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Comments and Opinion

L. N. HINES

Teachers are sometimes hired because of what they know and sometimes "fired" because they have not ordinary gumption and "horse" sense.

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Few teachers lose their positions because they do not know enough. It is usually the lack of some other saving quality that leads to trouble.

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A. P. Westhafer, principal of the Sugarland school, Daviess County, is doing some excellent work in agriculture. He is also conducting a novel. feature in his school that should be copied elsewhere. This feature is what he calls "magazine day." On this day each pupil brings from his home one or more magazines. The magazines are exchanged, read and discussed, to the great benefit of all concerned.

The classroom lecture, with the taking of notes, etc., has an infinitesimally small place in high school procedure.

All school records should be kept in a thorough, concise and understandable form, and then they should be preserved, so that future generations can see them. Superintendents and principals should see to it that all records are turned in at their offices for preservation. Further, a school scrapbook, containing all kinds of clippings

and other material that ordinarily does not get into the conventional records is of great assistance in compiling a complete history of a school system, and will be of untold interest to future generations. Suppose you celebrate the centennial year by installing a complete system of keeping all material bearing on your school system. The folks will be mightily interested at the next centennial.

Some of the so-called "educational" films put out by commercial "movie" houses are poor stuff for children, or any one else, for that matter. The only absolutely safe rule in arranging for the presentation of a film in your school is to insist on seeing all of it before the children are permitted to do so.

One group of eligible eighth grade pupils in an Indiana community ruined the following words in a written examination: Articles, British, Cincinnati, Cullop, complimentary, Evansville, Gary, Greene county, Maine, manufacturing, oxygen, Philippines, principal, Raleigh, Stockton, scissors, there, too, using, aided, Cuba, cloddy, Cabot, disease, enemies, too, to, grammar, Indianapolis, Missouri, nourish, peat, proteids, quarantine, Spanish, saliva, Terre Haute, there, two, Vincennes, breathe, governor, carbon, climate, compromise, our, drawn, French,

Lafayette, Malcolm, Philadelphia, pencil, received, salutation, sentence, telegraph, United States, vessel.

experiment at the Alexander Dallas Bache school in that city.

"It was found as the result of the

This list of words implies a wide year's experiment that the children in range of knowledge.

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"The open air treatment has been too much confined to the sick. Open air schoolrooms have been experimented with at various times, but usually they have been for sickly and physically deficient children. In the Philadelphia public schools the open window experiment has been tried with. normal, well children, on the theory that not only would their health be better under this treatment, but that the fresh, cold air would act as a mental stimulus and tonic. Dr. Walter W. Roach, a medical inspector of the Philadelphia school system, tried the

the open window room gained in weight on an average of more than twice as much as those in the warm room. The pupils in the open room had no colds whatever and were much more regular in attendance than the others. Mentally they were found to be more alert, free from day dreaming, quicker to learn, requiring less review work and were better behaved. In short, in every possible line of comparison the children in the open window room had a little advantage over those in the warm room. Impressed by the experiment, the Philadelphia School Board has authorized the establishment of open window classes in several other schools."-Leslie's.

Dr. Thomas W. Nadal, acting president of Olivet College, Olivet, Mich., is a native of Indiana and a graduate of DePauw, who has acquired a high and honorable place in the educational world.

"The policy of exempting from final examinations all pupils who attain a certain grade in the daily work of the term has been adopted by many high schools. In a recent issue of School and Society, Mr. C. J. Anderson reports an investigation of the alleged virtues of this practice. He made a statistical comparison of the grades given by teachers during two years preceding the adoption of exemptions, during two years in which exemptions. were permitted, and during two years in which the older practice of non

exemption was resumed. He concludes that, for the school in question, the exemption system 'played havoc with the teachers' grades.' His curves of distribution show that under this system the number of high grades awarded increased out of all proportion to any conceivable increase in accomplishment. In other words, it seems inevitable that exemptions will be permitted to pupils who have not earned them and that the system consequently places an inevitable premium upon low standards. Against the contention that exemption may have increased the diligence of the pupils and consequently augmented their performance, Mr. Anderson says:

"During the past three years test

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.

How shall I see no evil?

As the sun on the filthy pool, riving Naught but the glow of its own clear shining,

So shall you see no evil.

How shall I hear no evil?

As the lark in the blue, toward heaven winging

Hears only the sound of its own clear singing,

So shall you hear no evil.

How shall I speak no evil?

"As thyself, thy neighbor," such loving kindness

Will bring the holy deafness and blind

ness

And dumbness-to speak no evil. -Grace MacGowan Cooke in September Nautilus.

records of study habits have been made yearly. These do not indicate any decrease in the amount of study subsequent to the abolition of the system. On the contrary, pupils are devoting more time to study now than they did while the exemption system was in force.'

"As with the results of the Buckingham tests above referred to, a question is still open. It is conceivable that the increased study due to the pressure of final examinations is less valuable to the pupils than what they could obtain from other sources. were the spectre of the final examination removed."-W. C. Bagley, in School and Home Education.

For the year that is past and the year

to come,

For the ripened stores of our harvest home,

For the home that blossoms here, For the thoughts and fancies that 'round it cling,

For the hearts that love and the lips that sing,

Let us thank our Father dear.
-Dora Read Goodale.

"I've knocked around amazin' in this world of calm and storm,

I've had some hard old battles, but I've kept a ploddin' on,

And my spirit's just as cheery as it ever was, you bet,

I've had my tribulations but I ain't dead yet."

PERSONAL AND EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT

The 22nd annual meeting of the Southern Indiana Superintendents' Club was held at Princeton October 13th. J. W. Stott, superintendent of the Princeton schools, was president of the meeting.

Miss Mildred Burkett, for several years teacher in the Randolph county schools, was recently married to Ray

mond L. Alexander.

Anticipating the development of the city of Ft. Wayne and a consequent increase in property values, the board of school trustees has closed a deal for three pieces of property on which new school buildings will be erected some time in the future.

The following is an interesting clipping with reference to conditions in one Illinois county.

"One of the by-products of better school buildings is that it makes it easier for rural school directors, to compete with city schools for the best teachers. In Macon county one rural school district has been able to take one of the best teachers from the Decatur schools, because it has supplied her with a school building, modern and well equipped in every respect. This teacher says that with a building so well lighted and heated and with a good library at her disposal she is able. not only to teach the school but to

carry on a line of study for her own improvement to greater greater advantage than she could in the city schools. Her boarding place is near near the school building. She does all her school work as well as her own study in the school building, thus avoiding some of the inconveniences that most rural teachers meet with in their attempt to

do work in a country home where the teacher may have little or no privacy. Moreover, many of the best teachers available for rural school work are refusing to teach in school buildings that are not constructed for the health, comfort and convenience of the teacher and the pupil. It has been found that the teacher's health suffers quite as badly as the pupil's in ill-constructed and ill-ventilated school buildings."

The Gary school system may be used by England as the basis for reconstructing her school system after the war, according to the Teacher's World, a London publication. Japanese commissioners recently completed a study of the Gary schools.

The Anderson free night school, in connection with the public schools, opened with an enrollment of 747. Ninety-six entered the machinists' class. The Remy Electric Company's classes, in connection with the night school, opened with 120 pupils, in four classes. In the woman's home-making department there were thirty-three

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