THE NEW DEPARTMENT.

For several years it has been the general desire of the kindergarten workers in California for an educational journal, progressive and far-seeing enough, to conduct a department specially devoted to the kindergarten system and its development. In fact several of the brightest minds in the State have at different times been willing to undertake the management of such a department without price and without money. Every wide awake teacher knows why all these years we have never had such a department. But new institutions embody new ideas, and the PACIFIC COAST TEACHER has come to lead in educational thought and respond first to this want.

The aim of this new department shall be to unfold in a simple way the laws and conditions of childhood and make as far as possible a scientific study of children in the kindergarten and school.

The unfolding and development of the natural child shall be sought and the best conditions for his culture and training advocated. One object of this department shall be to stimulate a scientific study of children in the actual work of the kindergarten and school, and indicate methods and devices to that end. There is no subject on which teachers need guidance, light and assistance, so much as this, and hardly any subject in mod

ern pedagogy on which you can find so much chaff, nonsense and error. The development of the kindergarten and new methods of teaching in the public schools will receive special attention, and from time to time the best work in kindergartens and schools shall be noted and commended.

OUR HELPERS.

In such work, interest and enthusiasm are the motive forces to success. Our kindergarten workers are full of these soul-forces. Already they have responded with delight to the call to aid in the new department. We have been promised personally, assistance and contributions from Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, President Golden Gate Kindergarten Association; Miss Hattie B. Griswold, Kindergartner in Children's Hospital, San Francisco; Miss Charlotte F. Williams, Kindergartner for Congregational church, San Francisco; Misses Eva, Isabel and Lizzie Mackenzie, Kindergartners in Public Schools, San Jose; Miss Allie M. Felker, Kindergartner in State Normal School, San Jose; and there will be from twenty-five to thirty practical kindergartners in the post-graduate course for kindergartners in the California School of Methods from whom we expect to get some excellent results in child study and interesting methods in kindergarten work.

DOES IT PAY?

I think I hear some teacher asking this question. Or perhaps it rings in my ears from past impressions. You know there is always some one to croak it. No, my friend, it does not pay in dollars and cents. Such work never pays the mercenary, place-holding, political hanger-on. It never pays the indolent and stupid. Very often it is not paid for this side of heaven. It pays only those who love it, only the generous hearted and noble-souled, only the unselfish and consecrated, only those who have a larger and fuller life from doing it.

You must not expect or even think of money compensation in such work. You will degrade it if you do. Did you ever think that the best things in this life never are, nor never could be paid for? You never paid for a true friendship. You never paid for your mother's love. You never paid for your highest ideals, purest thoughts, noblest aspirations of your soul. You pay only for the lower, commoner, coarser things of life. It is a very low view of life, and especially of our profession to measure it solely on the money side. Money is necessary to live, but let us not live solely for it. Eating is necessary to live, but let us not live solely to eat. Let us rise above that mercenary, self-seeking plane on which. teachers always find their work a drudgery, and get some true happiness in helping others.

EVERY PRIMARY TEACHER A KINDER

GARTNER.

Every primary teacher should be a trained kindergartner. She should be trained not only as a kindergartner but to use the kindergartner methods and materials in primary teaching-in teaching all the various subjects of the primary school. The larger number of persons teaching in primary grades do not

understand the kindergarten methods and the adaptation of the material to primary teaching. In fact many who have had kindergarten training courses, are almost equally at a loss to know how to adapt the kindergarten methods and materials in the primary schools. Notwithstanding the fact that the system is admirably fitted and can very easily and naturally be adapted to the primary school. But it requires first special training in the science and art of the kindergarten, and then special adaptations of the methods and materials to primary work. The coming primary teacher must be kindergarten trained. She must be instructed and trained both as kindergarten and primary teacher. The nature of the child and the extension of the kindergarten system into the public schools demand this new and scientific training of kindergartners and primary teachers. Unfortunately for the kindergarten work it was for a long time looked upon as a separate institution with little relation to higher work. Now educators are coming to see the intimate connection, and the demand for kindergarten trained primary teachers is increasing rapidly. Every kindergartner should be able to teach equally well in the primary as in the kindergarten; and every primary teacher should be perfectly at home in kindergarten teaching.

This demand for kindergarten trained primary teachers on this coast can not be better illustrated than to refer to the selection of three kindergarten trained primary teachers out of the recent graduating class of the California School of Methods. A class of twelve was graduated in June as kindergartners and trained primary teachers. Supt. Riley of Butte City, Montana, visited the Summer School of Methods early in July in search of just such teachers. The result

was that Misses Lizzie Mackenzie, Emma L. Kooser, and Elma T. MacNeal, were selected with fine salaries to go to Butte City and introduce the kindergarten into the public schools. These young ladies were bright, competent and enthusiastic in kindergarten and primary work, and were pursuing further their studies in the summer school.

THE BUSY WORK CRAZE.

There is a class of well meaning but poorly trained primary teachers that are still making a fad out of "busy-work." The busy-work" craze has about run its course in the best Eastern schools and is dying out. I speak of it here because it is not infrequently seen in California yet; and we sometimes hear those who are the most crazy on the subject praised as the perfection of primary teachers. There is hardly a more serious mistake in teaching than this "busy-work" craze. It comes from the erroneous notions that children must be amused instead of employed, that all sorts of toys and contrivances are necessary to amuse and interest them, that the teacher is a sort of slight-of-hand performer and show-mistress whose sole business is to arouse and tickle the curiosity of children instead of directing their activities into pleasurable and creative work. The rooms of some of these "busy-work" teachers present the appearance of a toy-shop rather than a happy work-room; and very often their manner and activities suggest the juggler or slight-of-hand-performer with his rattles, whistles and other devices.

Now all this comes from the fact that these teachers have not made a careful study of the child and educational materials. A thoroughly trained kindergartner and primary teacher never takes up the busy-work craze. All education is to her a development in power, knowledge and skill, and has a deep and scien

tific aspect. Methods; devices and variety she knows how to use and will have enough but not too many. The best cure for the busy-work craze is scientific training in the kindergarten and new education. I never knew a teacher who had such training to run off on fads and devices, and lose sight of the true ends in teaching.

A ROYAL HONOR.

The National Educational Association at its last two sessions has undertaken the organization of a World's Kindergarten Association which is to be composed of kindergarten workers from all parts of the world, and meet in a Congress at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago next summer. A Board of Directors were appointed by the National Educational Association, composed of the most eminent kindergarten. workers, men and women, in the United States and Canada, and have in charge the organization and management of the new World's Kindergarten Association. At a recent meeting of the Board of Directors, Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper of San Francisco was unanimously elected President of the World's Kindergarten Association. The duties of the position are very important. The President is expected to lead in all the executive work, put the new association in communication with all kindergarten work and associations with view of having them send delegates to the Congress, and preside at the sessions of the Congress. To aid the President in the discharge of these duties a very able Executive Committee of sixteen vice-presidents has been appointed, and the work will be classified and allotted to special committees composed of these vice-presidents.

Mrs. Cooper first declined to accept this royal honor, feeling that others. might serve the cause as well as she.

But when it became evident that her acceptance would add harmony as well as strength, she took the advice of her most intimate friends in California and accepted the position. This is an honor that came unsought and unexpected to a most worthy and eminent woman, and one of whom all America and espeially California should feel proud. It is a fine tribute to the organizing genius, inspiring soul, and devoted love as well as the rare good sense and balance of mind of this noble woman. She will discharge the duties of the high position with a rare fidelity, a graceful dignity and a far-seeing wisdom in keeping with the grandeur of the movement. In the judgment of the writer no one else so well adapted could have been selcted, no one deserves to be more loved and more honored in the cause of children than Mrs. Cooper. In her great work for needy childhood she has won the love of more children, more pure and devoted women, and the esteem of more good men than any other living woman. She has attained that state of mind and feeling in her work that true honor comes only from doing good, and she accepts no position however great unless she is convinced that duty calls her.

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF KINDERGARTNERS.

The greatest hindrance to the growth of the kindergarten system is the un-educated, half-trained, and incompetent persons turned loose in society as qualified kindergartners. The evil they leave in their train is very great. They,ignorant of what true teaching is, not only experiment upon innocent children, and perpetuate the old error that any one can teach a little child, and thus give entirely erroneous notions to the public, but have the audacious cheek to set themselves up as competent to instruct

and train others, and induce young, uneducated girls to enter their classes, thus perpetuating their kind and increasing the error. Nearly every city of any size in California has one or more such "trainers;" and the result is that you can find any kind of a school called a kindergarten. That a girl is only fifteen and has not finished the grammar school course is no objection whatever, if she can pay the tuition. She is induced to enter the class, told how fine it will be to become a kindergartner, and in the course of a few months graduated with show and given a personal certificate called a diploma, and made to believe she understands the most philosophical system of education ever devised by man and that she is competent to undertake the most difficult task in education-the teaching of a little child.

Now I am thoroughly in favor of good kindergarten and professional training. With the elements of a liberal education as a basis, I think there is no education that develops young women as a scientific training in kindergarten pedagogics. I should not only like to see every teacher so trained, but every mother and every woman. I even go further, I would have courses in Normal Schools and colleges in the study of human nature and child life and philosophy of education and civilization for young men. Such instruction has a very liberalizing and humanizing effect over the minds and conduct of all who receive it. There is even some good received by these young girls and others from the instruction they get in these shoddy training courses. And if they did not persist in experimenting upon children, scattering false notions as to the nature of kindergarten work, and perpetuating their kind there would be some gain to society. As you might expect such training is

done for revenue only, and seeks to extend itself in all possible ways. As an illustration of this there is one of these training schools on this coast that has been for several years years establishing branch schools, selling its antiquated lectures to its graduates as principals, and drawing a commission on the proceeds of the branches. This is for revenue only with a vengeance. But think of the mental furnishing of a young body who draws her intellectual nourishment from one of the branches! Poor as

the greatest needs of kindergarten work everywhere is first good professional training; and the second need is to enlist the activity of more scholarly women in the work. These two things are aimed at by all true friends and workers; and in no state is there a more general desire for culture and a higher standard of professional training than among the kindergartners of California.

CALIFORNIA SCHOOL OF METHODS.
The Third Summer Session of the

Now the only way for the kindergarten cause to command respect of other educational workers is for its devoted and consecrated friends to condemn such. With malice towards none and charity for all they must have courage to stand for what they know is right. There should be no division on a matter so essential to the welfare of of the work as this. These training schools which are aiming to raise the standard of professional training should not admit young women to their classes until they have scholarship enough to make successful teachers. The minimum standard for a professional training course for a kindergartner and primary teacher should be at least a three years high school course. If they are graduates of Normal Schools and Colleges so much the better. They will develop more in the cause, and their success as teachers will be greater. We need a higher standard of scholarship for both teachers and kindergartners and neither can receive a scientific training course without scholarship. The most scholarly woman engaged in teaching ought to be employed in the kindergarten and primary school. In this field, Normal and College graduates would find great opportunities for work. One of

The enrollment combined enroll

closed, was in all respects the most suc cessful and pleasant of the institution, and is considered to be the most successful session of the kind ever held in the State. There were sixty five teachers and kindergartners enrolled-more than twice the number of last year and more than five times the number of the first session two years ago. was greater than the ment of all the other summmer schools in the State. The register shows that fifty-three of the sixty-five teachers were graduates of Colleges, Normal and training schools, and that forty of them were trained kindergartners and primary teachers. This is a very significant fact showing that it is the professionally trained and progressive teachers that attend summer schools.

Throughout the whole session the enthusiasm was marked, interest deep and sustained and the spirit most kindly and helpful. Instructions and lectures were all good—there was no poor work done. Most of the work was excellent, and we have never seen more good work done in any summer school. Class instructions were given in History of Education by Miss Ora Boring of the Stanford University, in Free Hand Drawing by Prof. B. C. Brown and Miss E. L. Ames both of the Stanford University; in Kindergar