Vol. XXIII

MEETINGS

Bay Section the California Teachers' Association; Lewis B. Avery, President, Oakland, Cal.; W. L. Glascock, Secretary, San Mateo, Cal.

Northern California Teachers' Association, S. P. Robbins, President, Chico, Cal.; Mrs. Minnie O'Neil, Secretary.

Central California Teachers' Association, F. H. Boren, Lindsay, President; E. W. Lindsay, Fresno, Secretary. Southern California Teachers' Association, Mrs. Grace Stanley, President, San Bernardino; J. O. Cross, Secretary, Los Angeles.

California Council of Education, E. M. Cox, Oakland, Cal., President; A. H. Chamberlain, San Francisco, Cal., Secretary.

California Federation of School Women's Clubs. Miss Anna Keefe, President, Oakland, Cal.; Miss Cora Hampel, Secretary, Oakland, Cal.

California Education Officers, Sacramento, Cal., Hon. Edward Hyatt, Superintendent of Public Instruction; Dr. Margaret Schallenberger-McNaught, Commissioner Elementary Schools; Edwin R. Snyder, Commissioner Vocational Education; Will C. Wood, Commissioner Secondary Schools.

State Board of Education, E. P. Clarke, President; Mrs. O. Shepard Barnum, Charles A. Whitmore, T. S. Montgomery, Marshall De Motte, Mrs. Agnes Ray, George W. Stone.

SHOULD THIS COUNTRY ECONOMIZE FOR OR AGAINST ITS CHILDREN?

This country is engaged in a war to make democracy prevail in the world, There could be no nobler purpose, for within democracy we imply the growing measure of social justice obtainable through a government of the people, by the people:-we include our advances in homely, daily life,--the wisdom and liberality with which children can be nurtured and trained.

Sir Ernest Rutherford, the distinguished English physicist, in an address before the Academy of Science in Washington last month said, in speaking of the fearful destructive weapons which science bestows for fighting, "This war would not be worth fighting if it is not a war to the end, for so destructive has war become that either we must end war or war will end civilization.

If this war can end war and can make democracy safe it will be worth great sacrifices; and sacrifices and cost it will demand, to a degree beyond all present reckoning. War expenditures is inevitably directed to the immediate destruction of values, material destruction and the destruction of human life and of human efficiency. Plainly economy will be required of a sternness never practiced in our country still in its rich unexhausted youth. In some way the debts created by war must be paid by us. The only choice we have as a nation is how and when we shall save in order to pay them.

Added to the fact of debt is another, al ready familiar enough in talk, but not yet felt with its real sharpness; the cost of food and clothing has increased until the family standards of an unknown proportion of our people are seriously threatened. I need not tell any gathering of salaried people that pay for services has not climbed automatically upward with prices of com

modities.

Again, only the infidel provides not for his own household. If we go to Europe to make democracy prevail we must see to it that democracy does not suffer irreparable harm at home. Our armies must not return victorious from Europe to find that we have allowed democracy to be defeated

SAN FRANCISCO, OCTOBER, 1917

at home-that family standards have been destroyed by poverty and civic neglect. How can we keep democracy alive except by the preservation of the hard-won standards of social order by which we have thus far been able to express it? Already methods of retrenchment and economy are being urged. The only question is, where we can properly economize. Here is the greatest test of our national good sense and foresight. What do we consider the foundation necessities; what luxuries shall we spare first?

The ultimate treasure and resource of

any people is its young life-the only surety

of the continuance of the race. What is the

fundamenal necessity, if it is not to safeguard that reservoir?

There are 30,000,000 children under sixteen years of age in our care; about 20,000,000 of them in our schools. Slowly we have arrived at certain measures of protection for those under sixteen-by compulsory education laws, by child labor laws; by mothers' pension laws, and now by a

"This flag which we honor and under which we serve is an emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that

which we give it from generation to gen

eration. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices whether in peace or in war."-President Wilson.

national child labor law, which says that after September first. 1917, every child under fourteen years of age is entitled to protection from labor in mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment. And no child under sixteen shall work in mine or quarry. No child between fourteen and sixteen shall work in these industries more than eight hours a day nor more than six days in a week, nor after seven at night, nor before six in the morning.

It is not too much to say that the first effect of war is to threaten all such standards; it may suspend or destroy them all, so that now in the beginning it is exceedingly important that we should face squarely the risk before us and determine whether such laws are necessities or luxuries.

What have foreign countries to teach us from their three years of war experience? The Children's Bureau has made a search of public reports upon living conditions affecting children behind the lines in the varifecting children behind the lines in the various warring nations; in order to learn what seems to the belligerent powers the great necessity back there where the women and children are living.

Admittedly our standards of life, including those of child protection are higher than those in Europe. than those in Europe. Otherwise ninetyfive per cent of our immigrants would not have come at the invitation of earlier ar

No. 9

rived friends who earned and sent the money for their passage. The important consideration is not the actual standard of life in any European country, but the attitude of the public mind toward their preservation or loss.

At the outbreak of the war the Board of Education of Great Britain stated that "in the general interest of the nation it is of the greatest importance that the public education of the country should be continued without interruption and with undiminished efficiency."

A year later its report contains this paragraph: "To withdraw the child from school at an earlier age than that contemplated by the attendance by-laws is to arrest his education on the threshold of the years. when he is probably just commencing to assimilate and consolidate the instruction he has received and is receiving at school. His introduction to labor at this time renders him liable to conditions of strain detrimental to his physical well-being.'

The reports of the British Munition. Workers Committee emphasize the waste of extraordinary war conditions of work and urge the restoration of former restrictions. They say in part:

to

"Conditions of work are accepted without question and without, complaint which, inmediately detrimental to output, would, if continued, be be ultimately disastrous health. It is for the nation to safe-guard the devotion of its workers by its foresight. and watchfulness lest irreparable harm be done to body and mind both in this generation and the next.

"Very young girls show almost immediate symptoms of lassitude, exhaustion, and impaired vitality under the influence of employment at night. A very similar impression was made by the appearance of large numbers of young boys who had been working at munitions for a long time on alternate night and day shifts."

The countries which have borne the brunt of the war have indeed sacrificed the schooling of children to their evident injury. Cecil Leeson says in his book on The Child and the War, "If the lads were learning anything useful the situation, though still undesirable, would be not quite so bad; but they are not learning anything useful. Most of the factory work they do is 'blind alley' work, fitting them for nothing afterwards; and, to do it, lads are sacrificing physique, efficiency, and in very many cases, character."

This year, notwithstanding the increasing exhaustion of the war, England and France have taken determined measures to restore or to improve their old standards.

In England the Board of Education has demanded a budget for 1917-1918 showing an increase of nearly four million pounds over last year-the largest increase over the preceding year known in the history of English education. Its purpose is to raise teachers' salaries, to restore school build

ings to school use, and to increase school efficiency.

Mr. Herbert Fisher, President of the Board of Education, in a speech in the House of Commons last April, supporting this budget said, "Economy is in the air. We are told to economize in the human capital of the country, which we have too long allowed to run to waste."

It is inspiring to know that certain younger countries have from the first refused any sacrifices of children's right to education. Compulsory school attendance laws have not been lowered in Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Since the war began, requirements for school attendance have been raised in Nova Scotia and in some parts of Australia; Manitoba passed its first compulsory education law in March, 1916. There has been no weakening of labor laws affecting women and children in New Zealand, nor in any Canadian province. Yet Canada has sent to the front one-nineteenth of her total population and New Zealand has sent one-fourteenth.

This heroic struggle to protect the schooling of children in countries so desperately involved in war as are France and England, this brave insistence upon no reduction, by the colonies which have sent their men so freely and generously to the aid of England, are in strange contrast with the spirit of the law passed by the largest state in this country permitting the school year to be curtailed five months; in strange contrast to the specious willingness to let children do their bit; in strange contrast with the suggestion that the Federal child labor law shall be suspended or repealed before it goes into operation.

Such efforts to tamper with the rights of children are not at an end. They will grow in plausibility and insistence unless they are frankly and vigorously met. Today as never before it is certain that the public school teachers of America have an unparalleled power to guard the nation's children and to mold public opinion so that this country will insist that the schools shall gather momentum during this period of war in order that they may better cope with the inevitable disturbance of orderly life which war entails..

On behalf of children, we must, even in war time, practice that true economy which scattereth abroad yet increaseth.

JULIA C. LATHROP,

Chief, Children's Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.

(Read before the National Education Association, Portland, July, 1917.)

ENGLISH ESSAYS

Fdited by David Pottinger, Thayer Academy,
Braintree, Mass.

LONDON'S CALL OF THE WILD

Edited by Theodore C. Mitchill,
Jamaica High School, New York

WISTER'S THE VIRGINIAN

Edited by James F. Hosic, Chicago Normal College
RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Letters from Many Pens (Coult); Selections from American Poetry (Carhart); Represen-
tative Short Stories (Hart & Perry); Shakespeare's Richard III (Brubacher); Short
Stories & Selections (Baker); Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (Chase); Lowell's Earlier
Essays (Hoffsten); Southey's Life of Nelson (Law).

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

609 MISSION STREET

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

Detroit Adopts Gregg Shorthand

It gives us great pleasure to announce that the City of Detroit, Michigan, has officially adopted Gregg Shorthand to be taught exclusively in the high schools of that city, beginning September, 1917.

The adoption of Gregg Shorthand was made after what was perhaps the
most exhaustive test of a shorthand system that has ever been con-
ducted. Under standardized conditions, parallel classes in Gregg Short-
hand and the system previously taught were carried through the entire
shorthand course. The test was not confined to one or two classes, but
included the entire shorthand department, the object being to avoid
drawing conclusions from the exceptional class or the exceptional
teacher. The progress of the work of each student and the results of
all tests and examinations were recorded and tabulated. Both the data
and the practical results obtained show the overwhelming superiority
of Gregg Shorthand.

The experience of the Detroit schools has been duplicated in hundreds
of others. More than 75% of the high schools teaching shorthand are
teaching Gregg. There is but one answer to the question "Why?"

THE NEW COURSE OF STUDY The San Francisco Public Schools are looking forward to the publication of a new course of study. Some educator has stated that no course of study should be regarded as a fixed creation, that it should be flexible, and easily subject to change, revised perhaps every two years.

The school teachers of the San Francisco Schools Department have been invited to send in suggestions for this new course of study. Various committees have been appointed to deal with the various topics, and out of much discussion and consideration there certainly should result a workable course. It has been my good fortune to hear the subjects discussed by many teachers some of them those veterans of an "education received twenty years ago," and others, young girls fresh from the theory and practice of a normal school. The concensus of opinion seems to be, not exactly that the course of study embraces too many subjects, but that too much is required under each subject. A systematic process of wholesale elimination would seem to be in order. Also there is a general feeling that the public at large-the parents, and the club women, should inform themselves of the conditions which underlie the schools of today, and also that they should familiarize themselves with the course of study, with its requirements, take into consideration the important fact that all home study is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and that the general attitude of mind in the student body is "You teach me, and if I feel like it, I may learn a little; but just as little as possible."

Misplaced Blame

It too often follows that, where children do not make the desired progress, the blame is placed upon the teachers and the course of study.

In the first place the class-room teacher does not make the course of study. Seldom indeed has the class-room teacher even been consulted when a new course of study was being prepared, and still more seldom have any of her ideas or suggestions been accepted or adopted, should she have had the temerity to make any. The class-room teacher too often has been made to feel that she is but a unit of work, and that she has no views, no ideas, no rights, and what is more should have none.

Teachers Invited to Co-operate But the present educational authorities have taken a very different attitude. The teachers have been invited and urged to cooperate with the officials, and as already stated, committees have been appointed to deal with the various parts of the course. As an Aid to Understanding the Situation The teachers throughout the San Francisco School Department have been urged to read Dewey's "Schools of Tomorrow," published by E. P. Dutton & Co. of New York.

We must admit that the schools of yesterday do not fit the requirements of today, and everywhere thoughtful people are recognizing this fact and working out theories and trying experiments. There is a tendency toward giving the child greater freedom, and an attempt is being made to identify

Eliza D. Keith

the child's home life with his environment. "Schools of Tomorrow" is aptly illustrated and some of the text accompanying the illustrations are epitomes of educational philosophy.

For instance, "Nature would have children to be children before they are men.” "Teach the child what is of use to him as a child." "To learn to think we must exercise our limbs." "Children are interested "Children are interested in the things they need to know about." Not Entirely Encouraging to a Conscientious Teacher

These are all true, and yet who will have the courage to take the initiative in breaking away from the old time death-like stillness and cemetery order in a class-room. Just let a progressive teacher do some of these things in an up-to-date way, and what would be her fate? Why, at any moment her principal might walk into her room, just in the midst of a community lesson, or during an instance of team work, and viewing the "confusion," would say "Why are these children out of their seats? Why is all this disorder?" And then the principal might report the up-to-date teacher to the powers that be, as having lost control of her class! Or she might charge the teacher with shirking her own work, when the teacher encouraged the older ones to lead the younger ones in their games in the yard, or to help in forming the lines.

The fact is, many teachers are better than the training they have received, and more instructive than the course of study, but in the words of John Swett: "If you know more than your superiors, never let them find it out.'

How "Schools of Tomorrow" may affect other teachers, I do not know, but I always other teachers, I do not know, but I always put the book down with a series of complex put the book down with a series of complex impulses.

One is to say "I've always felt this. I've always known it." In many an instance, I, myself, have groped in the dark to find the way out of the dead past into the living present; but the obstacles, the deliberate baffling of most earnest endeavor have often disheartened me, yet again have they often disheartened me, yet again have they spurred me on to greater effort.

How often have I, as has many another teacher, wished for the power to cut out dry detail, to start on wings through history and geography, and have been pulled back to earth with the realization that the course of study is the barrier before all latter-day progress.

Dewey predicts that in time "education will maintain a vital connection with contemporary social life, and give the kind of instruction needed to make efficient and self-respecting members of society, of the community."

To Return to the Course of Study In the meantime the teachers' committees of the San Francisco School Department are talking among themselves as to what they would like to see in the course of study. For my part, I should like to give the youngest children real tools in miniature and show them how to handle those tools. More than once have I made a plea for sandpiles in the school yard as an aid to the study of architecture and of various kinds of structural work. A sandpile would

be the field where the little children could be taught how to use a shovel, a garden trowel, a mason's trowel, a rake, a hoe, and even a tiny garden hose.

Even baby pupils love to use a hammer, and to learn how to drive a nail without mashing one's fingers is a liberal education in manual training. Little children can be taught how to hammer straight and effectively by having nails set up for them in a bar of kitchen soap and being allowed to hammer the nails down into the bar. The Open Doors of the Mind Once I read a book on educational psychology. It was called "The Education of the Central Nervous System." The author maintained that we never receive an absolutely new idea after we are twelve years old. Indeed, he inclined to the belief that seven years of age was the outstanding limit. The author argued that all that we did with our hands or with our minds in later life was the result of impulses received in childhood, and that one's life. work was merely a development or a combination of early impulses acting themselves into results. This was declared to be particularly true in all that pertained to muscular or motor activities. Therefore, there should be an early start in all training that makes for grace of motion, manual dexterity, and muscular activity.

Then why not begin to train our children. in the use of tools, of cooking utensils, of sewing materials, while they are young? Yes, while they are very, very young. This is done in "kitchen gardens," why not in our public schools?

Talent Lost to the World Every teacher has known cases of remarkable talent for some special work unaccompanied by capacity for the scholarship necessary for other requirements of the course of study; and because a pupil could not maintain the standing in the upper grades, he or she has had to drop out of school before the manual training or the industrial art course had been completed: the boy to go into some "blindalley" occupation, and the girl to return to the pots and pans and the dishwashing of a kitchen. Training would have made the boy a builder; training would have made the girl a successful dressmaker or a highclass milliner. Why not start this training in the primary grades?

The Composition Bugbear Another point on which practical teachers. are agreed is that the present methods of teaching composition is weak, wasteful, illogical, blundersome, and non-productive of the desired results.

Let us have drill in sentence-making and an early beginning of technical grammar of the most practical sort.

A course of study should require constant drill on the synopsis of verbs with particular stress upon the compound tenses, so that their use would be automatic instead of analytic. Don't talk so much about auxiliaries and helpers. Use them.

In this connection let me mention the fact that a wonderfully interesting and helpful book by Dr. Bennett has just been published by Ginn and Co., entitled "School Efficiency," and that one chapter on the