parts of the room, on my desk, on chairs, and in windows. The children can pass around in groups of six or eight to the different objects. After looking at the object, they go to their seats and talk about the subject. In this way they derive a great deal of good from it. In talking together they sometimes get more good than if I ask them pointed questions.

English in The Seventh and Eighth Grades.

IDA M. BLOCHMAN.

Just as I was leaving home last Sunday, I received Professor Davidson's note, asking me to lead in this discussion. There was no time to correspond with Miss Wheeler relative to the general trend of her paper, therefore, what I have to say on this subject is matter carved out on independent lines, and does not bear the relevancy to Miss Wheeler's thoughts that I might wish.

I am not, moreover, a grammar grade teacher, and have not been since the old days when the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Readers, Appleton's, I believe, were in use. I must, therefore, say my say from a high school teacher's point of view. I can tell what is not done that I think should be, rather than how to do it; can point out defects in the English instruction of the pupils whom the grammar schools send into the high schools and into the world, but whether I can give any positive help in remedying these defects, is what Kipling would call "another story."

The two great faults which I find, and the only ones which I shall take time to discuss in this brief and hastily written paper, are lack of fluency and spontaneity in oral and written expression, and lack of ability to get accurate ideas from the printed page. You may, perhaps, think the charge is very grave and comprehensive. I plead guilty to the gravity, but not to the comprehensiveness. The English teacher's duty is broader, much broader than that; it is world-wide-universe-wide, broader than time, as broad as eternity. She must teach morality, patriotism, charity, broadmindedness, appreciation of the beautiful in literature and art. Do not, I pray you, call my charge comprehensive until I have added ethics and aesthetics, with all their ramifications, and I do not intend to do that this time.

If I ask a little girl about her doll or her baby sister, the chances are that she will sit down and chatter half an hour about the doll or the baby, and throw in a lot of information gratis; but if we wait until she is thirteen or fourteen, even fifteen or sixteen, and ask her some question appropriate to her age, she will answer in monosyllables. She seems distant and formal and tongue-tied, and I wonder what process of mental dessication that child has gone thru to dry up her spontaneity in the last eight or ten years.

The small boy describes a game of foot-ball fluently, gesticulating freely and gracefully, but when he comes to high school and attempts to relate to you the battle of Marathon, he thrusts his hands deep into his trousers' pockets, leans on any convenient thing, stammers, and uses shockingly poor grammar. What has happened to that child between the foot-ball age and the battle of Marathon?

Of course, I understand that the early teens, the threshold of maturity,

is the awkward, self-conscious stage of human existence, but I do not think that can fully account for this lack of spontaneity, this dumbness, that is so prevalent among boys and girls entering high school. I believe that they have been repressed, not told exactly as we were by our grandmothers that children should be seen, not heard, but given to understand that.

So all the way through the grades I would encourage children to talk, and when I had more time I would encourage them to talk some more. No matter how crude, even absurd, their ideas are, if they think they are talking sense do not repress them by harsh criticism of course, I need not add to intelligent teachers, by sarcasm or ridicule. We all like to talk, but the best teacher of the English language is the one who curbs herself and gives loose rein to her pupils.

In the junior class in our high school I am trying a talking experiment this year. I assign various topics to members of the class, from time to time, and tell them to be prepared in the course of a week or two to discuss them. Without giving further warning, in due time I call on some one to give us a talk on his subject. Some of the topics, as I recall them, have been, "Is lying ever justifiable?" "An estimate of Antonio's character," "Should all boys and girls come to high school?" "Burne-Jones." When I received an invitation to read a paper at our local institute on "High School Commencements," I told this class about it, and asked their opinions on the subject. I did not have time to get entirely around the class, but each one whom I called on arose and gave me his ideas on the matter, based on his own observations. I am pleased with the results of the experiment. Besides the ability they are cultivating to express themselves, which was the avowed object, and the only one I had in mind at the beginning, I find that I am drawn nearer to that class than to any one I have ever taught. The recitation hour seems very much like a family reunion. That recitation period daily brings out the best that there is in them, and the best that there is in me; I only tremble at the responsibility; I regret that my best is not good enough to meet the exigencies of the case.

Then again, the method of getting at a child's knowledge of his lessons by means of questions and answers, while good occasionally, as a sort of mental gymnastics, and when given for that purpose, the sharper and quicker the better, is not well adapted, not adapted at all, in fact, to promote self-expression. I would not use it as an ordinary method of conducting a recitation. The topical method is far better in every way.

As to faulty grammar, I wonder what it is wise and safe to say. I wonder how we are, any of us, going to correct it. It has been my experience with my own children at home that it took all vacation time to correct the bad grammatical habits acquired on the play ground at school the preceding term. At the high school the "I seen," and the "has rang," and the "had went," must be corrected day and day after day, from start to finish. If we can prevent the valedictorian from coming before the audience with an oration beginning, "Friends and parents, we have came before you this evening," etc., we are doing pretty well: We can not hold the grammar

schools responsible for the faulty grammar of the pupils whom they send to us; the only thing that we can ask is that they will daily try to correct it. I read, somewhere, that the microbes of La Grippe had their origin among the dirty peasantry of Russia. Ever since then clean folks, the world over, have had to nurse their children through a siege of it nearly every winter, The microbes of poor grammar originate in the homes of the ignorant, and spread like an epidemic among our children. I suppose we must nurse them as patiently through one disease as the other.

As to written expression, the same faults obtain to even a more aggravated extent; lack of spontaneity and ignorance of correct form. They are directly traceable to the same cause, insufficient practice. If your high school pupils, when they graduate, find it a difficult task to arrange their thoughts on some subject within the scope of their knowledge in a forcible and logical manner, and all high school teachers know that this is true, we, of course, cannot expect any remarkable degree of efficiency along this line from grammar grade pupils. I believe, however, we have a right to ask that the pupils who come to us shall be able to do certain things in a moderately acceptable manner. I believe the world has a right to demand it, for we must always bear in mind that more than half the children in the state get all the training they ever get in the primary and grammar grades. I believe, for instance, that a child of high school age should be able to order a book from a publisher, to correspond intelligibly with business firms with whom he, as a farmer or a merchant, will be obliged to correspond in later life.

us.

Composition writing is a bug bear to most of the children who come to It is a cold, formal, horrible night-mare to them, entirely disassociated in their minds from the warmth and life and fun of human existence. It is something that must be hunted up from the encyclopedia and all available dictionaries, and then stiffly arranged in high-sounding sentences, whaleboned with polysyllables.

I asked a class once to write me an essay about house flies, and they positively went to the encyclopedia to study up their topic. I, of course, expected them to catch a fly and examine it and give me the result of their observations; or tell me how they were caught or excluded from their mother's kitchens, and should not have felt that it was undignified or unworthy if they had written how their bald-headed uncle was bothered at church by them. But no, if I had not nipped their efforts in the bud, they would have compiled for me a most elaborate article, bristling with antennea, ocella, ligula, etc. No, that is not the way to teach composition work.

It may be a good thing for the child to hunt up Abraham Lincoln's life, or that of any other great and good man, and write it down in the form of an essay, but the good, if there is any, is derived from the facts which he has learned. He never will learn to express his own thoughts in that way. Much better would it be for him to write about the tramp whom his mother fed that morning; about the last cunning thing his baby brother did; about his pet dog. In the first case he is merely paraphrasing the words of an

In the latter case he

other; he is translating words into words, so to speak. is coining the crude ore of thought, impressions, experiences, into words of his own.

I have not much time left, and I will use it in speaking of thoughtreading. Training pupils in self-expression is the most important labor of English teachers, whether in the high school or in the grammar grades, and I have discussed that first so that in case the chairman called me down before I had finished, I should, at least, have said my say on that subject which lies most heavily upon me.

. We have heard so much in recent institutes about extensive reading, that I wish to present a few thoughts upon the intensive side of the question. We have also heard a great deal which would tend to make a young teacher feel that he must not explain things in literature too carefully, because if the child understand it too thoroly, the juice of enjoyment is, in some mysterious way, all squeezed out of it. Some would try to make us believe that the author surrounds the heart of his thoughts and emotions with a sort of pericardium of mystery and vagueness, and that we must not prod around too carefully or we will prick the sac and let the ambrosial liquid of mystery out.

I believe in a child's reading many books if they are of the right kind, and he does it to appease a natural hunger, and not merely to be able to say that he has read more than the other boy; but I also believe that some books should be carefully read, the grain all threshed out, the allusions hunted up, the figures of speech examined, and their beauty and appropriateness seen. This work can be profitably done in the seventh and eight grades, and more of it should be done for the careful mental discipline there is in it, if for nothing else.

It makes but little difference what they read if it be worth reading. Hawthorne, Scott, Kingsley, The Youth's Companion, but I insist that they should be graduated from the grammar school knowing how to get the thought, and every bit of the thought and beauty from the printed page, if the subject be within their mental grasp.

As to the halo of mystery theory, I do not believe in it. If the author had a beautiful thought, or a valuable thought, the nearer we get to his point of view, the more nearly we see what he saw, the more beautiful and the more valuable will it be to us. If they were vague thoughts to him, and he intended to create in us and leave a dreamy vagueness, it will do no harm to try to see the substance behind. When the purple haze is on the mountain it does not detract from its beauty to see the rock outline back of it; the amethyst tint will still remain.

Manual Training.

BY LAURA J. INGRAHAM, RIVERSIDE, CAL.

I should like to present a brief mental picture of two schoolrooms, both first grades. In one room there is such perfect quiet that one almost fears to step for fear of breaking the silence, and a calm is seen on every face turned

soberly to the front. In another room the children rest easily in different positions, some standing, some seated, while they work in making baskets, the little teachers" of groups quietly instructing their "pupils," while the teacher moves about like a wise mother from group to group, telling bright little tales incidental to the history of basket-making. My own heart ached for the little ones in the first room, but I doubt not that the teacher in that room would have been dismayed at the scene in the second.

We believe thoroly in the resourceful powers of the American teacher, and that when she realizes the full meaning of the new education that her heart and mind will find a way (as some, indeed, have already done), of at least approaching the ideal. She will not be daunted because the ideal may seem far away, but will ever press on, remembering that she is, at least, nearer to it than if she stood still.

I wish, in closing, to be allowed to quote from that gem of books, "The School and Society," by John Dewey:

"All studies arise from aspects of the one earth and the one life lived upon it. We do not have a series of stratified earths, one of which is mathematical, another physical, another historical, and so on. We should not live very long in any one taken by itself. We live in a world where all sides are bound together. All studies grow out of relations in the one great common world. When the child lives in varied, but concrete and active relationship to this common world, his studies are naturally unified. It will no longer be a problem to correlate studies. The teacher will not have to resort to all sorts of devices to weave a little arithmetic into the history lesson, and the like. Relate the school to life, and all studies are of necessity correlated."

Industries.

CHARLES M. MILLER, LOS ANGELES NORMAL SCHOOL.

Commissioner Wright contrasts the apprenticeship system with the trade schools. "At first the boy in the apprenticeship system has to do much more than he is paid for, so, finding himself robbed by it, finally decides to earn no more than he is paid, and so acquires habits that follow him thru life. In the trade school a boy can utilize his whole time, and as soon as he becomes proficient in his particular trade, can command the legitimate wages due him." He usually gets a general education as well. Henry Dyer thinks the apprenticeship system is injurious to labor, and to the public generally. The boy goes into the workshop and does nothing but run errands, and odd jobs until he is able to use tools. He is then put on more difficult work, wasting much time and material, and with little or no instruction. If he shows ability he will generally be helped by the generosity of some workHe acquires a certain amount of manual skill, but unless he exerts himself, and takes advantage of night classes, as a rule he grows up an uninstructed workman. He finishes his apprenticeship, joins a labor union, and demands as much wages as his well-instructed fellow worker." Wood says, after a discussion of the labor problem: "There is nothing

man.