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NOTES.

-President Hall of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., has in the April Forum the first of a series of two or three timely articles in which he goes over more surely and in a more plain spoken way than has ever been done before the actual condition of our higher education in the United States. In this first article he considers the true university work, and inti. mates that there are no real universities in America except the Johns Hopkins, Clark University, the Chicago University and the Catholic University of Washington.

President Hall is abundantly well qualified to discuss all phases of higher education, and his articles, as supplementing those of Dr. J. M. Rice on the Public School systems, which appeared during last year in The Forum, will be read with great interest.

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WEBSTER'S INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY

The next issue of the POPULAR EDUCATOR will be in September. We trust our large and ever-increasing family will have the gladdest of vacations, and return to the family board with a keen zest to enjoy the good things we shall have in store for them the coming year.

The National Educational Association will meet at Asbury Park, New Jersey, July 6-13. The National Council will meet on the first day, when the now much-talked-about Report of the Committee of Ten will be formally presented.

The American Institute of Instruction will, unfortunately, be in session in Bethlehem, N. H., at the same time as the National Association. President Martin has been unceasing in his efforts to make a very attractive programme, and all New England ought to be there.

England has a Royal Committee of Seventeen; but three of these are women. Why were the mothers of the race passed by when Uncle Sam's Committee of Ten were appointed ?

A Prof. Bischoff, of St. Petersburg, maintained in a pamphlet published some years ago that the brains of woman weigh, on an average, one hundred grains less than that of man. The learned professor has just died. In his will he ordered that his brain should be weighed. Astonishing to relate, the brain of our Russian professor weighed five grains less than that of women of low intelligence. A good illustration of the value of much of the scientific dicta thrown out from the brains of some of our learned pundits.

The Best Text-Book.

The May Atlantic contains an article on ethical training in the schools. It states many truths and throws out some excellent suggestions. But the best ethical training in the public schools does not come from text-books. These may help, but they will fail of their purpose unless one very essential condition is present, and that is, a vigorous personality in the teacher's desk. It is strange, the number of people of intelligence who seem to think that success in the schoolroom depends upon one thing only, a knowledge, on the part of the instructor, of the subject to be taught. But the truth is, to-day and to-morrow as well, that the value of the teacher, looking at her from any standpoint any one pleases, ethical or what not, depends upon the influence she is able to exert - an influence, too, not manufactured, but in the person by right divine. The true text-book, therefore, for expounding temperance truths, or for the ethical training of the child, is in the teacher's chair; it is she who goes in and out before them day by day, holding them, if worthy of her position, with silken cords and yet as strong as steel.

The Obstacle.

And right here we are tempted to prophecy. This idea, so prevalent among those who select the instructors for our schools, that all that is needed in a teacher is knowledge and a memory, is the rock upon which "department teaching" will split. Departmental teaching, if it is to be desired, must mean more than a sufficient knowledge of the subject taught or even skill in imparting. It must add to that an influence that will certainly hold, if not attract. No study can long be a charm to boy or girl that does not pulse and glow with emotion and the source of that emotion is the teacher. This is the cardinal virtue. And so long as teachers are selected by those indifferent to its importance, departmental teaching, even if desirable in the abstract, will be inferior in its results to the present method of class instruction.

And now comes Supt. Draper of Cleveland, who has a plan "entirely new" for enabling the brighter pupils of the graded schools to travel forward more rapidly. Here it is:

"The schools have been made up for the new year in a way which may be, possibly, best described by use of an illustration. Take, for instance, a room of third grade pupils. At the end of the year the teacher determines, upon the ordinary and regular work of these pupils throughout the year, guided possibly by the monthly marking which she was required to make, which of these pupils were competent to go into the fourth grade, and they were so advanced. Heretofore the pupils held not to be competent to take the fourth grade would have been kept back in the third grade at least another year, and would commonly have been termed left-overs. But hereafter they will go forward with their more fortunate associates into the fourth grade room, although they will not at once become fourth grade pupils. They will constitute a separate division by themselves and will be designated as advanced thirds. The teacher is directed to give this second division very particular care and see if she cannot lead and encourage some of them at least up to the fourth grade work. On the other hand, there may be specially bright pupils in this year's third grade class who can easily be sent forward in the course of the year into this division of advanced thirds, although it would not be practicable at once to send them clear into the fourth grade. In this way the unpromoted pupils will be spared humiliation somewhat; they will secure special attention; they will have the help of association in the same room with the work of the higher grade; they will have the benefit of the presence of the specially bright pupils who will come in from the grade below; they will be encouraged and inspired to their utmost effort. Will not this plan save some of the unfortunates from the loss of a year aud will it not provide a bridge upon which the brighter ones may cross over from one grade to the next and gain a year?

Our Criticism.

We cannot agree with the Committee of Ten that the study of arithmetic should stop at the end of the Grammar school course. On the contrary, it should be continued through the High school. The fault we find now is that the arithmetic work required of the children below the secondary school age is too extensive; not in topics taught, but in the kind of work required to be done. Speaking broadly, the work of the lower grades should be devoted (1) to training through what is called "mental" arithmetic, and (2) to representation and reckoning upon the slate, or what is called "written work." The work of the High school should be the applying of the knowledge obtained in the lower grades to the working out of the problems of the shops. In other words, the foundation should be thoroughly laid in the primary grades. What the boy needs at 13 and 14 is a knowledge of the fundamental operations, with integers, fractions, common and especially decimal, skill, and accuracy, so far as it can be obtained, in reckoning, and such a training of the faculties as oral arithmetic will give. That is the work of this age, and is enough. The child does not get it now, simply because he is hurried into work that he very naturally cares little about; and so these processes learned remain in the mind through the examinations, and then most of them are forgotten. We would introduce the algebra into the two upper grammer grades as recommended by the committee (not doing too much, however) dividing the time with the arithmetic, and give one hour a week to the latter branch in the High schools, the work there being, as we have said, the solving of the problems of the banks and the shops.

The Imitative Functions.

Prof. Josiah Royce, of Harvard University, has an interesting article in the May Century on the imitative functions and their place in human nature. He believes that reason, conscience, and self-consciousness, although significant possessions, yet are the products of imitativeness. That is his thesis. To study the question of the psychology of imitation is his purpose. And as there are a number of groups of parents as of teachers who, in one way or another, are engaged in organized observations of children, he asks that the results of observations bearing on his thesis observations, independent and drawn as directly as possible from life, be sent him. First, he desires any information bearing upon the first appearance in the child as well as the later development of the imitative functions. Secondly, Prof. Royce desires to get as many descriptions as possible of what he calls the imitative game,— that is, the dramatic impulse, the tendency to pretend one is some one else, the stretching of one's own personality, so as to include that of a strange person; as in the case of a child of three, as stated by Prof. James, who, if called by his own name would invariably reply: I'm not H-, (his name), I'm a hyena or a horse-car, or some other object as the case might be. Prof. Royce is accordingly extremely anxious to get all the fresh and exact accounts that he can of cases of this phenomenon of personation, or systematic mimicry, either in one child alone, or in any small group of children, who, playing together, do not merely repeat some of the old traditional games of childhood, but invent their own drama. In case of each child concerned he desires as full an account as possible of the whole story of its imitative game, and of all the details of its life and character that seem to be relevant to the matter in hand. Thirdly, the Professor would like to have sent him instances of what he calls " counter-suggestions," that is, cases where children seem to manifest a disposition to imitate the naughty boy in the story rather than the good one; or where a child has been apparently tempted to do the wrong merely by hearing that it is the wrong; or where children have seemed from the start disposed to imitate evil examples rather than good, to admire bad big boys rather than good ones, or build fires in dangerous places apparently because they have learned of the danger-in other words, have been fascinated by the mischief just because it is mischief. Again, there are what Prof. Royce calls "imitative emotions," - emotions aroused in inexperienced persons by sympathy or contagion. The emotions of the theatre, the precocious emotions of young children on noteworthy occasions,—e.g., at funerals, the reaction of sensitive persons at the sight of disease and of accidents, are all cases in point. In addition to these, Prof. Royce, believing that the study of the imitative functions would be useless without a consideration of their opposites, the functions which appear to be the reverse of imitative, especially desires to receive instances of children, eccentric, wilful, whose life seem to their parents or teachers a life of almost persistent refusal to imitate models. These will not play with other children, they live much alone, they do not love what the family is most accustomed to show interest in, they seem to be determined from the outset to choose their own way, and to walk in it. In later youth such characters become especially noteworthy and perplexing. Prof. Royce wants a collection of descriptions of such personschildren or youth, portrayed just as they seem to their often very much-concerned parents, teachers, or other friends. The contention of Prof. Royce that imitativeness is not slavishness, that the rationally spontaneous is imitative, is an important one; and we trust our readers will be of those "kindly disposed persons " whom the Professor earnestly invites to assist him in his investigations.

Τ

Our Critic.

I.

▪HE Legislature of Ohio has done a good thing for popular education in conferring the right of school suffrage and office holding on the women of that state. Although there seems to be a question whether additional action by the people in the matter of a Constitutional Amendment will not be necessary, the step now taken will hardly be retraced. It is certainly high time that our great western commonwealths took decisive action towards abating the tyranny now exercised by partisan politics in their public school affairs. Not only is the important office of State Supt. of Education involved in the state elections; often tossed about to appease the "shrieks of locality" in the closing hours of a nominating convention; but the chief cities of a dozen of these states, in which the people are willing to pay for the best municipal school system, are constantly cheated out of their dearest right by the same malignant influence. In the majority of these cities the ablest school men of the west and often of the country hold the position of City Superintendent at the will of a political ring, composed of men who could not obtain a certificate of the third class to teach a country district school. Nowhere is the misery of this intolerable abuse more realized than by the intelligent mothers of the children dependent on the will of these political ring-masters for all their schooling for American citizenship. If these mothers,

sisters, cousins, and aunts," of the state will use their new opportunity with vigor, discretion and a single eye to the welfare of the children, the Buckeye State can be congratulated on another addition to the items of "honorable mention" in its statesmanship of the past generation.

II.

The wonder of the entire educational public of the country has long been the fact that the great state of Ohio is to-day almost the only American Commonwealth that has failed to establish a State Normal School. All the excuses for this unaccountable neglect simply amount to this; that the large number of private and denominational “ colleges" and "normal" institutions is still able to control the public sentiment of different localities that no legislature has yet "spunked up" courage to give the whole people even one institution of the sort established in every civilized country as the corner stone of an effective system of public education. According to report, a project is now launched to establish a department of Pedagogy in every considerable educational institution in the state; whose graduates will be honored by a State certificate, good for life. In the interest of Education, we trust the public school men and women of Ohio will expose the mischief of this plan; which permanently throws into the hands of private schools, irresponsible to the state, the training of public school teachers, and indefinitely postpones the imperative duty of the commonwealth to establish at least one great model normal seminary, under public control, which may "set the copy" for all attempts at normal training in other institutions. Up to this date the department of Pedagogics in American colleges has amounted to little more than a name; the Professor having no real standing in the faculty and access only to an insignificant fraction of the students. The time has not yet come in Ohio or any state for the graduates of such notoriously imperfect training to be honored by the perpetual certificate of a state board of examiners of the teachers of common schools.

horses." A vivid illustration of this situation is too often found in the ludicrous spectacle that greets the eye of the visitor, especially among the free high schools of large numbers of the smaller cities of the country. Here can be seen what comes of placing a young college graduate, appointed solely for "scholarship," with neither experience nor knowledge of school-keeping, at the head of a school, the majority of whose pupils are usually a crowd of lively "great girls," thoroughly aware of the infirmity of the "cultured" young master; and prepared to flustrate the popular conception of "woman's rights" to the end of the chapter. This pitiful exhibition of awkwardness, timidity, and absolute incompetency to handle this "wild team is among the most conspicuous humors of the common school and offers to the rising novelist an admirable theme for a 'new departure" in romance that will "capture" the country. But, on the other side, the situation is a new illustration, if one was still needed, of the academic and collegiate conceit that "scholarship" is the only essential qualification of the teacher. Especially should the position of High School principal in a town of moderate size be filled by one whose experience in school work, all the way up, enables the master or mistress to place the highest department in vital connection with every other; with a continuance in the best methods of instruction and discipline under which the pupils have been prepared. The real difficulty in so many high schools is not the lack of the college spirit and methods; but the "break in the connection" between the high school and the body of the system caused by placing at its head, and often in its most important chairs, teachers absolutely ignorant of their art; with no faculty of bringing their scholarship to bear on their pupils. Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler is quoted as saying that, -"all reform in popular education must begin in the secondary schools." We accept the statement in this sense; that until the free high school of the country becomes the real outcome of the best school-keeping of the elementary and intermediate grades, it will be like an icicle clasped in both hands; a chill alike to the best working of the common school and the true interest of the college and university.

IV.

One of the disadvantages of the growing habit of placing the public schools, even of our larger towns, under the almost exclusive charge of women teachers, is the difficulty of making a considerable class of these persons realize the fact that their position in the schoolroom is not that of a cultivated young lady-president of a children's club; or a volunteer teacher in a 66 go-as-youplease" Sunday school. Her business in the people's school is at all hazards to do her uttermost for the training of the children and youth; first, in the common and, afterwards, the uncommon elements of the manhood and womanhood that makes for good citizenship. One of the most important conditions of success in the future career of multitudes of children in these schools, is the use of a distinct and intelligible English speech, to take the place of the imperfect habit of the home, where the elders may be well excused for their failure. But, in school after school, we find the teachers apparently living in obstinate ignorance or indifference concerning this matter; themselves talking in the ordinary home-style or prattling in a cultivated parlor-key; "patting down" the pupils to such a feeble imitation of their own habit as makes the routine exercises of the school almost unintelligible to a visitor. We have often gone out from a half hours' visit in a schoolroom, almost within touch of pupils and teacher, knowing nothing of this weak, semi-confidential talk going on between the inmates of the room. Often the success of a really cultivated lady teacher" is prevented by this absurd affectation. In the realm of romance it may be true that "a