more of the comforts and luxuries of life than ever before in history; but it is true in even greater degree that with the masses aspiration has outstripped realization. The toiling millions of this country are not typified by Markham's "Man With the Hoe," a sodden peasant on whose features are impressed the stamp of hopeless hopelessness. Our social discontent is not, as demagogues contend, a symptom of popular degradation, but of popular elevation. It is the expression of new and higher wants, born of an age of education and of opportunity; the restless craving for something above the material which forms the promise of future progress. The poor have not grown poorer in mental or material resource, but life has come to mean to them more than what they shall eat, and what they shall wear, and wherewithal they shall be clothed. And through every struggle for bettered conditions shines the great soul of a higher aspiration which gives promise to the future of this republic, by which humanity's problems must be solved if they are solved at all.

Is it possible to invent a system of government by which these aspirations may be satisfied? If it were, so far as today is concerned, then tomorrow would see men journeying toward some new hope risen in the night. No policy of restriction is sufficient; no scheme of constructive legislation is adequate. In the first year of the last century Great Britain, the national conscience stirred by the appeals of Robert Owen, entered upon a program of social alleviation by passing the first factory law. It has been followed by the enactment of measure after measure until a great system of labor laws has been built up a system which does honor to our civilization-and yet we seem to be little nearer the industrial millennium than we were in 1800, for discontent is more evident in its organization, more militant in its demands, than it has ever been before.

Can we devise a man-made millennium and press it upon a stiff-necked generation through the agency of arbitrary legislation? We had within the borders of our State three-quarters of a century ago

a trial of that process. Under the leadership of Robert Owen, the most devoted, the most unselfish, in some respects the greatest popular leader of his generation

"an inspired man of his time" Emerson called him a thousand men and women, themselves convinced that the regeneration of the world was a mere matter of tossing off a new constitution and by-laws, gathered at New Harmony and proceeded to legislate themselves into a state of perfection. When things went wrong, as things someway did, they proceeded to repair the damage by enacting a new constitution, with a fatuous belief in the sufficiency of their remedy that was pathetic. In the end they became the most unhappy community under the sun, rent by factional dissensions, soured by repeated disappointments, and the splendid fabric of empire they had reared in dreams. faded in a cloud of charges and countercharges which hangs above the village to this day.

When we search for the solution of the industrial problem, as Carrol D. Wright said in a recent address, we must seek the solution of the problem of human life itself. When we have found freedom, as our forefathers established it, we have well-nigh exhausted the possibilities of political system as a constructive means of betterment. Back of industrial oppression is the selfishness of men out of whom selfishness can not be legislated; back of social degradation is the ignorance and idleness of men whom law can not transform; back of every wrong is the insufficiency of a citizenship of which we are a part, and for which we are in part responsible. It is true that restrictive legislation may be enacted; we may use the police power upon the man or the corporation committing a transgression of the law; we may place new limitations upon such men and such corporations, but this no more solves the problem back of it all than the fear of the switch above the desk of the Hoosier schoolmaster of earlier time made the sway of virtue universal on the benches.

"Social betterment," truly says Hugh Black in his "Culture and Restraint," "as more than the mere rearrangement of ex

ternal conditions can only come from individual character and intellect. The production of this is a primary duty even for the sake of others. A man's contribution to society will mean all the riches and resources of his nature, his heritage of race, and personal capacity and education." Here has been touched the heart of the whole question.

The public school-what of its relation to the problem of social adjustment? It deals first hand with individual character and intellect, which, as Black correctly says, is the sole source of social betterment. Into its crucible is poured the raw material of citizenship-out of it emerges a social product fashioned for good or ill well toward its final form.

Robert Owen distinguished a great principle when he laid such special emphasis upon the proper education of childhood as a potent factor in the creation of a better social order. Under his system, the child became at a tender age the property of the commonwealth, and to the State, rather than to the family, was to be committed the responsibility of directing the development of individual character and intellect. In a world committed by the precedents of centuries to the separate hearthstone, this was and is a doctrine at variance with the promptings of human nature. There must be a longer course of training for parents than could be accomplished even in the lifetime of a Methusaleh before the State becomes the universal foster mother.

And yet no one understands better than does the school teacher how little consistent, systematic training is practiced in the average home, and to what an extent the schoolroom process is a battle with what has come to be known as the home handicap a handicap which is not necessarily greater in the hallowed precincts of upper tendom than in the abiding places of the submerged tenth. The average parent is not to be blamed for opportunities neglected during the years when the child is most susceptible to impressions for ill or good; the bread-winning struggle, the pressure of household cares, the lack of training for the work of imparting instruction or enforcing a

sane and consistent discipline these are elements ever present in the average home. The kindergarten has come to extend the public school's zone of influence to the earlier years of childhood, and perhaps this institution will become universally a part of the public school system throughout the country as it is now in some cities, and as it was in the schools of New Harmony eighty years ago.

It remains, and it is likely to remain the function of the public school to create in the young American his rudimentary conceptions of the rights and duties pertaining to his daily work in the world, which is only another way of saying his citizenship. These are created not only by the imparting of information but by the potent influence of example, the imposition of discipline, and even the conduct of the games of the playground, which in the junior republics of today have been made instruments for instruction in civil duty and responsibility. Abraham Lincoln, a half century ago, expressed the hope that reverence for the law might be taught even in the primer classes. We shall yet come to a fuller realization of the public school's opportunity and duty of holding up before the millions of children within the scope of their influence the ideas and ideals essential to the citizenship of a nation in which social uplift and political betterment are possible only through the uplift and betterment of the men, women and children who go to make up, who are, indeed, the government of the United States.

THE METHOD OF THE RECITATION. CHARLES A. MCMURRY, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, CALIFORNIA, PA.

THE VALUE OF LESSER DETAILS.

In a previous article we have called attention to the importance of selecting leading ideas as units of thought. The basis for induction and for movement sometimes called the formal steps is thus provided.

In the present condition of our course of study it is somewhat difficult to dis

cover these units of thought, these organizing centers. In each study we have instead of a few pronounced and controlling ideas, a common level of multitudinous facts, all of about equal prominence.

With the multiplication of studies and the massive accumulation of commonplace facts in each study, we have begun to feel the weight of an overloaded and oppressive course of study.

In order to attain a better command of the situation and to reduce the problem of the school course to simpler terms, we need to notice, first of all, that ideas are the dominant things in the school program. Secondly that among ideas a few controlling ones, well mastered in their bearings and influence, are far superior in value to a multitudinous array of mere facts such as we often gather in history, geography, science and literature. Ob

serve also that in the process of enriching our course of study with history, literature, fine art, etc., great ideas are becoming relatively more important, and the mere forms and symbols of knowledge are becoming of less relative value.

Spelling, writing, oral reading, and figuring, while still indispensable, are relatively of less value than formerly, while the best poems and stories in literature, the strong personalities and ideas in history and the social and industrial problems of our modern life, are all looming up as really important and vital forces in our course of study. The time will never come again when the intelligent schoolmaster can be satisfied with the mere symbols and technicalities of knowledge, and these were the main things in the old course of study known as the three R's. The principal change that has taken place in recent years is the shifting over of the emphasis from the old formal arts to the new body of vital ideas with which the school course has been enriched.

If we can teach children how to grapple with these ideas effectively and, at the same time, but incidentally, to master the symbols and forms, we shall lose nothing of value in the old education, but we shall have transferred the basis of operations

to the real field of education, the conquest of ideas.

But among ideas a few are important and many are better left out. We are richer without them than with. The natural tendency of the school master is to heap up facts, to be greedy of itemized knowledge, and ambitious to stretch after it in all directions. Better select a few important thought centers and organize around them whatever is needful for their proper illumination.

When we have once selected our few central ideas in any study, we may well surround each central idea with an abundance of concrete and illustrative detail.

It requires a great power of discrimination to distinguish between those details which are necessary to the clear explanation of important central ideas and those other detailed facts which are a mere burden to the memory. For example in connection with Pittsburg we might require children to learn the names and location of a dozen big towns near Pittsburg, as Allegheny, McKeesport, Braddock, Homestead, Monongahela, Charleroi, Carnegie, Monessen, Greensburg. Connels ville, and Beaver. But such memory work is almost worthless. It throws no additional light upon any worthy problem or idea.

On the other hand, the detailed description of a blast furnace, of a Bessemer converter, and of a rolling mill, is highly instructive and interesting. Such a full and particularized account of the process (of the skillful contrivances for changing crude ore into finished steel) is highly stimulating to the student. These numerous concrete facts and machines are indispensable to an understanding of the fundamental idea of smelting and reducing metals. This is one of the commanding ideas of our complex industrial life and to understand it is to grasp the most essential thing in the vast steel industry.

Those details which contribute directly to the clear grasp of central ideas are of the highest importance, even though from another point of view (taken by themselves) they seem slight and trivial.

If we as teachers could learn to discriminate between that mass of secondary facts (often miscalled important facts) which are a mere burden without enlightening the mind, and those lesser concrete details which are indispensable to the proper illumination of the few important ideas, we should greatly simplify the problem of teaching.

At present it is hardly extravagant to say that we are spending half our time on things that are not worth knowing, not because these things are unimportant, but because they are of wholly secondary importance, and we have time in school to master only the few important ideas.

A curious contradiction, however, appears in the fact that in order to understand any really important idea we must see it in its concrete surroundings, and this requires numerous small details. In short we reject a great many so-called important facts (given in text-books) but we accept and make use of many far less

important items not mentioned in the text-books. These less important items are the necessary background to important ideas. They are the indispensable means for bringing an important idea into its proper illumination. A person might memorize the names and location of twenty-five important cities in the State of Ohio, and be very little the wiser. The time spent on twenty-five cities, if spent in examining into the immediate. causes that have brought the rapid growth of Cleveland, would bring into strong prominence a single idea which has produced not only Cleveland but a whole series of important cities on the south shore of Lake Erie.

It is first of all this wise selection of the few main ideas in any study, around which to organize the lesser details, that will give us a reasonable and rational course of study.

Upon the working out of such ideas can be based a true method of instruction.

MOTHER GOOSE RHYMES.

Is it the words? Is it the rhythm? Is it the theme? that makes them so beloved. What would we not give to know what it is in the Mother Goose rhymes that so charms the children?

It matters little whether they are nice American children or fine sturdy ones from Germany or Roumania, as soon as they know the rhyme they are caught and held. American children know Mother Goose without being taught, it seems. Foreign children must be taught the words, but just as soon as they are able to stammer them they are pleased to stand, with a face "one big grin" and repeat the rhyme again and again.

We are told that many authors have contributed to these. We know that the cheapest books contain them and that

children love them; if any phase of the school work is based on them interest never lags.

In a room where children were trying to read about a leaf, a flower and a stem, there was little interest displayed by either children or teacher; when the supervisor stepped to the front of the room, to save the day for the teacher in charge, and said, "Who ever heard of Little Jack Horner?"

Instantly the sleeping seemed to awaken. Half the hands at once waved in the air. The bodies of forty children. were balanced on one foot. It seemed a shame that public money had been spent for such unnecessary furniture as desks and seats.

The supervisor said, "Tell me about

him."

In a tremendous voice came-
"Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner

Eating his Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plum,

And said, 'What a good boy am I."" The supervisor looked quickly at the teacher, and behold there was a sign of life in her eye.

Quickly drawing a chair in the corner of the board and writing the word leaf on the part which represented the seat of the chair:

"Whose chair is this?"

"Jack Horner's," came in a chorus. "And what has Jack Horner on his chair?"

"Leaf," faintly..

"Yes, he has a leaf on his chair; look carefully at the word which says leaf."

Near the chair was quickly drawn, using lines and circles, a boy, with a large plum on his thumb.

"Who is this?" was asked. "Jack Horner."

A stem was drawn to the plum and the word stem written on the line. To this word the children's attention was drawn for an instant.

A flower was drawn on the body; the word flower written beside it. The children noted the form of the word.

They were then allowed to repeat, "Little Jack Horner sat in a corner.' Then for an instant their attention was drawn to the form of the three words. The picture and words were erased.

The children were happy; the teacher had the look of life about her; three words were learned, the form of which will never be forgotten; the time spent, three minutes. The teacher and children were there; the three words and the supervisor were also present, but there was little learning, but just as soon as Jack Horner took a hand the process was easy. We do not attempt to explain the psychology of the Mother Goose rhymes, but we know that they do arouse interest every time they are allowed to come into the work of their friends, the children.

Plato spoke of the value of play to the child and thought it might be of some

value in education. Pestalozzi thought it might be made an educational factor, but it fell to Froebel to see and to give to the world the great truth that "play is more effective than any other form of physical exercise in developing motor power and tendency." And it was he who said, "Childish plays show how we must begin to give activity to the powers of childhood in order that they shall neither rust and be lost for want of use nor be overstrained by too early study."

Since we have this authority, let us teachers of the first two years give the children one good romp with Mother Goose before they enter upon the more difficult work of the upper grades.

How is it to be done? Begin with the children who have missed learning the rhymes at home. Let these children have one good time before they take up in earnest the hard work of the upper grades, and let the first, second and third year romp with the Mother Goose rhymes for a few weeks. For the children who have missed them at home repeat them occasionally for a week, for another week dramatize them, sing them and make them permanent by poster work. They will not become a dead weight to the

school.

"Jack and Jill" goes to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" nicely.

"Jack and Jill went up the hill

To get a pail of water,

Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after." Repeat different ones. The next week we will dramatize the ones we have learned; next we will sing them, and last they are made permanent by poster work. In dramatizing the rhyme the teacher must be filled with the real spirit of play. Choose Jack and let him choose Jill. Have the two show the path which leads up the hill; have the children of the school repeat, and at the critical point where "Jack fell down," let him fall, with Jill "tumbling after."

Poster Material: Cardboard, gray, 7x6 inches; green paper, 7x4; small sunbonnet for Jill and a tiny boy with a pail in his hand for Jack.

Plan: Tear the paper to represent the