boys fresh from parental discipline and control, with unformed ideals or distorted ones, with little self-control, the subjects of impulse rather than of judgment, who flock to these great institutions where their fathers were nurtured and enjoyed the guidance of sage counsellors. We are not considering the relation of the university to the postgraduate, with his disciplined mind and well formed purpose.

A great organization with a regiment of teachers, larger than the body of pupils used to be, takes charge of an army of pupils. Teachers and pupils meet in the class-room, it is true, but under new conditions. The teacher in conducting his recitation used to call a pupil; now he calls a name, often not even knowing who will respond to it. For him there is no individuality belonging to it, appealing to him and guiding in the selection and framing of the question. The question is put not for the purpose of developing that particular pupil, but for the purpose of developing a subject. The aim of the teacher is thus radically changed because of the changed condition under which he is working. Is it not obvious that this change of aim has made it impossible for the teacher to attain to the position of an artist in his calling? The nice adjustment of the questions to the pupil, that shall result in the best thinking of which he is capable, that shall quicken his imagination or direct and modulate his feeling, or determine him to action, which is the aim of the artist in the profession, is by the very conditions excluded. Rather should men be satisfied with the tune of the organ-grinder instead of the strains of Paderewski, rather should they accept the chromo as the highest expression of the art of painting, than accept work upon the mind of the youth under such conditions as the work of educators. It may be said the organ-grinder has his place among musicians. True, but we do not expect to find him in the chair of an instructor in a musical conservatory.

Emerson (The American Scholar, p. 95) thus voices his idea: "Colleges in like manner have their indispensable office-to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls and by the concentrated fires set the hearts of their youth on flame."

President Gilman, of Johns Hopkins, in the Cosmopolitan for May thus describes the situation: "The end of education is undoubtedly the development of character. The experience of the world has demonstrated that while there are magnificent and surprising exceptions to the rule, the average man is greatly helped by submission, during all his adolescence, to the precept, example, criticism and suggestion of those who have been themselves well trained. By such influences, character-physical, intellectual and moral-is most likely to be har

moniously developed. Hence it is that, while we miss from the catalogue of college graduates many names of extraordinary distinction-for example, three or more of the most resolute and brilliant of the men who have been presidents of the Unted Stateswe do find upon the roll a very large percentage of men who have led long, useful and influential careers in the service of church and state, or in the advancement of science and education.

Notwithstanding the long experience of the human race, it is surprising how many men despise the college-bred man, how few college graduates are found in the halls of legislation, and how many of those who look forward to the professions of law and medicine avoid the preparatory discipline of a college. Something must be wrong when this state of things exists. To the writer, it appears that a college education would be much more highly valued, and would be much more advantageous to the world as well as to him who has received it, if a far greater amount of personal supervision attended its progress.

"As an illustration of the existing conditions, let me picture an imaginary case, but one which, I venture to say, has very many counterparts in human life: A boy of good parentage and environment expects, as a matter of course, to pursue an intellectual life. He is not conscious of strong inclinations toward any particular calling, or of marked aptitude for a special pursuit. But other boys go to college; his relatives expect him to follow. His course of study leads him on in this direction. He goes with the crowd. In college he is either subjected to the rule of the curriculum, or he is left free to choose his path through the thicket of 'ologies. His parents hesitate to advise him-colleges have changed so much in recent days.' His teachers (most of whom are little older than himself, and have had no experience of the world but that of their own brief academic life) have no confidence in their own judgment, or do not think it any part of their business to direct his course. Are they not the advocates of electives? So the young man floats on, avoiding difficulties as a rule, instead of mastering them, and attending to appointed duties in a properly perfunctory manner, but not enjoying his intellectual opportunities half as much as he does his companionship with his comrades. length he wakes up to find that he is almost, if not quite, of age,' and about to hear the valedictory' which closes for him his college course. Then he is aroused and perhaps half-frightened. He decides, without much reason for his choice, to follow this or that career, and so he launches into life. Often he discovers, when it is too late to seek a remedy, that he has made a mistake; and it is quite possible that he will remain for life the half-hearted and ill-rewarded follower of a career which he ought to have

At

shunned, for he might have been happy and successful in another.

Is there no remedy for this condition of affairs? None that will always work well. Educational defects can be met by no catholicon. But there are certain alleviations which might be employed, and it is safe to predict that in the next half century, perhaps within the next few years, they will find favor.

"Emerson has pointed out the way in his essay on Education. Individuality,' reads the sign post; persons by themselves, not persons enrolled in classes. Our actual mode of procedure, he truly says, aims to do for masses, what must be done reverently one by one.' In large schools there is always the temptation to omit the endless task of meeting the wants of each single mind and to govern by steam.' Our difficulties and perplexities 'solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.' This and much more that is worth remembering may be found in that helpful essay.

It would be well if, in every institution, there should be one or more persons specifically appointed to be the counsellors or advisers of students. Of course they must be men of liberal culture, but they should be more than that. They must be men who have gifts for reading character, as the artist has for perceiving colors, the physician for detecting diseases, the sportsman or the naturalist for noticing the movements of nature. They must be chosen because they have such gifts, and they must be kept so free from appointed lectures and recitations that they will always appear to the students to be at leisure.' Such men can be found. Many might be named who have thus been distinguished.

More are wanted-broad shouldered men, of good digestion, lovers of exercise in the open air, capable of enlisting confidences and of keeping them - but above all, men of high moral and social character. It may not be possible to find in one man all the knowledge requisite for advising several hundred students, any more than it is possible for one physician to take care of all the patients of a hospital. In a staff, or committee, or advisory council, it would certainly be possible to combine an amount of medical, psychological, spiritual and pedagogical experience which, if not ideal or complete, would be far in advance of what any college offers now. Our faculties are filling up with 'specialists'-but certainly they can be reinforced 'generals.' The specialist sometimes, not always-as testify Agassiz, Dana, Gray, Child, Whitney-regards his professional work as 'done' when his day has been carefully devoted to his lecture or his laboratory. Such men must be associated with men of another type, whose highest delight, whose noblest duty, is to inspire, guide, control, encourage, and counsel those who come under their notice."

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So far Gilman.

Let us now turn to the systems of public instruction, and inquire whether a perfect organization is certain to yield educated boys and girls. In such ideal organization it is the office of the superintendent to translate psychology and physiology into formulae for the grading of schools, into courses of study, into rules for the development of subjects, and to put these into the hands of his teachers, and then to see that they are daily followed. Those teachers are most desirable who will follow these instructions most implicitly. Young girls and immature youth will obviously do this better than teachers who have come to possess ideas of their own. The working of the system will be smoothest, with Napoleonic will in the superintendent and subserviency in the teachers. It will be more nearly uniform in its results. Teachers who have ideas of their own are injurious to the system and irritating to the superintendent. Like Cassius "they think too much." Such teachers are disturbing, if not dangerous.

But this is only a modified form of the Lancasterian idea, in its day hailed with the greatest enthusiasm, afterward abandoned everywhere. It made manifest the fact that more is required than mere organization. When the teacher is working out the superintendent's interpretation of principles, the teacher is to that extent a machine.

Dr. Harris met this tendency lately with the reminder that: "Principles give life; mechanical results death. Our system of education would lose much if the teacher should be deprived of the freedom to work out his own interpretation of principles. We prefer that the school shall look to principles rather than to details, and that the whole school system, with all its teachers and superintendents, shall look towards the eternal stars, and guide their work by the highest principles, by the light that guides our civilization. School reports often contain much matter that tends to make the school rather for the school than the school for humanity, and in this case the lower schools do not open their doors to the higher learning."

The plan has been seriously considered of conducting a system of schools by specialists, each of whom shall in turn hand over the school to his successor from hour to hour. The organization can be preserved in its completeness, and the disadvantage arising from the employment of callow youth or other teachers equally subservient can thus be avoided. The most skillful teachers may thus be supplied to all the pupils. But they are not sitting hens; they can't hatch the eggs The limitation here encountered is in the nature of children. The scheme would be an ideal one if dead matter were the substance to be improved. It is the scheme operated in successful factories. The material is passed from expert to expert

until it comes out a finished product. It is successful among the older students of colleges and universities, where the trained will supplies the stability found in inertness of matter, but it can never succeed with young children and youth, because their mobile nature is not duly regarded in the scheme. The metamorphosis, the transfiguration of a slave of sense and of self into the freeman of ideas, ideals, and unselfishness, cannot be effected by any educational machine, but only by the abiding presence of the living, transforming teacher.

Having glanced at the educational system as operating in the university and in the public schools, let us note how nature meets the limitations discovered.

Nature's teacher is no automaton, nor crank in a machine. She is more spontane. ous, more free, more independent, more resourceful, more tactful than the ideal system would tolerate. Nature's teachers are our mothers. Good teaching mothers make great men. It is a rare instance when we find a great man who did not have a great mother, and the element of heredity is not so great as that of environment-her influence. If we would contrast the difference between nature's teachers and those belonging to educational systems, we have but to note that, however magnificent they may be as charities, and though conducted upon the most scientific principles, orphan asylums are not as successful as mothers in rearing great men, still less are they patent incubators of soaring intelligence and exalted virtue. As we depart from nature's maternal plan, we find that no perfection of mere organization can supplant it. The old ungraded school with a born teacher in it gave us men such as that teacher could never produce in a modern graded school, because the period of his influence is thereby abridged. The system of graded schools is not ideal, it is but an arrangement in the interest of economy of money. The imposing character of a vast educational system with its multitude of teachers and command of public funds should not be allowed to blind our eyes to the essential conditions of successful teaching, the securing and the retaining of the best possible teachers. No excellence of system can atone for error at this point. No expenditure of money upon other salaried officials or upon costly buildings can produce the desired results if there is any paring down in such expenditure as may be necessary to secure and retain teachers of the highest order.

We must not lose sight of the fact that the whole system, however extensive, whether in a university or in a city or in a state, is subservient to one end, the education of the child, and that the act of educating can be performed by no board, by no superintendent, however skillful he may be, but can only be performed by the teacher; and that the quality of the education is absolutely fixed, not by the university nor by

the city nor by the state, but by the teacher that is in personal relation and contact with the child. Here is the limitation upon educational systems. Their palatial buildings, with their libraries, museums, laboratories and gymnasiums, great and important as they may be, must all be held as only auxiliary to the work of the teacher, and to depend for their usefulness upon the teacher. We must, therefore, get back to the high estimate that was put upon the individual who has personal charge of the children, before he came to be overshadowed by the magnificence of our modern educational systems. The idea that a man who understands a given subject is thereby qualified to occupy a chair in a university entrusted with the education of our boys must be dispelled. The idea that a school board, having chosen a good superintendent, can meet in June and parcel out positions upon any other basis than that of the educational ability of the candidates, must be dispelled. What is the educational power of the individual teacher? is the fundamental question in every child's education. It may be objected that a proper recognition of this truth involves a great outlay of money. It does the best investment a community can make-and the ignoring of this truth involves a great waste of money.

Organization is the educational jinnee of the 19th century, but whether in the university or in public school systems he is but a servant. However imposing in proportions, he is simply a worker for that master possessing intelligence and heart and will, the schoolmaster.

The attention of the State Teachers' Association is invited to this subject at this time because Pennsylvania is particularly well enabled to meet this limitation. With the returning tide of prosperity she will be able to raise more money than ever before for the proper education of her children, and with the princely appropriation of $5,000,000.00 from the State treasury a sufficient additional sum is provided to enable directors to obtain and to keep teachers who are qualified for their great responsibility.

The thought I would leave with you is that this great jinnee of organization has produced results so impressive and imposing that we are led tacitly to accept his ability to achieve everything, and through perfection of machinery to give us an educated generation; and to lose sight of the old truth which is still as true as ever, that after all, systems are but auxiliary to and promotive of the work of the educator, the teacher himself-that all we can do by our effort and expenditure should be centered upon making the work of the teacher more effective. We must not forget that the born teacher is a priceless treasure, and that it is our duty to see that the school, the college, the university, gather these and hold them: for upon this depends the advancement of the generation to follow.

And since Pennsylvania has risen to the occasion in the appropriation of such a magnificent sum, why should we longer allow it to be used in the reduction of taxes, and yet call it a "school fund." Every dollar of it is needed to give us first good teachers, afterward appliances for the education of our children. Let us see to it, then, that the bounty of the state is used in addition to what we can and ought to take out of our own pockets by taxation. As the people pay their taxes for the education of their children, they will be more likely to want to know what they get for their money.

In all that has been said, we have not meant to depreciate the magnificent school system of Pennsylvania, but only to emphasize the fact that organization cannot do everything, but behind and above all that we must insist on the selection of the very best teachers the Commonwealtn can provide.

Deputy State Supt. J. Q. Stewart, chairman of Executive Committee, gave notice that he would offer two amendments to the Constitution: 1. To fix the time of meeting permanently. 2. To add a third Vice-president to the list of officers. The first would relieve future Executive Committees of one of the most annoying questions; the second was desirable to meet cases like the present, when neither of the Vice-Presidents is here, and the President expects to be called away part of the time.

After a solo by Miss Murtland, Prof. W. C. Robinson, of Athens, Pa., read the following paper on

THE TEACHER, REAL AND IDEAL.

St. John had an entrancing view on the island of Patmos, and we all know of the wonderful things seen in that revelation; Plato let his imagination run riot, and it brought forth the marvelous land of Atlantis; Sir Thomas More, with his fine creative genius, produced Utopia. These are all read to-day with a fine flavor of satisfaction. We all have our day visions and our dreams of the night. We muse on the things that might be or that might have been; we rise to better things because we build with our imagination. So, fellow educators, I think that I owe you no apology in presenting the topic that I have the honor of speaking upon, The Teacher, Real and

Ideal."

thought and written; biographers have portrayed the lives of great teachers, and have often added to their real merits in order to bring out their conception of the ideal. It may not be presumptuous that we, one of the least and coming farthest from the ideal standard, should yet attempt to show what the ideal teacher should be.

One of the first requisites is that he be born a teacher. In a recent periodical I read, "A teacher is born, not made: we need a few more teachers born." That some mistake their calling is possible. I am reminded of a good old Scotch lady who once asked her nephew, a poor preacher whom nobody cared to hear, "James, why did you enter the ministry?" Because I was called," he replied. "James," said the old lady anxiously, "are you quite sure it was not some other noise you heard?"

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But back of the natural adaptability for the work is the need that a teacher possess good health, strong nervous energy and self-control. It is hardly conceivable that a teacher nervous, irritable, head-aching, and otherwise in bankruptcy, should teach a good school. If he does I am led to exclaim, "If under such unfavorable conditions this teacher succeeds, what is not within his grasp with all his powers at his command?" If it is needful that a teacher start with good health, it follows that it is equally imperative that he retain it by a judicious use of his powers and husbanding of his resources. This is not always done. I know of teachers that keep children after school, leave the building after the janitor does, think of the children and the work on the way home, at tea, during the evening; they are ever present company in sleep, their pupils are like the poor whom we have ever with us. Such teachers wear out under the strain; they teach with less success than others who take less thought, and having to leave the work for a long or permanent rest, may say something about the workings of inscrutable providence, when they ought to blame their own foolish improvidence. I believe that it is right that a teacher think of his pupils, and that he pray over them; but it is a good thing to have enough faith so that he may let them roll off his mind and be at rest mentally. The ideal teacher carries no such burden with him on leaving the school-room.

Another requisite of the ideal teacher is scholarship. So much stress is now placed on method and theory of teaching that there is great danger of forgetting the supreme importance of scholarship and culture. For these there is no substitute, and any scheme of professional study that is pursued at the expense of scholarship and culture is essentially bad. To be open minded, magnanimous and manly; to have a love of the scholarly vocation, and a wide and easy range of intellectual vision, are of infinitely more worth to the teacher than any authorized set of technical rules and principles." Let Plato's ideal of the cultured man char

acterize the teacher: "A lover not of a part of wisdom, but of the whole; who has a taste for knowledge of every sort, is curious to learn and is never satisfied; who has magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all time and all existence; who is harmoniously constituted, of well proportioned and gracious mind, whose nature moves spontaneously toward the true being of everything; who has good memory, is quick to learn, noble, gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance."

Mr. Atkinson, in a recent issue of the Atlantic, makes three charges against the American teacher: (1) lack of general culture, (2) lack of scholarship, (3) lack of professional preparation. He summarizes : "The lack of professional training prevents the teacher from holding that standing in the community which other professionally trained persons have. The low status of the profession has not made the teacher the adviser of the Board of Education and of the parent to the same extent to which the physician and lawyer are the advisers in their professions. *** The average teacher does not keep in touch with the advance in his line of work, he is often so overworked as to make this impossible; he tends to fall into routine; in a word, he is not professionally progressive."

The teacher's life, if unnecessary annoyances are eliminated, has in it many spare moments; the evenings will be used by the ideal teacher for mental improvement, the long summer vacation will be used partly for the same purpose. I know a teacher of mathematics who found time during the pressure of his regular work to take a course in natural science; to-day he is frequently quoted in scientific journals, and, though not yet forty years old, he is an authority. He now occupies a university professorship and draws thousands for salary where formerly he drew but hundreds. Is he the exception? He was an ideal teacher; his reward came as a result of diligence, just as it will come, at least in a measure, to any teacher who has energy and ambition to forge ahead. Do you lament in general and in your own case in particular that teachers are poorly paid? Let them prepare themselves for their work as the ideal teacher will, and this matter of salary will be a ghost that is laid. Let the teacher remember that "the gods have placed sweat in the pathway to excellence." "A man is as many times a man as he has mastered sciences."

Wordsworth has said the same thing in his familiar lines:

"So the wild Tartar, when he spies

A man that is handsome, valiant, wise, If he can kill him, thinks to inherit His wit, his beauty, and his spirit.” Scholarship fossilized is not the kind possessed by the ideal teacher. Knowledge possessed last year he reviews and supple

ments.

He holds the attention of his pupils

by allaying the mental thirst, that he knows how to create, with water from a living spring, not from a stagnant pool. He satisfies their hunger, which he has awakened, not by giving them cold hash, but by fresh and savory food.

It is unquestionably important that a teacher should know the laws of the mind, the order of the unfolding of the child's intellect, the best incentives to mental activity, the experiences of other teachers, modern and ancient, the history of education; but much of the investigation with which mere school-girl teachers are busying themselves along the line of physiological psychology, and because of which they are led to think that they are real philosophers and psychologists, is, to say the least, somewhat of the nature of folly.

The ideal teacher is a trained thinker. It has been said that a great general must have qualities that would make him great in almost any walk of life. I believe that the successful administration of a school, be it large or small, calls for a display of more largeness of mind than success in almost any other profession. Aside from the mere administration of the school, there are great educational questions, the proper solution of which requires as great mental acumen as any that philosopher has ever settled. And yet listen to the charge preferred against the American school teacher: "There have been neither educational experts of sufficient training and experience to perfect our school system, nor a well trained, sympathetic, stable body of teachers, to awaken public interest in education. Whichever way we turn in viewing the inefficiency of our public school system, we are brought face to face with the fact that the personnel of its leading force is not one of distinction."

The small rural school with its half dozen pupils cannot afford to pay living wages to the teacher of talent and training; they do not secure such. The people do not expect professional training and broad scholarship; they expect but little, and the teacher seldom passes beyond expectation. What is the remedy for this in our own State? I see clearly the light ahead. The township graded school must come; fewer teachers will be employed, and they will be better trained, professional teachers. Better salaries must follow; with increased salaries the teachers will have better facilities for self-improvement, the status of the teacher will be raised in every way. Public opinion will demand better things; increased preparation will be required of those who enter the work; with greater outlay of time and money in preparation, only those will fit themselves for the profession who are to make of it a life work. Teaching will then no longer be regarded as "a berry picking roadside where spare change is to be obtained before jumping into the field in some other profession and going to work, or as a