tendencies in the reading of the patrons of the literature placed in the hands of the chili always be literary. e at this time two serious problems common nd library. One is the danger of too much d too rapid reading by all classes of people, ally by young people. While thousands are to books because they do not read, there are sands who are just as truly strangers to the s because with their much reading they read e, high tension, flitting images, conspire to light impression. Our people are gormanbooks. An examination of the volume of ne by the young girls, especially in the gramgh schools of the communities having access Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard University, who has n elected President of the N. E. A., 1902-3. braries will reveal astonishing conditions. has referred to the prevalent excess of readtional vice, and Mr. Howells thinks that "we er of spoiling our literary digestion, and of anation of mental dyspeptics;" that "our eading may be a vice or mania, it certainly is ond of these urgent problems is the alarmto which people young and old, read withe, or at least without such purpose as brings with the activity. An activity is educative on as it is purposed, as it is determined by a end to be reached. The grave danger of merssibly, moral dissipation by intemperate and reading is so well put by Mr. Vail that his hould be read in great seriousness by every librarian. ortance of motive in this reading and library being completely overlooked. Librarians and ike feel that if the boy or the girl and the rought together the problem is solved. There take. The boy or the girl without the genuand earnest purpose, tho surrounded with the ctive books, is further away from the end s and reading should accomplish than is the girl with the proper motive but without easy ooks. Motive is everything in this matter. nce, whether in the country or the city, both reading habit are worthless or even worse. gent that school and library shall meet these ntelligently and promptly, in order that the of literature with which we are surrounding shall not become a source of literary and in audience, and local societies have diminished in The number of so-called investigators and th of articles on child study have been steadily de This does not mean that the scientific study of is being abandoned. Only the dilettanti are by the wayside. The scientist was not lured by delusive ho expectations have been well realized and large await his future efforts. But the practical child study have been much less important t have been led to suppose. Were we content to gain the ear of the spec there would be no cause for anxiety. But we benefits of child study to reach every teach parent, and, still better, every child in the la present the results are inversely proportion needs. The very ones who need its help most l comparatively little benefited. Child study, 1 cine, should result in bettering conditions of 1 else it has no right to exist. This does not ga value of a science of child study any less than of medicine. But medicine has only recently real science while it has long been a valuabl art. May we not hope that large, practical re flow from child study even long before it has well-organized science? I believe that stu the child should push their work from a new view. While in full sympathy with all the valua study work that has been done and also belie the scientific workers have rich unexplored fiel cultivate, I believe that the time is at hand wh ought to be an awakening of the people to standing of the great problem of education, an almost synonymous with child study. Whil in the midst of unprecedented wealth and ma portunities, there are grave dangers working i into the very fiber of our national fabric. Som said that the American people have been suc every business except the business of training In the mad rush for gold and glory the avera turns his sons entirely over to the mother schools. And in the recent days of women's conventions the women are in turn giving o sacred charges to the servants and the street it is that there are every-day illustrations o with vast estates and wayward children. When child study is mentioned there loom mind of the average listener images of meas weighing apparatus, the isolation of abrormal tional children, tables of statistics, references ancestors, a hunt for vestigial organs, etc. represent the field and the point of departure tain phase of child study-the genetic or the e phase. Such a study is for the scientist only Practical Child Study Methods. There is another kind of child study for the the school. Tho it may not weigh or measu child, tho it may not make a single collection tics, it may yet be indirectly of the most val This other kind is not only the privilege but most sacred duties imposed by society upon al Education is usually thought to concern only but the methodology of instruction and scho ment in no way comprehend the whole proble cation. Spencer's comprehensive definition tion as a preparation for life" is even too 66 Abstract of an article read before the Child Stud child culture, the results would be unpredictable. "We give what the people demand," they say, but why not help to create a more elevated demand? Here is a chance for a study. Who will find a way to enlist the public press for education? Along with this we need to make a crusade against the omnipresent, hideous, demoralizing posters that stare at us on every hand. Their influence counteracts all the esthetic cultivation that is afforded by art instruction in schools. Before holding out health-giving tonics let us remove the contaminating influences that beset us on every side. arents and school when the study of ɔme a regular part e student. Among Id place education Greek. Not only required studies in ut also in the col e the co-operation The playground as an educatinoal factor has not yielded the best results possible. We need many more experiments like those of Supt. Johnson at Andover to determine how to utilize this factor in modern education. How to select games that shall interest, instruct, and develop, and at the same time how to keep all at play is a difficult question. Mr. Johnson has rendered inestimable service by his suggestions gained through actual experience. We are constantly admonished that the period of adolescence is a time for great concern and that our present methods and procedure in school are entirely at variance with adolescence needs. But who has given us a workable plan which can be reasonably offered as a substitute? The high school is confessedly without sufficient attractiveness to boys and the high schools are becoming too feminine. Many theories have been put forth diagnosing the situation, but how few persons have come forward with accounts of curative measures successfully applied. These are the persons we need to hear from in the child study meetings. From impression to expression is a slogan which we have heard so frequently of late that it rolls off our tongues like many religious sayings which have no significance. The idea is correct, but who has made a study to show the varying application? Knowledge of ethical principles is only slightly valuable until it has given rise to activities in harmony with them. The boy who learns to denounce rascality in historical characters and then goes out to the playground and cheats, lies, and terrorizes those weaker than himself might almost as well have left the literature unstudied. According to James' theory the lessons are worse than wasted. In all ethical training we need to enlist the services of the youth in definite active moral enterprises. To weave ethical teachings into the fiber of their lives we need to secure their co-operative activity in assisting the needy, relieving suffering, protecting the weak, preventing cruelty to animals, ministering unto the sick, distress. in bringing sunshine to minds clouded by sorrow and Advanced thinkers clearly see that educational practice has too long maintained the scholastic divorcement of home and life from school duties. Our attitude has been a vestige of the period of world renunciation. But we are beginning to believe that education is life and all life is education. Now how to identify these interests and occupations so as to secure an ideal education and an ideal life is the problem to which few have really ad dressed themselves in the interests of the child. We need many more investigations like those of Dr. Dewey. Another problem demanding our attention is that of juvenile offenders. Every city and town has its cases, all too numerous to deal with. Lucy Page Caston is authority for the statement that 17,000 child criminals are arrested yearly in Chicago. It is gratifying that ΟΙ disease is stamp tho living in the walk in paths of 1 vill about cigarett Because of these The child study tiny ntion. Moral typhus pervades the atmosphere Isands of luckless urchins, who, unless the is stamped out, or they are rescued from its nation, will become infected just as certainly as ig in the pest house among smallpox. is work we must secure the co-operation of the Ministers should be trained in child study and evote a considerable part of their time to child questions. It is pathetic that the churches ne so little for the child and have spent their 1 energies in trying to convert confirmed sinners, ychologically almost impossible. The new note tion and religion must be prevention rather than ion, positive development, not repression. More training of children would lessen the number sinners. Jesus said, "Suffer little children to to me and forbld them not for of such is the n of Heaven." Children must be trained to paths of rectitude and not as adults converted ir evil ways. ust also secure the co-operation of physicians 'ers. They have most expert knowledge that itilized in the service of the child. y we must secure the co-operation of business the home makers. When a question comes to t of legislative execution, teachers and scientists ery impotent role. The lawyer and the capiake laws, and the lawyer interprets them. The ister teaches obedience to them. Last winter rtain educational laws were before the Iowa re it was said that the teamsters' union was more than the State Teachers' Association. The voice is one crying in the wilderness. He is a not a law-giver. The teacher may say what he t cigarette smoking but his words of wisdom eded. But when the railway managers find that rette fiend is an inefficient operative they ediately secure reformation among their em se of these conditions there must be a joining I am not sure that there should be any local dy societies as such. If the child study spend the teachers could ally themselves with the clubs, the civic leagues, good government ., and there consider child training questions mong others, would not the net results to the greater? If our National Educational Assocould bring into its ranks the lawyer, the he editor, and the business man, if we were sociated from every-day life interests, instead identified with them, we could much easier public ear and arouse public sentiment. lusion I desire to suggest some of the most roblems for child study. Better child labor establishment of juvenile courts, segregation e offenders from confirmed criminals, compulation laws in every state, the execution of such or children per teacher, better utilization and n of playground education, an educational at appeals to the home and the school, the -United States, the co-operation of the clergy, ment of the kindergarten in every hamlet and r, the doctor, the business man, and the ld study of the future should deal not less ropology but more with pedagogy, not less ectual training but more with moral, not less with shaning of des United States are a part of the public schoo the several states and are therefore subj peculiar laws and the special demands of the ments. They are also so recent in their fo so incomplete in their development that t more or less in the experimental stage and individual institutions. It has been but are almost as many kinds of normal schools years since the first state normal school beg and the time has not yet been sufficient to great modern movement to adjust itself to tional system as a whole and to its particula to define the exact province of such a schoo general terms. These sixty-three years of history have been notable for the criticism tion that the normal schools have suffered. times has been met with more positive ridicu Possibly no other educational movement organized contempt, and hence progress has delayed and development of type has been tarded. It has been more a question what schools have been allowed to do, rather tha of what they ought to do or could do. This has come first from the influential rank of in higher education, because the promoter education considered it as the best and agency of bettering the elementary and the In advocating their ideas they have frankly the normal schools, because they offered sho ple courses of study as a preparation for an career and thus were in apparent opposi traditions and the theories of the historic higher education. They discouraged the no graduate from taking college and university by refusing to consider his normal school ed training as having any value whatever, wher the courses offered by the higher schools. the graduates of normal schools, as repres the new system of thought and training, selves treated as innovators, reformers, and by an unfriendly supervision which adhered firmly to the older and more accepted sy sented by the college and the university. I was great difficulty to exemplify the training mal school in a practical way, as the chan fair test and a proper hearing was extremel secure. This opposition has come, in the second practical men of affairs, who judge policies immediate results, and who ridicule the pre the efforts of the normal schools as extr practical, and illusionary. They have decid doctrines and theories of education, as tau emplified by the normal schools, are more o and a fiction, possessing no intrinsic merit no promise at all of permanent and worthy As a result of these controversies and the normal schools were compelled to strict ate their field of labor from the college and sity and also from the elementary and his stitutes of other education already prov order to be able to defend themselves from of being simply duplicates, and poor ones at states. They have, therefore, been classed inferior and the unnecessary and have bee many influential leaders as unworthy and Such untoward conditions made the preli normal schools in favor among the e demand for spedecided as a force and growing colecessary to keep own interests as ents for the spemethods, in order in the progress ch an acceptance rinciples and the and was done as a interest by those rather than beh the conception The expansion ce of the normal meant new power -s, while the conrestrict their serin the field, has has been continuen complimented hile the efficiency hole face of the professionalism. ls to modern psys not been small has been definite, actual effect upon de of the elementersity. While the marked, the indi1, as the scholars es have been most any new develop› them into a logto meet and serve progress. ed by the normal a time of beginoud and notable erlook nor underform, and accommight easily conient and this sernt can well afford le for the future, I can develop anyviceable, or more ively at the front chers for public h present attainat there are deto be formulated. these schools yet prejudice. Some eding reform and achers' education class of men and a willingness to er ready to make ose as here stated the writer to be schools as organhis country, are uch defects that easily overcome, obtainable at a normal school is not sufficient for as large a field of usefulness and service as the executive ability and personality make possible. The narrowing of the preparation, such as many of these schools deem essential and desirable, has the effect of dooming a graduate to a smaller and a more petty field of labor than is either desirable or necessary. The normal schools must offer such inducements for scholarship and culture as the most promising and keenest intellects need, to guarantee a career where talent and strength can be used and where the higher and better possibilities are assured or else they fail to comply with the real requirements of this progressive age. 2. The normal schools have made and still make too much of theory, dogma, and philosophy, and too little of the real, the practical, and the essential. There is no doubt but the criticism of the common man that much of the so-called pedagogy that is promulgated and taught as the theory and philosophy of education is the merest bosh and nonsense from the practical standpoint of serviceableness, value, or benefit. It is substance, reality, and efficiency that is needed and insisted upon in this age of progress. It is common sense and judgment that must be applied to the problems of life in education, not abstruse thinking or disconnected philosophy. The only kind of pedagogy that the American people deem as actually worth having in these days of results and great accomplishments is a kind that is business in its nature. producing readiness in action and decided efficiency in the work of education. For such results and types of activities the real normal school must be an exponent. 3. The normal schools are usually conducted on the one-man idea instead of the faculty idea. These schools are organized on a theory of unity in which the head of the school is inferred to be so well grounded in wisdom, so perfect in judgment, so large in capability and resource, that all the associates are subordinated to an extent that requires them to not be allowed to think themselves, but to carry out the ideas and the notions regarding education that are possessed by the central authority. There is a so-called faculty of teachers but they are not supposed to possess valuable ideas that are worthy of being put to use. They must not contribute to the upbuilding and management of the schools, as their province is to be simply that of satellites who shine thru the inspiration and the guidance of the superior. The faculty meeting is not a place for conference, but a place to receive direction and instruction, a place where the unifying process is amplified and magnified until difference of opinion and practice is obliterated. Success as a teacher in a normal school usually means special ability to work out the president's conception of the way to successfully teach and train teachers. This prevents the school from becoming a great public institution, such as is possible for a university and a college, and limits its influence and power in the very field it endeavors to reach. 4. The normal schools are also conducted on the notion that the training department is the center of all effort and that all other lines of work and development must contribute to its prominence and glory. Now such a conception exaggerates the possible service of the training department and belittles the service that the other departments can perform for the development and the training of a teacher. There is a special benefit from personal contact with the best teachers in the class-room that is just as effective in developing the power of the teacher in training because the actual and powerful teaching of a branch of knowledge has a ... sense. 5. The norma a very easy thir eke out an existe for the work. T orable. It take teacher in additi mal schools can they must have t est working libr most distinguishe be fully able to m in solving educat 6. The normal sonnel of the fac chiefly to the eco the small salaries lines of teaching. selected for a pe cial personality, attainments and improved somewh less there is so n that it should ne depend entirely for their usefulne and the greatnes faculties. Some others are impera one factor in the and greatness are else may have bee are and of a right because they have expected to perf way. The unusu normal schools be claim their right ready to give whe and that they thu facilities that are this outlcak there and the methods of teaching and managing. The greatng about a school is its spirit and the superiority nvironment over the ordinary experience of the t and it is folly to expect a right preparation for or without the benefits of a mental diet that is ate and wholesome. To confine him to the technd the professional to such an extent as is fre7 practiced is contrary to science and common he normal schools are conducted, maintained, and ne normal schools are as a rule weak in the per- ance at the University of Michigan, in had its principal growth in the West. Till few years, however, the examination was schools, but of departments of schools, if distinction,-and it is an important one to instructors from the colleges examining th their special subjects in the preparatory latest modification is, however, the exami school as a whole by a special university sole duty it is to perform these functions to a committee of the college faculty whi final recommendations. It is precisely examination of schools which I wish to the type form of the examination of the I In applying our pedagogical criterion, such examination has not the slightest e pupil and that it lacks all the unpedagogi The e the college entrance examination. announces-or should not-the exact dat and the pupils need not know that he is pr the pedagogical standpoint, too, the colle, Supt. L. H. Jones, of Cleveland, Ohio, will go president of the Normal Schools of the d sufferer so long as the examiner does his up the standard, and we have already sh non-examined freshmen do not suffer in co the examined. It is in its effect upon th we find the principal arguments in favor First, because in doing away with the entr tion it does away with its narrowing ef curriculum, and second, because it furnis] authorities, master and board, with ar sympathetic advisor of the widest experie tary influence of whom in the states wit stitution has other obligations to the lowe vation can hardly be over-estimated. T to set a mark for them and see them jump as trainer as well as marker, and in this 0 these two functions combined. Questions of study, of the program, of equipment, bo ings and laboratories, of teachers, and th problems which are puzzling the principa the atomistic conditions of our secondary! has heretofore had no one to consult. ar solution by the broader experience of th visitor. He is the "concrete personif college influence-the present positive brings the influence into activity and effe could it be shown even, that the entrance to college is a real boon to the second could, in my opinion, be sacrificed ten tim turn for no other benefit then the invigor |