but met with indifferent success, no effort being made to force them. 1. In general, each man by his choice of occupation classifies himself with respect to society. 2. That blacksmiths are bound together socially by common interests in occupation which might result in an organization known as a union or an association. 3. The dependence of one blacksmith upon others of the same class seemed new to the children. They had thought Mr. Goff "monarch of all he surveyed, and looked troubled to find things otherwise. 4. "The blacksmith dependent on society" was not so new. They readily classified them as good blacksmiths and poor blacksmiths, and stated advantages which one has over the others. One thrives and becomes prosperous because people can depend on his work. He is patronized and his shop is profitable; in turn society, notably to them, the farmers, are dependent on the blacksmiths, and so branching off to the interdependence of social units. 5. This aggregate was discussed, "The relation existing between a blacksmith and his customers." People form the habit of patronizing this blacksmith and so a "business" is built up so that, should Mr. Goff trade or sell out, his successor would likely get the same customers, and if his work were equally satisfactory, Iwould hold them. The children had experiences to relate here. "We always go to Mr. J's grocery." "We've gotten milk of Mr. W- for a couple of years, and when he sold to Mr. X- we kept right on getting milk of him. Mamma said it was too much trouble to change." The following series of related excursions is one of the richest in simple, concrete illustration of the elementary forms of the principles of division of labor and resulting advantages: 1. The carpenter shop. 2. A house in process of construction. 3. The tin shop. 4. The planing mill. 5. The lumber yard. 6. Lumbering and pineries. The latter not being a possible observational trip with us. From this series also sprang machine labor versus manual labor. Arguments on both sides are given and often the debate waxes exciting. I am often startled at the grasp the children have on these questions and feel sure too little credit is given them in the understanding of our social problems. In the discussion of the planing mill and canning factory, "the relation of those who employ to those who are employed," and "the relation of the employed to the employer," was amply illustrated. The statements made by the children in the discussion, their ideas of man's humanity to man, and respect for authority were so clearly put that if their ideals are not warped by greed of gain, a force has been started which may help to solve the labor question in the coming years. The observational trip to the nursery gives us the opportunity to develop the "sacredness of unprotected property," "the sacredness of property in transit," and "basis of credit." This is sufficient to suggest what is being done in home geography incidentally along the lines of sociology. These then are some of the chief advantages in this work. 1. Develops powers of observation. 2. Enlarges store of useful information. 3. Acquaints the child with his surroundings; makes him intelligent with respect to his environment. 4. In the discussion, the understanding and reasoning powers are called to help memory. 5. Starts with sense-perception, and so rests on a sound basis, goes next to conception and idea. Shows the particu lar, concrete thing, shows him several similar particulars, and offers the opportunity to generalize. 6. Leads to the knowledge of princi ples to be developed through the knowl edge of observed facts and in this work of generalizing the power to use his own mind, the power to gain more knowledge; in short, the power to think. 7. Gives many opportunities for language culture, both oral and written; also opportunity to express himself through drawing. 8. The opportunity to introduce elementary forms of sociology. MAUD VALENTINE. Training Teacher in Illinois Normal University. On the Use of Like. Some of our correspondents have been writing some good things about the use of "like" in the expression of thought. One would need to follow the history of the development of the different uses of this word in English speech to be able to speak with authority on the proper and the improper use of it. But there is another fairly satisfactory way of deciding such questions. The original meaning of the word in Saxon, and allied languages, seems to be, "having the body, or shape, or appearance of something. This makes the original word do service as an adjective, since it expresses an attribute of a subjectidea. The extension of the use of this word to the modification of the meaning of an attribute word would soon follow, and such expressions as "He works like a slave" would come into use. Here it is the attribute of the subject, viz., working, which resembles that of the slave, and the use is adverbial since all attributes of other attributes are adverbial ideas. Then would come the use of like as a verb, as "I freely confess it likes me much better when I find virtue in a fair lodging than when I am bound to seek it in an ill-favored creature." -Sidney. This, literally construed, means that Sid. ney most resembles himself when he prefers virtue in a fair lodging, etc. From this to the use as a transitive verb is a short step, as "I like both the sunshine and the shower." Now the adjective "like" has lent itself more readily than some other words to taking after it an object without the preposition, "John looks like (to) his father." "Like" is not classed by our lexicographers as performing the double office of adverb and preposition in such cases, but it is only the few that think of the preposition "to" as needed in such constructions as the above. There is an evident tendency also among the unlearned in a large portion of the United States, to make "like" perform the double office of an adverb and a conjunction: as, "He talks like a bishop preaches." There are sentences where such a use as this passes unchallenged, though the one given would not be of the number, for it is evidently bad English, judged by present standards. And this is so merely because what is termed good usage has not yet admit ted that "like" can be a conjunctive adverb. And yet it performs that double office in the speech of half the people in America, perhaps. There are other occasional and unique uses of the word like, which are not taken seriously but are a sort of linguistic brica-brac that interests only the curious. G. P. B. Hon. John R. Kirk, state superintendent of Missouri makes the following statement in bis last annual report. How many schools does he describe? Does the shoe fit any reader of THE JOURNAL? "An impartial study of the typical school will probably justify the following conclusions: "1. That we begin by repressing instead of directing the normal inclinations of the child; 2. That we restrain his physical impulses instead of using them to promote his intellectual and moral growth; 3. That we educate him away from habits of action; "4. That we ordinarily withdraw him too far from real and tangible things; and fill him with facts too remote from the employment which his talent and his necessities will require him to follow when grown to manhood. "Children entering school at the age of six with no apparent disposition toward laziness are known to grow less inclined to work at useful things the longer they attend school; so true is this that large num bers of young people on leaving school, between the ages of fourteen and twenty, not only have no skill in doing useful things, such as an enlightened community must have done, but they have acquired a permanent distaste for doing useful things. "This does not seem right. But it is not the fault of the children; it is the fault of those who misguide the children; it is the effect of a system. Many, very many, 14-year-old boys and girls sit in the schoolroom day after day, not only in a condition of bodily inactivity, but also in a state of artificially induced mental inactivity, reverie, or day-dreaming, because the abstract and obscure subjects given them to 'study' do not appeal to their interest and cannot be brought by them into relation with concepts built up in previous work and play." Grammar and Rapid Addition. The following is the good old-fashioned way of successful teaching which has produced the able men of this generation. Its pedagogy is not of the modern type, but it will prove very effective in the hands of a Dr. McCaskey. Do you teach grammar? Don't waste much time on the text-book until pupils know nouns from verbs, and adjectives from prepositions, etc. Know twenty-five or thirty rules. If they are not in the book you use, make them, or get them from another book! Have everybody write and commit them to memory, whether understood or not. Don't expect the impossibility of having everybody understand everything. Know twenty-five or thirty good definitions. Have them written out by everybody and committed to memory, whether understood or not. Take page after page of your readers, go over them diligently for nouns, and nothing else. Use rules and definitions here and there as you can. Then for other parts of speech, one at a time, using rules and definitions so far as possible. Let the boys and girls weigh the words-in the hand, if you choose-to get the heft of them, and see how they fit to the definitions. Gradually light will come, and they will know that it is coming. When somewhat familar with rules take the words as they come on the printed page of reader or book, giving rules only and nothing else. Presently they will have some working knowledge of grammar so as to make the study of the text-book more profitable. It is a good thing at this stage and afterwards to keep a small blank book for incorrect English they may hear, these expressions to be corrected in class with rules. This practical exercise enables the pupil to get grammar out of the book and into the life, in his everyday thought and speech. Do you teach arithmetic? Don't think it the greatest thing on the list, nor have too many divisions of the subject, nor teach it too much. Better throw your slates out of the window than to do this. But teach it hard, make results as sure as you can, and compel as rapid work as possible. When a pupil has become an expert in the matter in hand, let him or her be excused until another subject is taken up. So often boys and girls do not know how to add, that if I were teaching arithmetic, I would have plenty of rapid addition. I think I would put a problem on the board--say 12×16, twelve rows of sixteen figures each-and keep it there as a perpetual challenge to the school that they cannot add. If anybody made a very high record on tests against time, I would excuse him. Changing a very few figures in the problem will make it new almost in a second. The entire school might have this exercise once or perhaps twice a week. Mark time! and change the prob. lem when the time is up, no matter who is late on it. Hammered upon it in this way through the grades, gradually simple addition would be so mastered as to become almost automatic, and you would be remembered gratefully for having made it so. But much more can be taught from this challenge problem than rapid addition. "To-morrow this will be a forest, first line, oaks; second, hickories; third, pines; fourth, maples, etc. I want to see how many know what these trees look like, and can describe them and their fruit. Get leaves, or pictures, or look carefully at the trees themselves and read descrip. tions of them if you can, so that you can describe them." After some attention to the trees, until pupils are able to tell where different kinds of trees are growing in the city, from having seen and recognized, and become somewhat interested in them, let the problem stand for native flowering plants, foreign plants in our yards and gardens, fruit trees, garden, vegetables, field products, insects, birds, beasts, fishes, men, monkeys, dogs, metals, rocks, shells, capitals, punctuation marks, feet in poetry, ships, mechanics' tools, farming implements, weapons of war, musical instruments, etc. Touch geography, grammar, spelling, history, astronomy, anything, everything. to awaken attention and give many new things to talk about, and many new facts of unusual interest outside the ordinary routine of school work. The variety here depends upon the ingenuity of the teacher; and the time of the exercise, under the lead of a live teacher, would never be long enough to exhaust interest in the subject. They must know the multiplication table and the tables of denominate numbers, simple matters which afford a good chance for fast work. Half the arithme tic is fractions in one form or another. Play with fractions as experts play baseball. And the square and cube roots are really no harder than long division to a boy or girl of brains who is awake, attentive, and observant. J. P. MCCASKEY. Manual Training for Girls in Chicago. The following description is furnished by Principal H. S. Tibbits, of the Hammond school, Chicago, who has been instrumental in employing some of the wealth of generous minded Opportunity for such training for boys was first afforded the Tilden school by the munificence of Mr. R. T. Crane, later to the Hammond school by Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick. Today more than a score of "centers" supply instruction in the use of wood working tools to nearly all the boys of the grammar schools in Chicago at public expense. But the girls have been ignored in the practical operation of this part of the Chicago course until September of this year. Simultaneously, the Chas. Kosminski and the Hammond schools initiated the training of girls in some handiwork and patriotic citizens of Chicago to test the practicability of introducing instruction for girls in domestic economy into the elementary grades of the public schools. -EDITORIAL NOTE. "Of all the arts I hold to the belief that the art of cooking is the most far reaching in its benefits to humanity. Ignorance of this art has caused more misery in the world than intemperance; has broken up more homes than infidelity. By all means let the girls learn to cook and ply the needle." A. R. SABIN. Manual Training is accorded ninety minutes per week in the seventh and eighth grades of the Chicago course of study, following the recommendation of the Committee of Fifteen. This through private generosity. The Kitchen Garden association equipped a cooking room and a room for typical kitchen garden work at the Kozminski school. work is shared by pupils from other schools. Mrs. Elizabeth Stickney and Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick provided funds for the introduction of sewing and cooking at the Hammond school, and Miss Florence Willard, a gradute of Pratt institute, has taught these subjects to two hundred and fifty girls in classes of twenty to twenty-four, at the same hours in which the boys had been receiving instruction in wood work. The eighth grade at the Hammond receives manual training one hour per day, both boys and girls, thirty minutes of this in school time and thirty minutes outside time. It is the firm conviction of the principal, and time strengthens the conviction, that any valuable training should be given daily, if possible, or as often as possible in preference to a prolonged period weekly. The instruction is given in the seventh, sixth, and fifth grades also, but in a more elementary form. Some correlation of the work is possible with the subjects of nature study, physiology, geography, etc., and grade teachers of the school have gladly availed themselves of the opportunity to widen the relations of such subjects. The cooking lesson is in no sense a play spell. The teacher, with two years of professional training beyond high school, possesses the scientific spirit and from the first lesson on the potato up to the subject of meats, etc., questions a clear understanding and a firm retention into the minds of the girls. The cooking room is a laboratory, with individual gas stoves and utensils for eighteen pupils and a large steel coal range, and complete large gas range. Both are fitted with water heaters, supplying hot and cold water to each of the three sinks. Two of these are most conveniently located in the center of the long laboratory tables. This individual or laboratory method of teaching cooking was chosen in preference to the class lecture and demonstration method, though the latter finds favor in a few eastern cities in which a cooking room contains but one range and one or two pupils cook. The related topic of cleaning is just now being developed in preparation for the house cleaning period at home, and the girls are removing spots and stains from various fabrics, furniture, carpets, etc., with some notion of the "how" of acid, alkali, and solvent. The older pupils are asked to assist mothers in keeping clean and in repair the garments of younger brothers and sisters in school. There is a peculiar fitness in the introduction of scientific cookery and sewing in such a school as the Hammond, attended by children of the artisan class. If economical, sanitary, and healthful cooking and thorough cleanliness are of A large percentage of these reports indicate success. The "why" of failures is made clear and difficulties are removed. The selection of teachers is a most vital point in the growth of the subject of domestic science. It is not true that any woman who can cook is fitted for such work. A few minutes time suffice for a modern trained teacher from Pratt, Drexel, or Teacher's College to separate the starch, cellulose, and water in a potato, explain their relative value to the dietary and the relation to the cooking processes. A knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology are essential, but not sufficient. There is a body of scientific knowledge which gives reason to the term "domestic science." It is largely of recent development and rapidly expanding. The names of Atwater and Atkinson suggest this without leaving the "A's." The teacher of sewing and cooking should have two years' normal training in domestic science beyond high school. It is interesting to note that the study of domestic science often has its inception in a city through the institute or technical school, the philanthropic rich man's ideal of a secondary school. Armour and Lewis institutes in Chicago have had flourishing and exceedingly popular departments of the kind for sometime. But not only does the wealthy practical man believe in relating education more clearly to the future needs of the child, it seems the demand of the anarchist, the trade union, the profound student of pedagogy, and of a Spencer and a |