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are-scholarship, teaching ability, the teacher's spirit, professional skill and the power of getting hold of pupils.

3. The value of four years of life in a good high school under the influence of inspiring teachers and a helpful home should not be underestimated. It is a place of regular work, obedience to law, and respect for the rights of others. Aristocrary cannot thrive in its atmosphere, the civic and social virtues are its legitimate product. The importance of the high school problem is very much underestimated even by the educators of the land. In the future it will hold a prominent place in educational discussions. Retrenchment in expenses, shortening of the term, or the appointment of inefficient teachers in the high school is likely to spread to the elementary schools. I am ready to stand by the principle that we cannot have a common school system without the high school.

In the past week Dr. Harris sends out this statement:

"In twenty-five years the number of students in institutions of higher education, such as colleges and universities, has increased from 598 in a million to 1,215 in a million of inhabitants, or more than double. While in 1876 there were only 2,150 in a million working on studies preparatory to college and branches of study of an equivalent degree of advancement, in 1897 to 1898 there were 7,630 students engaged on such branches."

In eight years the number studying "Latin has increased from thirty-three and one-third per cent of the entire number of secondary students to fortynine per cent." "The increase of the quota of the population that acquires secondary and higher education shows conclusively that, in proportion wealth increases and the productive power of the people gains strength, the

as

people at large give their children better educational opportunities."

The past year has given us an unprecedented number of important educational reports. No live teacher can afford to be ignorant of the contents of those issued by authority of the National Educational Association-the reports on College Entrance Requirements, Normal Schools and the Relation of Public Libraries to Public Schools. These should be on every teacher's desk. The most wonderful educational curiosity of the age is Senator Stewart's Senate Report on the Schools of the District of Columbia. You cannot do without it. The Ohio Syllabi on Geography and Arithmetic are specially valuable.

Overwork has been the most generally discussed school subject of the year. Placing side by side Mr. Bok's Slaughter of the Innocents and Prof. Münsterburg's School Reform in the May Atlantic we may see the question approached from two extreme points of view. Mr. Bok has done the cause of education no harm. He has set the people to thinking, but they do not share his alarm. Prof. Münsterburg's statement of the fact that German boys at fifteen are as far along in their studies as American boys at eighteen; that German boys at eighteen are as well equipped as our American men at twenty-two, offers an interesting problem for the investigation of the conditions under which such a variety of results is obtained. I am certain of one thing-our children are not overworked on account of either the quantity or quality of the education they receive. With most children it is the habit of idleness rather than overwork that is to be feared.

When better common sense will prevail in the classification of pupils, when we shall have a rational course of study, when all teachers will have

both accurate scholarship and professional skill, when the home and society shall give the right of way to the school, our children will do more and better work with greater ease and less worry. The result will be "Joy through achievement."

I deem it my duty on this occasion to urge upon you the claims of the Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle. There are many superintendents, principals, institute instructors, county examiners and teachers who ought to give their positive and active support to this cause. This movement, like other movements, will not run itself; some enthusiastic leaders are needed in every county to organize and carry on the work. With all its short-comings, this movement has done more to cultivate the idea of professional requirements for teaching than any other agency in the history of the state. Its success in a community depends almost entirely upon the attitude toward it of the most influential teachers. It disseminates correct principles and methods of teaching; it cultivates in its courses in literature, history and science, a sentiment for general culture; it aids in forming libraries; it furnishes a course of study for many; it affords its members a higher inspiration and a broader outlook; it aids in bringing about a real profession of teaching.

Our pupils' reading course should be made the ally of the school in every part of the state. This is emphatically

a children's age. Children are receiving attention in a way never before dreamed of. Their reading matter in the home, Sunday school, school and public library is receiving careful attention. Teachers who do not know the best books for children are unfit for their work. Dr. Harris says: "It is much more a matter of importance to get the right kind of book than to get a living teacher." Stanley Hall expresses this thought: "The reading of good books should be a part of regular school work, children should not leave school without knowing what good books are."

A thorough acquaintance and a scholarly appreciation of the best things in literature is one of the essential equipments of the teacher of the coming century. No subject has a greater claim upon him than a practical working knowledge of children's books and a well selected library. The facts, sentiments and ideals which are the result of a child's reading exert a neverdying influence not generally conceded.

If time permitted, I should be happy to touch upon a number of vital current school problems. Whatever may be our individual views on these, our hopes as to the future of the schools must ultimately center around these three essential things-the efficient, the true teacher, the intelligent co-operation of the home and the helpful influences of the social forces in our American life.

PRIMARY WORK.

BY MARY GORDON.

"Nothing useless is, or low. Each thing in its place is best."

These lines came as a consolation to the mind of a weary primary teacher

after conducting closing exercises in her own schools, attending Children's Day exercises the following Sunday morning, and in the afternoon hearing a beautiful sermon by an orator

preacher. The first effect of that great oration was to make her own work seem little, almost petty. For a primary teacher is wont to suffer depression, a kind of reaction just after the stress and strain of the year are lifted from her.

THE LARGER VIEW OF THE PRIMARY
TEACHER'S WORK.

Then came to mind those lines "Nothing useless is, or low, Each thing in its place is best," and she thought: the primary teacher should be one who sees things relatively, who places a proper valuation on "each thing in its place," one who has breadth of mind and is wide of intellect. Not one who spends half the evenings of the week at primary meetings, primary Sunday School Unions. Not one, who, when the Outlook comes looks first and perhaps only at the children's page. But one who, like any other cultivated woman, reads, studies, feels the current of the flow of events in this "age on ages telling."

And she repeated again those lines and realized the truth that her work though humble was just as important as that of the College President and orator. And the final effect, as it always is of a fine oration, was uplifting. She again took the larger view of the primary teacher's work.

The greatest minds have ever found keenest pleasure in companionship with children. Not by being primary teacherized, but by virtue of that universal touch that makes those of all ages companionable. How great was the pleasure Sir Walter Scott derived from his friendship with little Margery Fleming. For friendship is the true relation for children to hold with parents and teach

ers.

Primary teachers need ballast, balance, symmetry and common sense. Estimable women who "talk down" to

"little people" ought never to be primary teachers. I have known intelligent children from cultured homes who seemed to learn nothing during many weeks at school. Why? Because the estimable woman who presided had a plan that must be followed exactly for the time prescribed in her course of study.

And here I would say in an aside to certain superintendents who allow a primary teacher no freedom in arrangement of her work, that either he is dictating where he should not, or she is not suited to her position. For she of all others knows the auspicious "when" in the development of each child to present the proper work.

Teachers who assume that children know nothing when they enter school make a mistake. They remind one of the young newspaper man sent to interview the Chinaman proprietor of a tea store on what he thought about Chinamen voting. The young reporter went inside the tea store, took out his note book and thus addressed the proprietor: "John, how? Me-meTelegraph. John! Newspape-savoy, John? Newspape-print things. Unistan? Me want know what John think about Chinaman vote, see? What John think-Chinaman-vote all Melican man? Savvy, John? Vote? What think?

same

The Chinaman listened to him with profound gravity until he had finished and replied:

"The question of granting the right. of suffrage to Chinese citizens who have come to the United States with the avowed intention of making this country their permanent home is one that has occupied the attention of thoughtful men of all parties for years, and it may become in time one of paramount importance. At present, however, it seems to me, there is no exigency requiring an expression of opin

ion from me upon this subject. You will please excuse me."

The young reporter went outside and leaned against a lamppost to rest and recover from a sudden faintness that had taken possession of him. His superior had purposely "steered him against" one of the best educated Chinamen in the United States.

Children often give us just as startling surprises.

CHIEF AIMS OF PRIMARY WORK. Our material—the children. The Primary teacher should be conservative, progressive and self-reliant.

"Be not the first by whom the new is tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside", is good advice for the primary teacher provided she recognizes its limitations and adaptations.

But

Childhood and human nature are ever the same in those universal attributes recognized by those writers whose writings are from all time, and have what we call the universal touch. the times change, and as children even more than adults, are the product of environment, so methods of work with young children must change, have changed, are changing.

Experience is often better than theory, and yet that was an absurd answer given by an eminent college professor who, when a student presented a most sensible request, answered "yes, I see the reasonableness of your request, but we can't grant it because there is no precedent for it."

Here Emerson teaches us to use our own judgment when he says: "Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this, they teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression."

The worker must ever adapt his work to his material, especially when that material is human. The ideals must not be lowered, but children must be met where they are. We should self

reliantly meet the requirements of the day, as Emerson tells us: "Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."

A primary teacher must be hopeful of her material. We of course prefer children of great mental endowment, obedient, industrious, healthy, interested and interesting, regular in attendance at school, in short ideal children.

OUR MATERIAL.

We receive all sorts of children from all sorts of homes:

The blasé, pampered at home and kindergarten; the overestimated at home and kindergarten; the dull and precocious; the immature and the prematurely old; those with small mental endowment and bad tendencies, and the dully good; the true little embryo student and the so-called average child, which being interpreted generally means the most promising allaround child.

And there is in every child that individuality that is as marked as in adults, and in every little one something lovable, and in each a promise. It is the promise that makes us hopeful. With Longfellow we feel:

"O child! O new-born denizen
Of life's great city! On thy head
The glory of the morn is shed,
Like a celestial benison!
Here at the portal thou dost stand,
And with thy little hand

Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future's undiscovered land.
By what astrology of fear or hope
Dare I to cast thy horoscope!

For thou shalt learn

The wisdom early to discern True beauty in utility;

As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they
smote

The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre."

Neither the home nor the kindergarten is a school, but both should prepare children for primary school life and work.

If a child comes from a kindergarten with no relish for work and a repugnance for self-effort, then the kindergarten has not been a good one. Nothing so unfits a child for school work as does a poor kindergarten.

Primary work is very plain work from some points of view. Even though of these children it is so often quoted:

"Ye are better than all the ballads that

ever were sung or said,

For ye are the living poems, and all the rest are dead."

Yet being human and given at times to weariness of the flesh if not of the soul, there are times when the primary teacher would fain be hearing a more soothing and restful ballad, "even an hymn."

For no one knows as she knows what alive, aye, painfully alive poems some of these living poems are.

Still primary teaching is much more than a matter of scissors, colored papers, and doing with the hands. Do we not believe in manual training, in education by doing? Yes, but in doing what? Doing something with the hands only, or something with the head?

"Words and deeds are quite different modes of the divine energy. Words are

also actions, and actions are a kind of words."

I have seen a room full of primary children, sitting in position, filling their slates or paper with writing like copper plate, but their faces as expressionless as dough. There was no mental awakening, no power of expression developed.

But the writing supervisor brought all visitors to see this wonderful school, and thus a premium was set on dulling repetition.

The mechanical teacher asks, "Must not children learn to write?"

Certainly yes, but they should not spend hours in stultifying drill. Some mechanical drill and much repetition there must be.

As in a musical education scale drill, finger exercises must precede the sonata and fugue, but during both the real teacher will be awakening the brain of the pupil. The finest artist mixes his colors with brains.

It is much easier to drill children than to awaken them mentally. The primary teacher should give much more thought to the what to teach and to the why we teach it than to how to teach it.

For as Sarah Arnold, that most helpful of writers, says, "The aims determine the method. A clear understanding of the why definitely shapes the how."

Too much attention to method makes a teacher self-conscious and artificial.

To the small mind and the untrained mentality the tools with which a thing is done and the methods used, overshadow the results to be gained.

There is more danger that the primary teacher lay too much stress on method than there is with any other teacher.

True teaching has the best methods, but like the finest singing, the finest

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