"AT SCHOOL IN THE PROMISED LAND"*

Readers of the Journal of Education appreciate our enthusiasm over Mary Antin's great patriotic tribute to America in "The Promised Land," and they hardly need be told that we are most happy to announce that the publishers have selected all the passages in that book which have to do with her school life in America. It is really much more satisfactory in many respects than the larger book because it keeps one's mind closely concentrated upon that phase of her American life which is of highest significance.

We cannot recall any book which captivated us quite so completely as did her "The Promised Land," and these features of it seem more fascinating now than did the original story of her life. It seems as though all that captured us there is here.

We cannot see how any American teacher can afford not to own this book and read it and reread it.

THE NATIONAL KINDERGARTEN ASSO

CIATION

The many ways in which the work of extending the kindergarten can be aided through an ternal agency is illustrated by the report for 1915 of the National Kindergarten Association, of which Dr. John Dewey of Columbia University is president.

The object of this association is "to have the kindergarten established in every public school." To this end, during the past year, it has helped to support three demonstration kindergarten classes in Bellevue, Pa., Hindman, Ky., and Rock Hill, S. C. It is expected that at the beginning of the next school year these classes will be continued, and supported entirely by local funds.

Another practical means which the association has utilized for securing kindergarten training for little children who do not now have it has been the continuance of its field work in California in connection with the state law which provides for the opening of kindergartens on petition of parents. Through lectures, correspondence and personal visits the special field secretary of the association has continued to make known to parents throughout the state the value of the opportunity which the law makes possible for their children. As a result, many of them have signed the necessary petitions, and the number of kindergartens has grown from 197, in 1914, to 385 in 1916.

As a result of this field work in California kindergarten instruction has been secured during the year for about 3,500 children. This has involved an approximate expenditure of $70,000 on the part of local school boards.

The success of the California law has marked out a clear line of action for having the kindergarten established in every public school, and the association has consequently endeavored to arouse interest in this new type of legislation throughout the country. Interested persons in

New York, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, New Jersey and Virginia are already alive to the advantages of this kind of work for the children of their states, and efforts are being made to bring about such changes in their kindergarten laws as will make it easy to open kindergartens when parents express a desire for this training for their children.

It should certainly be in every reading circle list, should be in every school library, should be required reading in every normal school and training school, and in the English course of every college, high school and academy.

Antin's "At School in the Promised Land," Riverside Literature Series. Boston, New York, Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Company. Cloth. 104 pp. Price, 25 cents.

paigns.

In order further to facilitate legislative work, the provisions of all the state laws relating to kindergartens have also been tabulated. It is

believed that this information will be of valuable assistance to workers throughout the country, not only in showing the comparative standing of each state as regards kindergarten legislation, but in affording suggestions which one state may well borrow from another. To make this information as helpful as possible, the number of kindergartens in each state has been included with the state law.

Believing that the present period in the growth of the kindergarten is one of standardization as well as extension, the association has co-operated with the Kindergarten Division of the Bureau of Education and a Committee of the International Kindergarten Union in making a comparative study of kindergarten training schools throughout the country. This study is embodied in a report published by the Bureau of Education, the purpose of which is to afford a basis for comparison to school administrators who wish to know the training schools that provide the best teachers, and to prospective students who would like to know where good training may be sesured; and to provide an incentive to inferior training schools to improve their courses.

TO GET THE MOST AT THE N. E. A. If you will notify New Yorkers in advance what you most want to see-and when,-guides will be furnished to economize your time in seeing school buildings; model flats; infant milk stations; playgrounds; summer roof gardens; school results and methods; budget making; industrial processes; Ellis Island; night court; domestic relations court; newspaper offices; seaside resorts; hospitals; fresh-air homes; city departments; municipal art; field training for public service, etc.

In general for assistance specifically fitted to you or your neighbors, address John R. Young, Convention Bureau, Woolworth Building, New York City.

For special assistance in matters pertaining to public service, address N. E. A. Committee, Institute for Public Service, 51 Chambers Street, New York City.

more.

NEWEST NEW BUILDING

No one builds the old type of buildings any All school buildings now being erected are new, but Sacramento, under the lead of Superintendent Charles C. Hughes, has the newest of the new schoolhouses.

We have seen nothing elsewhere to compare with it for a moment.

It is absolutely fireproof, built of solid concrete, and stands as a monument to the most efficient skill in school architecture. Its keynote is simplicity and unity, the unit being the classroom. Each classroom is arranged upon the most modern plans. It is twenty-three by twentynine feet, entirely open with cottage windows on one side, and on the opposite side high transoms which open into a wide, open hallway, thus giving a sweep of fresh air through the room at all times.

Every classroom in the building faces the east in order to give it sunlight, protecting it at the same time from the heat and glare of the south and west exposures.

Each room has a separate hat room for boys and girls.

In each of these is an individual toilet to pre. vent the congregation of children in the general toilets during recitation and study periods.

There are twenty-four of these rooms-that is to say, the unit was multiplied twenty-four times, thus building the structure from the inside, for efficiency and usefulness.

Spacious concrete floored hallways with tiled walls add dignity and beauty to the building.

The assembly hall on the ground floor, with seating capacity for 1,200, adds greatly to the activities of the school, affording a social centre and meeting place for the patrons of the school.

The splendidly arranged wing for manual training and domestic training, with its complete cottage and sewing room, deserves mention.

There is a laboratory for general science, a separate room for drawing, a hospital for boys and one for girls, numerous bathrooms and shower baths for each sex, a commodious branch library, in which will be placed one of the assistants of the city library, where the children can come in close contact with books and receive training in their use. The building has no basement, the children coming almost direct from the yard into the first floor, thus saving the climbing of one stairway.

All the activities usually placed in the basement are left to the roof garden, in which can be carried on the gymnasium work and the physical training exercises, no matter what the weather may be outside.

It is planned to use every inch of this building all the time.

It is equipped so it can be brilliantly lighted at night for evening work.

N. E. A. BREAKFASTS

The Institute for Public Service, 51 Chambers street, New York City, is largely responsible for the arrangements by thirty New York men principals for breakfasts on July 4, 5, 6, 7. No speeches, but vital questions and crisp answers about educational affairs in New York City or anywhere else in America.

These breakfasts will be invaluable professionally and highly enjoyable personally.

Never before have school principals planned' anything quite so desirable and delightful.

Write at once to Institute for Public Service, 51 Chambers Street, New York City, for place and price of tickets. Don't fail to be at one of

the breakfasts.

Union Theological Seminary, Presbyterian, has received a gift of $1,800,000, donor unannounced.

New York City has a Francis W. Parker public school.

WALDORF-ASTORIA LUNCHEON

One of the best functions of the N. E. A. week will be the Waldorf-Astoria luncheon in honor of President D. B. Johnson.

If you have not reserved your luncheon ticket for the Waldorf-Astoria write to O. M. Plummer, North Portland, Oregon, at once. It will be one of the biggest features of the meeting and anyone can come. Luncheon ticket only $2.

NEBRASKA FARMERS

of

State Superintendent A. O. Thomas Nebraska has certainly lined up the farmers for educational devotion to rural life in an unprecedented way. The Granges are passing resolations requesting the state superintendent to call a convention of county superintendents and one delegate from each rural school district to be selected by the school board to decide upon a definite plan of action in arousing public sentiment. This is heroic surely. Never before has there been attempted a state gathering with one lay representative from each rural school district in a state.

This is the first great step toward emphasizing our contention that the local school district should be the civic unit in all public affairs. You will solve no civic problem on any other basis. You can poultice for surface irritation in some other way, but you can solve no rural problem in any other way.

CONSOLIDATION OF RURAL SCHOOLS

The United States Bureau of Education has rendered the cause of education inestimable service through the study, and the publication of the study of A. C. Monahan on "The Consolidation of Rural Schools and Transportation of Pupils at Public Expense."

No one should plan a campaign for consolidation, or attempt to administer a consolidated district, or write or speak upon this subject without making himself the master of this Bulletin, 1914, Number 30.

Historically, administratively, educationally it is invaluable.

STANFORD PROFESSORS

President Ray Lyman Wilber of Stanford University makes a gratifying announcement of virtual increase in salaries. It is a somewhat unusual classification. It will be possible for every professor to receive at least the minimum salary as fixed by the board two years ago as the ultimate aim of the university. Minimum and maximum salaries have been granted as follows: Instructor, $1,200 to $1,800 a year; assistant professor, $2,000 to $2,500 a year; associate professor, $2,750 to $3,250 a year; full professor, $3,500 to $4,000 a year; pre-eminent professor, $4,250 to $6,000 a year.

AN ERIE INCIDENT

The schools of Erie, Pennsylvania, are doing nany original and inspirational things educationally.

Vocational guidance, one of the great features of education today, owes everything to Meyer Bloomfield and to Boston for making his demonstration possible. Rarely has any new thing in education been absolutely a one-man affair and a one-city affair. in its demonstration as in this case.

Departmental teaching above the sixth grade is now so uniformly adopted that the wonder is that there was any opposition to its introduction, and yet conservatism was never more conscientious than in this opposition.

Apparently Superintendent Cole of Denver has all the triumphs available. Sudden changes have happened before but it looks like permanency for the success of Cole of Denver.

H. B. Wilson, Topeka, well says that if school work is to function in the life of a pupil, subject-matter and method must in themselves be worth while and significant.

There is a wealth of educational material in Get the most of the best of what you want. New York City outside of the N. E. A. meetings.

It is really surprising to see how universal is the "bubbling fountain" in city schools when one realizes how recent was its introduction.

The school enrollment in Los Angeles has increased 170 per cent. in ten years, from 34,236 in 1904-1905 to 92,628 in 1914-1915.

As one approaches the most vigorous cities in new sections of the country he often sees a huge sign, "Watch Us Grow!"

We could but think of that sign as we called at the attractive new building of the World Book Company on Prairie Avenue in Chicago near the new buildings of the American Book Company, Ginn & Company and Charles E. Merrill Conpany.

Caspar W. Hodgson, who makes the World Book Company famous, is one of the men whom

Heath and I stayed together in a more quiet "looking about." One evening he confided to me the fact that he wanted some one to represent his house in California but that he did not care to establish an office or assume a salary. It resulted in my having Hodgson come to San Francisco and arrange to do what he could at $5 a day and expenses and continue his course at the University. He stayed with the house until he had built up a business from almost nothing to more than $100,000.

we have seen grow, and in few experiênces have we greater satisfaction than in our acquaintance with Mr. Hodgson in the last twenty-eight years. He was an intensely kind schoolmaster in Pasadena in the days when Will S. Monroe was siperintendent. But he was a hustler. He was a young man to "put things over." It made no difference what good thing was on the docket, Caspar was boosting it to the end of the limit.

It took some grit for the young man to throw up a job of which he was the master with promotion to Los Angeles absolutely assured, but he did it and went to Stanford University almost literally to work his way through.

I was in San Francisco at one time when both Mr. Ginn and Mr. Heath were there. Mr. Ginn was doing the coast in royal fashion, but Mr.

Some years later, Edgar O. Silver, of Silver, Burdett & Company, at a meeting of the Department of Superintendence in Chicago consulted me about their finding a young man to come into their business, and in three days they had arranged with Mr. Hodgson to come with them, and the fabulous orders secured by him for them in the Philippines are matters of common knowledge among publishers.

It was his capture of those islands which led him to dare as few young men have dared in the last fifteen years to launch an entirely new business which has grown to unprecedented proportion. He has held his lead in the Philippines and has developed other lines as ingenious as they are original.

His place at Yonkers-on-the-Hudson, where

the editorial offices of the World Book Company are located, is as attractive as any that an artist can boast along the banks of the Hudson and in July it will be as much of a Mecca as any place for the teachers to visit.

Mr. Hodgson has gathered about him a score of devoted young men who have caught the inspiration and purpose of the founder of the house and are determined to make the institution roll on down time.

The new home of the World Book Company in Chicago is but another evidence of the growth of the business that is scarcely a dozen years old.

NEWTON HIGH SCHOOLS

BY MARY A. LASELLE

Newton, Mass.

Although the Newton Vocational School is young, the Newton schools have had a significant place among educators for a number of years. Formerly pupils all entered the city's excellent classical high school, where they remained one, two, three or four years, according to their mental aptitudes and the financial condition of their parents. Contrary to the usual impression, that young people wish to leave school at the earliest permissible moment, there has been manifest a great desire on the part of most of the Newton boys and girls to remain in school as long as possible; a desire that was pathetic on the part of some pupils for whom the training of the crdinary high school,-even the best type of high school,-developed restlessness and a spirit of revolt against the mode of life of their fathers and mothers, while offering no special training that enabled them to go out into life well-fitted either to improve home conditions or to enter upon any but low-grade employment-blindalley occupations.

Let us visualize the condition of educational matters in Newton ten years ago. Here was a wealthy city in which, judged by the educational standards of those days, the provisions for the education of the children of the city were superior. Had not the Newton schools received gold medals from two World's Fairs for the best work in drawing and design? And did not the Newton boys and girls who entered Harvard and Wellesley and other colleges maintain a high rank, both in athletics and scholarship? These were the questions asked Superintendent of Schools Dr. F. E. Spaulding, when he faced his school board quietly with the bold statement that the City of Newton was not doing its duty by a certa percentage of its young people. In reply to these questions, the wise and far-sighted superintendent produced statistics, compiled from a school census just completed, which proved conclusively that outside of a group destined from birth for college, not a large percentage of the young people who entered the high school so hopefully remained until the end In fact, some of the of the four years' course. so-called "unscholarly" pupils became discouraged and dropped out before completing the first year. And of those of this class who doggedly hung on, until the long worked-for

diploma was attained, only a very small number of boys were trained to enter upon a vocation that could be considered satisfactory from any point of view, while the majority of the girls, with the exception of a certain group from the commercial course, left this fine high school unfitted to enter upon any wage-earning employment and with little knowledge or skill that would enable them to make of their home a pleasant and healthful abode. Seeing is believing, and these cold black and white charts which Superintendent Spaulding had hung in his office started warm currents of life into action, and with a change of policy, which at first startled the conservative type of New Englander, a technical high school, costing with its grounds and equipment about a half of a million dollars, was erected upon magnificent estate of twenty-five acres, exactly in the geographical centre of the city-as the resolve was made by the school board that, if, the thing were to be done, it should be done thoroughly.

a

throughout the city recently, when, at the end of six years in the new building, it has been found that the school has outgrown even these spacious quarters.

Before

Where have the pupils come from? we answer this question, we must return to our superintendent, for in his hands was the key that unlocked the door of opportunity. It was the firm belief of Dr. Spaulding-a belief with which he managed to inspire every member of his school board and corps of teachers-that schools are organized for the best development of children, and for that purpose only. That is, he believed that a child should be in the kind of school that would bring to fullest life the spirit that was in him. He saw that thousands of children, in fact, whole generations of children, passed through the twelve years of school life with only a small part of their mental powers awakened, and that this condition is largely due to the fact that they are in the wrong school environment. He saw, also, that much of the work of the ordinary school is stupid for certain types of children, and that, quite naturally, such work produces dull children for whom anything like original thought is almost impossible; children who are destitute of any power of initiative; children who make the men and women who think what they are told to think; think; say what tens of thousands of others have said: do what everyone else is doing; in a word, persons whose power of accurate observation and of logical reasoning is non-existent, and who, moreover, have never been trained in any processes of skilled work. That every city, town and hamlet in this and in every other country has a certain percentage-sometimes a large percentage-of such passive minds, and untrained hands, does not