old ideals and habits, when we are adrift at sea, and it is in such crucial places that this life-book may be a trusted friend and counselor. IV. Our last question now must be : What responsibility rests upon the parent to aid in establishing a science of child study independent of the direct application of this work to the training of his own child- ren? If lack of space and time will make a dogmatic answer pardon- able, it may be said that even though such a duty rested upon parents the majority of them could not discharge it for the evident reason that they have not the necessary scientific training and attitude of mind. And, moreover, the labors of the majority of us are not needed to rear an inductive science of child nature, for a thousand Preyers left alone in their work will raise the walls of this great struc- ture with more of peace and surety than if a million amateurs try their hand at it; and if the development of the race will really be promoted by such a science let us have faith that apostles in plenty will be brought forth in due season. It is auspicious to note already that there are those parents in our midst who, having the right constitution of mind and heart, and being favored with a happy combination of circum- stances, have become genuine scientists in the study of their children ; and to such the call will doubtless always appeal so profoundly that they will have no other wish than to cheerfully obey. DISCUSSION. President Amalie Hofer. — It is interesting to notice that this sister to' the kindergarten movement, the child-study movement, is joining hands with us in this work with the parents, with the father and mother. It was with a special purpose that we have brought up the discussion of child study for parents, believing that if we can all concentrate on that one line of work, or propagation, 488 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Kindergarten we might call it, for the next few years, we will establish that relation between school and home which has so often been wished for, and appealed for so fre- quently from the platforms of the National Educational Association. We hope some day to bring together the home and school, which belong together. Miss Eggleston will speak of the parents' study classes from the standpoint of the schoolwoman in the general sense, not in the specific sense of kindergarten. Miss Anna K. Eggleston, State Department, Albany, N. Y. — "Would you recall everyone to his highest duties, begin with the mothers ; you will be aston- ished at the change you will effect," says. Rousseau. There is no greater problem in the educational world today than this one— how best to effect such a union between parents and teachers as shall result in the intelligent, sympathetic, and harmonious management of children at home and in school. To kindergartners is due the honor of having taken the first step in this direction, and is it not true that the closer their methods are studied the more convincing are the proofs that the path which they have opened is the correct one. They have not been perplexed about scientific products, but have cau- tiously gleaned the simple truths that were easily comprehended from everyday experience. In the kindergarten there has been less talk of the "pedagogical phantom, the child," and more about Harriet, James, and Lucy. Here we find the workers whom Professor O'Shea so aptly classifies as the "ones who are responsible for making things go, and are concerned with facts only in so far as they can use them to some definite, immediately useful end." Professor O'Shea's attitude toward the work of the scienthc fact-gatherers, and that of the practical people, must help to clear away a good deal of fog for many students of child study and at the same time give cheer to a multitude of trainers of children who will be better able to see the true value of their work. While scientific problems are being discussed children are growing, and if teach- ers and parents are to have as their chief motive the gathering of valuable facts for science, there will doubtless be added to the old story many illustrations of the little foundling who died upon the street while two philanthropic persons stood over him trying to decide which of several institutions was best fitted to rear this little being from babyhood to manhood. We have but to look back upon the beautiful mothers who in their simple ways have with great wisdom reared their children, but who had not the ability to state the first elements of the so-called science, to prove that the most powerful parental influence is not dependent upon the parents' knowledge of scientific facts. Yet who shall say that the "spontaneous action" which Professor O'Shea commends is not a scientific basis. It is certainly true that too much detail of outlines and classification is apt to render a parent insensible to the greatest need of the present moment, and possibly at the time when his statistics have given him a theory for action the child may have outgrown the condition upon which the theory is founded. With parents and teachers there is danger of an enthusiasm for proving old theories and establishing new ones that will make this work too intellectual and not sympathetic enough. One may solve mathematical problems for the delights of intellectual exercise, but the student of human life must have a deeper interest than intellectual recreation if he would effectually solve its problems. There is the danger in this child-study work of thinking conclusions are reached when the evidence would be deemed very slight by thorough students. Department.] DISCUSSION. 489 Workers are here whose thumbs are pulling out what they deem to be educa- tional plums, and, inflated with pride, the superficial investigator flings out his banner proclaiming the greatness of his achievements for the cause of science. It surely cannot be wise to enlist amateurs to bring lumber into the fields which the Preyers must clear away before they can get at the facts. Professor O'Shea has truly said that fathers and mothers should know the large vital facts of child development, and these great vital facts are always simple enough to be comprehended by those who need to use them. Experience is the best guide to the knowledge of these facts, and a simple intelligent putting of these experiences by teachers and parents must lead to a comprehension of them. In large city schools it is impossible for teachers to make personal visits to all homes, but may not the plan of the kindergarten of establishing mothers' meetings be introduced throughout the primary and secondary schools? For instance, one afternoon each month the teacher might send out invitations to mothers to meet in the schoolroom, and an hour be devoted to an informal talk by the teacher upon matters pertaining to school life, and parents be urged to give that information which would lead the teachers to know of the home life of her pupils. Plans for instructing and managing children might be explained, and parents invited to discuss them and bring to the teacher's aid anything from the child's standpoint. Statements made by children at home regarding school affairs would be invaluable to teachers, but too often they must work blindly because there is no co-operation with parents. It is very evident that teachers must possess great tact and wisdom in order to lead these meetings in such a way as to bring out the great vital principles, and at the same time establish between themselves and each parent a bond of sympathy so that conferences regarding the welfare of individual children shall be as sacred and as tender as those ought to be which exist between the father and mother of a child. After the discussion of the general or special topic the remainder of the time might be given to mothers who wish to have private conferences with the teach- er. Why may not this be a practical feature of primary and secondary schools as it is of kindergartens? Year by year the work may become more specialized as the conditions permit. It is a part of the plan and hope of the child study movement of New York that the flag which now waves over pupils and teachers of our state may yet float out, at least once each month from every union and district school, over parents and teachers assembled there to study child life and its needs. It is not necessary to cite evidences of the way in which the best efforts of schools are thwarted through the ignorance and distrust of parents ; it is also true that teachers often conceive false notions of affairs caused by misconcep- tions regarding parents' motives. One may well wonder how these little things escape with any original elements of life, save possibly that of original sin, since they are so often held by the right hand at school and the wrong one at home, or vice versa, and pulled in opposite directions, but it usually happens that they slip out from the grasp of each and limp out into the world carrying the scars of early training. There is a subtle sense in which one may learn to live with children; hear what they say when they do not speak, interpret their acts, their plays, and be a true companion to them. While every mother ought to live after this manner with her children only a very few know their children in this way. Conse- 490 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten quently many children live alone, and the mother loses her first hold upon this life which is a part of hers, and so near, yet into which she has no power to enter. Nothing is more pitiful than the fact that so many mothers live and die perfect strangers to the real inner life of their own children. Kenneth Grahame, in the "Golden Age," when speaking of parents and guardians, whom he calls Olympians, from the child's point of view, says, "This strange anaemic order of beings was farther removed from us in fact than the kindly beasts who share our natural existence in the sun. This estrange ment was fortified by the abiding sense of injustice arising from the refusal of the Olympians ever to defend, retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to accept similar concessions on our part. For instance, when t flung the cat out of the upper-story window, though I did it from no ill-feeling, and did not hurt the cat, I was ready after a moment's reflection to own I was wrong, as a gentle- man should, but was the matter allowed to end there? I trow not." Though, as Professor O'Shea has said, "the majority of us are not needed to rear a science of child study," yet it is the majority that must do the import- ant part for which the science is being reared. Teachers must be leaders in this movement among parents, and oftentimes must give arbitrarily, though kindly, simple directions for those who have neither the time nor the ability to solve these problems for themselves. The strong emotional nature of many a mother blinds her to the true condition of her child. She cannot believe that her boy is not truthful, and if he does wrong she is sure he was led astray by others. Oftentimes, as teachers, we grow impatent at this seemingly false pride. The wisdom of breaking down a faith which has often been powerful in keeping the tempted in the right path is to be seriously questioned. Men have said, I never could lie to my mother because she always trusted me. Faith in the good intentions of others is a powerful element in establishing acts of goodness. There is very little that is truly noble left when one does not try to rise to the belief of goodness which another has in him. In these gatherings of parents for the study of their own children there must ever arise the question, What are the needs of the children who are not rep- resented here by parents, what can we do for them? For it is not wise to permit the weeds to grow just outside the home garden. The day may come when the weeds shall strangle the cultivated flowers, and, besides, the study of one's own children awakens a love less selfish which has power to reach out to those of other households. And so, after all, it is the little child that is leading, and the stately array following are the parent, teacher, minister, biologist, psychologist, and economist. Department.] THE CHILDREN OF OUR CITIES. 491 THE CHILDREN OF OUR CITIES, MISS MARY E. MC POWELL, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SETTLEMENT, CHICAGO, ILL. [Stenographic RbportJ Sam Jones, that unique preacher who is very often slangy, seems to us very irreverent, yet says some sweet things once in a while. He said one day in his drawing manner, '*I don't know anything about theology or botany, but I do love God and flowers." And so when I come to talk about the children of the great cities I have to confess that I know very little about pedagogy, I know nothing about civics, but I do love my city and I do love children. I believe per- haps that every kindergartner who stays in the kindergarten business can say those two things. Those who have been in the parts of our cities, crowded, dense perhaps, as some of them are ; those who have known the little foreigners in our cities ; those who have known the poverty that we so often hear people tell about say to us, **Well, in the days of Lincoln and Garfield, you know, poverty created charac- ter." It is not the poverty that made Garfield and Lincoln. They had the poverty of the country with the flowers and the growing things and the stars and the birds; they had the poverty that was healthful poverty. The children we know do not have that kind of poverty. It is not the poverty that helps toward self-discipline and growth. It is the poverty that warps; it is the poverty that cramps; it is the poverty that starves the spirit of the child. We know that who have dealt and lived with those children. You know that Hero- dotus tells us that he is about tm write the history of the Greeks and the deeds also of the barbarians, and the Greeks always were talking about everyone else who did not live in Greece as barbarians. That spirit is not dead ; it is among Americans today. You cannot talk to American people who do not live near the foreign populations without finding that spirit. A cultivated lady wrote to me the other day, **I am so glad to help you, but I want yoii to know that I care nothing for the foreigners. I want to help our own people." Who are our own people? Who are they? Who was your grandfather and my grandfather. I think they were foreigners. I am glad somebody put up with them. I am glad somebody endured them. I am glad somebody allowed them to come into good society and get a chance in America. I am glad that they had schools. I am glad that they had those chances. I am living among foreigners. I know them. I believe in the possibilities that lie latent in these foreign children. A 492 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Kindergarten very clever woman in Chicago said, speaking of the foreigners, "I think that in the ideals of a nation we find their highest characteris- tics.** You will find if you study the question at all that the Bohemi- ans are religious people, with a zeal for religion. Why, the other day a Roman Catholic Bohemian showed to a friend of mine a little pic- ture of Joh Huss, that he loved simply because he was a Bohemian and because he had religious zeal. He made no distinction. The Poles have that instinctive patriotism that has never been satisfied. I can- not help but believe when I hear them sing their patriotic song which is so full of pathos and tragedy, I cannot help but feel, that we can get hold of the Polish children — ^if we can get that love of country planted here — of course we can; it is already planted here; and because they love to talk about Poland is no reason why they do not love our country. Already this last winter that has been shown. The Polish people started an educational movement; sent to the Old Country for two lecturers, and almost the first request they made of these Old Country lecturers was, **We want lectures on American history, particularly constitutional history." That is the Polish peo- ple who, I believe, if led by Americans who love America in the broadest sense, will transfer their love of country to our country. Then there are the Italians. A lady said to me the other day she would n't visit them for anything; she might think at any moment a knife would be drawn and thrust at her. I have lived among the Italians. I have never been stabbed. I have found there an affec- tion, I have found there an appreciation and a love of beauty, that I have not found among American children. I have now before my mind a picture of a little Italian girl in my kindergarten that I once had at Hull House. The walls were hung with the best pictures There was a little study, one of Millet's little studies of a father and a mother teaching the baby how to walk. I was telling a story to the kindergarten, and I think it did not have Miss Wiltse's spirit or some- thing; anyway, this young Italian would not listen and after a while I heard, right in the midst of my story, a little Italian voice saying, "Papa say, *Go baby!* Mamma say, *Come, baby!* '* We all turned and looked at little Marie. She was gazing at this picture, and there she had caught instinctively the spirit of the picture. I am sure Mil- let would be glad to know that a child entered into the heart of his picture. She did not stop at its technique. So I believe that among these foreigners we have all this poten- tiality, this possibility for patriotism, this possibility for religion, this possibility for art, for music, for poetry. I was talking with a Bohe- mian woman who lives in Chicago, the third largest Bohemian city in the world. This woman said, **Do you know I used to go to school in Department.] THE CHILDREN OF OUR CITIES, 493 Bohemia? Do you know how our Bohemian children go knee-deep through the grass and the corn flowers and the poppies? Why; I used to start very early so I could pick all the flowers I wanted." Those same little Bohemian children in our city go to school without seeing trees or grasses or dandelions. Their playhouse almost all the time is the garbage box, the alley, the street. No playgrounds in our great city for the more than 200,000 children — far from the parks, far from the lake shore, far from the boulevards. In Chicago we have 100,000 children living in eight wards that 'have all these advan- tages— the parks, the boulevards, our beautiful lake, that wonderful and elaborate set of boulevards that our park commissioners are not content with, planning more, planning more, but we have heard of no plans yet for playgrounds, no plans for squares such as they have in Paris, such as they have in Berlin, such as they have in London. To be sure London has just wakened up to the fact that her children had no breath- ing places, had no playgrounds ; and fortunately for London the good people of long ago were buried in the middle of the city, and around the church there is the old grave-yard and the blessed angels must look down with pleasure at the playgrounds that are made out of the old graveyards. I 'm sure I do not know whether the kindergartners have the feeling of patriotism so strong that they would say, *'Bury us in the middle of town, if in that way we can give some ground to the children." Now, I do not want to be pessimistic. This morning I went in search of a neglected portion of Buffalo, because I do not believe that the test of civilization in Buffalo is Delaware avenue. I do not think that the test of culture is up tiere where we have such beautiful churches, music halls, and all those things — which, to be sure, belong to all the people, and yet are so often far from most of the people. So this morning I wanted to find out how civilized Buftalo was. I was very much pleased with it, and it seemed to me so broad and airy and beautiful and clean after dirty, blessed old Chicago — Chicago is dirty and it is bad; but we do love it. So I went to the settlements, the two settlements here. As I live in one in Chicago I thought I would like to see what the settlements were here. I found no slums any- where near these settlements — not that I do not think they are well placed. I found them not near great tenement houses. I found cottage houses, little yards in front, little gardens in the rear, vines running up over the houses — I began to inquire and I could not find that there was one spot, where people said there were very disagree- able tenement houses, overcrowded, bad sanitary condition. I did not find the dirty streets or the dirty alleys here that we are used to. So I must conclude that whether you are very civilized or not, you are 494 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten very nearly very civilized, and much more so than is Chicago. But then Chicago is large. We have had a fire and we have had a World's Fair, so we have to wait a little while to do a great many things. So I say that the test of civilization in any city is not what you do for the few, for the 100,000 children, but what is doing for the 200,000. Chicago has 400,000 children — over that number — under fourteen years of age. One hundred thousand live under the most favorable conditions; 100,000, perhaps, are scattered about on the edges of the city; then in the center of the city are the 200,000. Now I know what it means to those people to get to a park. There are at least five children in every family, nearly always seven, eight, nine, ten, or more. It takes five cents for two children ; it takes clean clothes ; it takes time to get them ready; it takes a great deal of forethought; it takes a transferring from one car to another; it often costs two fares in our great cities. Now, is that fair? Is it fair that the 100,000 children should have the parks and the boulevards and the lake shore and the summer vacations? Some say to me: **0h, but you have a great many excursions for children into the country; you have picnics for children; you have kindergartens and all that.** Yes, so we do. But that is not enough. After all, only a handful of children, and those generally the strongest, that need it the least, get into the country on an excursion, or go out to the park. It is the weaker children we are to look after. Froebel says that the kindergarten — I don't know that I get his exact words — is to prepare children for citizenship here and hereafter. These children that we are dealing with in the kindergarten, and in primary departments, are the future citizens. Now, what is the value of those children to our city, to our state? In the time of slavery a little black child was very precious to its master because it had a money value. I do not believe we are so materialistic that we wish to tack a money value onto our children before we see what it means to care for them, and yet if we could in some way make it tangible to the people who will not see beneath things; if we could make them see how valuable these little children, these little foreign children, are the little children that are being reared in poverty, that are being cramped. Think of a boy being cramped. Think of cramping an acorn in a flowerpot and expecting it to grow up into an oak and not burst something! I believe that every boy should have about two acres of land along with a whole lot of other boys. Yes, girls too! I do n*t know why I always think of boys. Because they do trouble me more, I think. I sit at the win- dow in our settlement and I look out at the playground where the boys play. They actually do not know how to play. They seem out of place. They have been sent to work too early ; the work has been Department.] THE CHILDREN OF OUR CITIES. 495 irregular; the school has been very irregular; so much so that many of them cannot read and write. Now, what has the kindergartner to do with all this? She can't vote; she can't be mayor! No, but she has a great deal to do. Let me tell you what one kindergartner did in Chicago. She does not vote; she hasn't any special or great influence; she has no political influence at all ; but she watched the children last summer and she saw how almost barbaric they got before the autumn without anything to help them through the summer, and she, with some others, said, **We must not let this go on. We must try to have some vacation work for the children next summer." So she sent to New York and to Boston for all the facts that she could get about vacation schools. She found that they had been carried on there ; they had been successful ; the children had come voluntarily to them ; that the school board had loaned the schoolrooms, and that money had been given , and that thousands of children had come to the public schools in New York for a half day in the morning in the summer for manual work, for free work without text -books. So she went before a com- mittee of the Civic Federation in Chicago. She told about this, very simply. She stated the needs which grew out of her own experience. She told the facts; and today we have one vacation school in Chicago which is going to be run this summer to prove the value of such a thing. Now why can't every kindergartner keep a watch over the needs of the community where her kindergarten is? She gets nearer the people, she gets nearer the pulse that the politicians are always trying their best to get their finger on, you know. A lady said to me the other ddy, **Why, you people in the settlement live nearer the vote than anybody else," as if that were something wonderful. She was the daughter-in-law of a great politician. So while you need not worry about living near to the vote, perhaps you can feel that you live near to the pulse of the people; you know their needs. Now don't keep still about them, but just be an awakening force in the com- munity. Tell about them from time to time where you go. Go before your women's clubs, go before your civic societies, if need be; or, if you are not a speaker and do not like to do that, go to one indi- vidual and put the need, and say it with all your heart in it; and if it has grown out of your experience it will tell and something will be done in your city. Study the needs that you see about you. If there is a bad tenement house, know about it; if there is a bad sanitation, know about it; if there are narrow, dirty, cramped streets, know about them, and consider them all questions that you are involved in, problems that you must stir up the other half of the city to look after. Now I do believe that the kindergartner must be a meditator; 496 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Kindergarten she must be an awakener of thought in the community, she. must be an interpreter to the other half that do not know how the families of the free kindergarten communities live. This is such a great big subject that I feel as if I had hardly touched it, and yet that is the one practical thought I want to leave with you. Try to get play-grounds for children if they have not got them; get vacation schools for the summer; get singing choruses for children; get all those things. I am so disappointed to think I can- not hear that talk by Mr. Damrosch on **Good Citizenship and Sing- ing.** I believe in it. I have seen it this last year, and I think we ought to try more and more to get the children to sing, even though we may not be able to train them as we would like to. Just let them sing; g6t everybody to sing. 1 think if they would sing more they would n*t swear so much. I wish we could sit down and talk together about this subject. I do not believe in the meetings where you talk at people ; I think we ought to talk with people, and we cannot in such a large meeting as this. But I hope you will take home with you this little message, which is nothing more than a suggestion, and let every kindergartner be larger than a kindergartner; let her try to make, as Froebel said, all mankind love all mankind so that Christ may be truly interpreted to the world. DISCUSSION. Professor Earl Barnes, Leland Stanford Jr. University. — In using the kindergarten to improve the condition of our children in cities there are three great difficulties that confront a thoughtful man and make him hesitate in his action — I do not say he will give up the problem — Heaven forbid ! I simply say that in all the charity kindergartens I have visited these problems have risen up to confront me. It is worth something to state the difficulties of a problem clearly. I shall confine what I have to say to this task. In the first place, there is the economic problem, which confronts all charities, of relieving the pressure on a part of the lower classes enabling them to labor for a still lower wage, thus crowding the part of the lower class that is not relieved by charity to a point where they cannot live. Two mothers, A and B, arc work- ing for a wage which will just keep them alive. The charity kindergarten relieves the mother A of a part of her burden and under the pressure of competition she can and will submit to a still lower wage. Then B must starve. I do not say Die ought to do nothing. That would ,. be absurd. I simply point to the fact that owing to the play of economic laws the ten dollars you invest in charity kindergartens may not help any struggling mother, but may crush out some mother whom you do not see, and may enable me to buy a shirt for 68 cents instead of 70 cents. The second difficulty lies in the fact that the kindergarten was developed among a well-to-do people, and it is designed to fit healthy children living under Department.] PSTCHOLOGT OF DESCRIPTIVE GESTURE. 497 sane conditions. The neglected children of our cities are unhealthy children liv- ing under insane conditions. G. Stanley Hall found the Boston teachers giving their children reading lessons about cows and buttercups when the majority of them were ignorant concerning such objects. It is not sufficient then, to say that healthy children- always like cows and buttercups, so they should have them. As well say that since healthy children like cold baths a child with the measles should have cold baths. The charity kindergartens must be modified and used as medicine. In the third place the use of the kindergarten as a charity school has a bad reaction upon kindergarten work and theory at large. The infant school, as pro- jected by Robert Owen at the beginning of this century, was based on sound and intelligent principles. Under the necessities that surround philanthropic work it became debased into the pernicious and often wicked infant school of the ordi- nary type today. The charity kindergarten 'seeks economy, lowers the wage ; employs, in order to secure its support, teachers with the philanthropic spirit rather than teachers with intelligent minds and good training, and, used as a medicine, it changes its principles and its traditions and falls from its best estate. A silver spoon may be a good instrument to scrape an iron kettle with, but it is very hard on the spoon. Do not misunderstand me. I believe the way to elevate our neglected classes is to educate and care for the little children, but I raise these questions: Ought not the state to take hold and raise the burden for all the lowest families in a city at once, if it ought to be done at all? Ought we not to )iave a kindergarten developed along the lines of the needs of this particular work? And ought not its traditions to be kept free from the traditions of our best kindergarten work? And, lastly, ought the kindergarten, or any other tool of civilization, to be used in a way to seriously destroy its best usefulness? PSYCHOLOGY OF DESCRIPTIVE GESTURE. BY PROFESSOR S. H. CLARK, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. Before we enter into the discussion of the particular phase of expression that I have the honor of presenting today, it is necessary that we come to an understanding as to the meaning of two terms. First, we are to remember that expression, unless otherwise explained, is to mean the manifestation of thought and emotion by voice and gesture. Second, that by gesture we are to understand the responses of the muscular system to thought and emotion. Let it suffice that this definition is tentative; that we have a general if inexact notion of the meaning of gesture, which is sufficient for our purpose, and, further, that such modification as may be necessary for the thorough compre- hension of our theme will be brought forward in the course of the dis- cussion. The kindergarten aims to develop expression, and yet, as far as I know, little work is done in our kindergarten normal schools in the 32 498 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten science of expression. As a matter of fact there is very little atten- tion paid to the science of expression in the regular normal school. The Committee of Ten virtually ignore it, and their report has given the subject a decided setback. Mind you, I am no advocate for the teaching of posing and dramatic action in the public schools, but we do want our children taught to read aloud. This is elocution, and the basis for its proper teaching lies in the knowledge of the science of expression. It is because our normal schools are virtually ignorant of the science of expression that they have been unable to formulate a pedagogy of reading aloud. As a result most of our reading in public schools has fallen into the hands of teachers who make little pretense to teach it, and we can't blame them; or worse, into the hands of uneducated elocutionists (?). From this brief diversion we are led back to the main discussion by the thought that only in so far as we understand the expression can we understand the mind. This may be a truism, but truisms often need to be insisted upon. As I said a moment ago, the kindergart- .ner's aim is to develop self-expression in the child, and in the child a large part of that expression is gestural. The teacher, then, must understand gesture language. Fortunately, much of this is so univer- sal that the knowledge is possessed by most of us. We know what the toss of the head and the stamp of the foot mean. But there are many aspects of gesture language so complicated that they need special study, and to one of those it is my pleasure to draw your attention today. The failure to grasp the underlying basis of this aspect has led to a mass of affectation in elocution that is revolting to the cultured mind, and is fast leading us into the unnatural in the kindergarten world. Even more; the physical expression of the child has been warped, and often he has been reduced to a mere automaton. Now, if we can lay hold of the psychology of descriptive gesture, I am sure we shall be better prepared to understand the child, to remove this tendency to automatism, and to lead him to a more com- plete and adequate expression of his mental action. Psychologists agree that, especially in the child, there is a ten- dency to realize thought in action, to make ideas live in the body, in other words, to act, to make gestures. We need now to note that gesture comes in two ways: First, by impulse; second, by volition. If we are frightened, we instinctively put up our hands ; if we are insulted we raise the torso and head. These are instinctive gestures. If, on the other hand, we wish to point out a particular spot, we will use the hand in a particular way, and this use we designate volitional gesture. In the first of these classes we are unconscious of the gesture, in the second only partially Department.] PSTCHOLOGT OF DESCRIPTIVE GESTURE, 499 so; for while the facial expression and that of the body are left to take care of themselves, we are momentarily conscious of our hand, and deliberately choose to use it as an agent with which to reinforce the spoken word. We must remember that while the intention to use one part of the body has its effect upon the rest of the structure, of which effect we are often unconscious, yet, since the main element in the expression is the result of the will, we shall call that gesture voli- tional. Another element requires explanation : That, while the child may will to do something with his hands, the details of the gesture are left to take care of themselves. He wills to point out a ship, but he does n't think how the arm shall be raised from the side, nor what finger shall serve as the index finger. He wills simply to point. Hence we note that, as a general thing, the volitional gesture contains an ele- ment of the instinctive. We may now enter into the midst of things. Every observer in the realm of expression has noted the tendency to accompany descrip- tion with gesture. The words **The horse rushed rapidly by,'* are very likely, under certain conditions, to be accompanied by a quick forward movement of the arm. That is a descriptive gesture. But the problem is, what are those certain conditions under which this gesture will manifest itself. Here is where the confusion arises. Who has not smiled at the recitation in which the speaker acted out every phrase? For instance, **The carpenter raised his hammer," {raising the arm, fingers closed) **and struck the nail three times" {strik- ing three times). All of us feel the absurdity of these gestures, and yet there are hundreds of instances equally ridiculous which we pass by without noting. But why are they ridiculous? Because they are out of place, unnatural. They are made to order, and are, invariably, in the child, the result of imitation. A proof of their unnaturalness is found in the fact that they are never accompanied by a correspond- ing facial gesture and form of vocal expression. Expression is a unit, and we recognize that a gesture is mechanical when it is not justified, so to' speak, by the expression of the rest of the body. The lack-lus- tre eye, the vacant face, the open mouth, are too often the indubitable signs that the descriptive gesturing of the child is a perfunctory task. Let us now turn to a passage, the rendering of which may be accompanied by descriptive gesticulation with evident appropriateness. Suppose we are in the midst of a highly wrought description of a bat- tle, and we come to the words, ** Having exhausted his ammunition, the brave fellow grasped the barrel of the gun with both hands, and waving the butt over his head brought it down with crushing force upon the head of his adversary." Can you not feel the fingers close 500 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Kindergarten around the imaginary gun? Do you not feel the impulse to raise the arms and to bring them down with energy? What is the difference between the two illustrations? Let us note, first, that the hammer example contained no emotion ; the soldier example was full of it. Second, and this is most import- ant, that in the soldier illustration the gesture was suggestive only, not detailed. You perceive we did not hold the fingers as if they held a gun barrel, they were clenched. We did not wave the arms three or four times around and over the head, but simply brought them back over the head as if preparing to strike with the. gun; and, finally, we did not stop the arms when the gun struck the imaginary foe, but we continued until we had reached the full extent of our blow. This is, then, the difference. In the first case the gestures added nothing to the thought; they were largely mechanical; they simply repeated the story in other language. In the second example, the gestures were instinctive, growing not out of any desire to show how the thing was done, but out of our sympathy with the picture. I have termed this the gesture of sympathy. It does not grow out of any desire to imitate, but is a manifestation of a well-known psychological law by which in intense emotional description we become what we describe. The child does not imitate the lion or the elephant or the steam car; he is one or the other of these. His sympathy with the picture leads him to identify himself with it, and hence the term, the gesture of sympathy. In the case of the soldier we became the hero. As his hands clutched the gun, so did ours clench; as we saw his arms rise above his head, so did our arms rise, and so on to the end. Let us remember, however, that just in so far as we identify our- selves with our character the mere details vanished. You must have noted this in your work. When a child becomes the elephant he drags himself slowly and cumbrously along on all fours, waving his head slowly from side to side. It is the weight and size with which he sympathizes. But when he becomes the knight's steed, rushing to battle, he. rises and runs with all his might. It is speed and speed alone which he becomes. Now for our conclusions. First: Emotion, and emotion only, justi- fies the acting of description. Second: Emotion tends to destroy detail. Let me elaborate each of these and show a few applications of these principles, and I have done. As to the first: We are all aware that there are differences in children. Every child will not be moved in the same way nor in the same degree by a given picture. Hence where a gesture of description would be perfectly appropriate in A it would be entirely out of place in B. The lesson for us is that in the Department.] PSTCHOLOGT OF DESCRIPTIVE GESTURE, 501 games, if we would have the children act the description, we must stimulate the emotion. If we cannot do that it is far better to leave the gestures out. Do you not recall how certain little tots act out every detail of description for you? With their whole body alive with emotion, they say, *'0h, teacher, I saw a dog running so fast, and then he jumped on a chair, and he held out his paws,** and so he runs on, acting out every scene. But another child sits down and tells his story quietly. You note very little action. The excitement is absent and consequently the gestures. Now, 1 would urge you to treat this latter case carefully. Avoid suggesting the action ; stimu- late the imagination, and if you can't get the gestures you want, leave the child alone, or you will make a machine out of him. Theoreti- cally we all agree with this method, practically, I fear, we are some- times negligent. We are anxious for results. We can't see the harm of suggesting this gesture or that. Psychology tells us that such sug- gestion dwarfs the power of self-expression. There are instances, however, which form an exception to our rule. These are where the speaker is describing some intricate figure or some novel picture. Here, appreciating the difficulty his audience will have in getting the idea, the speaker accentuates his verbal description by such action as will make the picture clear. Many examples will occur to you, but let us bear in mind that unless the picture be intricate or novel, the acting of it is ludicrous. How ridic- ulous it is to see a person act out every phrase in uttering such a sen- tence as **The man raised his hand to his hat, then slowly lowered it, and put it in his right hand pocket.'* The child might act this out, but under conditions I shall mention later on. Second: Emotion has a tendency to destroy detail. At first glance this position seems untenable. You say, why emotion makes him act everything. But upon examination you will find that while he may act each detail of the sentence, he does so because each phrase or clause lives for itself and is not seen in relation to the whole. But, nevertheless he does not act each detail of these to him important thoughts. Some one feature predominates and that is acted out in large, in bulk. In the dog example, the child ran on two legs, not four; he climbed on a chair as a child would, not as a dog. He was speed and climbing, nothing else. He paid no heed to his gestures; they were entirely impulsive. Had he attempted to go into detail he would have been imitating, not impersonating, and just to the extent that his gestures had been realistic he would have failed to develop self- expression. An illustration will make this clear. If, in the story of the soldier, the words had been **He waved his gun three times around his head, etc.," and we had waved our hands three times, we should 502 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Kindergarten have been ridiculous. Remember, the acting of description is justi- fied by the emotion. To wave our arms three times around our head requires an amount of thinking which is incompatible with the emo- tional state, producing the acting of description. Hence the contra- diction which many of us have felt in listening to readers and to chil- dren who have been wrongly trained in the kindergarten. In order not to be misunderstood I will grant that a child ■ might wave his arms three times, but if you are a judge of expression you will find that it is threeness rather than anything else that he expresses. The heroism or desperation of the soldier is gone. Much of the detail in kindergarten games is imitative, hence volitional at first,and later automatic. I don't deny that there is a place for imitation in the kindergarten, but its place is surely not in such work as we are describing. The imitative gesture of the child in many plays is not instinctive, but volitional. It is the outgrowth of adult knowledge, or lack of it. Teaching a child to make a gesture here or there is pernicious in the extreme, and such teaching in many cases is the result of ignorance of the principles I have been trying to expound. Another cause of this faulty teaching lies in our failure to distin- guish between pantomime and ordinary expression. In the former we must act everything; in the latter the action is only occasional. A gesture which would be appropriate in the former would be entirely out of place in the latter. Take the lines. In my little garden bed, Raked so nicely over, First the tiny seed I sow, Then with soft earth cover. You all know the the conventional gestures given to accompany these lines. The hand so (illustrating), for the garden bed, this ges- ture for the rake over, etc. This is pantomime, not gesture. I would suggest, by the way, that pantomime might be used for far more than it is in our games, but much of it is entirely out of place when we use the spoken word. There never was a child who instinctively made the gesture I made when uttering that first line. There is not enough emotion, even in a child, to produce such action, and if you will notice his face, you will discover how perfunctory was his task. Mind you, I don't say you can't create conditions under which such a gesture will be used, but you will have to force this text to get your condi- tions. Pantomime has much more of the volitional gesture in it than has ordinary expression, and this leads us to another phase of the subject already hinted at. We do not clearly distinguish between the volitional and the emo- Department.] PSYCHOLOGT OF DESCRIPTIVE GESTURE, 503 tionai gesture. In the following lines the gestures accompanying the words are largely volitional, imitative : Here's the church, And here's the steeple, Open the doors, And here are the people. But these gestures are plainly different in origin from that in the first line of the other stanza. As a matter of fact, in the line **In my little garden bed* we have merely description, in the line **Here is the church," we have a finger drama. In the first example we state a fact, in the second we make the fingers act, although the action is purely conventional. In the lines : First the tiny seed I sow, Then with soft earth cover, I can readily see that a child might act out the story. Novelty of the idea might impel him to do so. But I trust I have made clear that there is a decided difference between these two lines, the lines of the steeple story, and the first line of the garden rhyme. But many of us have failed to discern these distinctions in the thought, and have sought to get the pupil to make gestures without supplying the emotional impulse, or have given an impulse not justified by psychology and the text. We know that certain gestures are appropriate in one place, and conclude hastily that they are appropriate in all. Third, not every child is equally responsive. We all agree as to this. Hence the value of the criterion offered you today. Just in so far as a child is moved through the imagination, as he identifies himself with his description, as it were, will he use the gesture of sympathy. Further, one element of the description will move one child, another element another. Now by noting his gestures you will get into closer sympa- thy with your pupil's imagination and emotion. I might add here that a child is much more prone to gesture of sympathy than the adult. A child finds new experiences every day. Their novelty fires his imagination and, consequently, his emotions. As we grow older there is less stimulation in our surroundings, and hence less action. There might be much profit in the development of this suggestion, but time is too brief to permit it. In conclusion let me say that I have had no intention of disparag- ing in a sweeping way, the work of all the kindergartners. There are many who may never have thought of this subject in the way here presented. There are others who may have discerned these truths vaguely. If I have helped the latter to bring some order out of chaos, and the former to a new light, I am deeply grateful for this opportu- nity of showing you the value of the science of expression. 504 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Kindergarten My last word is this: If there is anything in what I have said, it should teach us that uniformity in the child games means automat- ism ; that every piece of description will act in a different way upon every child, some using cold, mental gestures, others broad, emotional ones. And, finally, the acme of success is attained, as far as expres- sion is concerned, when the whole circle is alive with an apparent chaos which is in reality an exposition of a profound, underlying unity. THE ALLIES OF THE KINDERGARTEN. Miss CAROLINE T. HAVEN, NEW YORK CITY. Every new movement is conditioned by the age which gives it birth, and he who would establish a reform in education has set himself no mean task. The heights to which he aspires present even to him a dim outline, while to the rest of the world they are wholly veiled. The path to the summit has to be hewn from the flinty rock. Alone must the reformer climb through obstacles that appear insurmountable. His progress is slow, but here and there he gains a point of vantage from which he may view the desired goal, and gain strength for further endeavors — or, again, the mountain tops become obscure as he loses faith in his attempt and foregoes the realization of his earlier dreams. History reveals to us something of this struggle in the life of every great teacher. Each one in turn essays to promote the cause of truth, to lift the world to a higher level, to make men nobler, truer, and purer, and each in turn fails to accomplish all he would. Each, too, shows us at times the effect of discouragements at every hand ; the failure to make himself understood ; the indifference or distrust manifested by those upon whom he had counted for support; the lack of sympathy in the efforts to further the interests of humanity. Froebel, with his sensitive nature, was keenly alive to the condi- tions which hindered his progress, and in his letters we find at times the outpourings of a heart saddened by the thought that he stood practically alone in his self-imposed task. **I find it bitterly hard,*' he says, **to gain the smallest step in advance;" and again, **I find half the men I know arrayed against me;" and once more, **One can scarcely believe the fact that men are so dull ; that no one is ready to stretch out a willing hand to achieve and carry out this system." At other times the reverse state of feeling is manifest, when, cheered by the confidence of friends, by the approval of those who Department.] THE ALLIES OF THE KINDERGARTEN, 505 were led to investigate in order to more effectively criticise, and by the consciousness of success, the realization of his hopes seemed close at hand and failure impossible. **A11 your doubts and fears will eventually disappear to your per- fect satisfaction," he writes in the flood-time of his successful endeav- ors; and a little later, "Already upon this fair tree fruits rich in blessing are showing forth.** The followers of Froebel have had to meet similar conditions in the establishment of their work. Look back to the early days of the movement and recall the difficulties experienced in even gaining a hearing, much more in gaining support. The history of the kindergarten in this country is yet to be written, but in the records of its beginning one figure must always prominently appear — that of Elizabeth Peabody. A nature somewhat akin to Froebel's own, with untiring zeal and determined purpose, she went up and down the land, seeking to win approval for an idea that had become to her her very life. Misjudged by those who could not understand the philosophy she presented ; lacking the sympathy and support of those who could appreciate the thought ; hampered at times by a following of mere pretenders who played upon her too credulous nature, she stood alone, with alternate hope and fear, while the kin- dergarten idea, with feeble strength, barely turned the scale on the side of life. From the outset the chief allies of the kindergarten have been the children who came under its influence, for, whatever its shortcomings, its methods have always appealed to the child's instincts and needs. Through the children a recognition has been gained in the home, as the mothers have welcomed the means offered for a closer bond between themselves and their children. For a long time the support rested here; it was a case of live, let live; now and then it attracted some local attention, but till within the last decade it has been prac- tically an unknown quantity in the problem of education which seemed unessential to its solving. Today we are in the midst of a new revival of learning, and with educational interest and activity at every hand , the kindergarten has suddenly come into prominence, and finds itself allied to all the great factors of the new movement. Teachers of all grades are asking us to help them to recognize the innate tendencies and impulses of children, and to develop these through the individual efforts of each. The advocates of systematic child-study find a fruitful field for observation in the children of the kindergarten, and ask for our co-operation. The specialists of science, art, music, etc., look to the kindergar- 5o6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Kindergarten ten for the elements of their respective arts. Even the psychologist, so long engrossed in metaphysical discussions, thinks it not beneath him now to patiently study the little child, and through numberless observations to build up a new and rational system of psychology. The educational leaders everywhere recognize the kindergarten as an integral part of the school system, and the formerly unknown methods have now an acknowledged place. The time of greatest success is often the time of greatest peril. How have we borne this sudden and phenomenal growth? As the sun of prosperity has shone steadily upon us, have we struck deeper root in order to gain new sources of power to enable us to withstand the unaccustomed fervor? It cannot be expected that our new allies will see nothing to ques- tion in our methods and aims, but how have we met their just criti- cisms? Such crude, malicious statements as recently called down the condemnation of every fair-minded and earnest teacher need no cod- sideration, but as kindergartners we should not wince when our methods are honestly challenged, and we should welcome every opportunity to probe ourselves and give a reason for the faith that is within us. The questions lately sent out by Dr. Stanley Hall, known as the ** Kindergarten Syllabus," is a case in point; though these questions in the main were prepare^, by kindergarteners. However much some of us may take issue as to the results to which many of these questions may lead, it is helpful to us all to have the search light turned full upon us, that we may better see our weaknesses and learn to know on what we really stand. The essentials will always remain and it were well to let the non-essentials go, though some of them we have fondled so long that we must be pardoned if we do not easily cast off our bur- den. The real kindergarten can never die so long as we keep fast hold of the vital truths at the foundation, and pursue these in the spirit of him who saw **in every child the possibility of the perfect man." That the kindergartner has failed to fully meet the occasion is undeniable ; her general attitude from the first till now has not placed her in the line of progressive teachers. She has isolated her work and refused to view it as a part of the great whole of education. She has so idolized its founder that she has failed to see him in his proper setting in relation to other **master minds." Worthy as Froebel is of love and reverence, grateful as we must ever be for the possibilities of childhood he has pointed out to us, we have no right to look upon him as one so divinely inspired that his methods may not be improved to meet conditions of which he could form no conception. Department] THE ALLIES OF THE KINDERGARTEN. 507 The need of a closer connection between the kindergarten and the school is acknowledged **a consummation devoutly to be wished/' From the kindergartner we continually hear that this union will fail of realization till the teacher — meaning the primary teacher — has had the advantage of a full kindergarten course. It is granted at the out- set that a knowledge of Froebel's principles and their application is most desirable, nay more, a necessity, for every teacher, but is this enough? The teacher has studied us to a greater or less extent, and so eflFectively in some instances as to qxeate a doubt in the minds of many as to the need of special kindergarten training for the child ; but this is not sufficient to bind together the two. It is the kindergart- ner who must help to bridge the gap by gaining a clear knowledge and keen insight of the work that follows hers and of their relation to each other. Many a kindergartner objects to the term ** teacher" when applied to herself, as if her work were something apart from all other educa- tional forces, but till kindergartner and teacher can have a common purpose and spirit, the unity in education for which we vaguely yearn will never come to realization. This common purpose and spirit can only result from a real understanding of the work of each by the other, and to reach this end the kindergartner must become a teacher in the highest sense of the word. It is impossible to generalize of so* large a class as teachers, espe- cially as conditions vary greatly, but each of us must at least know one at whose feet we may sit and learn with gain to ourselves, as well as to those to whom we minister. At the close of an enthusiastic meeting of kindergartners during the past year we were all at the high-water mark of complacency because, notwithstanding a full acknowledgement of our duties and responsibilities, and of our shortcomings and failures as well, it seemed evident that we held the key to the many complex problems of the day — moral, social, and educational. My own enthusiasm received a sudden and chilling plunge to its normal condition on my way home, through a conversation with a primary teacher who had been present — a woman of rare culture and wide experience, whose knowledge and application of kindergarten principles had often called forth my admiration. She said in substance: **Why do you kinder- gartners assume so much? Do all sound, pedagogical principles and insight into the nature of the child emanate from you? I believe most heartily in the kindergarten. I owe much to it. I welcome every opportunity to learn more of its methods, and I try to carry its beautiful spirit into all my teaching. But it is not alone from them 5o8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten that I gain help, and more than ever tonight have I felt that the kin- dergartners were holding themselves aloof from those who would gladly unite with them, and who in turn could contribute something to the common good of all." Recalling the addresses of the evening, it was plain that the opinion so forcibly expressed was not without foundation. Specialists of every class are liable to the error of unduly magnify- ing the importance of their own particular work. Probably at this hour in the various departmental meetings extravagant claims are set forth by the enthusiasts of certain methods, which cannot be borne out when put to a practical test. The remedy for such a condition lies in a broader survey of the whole educational field, and a juster consideration of the relationship of the parts. But it seemed possible that the kindergartner had been particularly unfortunate in her understanding of these relations, and I determined to learn if possible how widespread was the opinion which had lately been expressed. By personal inquiries and letters I gained some facts relating to the status of the kindergartner. The number is limited and no general conclusion can be drawn in fairness, though they seem suggestive and may become helpful to us all. The list includes the statements of supervisors, superintendents, teachers of different grades, and mothers, each one being an acknowledged advo- cate of the kindergarten, and having opportunities for direct and care- ful observation. The questions referred to existing conditions of kindergartners, both public and private, in different sections of the country, in regard to scholarship, general culture, understanding of children, and broad views of education. Some extracts from the replies are here given : **In general I find painstaking study of Froebel's principles, methods, and plans to the exclusion of what has been done by others.** **The examination papers of the kindergarten candidates fall far below the average of the candidates for primary schools who take the same general examination.*' **The kindergartners generally appear well satisfied in regard to their intellectual ability — chiefly owing to the fact, I suppose, that so many young girls take up the study, who, knowing nothing else, feel content with what they have obtained from their special training.*' **We have monthly meetings for the discussion of general educa- tional questions along broad lines. No teachers are obliged to attend these, though the majority do so. The kindergartners, however, are seldom present, their excuse being that the subjects have nothing to do with the kindergarten. ** Department.] THE ALLIES OF THE KINDERGARTEN. 509 i( It has been absolutely necessary for us to lower our standard in order to admit enough kindergartners for the vacancies." **I lately called a special meeting of the kindergartners of our city to consider some of the problems of their work, and took occasion to urge all to make themselves better acquainted with the vital ques- tions of the day, for I feel that, as a class^ they are inclined to take a narrow view of their work.*' Such statements as these from earnest men and women of broad educational views indicate to us' our sources of weakness and our need of individual and united effort in meeting the demands of the present day. They are presented in no antagonistic spirit, but because the situation calls for careful consideration by us all. We must look the matter squarely in the face if we are to continue in the vanguard of modern education ; we must rid ourselves of many of our preconceived, often sentimental, notions that retard our progress ; we must dig deep that our foundation may be secure. In the April Atlantic^ Mr. Atkinson points out that by common consent the teacher is found wanting in three particulars: lack of gen- eral culture ; lack of scholarship ; and lack of professional skill. May not our deficiencies be fairly classed under the same three heads? We all agree, no doubt, that the requirements for admission to our training schools have been wholly inadequate to the character of the work, both in general culture and scholarship, and, if to this meagre outfit be added our uncertain training, the lack of professional skill is not surprising. We have already taken a step forward along this line. The train- ing schools are insisting upon a longer course of study and better qualified students, while public sentiment is slowly rousing to the need of broader culture in teachers of every grade. The curriculum of the training schools is changing also; specialists in psychology, art, music, and science are recognized as essentials in every course, and take proper rank with the specialist of kindergarten principles and methods, while general culture is provided for by a study of the masters of thought along all lines. The results of this broader study may not appear at once, but already formalism is giving place to the real study of the individual child and the one time magic power of the Froebel material to a rational view of its limitations. In certain essentials we are not wholly found wanting. Our sym- pathy with children is unquestioned ; our power of insight into their needs is conceded ; and our unbounded enthusiasm for our work is acknowledged by all. To these important qualifications we need to add : a clearer under- 5IO NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Kindergarten • ^ _^ Standing of the general principles of education ; the recognition of the true relation of the kindergarten to all other departments; a more intelligent appreciation of Froebel's thought and of its application to the child; a broader, sweeter, and more catholic spirit toward. all our allies. The full possibilities of 'the kindergarten may be still beyond our sight, but, if we will, we may do something toward its fuller interpre- tation, rising **on stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things." THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY KINDERGARTEN, ELLISE BERTHA PAYNE, CHICAGO FROEBEL ASSOCIATION. The kindergartner in a large city labors under many disadvantages peculiar to her environment — some small, some great; but the greatest stumbling-block that lies in her way is the impossibility of bringing her charges into genuine contact with any part of nature save human nature. Froebel's gifts and occupations, necessary as they are, can never wholly take the place of natural things, nor can they even be used in the kindergarten as the sole agents employed in a first course from which the children are to be eventually graduated into nature-study. I accept the various gifts as most suitable vehicles for a child's crude expression of crude ideas, as a means by which feeble fingers may be employed in inventions. I accept them as forms furnishing perfect standards for training of eyes and judgment, and suggestive combina- tions in number and proportion. I believe that the type forms are good playthings for children in the early play stage. I value the occupations, and believe that, modified, they have their place. But before, and above these tools, I believe in nature. From the dawn of consciousness, the children should be surrounded by nature. The country child throughout the year is immersed in beau- ties, in wonders inexpressible. The fancy is continually stirred by the sights and sounds of the outer world. The glory of the autumn, the miracle of the springtime — all the myriad forms of life awaken the poetic imagination. The understanding is stimulated to solve the problems that nature daily propounds to the questioning child. All this is in the line of natural education. The unconscious study of nature must precede, accompany, and supplement the use of gifts and occupations. For the world of nature and the world of man and his works furnish the stimulus to that desire to tell one's thoughts in form, for which these play materials are but the instruments. Department.] PROBLEM OF THE CITY KINDERGARTEN, 511 Froebers plan surely was to bring the children up in the heart of nature, to study her creatures, to become familiar with her moods, to love her beauty, to solve the riddles she propounds. Then his handi- work was meant to meet present needs and pave the way, not only for industrial work, but for the expression in art forms of his joy in nature's loveliness. Every other function of the gift and occupation, such as training to neatness and industry, fades before the two large purposes which they serve. First, they are an outlet for the child's creative energy, which must embody the forms that have appealed to his interest by their use and beauty; and, second, they serve as a means by which a little child may produce and give. Love must have an outlet. Expression deepens love. When nature has aroused love for creature, and given a glimpse into the wonders of her laws, a foundation for religious feeling has been laid. The order, simplicity, and purity of natural things are readily appre- ciated by the children long before they can voice the ideas awakened. Evil is driven from the mind when it is filled with interest in what is truly lovely. There is no surer way to develop in the character the spiritual attributes of sincerity and love of harmony than by sur- rounding the children with nature, and allowing them to feel the values you set on these things. Loving the flower means love of the color, the purity, and sweetness. Love of the tree is really love of its strength, its generosity of branches, the protection it gives to boy and bird. So every natural thing familiarly loved is building in the child heart the love of the spiritual qualities of which it is a sugges- tion. Who has not, pondering child-wise on the illimitable depths and heights of the blue, gained hints of the idea of infinite space, or per- sonified the watchful stars as brooding eyes? The symbolism of nature needs not a hint of interpretation to a little child; and I believe that the lack of spirituality, so decried in modern life, may be traced to the impossibility of this natural child-communion with nature in the city and the failure to recognize and nurture it as an educational fac- tor in the country. For the little children we must have nature-study; but they do not so much need ** Nature as she is taught," but ** Nature as she speaks while we are silent." "Why, Miss D there is personification everywhere in the woods," said one of the older boys from a Chicago school, while walk- ing with his teacher through a country grove where the class was spending the day. "There is that nettle, some folks are just like that, and soi^e are like thistles, and then some people are just like that great oak tree!" This is but an illustration of the way in which the 5i2 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten mind that reflects is continually led from the natural thing back to those qualities which give it distinction and make it reflect human attributes. I brought forty kindergarten children from Hull House to the country a year ago in the springtime. With many of them curiosity was rampant concerning this ** country'* of which such wonderful tales had been told. I would give much to know just what ideas were in the minds of some of those children when the word ** country " was used. One child said as he was turned loose in a great green field, **But, Miss Payne, when shall we see the country? Where is it?** I explained as well as I could, and he said disappointedly, **0h, I thought it was something somewhere else to see!*' Poor little mortal, what picture had he formed? Others said as they looked around, **Why, the country is just a- great big park, isn't it? *' and one, **How nice for Miss Payne to live at the park!** One reproved the rest sharply, as they sat in the meadow eating lunch, for ** busting down the grass.** Never shall I forget Annunziata, daughter of Italy, who at the close of this very busy day lay on the grass beside the station as we waited for the train, gazing with measureless content up into the sky, her great brown eyes rolling toward me often, to tell the utter satisfac- tion that she could not speak in English, and showing she was not too far gone in dolce farniente to feel the need of human sympathy. They had seen the farmer ploughing the ground and planting corn, had picked handfuls of buttercups, had found tiny green apples and cherries on trees, and had now a new classification by the addition of the genus apple to Christmas trees. I brought the same children out when the corn was cut and in shocks. The dandelion and milkweed had turned feather balls, and the apples were ripe on the trees. I led them casually to the only oak tree that I knew bore acorns. Down they went on hands and knees gathering them up. ** Peanuts! Cocoanuts!** they cried. The haw- thorn apples were another source of excitement, and the ripened corn a marvel. They argued long and earnestly over the supposed malignity of a tiny green snake, and when he slid away, wondered where his feet could be. But when they came to the orchard, the climax was reached in climbing the apple trees. All the quiet interests of a week from a country child*s life had been crowded into a short day. I found one tiny fellow (his own head like thistle-down) kneel- ing in a grass plat. He was guarding a tiny, round milkweed ball with both hands, and bending down he kissed it. Ever since, Hinsdale has been the place to which these children have referred every lovely or interesting thing described to them. "I know!** I know!'* they shout, **It *s at Hinsdale!*' Department.] PROBLEM OF THE CITY KINDERGARTEN. 513 Simply directing the attention of these fortunate country children to what is worth seeing, with an occasional question on what is before them, is enough teaching in the early stages of nature study. The mind's inherent love and curiosity prompt the observation and reasoning, which means mental growth when the child is in its natural environment. And all this absorption may be exhibited in an over- whelming enthusiasm for the dandelions or the first snow fall, or the rushing brook, or it may be simply that the child is in a quiet state of brooding over this great life. Then we say, **He is doing nothing, or is dreaming," or perchance is *'lazy," if he be older. I say ** blessed be dreaming." It is at such times that thoughts grow as germs in the dark, and we know it not until some remark is made and we stu- pidly say, '*Where did the child learn that?" There is nothing more significant of the original power of the child than this contented dreaming. Its loss is one of the greatest deprivations to the city child, forever lost in the confusion of hurry- ing images; a constant succession of fieeting impressions made upon his mind without time for reflection. An object catches the atten- tion, excites comment, and is gone; another and another, with no time for observation or relation to other images in the mind. This condition leads to a quick, excitable, and superficial habit of thought in these children. I have found the mass of children in crowded localities invariably much more fickle than those in quiet neighbor- hoods. In going into a new kindergarten that was being organized on Halsted street two years ago, I discovered that it was remarkably difficult to enlist an abiding interest in anything after the first impres- sion of novelty had worn off. This fickleness I have found strongest among the Italians, and least among the Germans. It is the stamp of environment, and shows itself all through the public schools. We find it one of the most difficult elements to cope with in the children's clubs at Hull House. A boy enters as a member of a story-telling club. He attends two or three meetings and then wishes to change his membership to a gymnastic class. This tried for a while, he thinks he would enjoy a drill club better. It is merely the changeableness of childhood, intensified by the rushing, changing city life. Nearly all of Froebel's games are based on phases of natural life. They are intended to furnish poetic or rhythmic expression of the child's ideas of that which he sees about him daily. Do we always follow the law ** impression before expression" in presenting these plays in the city kindergartens? For those games that relate to home or civic life they have a basis in a store of impressions gained from actual experience. It is easy to present these in accord with the laws of mind development. The plays of blacksmith, carpenter, baker, 33 514 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Kindergarten and others embody experiences common to all. But they are abso- lutely cut off from a whole range of experiences that are as common as rain and sunshine to the country child ; and yet we bring to them a host of nature songs, nature games, and nature stories, when they are utterly deprived of those experiences which would render these intel- ligible. We can bring a few flowers now and then into a city kindergarten. The children plant seeds and watch them grow; and vigilant is the kindergartner who saves her plants from frosts and energetic janitors, or her fish and tadpoles from the many dangers that threaten them in a public schoolroom. One enterprising kindergartner that I know, had turned the low roof of the engine house into a veritable roof-gar- den, with the help of her principal, and against the wishes of the jan- itor. But a thief in the night carried off the thirty large boxes of rich earth that had been carried there and planted with care. Often a neighbor's goat or- cow is the sole type of the class of **pets" so dear to children who enjoy space and freedom ; and yet think what must have been the ideal in the mind of Froebel when he invented the barnyard, pigeon, and bird games — the *' gardener and the farmer." By the light of psychology we realize that it is impossible to make our nature games spontaneous expressions of the children's ideas, when their only means of acquiring these ideas is through our descriptions, inadequate pictures, and through the games themselves. The apper- ceiving ideas must come from direct contact with nature. A question, . therefore, which demands our immediate consideration is: **How can this direct contact be secured for the little children of our cities?" DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION SECRETARY'S MINUTES. FIRST SESSION. Thursday, July 9, i8g6. The department was called to order at 3 p. m., in the People's Church, by S. T. Dutton Superintendent of Schools, Brookline, Mass., President of the depart- ment, who gave the opening address. An invitation was read from the Women Teachers' Association, asking all present to visit the Chapter House, the home of the Association. The first paper was read by Miss Flora J. Cook, Chicago Normal School, Illinois, on *' The Place of Nature Study in Primary Work." The discussion of Miss Cook's paper was opened by Mr. J. H. Van Sickle, Superintendent of North Side Schools, Denver, Colo. He was followed by Dr. W- N. Barringer, of Newark, N. J. Mr. Charles B. Scott, Oswego Normal School, N. Y., closed the discussion. The Committee on Nominations was announced by the chair as follows: J. A. Shawan, Superintendent of Schools, Columbus, O. Miss Flora J. Cook, Chicago Normal School, Chicago, III. Miss Minnie S. Mott, Orange, N. Y. F. Treudley, Superintendent of Schools, Youngstown O. Miss Elizabeth Baumgartner, Springfield, 111. Dr. Frank M. McMurry, Dean of the School of Pedagogy, Buffalo, N. Y., read a paper on ** Some Applications of Correlation in Grammar School Work." The paper was discussed by the following: Clarence F. Carroll, Superinten- dent of Schools, Worcester, Mass. ; Dr. Charles A. McMurry, University of Chicago, and Dr. W. A. Bell, Indianapolis, Ind. Dr. Frank M. McMurry closed the discussion. m The department then adjourned. SECOND SESSION.— Friday, July 10, 1896. The department met at 3 p. m., pursuant to adjournment, with President Dutton in the chair. The first paper of the day was read by Miss Annie E. Hill, Director of Pen- manship, Springfield, Mass., on "Vertical Writing." The discussion was led by Professor R. K. Row, Normal School, Kingston, Ontario, and Professor D. H. Farley, State Normal School, Trenton, N. J. Mr. Stebbins of Brooklyn, N. Y., Mr. Edwin W. Still of New York City. Mr. C. A. Bradner of Chicopee, Mass., and Col. F. W. Parker of the Chicago Normal School continued the discussion. 5i6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Elementary The Committee on Nominations reported the following for officers for the ensuing year: • President, Miss Sara C. Brooks, Superintendent Primary Instruction, St. Paul, Minn. Vice-President, Mr. E. B. Cox, Xenia, O. Secretary, Miss Ida C. Bender, Superintendent Primary Instruction, Buffalo, N. Y. The Secretary was instructed to cast a unanimous ballot in favor of the nomi- nees. After thanking the local committee for their untiring efforts in behalf of the visiting teachers and for many courtesies extended, President Dutton introduced the next speaker, Col. Francis W. Parker, Chicago Normal School, who gave an address on '* Art in Elementary Schools." Discussion by Miss Stella Skinner, Superintendent of Drawing, New Haven, Conn. The department adjourned sine die, HENRiETtA B. AvRES, Secretary. Department.] OPENING REMARKS, 5 17 PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS. OPENING REMARKS. BY S. T. BUTTON, PRESIDENT, BROOKLINE, MASS. It is my pleasant duty to welcome here the elementary teachers and all others interested in the training of children. Let us throw aside all unnecessary reserve and become at once not only co-workers but friends. Let us extend to each other the right hand of fellow- ship, and let us make the sessions of this department so full of kindly feeling and mutual helpfulness that their influence may long remain with us as a pleasant and inspiring memory. I shall not detain you with a formal or extended address. The programme that is to fol- low will, I am sure, contain enough that is substantial and helpful to fill the entire afternoon. I only wish to remind you of a few things upon which we, who are engaged in elementary teaching, may congrat- ulate ourselves.x First: I will mention the enlarged conception now current of what children are capable of doing, and the truth so widely recognized that mental nutrition is more important in education than mere drill ; that the mind, as well as the body, needs plenty of good food in order that vigorous exercise may profitably be taken, and the that selection and arrangement of the elements of nutrition constitute one of the most important functions of the teacher. The recognition of this truth has gradually broadened and enriched the life of our school. It has also blest the homes for parents, seeing the possibilities open to them in the way of a broader nurture, have surrounded their little ones with those objects of interest and culture that have ministered to their growth, and so the home and the school are able to work together to a common purpose. Nature, art, music, and literature, instead of being regarded as extra, or of doubtful worth, are now the very back- bone of the curriculum of the modern elementary school. Through their united instrumentality the whole soul of the child responds with joy and interest. We have talked of a liberal education as of some- thing that belonged to the few who possess a college diploma, but in this new era education is liberal, not only at the top, but also at the bottom, and all along through its successive stages. In all this, I say, we may justly rejoice. Another -ground for congratulation is the fact that physical health 5i8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary • is being recognized as of first account in the working out of all educa- tional purposes. Light and airy schoolrooms are just as good for the teacher as for the pupil, and happy indeed are those teachers who have learned the pleasure and profit of participating in outdoor games and gymnastics with their children. Also, most auspicious is it for our American schools that many teachers have discovered the intel- lectual and moral healthfulness of outdoor lessons in geography and natural science. I am ready to predict that outdoor experiences, both for the purposes of physical well-being, as well as for instruction, are to play an increasingly important part in the education of young children. Fresh air and sunshine should, as far as possible, be mixed with all school exercises. But I wish also to call your attention to another special cause for congratulation. In the manufacture of goods from raw materials great progress has been made during the past few years; in utilizing what are now known as ** by-products;" elements which were once regarded as worthless are now so handled and treated as to be of great commercial value. In some instances the larger percentage of the profit comes from these hitherto discarded materials. Now, fel- low teachers, have we not discovered that in the education of a child, certain elements once allowed to go to waste are of immense value if properly treated and refined? Are we not almost prepared to affirm that nothing that manifests itself as spontaneous activity is to be dis- carded as waste? Consider the element of play as an example of these by-products. How long has play been used as an almost price- less factor in education? It was not until Frederick Froebel discov- ered this new educational factor and expounded its intrinsic value that what had hitherto been a stream of wastefulness was made to fer- tilize large areas of educational endeavor. Thus our infant schools have been revolutionized. Once it was a sin to have fun in school; now it is a sin not to have it. Almost the same thing may be said of the constructive and creative tendencies in a child. How grandly this element, once wasted, is now being utilized in our schools through the manual arts? There is another by-product which the graded sys- tem, with its orderly arrangement and earnest striving for uniform results, has well-nigh overlooked. I refer to individuality. I cannot congratulate you upon the full working out of this discovery, but only upon the belief that it is being discovered. Go over in the child study section this afternoon and you will find that some of the first minds in the country have worked upon this very problem. It is the differential, which distinguishes one boy from another, that we need to conserve. I congratulate you that through the study of this child this heedless waste is to be stopped ; this sweating process as applied to Department.] NATURE STUDY IN PRIMARY WORK. 519 immortal souls is to end. Education is to help the child to be what his maker wished him to be, and his individuality is to be respected at every point. My friends, do not think the discoveries are all made yet. We thought we knew something about the atmosphere, but lo, argon, a hitherto unknown element, is just come to light! We supposed we had established a permanent distinction between things visible and things invisible, but the X rays have gradually upset this visible con- ception. I believe there are yet great discoveries to be made in edu- cation, and these will be in the domain of the child's nature and of the better adaptation of means to end. Finally, we may rejoice and be glad because of the increased interest taken by thoughtful people in education as the one great social force that can civilize and Chris- tianize the world. In this country, particularly, we find faithful men and women patiently studying the problem of education, not only that they may deal wisely by their own children, but that they may bear a hand in the uplifting of humanity. THE PLACE OF NATURE STUDY IN PRIMARY WORK. BY MISS FLORA J. COOK, CHICAGO NORMAL SCHOOL, ILL. Nature and humanity, if we interpret aright the teaching of great educators, poets and sages, are the two sources from which has come the inspiration essential to the highest development and usefulness of mankind. Comenius deduced his principles of education from nature. Locke preferred the influence of a virtuous humane man. Rousseau, seeing man perverted through his training, believed nature the only true guide. Pestalozzi again is enthusiastic for humanity. And so on down the ages to Wordsworth and Browning, until we are forced to believe that it must be in the nice balance of these necessities, natural and human, that we shall find the law of perfect growth. If this be true science is not the basis of primary work, but is one of its most potent factors. In the relations and responsibilities to both nature and humanity which come to him through the demands of his present environment, the activities of eviery child find scope for action. The teacher's sole duty is to use these opportunities to broaden the child's sympathies, refine his taste, to make it possible for him to form genuine habits in thought and expression. All his work, reading, writing, painting 520 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary ■ ■ ^-.^ -■■■ I—. - — -■■■ - ■■ »■■ ■» and singing are but means to this end — conditions for his best possi- ble growth today. According to this plan the subjects selected for study in science, literature, and history, grow from the present needs of a particular class of children, and therefore the subjects are not necessarily connected in themselves, though it often happens that they naturally are so. The true correlation of subjects must reveal itself in the improved actions of these children. Any other idea of correlation seems to me to be unnatural and strained. A day or a month is not adequate to finish for life the study of any educative subject. One might think it were so, as he watches the children counting the needles, reading, writing, painting, modeling, singing and reciting poems about an isolated pine tree throughout an entire month. The pine tree may become again and again the center of interest to a child, but I think it can in no right sense be considered a basis of work. It would be as absurd as to narrow the child's observation in sci- ence to the needs and pursuits of George Washington, Ulysses, or Rob- inson Crusoe. I would not seem to underrate the value of the study of such char- acters as these, but it seems to me that in order that the child may find his place, his true relation to his surroundings, he must also directly study the forces which are shaping man and matter in his own immediate environment. It must be in the spontaneous activities and interests of the child- ren that we shall find the true guide in our work. If for one summer a child were left perfectly free to choose between a room full of elaborate toys and a sand pile or a brook, between a store of most beautiful picture-books and a flower garden, or even if we arranged the choicest of artificial pleasures against a yard which afforded only such advantages as sunshine and a tree, can we doubt which would oftenest be chosen? A child longs to create. He must create ; and that material which resists him yet yields to his efforts, which is the best medium of expression for the greatest number of his fancies, is his most abiding joy. Another vital question is, can a child feel a necessity or purpose for what he does, or must he blindly follow a beaten path — spell the same word, work the same sum — run the same race his teacher has run. It means something that every normal child is born asking **why?*' — **how?** Could their questions possibly be a key to what they ought to know. Locke hints that he thought it might be so when he said, ** Educators fix the fashion to what they have, not to what their pupils want or need.** I believe that the instinctive interest and Department.] NATURE STUDT IN PRIMARY WORK, 521 questioning of children furnish the germ from which the courses of study should grow. Whatsoever the environment may be, we notice that there are cer- tain things which all children love, question about, and seem to feel a necessity for. These are friends, food, and shelter. All children seem to have a natural longing for grass, flowers, trees and animals. They delight in work, rhythm, stories and heroic actions. These vitally influence them, and in so far as they recognize and feel the relation of these things to each other and to themselves, do they become useful to the world. • It has been said: ** Among all nations the direction impressed on education depends on the idea which they form of the perfect man.'* The ideal man among the Romans was a brave soldier; among the Athenians a man who united in himself the happy harmony of moral and physical perfection ; among the Hebrews he was pious and virtu- ous. Are we willing that our ideal man should be judged by the natural outcome of the present educational system? Are we cultivat- ing in our children a sensitive good taste in the broadest meaning of the term — a sense so delicate that nothing out of harmony will be suffered quietly to exist? We have a right to believe that the sky is a standard of beauty in color, as is also the work of great artists who have been willing to sacrifice life for the expression of their divine instincts. If, in all lines — nature, literature, and mankind — we could lead our children to the sources which we have reason to believe are genuine, beautiful expressions of harmony and truth, and there try to answer natural questions, it would seem that we must have come to the door of an ideal course of study. I shall take the liberty to make the rest of this paper a record of experiences in primary work, not that they are especially satisfactory, but, as results of gropings in the great laboratory of child-study, they may be considered in the practical discussion of the subject. For illustration I have selected only the line of work relating to two of the necessities of life — water and food. I hope, however, to make it clear that the experiments used have not been made \\\^ first cause of investigation y but became necessary in answering the questions which nature asked the children. That I confine myself to the nature side of the work is due entirely to the subject assigned me. In our climate we have four great pictures during the year. Each season brings its changes, and each change its natural questions to the children observing it. What is the significance of the eternal alteration we note in botany, zoology, meteorology — perpetual change in object with no destruction of the elements which compose it? The 522 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary children are given more or less natural conditions for observing plants, animals, soil and weather throughout the year, and many of their questions they are able to answer for themselves by the help of simple experiments. As Lake Michigan is so important a factor in our environment, we go in the fall to the lake shore. It is a typical picture — water, sky, plant life, animal life, sand, and stones. To some of the six-year-olds who paint what they see it may be only a picture which is impressed according to the intensity of their interests. One of its most direct interests to the little children was that it was from this source that all the water came to them which they used for drinking, cooking, sprinkling, washing, bathing, or for steam power. Without suggestions from the teacher the first-grade children asked twenty questions concerning what they saw. The following are perhaps the most thoughtful and suggestive: **Who made the big hole for the lake? How can it stay so full when we use so much of it? What makes the water move? How can it carry the boats? How does the water get up into our pipes and come into our houses? Why does the water stay in the lake and not go down or run over the city? How can fish breathe? Where does all the sand come from? How do the stones get so round and smooth? Where do they get the pretty colors? What is the name of this red stone?" Many of these questions the children were allowed to answer for themselves through closer observations or the help of simple experi. ments. They were never told that anything was too difficult for them to understand, and indeed nothing proved to be so. The one respon- sibility seemed to be to find the things most vital in their development. With acid the children found that a certain class of stones were called limestones, and that shells and bone also contain lime; they learned that the pebbles which scratch glass were called quartz peb- bles. The stones gradually became their friends, claiming attention whenever they presented themselves. The children, having found how they would act under a few conditions, were never tired of testing them to find out their greater possibilities. A box in which to keep the stone collection was needed, and this they planned and constructed accordmg to the necessities of the case. They went also to a swamp which is within walking distance of the school. Here was another typical picture. Different soil, water, plants and animals. These the children unconsciously studied through the use of their water-color paints. The water here was black and seemed unfit for drinking, and a series of lessons grew out of the children's efforts to make it pure enough for this purpose. The following is a reading lesson in this line of work : Department.] NATURE STUDY IN PRIMARY WORK. 523 WATER. We use water every day. We use it for drinking, cooking, sprinkling, washing, bathing, sailing, and for power. In September we brought home some water from the lake. We let it settle. We found sand in the lake water. We brought home some water from the swamp. We let that settle, too. We found loam in the swamp water. We need pure water to drink, so we tried to purify the lake and swamp waters. We boiled them. The water all boiled away. The sand and loam were left* We tried again. We caught the vapor from the water upon cold glass, — there was no sand in it. There was no loam in it. The water was pure. Later their grasp of the preceding work was tested in the following lesson which I put also in the form of a reading lesson : We played we were out on the ocean. ' We had no water to drink. We were very thirsty. Some one said, "Let us get water from the ocean." We did this, but the water was salt. It made us more thirsty. Carleton said, "Let us strain the water." We did this, but the water was still salt Donna said, "Let us boil the water." We did this, but the water was still salt. Hans said, "Let us catch the vapor from the water upon a piece of glass." We did this — the water was fresh. How do you think we got enough water to drink? The children knew that part of the same rain fell upon the lake and swamp, yet the lake water was hard and curdled when they used soap in bathing their hands in it, while the swamp water was soft and made fine suds. Then came the question as to what made the lake water hard. When we poured soft water through lime it instantly became hard. This fact was sufficient. That the images gained at the lake shore were vivid, however crude and incomplete, was instantly proved by thieir eagerness to tell that the lime in the shells, limestones, and bones of fish might make the lake water hard. In another series of lessons they discovered the sources, uses, and chief constituents of the foods eaten every day ; also the necessity for the mastication of food, and the reason for the difference in their summer and winter diet. In the spring they made a garden, twenty-five metres long and five metres wide, in which they planted and cared for the most common 524 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary vegetables. They also had a plot in which they were allowed to plant the seeds of their favorite flowers. Each class estimated and claimed its own portion of work, finding the number of rows, number of places in a row, and number of seeds needed for each child. Again their questions determined the line of study. They noticed that some of the seeds came up ;nore quickly than others. Seeking the reason for this caused them to examine the covering of the seeds for the amount of stored up food and energy contained. Imagine their surprise when they saw a small handful of beans, which they had placed in water under the pressure of an iron cylinder and a fifty-pound weight, exert, in swelling, a force sufficient to raise the cylinder one-quarter of an inch from its first place. It added not a little to the interest that the strongest boy in the class using both hands, had been able to lift the weight only six inches from the floor. They had no detailed analysis of the seeds such as — **The bean has a skin. It has two cotyledons. It has a plumule. It has a radicle.*' But they discovered some of the general effects of heat and light in the growth of their plants. Later observation developed the facts that certain weeds were stronger than cultivated plants; certain insects injure the plants; cer- tain insects help them ; some plants need greater care than others. A careful examination of the soil became necessary in order to find out why we needed to make a garden; why the plants grow better in garden soil than in the surrounding land. They found that the gar- den soil contained sand and loam mixed together. And in answering the question, which soil was the best for seeds, or what each kind did for them, they found by experiment the relative capacity of each soil to absorb percolating water, and the power of each to retain it. Their field trips to the swamp and lake were again recalled, and in the end they themselves concluded that a mixed soil was best, since it must be neither a desert in dry weather, nor a swamp in wet weather. An interesting feature was added to the picture by the older child- ren when they discovered that the earthworm is constantly, steadily doing this most necessary work. The results of the children's experi- ences were used for blackboard and printed reading lessons. £ach lesson had a distinct purpose. It bound the observations of all the children into one picture, and thus new relations came to each child. The direct purpose of all reading, writing, number, spelling, form, modeling, and painting was to make some mental image clearer. The repeated observations of the same things made constant repetition of words necessary, and the expanding images demanded a continual increase in vocabulary. The test of a year's work cannot be estimated in the facts or knowledge gained by the children, but in their habits of work, love, Department.] NATURE STUDY IN PRIM ART WORK. 525 sympathy, and desire to know more of everything around them. It is largely, too, I think, in the power which they gain to recognize the right of everything, flower or worm, to its place, work, and life in the universe. The little children cannot, and we would not force them, too early, to understand God's great law of harmony in nature. But they can catch the spirit of it when they see the animals feeding upon the plants, the plants depending upon the soil, and all upon heat, water, light, and air for life. The older children enjoy reading the law in such a series of changes as the following: They see the rain water coming from the clouds free from mineral matter and making its way through the ground into the tree. They find in the sap of the tree the salts and minerals of the earth. They examine the wood and discover that it takes from the sap just what it needs, but that most of the mineral substance obeys the power of the sun and passes with the sap on into the leaves. Their wonder and delight grow as observation teaches them that from this point the water returns to the clouds pure as when it came ; while the leaves carry the mineral back to its home in the soil. And tracing further they learn the leaves moulder under the snow, until, when the heat of spring comes, they are prepared to give off the gas which would be poisonous in winter, just in time to breathe life into the opening buds. Yet, however necessary it may seem to the teacher to push forward until the children have thus plainly before them the beautiful harmony in cause and effect, she need never fear to allow them to pause on the way. If they are going in the right direction they will gladly go on when they are stronger, or if they happen to stray from her path they may perhaps find a better, more direct route to the same goal. The child must not be forced beyond the limits of his healthful curiosity and interest, if his work is to be truly educative. We can be patient and follow him if we fully believe that no question which he may ask concerning nature can possibly be isolated, or, however young he may be, entirely beyond his comprehension. There will be some relations which he can understand and which will make this new image expand an old one. If trees, flowers, birds and sky have a language which the child can understand, he can never be utterly unhappy. Wordsworth would have us believe from his own ideal childhood that nature should give every child his first idea of God, believing that so he must naturally grow to understand the great "Law which moves to righteousness, Which none at last can turn aside or stray , The heart of it is Love, the end of it Is peace and consummation sweet." 526 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary DISCUSSION. [Reported by B. C. Gregory, Trenton, N. J.] Superintendent J. H. Van Sickle, North Side Schools, Denver, Colo. — My discussion of Miss Cook's paper will lack the spice of objection. I must heartily endorse her views on this subject. I have looked in vain for a chance to attack her position, but I find myself ready to say "Amen" to it all. I desire simply to call attention to a few of the many good points by way of emphasis. The paper recognizes the pre-eminence of the study of history, literature, and science over the formal studies. The latter are relegated to their proper place, that is, as means to an end. While the great importance of a science is emphasized, the writer is not an extremist, placing what is, for the time being, at least, her specialty, as a center, around which all things are to revolve. She says ''Nature study is otu of the most potent factors.'* I think we may safely say it is one of two — humanity being the one and nature the other — and I would, since we are talking only of primary work, mention nature first. It is first in appealing to the child. It continues during the early years to hold this place where routine methods and formalism have not placed means above ends. We hear of nature study as an aid in teaching reading; as an aid in teaching language, arithmetic, etc. This form of expression assumes that nature study is something of no real importance in itself, but put in to lubricate the educational machinery; to sugarcoat the pill which is to save the patient. I do not believe in nature study simply as a means of teaching reading and language. Let us make use of the materials which it so bountifully furnishes, but let us use it because it is of value in itself, and recognize the fact that it is the ideal material for these purposes because its supremely interesting content is valuable in securing perfect growth. The paper states that spontaneous interests of children are the guide to the course of study. This truth is coming to be recognized. Within a few years we have seen evidences of this recognition in published courses, yet thousands of teachers cling to ihe traditions which make arithmetic the great essential and the standard of gradation. Subjects which arouse the spontaneous interests in children are not less, but more, educative than those to which they have to be driven. When the reading and a little arithmetic, very little, grow out of obser- vations of nature which have roused the child's activities, they are serving a good end and are served in turn ; yet I should hesitate to say that all is to be done in connection with nature study. I yet believe in some good, old-fashioned memory drill in the formal studies, but only to give the child the more complete mastery of these tools of education. This paper is, however, plain on this point. The statement is made that "all reading, writing, number, spelling, form, modeling, and painting are to be used to make some mental picture clearer." The clear mental picture, then, is the chief aim; reading, number, etc., are means to this end, and their services are rewarded by the increased vocabulary and greater facility in expression. Since the child is to live among men as a member of society, and to develop in contact with nature, he should learn not only to be in harmony with society, but to make the fullest use of his powers in adapting nature's products and forces to his needs, physical, mental, and moral. The more completely he is able to do this the more life nas to offer him and the moie nearly he has found his place. Department] DISCUSSION. 527 The fourth topic on the paper touches one of the chief difficulties in the pro- per management of this subject in the schools. In the paper we find this sen- tence: "The only legitimate experiments are those which answer questions Nature has already asked the child." Much of the so-called elementary science teaching is exceedingly faulty in that it disregards this important principle. The first stage in the history of the development of nature study, the idea of entertainment, the telling of curious and unusual facts, can be traced in the present methods of too many teachers. There is far too much telling of facts by the teacher, far too little chance given to the pupil to form for himself habits of close observation, under wise guidance; thus the great purpose of the study, insight into nature is spoiled. This leads back to the preparation of the teacher, on which nearly everything depends. The teacher who acquires the ability to manage this subject well becomes a better teacher along all lines, becomes accustomed to following nature's ways. No other subject has half the effect of this in improving the teaching force. No other subject brings about such sympathetic relations. Even the routine, mechanical teacher gradually ceases to be the cold critic and ruler of the group of children, and becomes the trusted co-worker and guide. Teacher and pupils now have a common interest as investigators. The pupils are individuals, each to be treated according to his needs. So, while I can subscribe to what is said of the test of a year's work so far as the children are concerned, I would add that the effect of this work upon the teacher is equally marked. It is educating both pupils and teacher. The pupil is learning how to live, the teacher how to teach. Superintendent William N. Barringer of Newark, N. J. — We are deficient in our conception of what may be called the elementary purpose of science instruction in public schools. We emphasize too much the matter of informa- tion, and leave in the background the result to the child in the training of his power of observation; We feel encouraged if, as the result of our instructions, the child knows a great deal. We need to know the child mind better. The essential character of mind is activitty, and the essential power of mind is intel- ligence. Our duty is to set the mind to work on proper objects and to provide proper methods by which the natural activity of the child mind may be devel- oped. The mind is not a dumping ground into which facts may be cast indiscrimi- nately; the mind is a bundle of activities, and it is our dirty to set these activities at work. The mind can no more act without leaving behind it a residuum of knowledge, however, than water can flow up hill. The older I grow the less anxiety I have about the communication of knowledge. If I can get the child's attention, and give him proper subjects on which to employ his activities, in accordance with' proper methods, the product of such activities in the matter of knowledge will be attained. The great difficulty with a large number of pupils, and a large number of teachers, is the lack of elementary concepts. The concepts of pupils are defective both in number and in quality. To enable him to gain these concepts for the future we must see that his mind works aright and that the concepts which he obtains are right concepts, at least right in view of the stage of his progress. Professor Charles B. Scott, State Normal School. Oswego.N. Y. — I want to express my approval of Miss Cook's paper, both as to matter and form. The paper was unusually practical and suggestive. It was not confined to general principles and generalities, but, after a presentation of the most essential prin ciples, applied these to school work showing exactly how these were applied in 528 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Elementary everyday work. Miss Cook has told us just how she has made science or nature study a basis for much of the other work in the primary school. I want to express also my agreement with the principles Miss Cook has enunciated. Two ideas which she has expressed cannot be too strongly empha- sized, that is, first, that in nature study the child must be the center and every thing must be studied from the standpoint of the child, and second, that every- thing in nature must be studied in its relations, not as an isolated thing. The writer of the paper has told us, in her account of a trip with the children to the lake shore, how she endeavored to follow the lead of the children, to note their questions, the points in which they were interested, and to work out from these. Many of us on such an excursion would plan out very carefully exactly what we wanted to do and wished the children to see, and would devote our energies to leading them to see what we saw and as we saw it. Too often, under such conditions the little folks would be almost prevented from studying those things which, from their point of view, might be much more important for them than many features which appealed to our mature minds. It is much wiser to follow the lead of the children, the path which their interests point out. This need not mean an absence of plan or sequence or coherence. Starting where the children are, as indicated by their interests and questions, we can lead them, step by step, to where we are. If we study the interests of the children we will find that our nature study with children will be, almost exclusively, a study of life and action, of living, working nature, not of mere form and structure. We will study the development of flower and bud, the unfolding of leaf, the work of each part, rather than the form. If after our nature work with the little folks they forget about the shape and attachment and arrangement of leaf and flower, it matters kittle. It matters much whether they learn to appreciate the plant as something with work to do, and remember something of the life and work of the plant and its parts. Even more important is the cultivation of an appreciation for the beauties of nature. If the children keep some realization of the beauties of the world about them, the beauty of form and color, the higher beauty of function and co-operation and unity, the mere facts of structure may slip from memory with little loss. I would like to emphasize the importance, the supreme importance with little folks, of awakening and strengthening a sympathy and love for nature. Above all else the child should learn to love the plant and animal, to cherish and care for them. As Dr. Hall has said, this is the beginning of the child's religion. If he learns to appreciate the world of sense, which is his world; if he is brought into right sympathetic relations with this world, he can and should, through his love for nature, be led up toward the Author of nature. Department.] SOME APPLICATIONS OF CORRELATION. 529 SOME APPLICA TIONS OF CORRELA TION. BY FRANK M. MCMURRY, DEAN OF SCHOOL OF PEDAGOGY, BUFFALO, N. Y. Numerous words have been used as apparent synonyms for corre^ lation, as concentration, co-ordination, and unification. But notwith- standing this confusion of terms the central notion involved in each is the same, that of relationship; it is that of connection of ideas, or of chaining thoughts together until they exist only in the form of a series or a network. During the past year the influence of Dr. White and others, has been exerted to persuade teachers that this problem was not one of vital importance. Dr. White wrote an exhaustive paper upon the sub- ject, in which he threw almost no emphasis upon relationships, while he laid special stress upon the importance of isolvation of studies. I do not believe that the paper is in sympathy with the progressive move- ment in teaching. Teachers are fast coming to realize that a close connection among thoughts is one of the great conditions under which instruction can be interesting and thorough enough to influence men- tal life and character, and instead of relegating relationships to the background they are likely more and more to regard them as co-equal in importance with clearness and accuracy of ideas; hence the means of establishing them becomes one of the few great problems of teach- ing. The value of a close connection among thoughts being granted, what are the; means by which it may be secured? They are chiefly two: First, the curriculum must be so arranged that the several studies may be brought into a close relation with one another; second, the actual recitation must establish the relations that this careful planning has made possible. Let us consider the former means first. So far as I am able to analyze the situation, two objections to any such careful arrangement of the curriculum have found great weight among teachers during the past year; one of them is due to the doctrine of co-ordination, the other is the assertion that there is a necessary sequence within each study. Dr. Harris is the leading exponent of the doctrine of co-ordination, claiming that the curriculum consists of five groups of studies that are co-equal in rank. Quite probably he is right in this assertion ; the curriculum is fivefold in its nature, and the five parts are in a certain sense co-ordinate. Each group might possibly be likened to a segment of a circle, the five groups together making up the circle as 34 530 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary — — a whole, or covering the entire round of knowledge, so far as the pub- lic schools are concerned. But while this view may be correct, the chief implication that it has allowed seems to me unwarranted, namely, that these groups are ndt closely related to one another. The fact is that the common-school study of geography does not belong in any one of these groups, but is made up of parts of at least three of them. It is closely related to the group consisting of mathematics and physics, to the one including biology, and to that including history. I would grant that the parts of geography are not intimately connected ; but if there exists that isolation between any two of these groups that is often asserted, what excuse is there for allowing such a study as geography at all? Much the same remarks may be made in regard to drawing. The fact is that all that Dr. Harris has accomplished in his doctrine of the five groups is to show that there are five fields of knowledge which are unlike in kind. But unlikeness in kind does not by any means signify an absence of close relationships, and that is the chief point. It is true that inorganic nature, as mathematics and physics, is quite different from organic nature, as biology; but instead of being only distantly related, they are vitally connected, for plant and animal life is directly dependent upon inorganic nature. For instance, the leaves of trees are directly influenced by their physical environment. Their petioles are of different lengths in order that they may be well exposed to the air and sunlight. Their upper sur- face is glazed because since it is struck directly by the rays of the sun, evaporation could easily be too great ; this function is left more to the under side of the leaf. When evaporation may still be too great leaves sometimes stand on their edges, or in the tropical climates they protect themselves by their great thickness. It is true that in times past such relationships as these have been largely ignored, but we know now that they exist, and we ought to emphasize, not neglect them. Take another example: Dr. Harris puts literature into one group of studies, and history into another, and, although perhaps he has not so intended, he has, I think, encouraged the isolation of these two fields. But while they are very dissimilar, they are yet very closely connected. Will any practical teacher today oppose the selec- tion of many biographies, poems, and orations for the work in litera- ture which bear directly upon the men and events described in the history? Numerous other examples can be furnished proving an intimate relationship among these five groups; hence Dr. Harris* doc- trine of co-ordination does not show any want of vital connections among the ^\t fields of study, and should not have the effect of build- ing a chasm between them, as it has to a considerable extent. The second objection to an arrangement whereby the parts of the Department.] SOME APPLICATIONS OF CORRELATION. 531 curriculum may be closely connected is the supposed fact that there is a necessary sequence within each study, and this necessary order of topics would be destroyed if the arrangement of the subject-matter in any branch were partly determined by some other study. I confess my obtuseness in this matter. It is especially difficult for me to dis- cover a necessary sequence in reading, literature, written language, geography, and nature study. Probably a somewhat strict order would be demanded if these studies were taught as sciences, but very few, if any teachers, will assert that any subject should be taught as a science in the common school. It is true that there is often a desirable sequence in these branches, but there is also very often one that is weak and even und#irable, and we are inclined to overlook that fact too much. I believe that it is tradition, rather than careful study, that causes us to assert so generally that there is a necessary order of topics within each branch. If that is true, the objection to correla- tion from this side largely falls away. It should be remembered, too, that whenever there is a close sequence within a subject itself, the suggested close relationship of studies need not destroy it. A proper arrangement of the curriculum will aim chiefly to secure a close relationship between studies at points where a necessary sequence is lacking within the individual branch. Let us take an illustration : During the past year I have had a mixed fourth and fifth grade which was ready to study the geography of Europe. Since in history the story of Columbus had been treated in detail, it was deemed advisable that we begin with Spain in geo- graphy. The study of Granada later suggested the Alhambra for the art and for the manual training. Some parts of our Jewish temple, that is Moorish, were observed and sketched; the Alhambra was roughly modeled in wood, and the columns were molded in lead. The life of Columbus suggested certain poems in literature, and the subject-matter for written language was chosen from all these studies. The suggestions that the several studies thus received came as a bless- ing and not as a curse. The class had been studying the geography of the United States, and were ready to pass over to Europe, but had no adequate reason for selecting one part rather than another; in manual training they had done some whittling and made several nail boxes; they were ready for something more difficult,*but were indiffer- ent as to what it should be. They had been reading a book called **Coal and Coal Mining." and were glad to change over to a poem on Columbus and to Irving*s description of the Alhambra. The value of correlation is here apparent; it allowed several studies to receive sug- gestions as to their subject-matter at points where they themselves lacked sequence. Is not that a help rather than a hindrance? And 532 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Elementary does not this state of affairs in which sequence is lacking exist very often. Indeed it exists in several of the high-school studies as well as in those of the grammar school. When it is remembered, too, that after a certain topic in one study is once well introduced through another study, the latter has no further control over it — when that is remembered, I say, the fear that the close connection of facts within a subject is endangered by corre- lation is still further removed. In the above case the history of Columbus introduced the class to Spain, and then the geography of Spain was pursued as a topic by itself; the same was true in regard to the art and the manual training, etc. But when, finally, the history left Columbus, and proceeded to other men %m| to other countries, the teacher felt no demand to keep pace with it by abandoning Spain. And though Spain and Granada were finished in Geography long before the building representing the Alhambra was completed, that fact furnished no pretext for leaving the manual training work unfin- ished. This means that there was no attempt made to relate all the recitations closely to one another each day; the relationship was attempted rather for the month, or the term, than for the day, and a topic within any study after having been once begun was continued so long as there was a close sequence of ideas within it. Thus the sequence within individual studies will not suffer by correlation; wherever there is a close connection of points it is retained; and where this is lacking the gap is at least partially filled by the estab- lishment of a close connection with one or more other studies. So much for two objections to correlation, namely, that following from the unrelatedness of the five co-ordinate groups, and that refer- ring to the necessary sequence within each study. But there is another serious obstacle to the establishment of a close relationship among studies, viz., the danger of mixing the branches taught. In considering this matter it is necessary to discuss the second means mentioned above for securing an inter-relation among studies, namely, the actual recitation itself. A careful arrange- ment of the curriculum whereby a topic in one study will of itself remind pupils of a topic in some other is a great help towards con- nected thought, but the actual instruction should also be an important factor in establishing relationships. How shall it do this? It was my lot recently to observe a twelve-minute recitation with six-year-old children. Some apple blossoms were first presented to them for observation. The statements made in regard to these were written on the board and then read. Then the children themselves attempted to write some of the words. They also made a drawing to represent the blossom, and before the twelve minutes were passed their teacher Department.] SOME APPLICATIONS OF CORRELATION. 533 presented to them a short poem on the apple blossom which was read and reviewed. Thus within these few minutes five branches — nature study, reading, writing, drawing and literature — were presented. That was an excellent example of what ought not to be done, for, in attempting to teach everything^ nothing was really accomplished. The actual recitation should not attempt to establish relations by mixing subjects. Such instruction affords abundant occasion for insisting upon the isolation of studies; hence we hear that cry so frequently. • But cannot the relation between all studies even those that are co-or- dinate, be taught in the class room without such a mixture? That is one of the most important questions in the whole matter. Dr. White's answer is **No, it cannot be done." On page 53 of the ** Sec- ond Herbartian Year Book** he says, **How can a teacher show pupils the relation of a known thing to an unknown thing? To see this relation, both things must be in the pupil's mind. Hence in the same lesson the facts to be related must be taught or reviewed. It seems clear that the teaching of the relations between co-ordinate studies makes the isolation of studies in class instruction impossible." This conclusion seems to me unwarranted ; in reaching it Dr. White has depended upon abstract reasoning, and is evidently not acquainted with the plan by which the friends of correlation would see it real- ized. Let an example show some parts of that plan: A mixed fourth and fifth grade was mentioned above, as having studied the life of Columbus and as having proceeded from it to the Geography of Spain. Granting the propriety of this step, several important questions are in place, as follows : 1. Can the history be used to introduce the general topic, Spain, without any confusion of subjects? 2. As particular topics are later reached, like sheep raising on the plateau, Madrid, Gibralter, etc., can past related experiences, either from history, reading, etc., or from the home life, likewise be used to introduce them without sacrificing the geographical aim? 3. When in the midst of recitation advanced work has been reached, can facts, like the barrenness of the great plateau of Spain, be explained through familiar ones drawn from various sources without again losing sight of the geographical aim and without confusing sub- jects? With these questions in mind let us proceed to the actual teach- ing. The first recitation on Spain ran somewhat as follows : Let us talk about the country from which Columbus secured help for the dis- covery of America. Why do you suppose he sought help of Spain? Because it was a prosperous country ; there were large, powerful cities there; it had many vessels, etc. What cities have you already 534 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Elementary become acquainted with? Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. What other places do you know? Salamanca, Palos, Malaga, and Gibraltar. Can you point them out on the map? What do you remember about each? etc. It may easily occupy a whole recitation to recall these facts, the answer to the last question especially occupying much time. Suppose the second recitation now begins : It being quickly seen that most of the cities mentioned are along the coast, the following aim may be stated : Let us see why most of the cities of Spain are along the coast. Then will follow a discussion of the harbor there, the fer- tility of the soil around the edge of Spain, etc., while the high plateau is largely barren, the rivers not being navigable, the rains not being able to reach it, there being few woods, little grass, and few people upon it. This is pure geography. And the former recitation was also primarily geography; while the experiences of Columbus were used to introduce the class to Spain, this review of historical facts was not undertaken for its own sake, but for the sake of establishing among the children a feeling of interest in Spain ; there was no con- fusion of studies, for history played a subordinate rdle^ and the recita- tion was controlled primarily by a geographical aim. Take another example: In spite of Dr. Harris' separation of literature from history, it is quite fitting after having finished the life of Columbus to study Tennyson's poem of **Columbus. " Suppose it be thus introduced: Let us se^ how Tennyson describes the feelings of Columbus in prison. What thoughts do you think might be uppermost in our hero's mind? The answers would come, events of Barcelona, the argument of his case at Salamanca, his downfall caused by his enemies at court, his chains, what people would say of him in the future, etc. This again would be an incidental review of history which might occupy consid- erable time. But it is a review not undertaken for its own sake but as a direct preparation for a poem; hence it is controlled by a distinct literary aim and constitutes a part of the study called literature. When the study of the poem itself begins, it, too, is unmistakably literature and not history, and it will remain literature. This is a typical case; hence the answer to our first question is evident; namely, the materials in one study can be used to introduce a class to a gen- eral topic in another, establishing a close relation, but without any confusion of subjects. Now as to the second question: The children may have some related past experiences when the particular topic Madrid is reached. They may be able to describe to some extent the national game of bull fighting, or they may be acquainted with some of the Spanish paintings, especially those of Murillo, or they may have heard about the barrenness of the soil about the city and the rawness of the wind. This knowledge may come from general reading, or Department.] SOME APPLICATIONS OF CORRELATION, 535 p' from art study, or from past geography, etc. But whatever its source it can be used to introduce the new topic without danger of any con- fusion of studies. For several years there has been talk in this coun- try about the five principal steps in instruction. It is the first of these steps that is involved here. Many teachers agree that in approaching any new topic it is necessary to occupy a period solely in the collection of the past experiences that bear closely upon it. If the curriculum has been so arranged that history is intimately related to the geography then the facts in history that bear upon a certain sub- ject in geography would be collected, and also facts bearing upon the same subject from any other source, as literature, nature study, etc. After the past related experiences are Collected, that form the founda- tion of the new knowledge, or get one into the proper mood for receiving it, the latter itself is presented and occupies the entire time. We conclude, therefore, that subject-matter that has already been taught in one study may be used as an instrument to introduce a gen- eral topic in another; also that each day's recitation may begin by recalling past related experiences from any source; that all this may be done without any necessity of mixing studies. This can be -done in any subject without sacrificing the chief aim of that study. If time permitted, it would be possible to show not only that this can be done, but that, if it is not done^ instruction is lamentably weak. Without the attempt to make use of ideas in one study that have already been taught in another, many of the most interesting relations are omitted, and thoroughness of instruction, even in the study that we are desir- ing to isolate, is made impossible. These facts should be borne in mind in all discussion of this problem. Two questions have now been answered. They pertained to the use of familiar experiences at the opening of the recitation. The third pertains to the advance work; it asks whether or not, in the midst of the recitation, new facts can be explained by reference to familiar ones drawn from various sources, without losing sight of the aim of the particular study. The answer can be brief. Many excellent teachers throughout the country follow to a considerable degree the developing method of instruction. For instance, they would give to a class the one fact that a few miles from the coast Spain rises abruptly into a plateau, and that the whole of the interior of the country is a vast plateau a half mile high. The children must give the consequences. What effect would that have upon the rains? They would fall upon the edge of the plateau and not reach its interior. What effect would th^it have upon the lowland around the edge of Spain? Fertile. Upon the number of people living there? Great number, etc. What about the navigability of the rivers? They would have falls, since the 536 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Elementary plateau rises so abruptly ; hence not be navigable. What about the number and size of cities on the plateau — the presence of woods, birds, game, etc.? The teacher here would teach solely by putting ques- ' tions. The children would learn solely by drawing conclusions from the facts learned in the past, coming from physics, physical geography, general reading, travel, history, etc. Here is an abundant application of the material from other studies. And yet is not this geography proper? Is not the geographical aim kept distinctly in mind through- 1 out? Is there then any confusion of studies, although there is so much review of different ones? This again is a typical case, and the conclusion is reached that the mixing or confusing of studies can be avoided, even though the beginning of the recitation be occupied ' solely with recalling the past experiences that bear on the topic in hand, and the advance likewise employ abundantly subject-matter * from many studies. Only one precaution needs to be greatly empha- sized, namely, that whatever past experiences be reviewed, they be reviewed not for their own sake but for the sake of the work in hand; they must contribute to the accomplishment of the aim of the study concerned ; they must be entirely subordinated to the branch that we are professing to teach at the time. Whatever is taught must be primarily either history or geography, or writing or reading, etc., but it cannot be two or three of these combined. Dr. Harris has lately thrown great stress upon the importance of isolating each study from all the others. We agree with him exactly upon this point interpreted in our sense. We agree that no good instruction can take place when the teacher is not quite sure whether she is teaching one subject or some other, because of the mixture. Even in the lowest primary grade both teacher and children should know whether they are learn- ing primarily to read, in a given recitation, or to write. The two employments are very different in kind, and if the class is doing one of them well, it cannot give equal attention to the other or to several others. But, while it is extremely important that one subject be supreme during each recitation period, there is no objection whatever to allowing one or several studies to be used to introduce a large topic in another, or the topic for each day*s recitation, or to form the basis for drawing conclusions on points that unquestionably constitute a part of that study which is under consideration. I have thus far reached three conclusions, that the assertions in regard to co-ordinate groups of studies, and also in regard to a neces- sary sequence *vithin each study, offer no serious obstacles to the establishment of a close relationship among subjects; thirdly, that the arrangement of the curriculum for this purpose does not necessitate any mixing of studies ; and I have suggested that attempts to relate Department.] DISCUSSION, 537 Studies in some such way as mentioned are not only possible, but highly desirable; that instruction which does not actually undertake these relationships is lamentably weak. Finally, one thought deserves emphasis. All instruction culmi- nates in the application of knowledge ; the extent to which truths can be applied is the test of their worth. Future schemes for correlation will certainly take this fact more and more into consideration. The kindergarten presents to us the ideal in this respect. It has four lines of work, viz., the morning circle, aiming primarily to present rich thoughts, and the other three attempting to represent these same thoughts in new ways and to apply them to life. The common- school curriculum should establish some such relationship among its studies. At present we have too many studies oflFering new facts, and too few applying what have been offered. It is quite possible for us to follow the lead of the kindergarten more than we usually do. The drawing, written language, manual training, and general exercises, including the celebration of holidays, birthdays, etc., can all be regarded as lines of work which test and apply what has already been learned. Our curriculum is poorly planned until these studies are viewed more in this light, and until others, including perhaps the games of the school, are looked upon chiefly as means for applying knowledge gotten from various sources. DISCUSSION. Superintendent Clarence F. Carroll, Worcester, Mass. — The efforts in the direction of correlation or unity in our methods of instruction are explained by the prominence that has recently been given to a single principle of psychology, namely, association of ideas. In operation this principle may be stated in two ways: (i) An intelligent man is one who is able, without effort, to supplement his knowledge of one subject by a large acquaintance with other kindred subjects. That is, no subject in his mind stands alone; his thinking constantly covers a wide range of information. Stating the same thing in another way, from a physiological standpoint, we may say that the different sections of the brain have worked together so that when a given part is active other parts act almost automatically. Whatever be the terms in which we express ourselves, we imply that the cultivation of the brain tracts or general information implies some fixed condi- tion. A man, once intelligent, can never be anything else. If we keep this principle in mind it is not difficult to explain education or development. Assuming the presence of discipline, whatever increases the range of information, whatever brings different forms of information into organic relation contributes to intelligence. 538 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Elementary (2) Another underlying principle is found in the familiar statement that we must be interested in order to acquire knowledge. Interest is an important factor in the successful operation of the principle of association. Not only is interest based upon good philosophy and good physiology, but it is economical in the highest degree. Relying upon these fundamental propositions, we can explain the examples of unity in teaching that have come into view within the last few years. (3) It is important that we inquire here what is meant by disciplinary studies. Some of the advocates of the old order still claim that a man may be well edu- cated if he has been trained in a few subjects, and has attained a certain power in given directions. I must agree with those who claim, rather, that such a limited form of discipline does not necessarily make a man intelligent. The theory of association compels a curriculum as broad as our civilization, and training with the mere tools of learning, namely, the three R's, may be carried on without reference to the question of the general information of the learner. In giving instances of unity as they come under the eye of the careful observer, we shall find ourselves dealing principally with what may be termed "culture" subjects. First, the most important center of association in teaching has been found to be language and reading. In the study of botany, geology, physics, chemistry, physiology, in fact, all forms of natural and physical science, we teach by experiment, and language instruction should here be at its best. Les- sons in these subjects should always be talking lessons. The freedom and interest possible here are almost unequalled by any other work found in the public schools. Correct expression may be not less clearly and successfully taught in connection with literature, history, and social and political geography. The interchange of thought between the pupil and the teacher, when dealing with these subjects, is, or ought to be, a living force in the schoolroom. Again, we need hardly add that the reading book so familiar in the schoolroom of ten years ago has been almost entirely replaced by books dealing with these five subjects that I have named. The power of the silint revolution in this direction cannot be overstated. (4) Drawing, as a means of expression or illustration, has come to be abso- lutely indispensable in connection with these same five subjects. Every picture or sketch, whether produced by an author or by a child, is evidence in point. Working within the same group, an illustration of association is found in the combination that any intelligent teacher unconsciously makes between literature and history, between history and geography, and among the three at once. (5) The study of botany, zoOlogy, physiology, or physical geography cannot be intelligently carried on without a working knowledge of physics. Every movement of the vital current in plant or tree, in the human body or in the body of an animal, every inhalation of the breath, every variety of movement, every contour of the earth, every movement of wind or of water, the action of every force in nature is made intelligible only by understanding \ery simple laws of physics. An acquaintance with the operation of the chemical laws of reaction is not less necessary in the study of these same subjects. (6) It is sometimes more difficult, but not less effective, to establish unity between two parts of the same subject. Considered by itself, there is no such thing, today, as the history of America. Our relations are with all parts of the earth. Our civilization is an organic part of a greater whole, and the true student of the history of the past keeps this fact in mind. A good teacher of arithmetic teaches parts with wholes; fractions with whole numbers. Again, she combines percentage with common fractions, and combines Department.] DISCUSSION, ^jp both common fractions and percentage with weights and measures. In fact, every problem has to do, or ought to have to do, with distance, time, and quantity. Every schoolroom bears conclusive evidence of the progress in the direction of unity in our methods of instruction. Every exhibit of the work done in a school, or a system of schools, brings this idea to the front. In this discussion I have used the terms correlation, association, and unity to suit my own preference. The philosophers can settle at their own convenience fine questions of distinction that have been thrust before us during the last two years. As teachers, we are interested in the business side of this question. With a few axioms upon which we can confidently rely, it is our duty and privi- lege to put theories that we have accepted into practice, ever holding ourselves ready to review both our method and our theory. Dr. Charles A. McMurry, The University of Chicago. — Referring to the discussion by Superintendent Carroll of Worcester, he admitted that correlation has nothing new to offer, but it has something tremendously old for American teachers to realize. He referred at some length to Mr. Carroll's illustration con- cerning Buffalo, and claimed that the things a teacher would not be found able to impart are just the things which we have a right to demand of the teacher. The work begins and ends with the teacher. The trouble is that the teacher does not recognize the value of relations, and in the illustration of Buffalo the whole point of the illustration is dependent on the relations of Buffalo to the environ- ment referred to by the speaker. The teacher must recognize the value of these relations, and then the child will understand what he is taught. The teacher must know that Buffalo has the very relations which have been pointed out. In- deed, the seeing of relations is the most important work with which teachers and superintendents have to do in their work of teaching. He further said that teachers are required to reconcile two apparently contradictory ideas, those of isolation and correlation. Dr. Emerson E. White said that one excludes the other. It should be the purpose of the teacher to show that one does not exclude the other; but that they may be harmonized. To some extent each study must be isolated in order that a beginning may be made in the understanding of that sub- ject; but afterward it must be taught in its relations with all other subjects in order that the understanding may be complete. The difficulty which the teacher experiences is in seeing the necessity of bringing these apparently opposing principles not only into reconciliation, but into such relations that their combina- tion gives greater strength. Dr. White has said that isolation is the fundamental principle of the course of study. Mr. McMurry endeavored to show the untenable character of this statement by comparing the school curriculum with the family. To some extent isolation here seems to be the principle. The father must attend to his daily work by himself, the child must go to school, and the mother must attend to the home duties; and yet isolation is not the fundamental principle of the fam- ily. The fundamental idea of the family is unity. In a similar manner there is a conception of a school course in which each study must be considered by itself but this is only a partial conception. The faculties of the mind must be asso- ciated, and there must be a linking together, a concentration of all the powers to the producing of a good result, and when this is accomplished the mind is work- ing tinder the most favorable auspices. There is a practical difficulty in the mixing of studies which is apparent! involved by correlation. Many teachers make serious and numerous mistakes at this point. The reason is that they do not grasp the principle of correlation. 540 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary It is a great principle and cannot be handled thoughtlessly. The teacher must recognize that all topics are not of equal importance. It is absurd to suppose that they must be mixed up in a recitation on the assumption that they are of equal importance. In every recitation relations must be seen, and some control- ling idea is necessary to give unity to the recitation, and in the grasping of this conception the whole method of instruction is involved. Th^ true method of employing correlation cannot be settled in a moment; it is the product of careful thought. Dr. W. a. Bell, of Indianapolis, Ind., announced that he thoroughly agreed with what had been said on both sides. He, however, desired especially to enforce the last statement of the last speaker. There must be a certain thing to be sought in a recitation, a certain point to be reached. There must also be a knowledge of related matters which are to be brought into the recitation to rein- force the centra] purpose. The trouble is that people only get a general idea of this subject, and many teachers, instead of having a central idea and being will- ing to exclude what does not hold an important relation to that idea, try to make use of everything related to what they are teaching, and the result is a failure to leave clear impressions. If the chaotic teaching of some teachers who have got this erroneous idea is to be the only alternative with the present method of teaching in which subjects are isolated, it would be better to go back to the isolated method. It requires on the part of the teacher a great deal of courage, in teaching geography and involv- ing the historical relations of the topic taught, to use only what is necessary, and to resolutely cut out what is not. The danger to which this subject of correla- tion is exposed is dissipation. We must have associated ideas in the recitation, but these ideas are to be introduced only so far as they are necessary to the clear presentation of whatever the teacher has in mind to present. Dr. F. M. McMurry, in closing the discussion said: I think that compar- atively little progress has been made during the past year in regard to the sub- ject of correlation. But if the remarks of this afternoon are representative of opinions in general, there is much hope for the future. Four obstacles have stood in the way of co-ordination First, the doctrine of co-ordination; second, that there is a necessary sequence within each study ; third, the danger of artificial relationships among studies ; and, fourth, the danger of mixing studies. We seem agreed that the doctrine of co-ordination does not necessarily stand opposed to correlation. We can grant that Dr. Harris is right in his assertion of five co-ordi- nate groups of studies, and at the same time believe heartily in close relation- ships among them. Second, as to the sequence within each study. Superintend- ent Carroll removes that difficulty by declaring that there is no necessary order of topics, even in arithmetic. We see, then, these two hindrances set aside. As to the third point, it is true that there is always danger of establishing superficial relationships among subjects. But that danger will be removed to a considerable extent if we endeavor to correlate, not by days and weeks, but by months and by terms. Fourth, the much dreaded mixing of studies can also be avoided if we take pains to introduce a topic by related experiences in other studies, and in advance work to subordinate entirely the thoughts from other studies to the aim of the particular study under consideration. The mixing of studies, in other words, can be largely avoided if we fix a definite aim in mind for each recitation and hold to it closely. Department.] VERTICAL WRITING. 541 VERTICAL WRITING. BY MISS ANNIE E. HILLS, DIRECTOR 0¥ PENMANSHIP, SPRINGFIELD, MASS. Probably no topic has provoked more frequent discussion or aroused greater diversity of opinion in educational circles«than vertical writing. While some have denounced it as a passing fad, or a worth- less innovation which ought never to be seriously considered as a rival of the orthodox, slanting hand,others have claimed superior advantages for it. Its friends have increased in numbers, and at the present time almost all the more progressive cities and towns in the country have made or are about to make, a trial of it. In many places where it has been introduced into a few schools the experiment has been so satis- factory that it has been adopted in all the schools. Vertical writing is not new, as up to the middle of the sixteenth century nearly all handwriting was upright. In its earliest and crudest forms writing was vertical. Specimens of the Roman cursive hand of the fifth century show a decided slope. In the year 600 the Greek uncial hand changed from the round to the oval style and many of the letters were compressed into a narrow shape. In the seventh century this hand began to slope to the right and continued in use through the eighth and ninth centuries. With these two exceptions old manuscripts all exhibit a vertical down stroke. In old cuts and pictures the position shown is erect and straight, the book or parchment being directly in front of the writer. From the twelth century to the time of the introduction of printing there were two well-defined and distinct styles of writing — the set book hand and the cursive. The set book hand filled the place now occu- pied by printed books, the writing being regular, the lines kept^even by ruling, and pages provided with regular margins. The cursive hand, in which the letters were fundamentally the same as in the set book hand, was used for correspondence and business purposes. The set book hand disappeared when printing came, but the cursive neces- sarily remained. Up to this time the style of letters used in the cursive hand had been largely influenced by the set book hand, but later took on a more flowing style. It is very interesting to know that handwriting, like every other art, has its different phases of growth, perfection and decay. A par- ticular form of writing is gradually developed, then takes a finished or caligraphic style and becomes the hand of its period, then deterior- ates, breaks up and disappears, being meanwhile superseded by 542 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary ' another style which is either developed from the old, or introduced independently, runs the same course, and in its turn is displaced by a younger rival. So in changing from slanting to vertical writing his- tory is only repeating itself. The slanting or Italian style of writing was invented by Aldus Manutius of Venice, early in 1500, and was dedicated to the Italian States. It spread to France and England when Queen Elizabeth changed- her» upright style to the sloping, and slanting writing then came into fashion in England. German writing succumbed to the new fashion at about the same time. As the art of flourishing was more readily developed with the sloping style, the simpler strokes of the vertical were abandoned by the writing masters in their preference for more artistic and complicated forms. No serious attempt has ever been made to revive the discarded and forgotten vertical until about ten or fifteen years ago, when it was found that in Germany, France, and England, spinal curvature and short sight were becoming so general among school children, and were increasing to such an alarming extent, that special inquiry into the cause seemed imperative. First, it was thought that the teachers were to blame, that they were careless about the positions of the pupils; but it was proven to the contrary, for bad positions were prevalent where the teachers were the most careful and painstaking A crusade was next made against desks and seats ; the former were too sloping or otherwise, or were not adjustable, so they bought desks that were adjustable, with broader seats, but still the bad positions of the children remained. The question of light was next considered, but when that was remedied the positions of the children were not improved.' Attention was at last directed to the positions of the children while writirrg, and the unanimous opinion of the numerous experts engaged in the invesigations was that slanting writing was the undoubted cause of the injurious postures of the pupils while writing. Some peo- ple say this is nonsense. I thought so until I began to study up the matter, and then I changed my mind. Eminent surgeons in France and Germany say that shortsighted- ness is developed almost exclusively during school life, as is also scoliosis or lateral curvature of the spine, and statistical inquiries prove that it is not because these diseases occur at this particular period, but that the cause is due to the bad positions of the children while writing. It is also stated by an eminent surgeon (Eulenberg) that 90 per cent, of the curvatures of the spine which do not arise from some special disease is developed during school life, from the Department.] VERTICAL WRITING, 543 ages of six to fourteen years. The International Congress of London and the Imperial and Royal Council of Hygiene of Vienna favored ver- tical handwriting on hygienic grounds. The school board of London recommended that upright writing be introduced in elementary and secondary schools, and generally taught, because it had clearly demon- strated to them by its adoption the injurious postures productive of spiniEil curvature and short sight are to a very great extent avoided. The French Academy of Medicine favored upright writing for the same reason. The Supreme Council of Hygiene of Austria decided that upright writing obviates one cause of spinal curvature. Doctors Berlin and Remboldt for the Wurtemburg government proved that the position that children were obliged to take in the sloping style causes the head and one shoulder to droop and the spine to curve. Dr. Javal, the Minister of Public Instruction in France, says: ** Doubtless a pupil may hold himself badly even while writing the vertical hand, with the paper straight in front of him, but he can hold himself well, whereas, with the present way of teaching the slanting hand, it is a physiolo- gical impossibility." It might be well to say here that, while vertical writing does improve the position of the pupils without so much care on the part of the teacher, it is often found that children sit very badly even when holding their papers in front of them ; this is especially true where the discipline is lax. Dr. Edward R. Shaw, dean of the New York University School of Pedagogy, says: **In visiting schools abroad, by actual count, the percentage that sat in a good position was not greater than the per- centage in this country where the slanting writing is being used." Dr. Paul Schubert, in a very interesting lecture delivered before the Society of Public Hygiene in Nuremberg, says: **The danger in the slanting writing lies in the fact that there seems to be no means of keeping the copy book in any fixed position; that there seems to be an almost irresistible tendency for turning and pushing the copy book till the body is twisted in a dangerous way." This position is not only bad for the spine but v^ry injurious to the eyes. If you do not believe this, try an experiment. Take a book and hold it in this way and try to read for two or three minutes. The position of the pupil at the desk is governed largely by the position of the paper on the desk ; as the paper is turned, the pupil is drawn around by it as the steel is drawn by the magnet. Notice that in the best school in slanting writing the heads are slightly twisted. You may be surprised to find, if you have never tried the experiment, that when you ask the children to turn their books around in front of them, taking the position for vertical writing. 544 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary and ask them all to look down on their papers, every head which in the position for slanting writing was turned a little to one side, straightens as the paper or book is brought around. It is this turning of the head and twisting of the neck that is considered so injurious. The position required for slanting writing is not and cannot be hygie- nic. Some teachers have attempted to teach slanting writing with the vertical position. In so doing, Dr. Javal says they are demanding something that is contrary to nature, because the weight of the body is thrown on the left side and the position they are obliged to assume is even more harmful than any of the others. When we began to use the vertical writing I really did not expect that the positions of the pupils would improve very much, but it is a fact that in the schools where we have introduced it the pupils sit much better than they ever did before, and far better than where the slanting hand is being used. Dr. R. Leibrich, consulting ophthalmic surgeon to St. Thomas' Hospital, says: **But what now is the normal posture? The upper part of the body is to be kept straight, the vertebral column neither twisted to the right nor to the left; the shoulder blades both of the same height are, together with the upper arm, freely suspended on the ribs, and in no way supporting the tody ; both elbows on a level with each other and almost perpendicular under the shoulder joint without any support ; only the hands and part of the forearms resting on the table ; the weight of the head freely balanced on the vertebral column and not on any account bent forward, but only turned so much round its horizontal axis that the face is inclined sufficiently to prevent the angle at which the eye is fixed on the book from being too pointed." Many of the advocates of vertical writing in this country have made such sweeping statements about it and have been so extravagant in their claims made for it that not a few have become prejudiced against it; for example, at a school superintendents' convention not long ago, one of the members in his enthusiasm over vertical writing said: **It is to be the handwriting of the future. Why, even now all business houses are demanding that their clerks shall write the ver- tical hand.** A man in the audience arose, and in a very deliberate manner asked if he would name a few; he did n*t care for a long list, but a few of the leading firms where vertical writing was actually required. The superintendent was unable to recall the names of any particular firm at that moment. We all know that a good, plain, legible hand is required in business, but we also know that in all pro- bability no young man would lose a position because he did not write a perfectly vertical hand. Scores of teachers have said to me, ''Don't you like vertical writ- Department.] VERTICAL WRITING. 543 ing? It *s so natural ! Children always write a vertical hand when they first enter school.** Why, so many articles have been written to prove its naturalness that one would almost suppose that children were born with full-fledged handwritings of their own, and the great object of teachers, more especially of writing teachers, had been to break up this wonderful hand, and force upon them a handwriting that was neither suited to their present needs, or that would be of any value to them hereafter. These infant prodigies must have inhabited some other part of the globe ; we never happened to have any of them in Springfield. While it is true that there is a tendency among children to write more nearly upright than at an angle of 52°, because they naturally sit facing the desk, it is also true that they do not write at any uni- form slant. When children first enter school they write on as many different slants as there are children, and they continue to do so until they learn the relative position of the arm to the paper. I am very fully convinced that it is an easier hand for children to learn, but whether it is because it is more natural, or because children naturally write with a finger movement, I am not sure. A very good vertical hand may be written with a finger movement, and as small children write with their fingers, in spite of all training on muscular movements, the average work done by pupils in the vertical hand is far better than that done in the sloping style. LEGIBILITY. I It is not necessary to say much about legibility because almost everyone admits that it is more legible, not simply because it is verti- cal (for a slanting hand straightened up is not very much more legible than the same hand slanted). The vertical hand is wider and is con- trolled by an entirely different movement, a pulling or rolling move- ment. Slanting writing requires a pushing movement; you are on the left-hand side of a word and you push through it. In vertical writing you are on the right-hand side of the word and pull through it. If you use the same movement on the vertical that you do on the slant- ing you make a failure of it. Vertical writing is not slanting writing straightened up. While it is true that a number of vertical lines are more legible than the same number of slanting lines would be the same distance apart, the width of the letters, the broader turns and the space between them, help to make it legible, but letters should not be too wide, or you lose what speed there is in the hand. Is it easier to teach? Yes, but do n*t expect it to teach itself, nor 35 5^6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Elementary would I advise any one to follow a rule I saw given in an educational paper, not long ago, which ran as follows: **No special method need be employed in teaching vertical writing. The lessons may be given on the same old plan.** What is the same old plan? We know what the results are if we do not know what the **same old plan'* is. We know it has resulted in poor writing enough without having any more of the same kind. The writer goes on to say — **The pen may be held in the prescribed way or in any easy position.*' A very nice, easy way to do, no doubt, but wrong, very wrong indeed. The author did not sign his name. I do n't blame him, I '11 venture to say the editor could n't have deciphered it if he had. The same amount of effort put forth on the vertical that has been given to the slanting hand brings far better results, because it takes less time to learn it, and because the written papers can be so much more quickly looked over and corrected. It is more satisfactory because the teachers can learn to write it quicker and better on the boards than they ever did the slanting hand, and the children can copy the work with less strain to their eyes. One very remarkable thing about it is that the teachers and children like it so much. I imagine the children like it because they can satisfy themselves better with it. Children like to do what they can do well, and the teachers like it because so many of the children can learn to write it well. Many people ask, **Is there any speed in it? Can you write it with a free movement? I want nothing to do with a slow, drawn-out finger movement.** A finger movement is not always a slow, drawn-out movement. A counting movement need never be a drawn-out move- ment, even when a finger movement is used. Vertical writing can and should be written with a rapid and con- tinuous movement, for a continuous movement is the secret of speed. Does the Empire Express, the fastest train in the world, stop and start over again at all the stations? Do you thing the earth could make her annual trip around the sun in 365 days if she stopped occa- sionally for a holiday or took a summer vacation? To me, one of the beauties of vertical writing is that it can be written with so many different movements. It can be written with the muscles of the forearm, it can be written with the whole arm, or with a combined movement; and another way in which it can be writ- ten quite rapidly is to rest the wrist and use a vibratory movement. Short hand writers often use this movement. I have an announcement to make to ladies which I am very sure will interest them, and that is that a very fair vertical hand may be Department.] VERTICAL WRfTfNG. 547 written even if you hold your writing materials in your lap. While it may not be a very beautiful hand, written with these various move- ments, it is very rapid and perfectly legible, and is n't that what writ- ing is for after all — to be read and not to be looked at as a work of art? Some people say, **I do n*t like the looks of vertical writing." Is not that because we are not accustomed to it? I am sure that the more one sees of it the better he likes it. Is n't it because we do not like to change, that we do not like to give up our old and cherished theories? Oh what a bundle of notions we are! We comfort our- selves by repeating the old adage, **You can't teach an old dog new thicks," forgetting that while it may be true of dogs, it ought never to be true of more intelligent beings. We can learn new things. We can accustom ourselves to new things if we will. Thackeray said that to learn a new language or a new handwriting would almost make a man over again, and is n't it a good plan to be made all over again occasionally? To look at life from an entirely new standpoint; wasn't that what Thackeray meant? I know it is almost an impossibility for a trained penman to make vertical writing look right; it goes against all his preconceived notions of good writ- ing; he is sure the movement is wrong; how can you write, he asks, your hand is right in the way; he knows it 's an utter impossibility to write it as rapidly, because he has to keep shifting his arm, and it stands to reason that if you have to keep stopping and starting over again you cannot write as rapidly, and yet, when he practices, he finds that his arm does in some unaccountable way move across the paper just as rapidly as when he was writing the slanting hand. I can understand very readily why the business college man does n't always approve of vertical writing. His pupils are older, grown men and women.. He looks at it from that standpoint, and not from the standpoint of the teacher. I am not at all sensitive about telling you that I was very much opposed to vertical writing myself, but because I was opposed to it three years ago is no reason why I should be now, if during that time I have found that by actual experience in teaching it, and it is the only way to find it out, it is better for children. I was quite positive, all by myself, that vertical writing would not do all that was claimed for it, but I was perfectly willing to give it the best chance in the world. It was first tried as an experiment in a nine-room building. Last October it was introduced into the first three grades throughout the city. February ist, into all of the fourth grades. Next fall it is to be introduced into all of the grammar grades. In the two or three places where vertical writing has not given 348 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [ElcmenUry satisfaction it has been, I think, because no books have been intro- duced ; teachers have had no instruction and the system has not had a fair trial. In places where vertical writing is to be introduced the teachers should be instructed. It is not fair to the system or to the teachers to ask them to take up a line of work they know nothing about. If you can't have a supervisor all the time, have a competent teacher to instruct the teachers — some lessons on the board and on paper, with the best methods for teaching the children. The wonder to me has always been, not that children do not write better, but that they write as well as they do with the poor teaching they have. When teachers are trained to teach writing as they are trained to teach geography, arithmetic, language and almost every other study, then, and not till then, shall we get good results. Poor writing in any hand comes from poor teaching and from allowing pupils to form careless, slovenly habits of writing when they are in school. Every normal school should have the best teacher of penmanship^ that can be obtained, and every state should have some one appointed to look after the teaching of penmanship. Every city should have a supervisor of writing as much as a supervisor of music and drawing. Teachers of penmanship instead of opposing vertical writing ought to be thankful for all this controversy, for it has created an interest greater than ever before in the subject. Vertical writing is a protest against the bad positions of the children, and against the illegible scrawls of grown people, and I am in hopes that as a result of these discussions the pupils in our schools will go out into the world with straight backs — two good eyes, and a handwriting that he who runs may read. If vertical writing will accomplish this, instead of its being a "fad" it will be one of the best and most lasting things we have in our edu- cational system. DISCUSSION. Professor R. K. Row, Training School, Kingston, Ontario. — From the point of view of a general educator, rather than that of the professional penman, there are two or three ideas regarding writing I should like to discuss, and my criti- cism of Miss Hill's paper, will, I think, be clearly implied in the statement of my own view. It is essential that writing should be: (i) legible, (2) hygienic, (3) rapid. The superior legibility of vertical as compared with sloping writing is gener- ally admitted, but there are essentially different styles of vertical writing and cor- responding degrees of legibility, and this is especially noticeable when speed also becomes a factor. Departmenu] DISCUSSION. 549 We can beat approach the point of view I wish you to gel by first considering position. There should be no question that the most hygienic silting posture is with the trunlf self-supporting. This position at a desk necessitates keeping the elbows close to the sides, because to raise the arms, spread [hem outward, and especially to carry them forward, as for sloping writing, is sure to be followed by a forward inciination of the head and shoulders, and a consequent compression of the vital organs. Leading French and German authorities have for some time been recommending this position, illustrated in Fig, I, and it has begun to find favor in America. Fic. I. Now, observe that when ihe elbow is kept close to the side, and the forearm raised the palm of the hand is turned inward, and if the pen is then taken the hand will be seen to rest somewhat upon its side. This position aSords a high degree of hand control. It is the position naturally taken to put a line point on a pencil, to thread a needle; it is the writing position of the reporter on the street, of the railway mail clerk, in fact of all who must write without a desk. But it is obvious that with such a position of the hand and arm, freedom in sloping writing is impassible. Therefore if this position is the most hygienic, sloping writing is incompatible with the most healthful posture. Now, let us approach the matter in another way. The approved position for sloping writing is, I think, with the palm of the hand downward, the elbows spread, and carried somewhat forward so that the fleshy part of the forearm will rest upon the desk. It has long been maintained that this is a natural writing position, and that it is absolutely essential to the sliding muscular movement, the pride of every thoroughly trained sloping writer. Bui it has just been pointed out, when the arms are raised and carried forward, there is an inevitable tend- ency to incline the head and shoulders. Hence, If my observations are right, the approved position for sloping writing naturally leads to a very unhygienic one. In defense of this position it will he said that it gives a high degree of arm control, and produces the smoothest and most graceful letter forms, and so it does, for careful writing, and even admits of considerable rapidity, but, owing to the peculiar forward-and-bacb movement, as the speed increases the legibility rapidly declines. It may be very fast, but when it is so it is usually very bad. For speed It sacrifices a quality vastly more important. 550 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary Strange to say, this is the hand position nearly always shown and recom- mended for vertical writing, but this recommendation i», in a measure, consistent with the style of writing also commonly shown which retains essential character- istics of the sloping hand, Fig. 2. /vyxjiAaaa/vyw Fig. 2. This writing, you will observe, retains the oblique up stroke which has been the basis of an important movement drill, considered essential to sloping writing. Quite naturally this feature has been carried into vertical writing by simply changing the direction of the down stroke. Hence we have a hybrid style of writing, and what is worse, but a natural consequence, a hybrid movement, a forward oblique up stroke and a vertical down stroke, consequently a zigzag movement. It is the style adopted by the Germans, and by a large number of American publishers, and it is not surprising that in some quarters vertical writ- ing is considered slow. When the hand must essentially change the kind and direction of its movement at the end of each short stroke, a rapid action, produc- ing legible letter forms is impossible. The foundation of true vertical writing is the broad ellipse, the whole of which, made in either direction, or either the upper or lower half, can be executed very easily, and hence with great speed. Fig. 3. Fig. 3. Nearly all the small letters are composed of this lower half of the ellipse, the under turn. Because there is so much of this easy movement in vertical writing, and because it takes time to change the direction of the niovement, a few persons adopt it exclusively, producing the style shown in Fig. 4. >uuj2XjLuuullu Fig. 4. Such persons evidently place ease and speed before legibility, a principle the schools cannot recognize. There is still another class of persons who appreciate the upper round turn in part, using it for initials, m*s and n's, and in other places where quite convenient, but making these letters sharp where they follow letters made with the under movement. Fig. 5. Observe how much more legible this is than the style Fig. 5. Fig. 6. shown in Fig. 4. But even this style no one would think of teaching. We must retain the upper round turn wherever it is needed for undoubted legibility. Fig. 6. If, then, this hand is the most legible, admits of the most hygienic postun;^, and a Department.] DISC USSION, 55 1 simple, easy, natural movement, it must also be a rapid style, for speed depends upon movement. Our investigations have proved it to be so. The only obstacle to speed being the necessity of changing the direction of the circular movement. To further facilitate speed, writers of this style resort to at least three devices > 1. Using optional forms of such letters as r and s, one form being easy in one combination, and the other in a different sequence of letters. 2. Dispensing with the round upper turn wherever possible, consistent with legibility, as in the first part of v, y and z. 3. Sometimes lifting the pen where the direction of the movement must be changed. This device renders the next letter the same as an initial, for which the hand takes one direction as readily as the other. It seems almost incredible that a disconnected hand can be written more rapidly than a continuous one, but such is the case with vertical writing, and the omission of the joinings adds to legibility. Now, to sum up in writing, the character and direction of the letter-forms depend upon the movement, and the movement depends upon the position. The most natural and hygienic writing position is with the body self-supporting and the elbows close to the side. This position admits of an easy, circular move- ment for round, vertical writing but does not s^dmit of free sloping writing, nor of the hybrid style, sloping up and vertical down. My plea is that, as teachers, we shall unite in an effort to rid our school writing of the hampering artificiality that has gathered about it, and that the children of this and future generations may have a chance to preserve sound bodies, and at the same time acquire a legi- ble, hygienic, rapid, natural handwriting. Professor D. H. Farley, State Normal School Trenton, N. J. — In the dis- cussion of this subject I shall view it largely from the standpoint of the teacher, rather from that of the advocate. All agree that writing is habit; that the style of form and position at the desk which develops the most healthful posture of the body, the easiest muscular con- trol of the arm and hand, the greatest speed and legibility, give the best writing habit. All of these advantages are claimed by the advocates of the vertical style of writing. In analyzing the subject we would divide it into two divisions: How to exe- cute and what to execute. The first, we classify under three heads: position, penholding, and muscular control. Some would have us believe that how to execute is the only important thing to be considered and that what to execute will take care of itself. Others rush to the other extreme and say that how to execute will care for itself. Looking at position from the hygienic standpoint, we find the discussion on this subject began in 1874 when Drs. Eliinger and Goss of Europe charged all the evils to the bad position of the book; at first. Dr. Eliinger demanded oblique writing on a book lying obliquely before the middle of the body, but in 1885 he professed a conviction that vertical writing in the straight, middle position was the only correct one. The first investigations by the medical authorities did not agree, but it was the beginning of other investigations by medical societies and educators in France, Austria, Germany, and England which has practically led to the same conclusion so far as the book and body are concerned, all agreeing upon the front middle position, the book being parallel to the front edge of the desk, the middle of the copy line being somewhat to the right of the breast-bone. All practically agree that the penholder should point in the general direction of the 552 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary forearm and that directing it over the shoulder requires an abnormal position of the hand. The lateral control of the hand from left to right is one of the problems most difficult to solve; it is also the reason for shorter lines. When we study this control from the standpoint of anatomy, we find the muscles that are largely used in carrying the hand to the right are located outside of the upper part of the arm. and that the muscles that draw the arm backwards toward the body are located back of the shoulder running out and down to the spine. These muscles, as well as those located in the forearm controlling the fingers and thumb, are said to be loo to I stronger than those used in propelling the hand and fingers from the body. The muscles largely used in this movement are in front of the shoulder running toward the breast and collar-bones. While we do not believe in the exclusive use of the muscles that control the fingers, we all know that it is absolutely necessary, in the low grades, to depend largely upon this movement in carrying on the number and language work of the schoolroom. But every teacher must remember that the lateral control of the hand must not be neglected. While the attainment of this lateral control on paper seems most difficult, it is without question much easier to acquire on the blackboard. The ball and socket joint of the shoulder seems to adjust itself better, and this is the most practical evidence we have that the ideal desk should be slanting; but an ideal is one thing, and a condition quite another. The ques- tion is how best to solve the problem of the present condition, which is a slightly slanting desk in the schoolroom and counting-house and flat tables at home. It should not be expected that a person who has the slanting writing habit well formed can learn to write the vertical hand as well by placing the book squarely before him as by placing it in an oblique position. In fact, I believe the person who wishes to change his hand from slanting to vertical will make greater progress by holding his paper in the position he has been accustomed to, as the muscles will respond more readily to the mandates of the will. But for the beginner there is no question that the front middle position is the correct one from every consideration. We will now endeavor to show some of the fundamental principles involved in the form, or what to execute. All agree that there are sixty-two forms to be absolutely learned, ten figures of the Arabic notation and fifty-two letters, as well as the many combinations of these letters in words. All agree that the learn- ing of these forms and combinations through well directed repetition leads to skill, or habit in writing. But all do not agree upon the kind of form, and some do not give form any importance, while others give many kinds of the same letters (beginning anywhere and ending nowhere) leading to many habits through fear of destroying the child's individuality. We claim that every stand- ard form of letter should be such as' will lead to the fewest possible habits con- sistent with legibility, uniformity, ease, and speed. Every small letter should have one common beginning and ending (one habit) until the learner has sufficient muscular control to warrant him in abbreviating the standard forms. Each letter should be so constructed that it will conform to a smooth rolling motion, and that which is common to as many other letters as possible. Above all, avoid those forms which develop eccentric motions. Why should we advocate a form of letter which requires the child to make a down stroke at an angle of 45 degrees to the right or to the left of the vertical, when the vertical is the main or common line? Why should we ask the child to form two habits when one is better than two? Why should we teach the child Department.] DISCUSSION. 553 to remove the pen from the paper in going from one letter to another in the unit word, when the pen or motion stops at every point or angle? Why not study it from the number of units of motion? To illustrate; write the combination eve" and you will find there are two units of motion, if the "v" is joined to the e" with a point or angle, as it should be in a low grade. In a higher grade we should teach the pupil to write the combination with one continuous motion by joining the "v" and the "e" with a loop. The capital letters should also be so constructed that they will have one common initial beginning, as far as possible consistent with concert drill. We should recognize the fact that muscular control is a large factor in teach- ing writing, but we cannot ignore the pedagogical facts and necessities found in the forms of the letters. All concede that vertical writing is more legible, that it is easier to teach and to learn, and that it avoids the possibility of flourish. The speed and ease of executing vertical writing are disputed by many of our skilled penmen for reasons that are apparent. These penmen have worked « faithfully in perfecting themselves in the writing and teaching of the slanting hand. They have the writing habit well formed. Self-preservation confronts them, and they are trying to save the ammunition of skill in flourishing which has taken them years to acquire, and which has been a source of satisfaction and profit to them. While I believe slanting writing has something to do in causing poor eye- sight, I truly believe that the prevailing method of teaching writing wholly from the board is ten to one more injurious. The unit of measurement on the board is two inches and on paper from one quarter to one-tenth of an inch. The child- ren see the copy at di£ferent angles, it being impossible for all of them to see it from the same position. One moment the eye has an adjustment, or accommo- dation, as it is termed by the oculist, to see the copy on the board, and the next moment the eye must be adjusted to the paper, and this change is constantly going on until the copy is finished. If we wish to protect the children's eyesight and to make it possible for them to gain a correct conception of the copy, we must place the correct model the same distance from the eye as the copy they are required to make. At no time in our history has the subject of writing agitated the minds of our leading educators and medical men as at present. Call it a fad or by any name you like. When men of the highest authority in medical science declare that "the question of instruction in writing should occupy the first place, as the teach- ing of this subject is attended with so great danger to spinal curvature, breath- ing, and digestive disturbances, myopia or short sight." When such vital mat- ters as the relation of writing to hygiene and the application of true educational principles are involved is it not time to see that more attention is given to this subject by every teacher in our public schools? Writing from an educational standpoint, develops a muscular control of the hand. It develops attention and close observation. It develops habits of order, judgment, accuracy, self-reliance and memory. It develops will power. It culti- vates the taste. The hand is trained to obedience. The sense of touch and the sense of sight are educated and the will is strengthened. Writing, drawing, manual training, and the industrial phases of the kinder- garten may be classed under the same general head — the co-education of the mind and hand — all leading to practical, painstaking habits. A paper on ** Art Education " was read and discussed. 554 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Elementary DISCUSSION. Miss Stella Skinner, Supervisor of Drawing New Haven, Conn. — I find myself in something of a dilemma. I was asked to discuss a paper upon "Art Education," instead of which we have been given a dissertation upon psychology. I am not a specialist in psychology, therefore will not attempt a discussion of a psychological question. But this is so important an occasion — the throwing open of one of the principal sections of the association to a consideration of the subject of art education — that I desire to improve it by asking your consideration of some vital points. Psychological investigation is indeed important, it is well to understand about nerve centers, brain processes, and so forth. '*Art may study the body long, but sooner or later it discovers the soul." ^ We owe to the scientists much, but to the artists infinitely more. They are the true prophets, seeing face to face what others see but through a glass darkly. " The poets reach a deeper life Than microscope or surgeon's knife. Groping for facts, we lose the real; Truth to be true must be ideal." We have been told that "the child is dying for want of right food." lam here to say that the child is being fed as never before; that never has there been such devotion, such consecration to their work among teachers as now, and never have children been so well fed; by nature, by the best thoughts of the poets, by beautiful forms and pictures, and by right ideals. Indeed, they are over-fed; much is still crammed down their throats which they have no taste for, nor need of; but things are better today than they were a year ago, and they will be infinitely better five years from now than they are today. We have been told that "the child wants to do something." The child is doing something; he is busy with many helpful, delightful tasks in nature study, modeling, drawing, painting, paper folding and cutting; working with head, hands, and heart enjoyably and healthfully. I heartily agree with the speaker that the child will come to know a flower much more truly through his effort to draw or paint it But I would go a step further, and say that not only his own expression, but a knowledge of that of others, is necesssary to growth. He needs to have his ideals raised by constantly studying the work of those who excel, by noting how others have interpreted the world about them. Indeed, we are told that "the great work of the art teacher is accomplished when he has succeeded in enabling his pupils to gain capacity to appreciate what is good in art;" and again: "The teaching of the practice of art is mainly important as a means of educating the public in appreciation." Side by side with art expression must go training in art appreciation; the child must feel the beautiful, whether in form or conduct, before he can express it, and for this he needs not only to have beautiful forms placed before him, but artistic interpretations of these forms as well. We have heard "accuracy" mentioned as a thing to be condemned. If an insistence upon mechanically perfect "results" is meant we will all agree with Department.] DISCUSSION. 555 — the speaker, but if definite and true expression of clear thought is "accuracy,** then we cannot have too much of it. AH first expression should be spontaneous and is of necessity crude and immature, just as the little child is inunature. We value it just in proportion to its being the real expression of childish thought. We are striving, not to obtain "results," but to guide the little child to see and to feel, and to grow through expression. But we should not be long satisfied with crude results, we should as soon as possible, create a "divine discontent** for crude work and develop a capacity for better. In the happy unconsciousness of early childhood there are no limitations to the children*s undertakings, because they themselves are conscious of none. But this condition is not permanent. With the development of self-conscious- ness the child begins to realize his limitations and to long for greater power, and it is our duty to help him to acquire it. Greater mental ability should now be required in their work, and an accuracy which is the result of clear, definite thought. The pupils should have high ideals of technical excellence, and should be held to them. Only in this way will they themselves be satisfied. If for no other reason than the mental discipline involved the study of per- spective principles is well worth while. To think out the problem of a'flight of steps embodied in the cube requires as great mental power as a problem in algebra and yields a much more tangible return. The question has been asked: "Why study types? Why handle wooden blocks when nature is spread out before the child? *' and I answer, because the type brings a something to the child which even nature cannot give. It feeds the imagination, it deals in symbolism. The type is never simply a piece of wood to a childt it is a key unlocking all the forms of the universe. By means of it the child binds up all past experiences, and through it reaches out to new forms, arranging, classifying, and systematizing that which before was a confused mass in his mind. It reveals in a wonderful way the divine order and plan of the universe. It was recently my privilege to be invited to meet a little girl of four years at her summer home on the seashore. She was in the midst of natural beauties, the sea rolling in but a stone*s throw from the cottage, while flowers grew in pro- fusion all about the place. In the evening, as I sat beside her, watching her preparations for the night, the most important of which was the disrobing and putting to bed of her favorite doll, I happened to take hold of a string and pull out from its hiding place a stick about a foot long, a rude piece of wood. "Oh!** I exclaimed, "is this your horse?'* " No,** she replied, indignantly, " it's my dog!" The next morning when I apologized to her for my blunder she graciously replied that it could just as well have been a horse as a dog^ had she wanted a horse. So, you see, in this case a block of wood, transformed in the alembic of a child's imagination, supplied a need which all the beauties of nature had failed to meet. Replying to the charge against outline drawing, I cannot do better than quote Mr. La Farge. Speaking of the Samoan children's drawing in the wet sand the outlines of fish and birds, he says: " I marvelled at the fact that the savage — the beginner in thinking — was representing these things chosen out by him, in the most abstract conceivable form.*' He speaks of these drawings as "a synthesis of nature, not a copy," and then goes on to say: " What is astonishing is that the symbolical 556 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, character of an outline drawing ... is the mode of art of the savage ; it is the mode of art that children understand and first care for. Conventional art, which one would think ought to repel them, is, on the contrary, the most suggest- ive and the most delightful." And he explains this by calling attention to the child's "power of accepting illusions," and to the play of the imagination thus afforded. DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY EDUCATION. SECRETARY'S MINUTES, FIRST SESSION.— Wednesday Afternoon, 2:30, July 8, 1896. The department met at 2:30 p. m. in the North Presbyterian Church, Presi- dent Edward L. Harris in the. chair. An address of welcome was presented on behalf of the secondary teachers of Buffalo by Principal F. A. Vogt of Buffalo High School. He invited the depart- ment to a reception on the following evening in the Chapter House of the Women Teachers* Association. President Harris responded to the address of welcome and spoke briefly of the important educational movements of the year, referring especially to the work of the Committee on College Entrance Requirements, and calling attention to the fact that the appointment of this committee was due to the initiative of the De- partment of Secondary Education at Denver last year. Dr. Ray Greene Huling of Cambridge, Mass., offered the following resolu- tion, which was unanimously adopted: Resolvtdy That the members of the Secondary Department hereby extend their hearty thanks to Mr. DeCroers, Miss Somerville, the young ladies and ^ntlemen of the Buffalo High School who appeared upon the stage, and all others who had a share in the presentation of "An Old-Time Tea Party " on Tuesday evening, desiring in this way to express our delight at the highly successful representation of the Revolu- tionary scenes which formed the basis of the drama, and also our deep appreciation of the kindly spirit which prompted so much effort for the entertainment of strangers, — ^strangers, indeed, we were before that evening, but forevermore cordial friends the Buffalo High School. The President then appointed the following Nominating Committee: Principal F. L. Bliss, Detroit High School; Principal C. I. Parker, Chicago, 111.; Principal W. H. Smiley, Denver, Colo.; Principal E. W. Coy, Cincinnati. Ohio; Dr. Amelia Earl Trant, Buffalo, N. Y. The meeting then adjourned to reassemble in round-table conference as fol- lows: ROUND TABLES. Ancttni LanguageSt and Engiish. — ^Joint Session (Auditorium). Chairman. — I. B. Burgess, Morgan Park Academy, Morgan Park, III. Leaders, — ^Wm. C. Collar, Roxbury Latin School, Roxbury, Mass.; F. A. Manny, High School Moline, 111. Topic. — ^Translation from the Greek and Latin Classics as a Training in the use of English. Modern Foreign Languages. — (Primary Class Room). Chairman. — Oscar Faulhaber, Robinson Seminary, Exeter, N. H. Leader. — ^Joseph Krug, Central High School, Cleveland, Ohio. Topics. — The Study of the (German Language as an Educational Factor in Anglo-Saxon Countries; Review of the latest changes in Methods, with special reference to the *' Natural *' and *' Inductive ** Methods. History. — (Church Parlors). Chairman. — Ray Greene Huling, English High School, Cambridge, Mass. Leader. — Wilson Farrand, Newark Academy, Newark, N. J. Topics. — The Library Method in History; College Admission Examinations in History; Help» to the Study of History in Secondary Schools. 558 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary Mathematics. — (Sunday School Room). Chairman. — William A. Greeson, Dean of Lewis Institute, Chicago, 111. Leader. — ^James L. Patterson, Union College, Schenectady, N. Y. Pa/^er. — Economy in Mathematical Instruction. By James L. Patterson. Topics grouped under the above head for general discussion; (i) Arithmetic in secondary schools; can it be dispensed with? If not, how much time should be given to it, and in what year? (a) In what order should the subjects in algebra be introduced? (3) When and how should negative exponents be taught to beginners in algebra? (4) The treatment of factoring so as to include the solution of equations. (5) Should algebra and geometry be taught contemporaneously or consecutively, or» in general, what is the best arrangement of a course in algebra and geometry? (6) Should solid geometry be included in the courses leading to college? Natu ral Sciences. — (Lecture Room) . Chairman^ — H. N. Chute, High School, Ann Arbor, Mich. Leader. — George R. Twiss, Central High School, Cleveland, Ohio. Topics. — What are the difficulties encountered in adjusting a secondary course of physics involving labor- atory work? How may they be overcome? What kind and number of quantitative experiments in chemistry should be made in a high-school course? Principals. — (Bible Class Room). Chairman. — F. L. Bliss, High School, Detroit, Mich. Leader. — G. F. Jewett, High School, Youngstown, Ohio. Topics. — To what extent should promotions be allowed in one department, with failures in another? The nature and propriety of opening exercises; special teachers. SECOND SESSION.— Thursday Afternoon, July qth. Joint session of the Departments of Secondary and Higher Education. These departments met at 2:30 p. m. in the North Presbyterian Church, President J. H. Baker of the Department of Higher Education in the chair. The chair was afterward taken by President Harris of the Department of Secondary Education. The Department deviated from the printed programme and took up first the report of the Committee on Uniform College Entrance Examinations. The pre- Hminary work of the committee was printed in the June School Review^ copies of which were distributed in the assembly room. Dr. B. A. Hinsdale, of the University of Michigan, for the committee, pre- sented the following plan of work for i896-*7. COMMITTEE ON COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS. Report on Plan of Work for 1896-7. It is within the province of the Committee, according to the resolution passed at the Denver meeting, to investigate existing college entrance requirements and to report on ways and means of securing such uniform- ity in extent and method as will be conducive to the best interests both of higher and of secondary education. The first step — investigation of existing requirements — has been taken. In our" opinion the programme of the ensuing year should be chiefly as follows: (i) The committee should invite the active co-operation of associations already organized for the study of such problems; it should appoint representative subcommittees of specialists interested in the various subjects; it should ascertain the views of individual institutions, — secondary schools, colleges and universi- ties,— all with a view to the ultimate determination of what should constitute a normal requirement in each of the subjects set for admission to a>Ilege. (a) To this end it is recommended that the requirements be considered in the following groups: Eng- lish, classical languages, modem languages, history, mathematics, and sciences. (3) Within the several groups special atttention should be given to what should constitute a year*s work in each subject, (e. g. first year French, second year French, physics, chemistry, etc.) or, as may be preferable in some groups, what should constitute the " elementary " and what the *' advanced *' requirements, and, in general, the constitution of entire courses of study in the separate subjects. Department.] MINUTES, 559 (4) It is recommended that a schedule of options or equivalents within the various groups, or between separate groups, be prepared. (s) The committee should make special effort to secure a more satisfactory method of admission to col- lege. The views of the associations, subcommittees and institutions (above referred to) should be sought as to the best pedagogical means of testing the work done in preparation for college. (6) All partial reports should be submitted to the Committee as early as possible that a tentative report may be prepared for discussion at the next annual meeting of the National Educational Association. ■(7) The Departments of Higher and of Secondaiy Education, and of Science, should be requested to make this subject a special order in their programmes for the meetings in 1897. (8) It is evident that the work outlined cannot be done without the expenditure of a considerable sum of money. This committee should urge upon the Departments of Higher Education, of Secondary Education, and of Science the necessity of petitioning the Board of Directors of the National Educational Association for an appropriation to be made at as early a day as practicable, sufficient to complete the work. The Secretary gave an oral report of the committee for the year. The report of the committee was accepted and adopted. On motion the same committee was ordered continued. The officers of the Departments were authorized to fill vacancies ifl the committee. Principal W. H. Smiley, of Denver, Colo., Secretary of the Joint Commitee, called a meeting of the committee at 9:30 the following morning at the Genesee House. Principal E. W. Coy, of the Hughes High School, Cincinnati, presented to the association the report of the CoAimittee of Twelve of the American Philological Association on the subject of the study of Latin and offered the following resolu- tion: Resolved t That the report on Latin of the committee of Twelve of the American Philological Associa- tion meets with the cordial approval of the Departments of Higher and Secondary Education of the National Edacati<»ial Association. The resolution was supported by Professor Andrew F. West, of Princeton University, Principal O. D. Robinson, of the Albany High School, N. Y., and Principal J. Remsen Bishop, of the Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, O. It was unanimously carried. Principal W. H. Smiley, of the Denver High School, moved that the Depart- ments present a joint request to the Directors of the National Educational Asso- ciation that the report of the Committee of Twelve of the American Philological Association on the Study of Latin as presented to the meeting by Principal Coy be printed in full in the minutes of the National Educational Association. This motion was unanimously carried. The following resolution offered by President Joseph Swain, of the Universi- ty of Indiana, was unanimously carried: Resolved f That Departments of Higher and Secondary Education in joint meeting respectfully petition the Board of Directors of the National Educational Association to appropriate the sum of $9500 at as early a day as may be practicable for the purpose of continuing the work of the Joint Committee of these Depart- ments on Collie Entrance Requirements. 9 Principal W. H. Wicks, of Syracuse, N. Y., delivered an address on ''Congres- sional Work for Youth." President J. G. Schurman, of Cornell University, addressed the joint session on the question, "What Is a Secondary School? " Discussion by Principal E. W. McCoy, of the Hughes High School,Cincinnati, Professor B. A. Hinsdale, of the University of Michigan, and Dr. Ray Greene Huling, of Cambridge, Mass. On motion the meeting of the joint Departments was adjourned. The two Departments assembled immediately afterward for a business session. 56o NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary SECOND SESSION.— Thursday Afternoon, July qth. President Harris again announced the reception to the Department in the evening. The following report of the Committee on Nominations was presented by. the chairman, Principal F. L. Bliss: President, C. H. Thuiber, Dean of the Morg^an Park Academy of The University of Chicago. Vice President, Principal Frank L. Fosdick, Buffalo High School Annex. Secretary, Ida B. Haslup, Principal of High School, Pueblo, Colo. On motion of Principal B. C. Matthews, of Newark, N. J., the thanks of the Department were extended to the members and trustees of the North Presbyterian Church for their hospitality in allowing the use of their building for the meetings of the Department. On motion the Department adjourned. C. H. Thurber, Secretary, AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. •Report of the Committee of Twelve on the Study of Latin, June, 1896. The programmes of secondary education put out by the Committee of Ten in their report published in 1893 proposed the reduction of Greek preparatory studies from three years to two, and the reduction of Latin preparatory studies from five periods a year for four years to five periods a year for the first two years and four periods for the remaining two years. The harm which would have been worked by the acceptance of the proposition with regard to Greek was so great and unmistakeable that immediate and unhesitating protest was demanded. Accordingly the Amer- Philological Association, at a large meeting held in Philadelphia, December a8, 1894, unanimously adopted a motion (now generally made known throughout the country) that in any programme designed to prepare stud- ents for the classical course not less than three years of instruction in Greek should be required. The harm which would have been worked by the acceptance of the proposition of the Committee of Ten with regard to Latin was appreciable, and the point of view from which the reduction in that subject was made was a dangerous one. Nevertheless, since the proposed reduction in Greek was the more serious of the two, the Philological Association confined its immediate expression of opinion to that subject, charging its Commit- tee of Twelve, however, with the further duty of considering the questions involved in the propositions with regard to Latin. The committee accordingly gave the question careful thought, and conferred also with a large number of other members of the Association engaged in the teaching of languages, ancient or modem, in schools or colleges. It found a striking harmony of opinion, which was further evinced at the meeting of the American Philological Association, held in Cleveland on July 13, 1895, ^X > unanimous passage of the follow- ing resolution. ** The American Philological Association is of the opinion that the best interests of education demand the retention of the full amount of five weekly periods for four years now g^enerally given to Latin, throaghout the country, by schools that have a four-year oouise. And it would be glad to see an increase of the number of years devoted to the subject, either through an extension of the high-school course to five or six years, or through the carrying of some of the high- school subjects into the grammar-school curriculum.'* The Association recognizes the fact that the prevailing crowding and lack of uniformity in our second- ary education in America are serious evils. Accordingly it is in sympathy with the desire of the Conunittec of Ten to relieve the present congestion of studies and at the same time construct a rational pn^^Ts^mme or series of programmes which might everywhere be adopted; but the Association differs radically from that com- mittee with regard to the method to be employed. It is of course clear that, under the present circumstances of increasing demands for time on the part of many of the so-called newer subjects, the results desired cannot be obtained unless there is either a general reduction of the time given to each subject or a complete omission of some of the subjects or a relegation of some of them, in whole or in part, to the grammar-school grade. In the judgment of the Philological Asssociation the first method, which was the one proposed by the Cbmmittee of Ten, is not the true one. It is not best to relieve an overcrowded programme by reducing studies that are of central importance. It is better in any case to make sure that the few essential things in any programme *This report was prepared by a special subcommittee consisting of the four professors of Latin on the committee, and has been approved by the other members without change. Department.] MINUTES. 561 of study, whether classical or scientific or of any other kind, are given their full weight and effectiveness, than to teach many things incompletely because of an insufficient allotment of time. It is to be clearly understood that the Association is not now concerned with the question whether every* one should be required to study Latin, but is simply laying down the proposition that those who do desire to study it should find a sufficient amount of time devoted to it to enable them to gain the best results. In point of fact there seems to have been a general agreement that five periods a week for four years is none too large an amount to assign to the subject. No demand for a reduction from this amount has come from the schools themselves. On the contrary it seems to be generally recognized that a larger amount of time, rather than a smaller, ought to be given to the subject of Latin. In a number of schools in different parts of the country courses of five or six years have already been developed ; and the feeling which led to this movement found formal expression, at the meeting of a large and widely representative Classical Conference held at Ann Arbor in March, ^895, in the passage, without a dissenting vote, of a resolution in favor of a six-year course. This belief in a longer course, rather than a shorter one, appears most natural to one who studies the problems of education not simply from the point of view of American experiments, but with knowledge of the experience of other countries as well. Our better schools usually provide four years for the study of Latin, with five exercises a week. If to this amount be added the two years of Latin regarded as normal by colleges which prescribe a part of their work, American education has at best a six -year Latin course to present as against the nine-year or ten -year course found in Germany and England. Moreover, the number of weekly exercises given to the subject is smaller in this cotintry than in Europe. A reduction to a still lower standard such as is proposed by the Committee of Ten, would be uncalled for and unfortunate. We protest against it, because such a reduction would tend to cripple the study of Latin and other studies which are appreciably affected by its welfare, and because such a reduction would postpone the hopes we entertain that Latin studies will be developed in this country until the opportunities afforded equal the best open to students in the old world. We therefore appeal to our universities, our colleges, and our schools, and to all friends of sound edu- cation, in whatever occupation, to see to it that our preparatory Latin, in place of being weakened, is strengthened and developed as soon as practicable into something more substantial than we now possess. To this end we especially ask the co-operation, not only of all classical teachers, but of those who are interested in our own and other modem languages ; and in general, we ask the support of all men who believe in a well- rounded liberal education, in which literary studies constitute an indispensable part. WILLIAM W. GOODWIN, Professor of Greek, Harvard University, CAairmatt. CECIL F. P. BANCROFT, Principal of Phillips Andover Academy. FRANKLIN CARTER, President of Williams College. WILLIAM G. HALE, Professor of Latin, University of Chicago. WILLIAM R. HARPER, President of the University of Chicago. FRANCIS W. KELSEY, Professor of Latin, University of Michigan. GEORGE L. KITTREDGE, Professor of English, Harvard University. ABBY LEACH, Professor of Greek, Vassat College. THOMAS D. SEYMOUR, Professor of Greek, Yale University. CHARLES F. SMITH, Professor of Greek, University of Wisconsin. MINTON WARREN, Professor of Latin, Johns Hopkins University. ANDREW F. WEST, Professor of Latin, Princeton University. June, 1896. The undersigned, not members of the American Philological Association, approve the position taken by the association in the resolution of July 13, 1895, and unite with the committee in their appeal, as expressed in the final paragraph of the accompanying report. GEORGE B. AITON, Inspector of State High Schools, Minnesota. HARLAN P. AMEN, Principal of Phillips Exeter Academy. JAMES W. BASHFORD, President of Ohio Wesleyan University. JOHN BINNEY, Professor of Hebrew, etc., in the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn. J. J. BLAISDELL, Professor of Philosophy, Beloit College. RICHARD G. BOONE, Principal of Michigan State Normal School, Ypsilanti. C. F. BRACKETT, Professor of Physics, Princetoii University. JAMES DAVIE BUTLER, LL.D., Madison, Wis. W. H. BUTTS, Principal of the Michigan Military Academy, Orchard Lake, Mich. FRANCIS J. CHILD, Professor of English, Harvard University. JOSEPH H. COIT, Rector of St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H. WILLIAM C. COLLAR, Head Master of Roxbury Latin School. EUGENE C. COULTER, Head Master of the University School, Chicago. T. F. CRANE, Professor of Romance Languages, Cornell University. NEWTON C. DOUGHERTY, Superintendent of Schools, Peoria, III.; President of the National Educa- tional Association. EDWARD D. EATON, President of Beloit College. WILSON FARRAND, Associate Master Newark Academy. . 36 562 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary JOSEPH W. FAIRBANKS, Principal of Smith Academy, Washington University, St. Louis. J. H. FREEMAN, Superintendent of East Side Schools, Aurora, 111. GEORGE S. FULLERTON, Vice Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. JOHN C. GRANT. Principal of the Harvaitl School, Chicago. JOHN J. HALSEY,. Acting President and Professor of Political and Social Science, Lake Forest University. THOMAS S. HASTINGS, Pies^dent of Union Theological Seminary, New York. B. A. HINSDALE, Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching, University of Michigan. WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE, President of Bowdoin College. JULIA J. IRVINE, President of Wellesley College. GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, Professor of Philosophy, Yale University. ALBERT G. LANE, Superintendent of Schools, Chicago. MOSES MERRILL, Head Master of Public Latin School, Boston. HUBERT A. NEWTON, Professor of Mathematics, Yale University. A. F. NIGHTINGALE, Superintendent of High Schools, Chicago. FRANCIS L. PATTON, President of Princeton University. HENRY L. PATTENGILL, Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Michigan. OSCAR D. ROBINSON, Principal of High School, Albany; a member of the "Committee of Ten.** AUSTIN SCOTT, President of Rutgers College. WILLIAM H. SMILEY, Principal of High School, Denver. EGBERT C. SMYTH, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Andover. WILLIAM GREENOUGH THAYER, Head Master of St. Mark's School, Southborough, Mass. CHARLES S. THORNTON, Member of the Illinois State Board of Education. C. H. THURBER, of the Department of Pedagogy, University of Chicago; Dean of Morgan Park Academy, Morgan Park, 111. CHARLES F. TH WING, President of Western Reserve University. OLIVER S. WESTCOTT, Principal of North Division High School, Chicago. C. O. WHITMAN, Head Professor of Zoology, University of Chicago. GEORGE E. WOODBERRY, Professor of Literature, Columbia University. C. A. YOUNG, Professor of Astronomy, Princeton Univetsity. Department] TRANSLATION FROM GREEK AND LATIN, 563 PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS. ROUND TABLE. ANCIENT LANGUAGES AND ENGLISH. The session of the Round Table of Ancient Languages and English was held in the auditorium of the North Presbyterian Church at 3:30 o'clock, Wednesday afternoon, July 8th. Chairman I. B. Burgess, of Morgan Park Academy, Morgan Park, 111., read the first paper, introducing the following topic for discussion, TRANS LA TION FROM THE GREEK AND LA TIN CLASS- ICS AS A TRAINING IN THE USE OF ENGLISH. BY PROFESSOR I. B. BURGESS, MORGAN PARK ACADEMY, ILL. The basis of my brief remarks this afternoon is the series of reso- lutions which you have before you in print. In framing these resolu- tions I had a share and have heard them once discussed. It may be posisible to make their meaning and purpose clearer by a few words of comment. Let me say that it is hoped by some of us that this body will be able to improve these resolutions and send them forth with its authority. The first resolution reads : I. More translation in writing* This is the substance of a suggestion insisted upon by Mr. Charles Francis Adams in the Nation last fall. It is undoubtedly a good one. The dictum of Lord Bacon that ** writing makes an exact man," is as true today as ever. A teacher is far more likely to notice devia- tions from good usage when he sits down to correct a set of papers at leisure than he is in the hurry and distraction of the classroom. In order to make sure of a generous amount of written work it is well for a teacher to plan definitely for written exercises at regular intervals. Many teachers will find it difficult to get time for a large amount of written work, but any earnest teacher can find time for some. Further, it is an undeniable fact that hundreds of teachers in sec- ondary schools do have time for a large amount of written work. Many teachers in secondary schools are not required to hear more than twenty recitations per week, and in many other cases where the number of recitations is larger the number in classes is quite small. 564 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary 2. Co-operation of English and classical departments by which the papers of the latter department may receive criticism from the former, and vice versa, English teachers will probably find that Latin teachers, in their concentration upon the meaning of the passage and upon the fidelity with which the classic writer's thought has been reproduced, will not be attentive enough to the English form. Latin teachers in visiting the rooms of their English colleagues and in inspecting English written work, will certainly find that in many cases the English teacher has not been critical enough, that he has been content with the general conception of the meaning of a whole passage, especially if that passage deals with an inspiring idea, and that he has not inspected phrases and clauses sharply enough to bring out the finer shades of meaning. English teachers are often so engrossed with the literary side of their work that they give too little attention to what may be called the linguistic and scientific side. 3. Animated and carefully prepared oral translations should be given by the teacher; and the student should study for comparison, under the direction of the teacher, literary translations such as are found in Collar's Seventh Book of the i€neid, Strachan-Davidson's Cicero, TroUope's Caesar or Kennedy's Virgil. The idea of this resolution is well brought out in the introduction to Mr. Collar's admirable little work on the Seventh Book of the -^neid. He shows that in expecting good English from pupils who have not had good models of translation before them, we are requiring "bricks without straw." Will you notice that the resolution guards very carefully against the **pony*' idea. The four books referred to contain only limited portions of translation and have been selected for that precise purpose. Of course it will not do for a pupil to translate anything like the whole of his Virgil or Cicero by the aid of another translation. 4. To make clear to the pupil the value of accuracy, beauty, and force in the expression of thought, constantly increasing emphasis should be given to the English form of translation. This emphasis should appear both in time allot* ment and in grading. This resolution contains several very distinct suggestions. It is not enough that the pupil's conception of a passage be, in general, clear. It must be, at least during the later years of his preparatory course, precise and exhaustive ; the words chosen for English transfer must be in harmony with the spirit of the Latin or Greek passage ; the beauty or force of the original should not be lost by an inappropriate choice of words or by an awkward grouping of them. The resolution recognizes the fact that much more may be expected of a pupil in the later than in the earlier years of his course. It ^ Dcpartmen t. ] TRANS LA TION FROM GREEK A ND LA TIN, 565 recognizes the fact that time must be taken generously in the class- room for guiding pupils to a proper choice of words and for helping pupils to correct their own offences against English. ' ,It recognizes the fact also, that the teacher will fail to impress upon the pupil the value of good English unless he distinctly lowers the grade of the pupil who uses poor English. Too often teachers give pupils the impression, by their grading, that in the Latin class they are studying only Latin. They correct mistakes in English, but the pupil sees that if he has the syntax correctly his grade is not affected by the English form of expression. 5. Prudery should be avoided — such as telling pupils never to translate a Latin word by its English derivative; or a Latin perfect participle by an English perfect participle. It is of course true that pupils are altogether too ready to translate Latin words by their English derivatives. This does not justify us, however, in flying to the other extreme, for there is no page of classic Latin which does not contain several words which may be admirably translated by their English derivatives. The perfect participle was instanced because Professor Hill, in his ** Rhetoric," and Professor Briggs, in a paper before teachers, have taken a position with regard to the use of this participle unsupported by the best usage. Upon this, as upon other matters, the grammar of Professor Whitney is commendably sane and moderate. If the English of candidates for admission is so unspeakably bad as college instructors would have us believe, it is certainly wise, for the present at least, to leave merely doubtful English unc9rrected. 6. Cast-iron "pet phrases" should be avoided, e. g , "march" for iter facer e. The example chosen under this heading, "iter facere," is an extremely mild instance of the fault referred to. It was suggested by reading in Trollope's Caesar the translation **do their traveling," where he is speaking of the movements of the Helvetian nation in a body. This seemed to me both admirably unconventional and admir- ably literal. The phrase is often used where no reference is made to the movement of an army. In such cases the word ** march" is inap- propriate. Many teachers of long experience and great conscientiousness have reached conclusions with regard to the proper translation of par- ticular passages which they enforce with so much vigor that the orig- inality of their students is sadly fettered, and really independent work in getting out good translations practically stopped. Some years ago two boys came to me from another school to be admitted to advanced standing in Cicero. In translating a passage of that author, the boys gave versions which were almost identical, and ^66 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary yet it would be hard to find two boys more different in their mental make-up and environment than these two boys. 7. A pupil's English should not be judged as a whole from single errors, however bad. There is, it seems, an irresistible fascination for many minds in the idea that a man's character or a man's knowledge may be infallibly determined by single acts of the man in question. Books of rhetoric and books of etiquette alike abound in expressions which show that their authors are victims of this delusion. It still remains true in the judgment of sane people who are not riding a hobby, that gentlemen do sometimes eat with their knives, and that good English scholars may, under certain circumstances, say **he don't," or spell separate with an "e" in the center. We cannot help admiring those sound old Romans in their use of that expressive plural **mores. " 8. Awkward, uncommon, unidiomatic English should not be confused with absolutely incorrect English. This resolution counsels moderation, sympathy, cool-headedness under provocation. Many of you will disagree, but still I should allow pupils occasionally to use the literal translation of an ablative absolute in the early part of their Latin study. I am not horrified by these expressions from those papers in the last Harvard report, at which we are all expected to hold up our hands in holy horror. **This Macedonia that we were wont to see held with a garrison. " **The city of the Byzantines, to you and to this government most faithful, has been harassed into an unfriendly mood." The order here is unusual, but the meaning is not obscure. I note, too, somewhere that an unlucky wight has said "mispro- priety" instead of the conventional * impropriety," and yet it seems to mof that the boy has got the idea and deserves credit for it. 9. It should be remembered that it is difficult to write good English even after long practice; that truthful translation is more difficult than a general theme, and that idiomatic English is often conventional and illogical. Translation is more difficult than a general theme because as any thoughtful critic of his own procedure will admit, the writer of a gen- eral theme, if he cannot express the precise idea which he has first in mind, will often adapt his language to a less precise but easier expres- sion of the idea. But, in translation, the conscientious student is not permftted to do this by the original before him, and in his effort to be truthful often becomes awkward. This idea was admirably brought out by Mr. Tetlow at the last meeting of the classic and high school teachers of Massachusetts in remarks reported by Mr. Tetlow himself in the Boston Transcript for April 1 8th. Department.] TRANSLATION FROM GREEK AND LATIN, 567 As to conventional English and its illogical character, note such expressions as *' Where did he go?'* and **If he comes I shall go/' The boy who says **Whither did he go?" and **If he shall have come, I will go," is logical and accurate, and in harmony with the spirit of his Latin, but he is not idiomatic. Now while I would not allow such unidiomatic translation to pass without correction, I should give a pupil credit for his sturdy effort to express the exact thought. I should show by my comments upon his work that I gave him such credit. I should have him understand that training in idiomatic Eng- lish is in some degree simply an effort to make him follow usage rather than to follow logic. The cold-blooded and harsh comments which teachers and writers often make upon such mistakes as I have just been describing are likely to make pupils less truthful and thoughtful. The last report of the Harvard Committee on ** Composition and Rhetoric" furnishes excellent examples of the statement in this reso- lution that it is difficult to write good English even after long practice. On page 277 of that report occurs the following astonishing sen- tence : Accepting this plea in extenuation and allowing it all the weight to which it is entitled, it yet remains that, under the existing system, the examination papers indicate unmistakably that a very large portion of the time of the pre- paratory school course is consumed in exercises which, in result, so far as good English composition is at issue, seems to obscure, at least in the mind of the student, the fundamental principles that every sentence consists of a subject and a predicate, and that clearness in the expression of thought is of the essence of good writing. This sentence violates rhetoric and common sense alike, by its frequent interjection of parenthetical clauses and phrases. It is pre- cisely the sort of a sentence which, to use its own words, "obscures the fundamental principles that every sentence consists of a subject and a predicate, and that clearness in the expression of thought is of the essence of good writing." Again, from the same report: **If in consequence of that report any steps in the direction of the reform of the system have been taken, they have not reached the ears of your committee." That means the steps have not reached the ears of the committee. What do the committee expect? That some one will step on their ears. Note in both sentences above the vicious repetition of the preposition **of," a mannerism which might easily have been avoided by a little care. I think I have touched* here upon a fundamental weakness of both these famous reports from * Harvard College. They are notably unsympathetic ; another fundamental quality is that they are notably uncritical. A 568 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary While great credit should be given to the zeal of the gentlemen composing the committee, and while it may be fully admitted that the way to incite attention to this subject is to bring actual specimens of English translation before the college authorities and the public, it must, with equal force, be insisted that the way to produce a reform is not to dump down with exclamations of horror, an unarranged and miscellaneous group of student compositions. Mr. Tetlow, in the report to which I have referred, calls attention to the fact that some of these papers, critically examined, are admirable specimens of Eng- lish for boys of eighteen or nineteen, written under the limitations that actually existed. I am unable to determine from Mr. Tetlow's paper which one of these he has specially selected to illustrate this proposi- tion. I should like, however, as a result of my own study of these speci- mens, to call your attention to No. 12, on page 283. I have examined this passage with the original before me and it proves to be, while most untruthful in its fidelity to the Latin, an admirable specimen of idiomatic English. The pupil who wrote it must have been drilled with remarkable skill in the matter of English expression, and the grade given upon it was given not because of its Latin, which did not deserve so high a grade, but because of its excellence as to English form. How uncritical, then, must have been the work of the committee to present such a passage as an example of the ** Egyptian darkness in which no small portion of our undergraduates are sitting." TRANSLA TIONS FROM THE GREEK AND LA TIN CLASSICS, BY WILLIAM C. COLLAR, ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL, ROXBURY, MASS. [An Abstract.] One of the striking facts in the more recent history of education is the changed and changing position of classical study. Latin and Greek no longer hold the predominance that they once did, nor enjoy their former prestige. They are losing ground almost with every decade ; their value as instruments of training is more and more ques- tioned. Everywhere the claims of modern subjects are being vigor- ously asserted and established; and as the period of education remains just as limited as ever, and as the powers of the mind are not increased, it is clear that only by a still further curtailment of classical studying can room be found for the newer knowledge. All the more Department] TRANSLATIOI^S FROM GREEK AND LATIN, 569 important does it become that right methods of classical study shall be fruitful of the best results. It is no longer • necessary to study Latin and Greek to obtain a knowledge of ancient life and thought, since everything of value for that purpose has been translated. Neither can it be said that the study is indispensable for purposes of general mental training, since a variety of subjects serve, each in its way, to that end. But for acquir- ing a command of English no substitute can be found so effectual as the practice of translation from Latin and Greek. Yet the danger is constant of adopting or imitating the foreign idiom. While acquiring power to wield the language one may be careless in-its use and fall into a style that is un-English in spirit -and in form. Hence comes the need of good standards of translation. The learner must first come to know what good translation is, and on what principles it is worked out. All this must be exemplified daily by his teacher, not merely by the fragmentary translation of phrases and isolated sentences, but by continuous translation of the whole lesson. But such translations are . addressed to the ear, and a thousand things escape the learner if he only listens to ** winged words." He must be practiced in the study of the best printed translations, com- paring word by word, and sentence by sentence, the version and the original. Only in this way will he slowly and unconsciously form for himself correct models of translation and grow to have a painful sense of his own crudities and infelicities. Translation pursued with such guides and with the distinct aim of mastery of expression is the best conceivable exercise in style. The ideas are furnished, attention can be concentrated on the form. It is objected that the use of transla- tions would be conducive to laziness. I ask how? The lesson may be doubled or tripled in length. A literal rendering, as a test of the knowledge of the syntax, may be required wherever the printed ver- sion departs from the construction of the original. The learner may be called on to show why a translator chose this or that form of expression ; why this or that order of words ; how the force of this or that prefix or suffix is conveyed ; what the effect would be of this or that substitution. Is anything missed in the translation that is either expressed or suggested in the original? There is no lack of work that may be assigned, and a mind prone to learn will find many and delightful incentives to study, such as accounting for ablatives and subjunctives cannot afford. We shall save classical culture only by making the study fruitful, and by making the students feel that through it they gain appreciation of literature and power of expres- sion, the first as a perennial source of enjoyment, and the last as one of the most potent instruments of human influence 570 NATION AI. EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GREEK AND LATIN CLASSICS, BY FRANK A. MANNY, PRINCIPAL HIGH SCHOOL, MOLINE, ILL. When the resolutions which have just been presented first appeared in the School Review, I felt that they marked a distinct advance towards better methods in teaching Greek and Latin and also, what especially interested m& as an English teacher, they indicated a moveinent towards the correlation of Emglish with these subjects. Whatever may be the possibilities of correlation or concentration in general there can be no question that, after the beginning work in these lan- guages, the first department with which there can be union is the Eng- lish, and I am by no means certain that this cannot be carried even into the beginning work. Almost every one of these resolutions calls for work which gives a reason for the hope that it is within the Eng- lish teacher. On another account do I consider these resolutions valuable ; there is found in many schools an unreasonable feeling that it takes more time to teach science and English than it does to teach foreign lan- guages and mathematics. Even on the part of English teachers assem- bled we hear of the necessity of a larger proportion of teachers for that branch than for others. 1 am heartily in sympathy with the demand for more time for instructors in my own line, and I think it is true that science and English as taught in many schools do require more time, yet there is no intrinsic reason why the other subjects of a secondary school curriculum, when taught by the best methods, should not be subject to the same demand. While working on this problem in the past I have tried some experi- ments which no doubt to many of you are old stories, yet I offer them for what they are worth. In these days of paragraph writing and daily themes (with which I am entirely in accord) we are apt to get away from a valuable part of compQsition work — the long essay ; in no way can this lack be met better than by a written translation of a short oration, or of a part of the ^neid or Iliad, which is complete in itself. A single topic in either of these poems about which the student gath- ers material during his whole study affords him an exercise not to be met elsewhere in his course. Written translations of the simple powers of other authors than those ordinarily studied give the student a breadth of view and a chance for the study of diction not offered in our regrlar programme. Department.] TRANSLATIONS FROM GREEK AND LATIN. 571 One of the most interesting opportunities for combination is found in the study of Cicero. Too often his orations are studied as a thing apart from all other literature. Why should not the time now given to this author, together with part of the time for English during the same year, be used for a study of orators and oratory? If the school has a definite course in literature and composition, by this time the pupils will be ready for careful discussion of argumentation and the writing of ejcercises of this kind. Let this be followed by a study of a few great orators and their best orations. Here is an opportunity for accumulating material for most valuable comparison later, and also for the use of translations. One always wishes that a Cicero class might have a chance to become familiar with more than the six or seven orations that are usually read, and by taking up in class good transla- tions of other orations several ends can be served. By such work as this before the translation is begun the student can surely get a better understanding of the subject than often is the case. A friend who has tried a part of this scheme, using only the time allotted to Cicero, says that she has secured in that time touch better interest than ever before and a better quality of translation without in any way losing sight of the syntax or other aims of the course. The iEneid can be treated as the main part of a course in epic poetry. While we have not been able to try this plan yet an unusual opportunity for co-operation was afforded this last year by the pres- ence of the Virgil teacher as a member of the senior English class (a two-hour course in the drama) with marked results in both classes. One objection that may be raised is that the English class often con- tains pupils outside the Latin course. I do not think this need stand in the way, for by this stage much of the work must be individualj and the very fact that there is union between several subjects adds to the interest and gives to the pupils an appreciation of the scope of the school. The great objection to these resolutions and to these suggestions is that so much more time is required than the teachers can give. I believe that the fundamental difficulty here is frequently in the organ- ization of the school ; principals and head masters are often chosen for any other reason than for executive ability ; in several cases where I have met this complaint of lack of time, an investigation has shown that teachers are burdened not by teaching, but by other work which could be done much more satisfactorily in the office by help which could be obtained at a fraction of the teacher's salary. A little direc- tion of pupil assistance makes the problem easier. There are always some members of a class who can easily do more than they are doing, and to whom the organization of library material and a hundred other 572 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary details can be entrusted with the best results to all concerned. A school which has the credit system can easily adjust credit for such pupils, as also for additional work in the courses above mentioned. I feel very certain that this unification well directed cannot fail to prove an advantage, and that the average pupil at the end of the twelth grade will have a better knowledge of Latin and Greek and will be better able to express himself in writing and in speech than at present; and that, whether he go to college or into some other form of life, many of the problems he will meet will be simpler for him. DISCUSSION. Professor A. C. Richardson, of the State Normal School, Buffalo, N. Y. — I think Mr. Collar has sounded a note of alarm, and all of us will do well to heed. I have myself thought that the study of Greek and Latin is losing its prestige. The fault, however, does not lie in the preparatory school. It lies in the college. In all the colleges but one that I know of, Greek and Latin grammar are given as among the topics in which examinations must be taken. These topics are required not as aids in the translation of Greek and Latin, but as subjects distinct and by themselves. If we can get rid of this antiquated method in the require- ments for college entrance examinations we shall accomplish a great deal. Another difficulty lies in the requirement by the colleges of the use of special passages for translation. We are required to chew sawdust in building the bridge to Germany instead of thrilling with interest over Caesar's relief of the beleaguered forces of Cicero. I do not believe that the four orations against Cat- ialine are of the best, but they must be read. Let us devote our efforts to remov- ing these mechanical requirements for admission to colleges. Professor George T. Winston, of the University of North Carolina, Pres- ident of the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges, said that he heartily endorsed the ideas expressed by Mr. Collar. He believed that lack of vocabu- lary was one of the principal difficulties in the translation of Latin ;^ that the use of the dictionary is more or less mechanical, and that the use of special vocabu- laries is still more so. Lack of sufficient vocabulary and not the right words in vocabularies that are furnished are the main difficulties. Given four-fifths of the words in a Latin sentence, and a bright pupil can guess out or reason out the rest of the words, and in his translation he will give a bright and original meaning to the sentence by the words which he uses, which he will not get if he uses a vocabulary or a dictionary. A number of Latin authors equally easy should be read, instead of moving rapidly from easy writers to harder ones. The pupil should write much Latin into good English, and met versa. In my section there is a constant increase in the study of the classics. There is an old law in South Carolina forbidding the teaching of Latin in certain large cities, but the popularity of Latin teaching is increasing in that state. The Latin language will conquer opposition as the Latin race conquered the barbaric nations of the North. In the South we have had difficulty in securing co-opera- tion from the schools and universities in raising the standard of entrance require* ments in the classics, but the co-operation is coming. Department.] DISCUSSION, 573 Professor Smith, of the University of South Dakota, dwelt upon the objec- tions to the use of the alphabetical vocabulary. He said that one of the most profitable language classes he ever .taught received by dictation from him the first twenty lines of Homer, and during the reading of the first three books of the Iliad they were not allowed to use a vocabulary. Teachers spend too much time in teaching rare constructions. A Latin book will some time be published which shall contain the text, a literal translation of the first few pages, containing . say 500 different Latin words; then a literary translation, and afterwards a vocabulary in the order of pages. Synonyms should be given and copious notes defining new words in the Latin or Greek words already had. A collection of forms used by a particular author should be made. After the first working over of the text, when a literal translation may be given, the teacher should accept nothing but clear-cut, idiomatic English straight through. Mr. Horace Goodhue, Professor of Greek, Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., said: I do not fully share the fears expressed about the growth and unpopularity of Latin and Greek — " By their fruits ye shall know them." We know the fruits of Latin and Greek instruction ; if there are other studies that will bear better fruits we want them and they will come; but so far, we find no new studies that will take the place of Latin and Greek in furnishing thorough train- ing and culture. In my classes I have found daily and constant drill on lists of new Greek words which I have written on the board most valuable in giving my students ready vocabularies in the language. I have drilled them also in the effects of suffixes and affixes; in this way, by learning a few words together with the suffixes and affixes, they have been able to get a good, practical working vocabulary without the mechanical use of the lexicon. The thing upon which I should dwell with especial emphasis is, that the pupils must know the forms of words ; he must know the tense, mode, and voice, and know it quickly ; if he does not, all his work is guess work. A perfect knowledge of forms is of main importance. Mr. E. W. Coy, Principal of Hughes High School, Cincinnati, said he was sorry to believe that the classical studies were losing prestige. He did not agree 'with Mr. Collar in advising the use of translation. He has had a number of boys in his classes who used translations, and so far as he had observed, they avail little. A metrical translation of Virgil is a good thing for use in class in the hands of teachers, not in the hands of young pupils. I wish to dwell upon a point made in regard to the unfortunate nature of college entrance examina- tions. In looking over work that some of my boys were obliged to take in pre- paring for entrance to Yale, I found that among other things thirty minutes were given for answering a list of history questions for any one of which I should require fifteen minutes. That sort of thing is a perfect outrage. I believe that good English should be insisted upon in translation from the start ; that an idiom- atic English translation of the ablative absolute should first be learned, then, afterwards, the literal translation may be studied for the sake of the syntax. In response to a question from Mr. Briggs, of Buffalo, as to Mr. Collar's estimate of the value of sight reading, Mr. Collar made a few remarks as to his position on the use of translations. He read from an introduction to his trans- lation of the Seventh Book of the iCneid, in which he deplores the use of transla- tions by pupils as injurious to their character. " I do not advise," said he, "the indiscriminate use of translations chosen by the pupils themselves. In all cases the school should control these translations and they should be used only under the direction of the teacher." As to the question asked about sight translation, I 574 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary think of it very highly, indeed, but I do not believe in the Harvard test of exclu- sively sight translations. It aflfords a test of power, but not of genuine acquisition of knowledge in the language. Few boys h^ve the power of divination sufficient to enable them to pass a creditable examination in this work, although they know a great deal about Latin. I think that the Harvard examiners would do well to take counsel of the schoolmasters. Principal J. Remsen Bishop, of the Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, said, I am more concerned about English than about Latin and Greek. The culture of the world is gathered about the Latin and Greek languages and there is no danger of the people condemning them, but English in the schools today is in a very bad condition. I know it from my own school and from others. The importance of the study is not shown by the time allotment in our school curri- cula. I teach Virgil among other things, and I mark the pupil down closely when he uses poor English in translation; it is one of the most effective methods of teaching English that I have found. I hope that we shall go home determined that if we do not get over so much Virgil or Cicero, or do not drill so hard on forms, that we shall have the best English we can possibly get. I do not agree with the idea of co-operation of English and Classical departments; I want the classical teachers to do it all. Mr. Winston explained Mr. Collar's position as to the use of translation in the classroom, and expressed himself as in hearty accord with that gentleman's views of the value of a good literary and metrical translation as a model for the pupils. Professor F.W. Kelsey, of the University of Michigan, said in regard to the matter of the use by teachers of certain pet expressions in translation, that the teacher ought to guard with special care against the use of unfortunate expres- sions in the class-room. The teacher's style of expression here has the greatest influence in shaping the character of the translation made by the pupils. I do not agree in the fear expressed that the classics are losing prestige. The clas- sics were never before so strong in this country. Twenty years ago Greek was losing ground and Latin was losing ground; now certain things indicate the trend of public opinion in the opposite direction. Scientific schools are insisting on one or more of the classics in preparation for entrance. Notable among these are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Sheffield Scientific School. The Dental and Medical Departments of the University of Michigan have recently added Latin to the requirements for admission. These are not isolated cases. Many more might be cited to show the great increase in the demand for a knowledge of the classics. The fundamental principle of the whole question has to do with Latin and Greek as instruments of education. It has been found that these furnish a training and culture which comes from the pursuit of no other studies. The present trend of education lays stress on the necessity of gather- ing together and handling masses of facts; and this has given rise to scientific methods. No power will be more useful than this. In order to cultivate this power schools all over the country are equipped laboratories. The question is yet to be determined how far this sort of study may be profitably pursued. With an outfit of books costing seven dollars, and a skillful instructor, a pupil can have something of the same thing for the development of his intellectual life through the study of the languages which we are accustomed to associate only with the study of natural science. ^-^ Department.] RECENT CHANGES IN METHODS, 575 ROUND TABLE. MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES. The meeting was called to order on Wednesday, July 8th, at 3:15 p. m., by Professor Joseph Krug, of the Central High School, of Cleveland, Ohio. Owing to the absence of the chairman, Professor Oscar Faulhaber, of Robinson Seminary, Exeter, N. H., Professor Krug was called to the chair. Professor H. M. Ferren, of the High School, of Allegheny, Pa., was elected as Recording Secretary. Professor Krug read a paper on the following topic: THE RECENT CHANGES IN METHODS OF TEACHING FOREIGN LA NG UA GES. BY PROFESSOR JOSEPH KRUG, CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, CLEVELAND, OHIO. Within the last twenty or thirty years many important changes and improvements have been made in the methods of instruction in foreign modern languages. It is found that a purely literary knowledge of such languages is insufficient, and that the faculty of thinking and speaking in them is the chief attainment to be sought. Former methods which rested upon those in use for the instruction in the classical languages had to undergo radical changes, and earnest attempts were made to reform them on a thoroughly natural and prac- tical basis. The offsprings of these new perceptions are the so-called ** natural methods." I say ** methods,'* because there is more than one of them, although there ought to only one, as there can be only one natural way for any physical or intellectual action. I also say '*the so-called natural methods,*' because there are still thousands of teachers who are thinking differently as to the natural method of teaching a language. The main basis of our modern ** natural methods" is the object lesson. And just in this regard they are not so new as might at first be supposed, nor so original as their promulgators would wish us to believe. A pedagogue of no less authority than Comenius was among the first to attempt to teach Latin in a natural way, by pointing out and naming objects and by the use of continued questions and answers. Jacotot followed, and by his methods of reading Caesar gave a new and strong impulse to the movement. Ollendorff and his disciples pub- lished improved text-books pursuing the same aim but limiting the means to merely colloquial exercises. Thus, from the very beginning of the reform, three characteristic methods could be distinguished. They have all been maintained and more or less developed; they are 576 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary all still in existence and frequent application. Permit me to call them: {a) The objective method — beginning with Comenius and his contemporary pedagogues, and finding its latest development in the Berlitz method ; {b) The literary or analytical method, from Jacotot to Toussaint-Langenscheidt; {c) The merely colloquial method, which has its representatives in Ollendorff and his many imitators. All the other modern methods — and there are legions of them — incline more or less toward one or the other of these three. It is often observed that improved methods upon any field of intel- lectual activity do not always lead directly to the end desired, their progress being depicted by a zigzag line. Poor results following an application of fallacious systems arouse an unmerciful criticism ; the old methods are condemned without discrimination and the demands for new ways and means become general. Improvements are then made, but in their zeal the advocates of "the new" proceed to extremes, and a reaction which we may call a second revision neces- sarily takes place before the right course is clearly determined. We today witness such a process taking place in the development of the methods of instruction in modern languages. The first halting station has been reached, and it is generally conceded that reforms are necessary. Unfruitful cramming of abstract grammatical rules, the knowledge of which the pupils were formerly expected to demon- strate by an application to unnatural sentences rendered artificially more difficult by numerous traps; the careless treatment of the phonetic elements in comparison with the prominence given to the written language ; the utter neglect of verbal expression in the foreign idiom ; the preference given to old-fashioned reading matter, encum- bered by a high-flown and pedantic style, and strongly flavored with home-made morality — these and many similar features of the old, one- sided grammatical regimen were earnestly attacked by a new genera- tion-which became convinced that the students* precious hours should not be wasted in sterile reasoning about a language, when they might be profitably invested for the purpose of acquiring practical knowledge and mastership. Attention was therefore directed in the first place to sound as heard, not as fixed upon the printed page. Phonetic studies were entered upon with much devotion, and were aided by accurate sound description, in order that the study might be emancipated from the doubtful historical traditions of written language. Instruction in formal grammar was reduced to the most indispensable rules, created anew in a purely empiric manner through direct perception. Conver- sation was generally encouraged. Reading matter was taken from popular and modern books of easy, flowing diction. All these changes and improvements rested upon sound principles. Department.] RECENT CHANGES IN METHODS. 577 They were the results of careful observation, of experience in teach- ing, and of disappointment in the old methods. If any one of the reformers had succeeded in combining them into one great and mod- ern system, the result would be glorious, and the device for teaching the reading, writing, and speaking of a language within six weeks — I beg your pardon ; let us say six months — might cease to be a fable. These prospects, however, are in the remote future. Moreover, it soon became apparent that in most instances the alterations were too radi- cal, that the progress in some directions had been too hasty — perhaps too much forced or artificially promoted, or had been in the wrong direction. By emphasizing a certian prominent improvement the teachers 'had lost sight of other no less prominent features of linguistic instruction; some placed the entire task upon the memory and dis- missed reason as an active factor, others applied exclusively to reason and abstained from all memorizing or learning by heart. Thus it has come that you find more partiality, one-sidedness, monotony, and exaggeration in any one of the modern methods than in all the old ones combined. But before passing final judgment let us review those of the new methods that stand foremost and have become indicative in certain lines of reforms. Almost all claim the attribute ** natural. " I have already said that only one natural way or method of any physical or mental action can be thought of. I admit, however, the fact that there is a marked difference between the acquisition of a language in the years of early childhood and the same intellectual process at a somewhat mature age. The child has many advantages: the flexibil- ity of the organs of speech, a still fresh and not yet overtaxed mem- ory, which will receive and preserve everything new with readiness; an almost undivided interest and attention which concentrate the energy upon one and the same object of observation. What seems to be an advantage for the adult very frequently is indeed a great hin- drance, or, at least, an obstacle. I refer to the more mature power of thought and judgment not yet developed within the child's mind. The child will receive everything strange or new involuntarily, as a matter of course, and without much effort or pains on his part. Not so the adult He will have to invest time and strength, he will meet numerous obstacles not at all noticed by the child, he will be in never- ceasing struggle with the **why?*' and the ''because,*' and will find the new tongue to be acquired in frequent contradiction with the ver- nacular. His way of mastering the new idiom must therefore be somewhat different from the ways of infants. The natural method of studying a second tongue is absolutely different at advanced age. Rosenthal — in the preface to his "Meisterschaft" system, — says: **It 37 ^yS NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary must have become conspicuous to every thinking man that children coming to foreign countries will acquire the foreign language within a few months. No grammar, no books, no teachers assist them. Without ability to read or write, they will express themselves fluently and correctly. Small, limited, apparently insufficient as his new vocabulary must be, the young child makes skillful use of it and applies the words appropriately. And it is by no means the smart, the quick, or the talented child alone who will do so. No, it is the child, every child, whether bright or dull, quick or slow. There must conse- quently be a certain instinctive and natural system or method at the bottom of these facts, a method which, in direct contrast and opposi- tion to our school methods, will lead always and under any circum- stances to the faculty of speaking^ to the real mastership of the lan- guage. * • There is a good deal of truth in these words. One fact, however, has been overlooked or perhaps ignored by Rosenthal. The child has only one purpose, and even this purpose is an involuntary one, really not even known to the child. It is the speaking only — the faculty or ability of expression — nothing else, nothing beyond. The adult — and with him the pupil of our schools — has to struggle with the reading, the writing, the speaking, and, moreover, with his own native tongue which seems to take a hostile position from the very first moment of studying a second language. In this way time, strength, and energy of the pupil are scattered and weakened, while the infant natur- ally concentrates and strengthens his powers, no matter how feeble they may be. Another important fact ignored by Rosenthal and others is this : The circle of observation and the supply of perceptions are very small for the child. He will therefore simply ignore in the foreign idiom all words or phrases which do not pertain to his childish perceptions, or are too heavy in meaning or value for his childish mind. The natural methods which we received from abroad were origin- ally intended for adults. The method Toussaint-Langenscheidt, the Meisterschaft system by Rosenthal, the Berlitz method or system, the Gouin method, even the far more simple methods of Ollendorff and Gaspey-Sauer — all were planned not for children, nor even for younger pupils in schools, but for people of mature minds and age. Some of these methods bear the labels **f or self-study," ** without a leader," ** within six months," and the like. Let us investigate them with regard to their true nature and character, and let us see how much of them has been carried into our schools, academies and colleges. If these people really tried to adapt the infant's way to an adult, they certainly made a mistake. It is impossible and ridiculous to clothe Department.] RECENT CHANGES IN METHODS. 579 full-grown people in children's dresses. But if we teachers of young people have indicated in our methods the ways of the old, we have made a still worse mistake, the ridiculousness of which is just as seri- ous as that of the other side. The Berlitz method is the most radical system of studying or acquiring a foreign language. This method is not new. The method of Comenius for teaching Latin was based upon the same principles, and the way which his pupils had to follow through the **Orbis Pictus*' was the same road that is now followed by the Berlitz disci- ples. The main feature of this method is this, that the vernacular of the student is ignored altogether. Teachers and pupils, from the very first lessons, converse in the new tongue; they actually use the new idiom in and from the very first sentence. It is asserted that the instruction according to this method shall act as a substitute for trav- eling to and living in the foreign countries where the language to be acquired is spoken. While in recitation the student, like the tourist abroad, is to hear and to speak that idiom only which he wishes to learn. Therefore, no translation, no grammar, no rules, no books — at least not in the beginning of the course. The teacher uses objects within his reach, or pictures, and instead of translating he makes him- self understood by pointing out and naming the objects in the new language. To give a simple example: The student does not learn : The window — das fenster, or in French: The table — la table. The teacher shows these objects directly; he points to them and says: Das ist ein fenster, or c'est une table; or else he may deem it sufficient to say: Ein fenster — une table. But he does not use one English word — neither for the purpose of translation nor mere explanation. There can be no doubt that this way is a good deal shorter than the old method of translating from the vernacular into the new idiom, and vice versa, A number of perceptions are at once formed in the mind of the student; these perceptions are brought into direct contact and connection with their objects. The danger of misunderstanding and misapplying the new terms seems impossible, the time which is needed by other methods for analyzing terms, phrases, and sentences into their linguistic elements may now be used for phonetic exercises and actual practice. And since every language represents its own and characteristic spirit, especially in its idiomatic terms and phrases, the old translation methods had to struggle with ever so many and some- times insurmountable difficulties, simply because they rarely of- fered any encouragement for thinking or reasoning in the foreign language. The Berlitz method then goes further. According to the rule in mathematics, by means of two known quantities we can find the third or unknown, the method will explain that which cannot be 580 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary made clear through objects by analogy, by comparison, and by con- stant use of the words already acquired. The entire matter of teach- ing has been arranged in such a form that each lesson represents an interesting conversation between teacher and student. As a motto for this method, the well-known sentence of Luther has been chosen : ** Anybody will learn German or any other language very much faster and better by direct oral conversation at home, in the market, or in church, than from books." I have attended only a few recitations in a Berlitz school. My judgment on this method is based more on the books which I have examined than upon direct observation. Nevertheless, I am ready to say the following: The Berlitz method (and all its imitations or par- allel methods — Henness, Sauveur, Gouin, Hausser, Worman, and many others — ) will be in its proper place and will do much good, pro- vided we are able to separate the student for a considerable amount of time from all people speaking his vernacular, even from his parents, brothers and sisters: provided, further, that, after having acquired a certain knowledge and skill in the new language, we can ofifer the student the association of people with whom he may converse in the language just acquired; provided, last but not least, that the teacher is a perfect master of the language to be studied. This last provision or condition sounds almost ridiculous, ironical, absurd. And yet it is stated in all sincerity. The Berlitz method requires not only a teacher of the foreign language, but a foreign teacher of the language, or, to express it more clearly; in order to learn French according to this method, the student must have a French teacher. This fact is freely admitted by all the promulgators of the method. In one of the catalogues of books intended for instruction in modern languages I find under the heading German Language (natural method) the follow- ing remark: In substance the book (Heness Der neue Leitfaden) is a classified list of words and phrases, generally woven into connected discourse. It gives the teacher all that is needful to teach according to this method, but he must understand German and be able to speak it; for nobody can teach what he does not know. So far, so good, but does not this remark contain a more general truth? May it not be applied just as appropriately to any other method? Certainly it may; and yet it remains of special significance in regard to the natural method. Look — or better — listen to the pupils that have studied a modern language — German, for instance — after the Berlitz method. When, coming to our public schools, as some of them do every year, they talk the funniest German that you may hear. They have only vague ideas of German grammar, of con- struction, of synonymous terms. In most cases they are not able to Department] RECENT CHANGES IN METHODS. 581 write a single German sentence without serious insults to grammar, and, with all their apparent parrot-like facility of talking, their voca- bularies are small and infant-like. Though being adults or half- adults, they strut about in infant's dresses which show their pitiable nakedness all the more. Thus have they become the deplorable vic- tims of a childish process applied to non-children, of an infant's method imposed upon adults or half-adult persons. I will now proceed to the second group, the one which I above have called the literary or analytical method. The principal repre- sentativres of this method are Toussaint-Langenscheidt, Rosenthal and Schliemann. The first direct impulse was given by Jacotot. He taught Latin in the following way: His students had to learn by heart the works of a Latin author (Caesar to begin with) chapter after chapter. As soon as the chapter was committed to memory a literal translation was given which was followed by colloquial exercises in Latin and on the subject matter of the chapter. Thus the student proceeded from chapter to chapter, and then from one work of the author to the next, and, finally, to another author. The principles of grammar, the elements of etymolog)-, the rules of syntax, the signifi- cation of synonyms — all these things were developed directly or indi- rectly from the text, and always by strictly analytical method. Jacotot in the preface to one of his texts (Fenelon's **T61dmaque,** Books L to VI.) says: **Whoever has committed to memory and fully compre- hended <7«^book will be able to understand all the others written by the same author. And this author will lead him to understand any author in the new tongue." We find here the same principles, the same method, although somewhat advanced and improved, which were introduced and pro- mulgated by Wolfgang' Ratich almost three centuries ago. There is nothing new under the sun. Jacotot began with **T^l^maque'* or Caesar, Ratich started with Terence. The method they followed was exactly the same. Committing the text to memory followed by col- loquial exercises in the new tongue ; analytical development of the grammar; overtaxing the memory, which was burdened with more than 90 per cent, of the entire study work; in fact, it was the old method which could be found in nearly all the monasteries and convent schools of the Middle Ages. And did not the students of those cloister schools actually acquire the faculty of talking the new language, in their case the Latin? Certainly they did, and later on they would talk their Latin more readily and fluently than the vernacular. The explanation is very simple. Their teachers, the monks, were speaking Latin only, their schools were internal institutions in the full sense of the word. Upon entering them, the students were entirely and 582 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary permanently separated from all former associations and brought into continuous contact with their tutors. Take any young person below fifteen or eighteen, separate him entirely and permanently from parents, brothers, sisters, friends, and all former acquaintances, take him into a family, boarding school or institution, or to any foreign country where he will no longer hear his vernacular — what will be the result? Within less than three months he will begin to talk in the new tongue, and within less than a year he will apparently master it. Such, and no other, was the secret of the success in the cloister schools of the Middle Ages. The systems of these analytical literary methods have been devel- oped to an astonishing degree. Above all stands the method, Tous- saint-Langenscheidt. It claims to be scientific, and it is actually sci- entific. Rosenthal, in his **Meisterschaft" system, Schliemann, in his **New Method of Learning English," and Leipzig, published by Spindler, start from the practical standpoint; their texts are taken from daily life, and have the tendency of practical conversation. While Toussaint-Langenscheidt attaches the colloquial exercises to the classical text, Rosenthal changes, remodels, and imitates the model texts in all possible forms and ways; and while Toussaint-Langen- scheidt bases all the work on a classical text (in the French course upon a novel by Chauteaubriand, in the English upon one of Dickens* novels), Schliemann underlays the text of a novel which he himself wrote expressly for the course. But the leading principle,* the funda- mental idea, the course of study, and the final aim to be attained, remain the same with all. The method has found an innumerable host of disciples and imitators. It must be stated, however, that of the former only very few have completed the course. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is true after all : The greatest disadvantage of this method is its thoroughness. I myself have seen many starting upon Toussaint-Langenscheidt in good faith, and full of zeal and enthusiasm, but they soon grew tired, their strength and perseverance failed, and, quoting Schiller, I can say: Noch Keinen sah ich frohlich enden, I myself went through both the courses of Toussaint-Langenscheidt. The author prescribes a year and a half of work for each course, French or English, at two hours of study per day. With a fair school knowledge of French, and with from two to four hours per day, Sun- days and holidays not excepted, I required almost four years to com- plete the course in French. I needed less time for the English course, because I was surrounded and assisted by English-speaking people, and was practically obliged to use the English idiom daily. It must be emphasized once more that these methods are intended, if not for adults exclusively, still for pupils or persons of somewhat Department.] RECENT CHANGES IN METHODS, 583 advanced age and mature minds. For pupils of lower schools, of our public schools, and even the beginning grades of our high schools, the method is too broad, and resembles too wide and broad a road upon which children would very soon proceed in a zigzag line which, under the very best of conditions, would prolong their way to an almost indefinite length, or, under less favorable circumstances, might fre- quently carry them backward instead of forward. Still, there are some features of the literary and analytical method which ought to be considered thoughtfully by every teacher of modern languages. The third group of methods is the one which aims to impart the new language in a merely colloquial way, without using objects, as we have seen with Berlitz and the natural methods, and without under- laying any connected text, as it is done by Jacotot and Toussaint- Langenscheidt. The teacher begins by giving simple phrases or sen- tences as models; a list of words — nouns or adjectives — is committed to memory, and then the real work for the pupil begins. The teacher asking questions in which he uses or imitates the model sen- tences obliges the pupil to do the same in his answers; the vocabu- lary previously memorized will be applied in ever so many new sen- tences which, however, like a never-resting teetotum, will turn again and again around one and the same spindle. This anxious clinch to the model sentence, together with the merely mechanical memoriz- ing of words afterwards to be applied in a mechanical, tiresome, and sometimes idiotic way, burdens the method from the very beginning with the curse of monotony, dryness, ridiculousness, and even foolish- ness. Let us listen to some of Ollendorff's colloquial exercises: Have you seen the tailor? No, but I have seen the chimney sweeper. **Has the Turk a flower? No, but his daughter has an apple. Has the Spaniard the yellow hat of the German? No, but the Englishman has the red pants of the Frenchman. This outrage of monotony and silliness is coupled with the still greater evil of burdening the memory with an endless line of discon- nected words. The pupil takes his natural revenge for such an insult to nature; he forgets these words almost as rapidly as he learned them. I have tested many of my private students in regard to their vocabularies. Some of the young people had previously received instruction by the method Ollendorff. Their vocabularies were the most wretched. One student — a bright young man of eighteen — ^hav- ing completed twenty-two lessons in Ollendorff's course to learn Eng- lish, did not remember 100 words. He had memorized about 500. Another student of mine, an intelligent young lady of about twenty, who had completed the Ollendorff course for English to learn German, was not able to read and understand simple, connected German, as 584 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary we may find it in any second or third reader of our common schools. Such is the curse of nonsensical memorizing, mechanical synthesis, and idiotic continuance of one and the same line or form. No more of these methods. They have no place within our schools. They would be sickening and fatal to our pupils, just as the monotonous and deafening noise of* a machine will at length destroy the power of hearing. Recapitulating the principal features of the different methods and pointing out those which indicate progress or improvement, we may say: {a) There is a strong tendency in modern methods to emancipate the spoken language more and more from the written or printed lan- guage. A mere book, or literary knowledge of a modern tongue is not sufficient, and for most people even practically useless. {b) The formerly so frequent vocabularies and merely synthetical exercises had to yield to phonetic studies. Some methods begin in a srictly oral way; they use no texts, no books. Only later, after having overcome the difficulties of pronunciation, the pupils will proceed to written or printed language. {c) As to the latter — the printed text — the modern methods incline most decidedly to complete and connected language ; that is to say, instead of individual, single and disconnected sentences, disconnected especially with regard to their meaning, the teacher and student will enter at once upon some complete composition of language, whether it be a shorter piece of reading, a short story, fable, or parable, or a longer and more extended work of some author — a novel, a romance, or a work of dramatic form. {d) This text will then be studied analytically, and will be subse- quently applied in a synthetic way. The student is introduced at once into the work and spirit of the author. He is directed to grasp the pronunciation, the form, and the spirit of the new language by one and the same process, through one and the same medium. {e) The importance of grammar, sovereignly disregarded and even held in contempt by so many, is duly recognized by others. But the old mechanical and merely synthetic way of teaching grammar has been abandoned. Baynesays: ** Grammar is a science or nothing. " And as a science it must be taught. It is therefore based upon scien- tific, let me say classic, texts ; it is developed scientifically from the language and will afterward serve as a scientific structure or frame- work for it. The knowledge of grammar may be dispensed with by anyone who will speak no other language but the vernacular. But it becomes indispensable for every person that aims at the correct use of a second language. Department.] DISCUSSION. 585 * There may be some more features of our new methods worthy of consideration, or, at least, mention, but let those which I have stated be sufficient. Some of these points will pertain to our instruction. A deliberate and thorough discussion is indeed very desirable, although I wish to conclude my remarks with the warning: Let us be careful, cautious, and slow in adopting new ways. The Italian says very truly : Chi va piano ^ 7'a sano. DISCUSSION. Professor Hermann Woldmann, Supervisor of German instruction, Cleve- land, Ohio, said that the methods employed depended upon the purpose for which the language is studied. A merely colloquial plan of instruction, he thought, would have a commercial value, to be sure, but, being solely a matter of mem- ory, would afford little or no intellectual training. In the more general discussion that ensued the following topics were touched upon: First, " Is it expedient for a teacher to correct a pupil's pronunciation or translation while he is reciting? " The concensus of opinion seems to be that it is better to wait until he has finished. It was suggested that the most glar- ing, and most habitual mistakes should be pointed out to the pupil as soon as he has finished; or that the class should be allowed to criticise his faulty pronunci- ation, and that the teacher should make only such corrections as the class had failed to see. The latter plan, it is believed, would insure attention and tend to develop a critical faculty. Second, " How much attention should prose composition receive with beginners in modern languages in the high school course?" Professor Krug recommended that prose composition should be commenced as early as possible, but should be based on the subject matter read, and not be made too difficult, as this would only tend to discourage the pupil by putting unnecessary stumbling blocks in his way. Miss Elizabeth Schugens, of the Buffalo High School, suggested that there be less prose composition, and more exact translation from German or French into English. Third, " Should the Roman script be used exclusively instead of German in our schools? " It seemed to be the general impression that in short courses, requiring economy of time, the Roman script is sufficient, but that in fuller courses the German script ought not to be ignored. Moreover, the fact that several of our leading colleges require the German script was cited as an addi- tional reason why we should be very careful in dispensing with it altogether. Fourth, " In regard to methods of teaching the modern languages." Profes- sor Krug, in response to questions asked by several members, remarked that he thought that no one method had yet been discovered which would satisfy all the requirements of our schools. "One of the great obstacles in the way," he said, "is the utter lack of uniformity in the curricula of our public high schools." Fifth, " For what purpose do we study German and French in our secondary schools? " No definite conclusion could be reached on this subject. It was stated that one purpose was that of general culture, and another that of improv- ing the pupil's English by insisting on accurate translations into his own ver- nacular. 586 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary A brief description of the modern-language work in England, corresponding to that of our secondary schools, went to show that accurate translations are required only of advanced pupils, while with beginners special stress is laid upon the language to be learned, and scarcely any upon the English. The meeting was then adjourned sine die. ROUND TABLE. HISTORY. The History Conference of the Secondary Department met in the parlors of the North Presbyterian Church on the afternoon of July 8th, but the very large number present compelled an adjournment to the vestry of a neighboring church. Dr. Ray Greene Huling, of the Cambridge, Mass., English High School, pre- sided, and Mr. George Parker Winship, of Providence, R. I., acted as Secretary. Dr. Ruling called attention to the importance of definite aims as an element of success in the teaching of history, and suggested five results as eminently desirable in order that the subject maybe a genu- ine means of culture to the pupil. These are: 1. A basis of historical facts, well selected, and believed to be true, should be laid in the memory and organized into a compact whole. 2. In the acquisition of these facts accurate and persistent mental habits should be formed, including, especially in the secondary period of education, habits of imagination and logical thought about histori- cal data, but not omitting good habits of observation and memory within the same field. 3. Meanwhile the learner's moral emotions should be stimulated and his moral judgment trained by appeals based on the personal elements in his historical studies. 4. In the midst of this work the pupil must be trained to give as well as to get, to express in speech and in writing, with clearness and precision, both the facts he has learned and the inferences he draws from them. 5. In the prosecution of the foregoing aims, by skill and tact, there should be aroused and trained a keen and abiding interest in his- torical reading and research. These results are not only desirable, but capable of attainment in the secondary school. Dr. Huling then announced the three topics mentioned in the pro- gramme for this conference, College Admissions, Examinations in History, Library Method in History, and Helps to the Study of His- tory; but he invited those present to speak upon any portion of the entire subject which claimed their interest. Department.] DISCUSS/ON^. 587 DISCUSSION. Mr. Wilson Farrand, of Newark Academy, Newark, N. J., opened the dis- cussion upon the first topic by suggesting as the essential conditionof all satisfac- tory college entrance examinations, that they should have as the primary object to insure the fitness of the pupil to go on with the college work, and to evidence his general development and the maturity of his mind. The requirement must be both serious and dignified, demanding earnest work in the schools and com- manding the respect of both teachers and pupils. It must be so framed and ad- ministered as to supply a guide and a standard for the secondary school work. Most important of all, the college should allow all earnest, serious work done in the secondary schools to count for admission to college, so as to allow the smaller high schools and the non-preparatory schools to foster and develop the desire for a higher education. There ought also to be a substantial uniformity in the requirements of all the colleges so far as concerns specific subjects. The history work now done in the best schools is serious and earnest and it especially tends to secure the desirable maturity of mind and the development of power in the pupil. As an admission requirement its introduction is perfectly feasible if only the colleges will consent to the substitution of history for some other subject in case it proves to be too difficult in addition to existing requirements. The results agreed upon after a discussion of the proper subjects for preparatory history study at the Columbia College Conference have been set forth with much detail and authority in the May issue of the Educational Review. The further discussion tended towards a comparison of the methods of teaching history and the presentation of evidence as to the success of the library method. Many of the teachers had tried in one way or another to use the library method, with vary- ing success, due perhaps in some cases to the teacher's preparation and enthu- siasm. The most satisfactory results were reported from the State University at Lincoln, Neb., where the students under Messrs. W. E. G. Taylor and H. W. Caldwell have succeeded in producing for themselves historical narratives based upon the sources made available in the American History LeafletSy edited by Pro- fessors Hart and Channing, of Harvard, the Old Soutk Leaflets^ and the Sheldon- Barnes histories. The students are trained in all the stages of elementary his- torical research, including the comparison of their own results with those of the standard writers of derived history. Despite the doubting questions of many teachers, others declared their faith in the new ideas. Among those who appeared to have been the most successful in the use of the library method was Mrs. Jennie Ward Davis, of Corry, Pa., and Mrs. E. P. Wetmore, of Rochester, N. Y. Miss Tenney and Miss Elizabeth Hirschfield told of thework in the Buffalo High School, where, as in many other places, the greatest hindrance to the sec- ondary work is found to be that the pupils coming from lower grades are unable to read intelligently, and they do not know what words mean, and do not distin- guish the exact significance of what an author is saying. Mr. Myron Tracy Scudder, Inspector of the University of the State of New York, detailed the results of his observations during his extensive visita- tions among New York schools, as a result of which he advocated more intelli- gent teaching in all grades. The wise use of a text-book seemed to him advisable ^88 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary as presenting the matured opinion of some scholar who had spent years of research and of thought upon the subject of which he was writing. Other speakers found difficulty in agreeing upon the text-book to be prescribed which should meet these requirements. The discussion was continued by Mr. £. E. Proper, of the St. Lawrence University, and Mr. Clarence A. Brodeur, of Chicopee, Mass., and was brought to a close by three short addresses. Professor B. A. Hinsdale, of Ann Arbor, Mich., protested against the filling up of the mind of the child with words the content of which is wholly unknown to the child. Everywhere, in every subject, the competent teacher is everything. Professor Morse Stephens, of Cornell University, gave an English observer's impressions of the whole discussion, which seemed to him to bring out the enormous acquisitive power of the American child. The main fault in this as in every other line of American education, seems to be a prevailing desire to teach the children to run before they know how to walk properly. It is a very useful thing to learn a certain substantial body of facts, which forms a founda- tion for everything which comes after in education. From a school where there is a good teacher, the pupils who come to the colleges are apt to have a love of history and a knowledge of how to pursue their studies to advantage. Better no course in history than a bad course. The closing speaker was Inspector James L. Hughes, of Toronto, who urged the use of the topical method in secondary schools. ROUND TABLE. MATHEMATICS. The Mathematical Section of the Department of Secondary Education of the National Educational Association, convened in Sunday-school room, North Presbyterian Church, 3 p. m., Wednesday, July 8th. William A. Greeson, Dean of Lewis Institute, Chicago, presided. S. Weimer, of the Cleveland Central High School, was chosen Secretary. James L. Patterson, Union College, Schenectady, read the following paper: ECONOMY IN MATHEMATICAL INSTRUCTION. BY PROFESSOR JAMES L. PATTERSON, UNION COLLEGE, SCHENECTADY, N. Y. The spirit of this age is iconoclastic. Tradition has lost its power. The fact that a* thing has been for years past has little weight in determining whether it shall be in years to come. The utilitarian and disciplinary value of each branch of study in our institutions of learn- ing is under scrutiny as never before, and time-honored beliefs are ruthlessly set aside. The field of knowledge is widening daily, new studies are clamoring for recognition, and as the capacity of the human mind is limited, the battle grows hot as to what shall be allowed to go by default, what retained, what added. The attempt Department.] ECONOMT IN MATHEMATICAL INSTRUCTION, 589 to adjust our schedules to the new requirements without sacrificing too far the old has resulted in a congestion which too often sacrifices thoroughness for quantity, and substitutes a thin veneer for solid cul- ture. The smoke of this conflict has obscured to some extent our vision of ways by which we may escape from some of the evils from which we suffer. No reformer, however exuberant his fancy, or violent his prejudice, has proposed the elimination of the elementary branches of mathematics from our curricula, and it is not likely that such a proposition would find advocates; for although a limited amount of arithmetical study would suffice for the absolute material needs of the great majority of mankind, yet that wider knowledge of number and form which is the necessary foundation of any adequate conception of the universe in which we live, and the prerequisite of all scientific studies, requires the prolonged and thorough study of at least the elements of algebra and geometry. While it is true that the place of mathematics in our educational system is assured, yet it would be folly indeed for us to be blind to the fact that a wise economy of time and effort in mathematical instruction is demanded by this age. If there are wastes in subjects taught or in methods employed, justice to other branches of knowledge, as well as to the individual student, demands that those who stand before the people as leaders should be untiring in their efforts to bring about reform. In recent years this subject has received much attention, and discussion has borne fruit in many of our best institutions. But in spite of all that has been said, and notwithstanding the growing conviction that in proportion to the amount of time and attention that mathematical studies receive, the results are lamentably unsatisfactory, yet careful investigation reveals almost no effort to take away the reproach in the great majority of our schools. In what I shall have to say on this subject there may be little that is new, but that which is old can never become uninteresting to earn- est teachers as long as there is overwhelming evidence that it should be repeated because it has not been heeded. In this paper I shall confine myself to two or three phases of the question, illustrating different directions along which economy may be secured. It has been said by competent authorities that the average pupil of fifteen years of age knows less about arithmetic than he should know at thirteen. Judging from a wide experience with boys from our public and private schools, I have no doubt that the statement is correct. This waste of a considerable part of the time spent in arithmetical study is still found in most of our schools, notwithstand- 590 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary ing all that has been recently said about it. The changes demanded by modern conditions are : 1. More thorough drill in the fundamental rules. 2. The omission of certain topics. 3. The simplification of the treatment of other topics. 4. The postponement of commercial arithmetic until the pupil is old enough to comprehend it. Facility and accuracy in the fundamental operations is secured only by practice. This practice should be continued throughout the arith- metical course, and may well occupy a portion of almost every recita- tion period. It is impossible for an instructor to supervise the tablet or blackboard work of each pupil, and thus make the sdlution of every problem an exercise in rapid computation, hence it is essential that a special exercise for this purpose should be frequently given. If any teacher supposes that his class is proficient in multiplication, let him give out a problem in this operation, each factor having three or four figures, and call in the papers after a reasonable time and note the result. By the way, how many boys and girls know by experience that the best way of testing the result in multiplication is by casting out the nines? This thorough training in computation will hear fruit all along the mathematical course and in after life. It will save time in the long run a thousand fold. Among the topics which may be omitted are cube root, equation of payments, and compound proportion. The last mentioned topic has not even a shadow of an excuse for retention. Ordinary analysis, or the so-called unitary method, will solve every problem given under compound proportion, and no special method is necessary nor desir- able either for the sake of utility or discipline. The simplification of the treatment of compound numbers is per- haps the greatest need of today in arithmetical instruction. This sub- ject as presented in the great majority of our text books in use, and as « taught in most of our schools is one of the most formidable as regards the time required and the difficulties encountered. It is supposed to be a practical topic, but when any mature person compares the actual needs and practice of daily life with the treatment of this topic in the schools, the latter seems grotesquely unpractical and magnified into proportions most absurd. The fact is that compound numbers of more than two or three places are almost unknown even in engineer- ing. The following problem would not attract special attention in any arithmetic: Reduce loA. 100 sq. rds. 5 sq.yds. 6 sq. ft. 30 sq. in. to decimal acres, and yet it will serve to illustrate one of the most common absurdities of our texts. A land surveyor employs two very crude instruments the magnetic needle and the chain. He may be Department.] ECONOMT IN MATHEMATICAL INSTRUCTION, 591 able to obtain the area of a field or farm within a few square rods, but what of the yards, what of the feet, what of the inches? A compound number containing acres and square rods is common enough in prac- tice, so square feet and square inches may go together, but hardly ever the whole series. The height of absurdity is reached when the pupil is required to add, subtract, multiply, and divide these long numbers. I believe that it is quite within bounds to say that the time devoted to this topic in the schools of this Empire state today might be reduced one-half to the advantage of all concerned. All that is required is the thorough memorizing of the tables in present use with practice in easy, chiefly oral problems. The adoption of the metric system would, after a few years of con- fusion, be a happy solution of the question we are considering. What more fitting gift could the nineteenth present to the twentieth cen- tury than such a boon to the commercial and educational worlds? While we work and wait for such a consummation, let us make the best of existing conditions. Time will not permit me to refer to other topics in detail, but every competent teacher, by the exercise of common sense and inde- pendence of traditions and text-books, will be able to reduce to the needs of actual life and future mathematical study, many topics which are now treated from a purely theoretical standpoint, a treatment which had its origin years ago, before algebra and geometry with their superior disciplinary powers were found in the courses of study for the masses. The elements of percentage and interest may be understood by the pupil of twelve or thirteen, and may be thoroughly taught, but most of the commercial applications, such as bank discount, commission, insurance, taxes, duties, stocks and bonds, and the more important business forms with which every young person should be familiar, are beyond the comprehension of the pupil of this age, and I should strongly urge that their consideration be postponed to the final year of the high or secondary school course, when one or two hours per week for a short term would be sufficient for their mastery. It is not my purpose to speak at length of algebra, but I wish to make a suggestion to teachers of mathematics in the fitting schools. It is not uncommon to find students in college who have no difficulty in comprehending the analytic geometry and calculus, yet lack a work- ing knowledge of fractional exponents, surds, and quadratic equations. They may have no difficulty in differentiating a somewhat complex radical form, but the reduction to a simple form gives trouble. In analytic geometry and in the theory of equations we meet students constantly who have not mastered quadratics. No student should 592 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary be passed in this subject in the fitting school who is not perfectly at home in the solution of equations by factoring, and in the solution of quadratics by the formula resulting from the solution of the general quadratic a^-\'bx-\-c=zOy and the condition for equal roots is of prime importance. As to the forms ax^-^bx=iCy and x^-\-px=q^ which are found in so many American text books, I should enter a very emphatic protest. The form ax^-\-bx-\-Cj is the form of the quadratic quantic. It is, in my judgment, the best form for elementary work, it is the only form for advanced work until we require the binomial form in the higher equation theory. The solution of quadratics by completing the square is only a beginner's method, and it seems to me that it is a waste of time to learn more than one method of completing the square. Let me repeat, quadratics should be solved by factoring if the factors are readily determined, otherwise by the formula ^=.( — b^±^ — 40^) 2a. Determining roots by inspection and by trials are also profitable exer- cises. My suggestion then is that in teaching elementary algebra the future needs of the pupil be constantly kept in mind, so that in advanced work time may not be spent in doing what the fitting school should have done, or in undoing what the fitting school has done badly. Leaving now this simple phase of our subject, let us consider what method of presenting mathematical subjects to our classes will most efficiently and economically minister to the development of a well- trained mind. It is common criticism that the study of mathematics does not fit a person for the practical duties of life, because in mathe- matics the data are definite, and a logical claim of reasoning con- ducts from premise to conclusion, and no exceptions are found ; while in actual life the data are seldom definite, many modifying influences must be considered, and a judgment reached by a nice balancing of probabilities. The person who reasons in this way has but little con-' ception of the modern theory of mathematical instruction as it is understood and practiced by our best teachers. In the hands of these teachers mathematics does present facts which are useful, it does culti- vate concentration, it does train the mind in exact demonstration and logical proof, but it also cultivates the power to examine a question from various standpoints, to take into consideration various modifying conditions, to choose the most simple and direct from a variety of methods, and thus it does fit one for solving the problems of life. But how shall this result be accomplished? It cannot be reached at all, or only by an enormous waste of time, by attempting to compel the student to reproduce the demonstrations and solutions of the text- book, which is at best little more than an exercise of the memory. A Department.] ECONOMT IN MATHEMATICAL INSTRUCTION. 593 few useful facts may be learned in this way, but that is all. The rea- soning powers are not developed, the judgment is not exercised, and self-reliance is not inculcated. Such methods do not fit our youth for the battle of life, and time thus spent is largely wasted. And yet the text-book has its place, and its use does not necessarily lead to intel- lectual imbecility. But its office is not to tell the student that which he may find out for himself, nor to relieve the teacher from the duty of directing the investigations of the student. Its office is to present a systematic development of the subject for reference and review, and to furnish in a convenient form problems from which the teacher may make a suitable selection for each pupil to solve. We may lay down this principle as fundamental: New topics should be introduced through the medium of the class-room rather than the study hour. In (Jther words each new topic should be discussed in the class-room before it is made the subject of private text-book study by the pupil. Upon the nature of this discussion the whole question hinges, and here the true teacher is revealed. College professors who teach the required subjects of the college course frequently lecture before the class, explaining each point and illustrating every principle by working out examples. The day following the student is expected to answer the questions which the professor had answered the day before, and which are also answered in the text-book, and to work out problems like those solved by the instructor at the previous recitation, and I regret to say that not a few secondary teachers follow this bad example. When this method is compared with that which consists in assigning a lesson in the text-book, and hearing the student recite on it the fol- lowing day, the latter method becomes quite respectable. A student may get some valuable training from his study of the text, but in ele- mentary work the lecture method has scarcely a redeeming feature, except that it matters little whether a class numbers twenty or 200. Handling large classes is a kind of economy, but not the kind that this paper advocates. In the discussion which introduces a topic to a class the attempt should be made to connect it in a simple and natural way with some- thing that has gone before, either in the class-room or in the experi- ence of the pupil. The youngest child of school age knows what one- half or one-third of an apple is, as u matter of experience. Such ele- mentary knowledge may be made tft^ basis of a development of the subject of fractions in which the chief agents are an interested child, a few apples, a knife, and a teacher who knows when to keep silent. It is an educational crime to tell a boy or girl why f =i or 2j=f. When difficult topics are introduced the teacher will find it necessary to ask leading questions, or at times to answer a question outright. 38 594 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary So much has been said recently in regard to the application of the method outlined here (which has been called the laboratory method) in elementary geometry, that I need not enlarge upon the subject here. It may not be amiss, however, to remark that many teachers who do not feel competent to conduct the work without a text-book, or who are laboring under unfavorable conditions, are obtaining excel- lent results with the more earnest students in their classes, while the indolent and indifferent are compelled to con the text as of yore. But in the ideal method no text-book is used. In the required work in college the same method may be employed with still greater efficiency than in the more elementary subjects. If an instructor is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of this method, whether in school or college, whether classes are large or small, he will find the opportunity to put it to a test to the delight and profit of the earnest workers in every class In the application of this method the time spent with the teacher is all important. In the lower grades long study hours are practically wasted. During the last year or two of the secondary course, the quiet study hour becomes of greater relative value. In many of our secondary programmes the recitation time allowed to plane geometry is not sufficient for the best development of the pupil. It is not a wise economy to curtail here. A four-year programme for secondary schools based upon the supposition that elementary algebra and geo- metry require the same relative proportion of study and recitation periods as solid geometry and trigonometry is, in my judgment, a mis- take. If time must be taken from mathematics and given to music and drawing and science, let it be taken from the study and not from the recitation periods. We do not claim for this method a saving of recitation time, but there is a decided economy in the study period. And, more important still, while under the old system the study hour is often a period of blind groping and discouraging failure, resulting in disgust for study and in dawdling habits, under the new method this period becomes full of interest and intelligent effort, because of the previous discus- sion in the class-room. But the strongest argument for this method is that it teaches the pupil how to think, it trains the reasoning powers, it exercises the judgment, it cultivates self-reliance, and gives the pupil command of his faculties. And all this is accomplished with that interest and sense of growing power which are essential to the best education. Department.] DISCUSSION. 595 DISCUSSION. Topics grouped under the following heads were discussed: (i) Arithmetic in secondary schools; can it be dispensed with? If not, how much time should be given to it and in what year? (2) In what order should the subjects in algebra be introduced? (3) When and how should negative exponents be taught to begin- ners in algebra? (4) The treatment of factoring so as to include the solution of equations. (5) Should algebra and geometry be taught contemporaneously or consecutively? or, in general, what is the best arrangement of a course in algebra and geometry? (6) Should solid geometry be included in the courses leading to college? On motion of Mr. Morton Jones, of Memphis, Tenn., the discussion was limited to five minutes each. Mr. Jones then opened the discussion on arithmetic in the high-school course, arguing that more attention should be given to the subject of aliquot parts. Mr. a. H. Avery, of South Dakota, contended that all problems in arithme- tic should first be solved mentally. Dr. Frederick Monteser, of the School of Pedagogy, New York City, thought that teachers have a false idea of utility. He objected to the emphasis placed upon rapid addition, for instance. Common schools have no business to educate specialists; should simply develop the mind. He would have arithmetic in the high school, but would show its relation to other branches of mathematical study. Professor W. A. Shoemaker, of State Normal School, St. Cloud, Minn., disap- proved of the idea that number or arithmetic should precede geometrical concepts. Pupils should be early introduced to geometrical form, as the idea of number can thus be better understood through form. Charles J. Capen, of Boston Latin School, argued that objective geometry should be first introduced to the children. The speaker asked for information concerning a text-book for such instruction. He would like to see such a book written. The speaker outlined the plan of work in vogue in the Boston Latin School whereby the subject of geometry -is presented in this way. Mr. E. C. Lavers, of Easton, Pa., thought children were not mature enough before they reached the high school to understand fully some branches of arith- metic. He was of the opinion that some of the subjects of arithmetic should not be studied until the pupil has had both algebra and geometry. The arithmetic should not be completed until the fourth year of the high school. Mr. Shiller, of Michigan, would like to get an expression of the teachers on the question of cutting down the work in arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades, and of introducing algebra and objective geometry. In his school they have arithmetic in the high-school course, and algebra in the eighth grade of the grammar school. In response to the question it was discovered that twenty schools were here represented in which arithmetic was taught in the first year of the high school, twenty-four schools in which arithmetic was taught in the last year of the high-school course, and twelve schools in which it was taught both in the first and fourth years of the high-school course. In seventeen schools no arithmetic was taught as a special study in the high schools. 596 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary Mr. Edgar H. Nichols, of Cambridge, Mass., thought the meeting should come to some practical conclusion and suggested the following motion: That it is the sense of this meeting that, in teaching arithmetic in the grammar schools only the five fundamental subjects of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers, and simple fractions, and decimals, should be taught before the subjects of elementary algebra and objective geometry should be taken up. In discussing the subject of negative exponents, Mr. Nichols expressed the opinion that complicated problems involving negative exponents, should be left out of an elementary course in algebra ; that the pupil should be taught that the negative exponent is simply another way of indicating division, for instance that 3a — 2 should be read "divide 3 by a*." Negative exponents should be avoided in practice almost wholly, because unnecessary. Mr. E. C. Lavers. — The presentation of mathematical subjects should first be inductive, and further on, when the logical faculty is developed more fully, de- ductive methods should be followed, so demonstrative geometry should come later in the course. He was of the opinion that since President Eliot has enriched the grammar-school course the teachers and pupils are taxed beyond mortal endur- ance. Too much attention was given to the few pupils who go from the high school to higher institutions of learning, and not enough to the many who find in the high schools their finishing school. Mr. Bo wen, of Kansas. — In >is state the high schools followed a plan by which the subjects of geometry and algebra were alternated, taking a half-year in each for the first two years. But the plan did not prove a success and was abandoned. Mr. James L. Patterson thought the University of Chicago had the right plan, in which a lesson was given every day in geometry until the subject was completed. Algebra was taken up in a similar manner. Mr. Morris, of Wisconsin, asked what was meant by literal work in arithme- tic to which Professor Patterson responded that arithmetic and algebra are one, and the pupil should early be taught to use symbols and to generalize. - Mr. Lavers thought it unwise to attempt to teach generalization too soon before the children were able to follow such lines of thought. Department.] PRINCIPALS' ROUND TABLE, 597 PRINCIPALS' ROUND TABLE. The Round Table convened Wednesday afternoon, July 8th, 2:30 p. m., with Principal F. L. Bliss, High School. Detroit, Mich., in the chair. G. F. Jewett, Youngstown, Ohio, was to have opened the discussion of the topic, " To What Extent Should Promotions be Allowed in One Department with Failures in Another? " In Mr. Jewett*s absence the chairman announced as the topic, '* What Should be Done to Supervise the Work of Individual Students in a Large High School?" He furthermore expressed a desire that the gathering might take the character of an experience meeting, and that the discussion might be as free and informal as possible. The expectation of those present to hear the former subject discussed shaped to some extent the character of the remarks made. The discussion was led by Principal William H. Smiley, High School District No. One, Denver, Colo. Mr. Smiley. — There is no need to speak at length of the importance of this question. The claims of the students to individual attention in every grade from the kindergarten to the college have received such full discussion during the past two or three years that we probably meet this afternoon more sensitive to our duty to him than we have ever been. Our chairman has asked that we speak from personal experience and I shall heed this suggestion, speaking for a school with an enrollment of nearly 800 boys and girls. A principal feels at times with tremendous force his lack of personal acquaint- ance with those under his charge, but he probably never feels it so keenly as when he stands face to face with the members of his entering class. Then, of all times, he longs for omniscience; yet, at this time, when fullness of knowledge would avail himso much in giving guidance and counsel, is his knowledge scantiest. If wise, however, with all the adminstrative ability he may possess, he plans to make good the deficiency he feels so keenly. In our school district, the relation between the high schools and the grammar schools is close and confidential. Superintendent Gove, the twelve or more principals of the grades below the high school, and the principals of the two high schools, meet in conference on questions of mutual interest once in two weeks throughout the year. I know the teachers from whom my students come, pro- moted to the high school on the certificate of their principal. For several years the principals have furnished me a more or less detailed account, made out either by the principal himself or by his eighth-grade teachers, of each pupil entering the high school. These reports give reasonably full account of the strength and weakness of the individual, of marked capacity or incapacity in special subjects, as shown by his previous school history, sometimes something of his home sur- roundings, and now and then something of the influences affecting him outside of home and school. This may seem at first to be a little inquisitorial, but whether it be so or not depends on the use made of the information. Suffice to say that such information has often proven of inestimable value, making possible a reasonable explanation of extraordinary conduct of a student in his new sur- roundings; his act, against this clear background of his past, appearing much oftener to his advantage than to his disadvantage. In no case is a student's' high school future made for him by his past record. That each student may be brought into close personal relationship with some 598 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary one teacher of the corps, our sixteen schoolrooms, each seating about forty-five pupils, with the exception of the senior class-room, which seats one hundred, are assigned to individual teachers and are known as their rooms. The teacher, so far as the programme makes it possible, instructs the pupils assigned to his ; room in some one subject in order to facilitate his acquaintance with them. He is expected to know them intimately. He has personal oversight of their monthly records in scholarship in all studies and in deportment, and gives reproof or praise as he may think wise. He prods the lazy, gives encouragement to the slow, holds in check the too ambitious, and tries to secure willing loyalty to necessary school requirements. In short, he makes his own character count for all it may by close contact with his little group, and he is able to give exact information to principal and teacher if need arises. He calls them to order at the opening of the session, and dismisses them before the lunch hour and at night. He is required to be in his room twenty minutes before school opens; he often remains after school hours to give suggestions or help to those who may desire it. One morning in the week he uses as he sees fit the time devoted on other mornings to opening exercises in which the whole school unites. How the time is used depends on the personality of the teacher and his own interests. He may desire it for the discussion of some current topic to which he has invited individual students to contribute; in the main he strives to so use this time as to get in touch with his pupils on a common footing of mutual interest in subjects that lie outside the ordinary school routine, that both may feel at one in a society more comprehensive than the school. That I may be able at a moment's notice to turn to the record of any pupil, I have printed slips for all, arranged by rooms in alphabetical order, and kept in a drawer of my office desk. On these the teachers enter at the close of each school month a pupil's standing in each study, his absence, his tardiness, and his deportment. At one end of the slip is space for any notes I may desire to make of interviews with him, or with his home. The monthly reports sent to parents are copied by the room teachers from these office slips. I find them of great assistance in fixing the names of the entering class. I take the slips of a room to any class I may desire to visit, and as the teacher calls upon pupils I turn to the corresponding slip, makiDg any mental note for purposes of associa- tion that I may please, and I find in a few weeks I have fixed firmly the names of a large proportion of the class. No amount of time spent in learning to call a pupil by his name can be wasted. He often assumes that your knowledge extends much farther than it does. But this assuinption on his part at times solves great difficulties for you. Perhaps the most valuable result of our weekly teacher's meeting is the dis- covery of those neglecting work in several subjects, or making petty trouble for several teachers. Prompt reference of the matter to the home usually brings prompt improvement. We hear frequent charges against the home, but my experience in securing helpful co-operation when a business-like statement of facts is courteously presented discredits the stock assertion about its lack of interest. The home often apologizes for its lack of power, but I have never found it unwilling to apply all that it possessed. But I believe the principal's power for personal supervision is rendered vastly more efficient if it be possible for him to meet his school in one body. A few words in the assembly-room may strike home with telling effect. The mass approves them and shows that it approves them. The sentiment of the mass sweeps the individual before it. Words that, coming from the principal, merely Department.] PRINCIPALS' ROUND TABLE. 599 as principal, would hardly reach the individual to whom they apply, when backed by the forceful silence of school approval sometimes carry instant conviction to individual hearts. In the assembly-room the brain and heart, the thought and feeling of various school years, various classes, various social surrounding are co-ordinated and unified in the public opinion of school society. By earnest effort on the part of the corps of teachers, working through the natural student leaders of school society, this opinion may be made very high. The highest ideal we teachers need have is that this school opinion may unite in support of our ideals of character and scholarship. There is no supervision that equals this in its power with individuals. Principal O. D. Robinson, High School, Albany, N. Y. — The difficulties aris- ing from the necessity of supervision, I suspect, are very general in their char- acter, and the remedies for them must be pretty much the same the country over. Our school is organized so far as possible on the department plan. Teachers are obliged to have some charge of study halls in addition to their regular hours of teaching. Our study halls seat about 120 pupils, and questions affecting indi- vidual deficiencies are raised in our teachers' meetings in much the same way as described by Mr. Smiley. We have, however, a printed form for convenience in calling promptly to the attention of parents any and all delinquencies. I find parents pretty uniformly desirous that their children use all diligence about their work, and I frequently get great assistance. If I find that a parent takes a great interest, then I say to him, " If you desire, your son may bring you a weekly report of his work." The result usually is that I get prompt support from the home. Let me say right here that I always communicate with the father at his place of business, rather than with the mother. But my most troublesome case is that of the pupil who dangles along for several months till he is hopelessly behind. Then what can be done with him? My way of settling such a case is to have him drop one or two studies, that he may save himself in others. This of course burdens him with conditions which must be made up before graduation. Though we lay much stress on the notion of graduation, yet, after all, this is not the most important consideration for the boy. If I can get him to work in any one subject, I make a better man of him. If I can keep him at work for a year or two I do my duty by him, though he may not gradu- ate. I would not keep him back for failure in a single study. Principal Edward L. Harris, Central High School, Cleveland, Ohio. — I need to preface what I may say by the statement that I am obliged to carry on what might be termed a double-headed high school, or two high schools of 800 pupils each, conducted for five hours in successive sessions. The difficulties of supervision are of course doubled, but we have succeeded in securing a regula- tion from the Board of Education that relieves us a good deal. We now have the power to send back to the grammar school any pupil who, after reasonable trial, is found to be unable to carry the work of the high school. But in spite of its exercise we still had failures, especially in mathematics and language. So we tried a plan which in mathematics has worked excellently, but in language not so well. I formed extra classes for those failing and put them back at the beginning, and in this way saved about 40 per cent, of those who otherwise would have been absolute failures. Principal Robinson. — When you exercise the authority of returning pupils to the grammar school, do you not in reality drive them out of school? I would also like to raise the question as to whether many high schools are in a position to secure extra teachers for such ideal classes as Principal Harris describes. 6oo NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary Principal Harris. — About one>half of those sent back continued in school. Arrangement was carefully made that ihey might repeat their work in other grammar schools than those originally attended. Principal Allen, Rochester, N. Y. — We have tried this plan of returning pupils to the grammar grade, and, so far as my experience goes, the method is a failure, for when you say *'Go back,'* you may as well say, "Out of school! ** But our trouble is not simply in the first year, it recurs in the second, the third, the fourth. We have, however, made the rule that no pupil may enter the grad- uating class with conditions hanging over him. But our governing principle is to give a student such work as he has capacity to do, for such time as he may stay. Frank D. Boynton, High School, Ithaca, N. Y. — I would like to ask Mr. Allen with regard 10 pupils allowed to pass along from one grade to the next, if he would make any difference in the matter of succession of studies. For exam- ple, could a pupil who had not completed algebra in the first year continue geom- etry in the second? If his father should make such a request would it be granted? Mr. Allen. — We should allow him to go on with geometry. Mr. Robinson. — Our practice would agree with Mr. Allen's. Mr. Boynton. — Suppose the father should say, " I wish my boy to study algebra, but not Latin." Could that also be granted? Mr. Robinson. — The case is a rare one; but I presume I should say **Ycs." I never make any quarrel with the home over questions of this sort. After a boy has proven his incapacity in one line, I say, "Go on in other things. " If the parent insists, I believe the courts have decided that he has a right to any instruction the school offers, so far as it can be given without impairing the effi- ciency of the school, and without detriment to the other students. Principal John Mickleborough, Boys' High School, Brooklyn, N. Y. — With us a boy must attain an average of 70 per cent in each study before advancing to the next grade. I ought to state, however, that we have a system of semi- annual promotions, so that a boy is not seriously injured by being obliged to repeat five months' work. I sincerely believe that the high school is for the boy, and that our chief duty lies in seeing that he gets all he possibly can out of it, and that no mechanism of our devising should work to his injury. I have a school of 1,000 boys, and my method of dealing with lapses from duty is this: When a boy is reported by a teacher as delinquent in work, I at once send my steno- grapher about to all his teachers, and the matter thus obtained I make the basis of a full statement to the boy's father. In conclusion I say to him, " Your son's education is a most important part of your life work. Your support is desired now." I find no refusal of co-operation to appeals made on this basis. The plan suggested by the first speaker, of securing statements from former teachers would avail me little. My boys come from too varied sources, I have little knowledge of their teachers, and in any case I prefer to let the boys write their own high- school records on clean sheets. Principal J. Remsen Bishop, Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, Ohio. — Our system is a rigid one in the matter of promotions. Yet I believe with previ- ous speakers that too great regard for mechanical requirements ought not to be allowed to work injury to the individual. It is our duty to see that the individual b Department.] PRINCIPALS' ROUND TABLE, 6oi gets all the good that the school can yield him. We do not, however, promote from a grade till all the studies of that grade are completed. We consequently find that in most cases conditions are made up during the summer. We have another provision which we have found helpful, namely, that a student making less than 50 per cent in a study must repeat the study. We are enabled without difficulty to have pupils repeat studies because the school is large ; there are many divisions, and therefore this work of conditional pupils may be made to fit in without detriment to the regular work. To spur on delinquents from month to month, I have what I call a delinquent register; I take it about to each teacher at the end of each school month, on the Friday preceding the monthly payday, that accounts of pupils and teachers may be squared at the same time, and get the names of all pupils falling below 70 per cent. Then I sit down and with a blank provided for the purpose send this record of failure to the father's business address. Principal Charles C. Ramsay, B. M. C, Durfer High School, Fall River, Mass. — We offer five courses of study each of four years ; we also have a general course made up largely of electives. We have two kinds of pupils, most of them regular, a few irregular, or, as we prefer to call them, unclassified. Pupils may become unclassified on grounds of health, or because engaged in work after- noons and evenings. There are very few of this class, perhaps twenty-five in a school numbering 575. All others are required to have sixteen prepared hours of work each week. For promotion, our standing requires an average of 70 per cent. ; a student may fall as low as 30 or 40 per cent in a study, if he can do well enough in other studies to bring his average to 70 per cent. This year fifty-three failed to get the required average, but on vote of the faculty twenty- three were promoted conditionally ; thirty failed to pass. Principal O. S. Westcott, North Division High School, Chicago, 111. — Do I understand correctly that a student can pass in a study on an average of 30 or 40 per cent? Principal Ramsay. — Such is the case. We have a blank for communication with the home, and this is furnished to teachers, who may send it to the home on receiving the principal's approval. We make but two regular reports, at the mid-year, and in June. We, however, give the whole school a rating at the end of five weeks, at which time pupils may be sent back, another rating at the end of ten weeks, and also at twenty. A pupil is not allowed to enter the senior class until all conditions have been removed. I desire to speak for a moment of the matter of supervision of study periods. No work of the student is more import- ant than this, and I attach the greatest importance to the conditions under which it is done. I would have the room carpeted that there may be absolute quiet; I would have its walls suggest its purpose by their decorations. Its pictures, its statues, should recall much that is notable in the history and literature of past and present. Its order should be absolute, and the spirit of the place should be such as to secure willing obedience to this requirement. If we return to the old-fashioned custom of two sessions, there will be even greater need of atten- tion to this portion of school work. I shall not like the change, but the rather lax control of parents over students, and other unfortunate conditions of the present, seem to make such a return a necessity. Principal Edgar F. Downs, High School, District 17, Denver, Colo.— We are fortunate in having secured a room very much of the character described by Prin- 6o2 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary I I cipal Ramsay. We provide for careful, helpful supervision, even to late hours of ; the afternoon. Our reference library is here, and students receive methodical in- struction in its use. In the matter of individual supervision, so far as this side of the work is concerned, we believe we are in a fortunate situation. We use words rather than percentages for classifying pupils, and at the end of the first four weeks, pupils are recorded as excellent, good, fair, poor; we have no regular time for sending reports to the home, believing that the element of surprise in receiv- ing an unexpected report is not without its value. Prinxipal H. H. Holmes, Moberly, Mo. — A point that does not seem to roe to have been sufficiently emphasized in this discussion is the extent to which the grading of pupils depends upon the grader. A most important part of a principal's work is to discover the personal equation of his teachers in the matter of grading above or below a given standard. A point I would make about the care of a study-room is this, that it should be supervised by one having nothing else to do. There is no more important work than this done by the school, and it should be done by the strongest teachers and those who will do it with under- standing and faithfulness. As regards promotions, I do not believe they should be made so long as a student is delinquent in a single study. No matter if he be delinquent in but a single study, let him sit in the lower grade; promote him and he will be careless about the old study. There are serious objections to grading students by the words, fair, excellent, and so forth. In spite of you they will resolve the words into percentages for their own purposes; it is just as well to let them have their full record. Again, the word fair might apply to one pupil who is promoted, and to another who is not promoted; it therefore seems to me that there are as great objections, in the matter of fine distinctions to the use of words as to the use of figures. A. R. Hardiston, Hobart, Ind. — The marking system often does great injus- tice to students, through failure to make a proper discount for absences. In some schools a student who is present but a single day, and makes a perfect recitation, receives lOO as his average for the month, though absent the other nineteen days, whereas his proper mark is but 5 per cent, tiU the work of the nineteen days has been properly made up. Mention has been made of the possibility of making up conditions by work during the summer. In the main I believe that such work is poorly done, and I should not encourage it. Principal O. S. Westcott. — The difficulty suggested as to doubtful meaning of words used in expressing grades could not arise under the Chicago system. But in case of a pupil's falling below 75, his exact standings are sent to his parents. There can be no dispute as to the usual character of summer work; yet, for a few, a good stiff examination in the September following his failure will undoubt- edly prove most excellent discipline. There are conditioned pupils, however, whom it would be criminal to urge to make summer reviews — pupils who should not be allowed to study during the summer. I endorse heartily the words of the last speaker, and the point that was made with reference to classifying pupils in former grades till work of grade be finished. I am, however, compelled, because of the crowded condition of our i5chool,to grade up into higher rooms such as have completed majority of their work. I should be glad to enforce the rule that no pupil may enter the senior class conditioned. But with us students are usually mature, and able and willing to put forth great effort to finish back work. This year in a graduating class numbering ninety-two there was not a single failure. Department.] PRINCIPALS' ROUND TABLE, 603 A. L. Beecher, Van Buren, Ark. — It appears from the discussion that some of these questions are affected by the practice of holding one session or two. I would like to ask how many present favor the double session for high schools in cities of 50,000 population. There appears to be none. How many favor it for cities of 20,000? (The vote as announced by Chairman Bliss stood thirteen in favor of a single session ; twenty-three in favor of a, double session.) Superintendent Freeman, Aurora, 111. — I should like to hear from some who have tried the single session and are dissatisfied with the results. Mr. Madegood. — We returned to the plan of double sessions because we thought it better to have students in school in the afternoon than on the street. We secured better work by so doing. Principal Sumner A. Farnsworth, Cleveland High School, St. Paul, Minn. — It takes some time to educate students to business-like habits of planning their work under a single-session plan; when that time comes there is no further trouble. I wish to return for a moment to the discussion of the question of promotions. We have weekly records open to inspection of the principal, and we send monthly reports to parents, using the word system, excellent, good, fair, poor. We place no figures in the record book. Those receiving mark of excel- lent and good in their general record for the year are promoted, all others have to sustain an examination. " Fair" indicates that a student has passed in three subjects and must repeat the subject in which he has failed. I do not send pupils back to the grammar grade, for I have the promotion to the high school in my own hands. Principal Ida Haslup, High School, South Pueblo, Colo. — We have two sessions and insist that all work shall be done at school. Our work, as most of you are aware, is done on the individual plan. If a student wishes to prepare work at home, he receives from me permission as to the amount of work I may think wise for him to do. To save failure, the entering year in the high school, we have what we call a preparatory class. Those coming to us are classified as strong and weak. We give to the weak three months' instruction in the high school, in reviewing work of the grammar grade. Frank David Bovnion, High School, Ithaca, N. Y. — I believe that we Amer- icans have one unfortunate characteristic. We have not the ability to get right down into the collar and pull steadily, day in and day out. This weakness exhibits itself in our education. We have too many subjects which we pursue for too short a time to receive any real discipline. I do not like Latin, but I appre* ciate the power that comes to the boy, who for several years with dogged tenac- ity, in spite of distaste, clings to its study till a reasonable degree of mastery is his. I would have him hang on to other subjects in the same way. The Germ- ans do this; how successfully, you are all aware. Instead of stimulating the increase of superfluous subjects, let us give the boy a chance to continue any subject for at least a year, and thereby cultivate courage to overcome difficulties. Superintendent J. Anthony Bassett, Richfield Springs, N. Y. — It seems to me that the time that has been spent this afternoon discussing the mechanical system of making promotions has been largely thrown away. If the principal and teachers know their students as they should know them, they are the ones who should settle on their judgment the question of individual promotion. Take any subject that I may teach, I know of the individual from month to month, unhesitatingly ; whether he has gone up, or gone^down ; I know as surely at the CONGRESSIONAL WORK FOR YOUTH. BY PRINCIPAL W. K. WICKES, SYRACUSE, N. Y. On a pleasant summer afternoon, years ago, I saw a gray-haired man pushing a baby carriage across a greensward that was flecked with flowers. In the carriage was a little child whose eyes, already wide open to the summer splendors of the world of nature, soon caught sight of a bright flower. Instinctively it put forth its tiny hand to pick it, but it was beyond its reach. Then it was that the graybeard stopped the carriage, bent low, plucked the flower, and placed it in the hands of the delighted child, laughing back its thanks into the face of the giver. And the significance of the graceful deed, I thought, was this. It is the high privilege, as well as the bounden duty of each generation to minister to the generations younger than itself. And if this privilege and duty devolve upon mature mankind in general, much more in particular, it seems to me, upon the teacher. For to him must childhood and youth look for guidance and help along the **dim and perilous" pathways of the mind. To me, a teacher, thus pondering upon my privilege and duty, long since came the question, how can I best fulfill my ministry and I 604 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary end of forty weeks whether he should be promoted. Under the percentage sys- ^ tem» there is hardly one of you who has not met the case where the boy with 74|1^ ought not to fail, and the boy with 75 ought not to pass. Principal Charles I. Parker, High School, Chicago, 111.— I am in close sym- pathy with the last . speaker. I do not believe that figures are of very much use in the settlement of nice discriminations in the matter of promotions; system requires that we use them, but 1 hardly need say that in our own system, we use them with judgment. Our minimum for promotion in a study is 75; but I remember very distinctly the case of a boy who had made only 70 in algebra. I took into account that he was of German parentage; I took other things into con- sideration and promoted him. He entered the University of Illinois, and his greatest success was in mathematics. Our figures are for the dear people, and we should be turned out if we failed to satisfy them. Into our pupils and into our mechanical systems, we must breathe the spirit of life through the exercise of common sense. Chairman Bliss. — The hour set for adjournment has arrived; but before adjourning, as this method of round table conference is new in the Department, an expression of opinion is desired as to the wisdom of its use, to guide the offi- cers of the coming year. The vote called for was unanimously in favor of conducting future meetings of the Department on the round table plan. Department.] CONGRESSIONAL WORK FOR YOUTH. 605 service? After much thought the answer I reached was this: By that plan or device which will best develop in youth the power of expres- sion, since the boy knows in a very real and true sense just as much as he is able to express, and no more; and, moreover, the art of expression is, in my opinion, the very crown of education. Thus concluding, I could not but deem the founding of a congress for youth (an application of the national Congress idea, original with me so far as I know) a happy thought. And eight years of continuous and successful work have proven it. Today I am profoundly thankful for the inspired hour when that thought was born in my soul. The congress is modeled upon the plan of the national body, subject to many modifications in detail, but keeping quite strictly to the spirit of that body. Thus there are two houses, the senate and the house of representatives. There are, or may be, many committees closely corresponding in number, kind, and title to the committees of the two national houses. There is also strict observance of the forms of par- liamentary law. Just here, however, it is best to depart somewhat from the plan of the national congress. In it the two houses are distinct in organiza- tion, in rules, in place of meeting. Even in these respects it is, of course, possible for a youth's congress to adhere to the national form; but unless a trusty leader can be found for the senate, another for the house, and a third for the congress presidency, it is better to have the senators and representatives meet in one a room, transact business and discuss bills as one body, though always voting as separate houses upon every measure or matter affecting the two houses. By this modified plan the same good will accrue to every member of both houses. The president of the congress is elected by joint ballot. The president of the senate should be chosen by the members thereof, and should be one of their own number; the speaker of the house, by its members, himself a member of the house. The clerk may be a member of either house, and should be chosen by joint ballot, the same with the treasurer. All committees, standing and special, should be appointed by the president, also, of course, the members of the cabinet, subject to confirmation by a joint vote of the two houses, inasmuch as he is at liberty to nominate his cabinet from both houses. But I rely upon many helps to make congressional work interesting and profitable. Thus the congress has its **blue book" wherein is recorded the name of each senator and representative, together with the name of the state which he represents ; its flag, to be cared for and to be raised by its members ; its congressional library, containing food for reflection and hints for bill framing; its congressional record, with its epitome of the doings of the national congress ; its cabinet, bring- 6o6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary ing before a little group of the most active minds the greatest ques- tions and problems of the day; its public meetings now and then, to bring out parents and the older folks of the community; its critic's report, made weekly by the president — made as kindly yet as search- ingly as possible, embracingminutest details of the manner and method of speaking. But the greatest help to any congress is of course its president — indeed, there should be no thought of forming a congress unless a leader can be found who is young-hearted, intelligent, self- sacrificing, enthusiastic — in short, in thorough sympathy with the spirit of youth. The congress then, I ask you to note, is not for fun. It has a very serious purpose as the very warp and woof of its life. True, it is shot through here and there with a thread of wit. I would give little for any organization that was not. When a young and much embarrassed member rises and says, *'Mr. President, I arise to speak to my feet," the whole legislative and executive branches of the government are bound to laugh, but all good naturedly. When a little member, but strong in debate is dubbed by another as **my distinguished friend the infant Hercules," the congress applauds, and the appellation sticks. Indeed, scarcely a congress night goes by without wave after wave of sparkling wit or repartee ; but that does by no means retard the ship of state speeding on over the solid sea of debate. Nay, it puts "a freshening" breeze into its sails. Again, the congress is not a passing fashion nor a pestilent fad. Too many such there are in the educational life of today. Give the fashion-plate and fad-fiend pedagogues their undisputed and unhindered way, and they will usurp the precious time of the pupil and the throne of the true teacher. But the congress idea is not a fashion, not a fad. It does not even ask for a moment of the school time of the student — it seeks no infringement, no abatement of the course of study. But it seeks to evoke and enhance the God-given given power of thought and speech. Nay, it is rather an aid to the better, clearer expression in the class-room itself, as many a youth has testified, and many a parent with exaggerated y€X. earnest words has told me that he would prefer to have his boy miss the drill of the cur- riculum than that of the congress. Consider with me for a moment the historical value that attaches to the congress idea. A bill is introduced for the election of United States Senators by the people, and is to be discussed the second week hence. Away the members fly to Madison's marvelous compendium of the debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, to see how the fathers of the republic reasoned about it, and thus to many an earnest youth is unsealed the fountainhead of our national life. Again, in his Department.] CONGJ^ESSIONAL WORK FOR TOUTH. 607 history book a youth has read and studied the story of trials and tri- umphs in the American Revolution. His love of country wakens afresh, and he brings in a bill for the erection of a monument to Wash- ington on the memorable battlefield of Trenton. Before the discus- sion is ended not only has many a glowing eulogy been paid to the *' Father of His Country," but the whole story of the struggle has been rehearsed from the day when **the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world." How shrewd, too, and really statesmanlike it was to introduce a resolution instructing the govern- ment, through the secretary of state, to secure the abrogation of the treaty of 181 7 relating to the naval force on the great lakes. I am not sure but that Representative White **builded better than he knew" when he framed that resolution. There may possibly have lurked in its shadow the spirit of prophecy, for the day that shall ** strike an universal peace through land and sea" has not yet dawned, and ships may yet thunder their death-dealing defiance. I do not mean, how- ever, to imply that the S. H. S. congress longs for war, or ever has, for I find in the early annals of the congress a bill introduced by the representative from Georgia, entitled "An act concerning the estab- lishment of an international court of arbitration." But my conten- tion just here is not for peace, nor for world-wide federation, but for the historical value of a congress, a value which a score or more of bills in our own congress has incontestably proven. Surely not the least among the good influences of the congress is its linguistic value. Indeed, I know of no practice in written English so fine as that to be had by the member who draws up a bill for the consideration of his fellows ; no test in spoken English so searching and helpfully severe as a debate. A bill framer soon comes to under- stand that if the principle involved in his measure cannot be success- fully assailed, its diction, unless logic-proof, may be riddled and his unfortunate bill be completely shot to pieces. And so in speaking. **I do not understand the gentleman," said a member. **I am not to blame," replies the speaker, **If the gentleman does not understand the English language." **Sir, I do," retorts the other, '*but your language is not English." I am sure also that congress work enhances in the mind of every thoughtful member the real national value of the English tongue. And so it is that I find on our bill files an act seeking to establish English as the official language of the United States. That is a very difficult proposition to maintain, as any intelligent man may readily perceive ; but the main thought, namely, that the use of the native language of a people is a great aid to loyalty is, I submit, a magnificent idea.. If I am alien in my tongue, I may be in my head, and get unrepublican notions ; I may be in my hegirt, 6o8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Secondary and cherish undemocratic resolves; I may be in my hand, and seek to strike a blow against the peace and liberty of the commonwealth. But here I am concerned to argue the linguistic good that comes to young disputants themselves. The congress idea, allowing more interruptions than does ordinary, set debate, is the best sort of drill for rejoinder and repartee yet discovered. I could fill this paper with examples. Let one suffice: '*What do we want Lower California for?*' cried an impassioned speaker, **A mere tail to the continent I" "Let me tell the gentleman," retorted his adversary, '*that the United States is considerable of an elephant, and much needs that tail." It ought to take but little argument to show the political value a right-working congress must have. It will be understood, of course, that I do not use the word political in any narrow or partisan sense; but rather in that broad and unbiased sense which Alexander John- ston has always in view in his incomparable ** History of American Politics." In the eight years during which I have presided over the S. H. S. congress there has never been a discussion along purely par- tisan lines. Many allusions there have been made to local and cur- rent politics; many a thrust at the foibles or follies of the party to which the speaker is opposed. These are not to be condemned, but commended — perhaps commented upon in friendly fashion. For the debater who ventures to make such criticisms must be sure of his ground or he may discover, too late, that his adversary has been lay- ing pitfalls for his unwary feet. Political, not partisan measures abound with us. Indeed they must, for in a republican form of gov- ernment they are the very essence of all legislative action. And now must the member have such practical and ready political knowledge that he may attack or defend, according to his beliefs. It will not do now to say, or intimate, that he is for or against a particular measure because his father belonge.d to this party or that. And it is for him to see to it that the principle for which he votes is a living, burning question; else would he be in danger of repeating the folly of the old Pennsylvania greenbacker who kept on voting that ticket for years after the party had perished, blandly saying, '*A vote for a principle is never lost!" No, the political value of congressional work cannot be overstated, for it is as broad and deep and swift-moving as the ever-increasing currents of our political life. But, the historical, linguistic, and even the political values of the congress — great as they are — are overshadowed by its patriotic value. You may indeed tell me that the love of country is inborn. I grant it ; may tell me that therefore it needs no kindly nurture no cherish- ing influences. That I must deny. Here Shakespeare's advice is Department.] CONGRESSIONAL WORK FOR TOUTH, 609 just in point — not to let *'a God-like faculty rust in us unused." Nay, must we not all cry with John Milton, *'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed.** And so we keep the flag, symbol of our dearly won independence, and still more dearly won union and liberty, ever before our eyes. On every school day that flag floats from the staff from the top of the building — placed there by the committee of the congress ; a committee never appointed by the president, but made up of volunteers eager for the honor. What a practical lesson in patriotism is the sight of the rippling flag! What congressman placing it there can fail to think of Webster, and to pray with him ever to see the flag '* still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured!" Surely it was with the vision of that **gorgeous ensign of the republic" in his eyes, and with a quickened sense of its glory, that Representative Palmer of Delaware, pffered a bill to prevent unpatriotic use of the American flag. I quote Art. i. Sec. 3: The American flag shall be used only to denote nationality, freedom and liberty. Well do I remember the debate on that measure, and the merciless scoring given to American citizens who would so far demean their birthright and their flag as to advertise their wares upon its sacred colors. And it was in the same glowing spirit of patriotism that Representative Blum of North Dakota, introduced a concurrent resolution forbidding the display of any foreign flag on any public building in the United States, except on occasions of a visit from a foreign sovereign or potentate ; and that concession, he explained, was in order to let everybody see **01d Glory" flying above all other and lower ensigns. ** Gentlemen," once cried Senator Phelps, **let us not go down in history as a generation that could not keep the flag where our fathers placed it!" But the flag is not the only inciter to patriotism. It happens not seldom that the meetings of the congress fall upon, or near unto, great anniversary days in the nation's history. Then the discussion is put over and the great event is made the special order of the day. So it came to pass that the congress celebrated the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. It was a surprise and delight to see how deeply many of the members had studied the unique greatness of the martyr statesman, and how keen their analysis of his power — but better than all, how reverent their regard for his memory, how glowing their appreciation of his matchless patriotism. Indeed, their thought is that of the old Latin writer — nothing that pertains to humanity is alien to us. And so their cheeks blazed in indignation as they read the awful story of Turkish atrocities upon the affrighted, yet faithful Armenians, and they straightway empowered and directed the general government to 39 6io NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary remonstrate with barbaric Turkey through the potent voice of Ameri- can men of war. **Child*s play," do you say? Oh no; they did as much as our own national congress, and they were far more honest in their indignation than the great powers of Europe. So the congress keeps its finger upon the political pulse of the world ; and though it may not correctly or completely diagnose every disease of the body politic, its heart is sympathetic, and the congress of the Saline City will never fail to prescribe generous doses of the sav- ing salt of patriotism, for the spirit of the whole body is that of one of its members who, ardently arguing for our home industry, and mix- ing his figures of finance and of speech in a fashion that Sir Boyle O'Roche might envy, cried out, **Mr. President, we do n't want any foreign salt; what we want is to fill ourselves up with American salt, so we *11 be ready to die for our native land!** It may surprise you now when I say that the congress idea has a greater value than any I have yet mentioned. For after long obser- vation I am sure that its personal value outmeasures all other values. It is the merest truism, of course, to say that the chief duty of a boy is to become a man, yet its triteness detracts not a whit from its true- ness. And I know of no place better than within congress walls to cultivate the manly spirit. As a matter of policy, to say nothing of principle, that is the place for the utterance of truth. And it is easy to speak the truth here, for no member is bound to speak or to vote save as he believes in his very heart. He has every reason to exclaim with Milton, **Let truth and falsehood grapple; whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free aAd open encounter?" Again, congress is the place for the exercise of a true and unceasing courtesy. It is the invariable custom with us to salute a new member, the first time he arises to speak with clapping of hands. It may possibly dis- concert him a little ; but better that than the discourtesy of painful and boding silence. If, then a congressman speaks noble words of truth, and in a courteous fashion, he surely is not far from the reali- zation in himself of that famous definition of a gentleman — ** High- erected thoughts, seated in the heart of courtesy." And it is of value also to acquire somewhat of dignity — not a rolling-collar and starched- cuff dignity, but a frank, manly bearing. As a teacher I have some- times with good effect, told boys that certain acts were beneath their dignity as congressmen. (Yet I do not often venture that argument, remembering how Mr. Blaine, once a teacher, was berated in the national congress for his schoolmasterly and scolding ways.) But congress has a personal value for a conceited youth, inclined to **strutting under his advanced plumes." He is speedily, yet not unkindly, given to understand that it is wise for him to dismount from Department.] CONGRESSIONAL WORK FOR YOUTH, 6ll the high hobby of his conceit, and amble along on the lowly rocking horse of humility. Thus he may avoid the fate of certain statesmen of older growth thus characterized by a congress youth — **They go to bed famous and sleep it all off before morning." Men and brethren, let me now ask the practical question, can we ourselves as teachers afford to miss the good which congressional work is so well fitted to do unto us? Are we not so much inclined to walk ** along the cool, sequestered vale of life,** that we lose sympathy with those who are bearing the burden and heat of the day along the sun-beaten paths of daily life? Do we deem our duty done when the schoolhouse door shuts for the day, and the pupils make a dash for liberty and fresh air? Has the community no claim upon us to con- tribute, by example and precept, to the betterment of its civic life? If we may not get into the swirling currents of its caucuses and conventions, may we not at least give to our boys, through their own deliberate thinking and speaking, some knowledge of right political principles, and a wholesome detestation of political chicanery? And has not our common country, as well as our community a claim upon us, first to lay broad, deep and strong the foundations of a knowledge of her glorious history, and then to superimpose upon that a splendid structure of personal patriotism, rising **like an exhalation,** not with '* sound of dulcet symphonies,** but to the nobler ** music of the union?" And believe me, not only ought we, both as American teachers and citizens, to be in tune with our national life in all its achievements and aspirations, but we ought to put ourselves in touch with the young life about us. To be in tune with the life of the nation. To be in touch with the life of youth! What is it, brethren, but to be made young ourselves? Now I am aware that no board of education requires this at pur hands, no course of study compels it. Nay, all the boards and courses in the nation could not compass such a con- summation. But we ourselves may so strike the chords of young life as to make them vibrate responsive in our own souls. Pardon me for saying that on many a Friday evening I have gone to congress pieet- ing tired in every joint of body and mind, and gone away revivified and rejuvenated. Yes, fellow teachers, it is after all life, more life, that we need, that the world needs. Knowledge is good, wisdom is better — but life, as the transmutation of knowledge and wisdom into action, is best of all. And I submit that a pupil may pass through the long curriculum from kindergarten through university, and come forth crowned with scholastic honors, and yet gain little knowledge of the life that is beating and surging in the veins of the world. This is, to him, a 6i2 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary tremendous and perchance may prove an irrevocable loss. For the passivity of **the studious cloister's pale" is not fitted for this age and land; large upon the vision of the student looms the intense practi- cality of life. Nor does this mean that the retorts and crucibles of study must be thrown aside; it means that all the knowledge that is placed therein must be fused and blended in the white heat of life and action. So I lately welcomed a bill which provided for the introduction of the metric system as the standard for weights and measures. Why? Not because the theory was all important, but because many a strong^ argument of commercial life was evoked, many a hint thrown out as to foreign habits and customs, and more than one suggestion made that that life was being weighed and parceled out in the scales and balances of an effete civilization. **The law of egoism is before that of altruism," said Herbert Spencer. In plain English that meant, I must help myself before I can help others. Nay, let me put it more truly thus: I must nourish my own life in order that I may nourish the lives of others. Just here, fellow teachers, is our duty — this, our golden opportunity. Let me then in these closing words plead the cause of our boys and youth. I grant that your curricula are strong, your teachers earnest, your work good. But the social spirit of the times is very marked — omni- present; the athletic spirit of our youth, most strong — omnipotent. In the athletic craze the young men of our colleges daub their towns fiery red for victory, or drape them in silent black at defeat; and the boys and youth of our high schools and academies ape the actions of their biggers if not their betters. Indeed, Hercules is now the God of the college world, and with his mighty club has bethum'ped whole faculties into submission, or changed them by the magic power of his demigodism into shouting votaries, wild as lotus eaters. So, many a boy of excellent pith is fast letting his brains run down into his heels, and soon a new edition of Ainsworth Physiologies will be needed to teach fast-growing youth the ill effects of stimulants upon the feet as the organs of the brain! In other words, curricula, teachers, work, may lose their grip upon the youth. See if you cannot win them back to study and the life intellectual by an appeal to their love of speech and country and noble deeds. It can be done, for it has been done, I know. Nay, teachers, it must be done, and everything must be done Dy us to help to arm the rising generation for its battles. For while no man is so wise as to forecast the future with certainty, surely there is none so foolish as not to see, though dimly, fast-shaping and portentous clouds in our political sky. The socialists in New York City, we read, will put up an unnaturalized alien for the presidency. I Department.] WHAT IS A SECONDARr SCHOOL? 613 What does that mean? It means that at some time the youth of today must brain that heresy with their brains. This very week a host of men, many misled, many on mischief bent, are seeking to degrade our financial honor. Let us teach our youth that we will not now, that they must never, submit to such degradation. Let us teach them constantly political morality, political righteousness — that in the magnificent words of Milton our young men may be "Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages." WHAT IS A SECONDARY SCHOOL? BY E. W. COY, PRINCIPAL HUGHES HIGH SCHOOL, CINCINNATI, O. The terms elementary or primary, secondary, and higher, as applied to schools and education, have been used without any very exact or well-defined meaning. The definitions of the terms them- selves, however, furnish a sufficient clew to their general application. Elementary education would seem to be a proper name for that part of education which deals with the elements of subjects. The term primary education, or primary school, suggests that division of educa- tion or that school to which the child is first introduced. That part of the education of the youth which comes second in order of time and which, therefore, follows primary education, may properly be denom- inated secondary education ; and higher education is simply higher, or more advanced than secondary. But where does elementary education end and secondary education begin? and where does secondary education end and higher education begin? What are the distinguishing characteristics of these three divi- sions? Do they depend upon the subjects pursued, or are they merely matters of convenience with no underlying principle, or is there a rational basis for such a division of the educational field? This threefold division of education is not a new thing. We have borrowed it from European practice, and the European schools in turn from the peoples of antiquity, especially from the Greeks, for in Palto's ''Republic*' and "Laws," there are indications that he recog- nized in his day a similar division of education. Some of those who hold to the so-called culture epoch or colossal-man theory, would have us believe that there are as many distinct stages of education as there are years of school life, but this is too fanciful for general accept- ance. But it is not difficult to find a basis for the threefold division 6 14 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Secondary of education in the three stages of individual development — physical and mental — nrhich are generally recognized. We speak of child- hood, youth and manhood very much as we speak of primary, secon- dary and higher education. Childhood is the time when the memory and sense-perception are especially alive and active, and this is the period of primary education. Youth is the time when the reasoning and judgment, the reflective powers, rise into prominence, and this is the period of secondary education. In manhood, the powers of the mind fully matured and developed, are ready for service in investiga- tion and research, in widening the area of knowledge and the early years of this period are given to higher, or university education. As we can set no arbitrary boundaries to the stages of individual develop- ment, so we can set no such boundaries to these divisions of educa- tion. Childhood merges gradually and imperceptibly into youth, and youth in like manner into manhood. So primary education, passes gradually and imperceptibly into secondary and secondary into higher. When sense-perception and memory cease to be the principal faculties brought into exercise, and the reasoning and judgment are assuming the most important place in mental activity, then the youth may be said to be ready for the secondary school. The chief work of the secondary school is the cultivation of these powers. Its key- note is discipline, training. It is not possible to make this division upon the basis of the sub- jects taught, because most of the subjects found in the curriculum of the secondary school may in some of their phases find a place in the elementary or primary programme. History, for instance, in the form of stories and simple biographical sketches, furnishes valuable material for elementary instruction ; while in the study of the careers of nations and of the causes and results of events, it falls properly into the course of the secondary school ; and, again, in a still broader view embracing wider generalizations and the causes and results of great race movements, and the investigation of original material, it belongs in the university. Geometry, again, which is usually regarded as specially belonging to the secondary school, in some of its concrete forms is peculiarly fitted for use in the elementary school. So the beginning of foreign languages is elementary school work. The same is true of the natural and experimental sciences and of literature. So that we cannot say that these subjects belong exclusively to the secon- dary school. The beginnings, the foundation of all these subjects should be laid in a very substantial way in the elementary school, where they properly belong. In many instances some of these sub- jects will be found upon the programme of the elementary school, but they have too often been regarded as interlopers and have failed to impressed with the lact ttiat it is not possible to cover ttie whole field of knowledge in a period of four years with boys and girls from four- teen to eighteen years of age. Professor Hinsdale, in the summing up at the close of his admirable discussion of "The Dogma of Formal Discipline" before the council two years ago, puts in a plea for a "measurably extended curriculum" as necessary to insure a well- rounded mental discipline, I do not wish to offer any objection to this; on the contrary, I agree with it most heartily, and not at all as inconsistent with it, but rather as supplementary to it, I should like to put in a plea for a measurably limited curriculum for the high schools and for the secon- dary schools in general. Undue congestion is' the most serious malady from which our high-school courses of study are suffering today — a congestion arising both from the amount of class work and from the number of different subjects embraced in the course. What is now needed is a judicious depletion of hours of class work and of the number of subjects on the programme. Contraction rather than expansion, limitation rather than extension, should be the motto of all friends of these schools. When the time of a pupil is divided up among six or eight different and distinct subjects, one-half of which come but once or twice a week, it is manifest that the conditions are not favorable to sound culture. Such a state of things is conducive to mental distraction rather than mental discipline, to dissipation of energy rather than to the acquisition of power. While a measurably extended curriculum is needed, still it should be measurable and not unlimited. It has been so often said, and is so universally conceded that it seems hardly necessary to repeat it, that the secondary school in the United States has a twofold function to fulfill. It attempts to fill the place in our American community that is filled in Germany by the two classes of schools, viz., the Gymnasia and the Real Schule. There are some advantages and some disadvantages in this attempt to combine these two functions in a single institution. But I will not 6i6 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary dwell upon this point. Suffice it to say that our secondary school undertakes to prepare for higher institutions — classical and scientific — the comparatively small number of students who are able to con- tinue their studies in these institutions, and at the same time to pre- pare for the duties of life, the larger number of students who are unable to continue their studies beyond the secondary school. In other words, our secondary school is both a fitting school and a finish- ing school, and all will concede that it is in this latter capacity that it does its chief work. President Eliot has stated this very clearly. He says, **The secondary schools of the United States, taken as a whole, do not exist for the purpose of preparing boys and girls for colleges. Only an insignificant percentage of the graduates of these schools go to colleges or scientific schools. Their main function is to prepare for the duties of life that small proportion of all the child- ren in the country — ^a proportion small in number, but very important to the welfare of the nation — who show themselves able to profit by an education prolonged to the eighteenth year, and whose parents are able to support them while they remain at school." Still, in view of the great liberality of the colleges today in the variety of courses offered by them to the young men and women who decide to enter upon a college course, there would seem to be little or no incompat- ability between fitting for college and fitting for the duties of life. The young man or woman who, in the secondary school, has made the best preparation for life will generally find a college course awaiting him if he chooses to enter upon it. If, to accomplish this, it should be found necessary to omit some of the ambitious subjects that ambi- tious secondary teachers have introduced into their programmes, the secondary school would not suffer any loss. And here, again, the number, variety and character of the subjects to be included in the curriculum come up for consideration. But it will, I think, be readily granted that the boy or girl who, during the four years from fourteen to eighteen, has given his time and energy to a reasonably limited number of subjects, and has pursued them somewhat continuously and with something of completeness and thoroughness, will not only gain more knowledge and have his powers better trained and disciplined, but will also be better fitted to enter a higher institution of learning or to enter upon the duties of life than the one who has taken a taste of everything and has appropriated and assimilated very little of any- thing. In the present organization of education in this country the proper work of the secondary school is divided up among three diflferent classes of schools. The elementary schools, or the schools below the high schools, are continued until they cover two or three years Department.] WHAT IS A SECONDART SCHOOLS 617 that should be given mainly to secondary work. Then comes the high school, and following it the first year or two of the ordinary college is taken up with what is properly secondary work. A theoretically correct threefold division of education would give us approximately six years for the elementary school, six or seven years for the secondary school, and then three or four years for the university course. But all our traditions are against such an organization, and these tradi- tions must command a certain degree or respect. We have inherited with our Anglo-Saxon blood a disposition to look rather to practical efficiency than to theoretical consistency. What we in general want to know is whether the thing works well, rather than whether it con- forms to some theory, however admirable that theory may be. And if our education should in the course of time be reorganized along the lines indicated, it would be because the people had been brought to see that such a reorganization offered important practical advantages over the present system. The American college has an important function to perform in our educational life, and doubtless, will continue to have for many years to come. Though there is a manifest ten- dency in some quarters to stretch out the work of the secondary schools so that it may connect with the university proper, this attempt has not in general been regarded with favor. So far as the public high school is concerned, I do not believe that public sentiment is ready to sustain any material upward extension of its course. But its extension downward I believe to be both practicable and desirable. Under the present arrangement, elementary subjects and elemen- tary methods are continued too long and are followed too exclusively. The result is seen in the many cases of arrested development of the reasoning power with which every high school teacher is familiar. Secondary school and secondary school methods should begin at least two years earlier than at present, and that work should be in the hands of secondary school teachers. The difficulty experienced in passing from the elementary school to the high school is due to the fact that it involves an abrupt change of method and of subject — a change that should begin earlier and should take place gradually. The intro- duction of secondary school work into the lower school will not meet the case. What is needed is teachers who have been trained in sec- ondary work and who are not standing with their faces constantly turned towards the elementary side. The elementary school is a poor training school for secondary school teachers, just as the secondary school is a poor training school for college and university professors. Again, there is less difficulty in securing thoroughly educated teach- ers for the secondary school than for the elementary. The recom- mendation of the Committee of Fifteen is generally concurred in. 6i8 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Secondary namely, that the high school teacher should have at least a college education. The same requirement is not demanded for teachers of the lower schools. There is nothing more unphilosophical and more unpedagogical in all our educational practice than the custom of pur- suing elementary work by elementary methods through the eighth year of the school course, and then all at once changing to secondary work by secondary methods at the beginning of the ninth year. With such a change in our school organization the work of the sec- ondary school can be successfully done. On the present plan, with a four years* course, beginning where the secondary school is expected to begin in our public school system, and ending where it is expected to end, and including what it is expected to include, no satisfactory programme of work can be made out. The Committee of Ten, who planned and caried out the most systematic and elaborate investiga- tion of secondary schools ever attempted in this country, had this difficulty forced upon their attention when they came to make out their programmes. They say, **In preparing these programmes the committee were perfectly aware that it is impossible to make a satis- factory secondary school programme, limited to a period of four years and founded on the present elementary school subjects and methods. In the opinion of the committee, several subjects now reserved for high schools — such as algebra, geometry, natural science, and for- eign languages — should be begun earlier than now, and therefore within the schools classified as elementary; or, as an alternative, the secondary school period should be made to begin two years earlier than at present, leaving six years instead of eight for the elementary school period." The alternative here presented, namely, the beginning of the sec- ondary school two years earlier, is the plan that I think would greatly improve our school organization and the one that I hope may be gen- erally adopted at an early day. DISCUSSION, Dr. B. a. Hinsdale. Ann Arbor, Mich. — The question set for discussion is, '* What is a Secondary School?" The gentleman who has spoken has given his answeh This answer I shall not make the subject of special com- ment. How far my own answer agrees with his answer, and how far it diverges from it, will be apparent to all those who favor me with their atten- tion. The question is, " What is a Secondary School? '* My answer to this question is that a secondary school is a school whose characteristic feature is secondary education or secondary teaching. It is often the case that much primary education or primary teaching is found in secondary schools so-called. Department.] DISCUSSION. 619 This is true of the German gymnasia, of the French colleges and lyc6es, and of the English grammar and endowed schools. But my answer is that a secondary school is one that is characterized by secondary education or secondary teaching. You tell me that this is only pushing the difficulty one step further along, and I hasten to admit the fact. What, then, is secondary education? It is true, as Mr. Coy has remarked that the tripartite division of education is of ancient date. It is also true that it now prevails in all progressive countries. On what basis does this division rest? Does it rest merely on convenience? Does it rest on the social needs of society? Does it rest on the special preparation of teachers who teach in secondary schools? It is true that these things are in some meas- ure and in one or two of them in large measure, involved. At the same time they are but superficial facts and do not furnish the real basis of the division. The division of education into primary, secondary, and higher rests, as I under- stand it, upon the subjects which are taught, and the methods that are employed in the schools in which these three kinds of education are given. In the eleme- nary certain educational arts are taught, as reading, writing, and the elements of mathematics, drawing, etc. What is more, the simple or elementary facts of all the great divisions of knowledge should also be taught; the facts of nature, of history, of literature, of social and political life, of mathematics. But not only are these facts simple and elementary, they are to a great extent empirically presented. The receptive faculties of the mind are active in this period of child development There is indeed some discipline of the higher faculties of reason, but after all the elementary school itself takes its character from the elementary school arts and elementary facts. The characteristic of the secondary school is to give discipline. School arts are now supposed to have been acquired. Many more facts, ideas, and thoughts are indeed taught pertaining to all the subjects that have been introduced in the earlier stage, but they are more advanced facts, and are handled in a more formal way. The faculties of the mind that are active are not so much the receptive as the analytical faculties. Some attention is paid to relations, but these are the relations that exist among facts belonging to the same groups. Secondary education does not go beyond science; it has nothing whatever to do with philosophy. The great end of higher education is knowl- edge. The student is now to use the tools that he has acquired in the elementary school, and the discipline that he has gained in the subjugation of some consider- able portion of the great kingdom of knowledge. Properly speaking, his educa- tion now does not look to discipline, although of course it involves discipline. It deals with facts, with ideas, with thoughts, as before, but of a higher character than before. He deals with those relations of facts that give character to science, but he goes beyond the relations that bind facts together within their several groups, and gains some grasp of that great total which forms the subject- matter of philosophy, which deals not with limited but with universal relations. Such I conceive to be the most general facis or characteristics of the three kinds of education. It must not be supposed that they pass suddenly, by a leap, from one to the next. The individual has but one life ; his being is continuous. The masters of historical method say that transition or development is a law of being. Hence there are no hard-and-fast lines between elementary education and secondary education, or between secondary education and higher education. At the same time, taking the three periods or stadia together, we have no diffi- culty in recognizing certain characteristic facts that mark the three periods or stadia off from each other, and so furnish the basis of the tripartite division. DEPARTMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. SECRETARY'S MINUTES. FIRST SESSION.— Thursday, July 9, 1896. After the adjourment of the joint session of the Department of Secondary and Higher Education, held July 9th, a brief special session of the Department of Higher Education was held in Asbury M. E. Church, Buffalo, N. Y., Presi- dent James H. Baker in the chair. President Baker appointed at this meeting the following Nominating Com- mittee: Andrew S. Draper, President University of Illinois ; William F. Ring, President Cornell Coll^fe, lovra ; Elmer E. Brown, Professor of Pedagoey, University of California. SECOND SESSION, Friday, July 10, 1896. The second session was called to order in the Asbury M. E. Church, at Buffalo, N. Y., at 3 p. m., July 10, 1B96, by President Baker of Colorado, who opened the session with a brief address. Professor Morse Stevens of Cornell Universi-ty, was introduced and addressed the department. Andrew S. Draper of Illinois, chairman of the Committee on Nominations, submitted the following report of that committee which was unanimously adopted: For President, Joseph Swain, University of Indiana. For First Vice President, Jacob G. Schurman, of Cornell University. For Secretary, George Parker Winship, Providence, R. I. The officers above-named were declared duly elected officers of the depart- ment for the ensuing year. President Baker introduced Dr. William R. Harper, president of the Univer- sity of Chicago, who addressed the department on the "Chicago System of Requirements for Admission." President Baker then introduced Professor Thomas J. Seymour, of Yale University, who addressed the department on the subject of " The Yale System of Entrance Requirements." President Joseph Swain of Bloomington, Indiana, President-Elect of the department, was introduced and acknowledged the honor of his election, solicit- ing the active support of the members of the department in the important work of the ensuing year. Principal W. H. Smiley of Colorado, oflfered the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted: Resolved t That the cordial thanks of the Department of Higher Education are hereby extended to the local committees, who have made the visit to the city of Buffalo so pleasant to all mcrobera by their busiaess- Hke arrangements and by their social courtesies during the sessions of the past week. Department.] MINUTES, 621 President Goodknight of Morgan town, W. Va., offered the following resolu- tion, which was unanimously adopted: Resolved t That the thanks of this department is hereby tendered to the officers of this department for the efficiency with which they have discharged their difficult duties during the past year. On motion of President Goodknight the officers of this department were authorized to hold a joint session with the Department of Secondary Education if in their judgment such joint session is deemed advisable. Secretary-Elect Winship was called for and responded, accepting the duties of his office with assurance of their faithful discharge. The department then adjourned fine die. Joseph Swain, Secretary. 622 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Higher PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS. , / HOW TO SECURE THE INTEREST OF THE COLLEGES \ AND UNIVERSITIES IN THE DEPARTMENT. ^ BY PRESIDENT JAMES H. BAKER, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO. [A Synopsis.] Causes of the isolation of institutions of higher learning: (a) The independent position of the college historically. (b) The rivalry of interests. (c) The traditions and unique development of each institution. (d) The exclusive devotion of the professors. (e) The disposition to ignore pedagogical problems. Interests may be increased : (a) By choosing fresh topics of prime importance. (b) By placing on the programme representatives of leading col- leges and universities. (c) By issuing circular letters inviting every college to send a representative annually to the meetings of the National Educational Association. (c) By joint investigations, such as has already been inaugurated of the relation between the secondary schools and the colleges. There are topics of the highest importance for common discussion at these meetings, among which may be noted : (a) Uniform plan for admission. (b) The standard that by common consent should entitle a college or university to recognition as such. (c) Length of the college course, and the relation to graduate courses. (d) Standard of the professional schools and their relation to the college. (e) Methods in the light of the philosophy of education. (f) The problem of the higher life and interests of the student body. Department] HISTORY IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS, 623 HISTORY IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS, BY PROFESSOR H. MORSE STEPHENS, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA. N. Y. (Stbnographic Report.] Mr, President^ Ladies and Gentlemen: I did not understand that I was to talk until after the papers had been read. I was therefore sitting quietly prepared to listen to other people for a little time before it became necessary for me to speak. But now I have been dragged from the obscurity of my corner to deliver my address before I have composed it. When I studied the programme I found that the subject assigned to me was not a subject connected with higher education, but the subject of the teaching of history in secondary schools. It seems perhaps that this subject would have been more appropriate for the department of Secondary Education, but when I reflect I perceive that any instruction in his- tory in the universities must necessarily depend upon the character of the instruction in history given in the secondary schools, and that it is perhaps not entirely without advantage that I should have an oppor- tunity to speak to an audience which I am informed contains more people interested in secondary than in higher education. I do not think it is necessary for me to defend the teaching of his- tory in the secondary schools. I presume it is universally recognized that if any subject needs to be taught in the secondary schools it is the subject of history. I heard in the morning sessions a defense of the teaching of literature; a defense of the teaching of natural sci- ence and of nature study in the schools; but nobody has thought it worth while to defend the teaching of history ; because, I presume, it is taken for granted that if any subject is to be taught at all, it is the subject of history. If it is of some interest to understand the life-his- tory of a tadpole, or to be acquainted with the great works of litera- ture of the past, it is even more important that every individual pretending to the smallest amount of education should have some knowledge of the history of the race, of the history of the nation, of the history of the community to which he belongs. At the meeting of the round table on historical teaching which was held in this building yesterday, the very able and acccomplished chairman at that meeting gave five reasons, if I remember rightly, why history should be studied in schools, or rather fi^vt aims towards which historical teach- ing should trend. I doubt whether it is necessary to give reasons for the teaching of history. Surely the advantage of knowing the 624 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. .[Higher details of the past of the country, and of the race to which one belongs is sufficient reason of itself. But further, some of the aims or reasons given seemed to be distinctly derogatory to the study of history. The study of history was defended because it had an ethical value. It seems to me that if history is not worth studying for its own sake it is not worth studying at all. Further, it was defended because history was a useful aid to the encouragement of patriot- ism; but a patriotism that has to be nourished upon the knowledge of the past glories of the country is not a patriotism worth a very great deal, ' more particularly if it is a patriotism that has to be based upon patriotic histories — histories devoted not to the relation of absolute truth, but to the glorification of the great men of the past. History deserves to be taught for its own sake, and the great aim should be to teach all children — and adults perhaps, most of all — the course of events of the past as they actually occurred ; to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; and not to lead children away into a spurious hero worship, or cause them to look into history for the illustration of the great qualities of their grand- fathers or great grandfathers, or for the justification of any modern forms of political institutions. If studied for its own sake, then the point that is to be brought out by the teacher, the chief point that I desire to bring out, is in what way it may be most profitably studied. If it be granted, as I think it should be granted, that the study of history is important, that the study of history is necessary, how is history to be taught? What methods should be adopted for the teach- ing of history? I intend, instead of dealings with generalities, instead of talking at greater length upon the study which has occupied the whole of my own life, to deal rather with a few practical points with regard to the teaching of history in the secondary schools. In the interesting talk we had yesterday two divergent methods for teaching history in secondary schools were advocated by different speakers. The one was the old-fashioned text-book method ; the other was the adoption in secondary schools of the system now in use in post-gradu- ate courses in American universities, and above all in German universities. Both methods have their uses. The study of history from original materials is undoubtedly the only way in which the method of historical investigation can be properly explained; it is the only way in which men can be trained to become historians. Every boy who goes to a secondary school, however, is not intended to be a historian; otherwise in the making of histories there would be no end. On the other hand, the old-fashioned teaching, the simple learning by heart of a text-book, has been as universally con- demned in historical teaching as it has been in other departments of Department.] HISTORT IN THE SBCONDART SCHOOLS. 625 education. The old-fashioned way of using a textrbook and setting the unwilling pupils to learning so many pages or paragraphs by heart needs no condemnation before an assemblage of enlightened educa- tors. What method is there that can be adopted which will be an improvement upon the old text-book method and will not make such extravagant demands upon the intellect of the pupils and upon the energies of the teachers as the study of history from original docu- ments? Between these two extremes there is a middle way which can be adopted. I speak with some confidence, because this middle way, which I intend to advocate at some length, has been adopted with signal success in the English secondary schools. The English secon- dary schools did not receive a very good character yesterday. As an Englishman I can assure you that the English secondary schools have nevertheless attempted some new methods of teaching which may be of use even over here, where your secondary schools are, according to the President and other speakers of yesterday, so very nuich in advance of what we have in our poor effete system. It should be remembered that most of the great English schools are boarding schools, and it is because they are boarding schools that they are to a great extent class schools, for it is only people of considerable means who can afford to send a child from home nine months in the year to Eton or Rugby or elsewhere. But side by side with these great boarding schools there exist a large number of secondary day schools like St. Paul's, the City of London School and others in the great English cities for the education of children from fourteen to eighteen years of age. In my own school days the teaching of history in the great English schools was by the vile old text-book method. But since that time there has developed a new system which I wish to describe to you. Two or three months before I left England for America, two years ago, I published an article on the subject of the teaching of history in the English schools. In that article I developed at length the main points which I wish to describe to you here. Taking the secondary schools as schools containing pupils from fourteen to eighteen it has been found far more advantageous to supplement the study of the text-book by lectures delivered much in the style of col- lege lectures. The lecture system, I know, is in this country not gen- erally adopted until the college stage is reached. But the one subject which, above all others perhaps, lends itself to treatment in lectures is history. Now, lectures on history are given regularly in many of the great English schools containing boys fourteen and fifteen, and up to eighteen, until the time they go to college. The great advantage of supplementing the text-book by lectures is that in that way the dry words of the text-book are illuminated by the personality of the 40 626 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Higher teacher. The success, then, of the system of teaching history in sec- ondary schools by means of lectures depends upon the employment in ] the school of some teacher who has received a sufficiently clear insight into the methods of historical work to be able to lecture with spirit and wide knowledge. When I was a schoolboy the masters who taught history were the same who taught classics, mathematics, or \ any other subject. Nowadays there are masters in the great English | school who have nothing to do but teach history to the different classes. These men are men who in their college work have taken an especial interest in history, and who have been initiated into mod- ern methods in the study of history and of historical questions. The way in which the system is carried out in such a school as Haileybury, which is the one I at present have in mind, is that the class is set to reading a selected text-book, chapter by chapter. There are three periods a week devoted to history through the whole school course. A certain chapter is studied each week ; and of the three periods two are devoted to lectures and the third to an examination upon the chapter of the text-book and upon the contents of the lectures. First the pupil reads the chapter. Then it is treated of in lectures. One of the advantages of attending a good lecture is that it teaches the student how to take notes. As a rule I find with students who come to me at Cornell that I have to begin by teaching them how to take notes. They generally have not learned how to take useful notes. At first I was surprised to hear in England that boys of four- teen and fifteen could take respectable notes. The pupils listened attentively to the teacher's comments upon the chapter of the text- book. The teacher of course, has read many more books on history than the teacher who has devoted himself to the teaching of other subjects. Say the subject is the reign of William the Conqueror in English history. The teacher will have read Freeman. He will put his knowledge to use and lay weight upon the personal points in the character of William. Or he will read striking passages from original documents, or he will illustrate the meaning of the text-book by notes. Sometimes a session will be held when the stereopticon will be used and illustrations thrown upon the canvas for the further enlighten- ment of the pupil's insight into the period under discussion. After two such lectures a written examination is held during the period devoted to the third lesson. Sometimes it is a mere examination of facts. The boys tell what they have learned from the text-books and the lectures about two or three men, and there become fixed upon the mind the chief points that have been emphasized in the course of the lectures. Sometimes, instead of an examination, an essay will be written. I do not want to say that this is an ideal, perfect system for Department.] HISTORY IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 627 teaching history in secondary schools, but I do think that it is very much better than the learning by heart of the text-book and empha- sizing questions and answers; and that it is far more practicable than the system of endeavoring to teach children from original sources. As I have said, one indispensable qualification for teaching by this method is to have a lecturer who will illuminate the dry matter of the text-book, and this depends upon the personality of the lecturer. Now, it is not every teacher who desires to teach history — more is the pity from my point of view. But at any rate a certain proportion of the students at universities who desire to devote their lives to teach- ing do have an especial interest in history. If such students have during their college course paid special attention to historical work they will have received something of the enthusiasm which is the result of careful study of modern scientific methods in historical work. These are the men and women who should be entrusted with the teaching of history in secondary schools. I need hardly, I suppose, go at length into the points that distin- guish what we historians speak of as scientific methods in the study of history. You must know that it depends mainly upon the careful examination of original material. Such work cannot be done in the schools; it can be done in the college. Any college student led by a teacher who knows his business, to. the examination and appreciation of original documents, if even upon the smallest possible period in history — a period of six months — any diligent student, I repeat, will receive such an insight into what is the aim of historical work that he will be able to comment with enthusiasm and a seeing eye upon the passages of the text-book which is being used in the school. The one demand of the modern scientific school is that the work of historical research be conducted as far as possible so as to discover the truth. No diligence in toil, no amount of patriotism, no earnestness of ethical lessons, nothing, can compensate the modern historian for the absence of a desire to find out the truth. This thoroughly implanted in the student, he will love to study history and he will be able to impart to the children whom he is teaching histori- cal knowledge of value in the practical affairs of life. He will be able to comprehend and draw inferences and often to perceive in the works of the writers of historical text-books, lessons in advance of their thoughts. He will be able to point out that there are two sides to every question. It is a misfortune to use a text-book which paints some characters as angels come down to earth from heaven, while it treats of other characters as without any redeeming qualities whatso- ever; but the trained historical enthusiast will be able to repress these inequalities, which appear even in reputable histories, by pointing out 628 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Higher that historical characters are neither angels nor demons, but simply men and women. He will be able to illuminate with his personality the striking events of history, and the dry and commonplace words of the text-book that is being used. I desire then to advocate this method of teaching history in the secondary schools, because I know it has been successfully carried out. It demands the existence of a teacher in the secondary schools who' has had a thorough and proper training in the modern or scientific sense, or who at any rate has had an insight into the scientific method, and, that guaranteed, nothing but success will result. His- tory will cease to be considered a mere collection of facts. The striking points will be illustrated by the lecturer and under the power of his personality he will inspire into it such life that the student will remember not only what is written down in the text-book, but the greater meaning which lies between the lines. This system, further, is suitable to comparatively young students. A gentleman whom I see present here, informed me that he had used, with the greatest success in his school, the thesis method during the last year, and I can well understand that no more valuable method of historical work could be pursued than setting every student who graduates in a secondary school, to work upon an original essay on a given subject. If any such students have a real desire for investi- gation, a desire to discover the truth, they will doubtless use all the authorities they can find, both original and derived, that they may be able to do the best work. In the pursuit of such investigations they find a valuable intellectual training, and the results of their labors may be of positive value to the world. The use of the thesis, then, in the final year, I should think might be proper for adoption in schools where there is a teacher sufficiently qualified to direct such thesis work. One other point upon which I desire to dwell is upon the question of whether or not the results of historical studies of this sort in the secondary schools could be made use of in the entrance requirements of colleges. I hold in my hand an invitation from the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States, to consider the subject next November, '* Shall historical studies be a necessary part of college entrance requirements?" I presume the answer will be **Yes.*' I know for my own part I shall be glad to defend the neces- sity of making history one of the college requirements. But then comes the question, **How can historical knowledge be measured as an entrance requirement?" I think every one of us who is at all interested in educational questions is ready to admit that the practice of basing an estimate of historical knowledge on a simple examination Department.] HISTORY IN THE SECONDART SCHOOLS. 629 paper is futile. The idea of such an examination paper pretending to test the student's work throughout a whole year, or perhaps during a period of years, is not fair to the student, is not fair to the teacher. But the report of the conference of college professors recently held at Columbia College advocates that it may be possible to send in, to meet the college requirements, the note books, theses and other written work that has been done during the course of histor- ical instruction at school, as a part of the evidence of historical knowledge of the candidate for entrance to college. It seems to me that nothing can be more excellent than this suggestion; but it should be made, it also seems to me, purely an optional measure. In some schools doubtless notebooks, the original thesis, or one or more of the original reports may be sent in and they may give evidence of excel- lent teaching in the schools, as well as of real knowledge on the part of the pupils. But there may be schools in which such means are impossible, and 1 would therefore be inclined to resist its being made compulsory that such notebooks or evidence of written work should be sent in. In that case it is necessary that the unfortunate individ- ual on whom rests the task of accepting or rejecting students for entrance to college should read, as he does at present, entrance examination papers. These are the main points I had intended to speak upon to you today. But there are two other things which I desire to touch upon. The one is the necessity of learning facts. After the few words which I said day before yesterday, one lady was kind enough to come up to me and say she was so thankful to me because I had mentioned the word fact as one of my corner stones. I always rigorously insist upon facts. It seems to me in America and other countries in which I have studied the educational question there is sometimes a disposi- tion to overlook the importance of learning facts and try to impart knowledge as a sugar-coated pill. Now what is easy of acquiring is not really worth acquiring. A knowledge of facts, as a rule, is not easy to acquire. It is not that I want students to learn long statements by heart, but that as a basis of their work they must learn some definite facts. I have heard much since I have been in Buffalo at this inter- esting meeting, but the thing which seems to be made of chief impor- tance— the chief thing impressed upon my mind — is that it is con- sidered the duty of the teacher to make learning easy. I, for my own part, am inclined to think this may be pushed too far. I, believe the road to knowledge has ever been rough ; it can never be made an easy bicycle track. There is difficulty in acquiring knowledge; it is diffi- cult to learn a long list of facts, but how is any one to acquire real knowledge upon any subject unless he takes the trouble to learn facts. 630 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Higher It is true that the duty of the educator is to teach the pupil how to think, that this is an important function in education and one that has been much neglected, but are we not going a little too far with the swing of the pendulum? Are we not devoting ourselves a little too much to worrying about how to teach children to think without giving them sufficient facts to support their correct thinking? Take the most brilliant writers, especially those who write leading articles in the newspapers, and how many times do we look through their productions and not find any facts upon which their inferences are based. The most brilliant thinking in the world will not supply the place of histori- cal facts, and if these historical facts are not accurately stated the information is simply worthless, aye, worse than worthless, it is mis- leading. Let me plead then for the secondary schools, and for that matter in the primary schools, that some attehtion should be paid to the actual teaching of facts. That in the primary schools, instead of writing what the teacher knows to be a legend or fairy tale, absolute facts should be taught. It is a duty we owe the child that he should learn early in life various things which will help him when he is older. How sad it is if their knowledge has no foundation in fact. There- fore it seems even in the earliest days, it might be possible to teach facts instead of theories and generalities. The president very rightly reminds me that I have outrun my time, so let me conclude in general terms by testifying to the enthusiasm I find in your schools in America, and to the enlightened intelligence of your teachers, and add that it is not possible for me to tell you in words what an inspiration it is to a teacher coming from the other side of the Atlantic ocean to be received so kindly by this great body of representative teachers, assembled from all parts of the United States, to hear your words of wisdom and listen with profit to your views concerning methods. In conclusion I want to say that the meeting of the American His- torical Association meets in New York the 28th, 29th and 30th of December next. It is ray hope that there will be set aside one session for the discussion of the methods of teaching history in colleges. If any of you are present in New York we will be glad to have you come into theTdiscussion, Department.] 'ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS— CHICAGO, 63 1 ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS— THE CHICAGO SYSTEM, BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM R. HARPER, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. I understand the question to be the standards of admission or rather the method of ascertaining how students have secured their training. The methods of determining whether or not the students are prepared to enter college. In the absence of the gentleman who had agreed to furnish a paper upon this question I am asked to say a few words with reference to what is called in the programme **A Chicago System. ** Four years ago we began our work in Chicago and in beginning we adopted the plan of Yale and Harvard. All persons admitted to the university were examined. This system has been maintained through the four years; no student has entered the univer- sity without an examination. The question then is not how the standard has been maintained, or with reference to the standard, but as to the methods of giving examinations. Our first system was the Yale system which Professor Seymour is to describe and which should have preceded this statement of mine. I will not enter into a full statement of the difficulties which presented themselves in the administration of the Yale system, as it will be presented to you. We found the necessity of coming into a closer connection with the teachers of the secondary schools. There was on the other hand, the certificate system which had been adopted in one or another form in the universities of Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and many other institutions. We investi- gated that system as closely as we were able to investigate it. We found, as we thought, many weaknesses in that system, so many, indeed, that by an overwhelming vote of our faculty the certificate system was not considered one which in our circumstances, we could adopt. Many of the arguments presented to us against the certificate system came from the institutions which had adopted it, confessing the weakness which they themselves had found. Naturally that raised the question whether, perhaps, something else was possible. It was then that the Yale system, with the other plan was adopted. That was something over a year ago, and it is now in use. The university has decided, first, that schools which have been visited and which have been found satisfactory, upon the whole, may be admitted into what is called co-operation. The university does not ask any school to enter into co-operation with it. If the school desires this privilege, 632 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Higher a petition comes from the school itself. When the petition is received, an officer of the university charged with this particular work is sent to visit that school. He spends at the school one, two, or three days, as the case may be, and on his return his report is filed. Another officer of the university a professor, is appointed to visit the school. He goes, and spends two or three and sometimes four days and on his return presents a most minute report of everything which he is able to discover in his examination. These two reports are placed together by a committee of the faculty, and if the reports are favorable the school is placed upon the co-operative list. It is understood that the "visitor" whom the university appoints will visit this particular school at least twice a year, and that another officer of the university will visit the school at least once a year. The school having been placed upon the co-operative [^list the procedure is as follows : Any teacher in that school may give examinations, the results of which will be accepted in lieu of the examinations given by the university itself. The university, at the same time, conducts its own examinations from its own papers. These are given at different places. The teacher in an approved school is permitted to forward to the departmental exam- iner a list of questions which are to be given to the class defining the subject, — let us call it a class in algebra. This set of questions is examined in detail by the departmental examiner. If it is regarded as of sufficient standard it is accepted. The paper is sent back to the teacher, through the principal of course. The students in that school who desire to do so, the students who are prepared for college, then write out the answers to these questions. The teacher takes the examination papers, and throws out the papers of all students who have not in his opinion passed. The other papers are forwarded to the university and read by the university reader. Marks are made and a record kept as if the examination were a university examina- tion, and when this particular pupil has passed an examination on a sufficient number of subjects, as shown by the records of the univer- sity, he is received as a student in the university. The chief charac- teristic in the system is its individualism. It deals not with the school as a whole, as the certificate plan does, but it deals with each individual teacher. There may be ten teachers in a school, and out of the ten, three only may be permitted to send in papers that will be acceptable; the other seven may be rejected. Another characteristic of the system is that it brings the teacher into the closest possible connection with the university instructors in his or her department. It leads to cor- respondence with reference to what should be called for in the exam- ination. It leads to a discussion of methods that should be em- Department.] ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS— CHICAGO, 633 ployed. It leads to the discussion of questions relating to the scope of the course of study. You will at once see that the burden which this plan lays upon the university is a heavy one. It is one which is costly, not only to the instructors, in time and energy, but to the university financially. The cost of providing men who will do this work^ the cost of provid- ing readers to read these papers is something very large. But it is believed that the results as they have shown themselves within this one year warrant the continuance of the plan. The plan is now in operation in something like fifty or sixty schools; the various high schools in the city of Chicago and the larger cities of the west and northwest have entered into the co-operation plan. While the number of papers received is as yet comparatively small, it is abso- lutely very large, so large, indeed, as to make the burden of the work very great. On the other hand we have found that the stimulus to the student in the secondary school was proportionately increased. The fact that his paper is to be read, not simply by his own teacher, but by others ; the fact that the paper is to be read by those who are at a distance — and you know there is a suspicion on the part of many students in the high schools as well as colleges that their examination papers are not read ; that the teachers do not burden themselves with the work of examining the papers, but that the records are made out on the basis of term work after all, serves as a very great incentive to the pupil in the preparation of his work in the course, as well as in the preparation of his examination papers. And more than this; there is the stimulus which is furnished the teacher. The teacher knows that his work, also, is to be inspected, if you please ; that at all events it is to be examined, that the results are to be preserved at a distance; that if there are no results, or if these results are not satis- factory, this fact is going to be made known to the board of educa- tion of that particular school, or to the principal. This helps, and the influence of it has already been felt in many schools which have entered into this plan. Whether or not this so called ''Chicago System" is one which in its present form is the most desirable and will continue, no man can say. It is only fair to the system and to all concerned, to say that when the plan was finally adopted, it was adopted by a tie vote in the faculty, and the president cast the vote which determined its adop- tion. In other words, there was great doubt about it. It is also fair to say that of that minority of the faculty that voted against it at the time it was adopted, I suppose not more than 5 per cent, would vote against it today, because of the results which have already been accomplished in the year or more which have passed. 634 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Higher Can this system be applied to other institutions? It certainly could be adopted by state institutions. The greatest difficulty involved is the large amount of work which it throws upon the univer- sity. If the university wishes to do all that it can do to assist secon- dary education, if it has money which it may use in this way, person- ally I can conceive pf no plan which would accomplish more with the same expenditure of money. I am thoroughly convinced after four years of careful examination that the old system of examination and the testing of the pupil's work simply by examination upon a particu- lar day is unfair to many students. I am thoroughly convinced that the certificate system has in it weaknesses which must be remedied or the system must fall to the ground. It was with the desire of escaping the difficulties characteristic of both systems that we adopted what you may call a compromise system for determining whether or not a student was prepared to enter college. In the Yale system the teacher and pupil are not taken into consideration; the university determines for itself and by itself who shall come into the university and who shall stay out. By the Chicago system the teacher is given a part in the work of determining who shall enter, though I ought to add what I have omitted, namely, that the term grade of the pupi^ is forwarded in every case with the examination papers, and is taken into consideration in connection with the examination papers. There are difficulties connected with the plan. One can conceive that the teacher desiring his pupils to pass might cram his pupils for a particular examination. This is possible, but such a thing could not continue long without being detected. There is the difficulty of providing means for carrying on the work. It involves so much labor and so large an expense: but nothing good is to be obtained without expense and labor, and if this were the only objection, if other difficulties can be removed, it will be continued. We feel, those of us who have tried this plan for this short time, that it contains some elements which perhaps can be used in the great problem of bringing the university and the college into closer connec- tion with the secondary schools. Personally I hope and believe the time will come when the institutions which maintain the higher stand- ards, East and West, may agree upon one plan of admission; may agree upon the same standard, and may form an association by which persons who are to enter college shall have their fitness determined by one standard, by one method, so that the certificates from this committee or association in the hands of the student will secure him entrance to any university in this association. I believe this is entirely feasible. Whether our Eastern institutions will unite in such a plan I cannot say, but it is certainly feasible for the Western institu- Department.] ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS TALE, 635 tions to form such an arrangement for themselves, the central insti- tutions for themselves, and the Eastern institutions for themselves. Perhaps, further along, the time may come when all may unite. The great hindrance to the progress of students in college is the step which must be taken between the secondary school and the. col- lege, and the greatest thing that can be said in favor of thei certificate system is that the certificate system, with all its weaxnesses, has made that step an easier one. When we realize how much these boys and girls have struggled in order to get forward, we ought not to multiply the machinery or utilize that which instead of helping them forward, makes entrance to the higher education more difficult. I think I have expressed in the time I have, as fully as I can, the main outlines of the system. We do not regard this as a perfect sys- tem ; we see difficulties already, but it has worked results which we could not achieve before and we believe it is a movement in the right direction. ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS OF YALE COLLEGE. BY PROFESSOR THOHAS DAY SEYMOUR, YALE COLLEGE. The entrance requirements of Yale College are determined by what this institution requires of its students after they are admitted to its privileges. Yale still agrees with Plato, in believing that one cannot easily find a system of education better than that which has been found by the long experience of the past, modified only (but sufficiently) to suit new conditions. Important modifications have been made of recent years in the curriculum of study at Yale, but every student of this college is required during his freshman year and (with a slight option) in his sophomore year to study Greek, Latin, mathematics, English, and French or German. Hence every candi- date for admission to Yale college is examined as to his proficiency in these five departments. In general, he is not prepared to do satisfac- torily the work of our freshman year unless he has studied carefully the equivalents of four books of Xenophon's Anabasis and three books of Homeric poems; half a dozen orations of Cicero, and about half of the works of Virgil ; he must know well his algebra and plane geometry, being able to solve new geometrical problems, and must read French or German with fair ease. He must also have been trained in the study of English literature, and have some acquaintance with ancient his- tory. Equivalents for particular set passages of Homer or Xenophon, of Virgil or Cicero, are accepted, but no other set of studies in place of any of those required. The proper study of Greek and Latin liter- 636 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Higher ature involves the study of Greek and Roman history. For our pur- poses of course then, German and English history could not take the place of Greek and Roman history, knowledge of which is required for a proper appreciation of the classical authors ; still less could another language or physics or botany be substituted for either Greek or Latin. We endeavor to test the candidate's power in dealing with new material as well as his familiarity with what he has read; but we believe that true scholarship requires not simply cursory, but also exact and precise acquaintance with the text studied and are not ready to make the test of skill in translating passages hitherto unseen our sole criterion of the candidate's knowledge of Greek and Latin. To a certain extent, our examinations are designed to be a test of culture. For instance, a student might be able to translate Livy or even Horace without having studied Virgil ; but we think every one of our students ought to have studied Virgil, and hence we require it. Doubtless a student of good ability could do the work required in our English courses of freshman year without having received definite instruction and training in that subject in his preparatory course; but he can unquestionably do better work in that department if he has been properly drilled and taught both in the "Reading and Practice" and in the **Study and Practice'* of English. In the subjects named our requirements agree substantially with those of other New England colleges. The Yale system of entrance requirements is thus seen to be simple and absolutely determined by the work of the first two years of the college course. Not many roads lead to our college work. Only one gate admits to Yale College. Those who desire a scientific or technical training, instead of a classical and liberal education, may apply for admission to another department of Yale University — the Sheffield Scientific School. The question, which of the two educations is superior, is not raised, but the two seem to us still to be different, and (being different) fitly both to demand different preparations and to receive different degrees. The entrance requirements at Yale are maintained by an examin- ation of every candidate for admission, **except in certain cases when a candidate brings evidence that he has spent the whole of a fresh- man year in good standing in another college. " If such a candidate, from a reputable college, falls back a year in his college course we allow him to enter the freshman class without examination. We accept no other certificate of proficiency. Since many (if not most) other colleges now admit students on certificate, perhaps the question may be asked, why Yale does not adopt that system. The subject is a large one, and I can only indi- Department.] ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS— TALE, 637 cate here some of the reasons which actuate us. The system of admission to college by certificate rests, manifestly, on the assump- tion of a sort of supervision of the school by the college. The college must know the quality and extent of the work of the school if it is to accept the school's statement that the candidate for the freshman class is ready to do the work required by the college. But the situa- tion of Yale differs from that of any college which has adopted the system in question. Yale draws students from a wider field and from a larger number of schools than any other college in the country. In our last academic freshman class were young men from about 150 different widely scattered schools — men from Maine and from Texas, from Massachusetts and from California, from Oregon and from Macedonia. Our registrar tells me that about 250 schools have been represented in our classes within the last five years. Clearly Yale College cannot exercise any supervision over (or have exact knowl- edge of) all of these schools, and we cannot take students on proba- tion into a freshman class of more than three hundred young men. To ascertain the character of a school by admitting its students on cer- tificates in September and dropping them again from the class in Janu- ary, is painful to the student and injurious to the work of the college. We find, also, that many of the best schools do not care to take the responsibility of deciding which of their students shall not be admitted to our freshman class. This is particularly true of the teach- ers of private schools. They think that most boys are benefited rather than injured by the knowledge that their teacher is not the final arbiter of their destinies with regard to their admission to col- lege, and are stimulated to good work by the prospect of the college examination. I may add that some colleges which have admitted students on the certificate of the teacher are not wholly pleased with the system, and are now limiting it in several ways. The conclusion of this matter is that since Yale examinations are planned to discover who are ready to enter upon the Yale course of study^ we can hardly delegate this office to others, especially since our questions and our judgment of the answers are our most effectual means of indicating to boys and their teachers what preparation we desire and expect. But in this connection I would say that we welcome the opinions and judgments of teachers as to the scholarship and characteristics of their pupils who are soon to be ours — but that any stereotyped certificate, stating no more than that the candidate is believed to be ready for the work of our freshman class, is of little worth to us. Such certificates are worth no more than formal certificates of charac- 638 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Higher ter, or signatures to an ordinary petition; but any information which will enable us to understand better the student as an individual, is of great value. The publication of our examination papers has dimin- ished materially the percentage of rejected candidates. Teachers know now better than ever before what are the demands of Yale, and many a boy is advised that he is not yet prepared for our work, who a score of years ago would have tried the examination, only to be rejected. But unfortunately we cannot make perfectly distinct the standard on which the papers will be marked. Every teacher knows that 75 per cent in one school .means more than 90 per cent in another, and to say that such or such a per cent of success would admit to Yale would be misleading. I need only to remind you further, that while some colleges prefer to set difficult papers and mark them leniently, Yale strongly prefers to set comparatively simple papers and require exact answers. While we hold that examinations are necessary to test the profi- ciency of those who would enter Yale, we admit that these are a very unsatisfactory criterion. The examination is held at the close of June, and the weather is often oppressively hot. If the candidate takes the whole examination at once, he is engaged in writing under heavy mental pressure for sixteen hours, on twenty different papers, within two days and a half, which is surely a severe physical strain. Most of the candidates take the examination away from home, in the midst of strange surroundings; some of them are unused to written examinations with prompt collection of the work at the expiration of the time allotted ; some are distracted by the unwonted scene, and by the presence of the other candidates; anxiety to succeed confuses others, and prevents them from stating what they know. Every year teachers come to our committee on examination, convinced that some pupil's paper has not been fairly marked, who on seeing what the boy wrote can say only that he did better in his examinations at school than in his examination for admission to college. But in addition to the chance that the boy may not show just what he knows — the examiners, too, are fallible. They, too, are working in the heat of summer, and at the close of a year's toil. Even the setting of suitable papers is not a simple task. Many a passage in Greek or Latin seems to the instructor to be a good ** average pas- sage" for translation at sight, which yet proves too difficult or too easy to be a suitable test of the candidate's proficiency and powers. Many a problem of the mathematical papers is bound to be either harder or easier than the instructor expected. Some papers are so difficult that the examination books must be read leniently; while others are so easy that the books should be marked strictly. Errors Department.] ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS— TALE 639 are possible even after the examination books are written. We can find no better examiners than our college officers ; but these have been selected for their scholarship and their skill as teachers, not for their judgment and accuracy in marking examination papers, in which work very different powers are required. Most of their errors are of a kind not to be easily detected. If Samuel Jones' mark is interchanged with that of Samuel B. Jones, no indication of a mistake is left on the face of the record. Last year we had more than 750 candidates under examination; each (on the average) had more than twelve books; thus we had about 10,000 books to examine, and to record and con- sider the special mark of each. Some of these books were insuffi- ciently identified by the candidates. Not a few poor fellows gave laborious answers to the questions, but failed to write their own names on the books which they presented, and thus caused perplexity to the examiners and trouble to themselves. But at Yale we endeavor to take all reasonable precautions against error, and to make sure that if ah error is committed it shal^ be in favor of the candidate. In the first place we hold examinations in thirty-eight places, so that most of the candidates can present themselves at their own schools, or at least not far from their homes — without long journeys — and in smaller and less distracting companies than were formed when all were obliged to appear at New Haven. Then, as for our own part of the work, our examination books in twenty different subjects are distributed by the committee to twenty different readers. Thus Professor Luquiens reads the French papers. Professor Cook the English, Professor C. H. Smith the books in Roman history. Professor Goodell those in Greek at Sight, etc. We thus avoid the chance that an examiner reading the books in several sub- jects might gain the impression that a candidate had done particularly well or ill, and make several of his marks unreasonably high or low. When seven different readers of Latin papers agree in marking a can- didate low in Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, Caesar, Latin composition, and the rest, the probability is strong that the young man is not ready in Latin to enter college. If a particular mark is surprisingly low the commit- tee are apt to re-examine the paper. The subdivision of the examina- tion into work on twenty different papers not only eliminates most of the personal equation of the examiner, but also increases the chances that the candidate will do himself justice on at least some of the papers. According to our present system no book in Greek, Latin or mathematics is rejected, except on the authority of a member of the committee in addition to that of the assigned reader, and the marks for the rejected books in English, French and German are 640 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Higher vouched for by experienced ofl&cers. The examination books are kept for several weeks, and are open to the inspection of the candidate or his teacher. All merely clerical work is carefully and elaborately verified and checked. Thus our consciences are clear. We believe that our examinations, conducted with this care, are a reasonably fair test of the candidate's fitness to enter our freshman class. About three-fourths of our candidates divide the examination into at least two parts, taking a ** preliminary" examination in the more elementary of the required subjects one or two years before entering college. We give a so-called ** preliminary certificate" when the can- didate has shown himself to be prepared in at least six of the twenty required subjects. Clearly if a boy is able to pass our examination in only six subjects, he is not likely to be ready to enter college the next year. Hence he is allowed to present himself a second time to pass in at least six more subjects, and to receive an enlarged preliminary certificate. This division of the examination is a great mental and physical relief to the candidate, and follows the analogy of the aban- donment of the old biennial examinations, to say nothing of the still older quadrennial examinations which were held immediately before graduation, on all the studies of the college course. The permission to divide the entrance examination into two parts was granted by Yale first in 1882. Entrance examinations for Yale were held out of New Haven first in 1877, and in that year only in Chicago. The marked changes and alleviations of the last twenty years are obvious. The question is often asked, what is done with the candidates who pass in most subjects but who fail to pass in certain others? These receive ** conditions," /. mal schools. The visitor finds much more to adapt than he does to adopt. Many of the adverse conditions are the result of necessity and not of preference. While, as reported in the paper, the equipment of this school is stinted by lack of funds, the furniture and illustrative material are, nevertheless, remarkably well adapted to the purposes of the school. The plain unvarnished seats and desks are better suited to school work than the handsome desks in American city schools and normal schools. The devices and material for class instruction show that the interested efforts of genuine teachers accomplish better results than even the well-paid services of mechanics and publishers. The critic teacher's habit of interrupting the pupil teacher at any point in the recitation where he thinks help is needed strikes the American training teacher as discourteous and likely to destroy the confidence of the children. American children would certainly carry a very damaging report to their home concerning any such proceeding. During the most vigorous interruption by the critic teacher, the children of the Jena practice school must keep their eyes fixed on the pupil teacher, and must answer, without turning, whatever questions may come from the critic teacher sitting behind them. When the critic teacher has carried the recitation to a point where the pupil teacher feels sure of his ground the subordinate breaks in on his superior's discussion with- out waiting for so much as a look of permission. The children in Dr. Rein's practice school are much more thoroughly under the control of the school than would be possible in any practice school in America. It costs their parents less to send them to this school than it does to an ordinary public school, and there is less danger of the child's being withdrawn from school than there would be with us. Free tuition and free books and stationery to children in American training schools would do much to give the hold on pupils that such a school should have. Not all who are taking Dr. Rein's course in pedagogics are permitted or required to do actual teaching. While there are many nationalities represented in the seminar, the Americans do more teaching than is done by any others not native Germans. Perhaps the teaching is entrusted to those who &re most anxious to do it, which would not [necessarily be those who should do it. The paper does not overstate the willingness with which practice teachers engage in the work entrusted to them. They receive for this work no credits or other advantage looking to a degree from the University. The teaching is done with that freedom from selfishness that is most favorable to the highest success. The large amount of time given by the over-teacher, and especially by the head over-teacher, would surely demand and receive some remuneration in American normal schools, with our present ideas of the fitness of things. We can certainly do well for our training departments by adapting that over-teacher organization in such a way as to give our strongest pupil teachers special training and such provision as will best fit them for principalships and superintendencies. The Praktikum which is the one recitation per week most carefully prepared, Department.] DISCUSSION. 651 closely criticised and fully discussed, can hardly be taken as a sample of the entire work of the school, however much it may be presented as a model for us. This is the only recitation at which the teacher is sure' of observers, although it is supposed that the over-teacher 'in charge of the class will attend every one of its recitations. The over-teacher knows, however, that the Prakti- kum is the occasion that will most thoroughly put his work to the test. He shares with the teacher the responsibilitv for the plan, and he expects to sit with the teacher at the Konferenz^ and help defend and explain their work. The tests applied at the Praktikum are most searching. For instance, some one keeps the record of the number of questions asked each pupil and the number correctly answered, the number of times each pupil ofifers to answer and the number of correct and incorrect answers given by him when allowed to answer. All the members of the seminar are expected to give their undivided attention to every Praktikum^ and on the second night thereafter to join in two hours of discussion on the recitation at the Konferenz. They make a review of its philosophical and practical bearings such as we have not found hitherto in America. As to adopting Professor Rein's plans in this country, it must be remembered that the conditions are very different in our normal schools from those in this little seminar of an old German university. It is wise to urge, as does the paper, that our normal faculties should unify their work around the practice school, but we cannot hope for such a centering of all interests around every recitation here as is possible with the one crucial test recitation per week at Jena. We hail with satisfaction the attempt made in Buffalo by the author of this paper and those with whom he works to introduce more of Dr. Rein's methods than is found in other American practice schools. There is no room to doubt that all who study carefully the lessons to be learned from Dr. Rein may get many valdable suggestions. While revolution is not feasible nor desirable in our training schools, there is great need of an evolution which will find its chief element in the work of the seminar at Jena. THE PRACTICE SCHOOL AS A PUBLIC SCHOOL. BY DR. E. A. SHELDON, PRINCIPAL STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, OSWEGO, N. Y. **How Can a Practice School be made to Answer the Purpose of a Good Public School," is the question we are asked to discuss this afternoon. A very common opinion is that the children in such a school are necessarily sacrificed to the interests of the pupils in training. While there is some ground for such an impression, the objection is less seri- ous than might, at first thought appear, provided all the conditions are what they ought to be. In the first place, the pupils in training should have the most care- ful preparation before they enter the practice school. This means, first, an exhaustive knowledge of the subjects to be 652 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Normal taught — such a mastery of the branches as is essential to those who have to teach them. This means more than is necessarily required of ordinary students, those who are preparing for other avocations. Teachers should understand the underlying principles of every subject they have to teach, the relation that exists between the different sub- jects, and the parts of each subject; the reason for every step taken, and should make the matter to be taught so thoroughly their own as to be quite independent of any text-book on the subject. They should, in fact, be able to make their own text-books. In the second place, the pupils in training should have a thorough knowledge of the children to be taught. This means a careful, sys- tematic study of children. How can one who does not understand children be expected to train them, to form them into beautiful, noble manhood? You might as well expect the sculptor to construct a statue, to be admired by all beholders, from material of the texture of which he is ignorant. Without this knowledge of children, teachers are sure to make serious and far-reaching mistakes. It is of vital importance, then, that this part of their preparation should be con- ducted with the greatest care. It implies much study of children of all ages under the guiding hand of the most skillful investigators. In the third place, they should have a clear understanding as to the use to be made of the means employed in the training of the child- ren. This implies a clear apprehension of educational principles and their applications in teaching. In this part of the training mere the- ories are not sufficient. At every step there should be a practical, objective application of the principles. Classes of children must be brought in and taught in the presence of the pupils in training, first, by a skilled teacher, and then by a member of the class, the teaching to be followed by criticism and discussion. These criticism lessons should be conducted with the greatest care and thoroughness. If given by the critic or method teacher, the object and plan of the lesson should be fully explained to the class in training. They will then be able to see whether and how the object is attained and the plan executed. Notes of the lesson should be taken at the time and on subsequent days criticism should be given and the lesson fully dis- cussed. If the lesson is given by a member of the class in training, it should be on a lesson previously assigned by the method teacher. In this case the object and plan of the lesson should be fully written out by the pupil in training, and submitted to the method teacher for criti- cism and suggestion. This plan should be given to the class in train- ing at the time the lesson is given that they may the better be able to judge as to the completeness of its execution. The criticisms on the lesson whether given by the method teacher or a pupil should be care- Department] PRACTICE SCHOOL AS A PUBLIC SCHOOL, 653 fully prepared, usually written out and presented on subsequent occa- sions. The summary of the criticisms should be done by the method teacher, after an opportunity has been given by the lesson giver to answer for himself. All criticisms should be based upon educational principles well understood. The reason for every step taken should be required. The lesson, in fact, should be an elucidation of such principles. After the preparation now indicated, in the knowledge of the sub- jects to be taught, in a knowledge of the children to be trained, and in the knowledge of the fundamental principles of education and their practical applications in teaching the various branches of study — the pupils in training may be introduced into the practice school as teach- ers, and most emphatically, not until the end of such a course should they be allowed to tamper with the children. To allow novices who have not been thus prepared to enter the practice school as teachers is harmful to the children, and should never be tolerated. At the end of their courses in child study and methods, and not before, they may go to the practice school, at* first as observers, preparatory to their work as teachers, and at the proper time they may be fully inaugurated as teachers of classes. Detailed plans of work in every subject should be submitted by the pupil teachers to the head critic or superintendent of the practice school for criticism and suggestion. These outlines should be pre- sented at the end of each week for the following week. This implies an understanding on the part of the pupil teachers of a proper relation of subjects, a knowledge essential to the success of teaching related branches. They ought to understand the principles on which courses of studies should be arranged, and be able to frame such courses. With- out such knowledge, they will hardly be able properly to arrange these weekly plans. With the careful preparation indicated, under the guidance of wise and capable critics, the children are not likely to suffer seriously at the hands of the pupil teachers. In the state normal schools of New York the time given to special professional preparation, after the scholastic knowledge of the branches has been completed, is five months. This is too short a time by one half. A full year at least, should be given to it by pupils such as we find ordinarily entering our normal schools. This would give opportunity for a wider range of application of principles, as also of instruction in the theories and history of education. By this time the pupils will, naturally, have reached the age of nineteen or twenty, and have gained that mature judgment so essential to the teacher. The school of practice should be so arranged that each pupil 654 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Normal teacher may have a separate room which may be closed against all unnecessary intrusion or interruption of any kind, where he may rule supreme and execute his own ideas in his own way. It should be emphatically his own school to organize, to govern, and to teach. It is only under such conditions that he can do his best work and that his skill and power as a teacher can be properly tested and developed. Lesson-giving is by no means the most important part of the teach- er's work. To arouse and develop the moral elements, to get into sympathy with the children, to get a strong hold of their inner life and strengthen the moral character so that it becomes self-poised and self- controlled, is far more than ability to give a good lesson. This can only be done where the teacher has his own children in his own room, to manage in his own way, without unnecessary interference. Realizing his responsibility and his freedom, if he possesses the power requisite for the teacher, he will prove himself equal to the* situation and do his work acceptably. If it be again objected that the children are liable to suffer in the hands of novices, with no teacher of experience to direct and control, I would ask is it hot possible that the inexperi- enced teacher, uncertain as to his ability to do the right thing in the right way, conscious of the presence of one whose business it is to size up and express in a permanent record his teaching qualities, may fail to do his best work? Cannot some of us appeal to our .own experi- ence in answering this question? Is not a sensitive nature likely to become excessively self-conscious under such conditions and so greatly weaken his powers to do what he is capable of doing if left to himself? If this inference is a corect one, then so far as the teacl;iiing goes, the interests of the children, as well as the teacher, would be best served by leaving the teacher largely to himself; so far as the control of the class is concerned, if the teacher is weak in this direction, something may be gained for the children by the presence of the critic, but, at the same time, you may take away one of the most important factors in the training of the teacher. If you take away all opportunity for testing his ability to govern a school, he can get no growth in this direction, and you have failed to train the teacher in that which is most essential to his success and usefulness, and, without knowing it, you may turn out upon the public an incompetent teacher. It is, perhaps, in this matter of discipline more than in any other, that the teacher is likely to fail, and needs the most careful training. By this we do not intend to imply that no suggestions or criticisms are to be offered to the pupil in training. The most competent critics should have supervision. Their duty is to outline the work, see that all parts are suitably related, and that their work is properly accomp- lished. The execution of the work, however, in all details of plan and Department.] PRACTICE SCHOOL AS A PUBLIC SCHOOL, 655 f method should be left to the ingenuity, skill, and individuality of the pupil. In this way, all the records, all the movements, all the man- agement, all the government, as well as all the teaching, are entrusted to the pupil teachers. Here is the place for them to learn to do all that they will have to do when they come to assume the entire respon- sibility of schools of their own. This brings us to the consideration of the critics; the value of a school of practice must depend very largely on their skill and ability. They must have had large experience as teachers, must have a thor- ough knowledge of educational principles, must understand human nature and the art of criticism. To insure success all these qualifica- tions must be combined in one person, whose mission it is to build up apd strengthen the pupils in training. The first business of a critic is to find out what is good in the pupil teacher and to lend all the encouragement that is possible. At first very little adverse criticism is to be offered. For the first few days after he is installed in his school he had better be left largely to him- self to work out his own salvation. As the critic makes occasional visits to his room, he should be careful to make himself as unobtru- sive as possible. He should be an observer and a helper, rather than a superior teacher and a fault-finder. He should make his presence felt as little as possible either by the teacher or the children. At a proper time, never in the presence of the children, in a quiet, friendly way, that cannot give offense, but on the contrary that will appeal to the gratitude of the pupil teacher, he calls attention to some marked defect, always prefacing the adverse criticism by commending some special excellence. Something may be found that is good in every one, and it is well that the critic keep before the mind of the pupil some of his good points, rather than only that which is bad. . He must ever be mindful that his work is to build up and strengthen, rather than to tear down and destroy. To this end an ounce of commenda- tion is worth a pound of condemnation. The frequency of the visits of the critic in any given room must depend on circumstances. The judgment of the wise critic will decide this. Under peculiar conditions it may be advisable that these visits be repeated every day, or possibly several times a day, while under different conditions it may be better that several days should intervene. A mistaken notion sometimes prevails that there is no improvement in the absence of criticism. On the contrary, growth not only goes on in the absence of any criticism whatever, but under certain conditions criticism becomes absolutely harmful. Just as soon as the pupil becomes self-conscious of a fault and is trying to break it up, the less you interfere with him the better. When he arrives at 656 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Normal this stage of consciousness, when he realizes a fault every time he falls into it, criticism becomes an annoyance — ^a positive hindrance to growth. In such a case it is better to let him alone — he will work out his own salvation. This is the time to drop all criticism of this par- ticular fault and leave it to take care of itself. Another fault may now be taken up and treated in like manner, and so, in order of their prominence, the weak points may be taken up and eliminated. To take up too many faults at once tends to confuse and dishearten. If you break down the confidence of the pupil in himself, all is lost. I have said that these criticisms should be personal and private. This includes all faults that are individual in their character. More general faults that pertain to the class as a whole may be discussed in the presence of all. Meetings for this purpose should be held at the end of the day's work. If the pupil teacher shows decided signs of weakness in control, in questioning, in general skill, or in any other vital point, the critic may arrange to take the class for a day or two while he looks on, or the class may be assigned to some other pupil teacher while he takes a little time for observation under the direction of the critic to whom he makes daily reports of his observations. After a short period of such observation he may be returned to his class, or under peculiar circumstances it may be better that he should be assigned to a new class, that he may have an entirely new deal. After repeated trials and failures, the time may come at last, hard though it may seem to be, that the effort to be a teacher should be discouraged, and some different calling recommended. Too much experimenting with a weak teacher, at the expense of the children, and we may add at the expense of himself, is not wise. Such a person had better turn to some calling where success is less problematical, and where less loss to others is involved. The product of a normal school ought, beyond all question, to be a good teacher. If the normal school does not sift out the poor material, and so protect the public from incompetent and inefficient teachers, it has no right to a place in our school systems. For thirty-five years the plan I have outlined has been employed in the Oswego school under circumstances that are calculated to test its efficiency. The school of practice is, and always has been, one of the public schools of Oswego, subject to the same supervision and tests as the other schools of like grade, and it has always sustained itself honorably and taken high rank in comparison with these schools. None but graduates of the normal school are employed in these schools, so that the test has been somewhat severe, all certainly that could reasonably be demanded. The school is not located where the children are drawn from the best homes. They are mostly the child- Department.] PRACTICE SCHOOL AS A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 657 ren of the poorer classes, principally those of day laborers and for- eigners. I have yet to be convinced that a better plan for organizing a school of practice can be devised. Where tuitions are received, parents are likely to feel that they have a right to dictate as to how and what their children shall be taught and the way in which they are to be treated. In the public school they expect to abide by the rules of the governing board, without question. In such a school, too, it is possible to regulate the number of children to the necessities of the training school. Where the school is dependent upon tuitions, it may be found difficult to secure a sufficient number of children to give proper opportunities for practice in teaching. The pupil teacher should have not less than fifteen to twenty pupils in his class, and he should have them continuously for a period of not less than ten weeks, when he may change and take a similar class but of a different grade for a like period of time. Such an arrangement is hardly found practicable where the school of practice is sustained by tuitions. It is also diffi- cult to carry out this plan where large numbers are in attendance in the normal school. It is hardly possible to do thorough, efficient work in a school of practice where the attendance in the normal department is more than four hundred. As our normal schools are ordinarily organized, giving instruction in both subject-matter and method, a normal school with an average attendance of four hundred pupils should have a school of practice attached containing not less than four hundred children of all grades below the high school. I say below the high school, for very few of our state normal schools afford that extended and thorough preparation in all the branches of study required in the best schools of this grade. This is particularly true of the sciences and foreign and ancient languages. For teachers in these branches we must depend, for the present at least, upon the col- leges and universities. It is preposterous to set up the claim of pre- paring teachers to teach any science in twenty weeks, or any language in two or three years, and this is the ordinary time given to these subjects in most of our normal schools. I have suggested that the time given to what may be strictly pro- fessional preparation should be not less than one year. I believe the time for practice in teaching should not be less than the time devoted to method. No part of the work is so important as the teaching under criticism. The value of this part of the preparation should always be emphasized and given its full share of attention. With a thorough preparation in subject-matter, with one year given to a dis- cussion of educational principles and their practical application in teaching, and one year to teaching under criticism, with no division 42 658 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, [Normal of time between studying branches and teaching, we may hope to turn out teachers fairly qualified for their work. I am aware that the time suggested for professional work is more than that ordinarily given, but at the same time I am very well satisfied that it is no more than is demanded to equip the teacher properly for his work. With the prep- arations and organization suggested I believe it possible to do good work for the pupils in training, and without doing any injustice to the children composing the school of practice. The plan supposes a well-organized force of capable critics, not less than five or six, with a superintendent at the head. In the outline here presented I am sure too much is not demanded, and anything short of this must end in partial failure. I wish to add, in closing, that to call a school of practice a ** model school" is a misnomer and misleading. Under the conditions sup- posed it is not possible to make it a model of excellence, but that it can be made equal to the average public school has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, and this, it seems to us, is ail that can be demanded. Novices are more or less employed now in the public schools, and it stands to reason that they are not likely, to do better than the teachers in training who are under the supervision and direction of the most competent critics that can be obtained, and who, under the most favorable conditions possible, are given every needed facility for instruction and illustration. They have the backing of those who stand ready to give them every necessary moral support. They have the advice and suggestion of the most excellent teachers, and cannot get far astray or fail in any very serious way for any con- siderable length of time. They have had the best previous prepara- tion in subject-matter and the methods of teaching obtainable, go to their work with fresh and admirable equipment, and are now put on their mettle. Their graduation and endorsement depend on their suc- cess in the school of practice. Under such conditions they are likely to do their best work, and the children are not likely to suffer seriously at their hands. It would be a very good plan to have in connection with every school of practice model schools of different grades to be used only as schools of observation. In such schools none but the best teachers should be employed and every desirable facility afforded for the best work possible. Such schools would be very serviceable but could never be substituted for a school of practice. I ought perhaps to add, although it appeals at once to the good sense of every person, that a normal school should be a unit in all departments of its work. There should be a mutual understanding and agreement as to the general principles that underlie all educational Department.] DISCUSSION. - 659 work, by all the members of the faculty, and the application of these principles should be clearly manifested in the teaching of all subjects by every teacher in all departments of th^ school. The school should have a character of its own, so pronounced both as to its spirit and method of work as to be apparent to the casual observer. This can only be brought about by a discussion of educational principles in faculty meetings, with a practical application of the same in lessons to be given in the presence of the faculty, to be followed by exhaus- tive criticisms. The result of such discussions and criticisms should be the substantial agreement on the part of all the members of the faculty on all fundamental educational principles, and the abilty to apply them in all their class work, whether in the teaching of subject- matter, or method, or criticism. DISCUSSION. [Reported by Professor W. J. Galbraith, State Normal School, Whitewater, Wis.] Miss Isabelle Lawrence, Superintendent of Training Department, State Normal School, St. Cloud, Minn. — " The essential unit of all teaching is the child; the child's interests. In teaching how to teach this must still be the essential unit. If the training teacher has the interests of the pupil teacher mainly in view, the pupil teacher will also consider her own success her main object. All enthusiastic love of children ; all true work from the right stand- point, will thus be included. But how can teachers learn to do their work with- out injury to the children? There should be a classification of the mistakes made in teaching by the pupil teacher. On the one side, a misconception of the child will injure the child; the wrong method pursued habitually with the child will injure the child. Su^ch injury to the child should never be allowed. Not alone should false work of this kind be prevented because of the children, but also because of the pupil teacher. Teaching wrong will not help a teacher to teach right. Hence, all blundering of this kind must be stopped. On the other hand, the mistakes of awkwardness incidentally made by a teacher who sees his problem but who lacks experience will not injure the child. I do not believe that the chances of injury to children in a practice school, where critic teacher and pupil teachers and the entire faculty of the normal school are studying the indi- vidual pupil and are ready to criticise wrong methods, are as great as they are in the average public schools.'* At the conclusion of Miss Lawrence's remarks, the chairman gave the mem- bers of the section an opportunity to ask Dr. Sheldon such questions as were raised in their minds by the paper. Miss Strong, Brooklyn, N. Y. — Q. Is the critic teacher the methods teacher? A. Not necessarily. Q. Are the classes always in the hands of pupil teachers? A. Yes. Q. Does the critic teacher control the work of the class? 66o NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Normal A. The critic teacher and the pupil teacher 4iscuss and direct the work jointly. Q. In Brooklyn, methods teachers do not teach classes. How are we to find places for 120 pupil teachers? A. I do not know. A partial solution would be to make branch training schools. Q. In Brooklyn we need 700 teachers; how are we to provide them? A. Have seven times as many training schools. We attempt to train too many, nevertheless the training school is the essential part of an efifective nor- mal school. Principal Husted, of Albany, N. Y. — Q. Is promotion determined upon the judgments of the pupil teacher, or by the critic teacher? A. By both. Q. Are promotions determined by examination? A. Not by formal examinations. Final determination of the whole matter is in the hands of the critic teacher. Miss Cook, Chicago Normal School. — Q. Why not allow the critic teacher to have charge of the children for a part of the day? A. I prefer to have the pupil teacher have and feel the full responsibility of the work. I believe in observation, but it should precede this work. The critic teacher must not aid the pupil teacher in such a way as to remove or divide the responsibility. Principal Noss. — Q. Does the pupil teacher have continuous charge of the children? A. She is supposed to. It is sometimes necessary to change, however. Q. Is there any objection to having critic teachers take charge of the class at times, pupil teachers observing? A. Yes; to the extent that you take away responsibility, you defeat the legitimate ends of practice work. Principal William E. Wilson, State Normal School, Providence, R. I. — Q. In our school critic teachers have charge of the classes each Wednesday; this gives an opportunity for observation of expert work. Will Dr. Sheldon tell us how he prepares his pupil teachers for practice work? A. Classes of children are brought before the students in the methods class, and the members of the methods class are encouraged to visit certain practice work. Q. Whence are these children brought? A. They are drawn from the school of practice. Q. Do pupil teachers do model work? A. No; the name model school should never be applied to the practice school. President Walter L. Hervey, Teachers' College, New York City. — Q. What proportion of the year are the children in the hands of pupil teachers? A. The whole time. Principal Harlan, Wilmington, N. Y. — Q. How many teachers other than pupil teachers have you in your training school? A. Five. Mrs. Frank S. Parker, Chicago Normal School. — Q. Is there a tendency to make pupil teachers copies of critic teachers? Department] DISCUSSION. 66l A. I cannot say that there is; it is exceedingly unfortunate if it does have that tendency. Q. How many lessons would the prospective pupil teacher witness during her preparation for actual practice work? A. One or two lessons «ach day for five months. Miss Marian Brown, New Orleans Normal School. — As a pupil of Dr. Shel- don's I can say that pupils do not imitate. Principaj- Francis J. Cheney, Cortland Normal School.— Q. Do you believe in "the method?" A. I do not; there are eternal principles, however. Principal Snyder, State Normal School of Colorado. — Q. Do your patrons complain that their pupils are being practiced on? A. No; thirty-five years ago there was some such complaint. Principal Husted. — Q. If pupil teachers do not imitate why observe at all? A. We observe in order that we may be original. Miss Rice, New Jersey. — Q. Are not normal schools to present to us exem- plar teachers and model teaching? A. Our pupils must not be encouraged to imitate; each should do his own work in his own way. Superintendent Oilman C. Fisher, Pawtucket, R. I. — Q. What grades arc represented in your schools? A. Including the kindergarten, ten. President George R. Kleeberger, St. Cloud, Minn. — Q. What is the rela- tion of the normal school to the practice school? A. The normal school has control of the administration of the practice school. Q. Who pays the expenses? A. The expenses are divided between the city and the normal school. Q. Who determines the course of study for practice school? A. The principal of the normal school. Q. What assurance have you of the continuance of the present relation? A. None, other than that it has continued for thirty-five years. Superintendent Eugene Bouton, Pittsfield, Mass. — Q. What is the relative value of a training school where the pupil teacher has the entire control and where there is a teacher in charge? A. As I have said before I do not like to have a teacher in charge ; it weak- ens responsibility. A city training school may be as successful as a normal school. At this point the paper was opened for formal discussion. DISCUSSION. Professor J. N. Wilkinson, State Normal School, Emporia, Kan. — As to confining the observation work of pupil teachers to the model school entirely, where they see none but the best of teaching, there may be some consolation for those of us who are not able to present enough model work to make this possi- ble. A successful blacksmith is reported to have said that he had received as much help in other shops from seeing how not to do as from seeing how to do. 662 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Normal The pupil teacher should not be led to depend upon imitation. If he has wise guidance, he will discriminate between the excellent and the inferior work of those he observes. He will feel greater freedom in questioning the work of an equal than in suggesting possible faults of a superior. It is probable that a greater amount of faulty work may pass without question when done by a model teacher than would be accepted from any pupil teacher. There may be greater danger in the harmful imitation of the few faults of a model teacher than of even a few of the many faults of the pupil teacher. There is a tendency on the part of chil- dren to become too self-conscious while they do the work of the scliool, and this tendency is liable to be most marked in the pupils who receive all their teaching in the presence of many observers. The model teacher will not fail to show the pupils that she is thinking much about how the work of the class appears to the observers. While the paper has described in the most instructive manner the using of the city public school as a practice school, it still remains a question of great concern in comparing practice schools with the typical public schools, whether the practice school can do as well for the children who attend it as can the public school. The frequent change of teachers seems to be a necessary evil of the practice school. The teacher who spends but a short time with his class cannot make the impression upon character which is among the best results of good teaching. With this thought comes the reflection that sometimes, in the ordinary public school, the fact of long continuance in the sole charge of one teacher has a very damaging effect upon the young people. It may be doubted, however, whether even the best results for the pupil teacher demand as frequent changes as some of us make. The teacher should slay with the same class long enough to make a very perceptible growth. The continual transplanting of cabbages is not likely to grow very good heads. The transferring of a teacher before he has been with a class as much as ten weeks should be made only in case of absolute necessity. It is not necessary that each pupil teacher should be tried in every subject or in every grade, but on the other hand it is not wise that any one pre- paring to teach in the ordinary public school should take all his training depart- ment practice in a favorite subject or in the grade most to his taste. There is, for pupils in the training department, some compensation for the loss caused by frequent change of teachers, in the fact that training school pupils get a consider- able sharpening of their wits in acquiring their very remarkable power of esti- mating new teachers, and their phenomenal skill in showing the new comer that he must learn to govern as well as to teach. There are many points in which the work of the pupil teacher may compare favorably with that of the teacher in the city schools. The average teaching ability of normal seniors is as high as that of the rank and file of public school teachers. The experience of normal seniors in ordinary school work is as extensive as the average of teachers in the public schools. The normal students of the West are chiefly those who have taught long enough before coming to the normal school to determine that they have some fitness for teaching which makes it worth while to invest something in the business. The teacher in a practice school comes to his work with a broader view of the educational field than has the average teacher of the city school, who stays with the same work year after year. The training teacher in a normal school has more freedom to exercise his discretion in the prompt suspension or transfer of teachers who are failing than does the city superintendent in dealing with the incompetent teachers that the board is liable to elect. The supervision of the work of the practice school Department.] D/SCUSS/ON. 663 is more close and careful than that provided for city schools, and yet there is less danger that the work may fall into ruts or that the management of the school may become the mere automatic working of a machine that cannot adapt itself to changing needs and conditions. Principal Francis J. Cheney, Cortland, N. Y. — This question is of great interest to many of the normal schools of New York state, because a part of the . public schools of the villages or cities in which these normal schools are located is in the practice school, and the problem is to make these practice schools as efficient and beneficial to the child as is the public school outside. This can be done if we have as nearly the same conditions in the practice school as are required in a good public school. What are these conditions? First, — not because it is most important, but because it is helpful, — the environ- ment must be pleasant and attractive. This condition is as possible in the prac- tice school as in the public school. The second, and most important condition, is a good teacher. This the paper of Dr. Sheldon emphasizes. He requires that the pupil teachers shall have a most thorough and careful preparation; they must know thoroughly what they are to teach ; they must understand children and know how to study them ; they must be familiar with the principles underlying good teaching, and be able to apply them ; they must have had an opportunity to observe good teaching; they must be saved from the obstruction of obtrusive critics. If there is one feeling that pupils should entertain for their teachers more important than another, I should say it is confidence. The pupil should have implicit confidence in the teacher; destroy it, and you have shorn the teacher of much of his power. The pupil must believe in the mental and moral power of the teacher. Now, if the critic severely condemns the work of pupil teachers in the presence of the children, that teacher is lowered in the estimation of the child- ren and his work defeated. Make the conditions what they should be and what it is possible to make them, and the practice school may be made to answer the purpose of a good public school. « • Principal F. B. Palmer, of the State Normal School, Fredonia, N. Y. — I shall confine myself in the few minutes allotted me to a single point which I think I can make plain most easily by a reference to our experiences in the Normal School of Fredonia. The question has been raised this afternoon whether or not classes taught by practice teachers should be given instruction a part of the day by the critic teachers in order that all pupils might have at least some supe- rior instruction. It has so happened that at Fredonia there was a time when practice teacher taught only one half of the year and critic teachers gave all the instruction the other half. For another series of years practice teachers did most of the teaching all of the year and critic teachers taught classes some portion of each day. During the past few years practice teachers have done all the teach- ing. I can say confidently that the best results have been secured since practice teachers have taught all the subjects. I do not say that this result is wholly due to the change of system in the use of practice teachers, but at least it must be said that other things besides the direct instruction of critic teachers have their influences in securing the best results. But it may be that the best results are absolutely dependent upon the adoption of practice teachers entirely if they are to be used to any considerable extent. There is a principle involved in the rela- tions of teacher and pupil which, perhaps, is paramount in determining the results we are considering. The relations existing between practice teachers and pupils 664 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Normal are very different from those of the critic and pupils, and if the critic teaches a part of the time and the pupil teaches a part of time the effect of this difference on the pupils will manifest itself in the loss of power by the pupil teacher. When she comes before a class the feeling on the part of the class will be that it is only a practice teacher and the recitation is of little consequence. This will do much to destroy the value of the practice teacher's work. Traditions go far to deter- mine the thoughts and conduct that are essentially characteristic of school life. The views which pupils entertain of their interests and responsibilities as pupils are not based so much on facts as on the traditions that have come down to them. An earnest effort should be made, and it is the first effort to be made, to create a correct sense of the proper relations that should exist between the teacher and the pupil, and this effort must largely fail in the case of the pupil teacher if the critic teacher occupies her place a portion of every day. The time taken by the critic teacher may be more valuable in itself to the class, but it will certainly make the time of the practice teacher of less value than it might otherwise be made. Professor J. A. Cooper, Edinborough, Pa. — To have the same results we must have the same conditions and agencies. The aim of a good public school is to prepare boys and girls for manhood and womanhood. It is to fit them to become good citizens. The conditions are to have a good teacher, and in a large public school there must be a good superintendent — a manager and good assist- ants, and plenty of them. To reach the same end in a practice school there must be a good head to the school, and there must be 'sufficient help, of the right kind, to do the same kind of work that is done in a public school and to do it in the same manner. School work consists of two kinds, perhaps three. There is the administra- tion, there is the character building, and there is the instruction. In a large school the head of the institution usually confines himself to administration, and he may be able to do this and do it well, even though he be not a superior instructor. The superintendent of a large city told me at this meeting that he had many teachers who are more successful in a class room than he could possibly be; 'but, he said to me, " I can do my work as superintendent better than any one of them could do it." This superintendent is recognized as one of the best superintend- ents in the country. If we would reach the best results in the practice school, that is the best result for the pupils, we must have a first-class man or woman at the head of the school as a superintendent and manager, and then there must be class instruc- tors, well fitted to give instruction, full of spirit and energy, with noble impulse and high aspirations, and they must have plenty of time to do all the work that is required of them. With these conditions the results in the practice school will be the same as in the best public school. The children will acquire knowledge and discipline of mind, will form good character, and become fitted for useful citizens and efficient workers in society. Dr. M. MacVicar, of New York City, a man of wide experience in the train- ing of teachers, who had been largely instrumental in promoting and organizing the normal school system of New York state, and who had been for many years the principal of one of these schools, expressed his views on the paper read by Dr. Sheldon, substantially as follows: He fully endorsed the views presented in the paper, and particularly the emphasis placed upon the importance of the practice school in the training of Department.] DISCUSSION. 665 teachers. Teaching, he holds, is essentially an art, as well as a science. As well therefore, he said, may we expect to produce good breadmakers without any practice, by simply requiring them to observe carefully the work done by experts, and by giving them a correct knowledge of the nature of bread and of the proc- esses used in making it, as to expect to produce good teachers by what was des- ignated by a former speaker as the "observation method" of training. In this method, he said, the practice school is entirely dispensed with; the persons under training are simply required to pursue a course of careful observation on expert work, and to receive instruction on the theory an^ practice of teaching. This he held was essential, but it was only a small part of the work of a rightly organized normal school. The most important part of the work must be done in the practice school. Power and efficiency in teaching, he said, can only be acquired, as in all other arts, by persistent practice under the guidance and friendly, yet exacting, criticism of expert teachers. Referring to the method proposed in the paper, to give to the students under training the opportunity of observing expert work, he said that perhaps on account of the matter of expense the plan proposed is the only one that can at present be pursued. But he hoped that in the near future, at least the state of New York would provide the necessary means for the support of an observation department in connection with each of its normal schools. In this department, he said, should be taught by expert teachers one class of each grade of pupils taught in the public schools, and the department should be used as a school of observation in which the teachers under training should have the opportunity oi forming correct ideas of teaching before entering the practice school. In his judgment every properly organized normal school should provide for the teachers under training, as implied^ in the paper under discussion, four distinct and yet correlated courses of instruction, as follows: A course in psychology and the practical study of child nature. This should be followed by a course in which the principles, methods, and practices of teaching are discussed and carefully studied^ Running parallel with this latter, a course of careful and critical observation conducted as proposed by Dr. Sheldon by using pupils drawn from the practice school, but better in an observation department as already suggested. After these three courses have been successfully completed, students are then properly prep^ed to take the course of training in the school of practice. DEPARTMENT OF ART EDUCATION. SECRETARY'S MINUTES. FIRST SESSION.—Wednesday, July 8, 1896. The department met in the assembly room of the High School, Bufifalo, and was called to order at 2:30 p. m. by the President, Mr. Walter S. Goodnough, Supervisor of Drawing, Brooklyn, N. Y. The annual address of the President was followed by a paper on "Art for the Eye," by Mr. Ross Turner, Boston, Mass. Professor L. S. Thompson, Supervisor of Drawing, Jersey City, N. J., read a paper on "Art in the Schoolroom through Decoration and Works of Art.*' Miss Stella Skinner, Supervisor of Drawing, New Haven, Conn., presented a paper discussing the same topic. General discussions followed, by Miss Wilhelmena Seegmiller, Supervisor of 'Drawing, Indianapolis, Ind. ; Mr. F. Treudly, Superintendent of Schools, Youngs- town, Ohio; Mrs. Mary Dana Hicks, Boston, Mass.; Mr. Eugene Bouton, Super- intendent of Schools, Pittsfield, Mass. ; Mr. Charles F. Wheelock, Regents Depart- ment, Albany, N. Y. ; Miss Gratia L. Rice, Department of Public Instruction, Albany, N. Y. ; Miss Harriette Rice. Supervisor of Drawing, Providence, R. I. ; Mr. J. P. S. Neligh, Supervisor of Drawing, West Point, Neb., and by others. The report of Special Committee on "Art and its Relations to Public Educa- tion," appointed at the Denver meeting, consisting of Mr. Walter S. Perry, Director Fine Arts Department, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; Dr. W. L. Her- vey, President of Teachers' College, New York City; Mr. F. Treudly, Superin- tendent of Schools, Youngstown, Ohio; Mr. A. B. Blodgett, Superintendent of Schools, Syracuse, N. Y., and Mrs. Matilda 4HS. Riley, Art Director, Public Schools, St. Louis, Mo., was read by the chairman, Mr. Walter S. Perry. The report of the committee was unanimously adopted. The following committees were appointed by the President: On Nominations — Walter S. Perry, Brooklyn. N. Y.; Mr. Eben Rose, Rochester, N. V.; Miss Mary Blake, Grand Rapids, Mich. On Resolutions — Mr. George Morris, Waltham, Mass.; Mr. E. C. Colby, Rochester, N. Y.; Miss Florence Himes, Albany, N. Y. The chair called attention to the reception tendered the department by the Buffalo Society of Artists in their rooms at the Library Building, through the chairman of the Local Committee, Miss Helen M. Horton. Department adjourned. SECOND SESSION.— Thursday, July 9, 1896, 2:30 p. m. The department was called to order, Mr. Walter S. Goodnough, President, in the chair. Mr. William Hamilton Gibson, who was to have read a paper on "Art in Education, Not as a Servant of Science, but as its Complement," was absent. Department.] MINUTES, 667 Miss Wilhelmena Seegmiller, Supervisor of Drawing, Indianapolis, Ind., opened the discussion of the topic and was followed by a paper upon the same subject read by Professor M. V. O'Shea, School of Pedagogy, Buffalo, N. Y. General discussion by Mr. Horace Briggs, Buffalo, N. Y., and by Mr. John S. Clark, Director Prang's Normal Art Classes, Boston, Mass., followed. The discussions of papers were reported by Miss Cora Zelia Parsons, Super- visor of Drawing, Youngstown, Ohio. Mrs. T. Vernette Morse, Chicago, 111., was given opportunity to present the claims of the Central Art Association. The following report was made by the Committee on Nominations: For.Prestdent — Mrs. M. E. Riley, Art Director Public Schools, St. Louis, Mo. For Vice President — Mr. £. C. Colby, Principal Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanic's Institute, Rochester, N. Y. For Secretary — Mr. George Morris, Supervisor of Drawing, Waltham, Mass. Vote by ballot was called for which resulted in a majority vote for the follow- ing persons who were duly declared officers of the ensuing year: For President— 'Vix. Mark Maycock, Buffalo, N. Y. For Vice President — Mr. L. S. Thompson, Supervisor of Drawing, Jersey City, N. J. For Secretary — Mr. D. R. Augsburg, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Committee on Resolutions submitted the following report which was unanimously adopted: In regular meeting of the Department of Art Education of the National Educational Association, be it hereby Resolved^ That the members of the department feel deeply grateful to the Local Committee for their services in our behalf in making arrangements for our comfort and convenience, and also to the officials of the school department of the city of Buffalo for the use of rooms for meetings and forother courtesies extended. Resolved y That we feel greatly indebted to the various societies of Artists of Buffalo for their hospitality in so kindly offering the use of their rooms, as well as for their cordial reception on Wednesday evening. Resolved^ That we tender to the officers of the Department of Art Education of the National Educa- tional Association our thanks and our assurance of appreciation of their labors, not only at these meetings but in the making of the necessary arrangements in advance. Resolved^ That we offer our hearty thanks to those who have so kindly and ably presented the papers at the meetings, and ti^those who have participated in the discussions. Resolved, That we heartily commend the proposed plan of the Regents of the University of the State of New York to establish the collection of works of art to be circulated throughout the various schools under their jurisdiction. This we would especially commend to the notice of other states as a wise example to follow. Committee on Resolutions : GEO. E. MORRIS. FLORENCE B. HIMES. E. C. COLBY. The meeting was then adjourned. Myra Jones, Sec*v. 668 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [Art PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS. PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. WALTER S. GOODNOUGH, DIRECTOR OF DRAWING, BROOKLYN, N. Y. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Art Department of the National Educa- tional Association. It is with sincere pleasure that I extend a hearty welcome to all in attend- ance at the annual session of this department. Tomorrow will be the fourteenth anniversary of its organization, which took place in this state in 1883, and I am happy to see that several of the original members are present today. A few have been constant in their attendance all these years, and only they can be fully aware of the good this department is accomplishing for the cause of art educa- tion and for its members. The volumes of reports which I value most highly in my library are the Annual Proceedings of the National Educational Association, and its depart- ments. Here the trend of thought of the leaders in the whole educational field can be followed from year to year. I was interested, recently, in looking over the proceedings of each meeting of this department since its organization, and, through the reports ot papers and addresses, tracing the development of art edu- cation, as there shown. It is interesting to note how the aims and ideals hare advanced and broadened. The mere perusal of the programmes is suggestive of the great progress that has been made, and of the larger view that has been taken from session to session. A great meeting of this department was held last summir at Denver; one worthy a journey across the continent to attend. It is our hope and trust that « this present meeting will be equally valuable and fruitful in its results. Our programme is indicative of current lines of thought. The first subject for discussion is one that is attracting attention all over the country ; one of the greatest significance, and destined to have a far-reaching influence difficult to estimate. Our other topic, in the programme for tomor- row, touches two distinct lines of thought prevalent today, each having its fol- lowers. There is no doubt in my mind which will in the end be found most inclusive and fruitful. It is to be hoped that the discussion at this meeting will have much weight in directing attention to the wider view. One of the first and most important steps which this department took at its first organization was the appointment of a committee to investigate, during the following year, and report on the condition of drawing in the public normal, high, and elementary schools of the country, and to make recommendations as to methods and courses of study. That report, made at Madison, had much influ- ence in shaping progress for a long time. Perhaps the most valuable contributions to the general educational discus- sion that have been made in recent years are the reports of the Committee of Ten, and of the Committee of Fifteen, on "Courses of Study for High and Elementary Schools." Department.] PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 669 Inasmuch as these reports, valuable and suggestive as they are in matters of general education, gave so little attention to the subject of art education, it seemed that the time had come for our department to make another report. At its session last year, at Denver, it was directed that a committee be appointed to consider the subject of art education in its relation to general education, and to report at its earliest convenience. That report will be made today, and I have no doubt will prove not only a most valuable contribution, but one that will ade- quately supplement the famous reports of the Committee of Ten and of the Committee of Fifteen. In view 0/ the larger demands for art education in the schools, it may not be out of place for me to speak briefly upon what should be the training of the art teacher or director for public schools. I am led to this somewhat by the num- ber of inquiries that come to me relative to the requirements for those seeking positions. The chief means of advancing the cause of art education is broadly and properly trained art teachers. The standard should be raised continually; indeed the cause itself is making new and broader demands. The day is coming rapidly when teachers who in the past would have proved acceptable will fail to satisfy the requirements. As new teachers seek to enter the field it should be our duty to advise them of the necessity of the broadest preparation possible, and to give them such aid as is in our power. It should be the duty of those occupying positions to seek opportunities for improvement. There are three requisites for success. First, a good general educaticn. Nothing less than a course at a good high school should be considered sufficient. Much beyond this is desirable. Second, the best art and technical training possible, including a course at a good art school with sufficiently extensive lines of study to fully meet the con- ditions. Third, a good pedagogical training. The need of the highest artistic and technical qualification^ is becoming more and more apparent. One should have from two to four years or more of special art study at least, including the necessary technical lines of work. In addition to the ability to draw well, and full knowledge- of principle and method, one should be acquainted with the history of art and be informed upon current art work and processes. The bringing