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perception, then he is able to say, “But a male English sparrow must have this characteristic (naming one). This bird I have said to be a male English sparrow, therefore it has, or ought to have, this characteristic. Then he examines it for that attribute. Hence, if the marks of the notion are distinct it can always be employed to correct the otherwise erroneous work of sense-perception. That is its great significance to the teacher.

Six and thirty little mortals Coming to be taught;

b. The teacher is to encourage the child to test all the results of the observation by the essential characteristics that belong to the general notion and not to rest content in imitating others.

The chapter presents a fine explanation of the thought that the act of conception reaches down and reinforces sense-perception. (See Philosophy of Education, J. K. F. Rosenkranz, pages 75-77.)

WHO IS SUFFICIENT? H. LAVINIA BAILY.

And mine that most delightful task,
"To rear the tender thought."
Merry, mischief-loving children,
Thoughtless, glad and gay,
Loving lessons "just a little,"
Dearly loving play.

Six and thirty souls immortal

Coming to be fed;

Needing "food convenient for them"

As their daily bread.

Bright and happy little children,
Innocent and free,

Coming here their life-long lessons
Now to learn of me.

Listen to the toilsome routine,

List and answer then

For these things who is sufficient 'Mongst the sons of men.

Now they, at the well-known summons,
Cease their busy hum;

Some with pleasure, some reluctant,
To the schoolroom come.

Here's a cunning little urchin

With defiant eye,

Making music with his marbles
As he passes by.

But, alas! the pretty toys are
Taken from him soon,
And the music-loving Willie
Strikes another tune.
Comes a hisping little beauty,

Scarce five summers old;

Baby voice and blue eyes pleading, "Please, Misth, I'm tho cold." Little one, the world is chilly,

All too cold for thee;

From its storms our Father shield thee, And thy refuge be.

While I turn to caution Johnny
Not to make such noise,
Mary parses: "Earth's an adverb,
In the passive voice."

Well, indeed, it must be passive,

Else it is not clear

How such open language-murder
Goes unpunished here.
Second reader class reciting-
"Lesson verse or prose?"

None in all the class is certain

Each one thinks he knows.

"Well," is queried then, "the difference Who can now define?"

Answers Rob: "In verse they never

Finish out the line."

Boy, thy thought doth strangely thrill me, And as hours roll on

Hears my heart the solemn query,

Is my day's work done?

Do I make of this, my life-task
Prose or idle rhyme?

Do I in the sight of Heaven

Finish out the line?

Oh, it is too fine a knowledge

For our mortal sight,

All these restless little creatures

How to lead aright.

He who prayeth, while he worketh,
Taking lessons still

Of the Friend of little children,

Learning all His will.

He alone can walk before them

Worthily and well,

He alone of life's strange language
Can the meaning tell.

Only he whose heart is tender

As a little child

Can the message give to others
Pure and undefiled.

TO MAKE LITERATURE VITAL.

SUPERINTENDENT MARTIN R. MARSHALL, REMINGTON, IND.

That the study of literature is essential in any scheme of education no one now denies. That it is profitable is not so certain. Prof. Arlo Bates recently told the story of a little boy studying Blake's Tiger. When asked if he liked it, the boy naively replied: "We don't have to like it, we only learn it." Too much literature study is done in that way. The scholar is to learn; whether he likes it or not is a matter of indifference to the course-makers. One can hear in almost any school some boy or girl say: "I just hate this old literature book."

Other studies may be of value when disliked, but where poetry and noble prose literature are dull or distasteful there can be little gain. To study the great writers under such conditions is time worse than wasted; when once a dislike of reading is habitual it destroys all possibility of self education in later life. The girl who detests George Eliot and Dickens as poky will be content with the lightest fiction the rest of her life, while the boy who scorns Longfellow, Whittier, Tennyson and Shakespeare is destined to a soulless commercialism. That the school boy should not voluntarily pore over Paradise Lost is not surprising. Blindness to its grandeur after study betokens poor teaching or absence of the esthetic sense.

Mature college students often find the literature classes arid because of excessive attention to philology. Critical analysis is carried so far that appreciation is lost. Classics are often so annotated that the original master-piece is lost under the comments. Hamlet's human significance may be ignored because of exclusive attention to word study. So much time may be given to the instructor's conception of a writer that the student fails to get any conception of the writing. Lectures by fourth-rate interpreters cloud interest in the greatest genius. The student is sent to the library to read about an author. In this way creative study is neglected, while in its place is

supplied an attempted deep technical study.

With preparation of this kind the common school teacher tries in his turn to teach literature. Every teacher meets difficulties, those of the English teacher are of unusual strength. Apathy is one of the strongest. On a warm September day the average boy or girl is in spirit in the fields. He dawdles languidly over Snowbound or the Vicar of Wakefield. He is frankly apathetic before The Great Stone Face or Emerson's Essays.

Should the energetic teacher dissipate this lethargy he often finds obtuseness. To master-pieces of literature with beauty of expression and thought the student is blind. His home has given no reading aside from papers. As a consequence he reads dully without the imagination kindled.

Then there is the galloping student who hurdles his way through poet, essayist, or novelist. He has not time to read understandingly. What courses over his mind has not time to sink in. Other kinds of faults need not be mentioned, yet they are numerous.

How can the teacher conquer these and other obstacles? Literature is inherently of interest. Youth admires beauty and truth. The subject matter is not at fault. The problem concerns the method of teaching. The teaching of English has been long "without form and void." Even now there is uncertainty of touch, and lack of precision in attack. Since the teacher does not know precisely what to do, he tries many things which possess the solitary merit of employing the class.

Although the personality of the teacher determines the details of all methods. there are some things which experience teaches all should avoid. In both high schools and common schools there is little value in studying minutely annotated classics. It is bad enough to study Greek and Latin grammatically. Such linguistic study is apt to destroy the student's interest. He learns notes, dates, the pedi

gree of words, and criticism, for a moment, and straightway forgets what manner of things they were. Who remembers or cares to remember the weary explanations of such passages as "The dram of eale doth all the noble substance of a doubt to his own scandal." Experience shows that nothing can so deaden a Shakespeare class as long dwelling on the

notes.

Avoid also great attention to the details of biography. Dates and deeds are dry, and literary gossip is as frivolous as any other gossip. Biography is important only so far as it explains the man's product. The young learner is unprepared to determine a writer's comparative rank. Study of criticism may secure parrot-like repetition, it can not take the place of individual grasp. Avoid sketches of men and periods, and outlines of literature. Such a valuable little book as Brooke's Primer has been known to reduce classes to dumb despair. Do not read admirable appreciations to learn what to admire.

Some youthful preceptor will say, "If we do none of these things, what shall we examine on?" There is some question concerning the utility of examinations in other branches. There is hardly room for doubt that it is impossible to examine for sympathetic appreciation, for imaginative development, or growth of soul. Gradgrind's facts vanish within the year. Why examine for them? Growth in the beauty sense can not be put on paper. Usual test questions in literature enforce a vicious method of study-a quest for material for the quiz in place of esthetic culture.

By clearing away false aims and methods we can see the correct ones. The aim in teaching all literature should be to secure appreciative comprehension. Proper dwelling on great works will get this. Let the student ponder over, meditate upon, and contemplate the piece of literature, line by line, part by part, and later get the synthetic view of the whole. An excellent way of spending the recitation hour is in interpreting vocally. Lack of preparation or comprehension is instantly evident.

Study the author's life enough to see how the man's work is the product of the man. Consider the age and surroundings enough to understand how the classic in hand is the expression of that time. How it is peculiar to it, and impossible elsewhere. Trace when advisable the writer's place in the stream of English literature. Yet first, most, and greatest study the production, the book, which is the authentic creation and expression of the time and the man. Look not in musty records for revelation of character, the writing is the man.

To make the study of literature profitable there must be assimilation. Use every device to secure this. Make the student think. To attain this comprehension require restatement and analysis. Linger over the beauties of the classic.

If a class persistently rebels against the author, change the author; if the class rebels again, change the method; if there is still inertia and indifference, change the teacher. Though living in the body he is dead in the soul. Great writings are immortal.

THE FUNCTION OF THE TRAINING SCHOOL.
ANNA TRUEBLOOD, TERRE HAUTE, IND.

This paper will deal briefly with the training school as a factor in a state normal school. The training school must be, in the first place, a school-one in the system of public schools; secondly, it is to be one instrument in preparing or training those who are to go out and teach in the public schools of a given state. As a school of the state it must be an organiza

tion of pupils, teacher, course of study, school officers and community, governed by the unifying force demanded in any other public school of the state; its aim must be, as in all the rest, the highest for the given school or individual that may be attained by public schools in the development of tendencies toward life-the highest that may be attained under given

conditions; the course of study, the curriculum of subjects in this school has the same general source as in the others; the pupils will represent, as in other schools, both sexes, the various political and religious beliefs, the various vocations, nationalities and conditions of life; the classification of pupils in this school will not vary essentially from that in other common schools of the state; the regular teacher will be subject to like school laws and officials. This school will thus present a problem common with those of its class in the state. In it the student teacher is to foresee and gain some insight into how to grapple with the essential difficulties that present themselves to the teaching profession in any or all schools.

The training school is the culmination, the climax, the flower of the normal schools of which it is one part. The two must be one in aim-each with its special function. Strength in one means corresponding strength in the other, weakness in one a corresponding weakness in the other. In other departments of the normal, the student who is preparing himself to become a public school teacher must have made himself proficient in all the subjects he may be required to teach in his regular profession before he enters the training school. This school need not take account of specialists. A specialist can not afford to work in any line with less basis than has any other teacher. The state can not afford to take him with less. Later he may specialize more thoroughly upon this equipment. The normal student, before he enters the practice room, must not only have seen his subject (history, reading, spelling, etc.), and mastered it, but he must have reseen it in the light of its central idea, in its logical organization; still farther, he must have looked at it in its psychological bearings, in a professional way, as an instrument to be used in a manner to promote correct mental growth. "Tis not the function of the training school to prepare the studentteacher in the lines just mentioned. His success here must depend upon the efficacy of his work in other departments of

the normal school, upon his native ability and upon the quality of the practice school when he enters it; and this last, in turn, must depend much upon the place it is granted in the institution of which it is a vital part. So various, however, are the views on this point of the relation of the training school to its accompanying doctrinal school that it becomes much less a task to discuss its function (ideal) than its work (real). The training school must furnish to the studentteacher the ground or subject-childmind with its natural defects or limitations; and must guide this teacher in his attempt at application of the material and doctrines with which he becomes equipped. It often happens that the student feels as forcibly the benefits he has derived from his new view of the academic branches in the normal school that he arrives at the hasty and rash conclusion that the best teaching must aim at such as has been wrought in him, forgetting the full process by which he attained it and the methods and theories of applications set out in the doctrinal departments; so he may set about attempting to have a young pupil see, as he does, the theory, the logic, the organization in the subjects taught. There results a sort of floating in an atmosphere of theory with no tangible results, no terra firma. Here the training school finds work to do; it suffers the error and attempts to correct it in as short a time as possible. The training school serves as an indispensable medium between the student-teacher and the state. It throws into a new lightthe light of practical application-any work of the departments of the normal school. It tests the thoroughness and practicability of the work there. It returns the inefficient student to the school rather than impose him upon the state. In its turn, it may and should give (as well as receive) direct and helpful suggestions for the best maintenance of its own whole body.

The practice school allows the one practicing to see where he may most readily err, that he may further fortify himself for his profession; it reveals to him. his exact limitations in preparation for

it; it makes him more conscious of the difficulties he may encounter; it helps him to see the pupil as of primary importance in the whole school-system-all else, himself included, as means, instrument, device; it makes him stronger to arrange a logical line of work, a program, or a course of study, to more readily adapt material to the learning mind, to regulate the mechanism of the school, to

discipline well; it must have a care to create in him (if 'tis not present) a mind fertile in the facilities to progress of mind-with the least loss of energy, selfactivity, growth-to the highest that the school is capable; it must attempt to leave in him an incentive for ever better and higher ideals in school work-with existing conditions, if possible-in spite of them, if necessary.

CIVIL SERVICE RULES TO RAISE THE STANDARD OF TEACHERS. E. C. CRIDER, Superintendent, Tippecanoe County.

(Read before County Superintendents' Association, June 28, 1902.)

Mr. President and Superintendents: Those who heard Superintendent Hostetter's excellent paper on "The Improvement of the District Schools" will remember that he spoke to some length and with due emphasis on such conditions of school work as the "Political Pull," "Favoritism" and "Lack of Preparation." In my paper I have assumed these conditions to be general and have not discussed them.

The schools cost the State of Indiana annually a vast sum of money. There is hardly any one other institution of our land that is maintained at the amount of expense as our public schools. In addition to our tuition and special school funds, which the State Superintendent of Public Instruction says amounted to six and one-half million dollars in 1899, should be considered the amount paid for school books and extra expense to patrons for clothing pupils. It seems reasonable to say that, excluding the colleges and normal schools, the State pays each year eight and one-half million dollars for the public school system. Of the above about five millions are paid directly to the teachers of the State.

The value received from this expenditure varies in different years almost exactly as the value of the teachers varies. As is well known, the management of this money is in the hands of the different counties, the school officers of which are the county superintendents of schools. and the trustees of the various corpora

tions. The superintendent must examine applicants and issue licenses without which no tuition money may be drawn. The trustees must hire the teachers and pay out the money. And in the management of these offices more than any other part of the public school system is felt the lack of proper safeguards. No other officers, county or State, are so handicapped in the performance of their duties. Other officers are hedged about by laws which protect and limit the power of action-laws which make them officially, not personally, responsible.

And here is one great weakness of the school system: its officers are more personally responsible than officially responsible. This means that the failure of an applicant to obtain license is charged directly and personally to the superintendent. If there be two applicants for a school, there is no law which gives either the preference and the trustee must make a personal decision and become personally responsible. There is a great train of evils which creep in at this place.

(1) The six months' license with the "pull" may step in ahead of a thirty-six months' license.

(2) No teacher feels legally sure of his position, hence he can not afford to prepare himself in the profession. He may be a college graduate and yet have a dozen times more trouble getting a position than some one who has just graduated from the public schools.

(3) Each corporation feels called

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