and executive qualities the service of education demands, to take the place of the negative, inefficient, or poorly trained who should be excused from service?

The honorable president of this Council has felt the need of a study of the question of the shortage of teachers, and so have other members of this body who occupy executive positions in the administration of school affairs. I am inclined to think that steps will be taken to bring about a comprehensive study of a topic of such vital interest to the life of the nation. The work of the teacher is with intellectual and moral forces. Because of the slowness of the processes of mental and physical growth and development, the real worth of one who stimulates, guides, and controls the activity of children and youth is not, in many instances, quickly discovered. In time, however, the efficient teacher who builds for the life that now is, and, in my belief, for a life to be, is recognized but too seldom in a way to encourage others to render the fullest measure of service which they have the capacity to give.

The profession of teaching is not attractive to many men who know too well that the schoolmaster is not generally held in high esteem in a worldly sense by business men. "He views the question in the schoolmaster's narrow way," is said so often that many a capable young student, wishing to be thought "a person of affairs" and a "man among men," turns away from the preparation for teaching and seeks equipment for other lines of effort. The argument which has come down as a persistent element from the Greek philosophy that we grow to be like the things with which we are brought in sympathetic contact makes its appeal and turns the ambitious young man away from a profession that compels the closest association with the immaturity of childhood.

The American people are thoroly aroused on the scholastic and professional training which the teacher, regardless of sex, should have. The interest of the home is the most vital one. No teacher with all the graces of a personality which attracts and charms, even with a college training, is held fit to teach unless he or she is able to stimulate, guide, and control boys and girls so that they will like school and put forth persistent effort to do and to be. The pay the people, as a rule, are willing to give for such expert service, the only kind of service profitable in a school-room, has not kept pace with the professional standards erected. Consequently, a comprehensive and adequate professional training does not offer the same attractive returns to the teacher that many other lines of technical education present.

In many sections of the nation, especially in the South, women belonging to the oldest and most aristocratic families become teachers. They hold their places in the social life of the community and very often live at home. Their splendid womanhood makes

appeal to the good sense and affections of single men. The story is too well known to be told here. Splendid teachers, noble and beautiful women, often lay aside work of the schoolroom to grace a home and assume the duties of wifehood.

Other considerations, I regret to admit, are far reaching in causing a shortage of teachers. The uncertain tenure of position has influenced many a noble teacher to turn from the most important work of the age, that of public education.

The baneful workings of machine politics and politicians put many splendid teachers out of business. They become disgusted with the unfairness and uncertainty of the outcome where the interests of the children are counted as naught against the interests of parties or party leaders. We have seen some of America's noblest educators belittled and besmirched because they would not bow to the dictates of "gangs without a conscience." Many have been compelled in order to save their self-respect to seek labor in other fields of human endeavor. There is hardly a man of prominence in the work of educational administration who at some period in his professional history has not felt the force of political organizations standing against the highest interests of America's future citizens. But some politicians are noble men who stand for children's rights. Such men guide political movements aright and insist that the American public schools shall be free from all elements that tend to destroy their usefulness. There are great centers in the

United States where public sentiment insists that the best teachers, the best schools, and the heartiest good-will toward education are to be permanent. God speed the time when good teachers with professional training and character will feel secure in their positions and reap deserved earthly rewards for duties well performed!

If this body, by any means at its command, can bring more fully into the active consciousness of the American people the tremendous importance of educational service, the shortage in the supply of teachers will gradually grow less and less.

OLIVER S. WESTCOTT, principal of the Robert A. Waller High School, Chicago, Ill.— There seem to be a good many complaints of shortage in the supply of teachers, but I have not heard any suggestions as to remedying the difficulty, except to make the work attractive by raising salaries. It strikes me that method would be a round-about one, and likely to produce results only after considerable difficulty. I should like to make another suggestion, and that is, that you take out of the examinations for teachers, the immense amount of stupidity that now characterizes them. As an illustration, I have in my mind a man who went into an examination on the subject of Latin. He is a man who can write Latin accurately, write letters in Latin, he has an S. D. T. degree in the Catholic Church. He was taught all his Latin, and received his instruction in theology entirely in Latin. He goes into an examination, and he makes mistakes in not writing the right mark over an a or an e—some of you may remember that there should be a mark over the final a in the ablative case, first declension. He is marked down in Latin. He could instruct the examiner. A person is ashamed to go before such people as those who conduct and regulate the examinations in this country. Superintendents ought to get together and stop the practice. A teacher having earned a degree from a reputable college and having successful experience should not be subjected to the humiliation of passing an examination too often supervised by persons greatly his inferior in experience, scholarship, and executive ability.

CARROLL G. PEARSE, superintendent of schools, Milwaukee, Wis.—While there is a shortage in the supply of competent teachers, there is in every other line of employment a shortage of competent employees as well. In this respect, we are not so very much worse off than other people. There always was a shortage in the supply of first-class teachers; there never were enough of these teachers to go around; there are not now, and it is not likely that there ever will be. So, while we bewail our fate, we ought not to feel that we are so very much worse off than people in other lines of employment. We cannot now get, and probably during your life and mine, Mr. Chairman, will not be able to get, enough thoroly trained teachers. One of the essential methods for getting better teachers is to have in positions of responsibility superintendents and principals who can train teachers. If that art, the gentle art of training teachers, is adopted by more of our superintendents and more of our principals, we will have a much higher average of welltrained and efficient teachers than we now have.

One other suggestion for our normal-school people: There is a strong temptation for them to put the hall mark of their approval on all of the product of their training. If the normal schools will throw out some of the least promising of their applicants for training, we shall have better results in our schools. Some of the normal schools do cull their product and their diplomas are presumptive evidence of good preparation and the required ability; but there are some which ought to do a good deal more separating of the fit from the unfit than they do.

MORAL TRAINING THRU THE AGENCY OF THE PUBLIC

SCHOOL

CLIFFORD W. BARNES, CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF
INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ON MORAL TRAINING,

LAKE FOREST, ILL.

THE

It was a well-deserved tribute which President Roosevelt paid to the teachers of America when he said:

The most characteristic work of the republic is that done by the teachers, for whatever our shortcomings as a nation may be, we have at least firmly grasped the fact that we cannot do our part in the difficult and important work of self-government, that we cannot rule and govern ourselves, unless we approach the task with developed minds, and with that which counts for more-with trained characters.

In placing this emphasis on character development in education, no organization has taken a more prominent stand than the National Educational Association, and especially this Council. Quoting from a few of your own leaders, we read: "The end and aim of all education is the development of character;" "Education is growth toward intellectual and moral perfection;" "We wish to lift into prominence the moral character building aim as the central one in education;" "No school is efficient that fails to stimulate right conduct, the issue of which is character."

There was a time when to teach the three R's with exactness and skill was to do the full work of a public school, for the home, the church, and the wholesome atmosphere of community life could then be trusted to complete the circle of a child's education. But those days were long ago, before the cities began to swallow up the country, and the great corporations the small producers, and the closepacked tenements the cottage homes; before the fierceness of competition robbed men of their strength and deadened their souls, and transformed the pursuit of commerce into one of industrial war. Macaulay once said: "The Huns and Vandals who will destroy our civilization are being bred, not in the wilds of Asia, but in the slums of our great cities." But Macaulay never dreamed of a condition fraught with such peril as that of one nation receiving into its midst, by yearly immigration, more than a million of the poorest and least educated of foreign lands. The teacher, standing in daily contact with the pupil, has seen, as few others could, these general changes in social and economic conditions by reason of which parental authority has been weakened, religious influence lessened, and the child been forced more and more to become a ward of the state. It is not surprising, therefore, that with ever-increasing earnestness teachers, the world over, have endeavored to broaden the scope of school activity, and have discussed in all its phases this question of moral training and the development of good citizenship.

The result has been in some ways very gratifying. In America the ordinary rules of school life, such as obedience to authority, punctuality, good behavior, consideration for others, and the like, are being enforced with a new and higher

motive; there is a growing inclination to give incidental instruction in rights and duties; and several noteworthy attempts at student self-government have been introduced for the purpose of training in citizenship. The other day, in one of these self-governing schools, a "tribune" had occasion to correct some fault in a fellow-classmate. He called to his assistance two other officers, and together they soon brought the culprit to a state of proper contrition. Finally the "tribune" was heard to say: "Well, I want you to know that our class won't stand for that sort of thing, and if you do it again, you will have to git." Evidently there had been developed here something more than a proper sense of responsibility, more than obedience to authority, or wise judgment in correcting a fault; there had been developed an esprit de corps of the highest order, which could be used as a powerful agency for righteousness and moral training.

I had an experience, not long ago, which gave me a new realization of the extent to which music might be used for this same general purpose. Three hundred children from a single school had been so thoroly trained that they rendered with absolute accuracy and perfect expression the most difficult selections. Among others was the "Pilgrim's Chorus," from Tannhauser, and when to the thrilling chords of this glorious harmony they sang the words of a national hymn, one's very soul was stirred to reverent devotion and patriotic enthusiasm. As the principal, who stood near me, remarked:

That helps to form good citizens, and when they leave here to make homes for themselves a few years hence, there will be in most of those homes the attractive influence of good music.

Decorative art as an agency for moral training is being brought more constantly into use, and good pictures on the schoolroom walls, by their visions of beauty, their appeals to ambition, and their outlook into a larger and fuller life, are having no small influence in the development of character. We have ample evidence that flowers, and vases, and a hundred other simple touches of artistic decoration are finding their reproduction in many homes which sadly need adornment. There was something to be proud of in this report which a principal gave me recently: covering a period of ten or twelve years, he had raised thru school entertainments, in order to buy pictures and works of art, something like six thousand dollars, and that, too, in a neighborhood of working-people.

Manual training, domestic science, and other so-called innovations in the curriculum of a modern school have received high praise for their practical utility, but when we note how well these studies serve to develop self-reliance, steadfastness of purpose, concentration of thought, constructive ability, and the like, together with a true sense of the dignity of labor, we are inclined to give them a new valuation on account of the good they accomplish in moral training. This sort of industrial activity has also a recreative value, which brings with it new power of application to bear upon the regular studies. One principal reports that by slightly lengthening the school day he has been

able to give each class an average of ten hours' manual work every week, and yet cover with excellent result the usual curriculum.

Here and there systematic attempts are being made to give instruction in hygiene, the care of the body, and such simple methods of helping the sick as may prove of use in the home. It is easy to see how clearly all this is related to the problem of good citizenship, and we are certainly coming closer to its wise solution when we recognize the relation which exists between truancy and malnutrition, bad behavior and defective vision, inattention and poor ventilation.

The architect is beginning to do his part, as never before, in making the school a powerful agency for the promotion of moral training and the development of good citizenship. Besides taking care that his building is sanitary, well lighted, and of attractive appearance, he is adding spacious halls, assembly rooms, gymnasiums, baths, and playgrounds, by means of which the school can readily become the social center of the community. Such conditions make it easy for the wise teacher to organize clubs among the students, which shall be both protective and inspirational, foster parental associations, which shall instruct and delight, and by these and other means develop a wholesome social life which shall bind the neighborhood to the school by a thousand ties.

It was once said of our greatest Teacher, that "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," and with a full recognition of the importance of this personal factor in education, many teachers of today are earnestly seeking to embody in themselves that knowledge, culture, and moral strength which they wish to impart to their pupils. Reading circles, travel classes, lecture courses, and other organized means of attaining this end are being utilized, but, most promising of all, the demand is steadily increasing for that kind of normalschool preparation which acquaints the teacher with child-nature, and familiarizes him with the various methods of moral training.

Generally speaking, systematic moral instruction may be said to have no place in our American school system, for it has only been tried to a very limited extent in a few small places; but some use is being made of the ethical syllabus, such as that issued by the New York schools, which affords the teacher a suggestive commentary on the whole subject of moral training.

Passing now to the other side of the water, and going in and out among the schools of Europe, one is immediately impressed with the fearless directness of moral and religious instruction. In Great Britain the first hour of the day is always devoted to the religious lesson, and teachers and pupils alike regard it with a pleasure surpassing that of any other period. This was the universal testimony to my oft-repeated question, and the reasons assigned for this feeling were generally these: "Keener interest in the subject," or "Closer sympathy between teacher and student." The work was never shiftless, and the atmosphere of reverence was always marked. A Catholic priest, a member of the school board in one of the largest Scotch cities, said to me that not for the world would he take the Bible or the religious lesson out