MRS. J. N. CROUSE, Kindergarten College, Chicago, Ill.-No class of educators who heard Dr. Butler last evening can appreciate more fully or make more practical his suggestions, especially along the line of the study of the Bible, than the kindergartners; not for religious or moral training, but as a study of language and literature. God dealt with the Jewish people in true kindergarten fashion. He taught the meaning of ideas and language thru sense-impression and object-teaching. The Bible, especially Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the Psalms, are full of clear, concise descriptions, strong and mighty expressions. How did these early nations so master language as to have thus expressed themselves? These child races must have had sense-impressions, clear and definite. We find such expressions as "riding on the wings of a storm," "mountain calls unto mountain." God gave them a long series of discipline to teach them the meaning of the word "holy," as is shown in the way the Temple was divided and animals chosen for food. We are doing the same thing - teaching long and short, high and low, by use of words in connection with things, and leading to the transfer from the physical meaning to the spiritual meaning. It was by these methods that the Jews gained such wonderful mastery of language.

Children are so shut up within themselves, and feel so much more than they can express. I had a boy who was in this condition. I consulted a kindergartner about him; her advice was that he be given means of self-expression. He was to be given opportunities for singing, dancing, drawing, exchange of thoughts and feelings with his fellows. Within six months he was a changed boy. The trouble is that children are not trained right at school.

MISS ADA VAN STONE HARRIS, supervisor of kindergarten and primary work, Rochester, N. Y.-I wish to emphasize all that has been said, especially with regard to placing children in contact with each other for the purpose of developing language. It has been my pleasure to work with all classes, rich and poor, all nationalities, and I know from experience the great good that comes from this association one with another. It is, however, necessary for the kindergartner to be ever alert in correcting all the inaccuracies of the foreign and the English-speaking children. I have known very timid children and defectives to develop marvelously by their association with other children. It is a great mistake to keep children aloof from companions. It is better for children to be in a kindergarten of from twenty-five to thirty than to be in one of from six to eight members. There is value in numbers, for they gain in power of expression from this contact with their playmates.

We had confirmation of this in the case of a child of deaf-mute parents, who was supposed himself to be deaf-mute. In one year he talked freely and expressed himself well. He was timid and reticent with the kindergartner, but when left with the others he unfolded spontaneously.

MISS O'GRADY.-I wish to emphasize the value of the child imitating other children rather than his elders, which Miss Harris has illustrated.

MISS MINERVA S. JOURDAN, Kindergarten Magazine, Chicago.- With language, expression and representation of the internal begin. The inner being tries to make itself known; the child begins to talk as he uses his arms or feet; and he knows language only as another part of his body, like arms, feet, etc.

Speech comes because of change in the nervous system; his babblings are the beginnings of self-active outward expression; his beginnings, like all primitive language, are rhythmic expressions.

If a child was left alone, he would invent a language, tho it would be limited. If he finds himself understood, he adopts words, and it requires no effort to remember new ones. Children, it is said, seldom lack for words, especially from three to twelve years of age. If they know a thing, they know a word for it. A child pronounces by imitation, but uses his words for the meaning in them. From the very first we should take more pains with

the cultivation of his language in his earliest years, that he may not need so many years of correction later.

After one-fourth of public-school life is spent in the study of grammar, do we see evidence of more ease in speaking or writing? Froebel says:

Language represents unity of all diversity, the inner living connection of all things, and as religion manifests being, and nature, energy, language manifests life as such and as a whole; it unites mind and the outer world. . . . . It is the expression of the human mind as nature expresses the divine. Man's speech will become an image of man's inner and outer world.

Mrs. Putnam has shown us the value of the mother's response; also the value of the society of children to the child as an aid in language; but what is the remedy for the children in the mass, as in asylums? Can anyone offer suggestions?

MISS O'GRADY.-There is an interesting experiment being tried in our orphan asylum in New York, where the children are being separated into small groups in cottages, and the managers plan to put kindergartners in charge of each as house mothers.

MRS. ALICE H. PUTNAM gave an experience in Hull House, Chicago, where the children were kept in the nursery by themselves, with no one to guide their play. They were from fifteen months to two years of age. A kindergartner was engaged to go and live with the children an hour each morning and afternoon. A marvelous difference was soon seen in the children, and before entrance to the kindergarten they all showed marked increase of ability in the use of language.

MISS SARAH C. BROOKS, supervisor of kindergarten and primary grades, St. Paul Minn.—In a kindergarten not ten miles from Minneapolis, I know of a young man five years of age who, for several mornings, regularly made requests for the "nigger song." The kindergartners ignored his question for some time, but finally asked what he meant. Why, don't you know, that song we sang the other day (Decoration Day), 'Colored boy, colored boy, where are you going?"" It was a revelation to the teacher.

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How important that teachers of young children should enunciate clearly! With the kindergarten and the first-grade teacher more attention should be paid to the way in which things are said and how they are received. She should have a knowledge of the vocal organs and how sounds are made, especially when working with the children of our foreign population, in whose homes only the mother-tongue is spoken.

Language-teaching in the kindergarten should be given careful attention. The kindergarten itself is coming to be more and more a part of our educational institutions. The problem of a part is a problem of the whole.

When the kindergarten was first introduced into the public schools there was a strong tendency to consider language instruction in the kindergarten a tabooed subject, to be talked of only in whispers. But it has been found by experience that careful attention to language is necessary from the beginning. Language clarifies thought, so far as the child is concerned. To hear the child talk shows us what he understands and helps us to remedy defects in teaching.

The regular work of the kindergarten and the material used afford the means and opportunity for all necessary language exercises - the circle, the gift, the games, the occupations. Miss Adams and Mrs. Putnam have made practical suggestions. I venture a few more. A successful exercise before the work with the gift begins is for the teacher to take a form from the box and say: "Let us have a little game. I shall play first. See how many different things you can do. I have placed my cube under my chair. What have you done with your cube?" Each child racks his brain to think out a new position for the object, and each is eager to describe. This develops originality as well as power of expression.

The number of our stories should be reduced and their language simplified and clarified. There is danger of mental dyspepsia and no language content gained for the child. A less number of stories well told are better than a great number of stories. A frequent retelling of the stories will give power and confidence, and gives an opportunity to draw

out the timid children. Call on as many as possible to take part, for sometimes this power awakens late, and it needs discrimination on the part of the teacher to know this. The words of songs should be most carefully learned, for songs learned at this time will never be forgotten. There should be more use made of nursery rhymes, for they serve as a connection between the home and the school, as they are a familiar note in the strange surroundings.

MRS. ALICE W. COOLEY, department of pedagogy, University of North Dakota.Language has greater significance and application than the dictionary would give. The development of talk is not needed in the kindergarten. Language means self-expression in words, in order that one soul may communicate with another soul. The development of the self cannot be separated from the power to give oneself to others; one may not grow without giving. “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder." We cannot get without giving.

What are some of the hindrances? Everything that limits me limits my language, in that it keeps me from expressing myself. The word goes with the impression. Every sense needs training, and where any sense is defective there is confusion of thought. The word must be incidental to the thing and given while the impression is clear. We must be in conscious possession of the word at the right moment. The ear must be trained correctly, that the right meaning may be attached to the words. Let us illustrate. A little boy, whose name was Hallowell, once spent the night with a little friend by the name of Brown. When he knelt by the knee of the playmate's mother he repeated his prayer, very seriously, in this fashion: "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Brown be thy name." When he finished, Mrs. Brown said to him: “Why do you say, 'Brown be thy name?'" "Well, when I'm at home I say 'Hallowell be thy name,' and so when I'm at your house I thought I should say 'Brown be thy name.'"

Every hindrance lies in the self. Anything which makes the child have clear images, think freely, see and link object with word, will clarify thought.

We must give and have ideals, and with that must go the opportunity to give expression to them. This opens the problem of the teacher's needs. There are two ways of looking at this. We may have ideals, but say that, as we can never reach them, there is no use trying. Or, we may have ideals and none are too high to hold in the soul - and with this goal struggle on to nobler things. There is no end ever reached, and in this is the beauty of teaching, a privilege we share with the mother. All the little things are really great, and mean so much; there is always something to climb toward.

In literature we find the purest ideals of language and the soul. The value of literature should be in the value of the story.

The problem of the kindergarten and primary school are one. I resent the expressions "the kindergarten spirit," "kindergarten thought," for they carry the wrong impression. It all means true spirit of union with the divine, and it makes the true kindergartner or primary teacher, for without that spirit, neither can be true to the best that lies within her and before her. Our spirit and problems are one, the child is one, and our work is one.

THE NEED FOR ENGLISH STUDY BY KINDERGARTEN

STUDENTS

MISS MARY C. MAY, DIRECTOR KINDERGARTEN DEPARTMENT, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

The kindergarten claims the child under six years of age, because it is the time of greatest plasticity, the easiest in which to make impressions. Habits are forming and opinions being molded, many of them for life.

Brain-centers are rapidly setting up connections, making it possible for it to act as a whole, and tending to establish that automatic action which makes for progress and intellectual growth. Our responsibilities are in direct relation to the plasticity and rapidity of growth in the child mind at this period. The imitative instinct is at flood-tide, and our language, manners, mannerisms, and opinions are copied and quoted as final authority. If the pattern set be good, so much the better, but if not, the result is unfortunate.

President Eliot says that "the power to understand rightly and use critically the mother-tongue is the flower of all education." Very few reach this perfection, but are we as teachers endeavoring to approach it, even from afar off? What is required of us?

First of all, the teacher should be able to speak correctly, in the matters of both grammar and pronunciation. She cannot allow herself the luxury of slang, vulgarisms, or colloquialisms, and her words must be chosen with elegance, simplicity, precision, and strength. She should cultivate a richness of vocabulary that will assist in a wealth of ideas, for a poverty-stricken vocabulary is indicative of barrenness of thought. She must be able to judge of word-values in their relationships, and to select the vital and fundamental, and discard the trivial and transitory. She should be trained in an ability to select from her experiences and knowledge those that bear upon a given point, that her work may be most effective. She should cultivate the power of using comparison and simile, that her fund of illustration and explanation may be enriched; should have a keen ear for inaccuracies; and should study the best ways of correcting them. With this should go a trained literary sense. The teacher is a teller of stories and a singer of songs. Thru these means she can introduce the child into the world of myth and poetry. The markets are flooded today with trashy story- and song-books. Can she protect and guide these impressionable minds if she does not know herself the difference between the fine and classic, the cheap and meretricious?

Here are some of our opportunities. Can our students meet the requirements? They are coming to us more and more from well-bred, well-educated families, and our preparatory standards are constantly being raised. Even so we still meet with insufficient preparation and conspicuous lack along the lines of correctness and ease in speech and writing, power of analysis, and selective insight.

A part of the difficulty may lie with the home. Correct habits of speech. can best be learned there, and it is only thru constantly hearing the mother-tongue correctly used that such habits become second nature. But a large share of the training in English is given over to the school. When we consider the proportion of time which it uses in instruction in reading, writing, grammar, and literature, how can we account for such mistakes and nonsense as these quoted examples show?

If a child be of a designing nature, this should be encouraged thru drawing and paper work.

The mind is developed from definite to indefinite, from indefinite to definite. Froebel also took his gifts in the same way, according to the law of progression.

The child under six uses language in its primary function as a medium of communication. It is a social thing by which he exchanges with his fellows his thoughts, feelings, and experiences. He has something to say, and says it in the most forcible manner at his command. He chatters constantly and is only hampered by his ignorance of idiom and his lack of vocabulary. These hindrances do not daunt him. He constructs his idiom as he goes along, and coins his words with ease. There is constant contact with realities, and so his speech is vital, picturesque, and often poetic. He "hatchets" his wood and "needles" his sewing. His nouns and verbs are descriptive of activities and qualities, and most expressive. They show the trend of his greatest interests.

Follow him on thru his school life. It becomes increasingly difficult to get him to express himself orally or in writing. He has sunk to the level of having to say something. As he goes on, all sorts of devices are used to take the place of the free, spontaneous expression that ought never to have been lost. Somewhere a great wrong has been done him. Conscientious work is done in English, and plenty of it, but it must lack that vitalizing spark which inspires elegance, spontaneity, and originality, or this discussion would not be necessary.

ance.

The fault must lie largely with the primary and secondary schools. It may be that technical grammar is put into the grades too soon. It is conceded by the authorities that "the science of grammar is of no value in bringing pupils to correct habits of speech. All it can do is to help to training in thought." The only way in which the idiom of any language can be freely used is thru the cultivation of the ear. There must be auditory images which tell us how a sentence will sound before it is uttered. With this there must go motor images to help in the utterHere is one of the fatal weaknesses of the English work. There is plenty of grammar and syntax; the classics are dissected and mutilated to find the construction, and perchance from the fragments some beauty of thought and expression. There is work in the critical estimate of the masters of style, but little to bring out spontaneous expression, orally or in writing; and more to check it. Our students may speak and write grammatically, but they have little vital comprehension or originality. They say they understand, but alas! they cannot express. For my part, I believe that understanding without expression is a "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." If we really comprehend, we can give it back again. Whatever theory may be advanced as to the cause of the trouble, there is no doubt of its existence. The next point is: What is the remedy? Let us ask ourselves a searching question. Are we as training teachers above reproach in our use of English? Above all, are we simple in our