The Breakfastless Teacher I see by the Western School Board Journal that there is a superintendent down there in New York by the name of Edward L. Stevens, who says that the teacher who comes to school without breakfast is a menace. Say, that's mighty sound sense! I have had a half-formed notion like that in my head for some time, and now that authority has expressed itself on the subject, I'd like to make some observations. I don't get much of a chance to learn about doings in New York; it costs too much and takes too long to get there. I have to fall back on Chicago, when our little city gives us a vacation coinciding with school days somewhere else. (Isn't it silly that so many schools have their vacations at the same time so that hardly any teacher can learn anything by visiting another? Why, man alive, the vacations in different parts of the same town ought to be on different days! Where was I? Oh, yes.) I went up to Chicago and visited a school. There was a doctor there examining children, but he never looked at the teachers. In one of the classrooms I visited, the woman had as clear a case of dyspeptic irritability as you ever saw. The blotches on her face showed malnutrition and autotoxication. She shook hands with me with a nervous jerk, and her hand was cold and moist: no circulation. She was not teaching. She was holding on to the place and wasting children's time, wasting her own nerve force, and wasting theirs. Now, what I want to know is why didn't the school doctor look the teachers over and say to this one, "You can't come to this school to-day"? He does say that to children. Now, the children (thru their parent taxpayers or rent-payers) are giving up money to come to school; yet the doctor quite properly excludes them; but the sick teachers are not paying anything to come, they are getting paid for it, and Mr. Doctor lets them in to spread irritation and nerve trouble to forty children penned up with them beyond all hope of escape. In this same Chicago there is much protest against letting children go out to parties and to the theater at night because it unfits them for school work the next day. Yet the Chicagoans have no device to prevent the teachers from going to the theater on Wednesday night and otherwise unfitting themselves for working with children. The man or woman who is too exhausted to get up in time in the morning, who rushes off to school without breakfast, can't recover his day. It is gone; lost beyond repair. Such a teacher is a menace. Well, what do you school superintendents do? At teachers' meetings you scold about such things, but your scolding is like the discipline of a school from which the right to punish has been withdrawn. Until you are in a position to demand sweet, healthy, cheerful and radiant teachers, you might as well not say anything at all, so far as the breakfastless teacher is concerned. If, however, like that right Mr. Wright, who is State Superintendent of Michigan, and that Western Charley Gorton of ours, who went as superintendent to Yonkers, N. Y., you insist that the children have a right to the finest-looking women in the land, it stands to reason that you could convince a school board that teachers and principals must be tested every day before they are permitted to menace children. Some entire school systems have been damaged by a sick superintendent, so irritable and irritating that he has wasted thousands of the people's dollars by his reduction of the teachers' teaching power. I heard of a superintendent of whom it was boasted that he had caused more tears to flow than any other hundred men in his city. This is absurd, you know; to raise money to educate the children and then to knowingly waste any of it by letting a sick teacher, principal or superintendent poison the work. What, would you punish one for being sick? Surely! You experts are always quoting Germany to us. Now, I'll tell you what they do in Germany. Their type of efficiency is their army. The main thing a soldier has to be equipped with is health. If a soldier goes out and takes liberties with his interior workings they lock him up. It is quite necessary for military efficiency that a soldier should be able to march. Now, what do you think of this? If a German soldier is found to have sore feet he is arrested and punished. Teaching means "know-how" plus power of inspiration. The inspiration is more necessary than the know-how. than the know-how. It is the element that makes an educator. If you have only the knowledge you are a scholar, nothing more;-comparatively useless for any service to children. But the power to make children want to learn and to go on learning is a spiritual radiancy pure and simple, so generally dependent upon a high-toned physical condition that for schooladministrative purposes you can ignore the exceptional cases of efficiency coupled with invalidism. No school manager has any justification for official sympathy with a sick teacher that makes the children suffer for it and the public pay for it. If you give me your money to go and get something done with it, and I hire invalids to do it because I am sorry for them, I am sustaining an unnecessary philanthropy for another promised service. This dishonest pity has made many schools into hospitals for unfortunate teachers. It is mixing two worthy purposes, but with disastrous results. Public school teachers can and do spend 80 per cent of their time per year out of the classroom, and with freedom from supervision. It is nonsense to believe that with all this time for recovery they cannot correct what we teachers have persuaded ourselves to believe the dreadful drain of teaching upon our constitutions. Oh fudge! If I am brought to see that health is one of the things I am paid for I won't have any trouble getting myself to bed betimes on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. Neither will you. We teachers have played the baby act too much in this matter of tired nerves. Yes, yes, we're tired; we're all tired, all teachers are tired teachers, if you want to have it so; but we tire ourselves by talking about it, and we use no sense in guarding against tire. If we were not paid by the Government, if we were subject to the ordinary demands of a newspaper office, a business house, or a private medical or legal practice, this tiresome tattle about the hard-hard job we have would have lost us our living long ago. Me for the teacher with a breakfast. Me for the school system that won't permit a teacher to take a class unless her eyes are bright, her pulse strong, her skin healthy, and her spirits high. Me for an assortment of well substitutes waiting to be clapped into a classroom every time the regular supply has gone and made herself ugly again. Doctor, this way, please. Is the teaching staff fit for duty this morning? When Greek Meets Greek MARY E. FITZGERALD, in the Chicago Record-Herald. "Oh, how do you do, Mrs. O'Brien!" said the principal, outwardly cordial and inwardly quaking. "It's too bad John can't behave himself, isn't it? Impertinence this time, I believe, is the complaint. Sit down, please. Miss Reid told me she wanted to see you when you came.' "Johnnie behaves himself as well as any boy that isn't a graven image needs to," said Mrs. O'Brien with dignity. "It's a pity, I say, if a dacent child can't spake up for himself once in awhile without being called impudent by the likes of her. Yes, I know her. Don't I see her from me window every morning, dressed to beat the band, and the taxpayers paying for it? Bedad! And the likes of her to say my Johnnie is impudent! I'll lower her crest for her. It's himself knows well O'Herne, the saloonkeeper on the corner, and he has a friend that knows "Isn't this a dreadful shame, Mrs. O'Brien?" said a pleasant-faced, brisk young woman who came in quickly and seated herself beside the caller, apparently unaware of the hostile look in the visitor's eyes. "Just think, John O'Brien, of dragging your poor, hard-working mother out just because you can't do what is right and good for yourself! And he can be so nice, too!" she went on rapidly, not giving Mrs. O'Brien a chance to speak. "Why, the way he can spell is fine, when he half tries." "Our family are all good spellers," interjected the proud mother, as Miss Reid paused for breath, "and"-but Miss Reid, evidently intending to keep the floor, rushed ahead: "Indeed, I can well believe it. I know, too, that you never in the world would allow him to be rude to anyone. It doesn't take me long to find out how a child is trained at home. Just because something didn't please him—as if I had time to try to please every boy in the room! -he took it upon himself to be impudent to his teacher!" O'Brien's face caused the principal to turn hastily to the bookcase. In course of the conversation, or rather monolog, Miss Reid deftly transferred the baby, who was grasping at her locket, to her lap, where he was enjoying himself immensely, patting her cheeks, puing her hair, and bestowing moist kisses all over her countenance. Mrs. O'Brien, wetting a corner of her apron, wiped the grimy little hands, saying apologetically: "I was in such a hurry I had no time to clean myself or the young ones." "Yes, I know," said Miss Reid sympathetically, "and here's this boy, who ought to be a help to you and doing everything he could for you to show his gratitude, behaving so that he is a perfect disgrace instead of a credit, as he might be if he tried. You know, Mrs. O'Brien, no woman with a drop of Irish blood in her veins is going to allow a twelve-year-old boy to sit around and think he can do just as he pleases and answer back when he feels like it; now is she?" "Sure not!" said Mrs. O'Brien emphatically, "and I'll break every bone in his body when I get him home. You-you-oh, just wait, me lad! Impudent, indeed, to your teacher!" "You told me- began Johnnie, whimpering at her sudden change of base. "I never told you anything of the kind!" interrupted his mother quickly. "And if I did, you might have sense enough to know it was because I didn't know what kind of a lady she was. I'm terrible sorry, my dear, you've had so much trouble wid him, but me word for it, it will be the last," she said, turning to Miss Reid, who was cooing at the baby. "Oh, don't be too hard on him this time. Just give him another chance, and if two big women can't manage him, we'll get a man or two. You'll be good, though, Johnnie, won't you?" And she turned up gently the downcast face and "Good-bye, Mrs. O'Brien. Come again soon and bring the baby. Good-bye, lovey," and she waved a friendly hand at the little one. "She is a rale lady, and when it comes to ladies, there's none like the Irish. You know Mrs. Connors, Miss Smith? Her boy is a fright. Well, she said as far as she could tell from the back window, she thought Miss Reid had the look of an Irish woman and was trying to hide it. It's scandalous the tongues some women have. Sure, why should she hide it? It's the great dresser she is, and sure, why wouldn't she be? You've noticed, I suppose, Miss Smith, that the Irish are most generally "Good-day to you. It's sorry I am that me Johnnie is so much trouble. No, don't send him up to the room. I want to take him home and clean him up before he goes back." "No patrol this time?" asked the janitor, tiptoeing in. "I hung around in case I might have to call one." "No," said Miss Smith, laughing. "Miss Reid absolutely made her confess that John could be in the wrong." The janitor raised hands and eyes with a "Glory be! but she's a wonder!" and departed. The Puritans and Christmas Day Christmas Day was not celebrated in the early days of New England. This was partly because the Puritans abhorred forms and ceremonies of any sort and partly because the observance of Christmas was associated with kings and the doings of kings. Yet it was not easy to keep all the colonists from following old country customs. In his "History of Plymouth Plantation," written in 1621, William Bradford says: On the day called Christmas Day ye Governor called them out to work (as was usual), but most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. So the Governor told them that if they made it a matter of conscience he would spare them until they were better informed. So he led away the rest and left them. But when they came home at noon from their work, he found them in the street at play openly, some pitching the bar and some at stoole-ball and such like sports. So he went to them and took away their implements and told them that it was against his conscience that they should play and others work. Nature Study Outline for December The Pine. Fifth Year FIRST WEEK Have the pupils bring twigs of as many kinds of pine as possible. Compare, to familiarize pupils with the different kinds. Ask pupils to bring pine cones. Sixth Year FIRST WEEK Study of Crystals. Study the formation of crystals: Sugar, salt, snow, quartz, and others that may be obtainable. How do snow crystals and quartz crystals Discuss trees and cones. Where are seeds? differ? In shape? In size? When are they ripe? Uses of pine. The Spruce. SECOND WEEK Have spruce twigs brought to the class. If the spruce does not grow wild in your vicinity, twigs can probably be obtained from a tree on someone's lawn. How does the pine differ from the spruce: In shape of tree? In height to which it will grow? In shape of leaves? In manner of growth of leaves? In color of leaves? In scent? In appearance of bark? In size and shape of cones? Have pupils make drawing of a spruce twig. Uses of spruce. THIRD WEEK Hemlock and Arbor Vitæ. Have twigs brought to class. Study as with pine and spruce, comparing the two together, and with the evergreens studied during the preceding weeks. Uses of hemlock and arbor vitæ. FOURTH WEEK Cedar and Larch. Form crystals of salt or alum, by setting a more than saturated solution of the substance away in a tumbler for a few days. Limestone Formations. Marble (crystalline limestone), shells, bone, Study, as with evergreens studied in preced- stalactites, stalagmites, Iceland spar. ing weeks. Have pupils make mortar and plaster. |