presented itself. I had always determined what I thought a proper amount of work to require from my pupils and then allowed it to be done at any time they could do it. I believe very thoroughly in giving them work to do and then holding them responsible for the doing of it. * But I do not like the

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teacher to assume that she has the control of an hour, an hour and a half, or two hours, out of school time. Indeed, when one is among teachers, the question sometimes seems not to be "Have teachers any rights that parents are bound to respect?" but "Have parents any rights at all in their children?"

In the earlier years of school life, I can scarcely see the two sides to the question, "Shall a child study out of school hours?" It may be that my range of vision is narrow. I am ready to have it widened by any one who will give me more light. But these early years are so evidently a period for physical growth; nature so plainly points out the necessity for play; there is so much to be learned through childish investigation of the world lying about, that more than five hours of the day that ought to be much shorter than the grown person's day on account of the amount of sleep so necessary for proper growth, to be spent on school-work is eminently unwise. Psychologists and physiologists both warn us against the danger of overstimulation of the brain, which leads to an increased activity of the organ due to an unfair distribution of the physical energy, the organ of the mind being enriched at the expense of the vital organs." I deprecate the requiring little children to do school-work at home, not only on account of the possibility of injury to the body, but because it does not seem to me best for the mind. There is danger of the mind's becoming jaded from continuing too long at the same kind of work. It loses its interest in a subject; and the strength of will is not sufficient to hold the attention firmly and habits are formed detrimental to concentration, that secret of success in all mental labor in later life.

There seem to me still other reasons why the teacher should not claim too much of the child's time out of school hours. I recognize the fact that our children come from a great variety of homes. Surely, many of them have work to do at home. This is particularly true of our girls in the cities and of both our boys and girls in the country. This work is often manual training of a valuable kind; and when there is not too much of it, it affords a healthful variety to the child.

There are parents-and I do not want to think their number pitiably small-(if it be, our schools must have done lamentable work in the past and are responsible for miserable failure) who can advise good reading for their children, and who wish them to have some time for acquiring that taste for good books that is rarely acquired if not in childhood or youth. Some one suggested that our schools were doing this work in literature as part of the regular school work. The amount done in this line in even our best schools is pitiably small. What cultivated parents would be at all satisfied with it? We shall do well if we teach the children in our schools how to read a good book and then direct them to some good books. It is a noble thing to inspire a love for good books in the child who has no one at home to be to him an inspiration. To guide and inspire is the design of the "Reading Circle for Children." Shall we interfere with its good work by sending home so much spelling to be studied or so many problems to be solved?

The girls in our higher grammar grades must receive our special thought when we are considering this question of home study. We are either criminally ignorant or cruelly thoughtless if we do not give our girls special care at the transitional period of their lives. They so especially need plenty of fresh air, sleep, and all attention of those interested in their well being to keeping them free from anxiety and nervous feeling. Let them pass this period in safety, and they develop into strong women, capable of a great amount of mental labor, and of wonderful endurance where love demands it. Of a bright and sunshiny disposition, they scatter blessings wherever they go. On the other hand, if they are given work that curtails the time that ought to be spent out of doors, work that prevents their being sound asleep before the grown members of the household, or worse than all, if they are worried about class standing or high per cents, they are apt to carry through life seeds of suffering that will render impossible prolonged mental effort without serious danger, seeds of suffering that will make them break down under any severe trial or make them peevish and fretful or selfish and despondent.

A grievous defect of our system.-President O. D. Smith, of the Alabama Educational Association: I am satisfied that too much stress is laid on results achieved by pupils and far too little on the effort and labor bestowed. One of the griev

ous defects of our sytems of marking, rewards, and distinctions, is that it takes no account of earnest, conscientious effort, of severe, persistent labor, unless they have been successful. The dull pupils, those hampered by an adverse environment, by want of preparation for work required, feel the injustice of such systems; to their other obstacles is added the discouragement of unappreciated effort. I insist that honest, hard work rank highest in all estimate of school work. Let the student feel that work is the valuable thing to him in its results in achieving a real education.

There is danger also that our improved methods, superior appliances, the processes of the new education will insensibly infuse into the minds of teacher and pupil the fatal notion that there is an easy road to education, over level plains, by the still waters, through rosy bowers; that the old, rugged road, up the hill Difficulty, with its briars and brambles, rocks and rough places, traveled with toil and sweat, has been abandoned.

The schoolmaster of the olden time had one qualification worthy of imitation, he believed in and exacted work.

Just so far as the improvement in processes, methods, and appliances have stimulated and facilitated work, so far as they have made a given amount of work effective, they are a positive good; so far as they supersede the necessity of work they are an evil. One must work out his education as well as work out his salvation.

Vicious modes of recitation.-President E. B. Andrews, of Brown University: A vicious mode of handling your class will do very much to develop inaccuracy, more perhaps than a perfect curriculum can overcome. A recitation which is merely that, only a text to the pupil, embodying no instruction, is sure to promote superficiality. There is a knack of reciting which many will acquire; a habit of mere glibness and parroting will follow, and the mind be turned away from real attainments. Here lies one of the teacher's chief temptations. We are forced to cherish rapid and fluent class exercises, because they save us time, which is so precious. We are thus beguiled into treating, if not considering, those as the best scholars whose tongues wag the fastest in the class. Next, our own ideas as to what a recitation should be become confused and faulty, the final result being that the appearance of attainments is substituted for attainments themselves, and that the pupil is actually aided by us to lose sight of his own real growth, only to be awakened, perhaps too late, when out in active life he is called to match himself with those trained upon a more thorough plan.

Every day's lesson an examination.-William A. Mowry, in Education: In primary and secondary schools almost every day's lesson is an examination, not merely of what has been prescribed to be learned for that special occasion, but indirectly and incidentally of all that has been taught before on the subject. It is, in truth, the mark of a good teacher to keep a perpetual informal review on foot, and to cause his classes to feel that any past acquisitions are always liable to come up in new connections.

College entrance examinations.-President D. C. Gilman, in the Cosmopolitan: I believe that the day is coming when there will be a revision of our educational creed, when the colleges will not make their entrance examinations such rigid tests of memory as they are now, but will contrive to make them tests of power. Is a boy capable of carrying forward the studies of the college? That must be found out. His capacity to retain and repeat what he has learned is one sign of his qualifications, but there are many others which a nicer analysis may employ. The qualitative test is quite as important as the quantitative. Not the size of the brain, but its structure determines its worth. The possession of 10,000 facts may distinguish an idiot, but an idiot gives no proper emphasis; he does not perceive the difference between the trifling and the fundamental.

IX.-PHYSICAL TRAINING.

A just medium can be secured.-President D. C. Gilman, in the Cosmopolitan: One of the first requisites of a good preparatory school is bodily discipline. This is partly to be secured by watchfulness in respect to posture, diet, repose, gymnastic, within the school walls: it is to be still further promoted by abundant exercise in the open air. Manly sports with the bat and the oar, running, jumping, bowling, swimming, rowing, riding, fencing, boxing, and, if possible, sailing, are all to be encouraged. Nor is military training to be underrated. The systematic exercise of every limb and every muscle is desirable, not under rules too rigidly laid down by the higher authorities, but under regulations

spontaneously developed by the youth. It is generally conceded that just now, in England and this country, there is danger of intemperance in sport. This may be less disastrous than intemperance in drink or meat; nevertheless there is such a thing as inebriety in athletic games. I do not refer to the danger of broken limbs and bruised faces, for they are rarely enduring injuries, but to the danger of unfair rivalries, of bad associations, of peculiar temptations in the anticipations and enjoyment of victory or in the depression of defeat, in the neglect of other and higher scholastic duties, in the waste of time and money upon costly journeys, perhaps in extravagant hospitality. The boys themselves must be encouraged to correct these tendencies, but they have a right to expect that we older boys will remind them of their highest obligations and encourage their fulfillment. With the reasonable control which players, teachers, parents can readily exercise, and which the young ladies and the newspapers might greatly encourage, the just medium can be secured, and athletics continue to be an essential factor in the training of American boys.

The place of games in education.-James L. Hughes, inspector of Toronto public schools (Canada): In physical development, as in all other departments of human culture, the law holds good that the informal is better than the formal, giving as it does not merely greater power, but greater spontaneity and freedom also; so the games of the yard and field will be recognized as forming one of the most important departments of physical, intellectual, and moral training. New games will be devised by the highest medical councils of the world, in consultation with the best minds in the teaching profession. Games may be improved without limiting the freedom and spontaneity of the playground. The games are really the best means provided in the schools of to-day for the exercise of the complete self-activity of the pupils; the only agencies for the full development of executive power; the only school process that completes the essential sequence of feeling, thought, decision, action, in application to the threefold nature of the child. The educators will not continue long to be mad enough to leave so potent an educational agency as games to chance.

Play, and plenty of it.-Principal George M. Grant, Queen's University (Ontario): Physical development does not demand gymnasium apparatus or a drill sergeant. As a rule children will see to this matter for themselves, in the best ways, if only opportunities are allowed. The games of children are, for the great mass, the very best means of securing good physical culture. Play, and plenty of it, is indispensable in education. Play means harmonious development of the body without fostering the self-consciousness that is apt to be induced by modern pretentious substitutes in the shape of military drill and gymnastic exercises.

There is no substitute.-Clara Conway, chairman of committee National Council of Education: Any plan or system of physical training which gives no attention to individual needs is defective. But here lies the chief danger, namely, that the lack of wisdom or skill in the use of apparatus may lead to serious results. There is no doubt that ill-chosen or ill-directed exercise in the gymnasium is a cause of deformity. The frequent and prolonged performance of unnatural movements is a fruitful source of enfeeblement and nervous disease. There is fortunately a strong reactionary movement against excessive work in the gymnasium, and the wisest are those who see that no movement they can prescribe can take the place of free voluntary out-of-door exercise, in which the activities have full play and in which the emotion of pleasure is a strong element. The law of will must be in force, hence there is doubt if physical exercise imposed upon pupils under protest of the will can be effective. On the other hand, in dealing with nervous or overtaxed students care should be taken to avoid exercise which requires sustained attention, and more still to avoid excessive exercises, the results of which are as serious as those of overwork.

The relation of mental to physical work.-Clara Conway, chairman of committee National Council of Education: The relation of mental and physical work is very close and vital, and yet in a careful study of the question how to give at the same time work to the inactive muscles of the child and repose to his over taxed brain there seems to be a kind of contradiction which makes the solution of the problem very difficult. The conditions of the work are the same for the brain which thinks and the muscle which contracts, and in both these organs greater activity of function is accompanied by greater production of heat. In the laborer and in the thinker alike there is an increased flow of blood toward the organ which works, and a greater vibration of heat within the active element.. ED 90-73

In difficult gymnastics there is a strong exercise of the will, judgment, and other psychical faculties, and if there is economy in the expenditure of muscular force it is at the expense of the nerves and the brain. Therefore, it is impossible that the nerve centers gain repose under the influence of movements which excite the whole nervous system. The overworked student requires economy of nervous energy, perfect repose of the brain, and rest of the psychical powers. A run in the green fields will free the mind and rest the head better than any system ever invented, because the head has no part in the lively exercise of running. All thoughtful teachers with gymnasia at command have noticed the indifference and apathy of intellectual students in the matter of difficult exercise. The reason is physiological and ought to be regarded. The tired brain makes strong and instinctive protest against an exercise requiring as much effort of the brain as of the body. In every case of this kind the discriminating teacher will prescribe exercise producing muscular and not nervous fatigue. Exercises which have been long practiced and have been mastered are performed automatically and require no brain activity, while at the same time they quicken the blood current, regulate the respiration, and give tone to the digestive functions. There are conditions of mental sluggishness for which one remedy is the performance of physical exercises requiring the concentration of will power and sustained attention; no system of education is complete which ignores the fact. But for the overworked child help comes best from long walks with mother over the hills, from the old popular games, and, indeed, from anything rather than difficult gymnastics.

The general principles of physical training.-Clara Conway (from the same report as the preceding): Our first duty as the guardians of the child is to see with all possible care that the growth of childhood be not disturbed or distorted by any influences adverse to nature. But how? By such a nice adjustment of mental and physcal work that one be not made to suffer at the expense of the other: by systematic daily exercise in order to acquire the aptitude. To this end we place walking first; well-selected games, second; gymnastics, third. Walking, as a physical exercise merely, is a perfect exercise, because it taxes the whole system every muscle, every nerve and fiber is brought into play. And when to this is added the interest awakened by the love of nature, a study of birds, a hunt for flowers, a search for insects, the temper is sweetened, the imagination brightened, the mind broadened, the spirit lifted near to God. It is something, says John Burroughs, to press the pulse of our old mother by mountain lakes and streams and knows what health and vigor are in her veins.

Games rank next. There seems to be a close relation between pleasure and high vitality or the vigor of the system, and between pain and the feebleness of the system. Hence the law of self-conservation. But the games should be carefully selected. Girls and boys left to themselves in this matter make their choice without considering the importance of quality and quantity. Gymnas tics have a value, too, which we must not underestimate in the general summing up; but in this day and generation, when the world is alive to the supreme importance of a healthy body and physical culture is the latest fashionable" fad," not many words are needed here. The first derived from the practice of gymnastics, says an eminent physiologist, is the education of movements. The country boy, rough, clumsy, and uncultured, rapidly gains ease, grace, and polish. His muscles, hitherto used to slow obedience, learn to obey with rapidity and precision, and thus undergo a discipline to which they had been strangers. The gymnastic work, carefully done, gives strength, and strength gives confidence. There is a way of standing, walking, and sitting, not only easy and grace ful, but requiring least expenditure of force. "Strength at the center and freedom at the surface" should be a precept of the gymnasium. "Let soul demand and body respond" should be another. Much of the work of the gymnasium is reformatory or hospital work. There is a patient uprooting of physical faults growing out of inheritance and out of environment and habits of life, and in their stead are established fine, graceful carriage, ease of manner, new and correct habits. In the hands of skill and wisdom the gymnasium is a powerful means for the freeing of the body, until it becomes not only the fit temple of God, but the expression of his best thought.

Should boys and girls engage in the same exercises? Dr. Sargent answers the question in these words: Up to 10 years of age any exercise that will be beneficial to a boy will be just as valuable to a girl. Between 10 and 14 girls should take lighter exercise, with more frequent intervals of rest. After that age it is simply a question of time, amount, and degree, rather than of quality. As a general rule, he says, girls need more muscle, making exercise than they

get, not so much for the sake of acquiring greater strength as for the influence that well-developed muscles have upon the brain, nerve centers, and other parts of the system. For this reason many of the so-called calisthenic movements do not meet the demands of the female organism. They weary and exhaust without giving anything adequate in return. These matters can safely be left to the judgment of a well-trained teacher. The corset should be taken off and kept off, or, what is better, never put on, in order that the body may be built up with the new material that will come to it as the result of the exercise, and to eliminate the old, broken-down tissue from the system.

Should the schools be furnished with the apparatus of the gymnasium? We answer that no gift in the power of the State is too rare or precious for the child in its keeping, and no expense too great for the process of preparation for American citizenship. If the eminent specialists, who are doing so much for the causes of physical education, will demonstrate beyond question their ability and power-and we think they can-to remedy the evils of imperfect physical organizations, then the State owes it to the child, through the school, not only to provide the necessary means, but to furnish also the teacher, wise by natural fitness, and skilled by the best training of the schools.

What system?

The answer is brief. Any system that is good, or a combination of the best in every system.

Should not become a will training.-W. T. Harris: I think that physical exercise ought not to be set as a task when it is intended to serve as recreation. It seems to me that it has been one of the great defects in physical education that it has been brought into the schools and made a will training, so that the child who has been exhausting his nervous energy all the morning at his lessons in school is then called upon to exhaust it even more rapidly in set forms of exercise instead of relaxing, as he ought to. The child must stand up; he must not lean. He must pay strict attention and imitate precisely the motions prescribed. This is a strain on the will power, and calisthenics, as practiced in many cases, exhaust nervous energy faster than a class exercise in Latin or Greek. * Now I am a great stickler for the old-fashioned recess, the wild recess, the pupil bursting out of the schoolroom, running about, shouting, and pushing his fellows. It is this recess that recreates the pupil and restores his nervous energy. After the enjoyment of a little freedom and a run the child returns to the schoolroom and does his work better; but these set exercises which strain the attention of the child are hurtful. * There is great danger in this matter of physical exercise of overstraining in certain directions and producing permanent weakness. When one looks at the danger of half knowledge in this matter, one is almost frightened.

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A vast problem.-G. Stanley Hall: If the object of the [physical] exercise is to increase the strength and physical development, it should always be when the body is rested and fresh. But if the object is divergence, in order to further intellectual work, it is a totally different thing. Then it should come when they are fatigued. Physical exercise is not one thing, but it is a great many things. I do not think we realize what a vast problem it is.

In case of fatigued pupils.-Clara Conway: I have frequently, in the schoolroom, seen pupils object to the physical exercise when the hour came, and upon investigation I find that the pupil is tired. In such a case I think it common -sense that the pupil be allowed to rest, or sent out in the air and sunshine, where she may have the best rest. I think it would be cruel, I think it would be an outrage, to compel a girl to take physical exercise under those circumstances. On the other hand, I am not prepared to state that physical exercise should be dispensed with. I believe in physical exercise, but if it is observed that physical exercise is harmful it should be abandoned.

There are times when physical exercise should be given to tired pupils who are mentally fatigued, and in that case it should be such exercise that the attention of the student is not required, and where no concentration of the mental faculties is necessary, but in which the exercise is merely automatic.

Preservation of health a sine qua non.-G. Stanley Hall: Some of us have progressed to the point where we feel that no system of education is beneficial if the young person leaves the schoolroom in worse health than he entered it.