Free School Books

and

These are the two important reforms which SuperinBetter School Buildings. tendent Jones wishes to see realized in the Indiana system during his incumbency. It is doubtless true, as Professor Jones states, that the free text-book plan has worked well wherever it has been faithfully tried. The fact that the present system makes those children who are unable to buy necessary text-books objects of charity is one strong argument in favor of the change. The other reform in view has particular reference to school buildings in the country districts. Better locations, better lighting, better heating, better ventilation, are questions not only of educational but of vital interest to every child in the community. These things are now considered essentials, to say nothing of more attention to pictures and other decorations that contribute so much to the higher life of the child.

Three Valuable Reports.

One result of the tendency to specialize, now so prevalent in all departments of work and study, is the submission of certain definite questions to carefully chosen committees who are expected to make an exhaustive investigation and a full report. Several years ago the National Educational Association recognized the value of this method of investigation and there have since been several reports which stand as the most important documents in our educational literature. The committees of Fifteen on Correlation, and of Ten on Secondary Education, will be readily recalled. Three other of these committees have just reported—that on Normal Schools, that on College Entrance Requirements, and that on Relations of Public Libraries to Public Schools. The first of these takes up such questions as the function, administration, variations, and inner life of the normal school in the different parts of the Union. An account of Professor Rein's practice school in Germany, and another of a typical English training college are interesting appendices. The committee on college entrance has been at work since 1895, and there have already been partial reports. The now published, designed to complete work harmonize the relations between high schools and colleges, will be of great interest to all who have to do with the preparation of study courses in the respective schools. The report that will be of greatest interest to the mass of teachers in the public schools is the one on libraries. The conception of a library as a storage place for books has grown into that of a working place

among books. This work that formerly began chiefly in the high schools now begins well down in the grades. Even here it is not merely as a set of reference books, or as supplements to the regular text-books that a school library has value, but as the source and foundation of a taste for good literature. With the growing appreciation of this value has come a desire to let down the barriers between the children and the books. Not preservation but use is the motto to-day. The librarian who was a guardian of books has changed front to become a guide for his patrons, and cooperation is everywhere advocated between the public library and the public school. It is such questions as these that the report considers. It is rich in practical suggestion and contains several lists of books from which we shall print in early issues of THE EDUCATOR.

The Man With the Hoe.

*

Ranking in popularity with Kipling's Recessional and The White Man's Burden is the poem that appeared in THE EDUCATOR last month with the above title. Its author, Edwin Markham, assures us that he did not anticipate any such interest as the poem has aroused; and it is evident that the fame to which he has awakened is not likely to disturb the even tenor of his way as principal of the observation school in the University of California. Ten years ago, he says, he first saw Millet's painting, which impressed him as being more terrible than anything in Dante. He saw in it a type of the toiler brutalized through oppression, and for ten years the effect upon his mind lingered, or deepened, perhaps, until it became the poem. The critics say he "has struck a universal chord." This may be true, but is not the popular response due rather to the deep under-current of revolt against the industrial conditions that make beings of this type at all possible? In this sense the poem expresses the spirit of the time. According to the Bookman Mr. Markham believes that all true progress of men is a progress unto solidarity, an ever growing realization of the principle of fraternity. Fraternity is to him the holiest of all words, being at once the essence of all gospels, and the fulfilment of all revelations."

She appears to have recognized the New England town to which Mrs. Davis alluded, and she shows how the implication that over-education is a blight upon the town is wholly wrong. A sensible answer is made to the question of the efficiency of our schools, and the charge that we have made a fetish of the schoolhouse in the United States is both accepted and approved. The article is an encouraging one throughout," and stands in fine contrast with the depressing paper that Mrs. Davis felt called upon to offer.

It is not easy to believe that Free Speech. any one in this day would question the right of people to express their convictions in a peaceable way. Yet it has happened lately that certain prominent educators have been severely criticised for their public utterances on subjects of general interest. A notable instance was that of Dr. E. B. Andrews, who, while president of Brown University, delivered himself of certain opinions on the silver question that in staid New England seemed sufficiently heterodox to require his dismissal from the presidency. It will be remembered how the action of the trustees called out an immediate and emphatic protest from the alumni and patrons of the institution, and from the public press as well; and how the offending president was invited to remain. This prominent instance is by no means the only one. Three years ago Professor Bemis, who then occupied the chair of sociology in the University of Chicago, was compelled to resign because he had expressed radical views on social conditions. And now Professor Albion W. Small, head of the department of sociology and economics in the same school asserts his right to hold and express personal opinions by a vigorous arraignment of trusts and capitalism. His chief contention is that capitalism is the root of nearly all the industrial evil. Considering the fact that the university in which he teaches owes its existence mainly to a seven-million-dollar endowment from John D. Rockefeller, a most distinguished exponent of capitalism, there may well seem to be a touch of incongruity, and hence more ground for objection than in ordinary cases. Nevertheless, the congregation of the university, composed of fifty-five representatives from faculty, trustees and alumni, all arrayed in cap and gown, moved to action by the stir which Professor Small's utterance has created,declares absolutely for freedom of speech among the college professors and officials. It is understood, of course, and expressly stated, that "the university does not appear as disputant on either side upon any

public question, and that the utterances which any professor may make in public are to be regarded as representing his own opinions only." This is right, and best. The University of Chicago is sure to be followed by other large institutions, and when individual teachers feel free to enter into the discussion of the great political and moral questions of the day their influence will be multiplied many fold.

Reminiscence.

The session of the N. E. A. this year at Los Angeles brings up various interesting reminiscences. Among them those suggested by the old Spanish life in the Southwest is perhaps the most interesting historically because it is farthest removed in time, and is most tinged with romance. One recalls, too, the Forty-niners. There is doubtless more than one man now living whose story of "prairie schooners" fifty years ago would stand in striking contrast to the luxury of a trip that his son or his daughter has just made in a through Pullman. But as we comment on the spectacle of thousands upon thousands of teachers going to the Pacific coast for a four-day educational meeting, the wish arises that our great statesmen who less than a century ago feared the wild and unknown West could somehow be witnesses to-day. In 1803 Fisher Ames, a leader of New England political thought, wrote to a friend: "Now by adding an unmeasured world we rush like a comet into infinite space. In our wild career we may jostle some other world out of its orbit, but we shall in every event quench the light of our own." Such an opinion regarding the purchase of Louisiana was held by a man who was diplomatist, scholar and statesman, a United States senator from Massachusetts, and so eminent that he declined the presidency of Harvard College. Later still, two other United States senators, one of whom was Benton of Missouri, made earnest speeches, entreating the senate to refrain from extending government territory west of the Rocky mountains. To a far corner of this remote region, now as much an integral part of the Union as New England itself, 15,000 teachers of our public schools travel to-day, with speed, comfort and safety, and assemble for deliberation and counsel. A more suggestive example of unforseen growth and development it would be hard to find.

Lafe Young by name, an Iowa journalist, declares that since the close of the Civil War the three great ideas which stand prominently out in American life are Henry W. Grady teaching the confederate soldier how to decorate the confederate grave without disloyalty to the common flag; Booker T. Washington showing how two races, the white and the black, may live in the same state, with a common purpose; and Colonel Roosevelt teaching that the law must be administered for the rich and the poor alike. The three ideas are not very closely allied, and yet in them all there is a common element which stands for loyalty to principle. When Roosevelt was organizing his now famous regiment it made small difference to him whether a fellow came from the cattle ranch or from the bosom of the "four hundred;" whether he were white or black or red, so he might be a man. And when all these types went up the San Juan hill shoulder to shoulder the victory over race and class and sectional prejudice was quite as large as that over the enemy at the top of the hill. In a recent address to the alumni of Columbia University Roosevelt said "We don't need nice, dainty men, but the man of high instincts who isn't afraid to go down into the hurly burly of the arena." At one of the splendid receptions tendered him on his trip out west he said "I know no such thing as sectionalism in considering my country. In the West I have come in contact with the stuff of which heroes and statesmen are made; I have been close to the foundations of the Republic." The Chicago Times-Herald speaks of the inculcation of honesty in the minds of the people as "the Roosevelt idea." This is good. And if 1904 is still so far off that THE EDUCATOR will not be suspected of joining in "Teddy's" presidential boom it would like to hold up his official life as the ideal for all men who shall become public officials, and as the standard for men who shall elect them. However, we are not in the business of politics. Much less do we wish to be or to seem partisan.. We simply agree with Mr. Charles R. Williams in his address to the graduating class of the Indiana state normal, that the hope of politics is not in the Quays and Hills, the Murphys and Platts, the Gormans and Brices, but in men like W. L. Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, who have convictions and the courage of them. To this extent we think every teacher should teach politics. But it is not alone nor chiefly official integrity that we wish to emphasize. When Roosevelt was running a cattle ranch he discharged one of his hands for attempting to brand a stray animal that had wan

dered in from another range. Almost any of us would dismiss a man for stealing from us, but to to do so when he is stealing for us is another story. Moreover, it is well understood that most ranchmen appropriate stray cattle in this way, and Roosevelt's refusal to do so seems to be even a better example of integrity than his official honesty. This incident will mean much more to a boy than will purity in politics. This is the "idea" and the ideal that we need to teach-to be upright and square in every-day conduct. This is the real thing behind true patriotism. This is the large element that makes not only citizens but men.

Now that the school board in ChiOne Year's cago has shown its confidence in Campaign. Dr. Andrews and his policy, those self-ordained guardians of the city's welfare who suspected a scheme between Superintendent Andrews and President Harper to create a market for all the graduates the university could supply, may feel free to take a few weeks off. The editor of The Dial, in his issue of July 1, discusses the situation in a judicious way which shows better than anything else we have recently seen the danger of prejudice and the unfair influence which may be exercised over a mass of readers who do not know all the facts in any given case. We quote a few sentences: "It is not easy to disengage from the tangled skein of rumor and recrimination the thread of any coherent argument, and the more one examines the charges brought against the present policy of school administration the more bewildered one becomes at the infusion of personal feeling and the confusion of thought. As far, however, as any argument is discernible, it seems to be directed against two of the aims of Superintendent Andrews-that of establishing a system of true executive control and responsibility, and that of raising the standard of efficiency and intellectual ability among the body of instructors and administrative officers. It would seem that a superintendent who kept these aims in view should deserve and receive the heartiest support from all sections of the community. For the past score of years these aims have been set, by all the organs of serious educational opinion, foremost among those that should be worked for in the betterment of public school education. They have become the merest commonplaces of educational discussion, and it is rather late in the day to be called upon to defend them But such is the distorting power of prejudice over the simplest and clearest ideas that the guarded annunciation of these aims by

anew.

the present school administration has evoked an attack of the most violent nature, in which the plain promises of the superintendent have been ignored, his motives impugned, and even (as in the case of the shameless resolutions of the Chicago Federation of Labor) his personal character aspersed... . . There is nothing in the course of Superintendent Andrews to indicate that he has any other object at heart than that of strengthening the system under his charge by the application to its work of the most enlightened ideas and the recruiting of the most efficient co-laborers in this great service. He has been less than a year at his difficult task, and it is not yet time to demand results. But in the course of that year he has at least shown to all who have eyes to see, and who are in a position to take a disinterested view of his position, that he has his work earnestly at heart, and that he deserves from the whole community that cordial support with which the best elements of the community (including those that viewed his original appointment with some apprehension) have already expressed their recognition of the strength and the sincerity of his purpose."

Native Ability to Teach.

In a remarkably practical paper, read before the N. E. A. department of Superintendence in February last, Dr. James E. Russell of New York named four essentials in the teacher's preparation: (1) general knowledge, (2) professional knowledge, (3) special knowledge, (4) skill in teaching. The treatment was logical and clear, but in our judgment the fourth point did not receive the attention which its importance seems to demand.

Since that meeting we have taken pains to examine quite a large number of catalogues and announcements of the best training, normal, and teachers' schools in the country to find that entrance conditions, where they are imposed at all, are based upon age, scholarship and moral character, with the added requirement in one school of "qualifications for undertaking professional work." In making a plea for more attention to skill in teaching we realize how difficult it is to determine such skill, especially at the time a student enters upon professional study. Yet it may be admitted that in any group of candidates there will probably be three classes: (1) those who seem especially promising, (2) those who seem doubtful, (3) those who clearly lack

natural qualities that would fit them to teach. The determination of this last class would be effected by personal examination, if at all, and could be entrusted only to a man of peculiar ability and deep psychological insight. But if such a differentiation is at all possible the good of the candidate, the good of the profession and the good of the children who would afterwards become the victims of vain endeavor all require it.

However, as the class advances in the course the manifest unfitness must become more and more evident to observant teachers. If all teachers would observe and record such evidences, an impartial comparing of notes should determine, early in a normal student's course, his probable native ability. When Mayor Quincy of Boston a few months ago declared his belief that there should be a weeding out of those pupils in the high schools who did not show marked ability to assimilate the high school course we entered our protest on the ground that the high school is intended to provide the basis for general culture to all who can avail themselves of it. If the high school prepared for specific occupations we should object to the special training of the plainly unfit just as we do in the case of the preparation of teachers.

The ambition of the teacher who may have had poor success for a first year is altogether admirable, and it may require courage to advise a change of plans. Yet the consequences and the interests involved seem to warrant such frankness. Let us see what benefits might result:

(1) It would be an honest service to the person thus advised, sparing him loss of time in preparation, loss in pursuing an occupation that would be abandoned, and the humiliation of failure in the end. (2) It would help to reduce the evil of using the schoolroom as a stepping stone to other professions. (3) It would help to reduce the over-supply that now exists and so raise the standard of the profession. (4) It would help to end experiment for the benefit of the teacher at the expense of the pupil. This is doubtless the most serious objection to existing methods. The importance of such a reform would seem to justify a continuous effort to realize it. If it seems impracticable now, all the greater is the need of giving it careful thought. Scholarship. tact, executive ability, skill in maintaining order are all desirable. A person having

all these up to the required per cent. may keep school most successfully and yet be no teacher. Professor James goes even farther and says that "to know psychology is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teachers." The problem is how to recognize that spiritual quality which knows mind. without analyzing it, which invites sympathy by giving it, and which is always stimulating the desire to know. This quality is as intangible as the "call" to preach and it is quite as holy.

"Redeeming the Time."

There is an often repeated anecdote about a passenger on one of the great trans-Atlantic steamers who asked the captain one afternoon how soon they should reach Queenstown. The captain said that if it was clear the next morning the Irish coast would be visible from the deck of the steamer at four o'clock. The passenger admiring the captain's confidence, answered "Suppose tomorrow morning should be clear, and the coast nowhere in sight, what would you say?" "I should say," replied the captain, "that Ireland had sunk." How we all admire the master of a great vessel who brings his ship to port on time. Even at the railroad station there is something fine about a big throbbing engine rolling in with its train load, on time. It often happens that the bulletin board must record so many minutes late, but the average traveler, passing the time with his newspaper or a book little knows what extra switching, what manipulation, what unforeseen changes, what disappointments, perhaps, a late train involves. And yet, most delays on a railroad are unavoidable. The plans are laid on a basis of punctuality. The train begins its run on time, and if a man wants to take it he doesn't risk a calculation that it will start even one minute late. We ought to learn punctuality from the railroads, but unhappily we do not.

A meeting is called to begin at half-past seven, but members straggle in until eight, and proceedings commence a half hour behind time. Those who come late have simply “held up," as the highwaymen say those who were there on time. You order some manufactured article and have the promise that it will be ready by Tuesday noon. Tuesday evening you call for it and

find that it is not quite finished.' No explanation is made, for it is the daily experience and supposed to be taken for granted. Still, the manufacturer would resent the charge that he had stolen from you the time you must take to call again. You purchase groceries in the morning with the proviso and the assurance that they be delivered not later than ten o'clock. At noon you go home, and lo, they come, even while you are blessing the unfaithful trader. The grocer made a promise that he could not keep, just for the sake of making the sale. The plumber promises to come to-day to repair a broken pipe; but he doesn't come until day after to-morrow. He knew he couldn't when he promised, but for the sake of holding the job he takes the order and does the best he can while you practice the virtue of patience. If you boycott a dealer when you find him unreliable it will not take long to go the rounds of all in your neighborhood; and you will have to commence over again at number one. So we are at the mercy of a wretched system that tolerates tardiness on every hand.

Dare we hope to reform our grocer and our plumber? Hardly; the commercial conscience is asleep. But we dare hope all things for the children who will take their places by and by. THE EDUCATOR believes that human nature advances. It addresses itself to the teacher of progress. If a paragraph of this kind will help one such teacher to resolve that the virtue of punctuality will have renewed emphasis and wider application in her school this year the effort is repaid. There is no doubt that all teachers urge the value of punctuality at school, but we do not enough emphasize the virtue of punctuality in general-the virtue of keeping engagements, of meeting obligations, of fulfilling promises. Business men recognize the truth of the old saying "time is money." Rather let us say time is opportunity. It is pitiful to see a man wasting his own time, but it is wicked to take that of another, too.

We have a good deal of admiration for the little monthly called The On Timer, published at Denver, Colorado, and "devoted exclusively to the rare virtue of punctuality." It carries as its motto the words of Saint Paul, which we have quoted at the head of this article, and it is the appearance of another copy of this little crusader that prompted this expression of things we have long wished to say.