My question concerning the drama in the Sunday-school was ignored except by two teachers. One had seen it tried with great success. The other was sure it should not be tried, as it would detract from the devotional spirit of the lesson. Personally I am quite willing to have the devotional spirit of most primary Sunday schools disturbed, if something can be introduced of sufficient interest to keep small boys from horse play and of sufficient power to make them understand and remember the heart of the day's lesson.

To sum up, dramatizing is a potent factor in teaching oral reading and oral language because it makes the child understand literature, because it makes him love literature, because it makes him self-reliant, and because it makes him see that there is a vital relation between a story and the life he is living today.

Of its other important results especially to be commended is the bubbling delight it affords children. It will probably win its way thru all the grades, being of particular value in making the old myths and the literary classics vibrant with interest. Little costuming should be attempted, and its hour should be the psychologic moment rather than a regular time on the program. may become one of childhood's favorite outdoor games, and it seems potent as a help to concreteness and interest in primary Sunday-school work.

It

IV. EXPRESSION BY THE HAND

1. C. MCNEILL, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, MEMPHIS, TENN. The school is life as well as a training for life. All movement toward self-realization is at first vague, crude, and indefinite. The all-wise Creator decrees it should be thus. Man in his systems of science, philosophy, art, and business must ever move from the vague, crude, and indefinite to the clear, the finished, and the comprehended. The movement is natural and the only possible way to freedom of action, mental or physical, lies in this direction.

The utility of expression by the hand is no exception to the principle stated. Some have thought of its coming thru music, some thru drawing, some thru manual arts, some thru domestic science, or domestic arts, and others thru artisan work in wood, iron, clay, leather, or other kinds of skilled labor. All are right in part, yet expression by the hand means more than deftness in any line of human effort. It is the soul expressing itself, in doing what the mind has imagined, conceived, or constructed. It is a test of the fulness of the executive agencies of stimulation, guidance, and control. It is a high form of reaction by which the free play of motor activity reinforces the development of mental images or ideals. It is the guided expression of motor impulses which stimulates the senses to do their work, a lack of which would inhibit mental growth by letting the motor impulses go out toward wrong or trivial ends.

A definition of expression by the hand should harmonize with the latest findings of science. It is now held by investigators of the localization of brain functions that manual expression enriches the centers in front of the fissure of

Rolando and makes brain activity more easy and vigorous in other directions. It is known beyond any reasonable doubt that brain activity and brain efficiency move together; that the enrichment of one area by use makes growth and development more certain and more easy in other areas; and that welldeveloped lobes in front of the fissure of Rolando were characteristic of brains of some great men who gave to the world thought expressions thru the hand in one or more of its manifold modes of self-revelation.

The mind works with images. There ought to be a close relation between the motives for expression and the images of the needs of the home and of the larger social units with which pupils of different sections are familiar. The images that form the most valuable contents of children's minds are those that appeal to individual and social necessities which they can understand and appreciate. A scientific application of expression by the hand would hardly warrant children's making wooden nutmegs, since the national pure food laws prevent their attempted export sale as food. The ethical end of effort and the idea of practical utility come together at many points; and true educational guidance makes all expression one's best and therefore in some degree ethical. I have just come from Mississippi where for two weeks I assisted in the work of the Institute Conductors' Meeting at Starkville. I had there an opportunity to see many illustrations of the attractions of properly guided expression by the hand in the summer school at the Agricultural and Mechanical College. The most popular courses offered were those that allowed the hand to express the ideas gained by full and complete use of the motor activities. One crowded course was given by Superintendent E. L. Hughes, of Greenville, S. C. At an expense of less than two dollars for all the material used, the teachers learned how to construct a twenty-four-inch globe which has all the illustrative value of one that would cost twenty dollars on the market. The construction of the globe, the necessary study of the problems of latitude and longitude, the work with Diamond Dye colors to produce artistic and graphic pictures of land, water, elevation, etc., and the idea of making an irresistible appeal to boys and girls, who in the past have had so much trouble in seeing with the mind's eye the world in miniature, led a large and enthusiastic group of men and women, many of whom had college degrees, into doing what would equip them to direct scientifically the steps of pupils to an attractive realization of many geographical notions.

An interesting experiment, showing the high appreciation placed upon expression by the hand by people who value doing for art's sake under the expert guidance of great teachers, was tried in the Wisconsin State Normal School at Superior while I was the president of that institution. Courses in domestic science and handwork, or domestic art, were installed; and students whose programs would permit it were allowed to take the work with no view to credit toward graduation. The movement was a marked success from its inception. A waiting-list from which students were admitted to the classes was necessary. The further fact that the interest grew from year to year

shows that the work has intrinsic value, a value that makes its appeal from the side of science, as well as from art.

In the modern interpretation of expression by the hand science guides and precedes art. Science orders the doing and art, expressed, reveals and reinforces the mind's perceptions, images, and relations. The educator, having reached large and clear views of the meaning of things he teaches, causes art to follow scientific knowledge. The wise superintendent requires general culture, specific training in the science and the art of teaching, and a comprehensive and guided education in the technical work to be done of all who are to assume leadership in expression by the hand.

In every system of schools there are problems peculiar to the locality. In a large measure the scope of the work in all phases of the educational scheme should aim to relate the life of the school with the larger life outside.

Drawing, painting, paper-folding, weaving, basketry, clay-modeling, cardboard construction, book-binding, mechanical drawing, woodwork, ironwork, cooking, and sewing are the principal features of the branches that require an intelligent application of the motor activity.

In some places the exercises have been arranged to give exact sequence to them; and to exalt the system rather than to lift up the children, all pupils must "get into the grind" and do the same work in the same way at the same time. Such a plan is systematic, but it is so rigidly formal that it leaves no opportunity for initiative and original thought on the part of the individual child. In other cities we find a jumble of exercises not well interrelated, each one being an isolated item bearing very little upon other units of the course. This is an aimless waste of time and energy, entirely out of harmony with the spirit of scientific teaching. All the forces and considerations that necessarily enter into the success or failure of any line of effort should be taken into consideration. Nothing should be done by guess. Everything should move towards a definite and understood end. To illustrate, girls who study cooking need instruction in the chemistry of food, in food values, in providing for balanced rations, in economy of materials, in cleanliness, in sterilization, in care of utensils, and in other things the home-maker should know and do, or direct. There are many who, having an empirical view of expression by hand, make a great outcry against the crowded course of instruction and object to motor studies and call them fads. I quite agree with Superintendent L. D. Harvey of Wisconsin in saying that we teach too many details in subjects not worth teaching and in so doing waste the time and energies of pupils; that when books fail, industrial training, which calls forth a high order of mental activity, is a time-saver; and that the mental power gained by contact with things gives a capacity for mastery which holds the pupils in school and thus brings them under the influence of educational agencies.

Gradually but surely the American people are reaching an advanced conception of the utility of motor expression as an effective and necessary element in public education. The science of teaching, year by year, brings closer

together the vital factors of stimulation, guidance, and control to the end that the children and the youth may grow to be able and disposed to lead happy, healthy, and morally worthy active lives. As history advances, more and more the citizens of this great country of ours realize that for every impression there must be adequate expression; that motor activity guided by trained intelligence is a powerful instrument for intellectual and moral advancement; that character is measured by the habitual reactions of our daily lives; and that the All Wise in his Book anticipated our reaching a new interpretation of the injunction—"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

DISCUSSION

JOHN S. WELCH, supervisor of grammar grades, Salt Lake City, Utah.-The mind has many languages, many modes of expression. Now it speaks thru stone or bronze; now thru the many-colored canvas; now thru fragile clay or massive steel; now thru gigantic industrial and commercial enterprises; now thru institutions for intellectual and spiritual uplift and growth. In the discussion this larger conception of language may legitimately enter into the trend of thought, for, back of all the diversity of expression as effect, there may be unity and oneness of cause.

Anything that tends to focus the mind on a central point about which ideas may group themselves is a factor which determines clearness of language and forcefulness of expression. Thoughts seek to embody themselves in fitting form. Slovenliness of language and expression is due to slovenly thinking; to a lack of worthy ideas to be expressed worthily.

The discussion will be an attempt to estimate the points advocated in the papers as means for causing fit ideas to be expressed fittingly.

Expression by hand.—We will all indorse the oft-repeated statement of Dr. G. Stanley Hall that manual labor builds brain, if the statement refers to the work of the muscle as it becomes an agent for transforming the thought of the brain to the external object that gives it sensuous being, but we will scarcely indorse the implied suggestion that any form or phase of muscular labor builds brain. We can believe that the brain of a Michael Angelo was strengthened and enlarged as acting thru his muscle it wrought the form of his mighty Moses in the unyielding stone, but we are loath to believe that the brain of the hod-carrier, the ditch-digger, and the plowman are strengthened and enlarged by the action of muscle as they follow the dull routine of the occupations into which circumstances have thrown them. So in school, the child builds brain as the brain holds the idea which is given objective being thru the action of mind and muscle, but we doubt whether the brain is either strengthened or enlarged as he constructs the formal object from dictation, suggestion, or imitation of the teacher. That manual training may build brain is true, but that it all too frequently does not is also true.

Because of its possibilities, I wish to re-emphasize all that Superintendent McNeill so ably has said of the right of manual training in all of its manifold phases to a place side by side with the other studies which have found an abiding-place in the work of the school. The delay in giving it this recognition is due to the fact that there are those classified as leaders of educative thought who still believe that the subject is the end, the child the means of fostering and preserving it; who still believe, or seem to believe, that all children need the same thing at the same time and in equal amounts. When all can realize that the child is the end; that books at best, however important their message, merely represent what others have thought and said and done, that the child will come to his own in the best sense of the term when he feels and thinks and does in terms of his own initiative and responsibility; when the construction, in whatever form or manner it reveals itself, is the

result of creative effort, manual training will receive full recognition in terms of what the school ought to do, must do, will do as determined by a well-ordered course of study.

The final value of the work of the hand as a factor in thinking and expressing will be determined by whether the leaders are artists or artisans in the work; by whether the desired end is the finished product in terms of the object constructed, or whether it is the child's ability to see, to relate, to execute, to go from better to best in high thinking, in worthy achievement; by whether the child seeks to realize his own best possibilities and to give himself as the finished product thru the use of brain and muscle.

Dramatizing.-Clearness, conciseness, definiteness of language, force and power of expression, are dependent upon the vividness of imagination and dramatization is a forceful factor in training and developing the imagination. This training and development is vitally essential as the imagination is a mighty factor in social, intellectual, and spiritual life, but we must not fail to discriminate sharply between the fancy and the imagination. None will question that in the main children are more fanciful than adults, tho there may be grave doubts as to their being more imaginative. We have but to recall the facts and forces of modern complex life; the gigantic sky-scrapers, towering like huge exclamation points done in stone and steel; the great corporate and municipal enterprises; the great inventions and discoveries and all the appliances and appurtenances of modern life to realize the power of the imagination in the affairs of men. Surely the imagination of the adult is not a negligible quantity. Because the imagination plays so important a part in the affairs of men there is full justification for using any and every legitimate means for its development in the schoolroom.

We may admit all that is claimed for dramatization as an aid to the expression of the constructions of the imaginations, yet we must not lose sight of the fact that all objective representation is on a sensuous basis and the highest flights in the possibilities of thought and expression have not been reached until, above the sensuous, the spiritual construction has been attained. Every individual defines its own limits. The beginning of the use of dramatization must also be the beginning of its disuse.

The great dramas of Shakspere are a mighty force and power, for despite the glitter and trappings of the stage, the pomp and splendor of costume, a thrill of real spiritual life is felt in and thru them all. It is possible to so read these dramas that only the external form will be seen and felt, hence an appreciation of Shakspere by a Tolstoi; but it is also possible to so read a play of Shakspere that no outer presentation plus all the panoply of the painted stage can equal the construction which the reader has made, hence the disappointment in witnessing the rendering of Hamlet by a Mansfield or an Irving.

Thru the development of the imagination we must lead children to the conception of Mrs. Browning:

The growing drama has outgrown such toys

Of simulated stature, face and speech;

It also, peradventure, may outgrow the simulation of the painted scene,

Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,

And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,

Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,

With all the grand orchestral silences

To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds.

Another phase of dramatization, vastly important, but often lost sight of, is the choice of material for dramatic purposes. Supervisors and teachers often become enthusiastic over the possibilities of the subject and literary selections are made not because of their intrinsic life and worth but because they admit of dramatization. There is a failure to keep in mind the fact that not what can be dramatized but what ought to be, what must be, is the determining factor in choosing material for this purpose. If any one believes that I am aiming at a man of straw, I respectfully refer him to the average book dealing with this subject and suggest that he travel about and witness some of the foolishness perpetrated in the name of dramatization.