School Recreations and Amusements; Mann; American Book Company. $1.25.

Games for Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium; Bancroft; Macmillan. $1.75.

Boy Scouts Manual; Boy Scouts of America; Fifth Avenue Building, New York. 50 cents.

Camp Fire Girls' Manual; Camp Fire Girls of America; 118 E. Twenty-eighth street, New York. 25 cents. Some Great Stories and How To Tell Them; Wyche; Newson & Co. $1.00.

(Prices subject to teacher's discount.)

II. Materials

Knife, .50; hammer, .80; saw, $1.25; pliers, .60; wrench, .25; cold chisel, .10; scissors, .40; two-foot rule, .30; ruler, .05; nails, tacks, screw hooks, etc., .25; ball of twine, .10; thumb tacks, .10; pencils and erasers, .10; box of water colors, .25; crayola, .10; assorted colored chalk, .10; fountain pen, $2.50; overalls (or apron), .50.

Total cost will not exceed $20.00.

Playground Equipment for a Country School Everyone must have observed how the play spirit is sweeping over the country. The quest of recreation is not only legitimate; it is as essential as food, shelter, and religion. Mr. Joseph Lee, of Boston, father of the playground movement in this country, says: "The thing that most needs to be understood about play is that it is not a luxury, but a necessity: it is not something that a child likes to have; it is something that he must have if he is to grow up. It is more than an essential part of his education; it is an essential part of the law of his growth, of the process by which he becomes a man at all."

This is as true for the country child as for the city child, and teachers are waking up to this fact. Much interest is shown at some of the summer schools with respect to rural recreation. Last summer, for instance, at the summer school of the University of Virginia, a fine playground was laid out and equipped as part of the work of the rural school department. As this equipment was home-made and inexpensive, many, no doubt, will be interested in the description of some of the apparatus as here given in detail. If sufficient interest is expressed the details of other pieces will be given in subsequent issues.

Equipment for Rural Playgrounds

I. Flying Dutchman.

This consists of a 16-foot board, mounted on a low post in such a way that it may be whirled around when pushed, with children seated at either end. It is an inexpensive and easily constructed piece of apparatus. MATERIALS NEEDED

(1) A tree trunk, or thick post about 8 inches in diameter and 6 feet long, to be set 3 feet in cement, leaving 2 feet projecting vertically from the ground.

(2) A board 16 feet long, 10 inches wide, and 2 or 21 inches thick, stiffened by bolting two 8-foot two-bythree's to the under side. (See illustration.) Eight bolts 6 inches long will be needed for this.

Homemade Flying Dutchman

Wheel from a mowing machine

• Post set in cement

(3) A strong wheel, such as may be taken from a worn-out mowing machine.

(4) An axle to fit the same, 18 inches long.

(5) An iron plate 5 or 6 inches square, to place on top of the post, with a hole large enough for the axle to pass through.

(6) Another iron plate of about the same size, but with no hole, to be fastened to the under side of the board at the middle point.

DIRECTIONS FOR INSTALLING

(a) Sink the axle into the post about 9 inches.
(b) Over it slip the iron plate mentioned in (5).
(c) Place the wheel on the axle.

(d) Lay the board across the wheel, and secure it firmly to the wheel by bolting it to strips of wood 3 feet long extending along the under side of the wheel. Anyone with a little mechanical ingenuity can easily contrive to do this. Or let the boys study out a method of doing it. Problems of this kind are good for them. Four 9-inch bolts will be necessary.

(e) In setting the axle into the post, care should be taken to have it project through the hub of the wheel far enough to permit the board to actually rest on it. It must carry the weight of the board. The iron plate (6) is to be fastened to the board just where the axle would bear against it.

Total cost ought not to exceed $3. II. See-saw.

Home-made See-saw

Two or more are desirable if there is money enough. Children using them should be under supervision, or they may receive injury. Warn them not to let the board bump on the ground when they are see-sawing.

MATERIALS NEEDED

(1) A board like that made for the Flying Dutchman. Where the board rests on the saddle, groove the under strips, or otherwise fix it so that the board will not slip. Another problem for the boys.

(2) An ordinary saw buck, stoutly built, 30 to 36 inches in height, is high enough. The cross-piece or saddle should be at least three inches in diameter. Rubbing it with a paraffine candle will prevent squeaking. Total cost, about $1.75 for the board, and $2.50 for the saw buck.

The possibility that Woodrow Wilson, a teacher by profession, will be the next president of the United States suggests a rather interesting inquiry into the history of those presidents who have at some time in their lives been teach

ers.

None of our presidents has been a teacher by profession, unless we except James A. Garfield, who, after following that line of work for several years gave it up for a short military career and for the political activity in which he was engaged at the time when he was elected president of the United States. Four other presidents, perhaps five, at one time or another taught school as a stepping-stone to some other occupation. This is perhaps a smaller number than might be expected considering the number of lawyers, physicians, ministers and business men who have at one time or another engaged in teaching for the sake of the financial returns which would aid them in securing their education.

In the following paragraphs we have mentioned all the presidents of the United States who, so far as we can find, have done any regular work in the schools. If any president or any interesting details have been omitted, some critical reader of The School Journal will probably put us on the track of such information.

John Adams

The elder Adams was a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1755. He was distinguished as a scholar in a class which in proportion to its numbers contained a large number of men who were afterward eminent. Adams, three weeks after his graduation, became a teacher of a grammar school in Worcester, Mass., making an engagement for one year. He was then but nineteen years of age and his compensation, it might be mentioned, was a little above that of an ordinary day laborer. As he took up this work merely to earn money, the situation was extremely irksome to his active, vigorous and inquisitive mind. But instead of suppressing it stimulated his native energy. Perhaps no account of his work as a teacher would be so in

teresting to us as a quotation from a letter which he wrote to a young friend describing his situation.

"When the nimble hours have tackled Apollo's coursers, and the gay deity mounts the eastern sky, the gloomy pedagogue arrives, frowning and lowering like a black cloud begrimed with uncommon wrath, to blast a devoted land. When the destined time arrives, he enters upon action, and, as a haughty monarch ascends his throne, the pedagogue mounts his awful great chair, and dispenses right and justice through

his whole empire. His obsequious subjects execute the imperial mandates with cheerfulness, and think it their high happiness to be employed in the service of the emperor. Sometimes paper, sometimes his penknife, now birch, now arithmetic, now a ferule, then A B C, then scolding, then flattering, then thwacking, calls for the pedagogue's attention. At length, his spirits all exhausted, down comes pedagogue from his throne, and walks out in awful solemnity through a cringing multitude. In the afternoon he passes through the same dreadful scenes, smokes his pipe and goes to bed.

"The situation of the town is quite pleasant and the inhabitants sociable, generous and hospitable; but the school is indeed a school of affliction. A large number of little runtlings, just capable of lisping A B C, and troubling the master. But Dr. Savil tells me, for my comfort, by cultivating and pruning these tender plants in the garden of Worcester I shall make some of them plants of renown and cedars of Lebanon. However this be, I am certain that keeping this school any length of time would make a base weed and ignoble shrub of me."

Millard Fillmore

Following John Adams there is a long list of presidents of whom we cannot learn that they had any experience in the schoolroom, until we come to the second vice-president who, on the death of the president, filled out the term. Fillmore was a man without a liberal education. At the age of fourteen he was set to learn the clothier's trade. It is said that the first book he read was an English dictionary, which he studied while doing the work of a carder. Later a helpful friend took him into his law office; and young Fillmore, in order that he might not be burdened with debt and that he might not bear too heavily on the generosity of his benefactor, taught school, as so many young men of that period did, during the winter months. We do not know whether he was successful in handling the large boys who in those days were so troublesome or whether he liked the work and was successful as an instructor; for upon those points the histories are silent.

James A. Garfield

President Garfield began to teach school when he was preparing for college, teaching near at home in order to earn money to pay his way through the preparatory school then known as the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. When he went from there to Williams he still was in need of what he could earn to pay his college bills and so taught a class in penmanship. We are not surprised to find, therefore, that at the

time of graduation, 1856, he was a man twentyfive years of age; but notwithstanding the time and energy that he had given to the work of paying his way, he took the highest honor in his class upon graduation. Undoubtedly he looked upon the work of teaching in a different light than did John Adams, for he chose that occupation as his life work, and from the year of graduation to 1861 he was the principal of the school in which he had prepared for college, the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. It is recorded

that he was a hard-working instructor, and he himself acknowledges that his experience there was of great value in public life. His admirable power of rhetorical exposition is largely traceable to his experience as a teacher. When the preparatory school in which he was a teacher became Hiram College Mr. Garfield was chosen as its first president.

His experience in teaching is observable in his congressional speeches. Such observations as we find in them on the torture of keeping little children quiet for six hours a day would only come from a man who has actually been in school work. Mr. Garfield also has the honor of introducing to congress the subject of organizing the National Bureau of Education, and in the house he was chairman of a special committee appointed to that end and was the principal champion of the project on the floor.

Chester A. Arthur

La

The man who filled out the term of President Garfield also had some experience in teaching. Young Arthur entered the sophomore class of Union College at the age of fifteen and during his course he taught school for two years. ter on, when studying law, he fitted a class for college and taught in the academy at North Pownal, Vt., as principal. All this was before he was twenty-one years of age. When Arthur was obliged to spend a portion of his college

years in teaching school in country towns he endeavored to keep up his college studies during the evening. As the system of boarding around a day or two in turn at every scholar's home was then in vogue in the country, Arthur discovered many uncomfortable boarding-places and even Iound that his studies were wholly interrupted. The following is from a letter written by him in 1846, when he was teaching school at fifteen dollars per month:

"My school is composed of motley races of brats. There are nearly all the goddesses, all the saints, and as many of the wise men of antiquity nominally present. There is an African damsel, a score of aspirants of alphabetical mastery, and many a specimen of the Yankee swopjack-kniver.

"There has been but one battle-a strong farmer's boy endeavored to overthrow your humble servant and his authority at the same time; but, thanks to agility and gymnastic practice, there was a triumph for the teacher.

"Beware of trusting to the statistical calculation of committeemen in respect to the num

ber of scholars, for they are as fallacious as the idea of getting your pay. And when you have over forty youngsters learning the rudiments of an education do not delude yourself by complying with the direction to hear them four times a day.”

Grover Cleveland

The statement has frequently been made that Grover Cleveland, twice president of the United States, was at one time a teacher. We are not able, however, to verify the fact. It is recorded that young Cleveland was clerk and general assistant in the Institute for the Blind in New York city, where his brother was teacher. What the duties of a general assistant were is not altogether plain, and the inference is that he may have been called upon to do some work as an instructor in the schoolroom. It is also further stated that he was not succesful in the performance of his duties, whatever they may have been.

William McKinley

The last of our presidents with experience in teaching is William McKinley. However, this experience was not considerable, for the total record that we are able to obtain in reference to the matter is that he taught district school one winter before entering the army in 1861.

In summing up the educational preparation of our presidents we find that a large number of them have been college graduates. At least fourteen of the twenty-six finished a college course, taking the degree of A.B. One was a that five others received a liberal education; graduate of West Point. It may also be said while six of them had a meagre education so far as any instruction in the schools is concerned.

The records of the present Congress show that one member of the lower house is a teacher

by occupation. This fact does not fairly indicate the advent of schoolmen in public affairs. In the present campaign teachers as never be fore have taken part in conventions and political discussions. The change in sentiment is reflected in the New York Press:

Bernard Shaw's famous epigram, "The man who can, does; the man who cannot, teaches," contains just enough truth to make it bite.

"The man who can" is needed in every profession; he is especially needed in a work which attracts much mediocrity because of the comfortable ease of fulfilling its minimum requirements. The disadvantages of low salaries are fast being removed by state and private endowment and at its maximum definition the profession of teaching is entirely worthy of the highest ambitions.

To-day, as never before, a career of instruction does not withdraw one from the active, practical work and life of the world outside academic walls. A teacher is the candidate of the democratic party for the presidency. Ex-professors are the advisers of foreign governments, and men who have taught or still are teaching find that they are not thus unfitted for many other kinds of serviceable doing.

The Junior Republic

Mr. George, of Republic fame, is to leave the picturesque hilltop at Freeville; and the young citizens of one of the smallest and most noted governments in the world will no longer daily see the familiar form of Daddy George. It is useless to pursue the reasons for the separation of the man and his work; it is at best an unfortunate affair.

Some years ago I happened in upon the George Junior Republic in its early days, while yet its fame was local and magazines were still unfilled with its praise. It was contained then in a farmhouse, a thickly populated barn and a large and crowded tent. The appointments were most primitive; some citizens slept upon the hay; the jail was the stall where the cows had been stabled in winter; inside, boy-prisoners sat with matter-of-fact patience, and outside, boy-keepers patroled with matter-of-fact importance.

Why it Succeeded

Since then I have seen the place a number of times when its admiring visitors were many, its housing and equipment pretentious and its fame was farspread; and always it seemed plain to me that there are just two great reasons for the notable results that have been accomplished. First, the man, a remarkable man, and in the second place the George Junior Republic is a simple illustration of what will happen to a company of human beings taken from the harassing conventions of their ordinary surroundings and set to battling with the elemental conditions of nature; of how that struggle will straighten out their moral kinks, sweeten them, and set them right.

The boy who had been brought up in the city streets, who looked upon every attendance officer and policeman as his deadly enemy, got an altogether different view of existence when he struck the problem of raising enough potatoes to buy his meals, clothes and lodging. He found that plenteous hoeing and abundant fertilizing bring the good things of life and that of real evils the potato bug is not least. He found that if he did not work neither could he eat. He saw clearly that laws and officers are simply to protect the worker and keep for him intact the proceeds of his toil. Under those conditions the foe of law and order became the friend and defender of law and order.

A Replica of Jamestown

Here, then, reduced to simple terms, is the reason for the success of the Freeville colony. And this fact ought to be plain to Americans,

since the success of every colony from which our country grew was largely the result of similar conditions. Those colonists became the stuff out of which a great empire was welded because leaving the usages and customs under which they had become warped they put themselves into elemental conditions and worked out unaided their own salvation. With their backs to three thousand miles of water and their faces to three thousand miles of wilderness they laid their course along the chalk-line of nature.

Immigrants Minus their Haloes

Of

And they were a tough set to begin with, those first boatloads. A lot of them would not get by our Ellis Island inspectors now. hands in horror at this statement, and take a course the Colonial Dames will hold up their few moments from quarreling over their officers for the next year to denounce the idea. I see the associations of descendants at their annual banquets-and I happen to be a descendant-proclaiming the exceptional physical, mental and moral equipment of their immigrating ancestors; when, like as not, if they could meet one of these progenitors getting off the boat, they wouldn't speak to him.

True, there were the picked lots, the Mayflower contingent and a few others, but a good share of those fellows that came across in the John Smith days were toughs. To fill the boats the jails were emptied, the lazy and disagre able were inveigled and the shiftless were enticed. These we do not hear of, of the excep tional few we do. Man for man the immiimmigrants of 1912. grants of 1612 and of 1712 were inferior to the

The Soil Heals

They were dumped on the shore and left to work or starve. Face to face with primal conditions, they found that evil was not the thing that priestly and lordly authority had taught them; they got into tune with nature; they sweetened; their moral kinks straightened out; they made for themselves such rules and rulers as seemed needful; they grew self-reliant; they achieved independence there and then. They supplied the facts to which, years later, that red-haired Virginian fitted some big words.

The trouble is now not so much with the kind of man that crawls out of the steerage to take his first look at the Goddess of Liberty, but with the place where we put him. We can't push a man into Hester street and make out of him what we could when we turned him loose in the wilderness of New Haarlem.

About the Man

So there we have the reason for the regeneration of the girls and boys at Freeville, not to forget in our accounting that other factor, the man. No use to try to analyze the elements of his power. It was at least great enough for him to ignore some of the directions laid down as essential to the proper handling of children. Once, to illustrate a point, he called up one of the boys and discussed his career and characteristics to his face.

His knowledge of his charges was as intimate and ready as his memory of their names and faces. He told me that when he lived in New York he could call thousands of children by name. The number of thousands was so many that I hesitate to mention the figures; but some years later, when I had not seen him for some time, he stopped me in the city of New York and called me by name.

A Secondary Consideration

The system of self-government, or of play self-government, which prevails in the institution has not been the secret of its success. That system has helped, and it has been the dramatic feature. It is what has appealed to many of the visitors, who in turn have imitated it in reformatory institutions and in schools.

Some of these imitations have been ludicrous failures. I have in mind two instances of the

introduction of Mr. George's ideas into the government of schools. In one case the principal was a conscientious plodder quite without imagination. He copied the plans to the minutest detail, thinking the method was all there was to it. In six months his school government had toppled into chaos. In the other case the principal had imagination to spare. He worked the analogy of the republic to the limit, trying to eliminate himself as the needful monarch of his realm. And in the end he covered the disgrace of failure by the introduction of another of his numerous and scintillating vagaries.

Men-Not Methods

There is, to be sure, a lot of helpful aids to discipline in some of the so-called self-government schemes. But they need a genius back of them. The ordinary headmaster of a school will get along better in the old-fashioned way, or at least with little of the machinery of the scheme apparent on the surface.

Mr. George himself did not seem to realize how much of the direction of affairs ever remained in his hands. "I have nothing more to do with matters here," he once said, "nothing at all. The boys and girls do it all." It was like the expert riding a bicycle. He hardly touches the handle-bars. He doesn't work them back and forth as he once did. The wheel seems to guide itself; but it doesn't.

It will be interesting to see what another will do in his place. With the start he has given the institution, a less able man ought to succeed.

But one thing is certain, the system won't work itself. There are some disappointed teachers in the land who can testify to that.

In 1850

I am indebted to the Journal of Education for an extract from an ancient newspaper, dated, in fact, exactly in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is the Richmond, Indiana, Palladium which is talking; and the talk is illuminative of the then prevailing notion of free schools. These are the remarks:

"A young man by the name of Josiah Hurty last night delivered an address upon education in the Presbyterian church. The audience was a large and appreciative one and the lecturer held them with his eloquence and strong discussion of the subject. One of the contentions was that which we have heard somewhat of before, that free schools be established. This idea is, of course, chimerical, impractical, and impossible of fulfillment. Obviously the people could never pay the taxes necessary for providing free education of all the children. Besides, this is a wrong principle, for it would take from the natural responsibilities of the parents, who are in duty bound to see that their children are properly educated."

In 1912

I am indebted to a current newspaper for the following item, which in the illuminating line has some candle-power:

drawing class so the pupils could study from the nude "Objection to having models placed in the room of a was made yesterday by the instruction committee of the Newark board of education. The commissioners decreed the clay and plaster casts were true enough to life, and put the ban on the proposition.

"The subject was brought to the attention of the committee by Cephas I. Shirley, principal of the Sarah A. Fawcett Drawing School. He said that eighteen of his advanced pupils in drawing wanted him to establish a class in nude. Mr. Shirley made it plain that he was not advocating it, but that it was merely the request of the pupils.

"After hearing him the commissioners announced that they would not stand for the idea, as it would be dangerous."

In 1950 this latter extract may be worth quoting again.

The Dastardly Deed

WELLAND HENDRICK.