sight that the results obtained in this great Commonwealth should be the recog nized standard in all our sister States. It is not an idle dream, this ideal that there should be practical uniformity of results in all the schools of the State of similar grade. Germany accomplishes it through the benign influence in that particular of the central government. The only question with us is, whether we will let the State, which is ourselves, do a similar work for us with similar efficiency.

There is another element in the problem besides the shaping of the curricu lum and the oversight of the work, in which the voice of the State must be clear and decisive. It must define, and define adequately, the qualifications of the teachers in the various grades, and, if necessary, test these qualifications. I do not mean that the State should in any way interfere in the actual selection of teachers. That by all means belongs to the localities who are to employ them. But the State should define the training and equipment which the teacher must have before he is eligible to enter any one of the public schools. Similarly the State might well fix the minimum educational requirements for the different positions of responsibility throughout the schools.

The General Government may stimulate public education.-W. T. Harris: It is clear that education is of vital interest to our form of government. The inhabitants of Mississippi have an interest in the education of the people of Pennsylvania because the voters of the latter State help to make laws which affect Mississippi. So Pennsylvania is vitally interested in the education furnished in Mississippi for the reason that Pennsylvania's national interests are partly controlled by the votes of Mississippi cast for President and for Congressmen.

Here is a text for a sermon on national aid to education and for national compulsory educational laws. But I trust that no person will draw the conclusion that we ought to adopt the centralized educational system of France, no matter how strongly he believes in the duty of the nation to look after education. Our doctrine of local self-government tends to increase the directive power in all places outside the centers. But this does not necessitate a "let-alone" policy, For the General Government may stimulate local action by subsidizing ít, or it may pass laws compelling a minimum provision for schools.

The limit of the function of the State.-Jas. P. Monroe, in the Educational Review: Once having established the machinery of free schools, once having placed proper safeguards for its maintenance and protection, the State should deter mine the least that it must do to preserve its integrity and provide for its healthy growth. It should then rightly exclude from the school all that belongs to the parent as well as all that, being nonessential to the life of the State, ought to be left to individual effort.

Mischievous interference with the schools.-Educational News: Unfortunately for the poor teacher, nearly everybody, from the chief officer of a city or other school district, down to the man who drives a garbage cart, believes that he knows better how to manage the children and conduct a school than do those who have made it a life work, and for this reason both individuals and organizations offer their uncalled-for criticisms and push their mischievous interference. Oh, for something for idle hands to do! The idle child is the mischievous child in school; he is also the mischievous child at home. Keep him busy and you are safe. But what shall we do with the idle man? It is he who concocts the mischief of the neighborhood. It is he who says "they say" and destroys men's reputations. It is he who too often is the critic of our educational work, and while he lounges on the store boxes of the village can tell just how the school ought to be kept and where its greatest weakness is to be found. Is there no plan by which this man can put the energies to work in profitable channels? How much better our schools would succeed; how much better off the whole community would be if we could only keep the idler busy!

Also this from across the water, same subject.-Revue Pédagogique Belge: For ages, the progress of school education was retarded by general indifference: to day, on the contrary, the most formidable obstruction it encounters is the itch, or the passion, for innovations. In all countries, monarchic and democratic, everybody, from emperor to pastry ccok, has upon the subject of education ideas which in his view will regenerate humanity. Naturally, the ministers of public instruction have their ideas too, and endeavor to put them into practice. Almost every one wishes to break away from what he is pleased to call the old usages, that is to say, from the experience of centuries, and to build up the course of study on a new basis. The lack of practical experience causes people to get

astride of some of the strangest hobbies. One is wholly engrossed with gymnastics, another with chemistry; this one is inflexibly bent upon teaching anatomy and physiology to future seamstresses, that one is of the opinion that the youthful residents of the Rue du Temple will not be able to get along without some well-grounded knowledge of farming.

With the best intentions in the world, they would (in Paris) have turned the courses of study topsy turvy a score of times, and have completely ruined the public school instruction, if they had not had to moderate and guide them the learned and unpretentious Académie of Paris, with its inspectors and its active and energetic rector, M. Octave Gréard.

So, while no really useful innovations in the course of study, the methods, or the text-books, have been rejected, the literary basis upon which elementary instruction was founded, has been wisely retained.

The school of the future will not usurp the functions of the parent.-Superintendent A. P. Marble, Worcester, Mass. The school, having undertaken to train the in-. tellect of boys and girls, is now quite generally expected to take entire charge of their education, intellectual, physical, and moral. This is beyond the original contract, and if so broad and general an end is to be attempted, then time must be given to enlarge the plant, to reorganize the system, and adapt it to such an aim.

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If the school of the future is to take of the parent, and attend to the entire training of children-to be responsible for bodily health, intellectual training, and moral culture, if the duty of parents is to cease when once the child is old enough to enter the kindergarten, and the school is to turn him out fully equipped for the battle of life, and for entrance into a blissful hereafter, then we must have a good deal more time and more funds. It would seem as if so broad an aim would need to include dormitories, clothing, stores, and refectories. Such was the Spartan scheme of education. It is not likely to be repeated. It is not desirable. Nothing of a public and institutional nature can supply the place of parents. They were ordained of God; and no incubator of modern science or education should ever supplant them. The duty of rearing and disciplining their children ought to be thrown back upon them to the largest possible extent; any institution or any school which tends to beget in the parental mind a feeling of irresponsibility is evil and only evil, and that continually. The school of the future will not usurp the functions of the parent.

The aim of the school.-Principal George M. Grant, Queen's College (Ontario): We must remember that the object of the common school is not industrial. It should not regard children as the raw material of craftsmen, and aim at making infant mechanics. Children are organisms in the flower of life, and the best fruit will be had if you give the flower free play and do not expect it to be fruit. The fruit will come in due time, if you do not handle or test the flower too often. The aim of the school is to make children happy, healthy, and natural; to give them a love for their country and for one another; to open their eyes to the beauty of nature and the meaning of life; to give them a love for reading, and a taste that will enable them in some degree to discern good reading from bad; and to form in them habits that will make the end of their school days to be but the beginning of their education. It may be said that all this and more too is being done now. Possibly it is in some places. Improvement, too, there has been of late years, in the general diffusion of education and educational appliances, and, above all, in the increase of popular interest in the common school. But no one will say that the influence of teachers or society, or the influence of school on the formation of character, is what was at one time hoped for; and how, then, can we profess to be satisfied? Unless the people are bẹcoming more intelligent and more moral, the school has failed. Unless there is a higher political life the state can not be satisfied. So great are the possibilities of the public school, however, that despair must not be thought of.

What socialism in education tends toward.-James P. Munroe, in the Educational Review: If the State, that nonentity for which each one of us and therefore none of us is responsible, is to bring up my children for me; if morality, good manners, and the domestic virtues are to be taught by some one else while I am but to provide the material things of life; then, forsooth, I will lay aside such sums as may meet these temporal wants and with the balance, large or small, will eat, drink, and be merry; for surely I have no better use in the world. The fact that in a few generations the State will fall to pieces is not for me to consider, since I am credibly informed that the sacred duty of maintaining it is taught in the schools. This wicked and absurd result of socialism is, of course, extreme.

There are, fortunately, human tendencies retarding such a mad career as this. Of these are avarice, making us save even when there is no direct motive for saving; family pride, unwilling to resign the task of chaping its heirs; and above all, parental love, refusing to deny itself to its offspring.

What the public schools can and can not do-kindergarten training.-State Superintendent A. S. Draper, of New York: The business and industrial world is in a ferment. The educational world is no less so. All manner of schemes are on foot. Everything is expected and demanded of the schools. Specialization and experimentation are the order of the day. The schools are sympathetic with this spirit. In my opinion there is danger in it. It is a tendency which is to be resisted. The schools can not specialize. They can not undertake to fit a child for any particular field of labor for they can not cover all the fields. They can not teach him all he is ever to know. They can arouse his faculties. They can give him the elements of an education upon which he can build for himself and they can stimulate his ambition so that he will want to build for himself. If they do this they will do much. This much will not be accomplished if the schools attempt to do special things or if the work of the schools is allowed to become involved in uncertainty and confusion.

In so many cases as to be practically universal the child will remain in the school but a few years. He may be expected to withdraw at any time. Then the most scientific and painstaking work must be done in the first years. If there is unusual care or large expense it must be there. The idea that persons of little learning or who are without professional training can teach the young est children, must be discarded. The greatest expertness must be placed where it will reach the greatest numbers and perform the best and most lasting work. We must proceed as though each year may be the last in which the child will have the benefit of the schools.

The child is to live in contact with affairs. He is to live by his hands and his eyes as well as by his ability to reason. His value as a citizen and his success as a man depend as much on his ability to do as on his ability to think and perhaps as much on his sense of right as on either.

Then he is to be educated practically. He is to be taught to put his hands and his eyes to their best uses. More than this, he must be disciplined. His moral sense must be aroused. He must be brought into sympathy and harmonious relations with nature and with affairs. We can not neglect this until we arrive at the age at which children may advantageously handle tools, and then expect to accomplish much. Something must precede the handling of tools. Half the children will have left school before that time. A carpenter shop connected with a high school is a feeble thing with which to bestow a practical education upon the children of a sizeable city. But the kindergarten will do it. It is at the right end of the course. It may reach every child. It harmonizes with the other work of the school. Children love it. It lengthens their time in school. Otherwise its results are extraordinary. It arouses an interest in natural objects, as stones and trees and animals. It cultivates social amenities and asserts mutuality of rights and obligations. It quickens the moral sense. It sharpens the observing and perceptive faculties. It forms and develops the constructive powers. It cultivates the aesthetic taste. The laying of straws, the weaving of mats, the folding of papers, the blending of colors, the molding of sand and the modeling of clay, train the eye to exactness and the hand to deftness at an age when such training is effective and influences the whole after life, If beyond this children are taught obedience, punctuality, neatness, some knowledge of themselves, if they are taught to spell correctly, to speak grammatically, to write legibly, to read understandingly, if they are taught the fundamental principles of mathematics, and if it is done in a cheerful way so that the teacher will be looked upon as a friend and helper, the public schools will have met measurably the responsibility resting upon them. If the attendance can be general and regular the schools will make the citizenship of the State industrious, well-disposed, and safe.

XII.-READING AND LITERATURE.

Classical literature the basis for ethical training.-President Charles de Garmo, of Swarthmore College: The advantage of the classical, imaginative literature for the young is that it portrays the ethical lessons of life in a form that most pow erfully appeals to the child's natural interests. To many it is a familiar thought that the stages of a child's mental development correspond to the stages of culture through which the world has passed. If this is true, as it must be in some

sense, then thoughtful experiment with classical literary forms will enable us to find that best adapted to any given stage of child development. All education is a process of attaining intellectual and moral freedom. The true fairy tale not only embodies an ethical truth, but it frees the puny child from the iron bands of time and place and circumstance. The child of penury may dwell in marble halls with princes of the blood and eat the food of the gods. Mrs. Burnett has beautifully illustrated this power of the imagination in "Sara Crew." The curlyheaded lad at his father's knee may quickly become the armed hero, doing mighty deeds for the right. This emancipation from the physical limitations may soon be transformed to the moral field. I have said that it is the mission of literature to enable the individual ideally to pass through the experience of the race without the pain that the original experience cost. What a weary round of scourgings the race has gone through to arrive at its present state of material, political, and ethical freedom! All this is portrayed figuratively in literature, and literally in history. The child is born now, as ever, with all his experiences before him. Must he, for the lack of education, tread again the thorny path of his race? We do not ask it with regard to his material or intellectual welfare; why should we with the moral? Shall we not rather portray the inevitable struggle in forms that he can understand, teaching him to win the victory before the battle is fought.

The basis for ethical training in elementary education is to be found, therefore, primarily in a graduated course in classical literature, beginning with fairy tales, myths, legends, and folklore, and culminating with the higher dramatic literature; and secondarily, in the concrete biographical and narrative elements of history.

The best literature for children.-Principal George M. Grant, Queen's University (Ontario): The difficulty of teaching literature to children is very great, perhaps greater than of teaching history itself; and the usual mistake is in being too formal, too didactic, too analytic, and too ambitious. The children must be interested only through their imaginations. Mr. Gradgrind would give them "facts." I would give them stories and tales instead-books like Hans Andersen's and Grimm's tales, the Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, and the Synoptic Gospels, to begin with, to be followed by Scott's poems, selections of ballad poetry and selections from Scripture. "The best literature for children from their seventh to their fourteenth years," says Rosenkranz, "consists always of that which is honored by nations and the world at large," and if the books I have mentioned are objected to, choose at any rate others that have stood the test of time and a jury that may be said to comprise universal humanity.

Should not anatomize in teaching children literature.-Miss N. Cropsey: A vast amount of time is wasted by presenting the common and the crude in reading and literature, because we fail to understand the poetic spirit in which the child interprets the world. It is not necessary to know the exact meaning of each word in a poem in order to be instructed and inspired by its general sentiment. The world comes to us first as a general impression; it may be dim and obscure; its diversity is interpreted in relation to this whole. Our primary schools ought to teach the best that literature has to offer, not the most complex or the most obscure in meaning, but some expression of other than the literal and disconnected view of things.

The analytic processes may entirely absorb the time of the child in school, and completely obscure his poetic view of the whole which he brought to us out of the land of early childhood, leaving him on a barren plain of facts, cut off from the living spring of imagination and reason. The eye of the poet integrates the parts and feels the living spirit which animates and unifies nature, though he may not be able to give a scientific classification of its forms.

He will get much more than we imagine.-Intelligence: Reading should be encouraged with the earliest ability of the child to read, and continue through all his public school career. There is slight danger of the child reading beyond his depth. What if he does not seize all the thoughts if he only begets a taste for ennobling literature? He will get much more than we imagine, and will grasp it with a firmness we little suspect.

The teaching of English literature.-The following remarks upon the methods of teaching English literature were written by a graduate of the Worcester (Mass.) Normal School and read by Hon. A. P. Marble at a meeting of the New York State Teachers' Association:

If I am to teach literature to a class of boys and girls, I must have my target, just as truly as the child with the bow and arrow in his hands must have his. I ED 90-74

must know at what my teaching is aiming, or I shall be as likely to fire into the ground as at the stars.

I begin with the hypothesis that literature is to be studied in our high schools as a form of culture and education beneficial to our growth, though, it may be, not directly helpful as a preparation for bread-earning. If one were to ask s class of boys and girls, after a year's study of literature, in what way they expected to use their knowledge, I imagine he would get some such answers as these: "I shall be able to make a great many pat quotations." "I shall be able to talk on literary subjects." "I shall be able to use better language." "I have got started in reading and in thinking for myself;" or, perhaps, "I don't suppose I shall ever use it at all."

These answers, with the exception of the last, are reducible to two purposes: To show off what one has accomplished, and to be able to accomplish in the

future.

If one's education is to be only an end, and not a means to something further, it is a poor thing to waste fifteen years of work for, and not usually worth trying to show off. It is what one is, or is able to become as the result of the work he has done, rather than the exact measure of knowledge he has gathered together, that is of value to him. Things plastered upon the outside of a person soon wear off and show the old texture through. That which is taken in as a germinating force, fostered and helped to grow, changes the very fiber of the mind, and makes it able to be and to produce that which it could not have been or produced otherwise.

The activity of the mind is of course thought. And just in proportion as we can increase the thoughtfulness, the habit of thinking deeply and independently, just in that proportion can we give vitality and strength to the intellect of a youth.

Young people think, of course. But what about? Take a class of boys and girls 15 or 16 years old. What sort of thoughts are making themselves at home in their minds, to order their affairs? There is the last ball game, the tennis match, the new spring dresses, the next dancing school, endless novels, with many tedious school books from which to economize time for more interesting things. Here is much thinking, but little thought. Much of it a very healthful kind of thinking, but not just the kind that is going to bring them out men and women, intellectually wide-awake, serious, and clear-sighted, the kind of men and women we need.

Take this class of young people and get them deeply interested in a play of Shakespeare. The plot itself can be trusted to get their interest. Then just make those characters live to those boys and girls; and if Iago and Othello, Macbeth, Portia, and Hamlet do not teach them some lessons about themselves and their relations and duties to their fellow-men I am greatly mistaken.

Make them hear a little of the music of Milton, entertain them with some of Dickens and Scott, get them up to their ears in discussions over the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In each case pick out the great gift, the leading characteristic of a writer, and just make that one point tell on the thoughts of the pupils. Above all things, do not discourage the pupils from making their own comments and expressing their own opinions. They will often seem ridiculous to the teacher; but youth is the time to be ridiculous, and mistakes are the surest way to correct ideas.

Would I have them learn quotations? Certainly. Things committed to memory are seen in the many different lights of after reflections, while a thing read once has but the light of a passing mood.

But committing to memory should not be the chief work of a class, and pupils should be tempted and praised, rather than driven and scolded, to quotationlearning.

It is very common, too, I think, in the study of literature, to require a pretty full biographical account of the life of each writer studied. This would do very well for a psychologist or a philosopher, or even for a man of mere general culture, provided he were 60 years old. And so with long criticisms and books about books; they are well for the writer of 40. But give these young boys and girls the works of great men, pure and simple, and let them feed on them and grow mentally and morally.

In my opinion it is better, too, not to include very many writers in a school literary course. Just as it is better to have a good talk with one intellectually great man than to have an introduction to 40, so it is better to know 1 poet than to know 40. To study literature and to study the history of literature are two different things, and they should not be exchanged for one another. But the life is in the literature, not in its history.