Our pupils are not our slaves, but it is for their good and ours that they render instant and cheerful obedience.

The habit early formed in their physical exercises will have its effect all along the line of school work.

A former major of a school battalion, recently informed me that he considered this habit of prompt obedience the best part of the military drill in which he had had so conspicuous a part. Because "dictation is contrary to the American spirit," is an argument in favor of "commands" rather than a valid objection against them.

In my student days muscle was the end and aim, and a powerful biceps flexor was the pride of its possessor and the envy of all who failed to secure it. Not so in the Swedish system. The nerves, respiratory organs, etc., receive even more consideration. The aim is not to acquire the strength of a giant, but that symmetry of proportion and harmony of development which shall best fit for a life work.

A distinguished physician recently said, "Show me one who has been an athlete, who is now more than 42 years old, and I will show you a prematurely old man." There is some justice in the remark, for of those of my associates who were excessively trained for the development of muscle not one is alive to day. From the Swedish system no such results need be expected.

To the best of my knowledge, the teachers, both male and female, who have received drill in this system are unanimous in praise of it, both for its good effects upon them, personally, and for its adaptability to the needs of the schools. At a recent meeting of the masters, where for the third evening this subject had been under consideration, Mr. Waterhouse, head master of the English high school, said that in his opinion a system of exercises for our public schools should be, 1, simple; 2, light; 3, safe; 4, comprehensive; 5, progressive; 6, varied; 7, lively, and that, after a careful investigation, he was satisfied that the Ling system furnished all of these requisites, and was therefore what should be introduced. That the system will soon be authorized by the school committee of Boston I have no doubt.

Several cities in the vicinity have already adopted it.

ADDENDUM.

[Extracts from the report of the director of physical training in the Boston, Mass., public schools (Dr. E. M. Hartwell), December, 1891.]

Boston has earned the right to be considered the most influential center in America of the movement for promoting Swedish educational gymnastics. This result, which has been brought about within the last three years, is primarily due to the wisdom, generosity, and public spirit of Mrs. Mary Hemenway, and secondarily to the discussions, reports, and votes of your honorable board prece dent to its adoption of the Ling gymnastics for the public schools on June 24, 1890. The establishment by Mrs. Hemenway of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, which already has no equals and few rivals in the country as regards the genuine and thoroughgoing character of its training, is an event of capital importance in the history of physical training in America, and may well be ranked beside the gift to Harvard University of the Hemenway gymnasium, by Mr. Augustus Hemenway, her son.

The Boston Normal School of Gymnastics had its beginning in October, 1888, when, at Mrs. Hemenway's invitation, a woman's class, composed of twenty-five public-school teachers, was formed for the purpose of testing, under the instruc tion of a trained Swede, the adaptability of the Ling gymnastics to use in the Boston schools. The experiment proved so satisfactory that on April 25, 1889, Mrs. Hemenway offered to provide similar instruction for one year, without expense to the city, for one hundred teachers of the public schools who should be permitted to use the Ling gymnastics in their several schools. June 25 the school board voted to accept this offer, and in the ensuing September the class was formed. On September, 1889, the board accepted "with grateful appreca tion the generous offer of Mrs. Mary Hemenway to provide a teacher of the Ling system of gymnastics, for service in the normal school, free of expense to the city." Mrs. Hemenway's further offer to provide free instruction "for those masters and submasters who may desire to make a thorough study of the Ling system for the benefit of the Boston public schools," was accepted by the board

on October 22. Mrs. Hemenway continued to maintain the "masters' class" and to provide the normal school with a special teacher of Ling gymnastics throughout the school year 1890-91. The "masters' class" numbered 50 in 1889-90 and 57 in 1890-91. In 1889-90 there were 190 women engaged in teaching in the public schools who received instruction in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. In 1890-91 the number was 140. Its first class of graduates, numbering 33, was graduated June 6, 1891. The demand for the services of graduates and pupils of this school, as special teachers of Ling gymnastics, greatly exceeds the supply. October 8, 1889, the committee on hygiene, which had been given full powers in the department of physical exercises (on March 12), presented a well-considered "report of the board of supervisors on physical training in the public schools." (School Doc. No. 10, 1889.) The concluding recommendations of the supervisors were as follows:

1. That the Ling system of gymnastics be the authorized system of physical training in the public schools and that it be introduced into them as soon as teachers are prepared to conduct the exercises.

2. That a competent teacher of this system be employed to train the pupils in the normal school and the teachers in the public schools.

"3. That for the coming year provision be made for training at least the pupils in the normal school, and the teachers of the first and second classes of the primary schools, and the fifth and sixth classes of the grammar schools."

These recommendations were approved by the majority of the committee on hygiene and a minority report was made by Miss Hastings. Both reports were tabled. December 10, the whole subject of physical training in the public schools was referred to the next schcol board."

Meanwhile on November 29 and 30, 1889, Boston was the scene of the largest and most notable conference on physical training ever held in the United States. Dr. W. T. Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, presided over its deliberations. The call for it was signed by John W. Dickinson, secretary of the Massachusetts board of education; E. P. Seaver, superintendent of the Boston public schools; Francis A. Walker, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and by the presidents of Boston University, Colby University, Maine, and Wellesley College, as well as by many members of the Boston school committee and a large number of physicians and others prominent in educational circles. The audience at each of the four sessions of the conference numbered from fifteen hundred to two thousand persons. * * *

The programme, which embraced papers, discussions, and illustrative class exercises in gymnastics, was a varied and interesting one, and served not only to set forth the general nature and effects of muscular exercise, but also the salient principles and characteristic methods of the German and Swedish and so-called "American" systems of school gymnastics. Similar discussions and illustrative gymnastics on a large scale signalized the fifth annual meeting of the A. A. A. P. E., held in Boston in April, 1890. The public and educational mind was much awakened and not a little enlightened by reason of so much discussion and exposition.

January 16, 1890, a standing committee on physical training was appointed. Dr. W. A. Mowry, its chairman, made an exhaustive report on June 24, embodying the results of a wide tour in the West and South to observe the peculiarities and workings of various systems of physical training in public schools. The committee, without a dissenting vote, recommended the following:

Ordered, That the Ling or Swedish system of educational gymnastics be introduced into all the public schools of this city.

Ordered, That the appointment of one director of physical training and four assistants be authorized.

Ordered, That the salary of the director of physical training be $2,640 a year and that the salary of each assistant be $1,080 a year.

The following order was substituted for the second and third orders appended to the report:

Ordered, That a director of physical training and one or more assistants be employed, the total salaries for the same not to exceed the sum of five thousand dollars ($5,000) per annum and that the committee on physical training be authorized to nominate suitable persons for these positions, to commence at the beginning of the next school term.

In accordance with the above orders, the present director of physical training was elected on November 25, 1890, at a salary of $3,000 per annum, and the present assistant instructor was elected March 10, 1891, at a salary of $1,680.

* *

*

I reentered the service of the city of Boston on January 1, 1891, after an inter

val of 13 years, and at once began visiting schools of all grades, from the kindergarten to the high school, having a twofold purpose in view. In the first place, I was desirous to familiarize myself with the main features of the organi zation and administration of the schools and, secondly, I wished to obtain an idea of the character and extent of the physical training which had been introduced into the schools, in accordance with the vote of the school committee, on June 24, 1890.

Toward the end of February I addressed a circular letter to the principals of schools, in response to which I received a statistical return, covering the month of January, 1891, regarding all high, grammar, and primary schools.

The returns showed that upwards of 1,100 teachers were giving gymnastic instruction, for some 17 minutes daily, to their classes. In some schools the old memorized gymnastic drill had been continued, pending the appointment of a director of physical training; but the greater number of teachers, in the grammar and primary schools, were engaged in an honest attempt to teach the Ling free standing movements. Counting the masters of the 55 grammar schools, 1,120 teachers, in the grammar districts, were returned as teaching gymnastics, of which number, below the grade of master, 844 were teaching Ling gymnastics and 221 teaching what may be termed not inaptly "mixed gymnastics." The best results were observed in those schools whose masters had attended the tachers' classes of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics and had taken par ticular pains, besides, to lead, assist, and criticise their teachers in the work of class instruction in gymnastics. In certain schools extremely creditable results had been attained, especially in those where the teachers had formed themselves into classes and hired special instructors in the Ling system to give them normal lessons.

It gives me pleasure to say that I have been much surprised and gratified by the interest, zeal, and intelligence shown by the teachers of the grammar and primary schools, as a body, in the subject of physical training.

Since April 1, 1891, I have availed myself of the invaluable services of Mr. Hartvig Nissen, who was elected assitant instructor in physical training. March 10, 1891. Mr. Nissen has assisted me in visiting and inspecting schools and has conducted normal classes in the Ling gymnastics for the teachers of the grammar and primary schools. Two inspections of the grammar schools have been made since they opened on September 9. On the basis afforded by the first inspection, 8 were rated "excellent," 18" good," 17 "passable," and 12" poor." The result of the second inspection is as follows: 8 were marked "excellent," 20 "good," 20"passable," and 7 "poor."

I propose to continue such classes until the class work in the schools shall show that the average teacher has grasped the main principles of the Ling school gymnastics and is able to carry them into effect,

Early in 1890 I was engaged by Mrs. Mary Hemenway to deliver a course of lectures on physical training before the students of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. These lectures were given in the Oid South Meeting-House, at noon, on six Saturdays, viz, March 21 and 28, April 18 and 25, and May 2 and 9. Through the kindness of Mrs. Hemenway the lectures in question were thrown open to all teachers of the Boston public schools. I was thus enabled to meet so many of the teachers as cared to consider the salient facts regarding, the origin, development, and characteristic features of the principal types and systems of physical training.

I also addressed the masters of the grammar schools upon "Physical training in the Boston schools" at the May meeting of the Masters' Association.

In accordance with an order of the school committee, which was passed May 12. Mr. Nissen gave special normal instruction to the teachers of the primary and grammar schools of some forty districts during May and June. This form of instruction has been continued, though in a less formal way in all grammar districts, from the opening of the schools in September last until now. In accordance with an order passed by the school committee on December 8, arrange ments have been made to provide for the normal instruction, twice a month, in the Ling free standing movements, of all teachers of the primary and grammar schools, not especially excused by the committee on physical training, during the remainder of the present school year.

CHAPTER XV.

DISCUSSIONS OF EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS.

I.-Civic instruction. II.-Compulsory attendance.

III.-Courses of study-Adjustment of school programmes. IV.- Education. V.-Higher education. VI.-Kindergartens. VII.-Manual and industrial training. VIII.—Methods of instruction. IX.-Physical training. X.-Private and parochial schools. XI.-Public schools. XII.-Reading and literature. XIII.-Religious and moral training. XIV.-School management and discipline. XV.-Secondary education. XVI.-Teachers. XVII.-Text-books.

1. CIVIC INSTRUCTION.

The truer meaning of patriotism.-Hon. William A. Poste, New York civil-service commissioner: Patriotism, as an impulse, like all the enthusiasms, counts for nothing in the every-day life unless its deep and truer meaning is fully perceived. The ideal of citizenship can not rise higher than the moral nature. The flag may wave from every school-house, and the boy may know on how many battle fields it led the way to glory, but unless behind all is the thought that a man is as much bounden to his country to vote thoughtfully as to fight for the flag if the country calls, that flag to him is indeed but striped bunting. Unless he can understand that for a man to sell his vote * * * is moral treason, what boots it to him that in every age men have gone to their deaths for truth, for fatherland, and that their babes might breathe free air.

Beliefs that are individual and inherent.-Hon. William A. Poste: The beliefs that men live by and die for are not to be drilled into the boy like the rule for long division. The genesis and growth and persistence of political opinions are often beyond analysis and, to the theorist, unscientific, illogical. It is well that this is so. These convictions are matters very largely of personal dispositions, intangible but persistent as the traits of race. If they are individual and inherent, they are of more positive personal force throughout the multitude than any dogma nurtured in the schools. Let the boy come to his political faith as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln came to the principles that made and saved the State. It is out of the clashing of such individualisms, spear against shield, that the will of the people works. Its voice is heard above them. The voice is not always the voice of God, but in times of trial, in hours when great and solemn questions are asked and answered, the thunder of Sinai is in it.

"Patriots' Day" proposed.-Superintendent J. R. Preston, Mississippi: One school day should be set apart every year as Patriots' Day. Planting trees and flowers to adorn school premises-an engaging practice now in vogue in most of the States-is undoubtedly a potent means of establishing attractive associations and of endearing the school, and through it the State, to the hearts of future citizens. If this be a laudable practice, how much more worthy and sig nificant to utilize a day to implant in their natures the seeds of genuine patriotism. Just as ground is prepared to nourish tree and flower, so may hearts and intellects be quickened to cherish high resolve.

So let us have Patriots' Day dedicated as a national holiday, on which to focalize the light and grandeur of our country and photograph its glory upon the hearts of the children. Let parents and the community at large congregate at the school, and in song and recitation and patriotic speeches revive their love of country and deepen their spirit of fidelity to its principles.

The highest patriotism.-W. D. Atkinson: True patriotism is the endeavor to elevate my country's standard of honor up to that which is right and true, and I should love my country for that in her which is devoted to righteousness. I should love the truth and righteousness which God has given us, and seek to bring my country up to it. I am not to make patriotism, therefore, the end, but rather the means by which I may hope to bring the nation to a love of righteousness. I do not think the observance of any patriots' day will ever attain that result. The time wasted or spent in that could be better spent in educating the young men in these moral truths and principles which will make the citizens seek that which will be for his country's highest good; hence it is not patriotism itself we are striving to attain, but it is love of truth, of right, and righteousness. Patriotism is nothing more than this; that is the highest patriotism.

A great difference.-Principal George M. Grant, Queen's University (Ontario): The school should teach patriotism, and let us not forget that there is as great a difference between patriotism and the blatant, arrogant spread-eagleismwhich in Europe is called Chauvinism-as there is between enthusiasm and fanaticism. The one is healthy and full of generous inspirations and the other unhealthy and the destroyer of true patriotism and morality. The one teaches us to love our own land and race first, because it is ours, and we believe that it has done and that it promises to do most for man and for that which is best in man, especially for the good old cause of liberty, peace, and righteousness. The other teaches us to hate men for the love of God or the love of country.

II. COMPULSORY ATTENDANCE.

Compulsory education in Ontario.-Hon. George W. Ross, minister of education: By an act of last session the police commissioners of every city, town, and incorporated village are required to appoint truant officers. This act came into effect on the 1st of this month [July, 1891]. It may take a year or two to acquaint the people of the province with its requirements. It may also take some time to train the truant officers to the proper discharge of their duties. As the schools of Ontario have been free for over twenty years, there is no doubt the people will gladly accept their natural complement, compulsory education, as indispensable.

The most effective agency for securing school attendance.-Report of Committee of National Council of Education, D. L. Kiehle, chairman: Everyone, and very certainly every educator, will place the first stress upon the natural, self-cominanding, and assimilating power of a public free-school system, and will agree that this should be perfected to meet every demand of the highest standard of physical, intellectual, and moral training; that it should be protected from every corrupting influence and every political or religious entanglement, and that its true value by every means should be impressed upon the public mind.

Next, as to the necessity and practicability of applying the compulsory feature for the general enforcement of attendance, there will be various opinions, according to points and circumstances of observation.

In some large cities, and especially in manufacturing districts where children are at the mercy of soulless corporations, the State has successfully enforced a compulsory law; but in the State at large, and especially in agricultural districts, your committee are not aware of any enforcement of a compulsory law, which proves that it can be made an effective part of our educational system.

Our system ought to be extended by educational methods.-Superintendent D. L. Kiehle (Minnesota): The Government ought to look to the limitation and improvement of its citizenship, and we as educators ought to put more stress upon the improvement and extension of our educational system by educational methods. Our system ought to be perfected. We ought to do more for our young people. We ought to make our system less objectionable. We ought to introduce the moral element as perfectly as possible, to meet the demands of that class of people who have been accustomed to associate religious instruction with secular instruction. Now, coming to the legislative part, theoretically your committee has no doubt that it is perfectly legitimate that men be required to do these things; but practically it questions whether it is not better to enforce the compulsory law in our towns and cities moderately, watching the development of circumstances, and not relying on the law to effect very much at present in agricultural districts or over the country at large, but at all times holding it as a subordinate feature of our educational system.