THIS

EDITORIAL.

HIS June number of EDUCATION closes the thirteenth volume and year of its existence. The magazine is not published during July and August. Editors deserve a vacation as well as teachers. The past has been, on the whole, the most prosperous year in the history of this, the oldest high-priced educational magazine in this country. We wish to thank all our friends who have helped us in the past, and invite them to continue to aid us in the future. We are especially grateful for the many kind words which have been said, or written, concerning EDUCATION during the last few months. These are very cheering. It is our desire to make the magazine better than ever before. We shall be glad of all the assistance you can give us. Will you not speak to your friends about EDUCATION during these vacation months and get them to subscribe for it next September? We shall be pleased to extend hearty greetings to thousands of new readers during the coming fall.

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LL eyes are now turning towards the great Columbian Exposition. It will be an education which teachers cannot afford to miss. Those who have already been there speak in the highest terms of the wonderful collection of buildings, great and small, in the White City. As an exhibition of what man can do, this alone would well repay a visit to it. The colossal scale on which all has been done is most

impressive. One will get a new idea of the greatness of our country and the almost infinite variety of its resources. The worth of the exhibits alone is said to be above $100,000,000. While to one who wishes to study humanity, it will afford an unparalleled opportunity. The nations of the earth, as perhaps never in the world's history, are now met together. To one anxious for mental growth, a diet is prepared of amazing richness. Congresses of every description, educational meetings of superior excellence, summer schools; everything to whet the mental appetite and brighten the intellect greets the Chicago visitor. We trust all our readers will be able to see the Exposition and feast the eye and the mind during the coming vacation.

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PRACTICAL result of the modern scientific spirit, which studies minutely and exhaustively the conditions of human environment, is seen in the great attention that is now given to educational sanitation. Of old a square box for a school room, with a nar

row window or two for light and an "air-tight" stove for heat, met all the requirements. Into this the children were packed, to breathe the dead air over and over again, and then were flogged for having disordered nerves and irritable tempers. Now it has been clearly perceived that the health and the deportment of the pupils as well as their mental attainments are vitally related to their school room surroundings. Flowers, pictures and pianos are good and useful. They are an interesting part of the reaction against the old, bare, unhealthy barrenness. But good ventilation and proper heating apparatus are even more important. We have had the pleasure of reading the report of the Committee on Sanitation of the school department of the city of Lynn, Mass., and we think it is a model of its kind. Special prominence is given to the value of the Lynn system of jacketed stoves whereby the temperature of the school room is kept very even and the air constantly renovated, with a marked result in the improvement of the deportment and the studying capacity of the pupils. The Lynn system is not patented and we counsel all committees who are dissatisfied with their teachers' discipline to investigate this subject.

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HE expression of thought is the greatest aid to correct thinking. Every teacher has learned this by experience. Studies reviewed in preparation for unfolding and imparting them to classes become luminous with new meanings, especially as they are explained and expounded in the class-room. It is a natural and inevitable deduction that the pupil himself should be made to begin very early to express his thought in good English of his own choosing. It is not enough to memorize the lesson in the words of the text-book. It should be assimilated and incorporated into the mental constitution so that it can be reclothed in appropriate language, and the effort so to reëxpress it will wonderfully clarify the vision and deepen the mind's comprehension of a given subject. English composition should be taught from the primary to the highest grades, and a larger place should be given than is the custom in many schools to drill in writing and speaking the mother tongue. This should accompany the study of the language historically, and the pupil should be given an intelligent idea of the objects of such study. It should be impressed upon him that clear thinking and graceful, felicitous speech accompany each other and are equally desirable. Then he should be urged to guard his language out of school as well as in it. Many schools and teachers have suffered in reputation by the careless and ungrammatical speech, out of doors, of pupils who were faithfully drilled and reasonably careful of their language in the class-room.

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T this season of the year the heart of every true American citizen swells with patriotism. We have just stood by the graves of our soldier dead, the soldiers of the Revolution as well as of the Rebellion and thought of our great and lasting debt to them for securing and preserving our freedom and the unequalled blessings we enjoy. A few weeks more and the Fourth of July will be celebrated amid the booming of cannon, flags floating in the breeze, buoyant oratory and universal noise. We sincerely hope that teachers everywhere will instruct the children of the land in the real meaning of these things. Is it not true that we take too much for granted? Do we not expect that the seventeen million little citizens of the United States will salute and reverence the flag which we salute and reverence? But why should they, if some one does not instruct them in the meaning of these things? Time has passed swiftly since the war. thirty years since Gettysburg. The children and youth know only of those days of blood and suffering as the older generation tells them or as they watch the reunion of old soldiers or read history. We heartily welcome the idea of an American flag floating over every school house in the land and of the boys and girls being taught to salute that flag and to know its historic and emblematic meaning. Especially should the vast multitudes of little strangers from foreign lands who come to live under this flag be taught these things. Teach them that immortal document, the Declaration of Independence. Teach them of the Constitution of these forty-four United States. Teach them the obligations and duties as well as the privileges and blessings of American citizenship.

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HE annual resurrection of nature from the sleep of winter is hardly more suggestive and wonderful than the yearly replenishment of the world's life by the current of fresh young blood that flows out into the World's activities at this commencement season. From countless schools, colleges and seminaries all over the land, young people are going forth to take hold of life in earnest, to show the stuff they are made of, to vindicate the principles and methods of their education, and to contribute their share to the solution of the profound problems that confront us on every hand, to solve which is the significance of our destiny. He who looks on at the spectacle of the graduation exercises of any school or college and sees only bright, eager faces happy at the prospect of vacation, or "sweet girl graduates" emulating each other in the perfection of their white dresses and the expression of pretty sentimentalities in their commencement essays sees but the surface. To one with the mature experience of years, in the thick of the conflict, there comes an undertone of sadness at the thought of the

happy, comparatively care-free life that ends at graduation. Yet the prevailing sentiment is one of hope and thankfulness. These young lives will have their trials, their conflicts, their disappointments. But they will have also their successes and the world's life will be enriched and advanced by their achievements. There are cold storms in the spring time and we are impatient with the retardation of the summer, but summer comes neverthless, and the very storms contribute to nature's wonderful consummation. It is for the graduate to expect the storms and be prepared to meet them. It is for the rest of the world to get out of the ruts and make room for new lives, new thoughts and new methods. Teachers, superintendents, committees will now look back and study the year's work in the light of results and profit by experiThose who are going forth will look forward with eager desire for the battle of life. May true success wait on them.

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HE American Society of University Extension announces a four weeks' Summer meeting, to be held in Philadelphia during July. This Summer meeting will provide courses in history, literature, science, sanitation, pedagogy and music, and in the technical parts of University Extension organization. The corps of instructors includes the names of Dr. B. L. Robinson, of Harvard; Prof. Henry H. Beers, of Yale; Dr. J. S. Billings, of Johns Hopkins; Prof. Edward A. Ross, of Cornell; Prof. J. B. McMaster, of Pennsylvania; Prof. John Fiske, the historian; Mr. Edward Eggleston, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, and of more than a score of additional men known for special work in some department of science or literature. The Summer meeting gives a rare opportunity for University Extension students to meet distinguished scholars from different institutions who, however diverse the peculiar flavor of the culture which characterizes their respective universities, are united in a determination to place all possible elements of university culture within the reach of all people.

Those of our readers who have followed the series of papers on University Extension in this magazine and the current discussion of this now very familiar subject, will understand that the term University Extension Students as used in the last paragraph, is a very elastic term. In the case of the Summer meeting, it is broad enough to include all who find themselves able to pursue vacation studies in any of the lines indicated. It includes especially teachers, but also all other busy women and men who wish to make of their summer a period of growth and intellectual refreshment rather than one of intellectual stagnation. College instructors and graduates of colleges who contemplate entering the teaching profession will be interested in the announcement of the professional courses in pedagogical and educational subjects, particularly those bearing on the history and organization of extra-university

teaching. Regular courses of instruction on this subject, with conferences and discussions, are provided. Lectures in this department are by Dr. R. D. Roberts of Cambridge University, and secretary of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, Mr. George Henderson, director of the Extension Department of the University of Chicago, and one or more staff lecturers of the American Society.

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SOME PEDAGOGICAL BLUNDERS.

AMALIE HOFER, CHICAGO.

HE pedagogical principle involved in Ex duco (draw out) the Latin root of the English word Educate, may be sadly misused. The old illustration of the "jug-child" and "funnel-teacher " has served its purpose and is on its way to desuetude. The desired result has been gained thereby, and it is acknowledged by some, if not many, that the teacher has other functions than that of pouring into the alleged empty child. Some teachers in order to be properly progressive have proceeded to fall into the opposite equally great mistake, - that of the fishing" process. A teacher is not educating, developing a child when she calmly sits back, and becomes a passive questioner, refusing by look, tone and gesture to reveal herself to him. The artful chemist "draws out" the essence of the rose by a peculiar law of extraction, but he can never by the same process replace it. The sun must shine upon the bud, the dews fall and all natural conditions supplement each other perfectly, to make the rose a thing of perfume, color and beauty.

No adult, whether parent, teacher or educational experimentalist, has the right to probe the heart of a child and constrain him to yield up proofs that a ray of intelligence has lodged therein. Such methods are no more nor less than the cold steel instruments in the hand of the surgeon. Every adult becomes the true educator, draws out, only when he mingles and commingles his own essence of word or thought or look with that of the child. Divine fire flashes back its own kind, and spark touches spark. Every adult becomes a pedagogue when he learns and applies the simple lesson, that the child needs but be flooded with right mental conditions, such as freedom, sympathy, genuineness and ideality, to become all the greatness there is in him. The niggardly economy displayed by many so-called teachers in the matters of affection, fellowship and helpfulness is enough to stultify every mental effort or desire in their presence. This is done in the name of putting children "upon their own metal."

Such false excuses as small boys offer when stealing robin's eggs,