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NOTES.

-The sixteenth annual meeting of the Society of Elementary Teachers in Hanover was at. tended by more thah a thousand members. Herr Grabbe, of Minden, delivered an address, on the best means of preventing the results of the education given in elementary schools from being lost. He contended that the idea of compelling pupils of such schools to attend up to their sixteenth year was impracticable. Apprentices now learned little from their masters, and factory hands were still worse off. Attendance at the continuation schools should be made obligatory on boys up to their eighteenth, or girls up to their seventeenth year. These schools must be free; and the six hours a week which they require (or from girls four) should be taken from the hours of work, and not from the leisure time of the pupils. That these proposals are feasable was shown by a comparison of the regulations which prevail in other States. Herr Schuttler, of Hanover, read an interesting paper on the time during which boys should remain under one master. He urged that it should be for their full school course. The teacher would thus learn to know the capacity of his pupils, and the power of character to mould character would have free play. The system would be perfect if the master kept his boys for the eight years of their school life; but it would be a gain if he had them for three years instead of, as now, for one.

-Of all the blood-purifiers which were offered for exhibition at the Worid's Fair, Ayer's Sarsaparilla was the only one accepted. In admitting this great remedy, the World's Fair Directors publicly indorsed the favorable opinion which physicians and chemists have always held with regard to Ayer's Sarsaparilla.

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For the Reading Circle

The Teachers' Club

or Home Study

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A number of teachers have formed a class in
Psychology. Having decided on McLellan's APPLIED
PSYCHOLOGY as the book we wish to study, we de-
sire to take advantage of the usual club discount
allowed. Please send twenty six copies immediately,
and enclose bill for same at earliest convenience.
M. A. HENDERSON.

APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY.

An introduction to the principles and practice of education. By
J. A. MCLELLAN, M. A., LL.D., Director of Normal Schools,
etc., and PROF. JOHN Dewey of Michigan University.

USED IN THE NORMAL SCHOOLS IN

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Set I. 'Things Like a Ball."

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70 Fifth Avenue, New York.

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NOTES.

- An organization has just been affected, known as the Manual Training Teachers' Association of America. Its purpose is "to secure co-operation in study and experiment; to dis seminate information regarding the principles progress, and development of manual training, and to promote the professional interests of its members." The officers elected for the ensuing year are: President, Geo. B. Kilbon, Springfield, Mass.; vice-president, Geo. Robbins, Frankfort, Ky.; Sec. and Treas, Chas. A. Bennett, New York City. The place for the meeting of the association is not yet determined.

-According to a writer in the Revued 8 Deux Mondes, the country districts of South Italy are in a very bad plight and nothing is left for the peasants to do but emigrant to the South American States; more than eighty thousand men went in one twelve months, yet M. Bazin observes that in Calabria he looked out from the train on more than three hundred kilome. tres of lonely uncultivated districts. As for the country populations at Reggio, where bergamot scent is distilled, the workmen go to bed at five in the afternoon, rise at ten, and work all the night through, and until three the next afternoon. For these fifteen hours' hard work in the scent factories they are paid the sum of one shilling a day. Their food is naturally innocent of meat or wine; breakfast being composed of pepper-pods dipped in oil and caten with black bread.

-The Niateble have one good custom if they are savages

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"Lazy persons who will not help in sowing or reaping are driven from town to town. No work, no food is the motto for them. The queens themselves dig their gardens, and everybody who can must help to prepare for the dry season."

Have you Decided

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to Join the Onward Movement?

See Report of Committee of Ten.

Vol. II. Now Ready.

Æsop's Fables.

Vols. I. and II. Illus. Price, 30 cts. each.

This large type edition is used in the schools of Quincy, Clinton, Brookline, Mass.; Portland, Me.; Concord, N.H.; Ansonia, Conn.; Bennington, Vt.; Columbus, Dayton, Ironton, O.; Lynchburg, Va.; Milwaukee, Burlington, Wis.; La Porte, Indianapolis, Ind.; Flint, Union City, Battle Creek, Mich.; Newport, Ky.; Anamosa, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Rockford, Elgin, Kankakee, Sterling, Ill., etc., etc.

66

As you wished to hear of our experience with the books published by you. Esop's Fables," and "Grimm's Fairy Tales." I write that Æsop is being read with great interest in my lowest grade September children. Though the most difficult reading ever given that grade, they are making a fine success of reading it; their live interest in the matter putting them through difficulties that would wholly stagger them but for such a stimulus. The "Grimm" being read in my Second Grade (second year) with gratifying success. C. L. HUNT, Supt. Schools, Clinton, Mass.

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EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING CO., 50 Bromfield St., Boston; 70 Fifth Ave., New York; 262 Wabash Ave., Chicago; Topeka, Kans.

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Published Monthly, September to June, Inclusive

Subscription: $1.00 per year Single copies 10 cunts Entered at the Post Office, Boston, Mass., as Second Class Matter

Don't forget to read Nature Studies. The season will soon be on for just such studies.

And following this, is a specimen of the work done in the schools of Supt. Morss, of Milton. As he says, "the month of March may well be devoted to preparing the children to appreciate Nature's spring awakening." We cannot understand how, in these days, any true teacher, if in the country, can turn aside from the material which Nature furnishes in extravagant abundance for the training of her little ones.

That " itself.

The Lesson.

suggestive examination" in another column answers The reason why so many children answered the questions propounded to them was because the subjects came within the field of their observation or experience. The lesson we should draw from this is that we should be more careful, if we desire to train well, to not get too far away from these boundaries. Examinations, properly conducted and for the purpose of showing the teacher the true basis of instruction, are all right; but the danger is, that if the test is for results, or, if the examinations are too frequent, the teaching ceases to be instruction and becomes the mere memorizing of information sought to be got at by the examination.

Back Again.

Our readers will find the present issue one of great interest and value. On the next page we print a few pregnant sentences on the "number" question by Dr. McLellan, a logician of distinction and a leading thinker in pedagogics. Evidently the pendulum is beginning to swing back again. The slow, tortoisecreeping methods, which servility to German notions has made influential in the schools of this country, are nearing their Waterloo. The Scotch are the best fighters in such a contest. Scholarly, profound, and the old Berserker spirit is still so much alive in them, that shams and the quackery of the schools flatten out very quickly under their well-hit, Thor-like blows. Without agreeing with all that Dr. McLellan says, we believe that his main contention is true. We have long thought, and have not hesitated to say, that we do not believe in feeding children, healthy, fast-growing children, on intellectual pap. The tendency to act as if nature were of no account, or as if any brain, no matter what may be the height of its psychological flights could

Number 7

find out God, is simply absurd. He is past finding out, and if the teacher were wise, his question would always be, not "How can I make this growing mind obey my rules," but "How can I best care for and feed, that Nature shall not be hindered, and its growth troubled?"

Have Charity.

Appropriate to the thought above, is the article on stupidity. We are sorry to be obliged to believe that even to-day, in some of the best schools, (our readers, of course, are excepted) there are still teachers who are guilty of exclaiming impatiently, "I have such a set of idiots in my class," or, "That boy is the biggest dunce ever born;" or, if these and similar exclamations are not made, then the tone and the manner, or, perchance, the examination, speak the same language-with even more emphasis. But the teacher should be on her guard. She should remember, surely ought to know, that the child is controlled largely by his impulses; he has very little, if any, determined purpose. And his impulses, alas, are not always his own. "No one," says the article, dreams of blaming a blind, deaf, dumb and deformed ehild." "By extra kindness and sympathy, we try to make up for nature's unkindness." Then, if it is not his fault, his doing, if he must suffer, as the writer has it, in the struggle for life from this natural defect, why not bear and forbear, and resolve, as did the young schoolmaster after he had scolded the stupid boy, whom he had afterwards seen in his early coffin, to do as little as possible in the exercise of stern duties to make of life a weariness to young children.

66

Contented.

In another column will be found a communication which we are only too happy to print. The writer seems to be earnest in what he says, and honest as well. We are sorry to lose him as a subscriber, for we think he, and so the schools under him, would be benefited by a perusal of our virile columns from month to month. We are glad to be told our faults, and are not at all offended at his "boldness and plainness." But we think he is wrong as to his opinion of the intellects of our readers. Our "marches and drills," our " helps," although they may be great in quantity, are to be tasted, and only eaten here and there. We flatter ourselves that our readers are not of the kind who think they must devour all the viands, even though they be "good things," and so make "mental dyspepsia" the inevitable outcome."

selected with care

But we believe in a plentitude of riches. Starve the teacher and you starve the child. A good journal is not so much informative as suggestive. The "helps" of the POPULAR EDUCATOR are the work of many minds, and are not printed without reference to their intrinsic value. It strikes us that only the egotism of an uncultivated mind could read our recent issues and not give them unstinted praise. There are a few teachers who are living in the same happy contentment of spirit that our correspondent is, and are grinding over the same old grist, and,

wrapped up in their own conceit, certainly never "trying to do too much," tyrannize rather than teach. But, thank God, their numbers are few and they will be fewer still as the years go by.

Practical Physiology.

We trust our read rs will not omit to peruse the article on Practical Physiology. The sub-committee of the Committee of Ten, we are glad to see, have taken our ground in the kind of work that should be done in physiology in the public schools. They say, and we desire to emphasize it, that it is not desirable to teach a great deal of anatomy to young children." "Such instruction," they say, "is likely to lead, in some instances, at least, to morbid if not prurient curiosity, that is productive of far more evil than the instruction is likely to counterbalance with good."

Teachers, therefore, should confine their instruction in physiology almost exclusively to hygiene, touching the other divisions of the subject only incidentally. How, the writer in her interesting article, admirably tells us.

The Newer Philosophy vs The New.

If Prof. Dewey's article on the " Psychology of THE IDOL. Number", which appeared in the February number of the POPULAR EDUCATOR, were thoroughly mastered and applied by teachers and superintendents, there would be little short of a revolution in the prevailing methods of teaching arithmetic. And such a radical change, it may be added, is urgently needed. Our methods in arithmetic have been too long the result of a religious superstition concerning things of foreign, particularly German origin. To stamp a method with a German name was to secure its immunity from scientific criticism. The IDOL was set up with its crown and superscription, and some educational Nebuchadnezzer issued his mandate that we should fall down and worship it; and hitherto not a man or woman of us has dared to say, Nebuchadnezzer go to grass, and take your idol with you."

THE ATOMIC THEORY.

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This servile adherence to methods strenuously advocated as alone philosophical, has been fruitful of mischievous fallacies in number teaching. The present times are not better than the former so far as the study of arithmetic is concerned. The " of progress," started fairly on its way by Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic has been retarded, turned completely round in obedience, I suppose, to Pestalozzi's preposterous dictum. At all events we are getting from the study of arithmetic, neither the practical knowledge nor the mental discipline which our fathers got. We have adopted the atomic theory in administering mental padulum. Our children must be spoon-fed with driblets hashed to the minutest form-comminuted til they are almost below the threshold value" of any intellectual stimulus. 'Tis high time to

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"GRUB up this growing mischief by the roots."

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Six months or a year for the number THE GOLDEN TEXT. five", is the golden text of our modern apostles; and no teacher may remain an unbeliever without running the risk of a crushing indictment at the judgment bar of a new education. The "presumption of brains," as Supt. Marble puts it, that is the presumption of brains 'whose maximum of energy is fixed by anything greater than the number five is but the baseless assumption of a visionary mind, or of a mind as yet unvisited by the light of the new revelation. One of the most successful teachers

I ever knew was refused a license because she was and is an unbeliever in this "number five" doctrine. She had never begun her number teaching with the "development of the number one;" she always began with a group of things and guided the children in the process of analysis-synthesis which leads to number; to class after class she had taught the number five, not in six months, but in a few weeks. But she knew the high place of the number five item in the creed of the examiner who questioned her upon this point, and allowing what she thought was a large margin," she replied that "six months would be quite sufficient for the number five." She answered with a confidence born of intelligent experience; but she was not sufficiently conversant with the immutable demands of the new creed; she had not allowed margin enough for the requirements of the examiner. There was a marked elevation of eyebrow, a mantling of the visage, as who should say, "What fatal ignorance of the laws of child development!" Then the oracle spoke: "Six months! Cruelty to the children!" cue from the failure of the first; for the number five," said she. more like it, you may do it in short."

THE MYSTERY AND MISERY OF FRACTIONS.

The next examinee took her "I would take at least a year Said the examiner, 66 Ah, that is a year, but even that is all too

So with fractions, we must have so many months for the " development" of and; so many for and, etc., etc. In fact fractions are treated as if they had little or no connection with "whole numbers." Whole numbers are treated as if they were things, visible, measurable, ponderable things. And It fractions are simply broken things. seems from the discussions of many of our instructors that fractions are not not numbers; a psychological product formed by the indispensible process of analysis-synthesis. We are not to make use of the child's already acquired knowledge of "integers." We are not even to begin with separation and combination of things to aid the mental process. We are to begin our analysis with the inevitable"unit"- the fixed unit - and to break this unit into parts and yet smaller parts, fractionlets, - in order, doubtless, to get at fraction-relations, not numberrelations, which, it is implied, are something quite different. In a word, most of the vicious methods of handling fractions are developed" in total ignorance of the fact that all acquisition of right ideas of number is through a process of fractioning (if I may coin a word); and that in principle, there is no difference between fractions" and " whole numbers." No wonder there is both mystery and misery for the classes in fractions. In the brave days of old, we used to say or sing:

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THE NEWER PHILOSOPHY.

I hope Prof. Dewey will favor us with the conclusion of his article.

It will prove, I believe, the best thing on the psychology of number that has yet appeared. It will be the beginning of a newer and better philosophy of arithmetic; and so will lay the foundation for a truly rational method in teaching arithmetic, the logic of the common school -a subject upon which, perhaps, more time is wasted than upon any other branch of school studies. I venture to predict that in the near future American educational psychology will be generally acknowledged to be quite as sound, and certainly as practical, as that of any other land. J. A. MCLELLAN, Ontario.

Τ'

Our Critic.

I.

'HERE is no doubt that the recent document issued by the National Bureau of Education, containing the reports of the ten committees of "one hundred distinguished college, high school and academical men, educators on the Secondary Education'," is, in some respects, the most important educational publication of the last few years in our country. And this not chiefly for what it contains in the way either of inspection or suggestion, concerning this department of education. In fact, there is really no conclusion arrived at in which any ten of the hundred are really agreed. But the document, if carefully read by the right people, will be the incentive to a great deal of hard thinking, and, possibly in time, of vigorous controversy among school men. And when a dozen of the great metropolitan newspapers are relieved from the engrossing labor of watching the paces of what ex-president Harrison calls " Mr. Cleveland's wild team" at Washington, and lift their eyes to the more weighty matters of the education that makes the men that think they make the laws, this document may be translated into journalEnglish and put before the educational public that isn't keeping school. Then, and hardly before, some of these gentlemen who are the chief "authors and finishers" of this conference work may first realize what their theories signify; first, to the children and youth who are to be educated in schools; second, to the parents, friends, and entire social environment of the contents of a school-house; and, lastly, what will be the "sober second thought" of the people who are willing to pay the bills to any extent for all things they are convinced will "work together for good" in the republic.

II.

It strikes us that the way this whole matter will be apt to appear to the thoughtful people of the country is, that this document is the most prominent symptom of a coming situation, long prognosticated by the careful observers of our educational life. For here is foreshadowed a rapidly approaching trial of strength between what may be called the European and the American idea of universal Education. Three hundred years ago, there was no doubt, the other side of the water, of the proposition that all education that educates begins at the top, in the university and, thence, descends, always and everywhere, according to the theories and aims of the leaders of the higher education, even to the lower extremity of the least neighborhood elementary school. Of course, this was according to the inevitable logic of European life before the French revolution. It is still the theory on which all the continental systems of national education are constructed to-day. According to this philosophy of society, its one permanent interest is to train the governing class in church and state for the wise and beneficient leadership and domination of the masses below. The old medieval habit of trying to construct this leadership chiefly out of the hereditary principle is now enlarged and refined into the system of the most astute despotism on earth-the German Empire. The German schoolsystem, at the bottom, means a paternal government, hunting up and down the Empire with a lighted candle for the few superior youth who can be captured and educated in all the wisdom and righteousness of the most refined nineteenth century Imperialism to reinforce, fortify, and keep vital and invincible the imperial order of society. Meanwhile, the people are to be schooled just far enough to become intelligent moral and effective subjects of a magnificent military Empire, powerful to dominate the affairs of a continent.

III.

This idea, minus its modern refinements, was brought, in its crude state, from Great Britain, by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and education in all the old thirteen colonies began with the university to train a governing class. Until the Revolution, in all, and until the close of the Civil War, in half the original colonies beyond the Berkshire Hills, education practically stopped there;

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leaving the masses of the people to grope their way up the hill of Knowledge as they might. But it was inevitable that a people endowed with the rights of American citizenship, to make and unmake church and state, and be themselves the court of last resort in human affairs should revise this venerable idea of education. The result of this logical outcome of republican institutions is the American Common School system, now established in every state and territory; but only developed in its complete form, in the great Western and Pacific states, where the whole people provide, through the agencies of government, for the free schooling of all children and youth, from the kindergarten through the university. But the majority of the university professors and presidents in our country, still fail to understand that this great American system still somewhat crude, vague, and wavering in its outlines and by no means satisfactory to anybody is not, what they call it, "a descent from the heights of the university, the work of eminent school-men"; but an ascent, the first in history, from the people, working along with the teaching profession, suggesting, modifying, moulding, ransacking the earth for the best methods; pouring out money like a flood to give every favorable theory a chance of experiment; and slowly concentrating into the present form of the graded school, crowned by the state, academic, and industrial university, and including all professional instruction, save church theology and polity, which, for the present, the people are disposed to leave with the clerical profession.

IV.

Now the college fraternity of the country, a vast majority of whom represent the sectarian religious idea of the college, and a large class of the secondary school men of the same type, have resisted, openly or quietly, or been indifferent to the progress of thris vast people's movement. They do not realize that the logic of Republican institutions is that in the long run, the whole people is wiser than any class, profession, or set of wise men. The time has already come in every church where the christian people practically mould religious institutions according to their need and expect the clergy to be their "ministers" and not their spiritual lords. The lawyers no longer make, and the press, representing the people, largely governs the administrations of the laws. While the doctors of rival schools denounce each other, the people are finding out the laws of personal health and sanitary science for themselves. But it seems not to have occurred to many great educators in professional and presidential chairs that the 500,000 American teachers neither make nor entirely administer American schools, but that they, at best, must bring their highest culture, character, experience and achievements to the same great court of last resort and help the American people educate their 20,000,000 children and youth.

V.

But the logic of events has broken into the ranks of this class. It is already seen that the free high and normal schools, with their environment of splendid industrial seminaries and their upper story of the state university, are seriously threatening the dominance of the old time college and promise, in the future, unless reconstructed, to leave it by the wayside. The abler and broader-minded men are preparing for this thorough reconstruction of the higher education, to meet the people's school in the upward irresistible march. This conference was inaugurated and largely directed by the representatives of this idea and, as such, has great significance. But, just here, comes in the new European idea; whereby the college and university, both in its curriculum, method of instruction, and character-training, shall be broadened and extended to meet all the supposed necessities of modern society. Thus furnished, it will then offer itself as the arbiter, reorganizer, and practical controlling power of the whole system of the public secondary and elementary education. Our young experts return from their studies in Europe deeply impressed with this idea. The air is full of brilliant schemes for the training of statesmen, journalists, teachers, and all orders and conditions of governing people, through the agency of college life and University Extension. This idea crops out largely in the reports of these ten committees of conference. Yet even this small number of one hundred gentlemen, after practically ignoring the office and position of woman as educator and, in their official reports, giving the cold shoulder to the higher "Humanities: " moral and religious instruction; philoso

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