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HEARD IN THE LOBBY

"It's thirteen blocks from headquarters to the registration desk, which may be good for the trolley car company, but it's an unlucky number for shoe leather. And we cry conservation!"

you wish to renew acquaintance, and 2,000 more with whom you wish to get acquainted, a formal receiving line is something of a boulder in your path. Your name may be Alpha when you reach the head, but it will be

"Isn't the political situation in this convention getting Omega or something worse before you reach the foot, a little off professional lines?"

"Nothing but sickness or death should keep a speaker from appearing on the program according to schedule. The departmental meetings are held everywhere from Reed College, some miles out of town, to Multnomah Hotel on Pine Street. If you want to hear a particular subject discussed by a particular speaker, you lose valuable time when you go to a department only to find that his name is on the program merely for the 'honorable mention' derived from it. It's a waste of time, temper, and printer's ink. And we cry conservation!"

"If a speaker hasn't a voice that will carry at least as far as the middle of the auditorium he should not ac cept a place on the program. Moreover, the people who cannot resist the 'call of the wild' long enough to remain until the end of the program should not take a perfectly good seat simply to gratify curiosity for a moment. People afflicted with corridoritis will drive any presiding officer to the verge of nervous prostration."

"When there are 2,000 people at a reception with whom

and the members of the receiving line are a sight the 'morning after."'

"If somebody would invent an outline for a program that would show at a glance just what is to be given in the different departments at each hour, it would save time in deciding where one wished to go, and we would strike the keynote of the convention-conservation."

"A less number of speakers on the program and less repetition of things already said would be worthy of consideration."

"D. W. Springer is personified perpetual motion. As secretary of the N. E. A. he acts in the capacity of a torpedo-boat destroyer. No convention sub-marine gets by him."

"The delegates of the male persuasion may allow the women to take the presidency of the N. E. A. into their own hands, but they will not stand for any 'heckling' of the President of the United States by the N. E. A. at this point in our history, and they don't care who knows it."

MR. PITTMAN'S NOTES

BY M. S. PITTMAN
Monmouth, Oregon

DEPARTMENT OF RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL

EDUCATION.

That the time has fully arrived for the establishment of special Normal Schools whose sole function is the study of rural problems, industrial, social, and educational, and the training of teachers who are able to cope with these problems, was the unanimous opinion of the Rural Section of the N. E. A. The country has been too long in awakening to the rural need and too long has the training of rural teachers been considered as merely a subordinate, a very subordinate, phase of the regular Normal School.

The problem is a big one. It demands the special, continuous, and expert attention of the country's best educational minds. It demands a suitable environment. It needs to be freed from the pedagogy, the methodology, which has been evolved with the town in view. It wants an opportunity to dream its own dreams and realize its own ambitions unhampered by town educational creeds and city customs. This, in short, expresses the feeling and the hope of the rural section. All talks led to the same conclusion-a rural teacher that will fit the job and a Normal School that will create the teacher.

Thomas E. Finegan blazed the way. W. H. Campbell, chairman of the Educational Committee of the Farmers Union of Nebraska, humorously, naively cleared the ground. H. N. Goddard of Wisconsin cultivated the soil. Others of the conference gave abundant proof. Dr. Charles H. Lane of the Bureau of Education made a splendid chairman and guided the discussion into profitable channels. Optimism and purposefulness characterized the entire session. The past has been fair,

the present is better, but the future that lies just ahead is better still. Country life, through a suitable country school and intelligent agriculture, is about to come into its own.

DEPARTMENT OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.

Normal Schools should be colleges with the authority to grant degrees. They should train teachers for all of the public schools. The High Schools are a part of the public schools, therefore the Normal School should train teachers for High Schools. The Normal School is the great teacher factory, therefore it should train special teachers of music, drawing, household arts. In fact the Normal School should do what it is supposed to do and what it should be equipped to do and what the public has a right to expect that it do-train the teachers of the state to do all of the work up to college entrance. This is the summarized opinion of those who spoke on the Normal School Department program. If such is to be the work of the graduate of the Normal School, then he must have scholarship. If he is to have scholarship, time must be devoted to the training-four years is most desirable. Even if the teacher teaches the primary grades in the town, scholarship is necessary. If she teach the remotest rural school, she should be no less equipped. Carroll G. Pearse thought there was room for argument as to how long the Normal School course should be but the greater part of his brother Normal School presidents thought his argument weak and that it lacked the strength which conviction gives. Mr. Pearse seemed to say: Let's be reasonable. The Conference seemed to say: Let's sign a new Declaration of Independence.

CO-OPERATION IN EDUCATION

BY ROBERT J. ALEY

President of University of Maine. President of the N. E. A.

This great association has never held a meeting when national and world conditions were as they are now. Our country for the first time in her history is part of a world conflict. This world struggle is between democracy and autocracy. Democracy must win or all the sacrifices of the past have been in vain.

Last August by the establishment by Congress of the Council for National Defense with its advisory committee on Engineering and Education, official recognition was given to education as a national resource. It is significant that this is the first time education has been so recognized. As teachers we certainly appreciate the confidence of the government in our work. We renew the pledges that our work of the past has verified and offer ourselves unreservedly for the great work ahead of us.

August 2, 1917

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In a country like ours where saving has been unnecessary, keenness of wit and an ability to profit by failure have been fairly good substitutes for systematic training and scientific knowledge. The rapid increase of our population, the higher plane of living expected and demanded of our citizens, the increasing complexity of modern life, the demands of our allies upon us in the present

Organized education must continue to produce crisis, and the part that we must play at the close broadly educated men and women. In addition, it must speed up its machinery and produce men and women specially prepared to handle the difficult and complex problems of the great war. It is also essential that organized education do more than heretofore to disseminate knowledge and to illustrate and teach how our citizens may produce more and conserve better.

The democracy of this country has produced a multitude of schools of different ideas and ideals.

of the war in the remaking of the world all unite to give American education an opportunity and to place upon it a greater responsibility. If education accepts its opportunity and assumes its responsibility, there must be co-ordination and cooperation. It is the function of the National Education Association, the greatest educational organization in the world, to bring to the American people a constructive educational program, adequate for present needs, and flexible enough to be easily adjusted to future growth.

NATIONAL EDUCATION AND WORLD POLITY

BY EDWARD O. SISSON
President, State University, Montana

The world is ablaze with war because in 1914 it was highly inflammable and some one in an obscure corner of Europe struck a match.

We want a world safe to live in; but unless profound changes are made this war, more frightful than all previous wars, may well be followed by another war more frightful than this.

Some of these changes are being wrought before our wondering eyes. But education also is supposed to have a share in making individuals, and so in making nations and the world.

What changes must we make in our education that it may do its great part in making men and nations and a world which shall be conflagrationproof?

The cause of this war is the exaggerated national ego. Every nation believes itself the chosen people of God. If they felt chosen to serve, all would be well; but when they feel chosen to rule, trouble follows.

Through the interworking of racial character and their situation in the middle of Europe, the Germans have become the terrible example of the exaggerated national ego. But all nations are af

fected: English, French, Americans; also Russians, Italians, Serbs; even Turks and Mexicans.

The schools have done their share in fostering the exaggerated national ego. Here again, through quite natural causes, Germany is the supreme example of deliberate, indefatigable, century-long culture of the national ego, to a point where no cosmic forces could avert a clash and a cataclysm. It used to be proper for individuals to brag and boast, to play the bully; that was found to be incompatible with friendly social relations, and is under the ban. From now on it will be prohibited for a nation to play Goliath to the rest of mankind.

We still need a new and different education; the old education simply won't serve the turn. We must cultivate the Ego less and the Socius more. We need not less patriotism, but more and wiser and broader; but we also need more and wiser and broader humanity.

No people owe more to history, or if you like to God, than we Americans. Our great opportunity for repayment is coming; our politics and our education should lead the way in the making of a new and safe world; but always in the spirit of gratitude and service.

GENERAL ADMINISTRATION

BY O. M. PLUMMER

Member Board of Education, Portland, Oregon

When a board of education, after much consideration and investigation, selects a superintendent for its system, its work is half done. When it puts in the balance of the time letting him alone. and looking to him for administrative results, its work is well nigh complete. Ninety-five per cent. of the trouble between school board members and their administrative head, is caused by the question of patronage. The old-fashioned idea which still obtains in some quarters, is that the main duties of the school director is to provide places as teachers for his relatives and friends. It's apparently a question of a few years, however, until this idea will have become a thing of the past and school board people will confine themselves purely to the larger policies of the entire system, allowing the details to be worked out by the proper heads.

No man should be on a board of education who has not a great love for children. If he has every other qualification and lacks this one he is bound to be a failure. No office within the gift of the people carries with it so much honor as that which goes with a member of the board of education.

One of the best known statesmen in the United States, who has held practically every office excepting that of president, said that he counted twenty-five years of experience on his local school board as the most important and honorable duty which he had ever performed. When people at large realize the importance of the work of the board of education, they will give to the selection. of such members as much consideration as they now do to the selection of their city and state of

ficials.

The School Administration Department of the National Education Department can be made one of the strongest departments of the entire Association. If more school people could be brought to attend these national gatherings there would soon be a more general understanding by them of the problems of their administrative offices. They would also be brought in touch with the rank and file of teachers from all over the country, thereby getting a much broader viewpoint and be able to treat the various problems in a more sympathetic

manner.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND THE NATION IN 1917

BY L. R. ALDERMAN Superintendent, Portland, Oregon

Perhaps the biggest thing that the schools have been doing is the teaching of co-operation resulting in good order. An astonishing thing to most people is the voluntary good order in a great school system of youngsters in the turbulent, and strongly individualistic high school age. Records show that there is very little crime among high school students, whereas there is much crime proportionately among boys of high school age who are not in school.

Our schools have helped the people of the nation adjust themselves to many great changes. Immigrants come to this country and find a strange language, strange habits of work, and different standards of living. Through the school these people learn American standards. The public schools give all the children, rich and poor, a standard environment, thereby assisting them in adjusting themselves to the great national spirit of democracy.

Not only do the schools standardize, but lead in forward movements. For instance, the present age of temperance advancement is made possible because Frances Willard introduced temperance instruction into the physiologies of the '80s, when the present generation of men and women were in the grade schools. Another forward movement is that for hygiene. The schools are teaching the people how to live.

In this time of war the fundamental virtues are being intensified by the teaching in the schools. The work of food production and industrial conservation has always had its supreme value in the schools, but today it has become a patriotic duty. Breadth of vision which will enable us to fight for the cause of democracy without hating the German people is a possibility of the schools. Then the great lesson of all is the lesson of democracy. The school is to be the great battle ground of the future where all reforms are to be brought about.

EDUCATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

BY CARROLL G. PEARSE, LL.D.
Milwaukee

Our system of education has given our people intelligence and interests in the things being done in the world, and has made them adaptable, courageous and aspiring. As an education to fit them for the duties by which to earn their livelihood it has left much to be desired. The American system of education must do much more and much better to train the youth of the country for their

vocation.

This training for vocations must include the training of girls for that vocation which nine out of ten will follow-the vocation of homemaker. It must train them not only in the ideals of an American home; they must also understand the operative side and be qualified to become buying partners in these homes. Our youth who will be heads of families must also learn what are their family responsibilities, and how to carry these responsibilities right.

We have left much to be desired in our training for the duties of citizenship. Ten million of our young men enrolled for military service on a designated day. Our people respond to great emergencies. They have not been so taught as to be ready and to have the habit of responding to the small daily calls for service. They do not go to the polls on primary election days, or on the day of the general election. Our leading and most competent business and professional men refuse to become candidates for office when asked to do so, perhaps because they dread to face possible de

feat, perhaps because they do not wish to make the required contribution of their time. Loyalty and usefulness in daily requirements are no less important in establishing a high standard of civic value than the readiness to respond to those emergency calls for extraordinary service.

It is the task of the school people in the country within the next decade to apply themselves to the task of working out this more effective system of public education. The National Educational Association must lead. The national council of education cannot justify its existence more thoroughly nor more conspicuously than by taking the initiative in this task.

THE CONSERVATION OF THE TEACHER

BY CHARLES E. RUGH University of California

The growing point in education is where the teacher comes into vital touch with the pupil. The supreme qualification of a teacher of youth is surplus human vitality-physical, mental, spiritual. Lengthening time of preparation, lengthening school and increasing school demands lays a heavy task upon teacher's vitality.

The teachers in the service must be conserved and given every possible chance and encouragement to keep vital and progressive. Length and strength of life depends upon a harmony of the life rhythms. Like a chain, life is just as strong as its weakest rhythm.

There are two systems of rhythms, dynamic and kinetic. The processes in the dynamic system are circulating blood, breathing, digestion, sleeping and waking, working and recreating. These must be harmonized into a system. The organs of the kinetic system are brain, adrenal gland, thyroid glands, liver and muscles. These must be harmonized into a system. The two rhythmic systems are co-ordinated and correlated through the daily life program. Teachers need vital surplus for the same reason they need a bank surplus and such a surplus is developed by somewhat the same method-by looking out for the checks and deposits.

A. Check on Physical Vitality.

D. Cultivation of Mental Vitality.
2. Keeping up vigorous student life.
1. Cultivation of physical vitality.

3. Social and civic and philanthropic activities, forcing one to match one's mind with men and women of affairs.

E. Check's upon Spiritual Vitality.

1. Checks upon physical and mental life.

2. Necessity for criticism and even blame of pupils.

3. Increasing grind of school machinery and "system."

F. Cultivation of Spirtual Vitality.

1. By cultivation of physical and mental surplus.

2. By development of (a) sympathy-ability and disposition to employ the golden rule in instruction, discipline and fellowship; (b) humility -allegiance to what is spiritually above us as a means of inspiration and growth and as an example to pupils; (c) love of pupils-dispositional interest in their fellowship and in their successes.

From the standpoint of the individual these principles of the abundant life must be mechanized into a daily, yearly and life program. From the standpoint of the community the teacher must be inspired and encouraged by appreciation, salary, tenure, sabbatical years and fellowship.

WOMAN AND PREPAREDNESS

BY JOSEPHINE CORLISS PRESTON Superintendent of Public Instruction, Washington America-neutral America-has become aroused to its own peril. We are awake at last to the unbelievable fact that the perpetuity of our nation-that the inalienable right of every individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness— that the principle of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as opposed to the feudalistic world dominion policy of Germany, is the fundamental issue at stake in this

war.

[Mrs. Preston described two types of women, the one who holds back her tears as she wishes her son "Godspeed" and bravely smiles a last

1. Unhygienic habits of living developed through greeting as he marches away to war, and the other years of preparation and teaching.

2. Unhygienic living.

woman-"the woman in the hammock❞—who, childless, perhaps, watches the youth go with a

3. Monotony or routine incident to the profes- dispassionate "Why shouldn't he go? It is his

sion.

B. Cultivation of Physical Vitality.

1. By learning "How to Live"-book by this title recommended.

2. By well planned recreation.

3. By calling upon life rhythms frequently to perform a more vigorous action than is required in teaching.

C. Checks to Mental Vitality.

1. The checks on physical vitality.

2. Monotony or routine incident to the profession, teaching same grade of pupils in the same subjects.

3. The teaching of younger persons-not requiring top notch mental activity as required by the other professions.

duty."]

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EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

This department is open to contributions from anyone connected with schools or school events in any part of the country. Items of more than local interest relating to any phase of school work or school administration are acceptable as news. Contributions must be signed to secure insertion.

Meetings to be Held

AUGUST.

7-9: Western District of County Superintendents. Blue Ridge, N. C. R. A. Sentell, Waynesville, president. 24-31: Wisconsin State Supervising Teachers' Association. Madison.

SEPTEMBER.

Wagner, State Commissioner of Ed-
ucation, Dover, Delaware, chairman
committee on arrangements.
15-17: Missouri State Teachers' Asso-
ciation. Kansas City. President,
Ira Richardson, Maryville; secretary-
treasurer, E. M. Carter, Coltanbia.
15-17: Joint meeting: New England
Association of School Superintend-
ents, Massachusetts Superintendents
Association, American Institute of
Instruction and Massachusetts
Teachers Association. Boston.
26-28: Virginia Educational Confer-
Richmond. State Teachers'
Association, William C. Blakey,
Richmond, secretary; State Co-
operative Education Association,
J. H. Montgomery, Richmond, secre-
tary; Association of Division Super-
intendents,
North
Superintendent F. B.
Fitzpatrick, Bristol, secretary; Asso-
ciation of Trustees, M. C. McGhee,
secretary.

3-8: Interstate Fair and Live Stock Show. Spokane, Wash.

B-8: East Central District

Associa

tion of County Superintendents. Sanford, North Carolina. J. F. Webb, Oxford, president.

10-15: State Fair Spelling Bee, Syracuse, N. Y.

17-22: Children's Encampment. Yakima, Wash.

22: State of Washington County Superintendents' Annual Convention. Cheney, Wash. September 24-25 at Pullman.

OCTOBER.

11-13: Lake Superior, Wis., Teachers' Association. Miss Bertha J. Bauer, Superior, secretary.

12-13: Lake Superior Teachers' Association, Superior, Wisconsin. Ashley T. Conrad, Superior, president; Miss Agnes E. Bury, vice-president; Miss Bertha J. Bauer, secretary; R. A. Quick, treasurer.

12-13: Illinois School Masters' Club. 18-20: Illinois State Teachers' Association, Western Division. Galesburg.

18-20: Illinois State Teachers' Association, Illinois Valley Division. Ottawa.

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Association. W. H. Saunders, La Crosse, secretary. 19-20:

Wisconsin

Northwestern
Teachers' Association. Eau Claire.
Miss Mabel Ahlstrum, Eau Claire,
Secretary.

Asso-
ciation. Spokane. O. C. Whitney,
Bryant School, Tacoma, Wash., sec-
retary.
29-31: Colorado Education Association,
Western Division, Grand Junction,

24-27: Washington Educational

Miss Agnes Young, Montrose, secretary. 1-November 2: Minnesota Educational Association. Minneapolis. C. C. Baker, Albert Lea, president; E. D. Pennell, East High School, Min

neapolis, secretary. 31-November 2: Colorado Education Association, Southern Division, Pueblo. Lemuel Pitts, Jr., Pueblo, secretary.

81-November 2: North Dakota Educational Association. Bismarck.

R.

E.

Edwards, Jamestown, president; W. E. Parsons, Bismarck, secretary.

NOVEMBER.

1-3: Colorado Education Association, Eastern Division. Denver. James H. Kelley, Gunnison, president; H. B. Smith, Denver, secretary general association.

13: Iowa State Teachers' Association. Sixty-third annual session, Des Moines. Eva M. Fleming, superintendent, Decorah, president; Superintendent O. E. Smith, Indianola, secretary.

2: Essex County, Mass., Teachers AsBoston. sociation. Tremont Temple, Superintendent William F. Eldredge, Rockport, president; John H. Bosshart, Salem, secretary.

8-10: Kansas State Teachers' Association. Topeka W. H. Johnson, Lawrence, president; F. L. Pinet, Topeka, secretary.

12-16: Newcastle County Teachers Institute, A. I. Dupont High School. Kent and Sussex Counties, at Milford. State Institute for Colored Teachers at Milford. Charles A.

ence.

26-28: New York State Teachers' As-
sociation. Syracuse. Herbert S.
Weet, Rochester, N. Y., president.
26-28: Wyoming State Teachers' Asso-
ciation. Buffalo, Wyo.

26-28: Maryland State Teachers' Asso-
ciation Baltimore City. Sydney S.
Handy, president; Hugh W. Caldwell,
Elkton, secretary.

26-28: Montana State Teachers' Asso-
ciation. Helena. Dr. H. H. Swain,
Helena, secretary.

29-December 1: North Carolina State
Teachers' Assembly. Charlotte.
T. Allen, Salisbury, president;
Walker, Chapel Hill, vice-
president; E. E. Sams, Raleigh, sec-
retary.
29-December 1: Texas State Teachers'
Association. Waco. Miss Annie Webb
Blanton, Denton, president; R. T.
Ellis, Forth Worth, secretary.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE. CONCORD. H. A. Brown go to Wisconsin, as president of the Oshkosh State Normal School, succeeding John A. H. Keith, who will become president of the Normal School at Indiana, Penn.

will

Mr. Brown, who is 38, has been director of the research bureau at Concord, N. H., for the General Education Board of the State.

Born in Maine, he worked his way through Bates College and also through the University of Colorado and has done post graduate work at Harvard.

The Oshkosh Normal School has an attendance of about 4,000.

VERMONT.

PROCTOR. Henry Hall, for the past three years in the schools of Norwood, Mass., has been elected principal of the high school in Proctor.

ARLO

Have you a little Arlo in your school?
Children cry for it.

Eventually, why not now?

ARLO, a reader for upper third and regular fourth grades. By Bertha B. and
Ernest Cobb. With illustrations by Charles Copeland. BROOKLINE, MASS.:
THE RIVERDALE PRESS.

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