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There are, fortunately, human tendencies retarding such a mad career as this. Of these are avarice, making us save even when there is no direct motive for saving; family pride, unwilling to resign the task of chaping its heirs; and above all, parental love, refusing to deny itself to its offspring.

What the public schools can and can not do-kindergarten training.-State Superintendent A. S. Draper, of New York: The business and industrial world is in a ferment. The educational world is no less so. All manner of schemes are on foot. Everything is expected and demanded of the schools. Specialization and experimentation are the order of the day. The schools are sympathetic with this spirit. In my opinion there is danger in it. It is a tendeney which is to be resisted. The schools can not specialize. They can not undertake to fit a child for any particular field of labor for they can not cover all the fields. They can not teach him all he is ever to know. They can arouse his faculties. They can give him the elements of an education upon which he can build for himself and they can stimulate his ambition so that he will want to build for himself. If they do this they will do much. This much will not be accomplished if the schools attempt to do special things or if the work of the schools is allowed to become involved in uncertainty and confusion.

In so many cases as to be practically universal the child will remain in the school but a few years. He may be expected to withdraw at any time. Then the most scientific and painstaking work must be done in the first years. If there is unusual care or large expense it must be there. The idea that persons of little learning or who are without professional training can teach the youngest children, must be discarded. The greatest expertness must be placed where it will reach the greatest numbers and perform the best and most lasting work. We must proceed as though each year may be the last in which the child will have the benefit of the schools.

The child is to live in contact with affairs. He is to live by his hands and his eyes as well as by his ability to reason. His value as a citizen and his success as a man depend as much on his ability to do as on his ability to think and perhaps as much on his sense of right as on either.

Then he is to be educated practically. He is to be taught to put his hands and his eyes to their best uses. More than this, he must be disciplined. His moral sense must be aroused. He must be brought into sympathy and harmonious relations with nature and with affairs. We can not neglect this until we arrive at the age at which children may advantageously handle tools, and then expect to accomplish much. Something must precede the handling of tools. Half the children will have left school before that time. A carpenter shop connected with a high school is a feeble thing with which to bestow a practical education upon the children of a sizeable city. But the kindergarten will do it. It is at the right end of the course. It may reach every child. It harmonizes with the other work of the school. Children love it. It lengthens their time in school. Otherwise its results are extraordinary. It arouses an interest in natural objects, as stones and trees and animals. It cultivates social amenities and asserts mutuality of rights and obligations. It quickens the moral sense. It sharpens the observing and perceptive faculties. It forms and develops the constructive powers. It cultivates the aesthetic taste. The laying of straws, the weaving of mats, the folding of papers, the blending of colors, the molding of sand and the modeling of clay, train the eye to exactness and the hand to deftness at an age when such training is effective and influences the whole after life, If beyond this children are taught obedience, punctuality, neatness, some knowledge of themselves, if they are taught to spell correctly, to speak grammatically, to write legibly, to read understandingly, if they are taught the fundamental principles of mathematics, and if it is done in a cheerful way so that the teacher will be looked upon as a friend and helper, the public schools will have met measurably the responsibility resting upon them. If the attendance can be general and regular the schools will make the citizenship of the State industrious, well-disposed, and safe.

XII. READING AND LITERATURE.

Classical literature the basis for ethical training.-President Charles de Garmo, of Swarthmore College: The advantage of the classical, imaginative literature for the young is that it portrays the ethical lessons of life in a form that most powerfully appeals to the child's natural interests. To many it is a familiar thought that the stages of a child's mental development correspond to the stages of culture through which the world has passed. If this is true, as it must be in some

sense, then thoughtful experiment with classical literary forms will enable us to find that best adapted to any given stage of child development. All education is a process of attaining intellectual and moral freedom. The true fairy tale not only embodies an ethical truth, but it frees the puny child from the iron bands of time and place and circumstance. The child of penury may dwell in marble halls with princes of the blood and eat the food of the gods. Mrs. Burnett has beautifully illustrated this power of the imagination in "Sara Crew." The curlyheaded lad at his father's knee may quickly become the armed hero, doing mighty deeds for the right. This emancipation from the physical limitations may soon be transformed to the moral field. I have said that it is the mission of literature to enable the individual ideally to pass through the experience of the race without the pain that the original experience cost. What a weary round of scourgings the race has gone through to arrive at its present state of material, political, and ethical freedom! All this is portrayed figuratively in literature, and literally in history. The child is born now, as ever, with all his experiences before him. Must he, for the lack of education, tread again the thorny path of his race? We do not ask it with regard to his material or intellectual welfare; why should we with the moral? Shall we not rather portray the inevitable struggle in forms that he can understand, teaching him to win the victory before the battle is fought.

The basis for ethical training in elementary education is to be found, therefore, primarily in a graduated course in classical literature, beginning with fairy tales, myths, legends, and folklore, and culminating with the higher dramatic literature; and secondarily, in the concrete biographical and narrative elements. of history.

The best literature for children.-Principal George M. Grant, Queen's University (Ontario): The difficulty of teaching literature to children is very great, perhaps greater than of teaching history itself; and the usual mistake is in being too formal, too didactic, too analytic, and too ambitious. The children must be interested only through their imaginations. Mr. Gradgrind would give them "facts." I would give them stories and tales instead-books like Hans Andersen's and Grimm's tales, the Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, and the Synoptic Gospels, to begin with, to be followed by Scott's poems, selections of ballad poetry and selections from Scripture. The best literature for children from their seventh to their fourteenth years,” says Rosenkranz, "consists always of that which is honored by nations and the world at large," and if the books I have mentioned are objected to, choose at any rate others that have stood the test of time and a jury that may be said to comprise universal humanity.

Should not anatomize in teaching children literature.-Miss N. Cropsey: A vast amount of time is wasted by presenting the common and the crude in reading and literature, because we fail to understand the poetic spirit in which the child interprets the world. It is not necessary to know the exact meaning of each word in a poem in order to be instructed and inspired by its general sentiment. The world comes to us first as a general impression; it may be dim and obscure; its diversity is interpreted in relation to this whole. Our primary schools ought to teach the best that literature has to offer, not the most complex or the most ob cure in meaning, but some expression of other than the literal and disconnected view of things.

The analytic processes may entirely absorb the time of the child in school, and completely obscure his poetic view of the whole which he brought to us out of the land of early childhood, leaving him on a barren plain of facts, cut off from the living spring of imagination and reason. The eye of the poet integrates the parts and feels the living spirit which animates and unifies nature, though he may not be able to give a scientific classification of its forms.

He will get much more than we imagine.-Intelligence: Reading should be encouraged with the earliest ability of the child to read, and continue through all his public school career. There is slight danger of the child reading beyond his depth. What if he does not seize all the thoughts if he only begets a taste for ennobling literature? He will get much more than we imagine, and will grasp it with a firmness we little suspect.

The teaching of English literature.-The following remarks upon the methods of teaching English literature were written by a graduate of the Worcester (Mass.) Normal School and read by Hon. A. P. Marble at a meeting of the New York State Teachers' Association:

If I am to teach literature to a class of boys and girls, I must have my target, just as truly as the child with the bow and arrow in his hands must have his. I

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must know at what my teaching is aiming, or I shall be as likely to fire into the ground as at the stars.

I begin with the hypothesis that literature is to be studied in our high schools as a form of culture and education beneficial to our growth, though, it may be, not directly helpful as a preparation for bread-earning. If one were to ask a class of boys and girls, after a year's study of literature, in what way they expected to use their knowledge, I imagine he would get some such answers as these: "I shall be able to make a great many pat quotations." "I shall be able to talk on literary subjects." "I shall be able to use better language." "I have got started in reading and in thinking for myself;" or, perhaps, "I don't suppose I shall ever use it at all."

These answers, with the exception of the last, are reducible to two purposes: To show off what one has accomplished, and to be able to accomplish in the

future.

If one's education is to be only an end, and not a means to something further, it is a poor thing to waste fifteen years of work for, and not usually worth trying to show off. It is what one is, or is able to become as the result of the work he has done, rather than the exact measure of knowledge he has gathered together, that is of value to him. Things plastered upon the outside of a person soon wear off and show the old texture through. That which is taken in as a germinating force, fostered and helped to grow, changes the very fiber of the mind, and makes it able to be and to produce that which it could not have been or produced otherwise.

The activity of the mind is of course thought. And just in proportion as we can increase the thoughtfulness, the habit of thinking deeply and independently, just in that proportion can we give vitality and strength to the intellect of a youth.

Young people think, of course. But what about? Take a class of boys and girls 15 or 16 years old. What sort of thoughts are making themselves at home in their minds, to order their affairs? There is the last ball game, the tennis match, the new spring dresses, the next dancing school, endless novels, with many tedious school books from which to economize time for more interesting things. Here is much thinking, but little thought. Much of it a very healthful kind of thinking, but not just the kind that is going to bring them out men and women, intellectually wide-awake, serious, and clear-sighted, the kind of men and women we need.

Take this class of young people and get them deeply interested in a play of Shakespeare. The plot itself can be trusted to get their interest. Then just make those characters live to those boys and girls; and if Iago and Othello, Macbeth, Portia, and Hamlet do not teach them some lessons about themselves and their relations and duties to their fellow-men I am greatly mistaken.

Make them hear a little of the music of Milton, entertain them with some of Dickens and Scott, got them up to their ears in discussions over the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In each case pick out the great gift, the leading char acteristic of a writer, and just make that one point tell on the thoughts of the pupils. Above all things, do not discourage the pupils from making their own comments and expressing their own opinions. They will often seem ridiculous to the teacher; but youth is the time to be ridiculous, and mistakes are the surest way to correct ideas.

Would I have them learn quotations? Certainly. Things committed to memory are seen in the many different lights of after reflections, while a thing read once has but the light of a passing mood.

But committing to memory should not be the chief work of a class, and pupils should be tempted and praised, rather than driven and scolded, to quotationlearning.

It is very common, too, I think, in the study of literature, to require a pretty full biographical account of the life of each writer studied. This would do very well for a psychologist or a philosopher, or even for a man of mere general culture, provided he were 60 years old. And so with long criticisms and books about books: they are well for the writer of 40. But give these young boys and girls the works of great men, pure and simple, and let them feed on them and grow mentally and morally.

In my opinion it is better, too, not to include very many writers in a school literary course. Just as it is better to have a good talk with one intellectually great man than to have an introduction to 40, so it is better to know 1 poet than to know 40. To study literature and to study the history of literature are two different things, and they should not be exchanged for one another. But the life is in the literature, not in its history.

XIII.-RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TRAINING.

Religion in education.-Brother Azarias: Religion is sacred, and because it is so sacred a thing it should not be excluded from the schoolroom. It is not a garment to be donned or doffed at will. It is not something to be folded away carefully as being too precious for daily use. It is rather something to be so woven into the warp and woof of thought and conduct and character, into one's very life, that it becomes a second nature and the guiding principle of all one's actions. Can this be effected by banishing religion from the schoolrcom? Make religion cease to be one with the child's thoughts and words and actsone with his very nature-at a time when the child's inquisitiveness and intellectual activity are at their highest pitch; cause the child to dispense with all consciousness of the Divine Source of light and truth in his thinking; eliminate from your text-books in history, in literature, in philosophy, the conception of God's providence, of His ways and workings, and you place the child on the way to forget, or ignore, or mayhap deny that there is such a being as God and that His providence is a reality. The child is frequently more logical than the man. If the thought of God, the sense of God's intimate presence everywhere, the holy name of Jesus be eliminated from the child's consciousness and be forbidden his tongue to utter with reverence in prayer during school hours, why may not these things be eliminated outside of school hours? Why may they not be eliminated altogether? So may the child reason; so has the child reasoned; and therefore does the church seek to impress upon it indelibly the sacred truths of religion in order that they may be to it an ever-present reality.

Not that religion can be imparted as a knowledge of history or grammar is taught. The repetition of the catechism or the reading of the gospel is not religion. Religion is something more subtle, more intimate, more all-pervading. It speaks to head and heart. It is an ever-living presence in the schoolroom. It is reflected from the pages of one's reading books. It is nourished by the prayers with which one's daily exercises are opened and closed. It controls the affections; it keeps watch over the imagination; it permits to the mind only useful and holy and innocent thoughts; it enables the soul to resist temptation; it guides the conscience; it inspires a horror for sin and a love for virtue. The religion that could be cast off with times and seasons were no religion. True religion may be likened to the ethereal substance that occupies interstellar space. This substance permeates all bodies. There is no matter so compact that it does not enter, and between the atoms of which it does not circulate. Even so should it be with religion. It should form an essential portion of our life. It should be the very atmosphere of our breathing. It should be the soul of our very action. We should live under its influence, act out its precepts, think and speak according to its laws as unconsciously as we breathe. It should be so intimate a portion of ourselves that we could not, even if we would, ever get rid thereof. This is religion as the church understands religion. Therefore does the church foster the religious spirit in every soul confided to her, at all times, under all circumstances, without rest, without break, from the cradle to the grave. Place yourself, at this point of view, and say, if believing all this, child of yours should receive any other than a religious education.

How piety can not and can be taught.-Carlyle: Piety to God, the nobleness that inspires a human soul to struggle heavenward, can not be taught" by the most exquisite catechisms or the most industrious preachings and drillings. No; alas, no. Only by far other methods, chiefly by silent, continual example, silently waiting for the favorable mood and moment, and aided then by a kind of miracle, well enough named the grace of God," can that sacred contagion pass from soul into soul. How much beyond whole libraries of orthodox theology is, sometimes, the mute action, the unconscious look of a father, of a mother, who had in them "devoutness, pious nobleness!" in whom the young soul, not unobservant though not consciously observing, came at length to recognize it, to read it in this irrefragable manner-a seed planted thenceforth in the center of his holiest affections forevermore.

Can morality be taught in our public schools apart from religion and theology?— Nicholas Paine Gilman: The great facts and the main laws of the moral life are obvious to all mature men and women; certainly they are not dependent, for their clearness and their binding force, upon any notions as to the origin either of the universe, of mankind, or of the perception itself of these facts and laws. The facts of astronomy which affect men's daily life-such as the so-called rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, and the phenomena of the ocean

tide, for instance-are plain to every one; the explanation of them given by the astronomer to the farmer and sailor, whether correct or not, will not essentially change the arts of agriculture and navigation. So the common practical duties of human beings have long been familiar. Each new generation must learn them afresh, indeed, but it learns every day morality as an art, not as a science. The difficulty lies in the practice, not in the theory. Philosophers may dispute as to the exact reason why a man loves or should love, his mother; but the duty of loving one's mother is not a question considered open to discussion in common life. The same may be said of the other obligations which make up the substance of their duty for the great mass of mankind, in all but exceptional

times and situations.

When, then, we have in mind as a subject for public school instruction, not the science of ethics, not the speculations of moral philosophers, but the orderly presentation of the common facts and laws of the moral life which no one in his senses disputes, we perceive how the religious or theological difficulty at once disappears, to a large degree. There is possible a theistic explanation of the moral law; there is possible an atheistic explanation; but there is a third course open here to the common-school teacher-to attempt no such final explanation at all. It is not necessary for him to teach that morality rests upon religion as its ultimate foundation; it is just as unnecessary for him to teach that religion, on the contrary, reposes upon morality as its basis. Let the relation of religion and morality be as it may be the teacher is not called upon to decide an issue of this magnitude. He can teach the duties of ordinary life, showing their reasonableness and their interdependence in a consecutive, orderly manner, without appealing to religion; he can use the plain and usual consequences of actions, good or bad, as reasons for morality, without being open to a just accusation of irreligion. These consequences, as he should teach them, are admitted by

all.

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Such a limitation bars out all matters of theological controversy. The sectarian difficulty and the religious difficulty in moral education disappear when we keep to conduct and its common laws, and stop short of theological or philosophical explanations why right is right or wrong is wrong.

General method of moral instruction in public schools.-Nicholas Paine Gilman: The one principle to keep firmly in mind is to avoid didacticism ("preaching") as much as possible, and to hold fast to actual life as children already know it, or may be led to comprehend it. Concrete instances of right-doing or wrongdoing, happening in the schoolroom itself, or just outside, within the immediate knowledge of the boys and girls, afford the best starting point for talks about the moral points involved. It will be easy to bring the children's minds, through a consideration of actual examples, to recognize in some degree the general principles involved. The same caution needs to be urged here as in the case of other general notions, against haste and consequent disregard of the immaturity of the childish mind. But if the teacher will shun formality and generality, and keep mainly to the particular and the concrete, he will find that few subjects interest children more than these questions of right and wrong in common conduct. These men-and-women-to-be find people the most attractive matter, just as they will find them later in life. Man is not only the "proper," but also the most engaging "study of mankind," large or small. Conduct is to children, who have not yet entered upon the great activities of business, art, or science, much more than "three-fourths of life," and the lines of it on which they are beginners will continue unbroken through all their years. Elaborate casuistry, hairsplitting about imaginary situations, anything and everything in the line of pure ethical theory, should be utterly tabooed in the school room. But with these precautions observed, and under the guidance of a teacher of well developed moral sense, boys and girls between 8 and 14 years of age (in the grammar schools, where moral education has its most fruitful field) will reason about points of ethical practice with interest, and often with a freshness and an acuteness that are surprising. If this be not so, then these children in school differ very much from these same children out of school.

If the course of study is, anywhere, so full or crowded as not to allow time for the occasional talks (one or two a week) about conduct, which I should advise as the best method, then that course should be shortened by the omission of some branch of much less useful knowledge sure to be found in it. I would avoid set times for these conversations; in them, question and answer should play a large part; the more easily (if not very frequently) the teacher "drops into one of them for a few vivacious minutes, the better. Some incident of the schoolroom life that has just occurred, or some matter in the lesson in read

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