Report of the committee on nominations was made by the chairman as follows: For President J. K. Stableton, superintendent of schools, Bloomington, Ill. For Vice-President-Miss Adalaide S. Baylor, superintendent of schools, Wabash, Ind. For Secretary-Miss S. Belle Chamberlain, state superintendent of schools, Boise, Idaho.

A motion was made and carried that the report be accepted and that the nominees be declared elected. The president closed the meeting with an expression of appreciation of the work of the contributors to the program and of the local committee. The Department then adjourned.

EMMA C. DAVIS, Secretary.

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

INTRODUCTION BY THE PRESIDENT

ALICE WOODWORTH COOLEY, GRAND FORKS, N. d.

Hundreds of us climbed over and shot thru most stupendous mountains; slid down into and crept up out of deepest cañons; and panted across scorching and seemingly pathless deserts to what we had ignorantly thought to be the southwestern jumping-off place of our country. At last arrived, we find our destination to be the center of the universe. So we have great reason for congratulation this morning.

Truly it is a matter of great significance that so many of us have thus journeyed for days and nights over mountain, cañon, and desert because of our interest in our chosen work. It is significant, too, that with so great a variety of good things inviting us this morning, so many are here to evidence their appreciation of the vital importance of the elementary work. And we assume that we are here because of our live interest in the live topic to be presented.

A brief glance at the program shows that each address is a part of one whole these parts woven together by experts in both theory and practice. The president's part of the program is to give merely the prelude; to call attention to a few main features of the morning's discussion.

There is concentration of attention on the one subject, development of oral self-expression. More than this, concentration upon a particular phase— the great factors to be used in this development. In the word factor we strike the keynote. In the grouping of the words "oral reading and oral language" we strike the dominant chord, to emphasize the fact that there can be no true teaching of the one that does not give increased power in the other. Both are forms of self-expression.

This program has been made to meet the demands of present conditions. For more than a quarter-century colleges and universities have been castigating us for the noticeable lack of early language training in their students; educational clubs thruout the country have been continuously "resolving" that the "correct use of the English language must be taught in the elementary schools;" leading periodicals and current magazines have taken up the cudgels

and laid upon us the responsibility for "English as she is spoke." And these criticisms are just. In these days of art-revival, when we are so vigorously preaching the gospel of beauty and the necessity of cultivating the sense of beauty, this great universal art is most neglected. One rarely hears in conversation the choice, beautiful English that is our inheritance. Our ears are made constantly familiar with ungrammatical and provincial expressions, used by boys, girls, men, and women, who have spent years in our public schools, and who frequently tell us they have "been thru" language, grammar, and literature.

Again, we have for years discussed all phases of this problem in conventions and institutes-national, state, city, village, and rural. We have learned by head, if not by heart, the physical, metaphysical, aesthetical, philosophical, biological, psychological, and pedagogical reasons why language development is absolutely fundamental in education. And after all this, we return to the schoolrooms of our country to find very little growth in actual language teaching. We find schools in which "language is taught incidentally;" schools where grammar lessons of varying degrees of solution and dilution are taught under the guise of "language lessons;" and schools in which all kinds of mechanical devices and exercises masquerade as language work; but we find very little true, strong, vital language teaching.

Many, many teachers are awake to the necessity of doing something who have most vague and hazy ideas of that something to be done. For these reasons, therefore, emphasis is laid this morning on the factors, the means to be used in the twofold nature of language teaching, the two phases that joined by nature cannot be "parted asunder." These are, as we know, cultivation of the ear to quick, keen discrimination between the beautiful and the ugly expression-between the true and the false; and the establishment of the habit of right usage.

The subject has been chosen for this particular time and place with the thought that the function of the National Educational Association is not merely to talk and possibly influence theory, but to mold practice. It is our most earnest hope that the messages brought to us by the speakers of the morningmen and women who have proved the potency of these factors by experience— may be to each individual as so many bugle-calls to more effective work in the language development of children. None can measure the service to humanity if we who are here help the children who come to us in the future to more adequate self-expression. It means for each child so helped, unfolded life with greater power for service. In this way the work of the teacher of language never dies, but abides as a mighty and generative force, playing its part in the up-lifting of humanity. May we enter into this holy privilege and thus prove ourselves one of those whom Robert Burdette described to us as "teachers come from God." And may this morning of July 10, 1907, bring us new inspiration, new consecration, and new determination that shall bear fruit in the lives of children.

POTENT FACTORS IN ORAL READING AND ORAL LANGUAGE

I. THE STORY AND THE POEM

HENRY SUZZALLO, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY

[CONDENSED STENOGRAPHIC REPORT]

The tendency of the modern school to become an institution designed to give more than an appreciation of knowledge is clearly manifested by recent school curricula. Within the past decade or two the expressive subjects have come to occupy a larger place in instruction. Drawing, music, manual training, and composition have been given larger attention of late than in previous years. The importance of expression in the learning process has become quite obvious from the very beginning of the experiment in the use of active subjects. There is no final test of the rightness of feeling or of the accuracy of thinking like the action or expression which is the result of these. We are realizing more as we proceed that the school must turn out men with more than appreciative power. Its men must have the ability to influence life thru expressive ability. Thus far our efforts have been fragmentary, however, and it seems a meet time to consider from a unified and broad point of view the expressive work of the school, and more particularly for the purposes of this address to show the place of the story and the poem.

There are many types of expression thru which man comes to influence himself and the world in which he lives. Some of these are in analysis, simple, others are complex. For purposes of convenience and clearness one might say, that there are four simple types of human expression and action. These we may term, (1) organic expression; (2) reconstructive expression; (3) representative expression, and (4) expression thru language. Other important types which are combinations of two or more of these might be noted, such as the forceful expression of a great executive, who does his creative work mainly thru the control of men. Dramatic expression, which is also a combination of these various types, might likewise be noted.

The first type of expression, which I have chosen to call organic expression, is the expression of human life which man gives thru his own physical organism. Movement of all sorts, facial expression and every other form which reveals the human mood may be included under this head. From the play of the child and the irritation which a man reveals thru the nervous readjustments of his body up to the fine art of pantomime and facial expression as revealed in the drama is a series of human manifestations which make up the influential factors in human personality. Find a man who is devoid of personal expression of this organic type, and you will have a man who is likely to be personally uninfluential among his fellow beings. In the order of precedence organic expression is the most instinctive and is the first general power of expressiveness which a child attains.

But a child not only makes over himself readjusting his inner states by

his organic actions; he goes farther and becomes expressive and creative with the world beyond his physical self. When a child changes an object from one position to another or tears it to pieces, scattering its fragments, or builds the torn fragments together again, he is modifying the world in which he lives; he is engaging in reconstructive expression. This is the second large type. In the school it is represented by the subjects of manual training and the fine arts.

In the work of making over the world after the fashion of his heart's desire a child soon faces his own impotency. A child like a man may wish to hold a fleeting picture or the evanescent hues of a sundown. He may wish to change the sky line to the fashion of his own interpretation. But the untold forces of nature are mightier than he; the round of days with its fleeting beauties goes on and the mountains hold their rigid silhouettes against the sky. Man can little change them. But the idealistic nature of man must have its way and so he represents nature to himself in line and color. Out of it come the arts of drawing and painting. This is representative expression.

All that man has done in the preceding types of expression is to tell of some concrete thing, to indicate a special mood, to mold a special object, or to represent a particular picture. Man with his intellectual powers sees more than the concrete. Behind the world of particular things his interpretive mind has builded abstractions and generalizations, laws and gods, and so for these he has created a special language, the language not of sticks and stones and lines and colors, but the language of sounds and symbols. In the school on the lower planes, we call such expression language, and when it rises to the plane of fine arts, we speak of it as literature.

If the school is to train thoroly the expressive life so that man may be influential through all his powers in all his domains, the school must develop not only these four types of expressiveness but the various complexes of these which are everywhere recurrent in life. Spontaneous play with its free organic expression, constructive activities, music and the plastic arts, the formal expression of language, the executive control of his fellow-men must all have a place in the public school. They may not all be set down in the formal course of study, but in the inclusive round of school activity each will have its place. Now the special subject in hand, the place of the story and the poem, has direct reference to but one type of these, that is, to expression in language, and to but a single aspect of one form of language; that is, to the aesthetic side of oral language.

For the most part human experiences have the same meanings to different peoples the world over. This is due to the similar constitution of human beings. But the language which expresses the meaning of these experiences will differ with Frenchmen, Englishmen, or Germans. The training of linguistic expression then depends upon a clear and fixed association between the meaning of an experience and the language symbol which expresses it. For our American public schools it involves giving the child experiences, or taking

those which he already possesses and associating with them the conventional symbols which his race usage has approved.

The English language is, psychologically speaking, two languages, for there are two sets of symbols to be associated with every experience, one with sound symbols, the other with sight symbols. In any written language the symbol enters the eye and is expressed thru the fingers which write or set the types for the printed page. In any spoken language the symbol enters the ear and becomes expressed thru the vocal organs. The poem and the story as potent factors in oral reading and oral language concern the symbols understood by the ear and expressed thru the throat, tongue, lips, and other physical organs of speech.

In the foregoing analysis it has been suggested that there are two functions to oral language. One is the function of appreciation and the other is the function of expression. Appreciating is listening and understanding. Expression is thinking and speaking. Between these two functions there seems to be an established relationship. Our appreciations usually precede and envelop our expressiveness. Clear expression demands as a basis clear appreciation. Knowledge of a definite sort is always important to decisive and effective action. But in the learning stage experiment in expression may be the best method for gaining clear and effective knowledge. Our ability to appreciate, as it widens, enlarges our ability to express. And as expression grows our appreciation enlarges. The literary appreciation which comes from the use of the story and the poem is not alone significant in ministering to understanding and enjoyment-it has a direct influence upon the power of expression thru oral language.

If any given course of study in the subject of reading is carefully analyzed it will be noted that three problems appear to be dominant each at a different time. These problems are, (1) the mastery of mechanics in beginning reading; (2) the quick acquisition of thought in the silent reading of the later primary grades, and (3) the sensing of feeling in the interpretations of the literature of the grammar grade. This order in the treatment of our problems which is the common practice of our schools, while it represents fundamental types of difficulty, may not necessarily give the proper order and arrangement for attacking these difficulties.

While one problem may be dominant the subordinant problems should not be neglected if teaching is to be truly effective. From the very first mastery of mechanics reading should mean some appreciation of thought and literary feeling. The same treatment should be characteristic of oral language where from the start children should not only write words but their ideas and feelings about things. The story and the poem therefore will be a force in oral reading and in oral language not only in the more advanced stages of the subject, but from the very beginning.

Because the story and the poem deal with literary forms of language where the aesthetic elements of beauty are involved their main service in oral read