The educational legislation of the legislature of Pennsylvania for 1917 has been most important and progressive, indeed, it has been the most important since the adoption of the new Pennsylvania school code, in 1911, and for many years before that time. This, of course, was to be expected in the administration of the great teachergovernor, Dr. M. G. Brumbaugh, to whom great credit is due for his wise and patriotic influence and efforts for the cause of education.

Among the most important of these bills are the Act authorizing the State Board of Education to co-operate with the federal government in carrying out the provisions of the Smith Hughes bill. The increasing of the minimum salaries of county superintendents to $2,000. As is well known, the county superintendents of Pennsylvania are the best paid county superintendents in the United States, but in a number of the smaller counties the salaries have been from $1,500 to $2,000, the first named being the minimum salary heretofore. Hereafter all must be paid at least $2,000, but counties may provide for larger salaries for their superintendents and salaries of three, four, and five thousand dollars are not uncommon. Three superintendents now receive $5,000 per year, one $7,000, and another $8,500. The salaries of county superintendents of Pennsylvania are paid by the state up to $2,000 or $2,500. Additional pay for them, made at the discretion of the county conventions of school directors, which elect them every four years, must be taken from the whole county's share of the state appropriation for public schools.

The salaries of assistant county superintendents, which are required in all the larger counties of the state, have been raised from a minimum of $1,200 to a minimum of $1,800 per year. These, too, may be increased in the same way at the discretion of the School Directors' Conventions.

Pennsylvania now has a very comprehensive and efficient system of medical inspection in the townships and smaller boroughs. This is done. at the expense of the state. In the larger districts it is done at the expense of the districts. Practically the whole state now has this medical inspection. This year school districts were all given the authority to provide for the care and treatment of defective eyes and teeth of pupils at public expense.

The state appropriation for public education in Pennsylvania for the ensuing two years was increased from sixteen to eighteen million dollars, which is believed to be the largest appropriation made for public education by any state.

A new minimum salary bill was passed, which requires that teachers with provisional certificates, that is, one year certificates granted by superintendents, must receive at least $45 per month; that all graduates of normal schools and all holding professional certificates, which are the certifi

cates of those who have taught three years and have had certain branches added to their certificates, and have secured these certificates which are good for three years, must have at least $55 per month; and that normal school graduates who have taught for two years in the state and received their final normal school diplomas, as well as teachers having other forms of permanent state certificates, must have at least $60 per month. Of course a great many teachers receive larger salaries than these, but no teachers hereafter employed in the public schools of Pennsylvania can receive less than the above salaries.

But the crowning act of the legislature, educationally, was the passage of, and approval by the governor of, a state-wide teachers' pension bill, which, in the case of beginners, shares the expense of the pensions equally between the teacher and the state, and in the case of those already in the service, the state bears the larger share of the cost, and with those who are near the retiring age, much the larger share of the cost. The bill has been carefully drawn, and is undoubtedly absolutely sound actuarily, and its friends predict that it will be a model for other states. All new teachers must join the retirement association, and teachers now in service may elect whether they will join or not. Teachers who drop out before the retiring age, sixty-two, will have all of their payments returned to them, and the act provides that they shall receive 4% compound interest upon their payments.

CURRENT EVENTS QUESTIONS

A. H. Seymour, Aberdeen, S. D., has prepared forty questions for Current Events discussion at the annual meeting of the Thirteen Northern Counties of the State at Aberdeen this summer. From these we make a few selections:—

What is the source of your information on current events? What distinction do you make between current events and general informa tion? What papers do you read regularly? Do you read many editorials?

Name and classify the leading nations that are at war. Name some leading generals. Why did the United States enter the war?

Why is our Congress in session? Who presides in each house? Name your senators and representatives.

Where does the N. E. A. meet this year? The S. D. E. A.? Name president of each.

What American state is celebrating its centennial this vear?

Name three or four of our leading foreign ambassadors.

What has attracted attention to Cuba in recent months?

Name some states that have lately extended women the right of suffrage.

What European ruler died a few months ago? What one abdicated?

What change in the United States Supreme Court within the past year?

Name five of the most influential of our cabinet officers.

What city superintendent gets the highest salary of any in the United States?

What important law was passed last winter over the President's veto?

Who is Joseph R. Mann? Cardinal Mercier? David Lloyd George? General Joffre?

What noted foreign visitors has the United States had recently?

Who is Elihu Root and what has recently called attention to him?

These people have died within the past year: Seth Low, Joseph Royce, Eben E. Rexford, Frank Dempster Sherman, Jack London, Hiram Maxim, George Dewey, Hamilton W. Mabie, William De Morgan, James W. Guthrie, Count Zeppelin, Joseph B. Foraker. Make a distin

guishing statement about each. Name the best book you have read in a year. Who wrote it?

Who is "the dean of American writers"? What do you understand by a teachers' pension law?

Who is at the head of the United States Army? What is the origin of your own surname? What was your grandmother's maiden name? Is the study of one's ancestry worth while?

What is the best poem you have found brought out by the present war?

How many of our national parks can you name and locate? What national monument in South Dakota?

GAMES BASED ON FROEBEL'S

TEACHINGS-(I)

BY L. ROUNTREE SMITH

SEPTEMBER GAME, BASED ON "FALLING, FALLING."

The children are in a circle. They raise and lower their arms while singing. They choose Autumn, who runs outside the circle with a wreath. She crowns any child at the close of the song and they change places. Sing, tune "Comin' Thro' the Rye."

See the autumn leaves are falling,
Yellow, brown and red,

Hear the fairy voices calling,

Autumn's come 'tis said;

Falling, falling from the tree-tops,

Yellow, red and brown,

Oh, all the autumn leaves are falling,
Over squirrel town.

CITY BOARDS OF EDUCATION

[Gleaned from the Report of Charles E. Chadsey, Detroit, chairman of a Committee of the Department of Superintendence.]

Of 1,271 cities of the United States only eighty-four cities have more than nine members, that is only one city in fifteen has a board of more than nine members.

179 have only three members.

365 have five members. 236 have six members. 306 have seven members.

The small boards are increasing rapidly and will soon be universal. Of 1,288 cities, 1,094 elect board members and in 194 they are appointed. 975 cities elect members-at-large. Ninety-eight elect by wards.

The election by wards is fast disappearing. San Francisco and Rochester, N. Y., are the only important cities that pay school board members.

A NOTABLE STATEMENT

BY W. D. ROSS
State Superintendent

To the Young People of Kansas:—

The universities of Eurone have virtually been transferred to the trenches. Thousands of their students and graduates are dead upon the field of battle; still other thousands are yet to make the supreme sacrifice. Soon we must add our share to this offering to liberty and civilization. When these have finally been made safe devastation and demoralization unparalleled will prevail. This ruin will not be merely physical and material. Ideals will have been shattered, education will have been crippled, Christianity itself will have suffered.

Peace will bring with it problems even greater than those the war has brought. The world will have to be rebuilt, society will have to be reorganized, civilization will have to be remade. To prepare to perform this herculean task; to be ready to take the places of scholars and scientists whose learning no longer avails; to fit themselves to step into places of leadership made vacant, and still other places of leadership never yet filled-these to my mind are the supreme opportunity, the sacred obligation of our young men and young women of high school and college age.

Not education as usual but education more and better than ever-next to victory itself this is the most fundamental demand the world war makes upon us. To meet the demand is a matter of patriotic duty. On the eve of the opening of the schools in this our first year of the war I call the youth of Kansas to their colors.

August 16, 1917.

VERIFICATION

Dear Dr. Winship: I want to express to you my personal thanks for your editorial in the Journal of July 26, in which you recall the services which Mrs. Hunt did in laying the foundation for our present temperance progress in her efforts for public school education. One of the European statesmen once called it "the greatest piece of constructive statesmanship of the nineteenth century."

From several of the prohibition states has come testimony of the fact that a generation of the men and women instructed in the schools in the facts about alcohol has been the explanation of the growth of the temperance sentiment in those states.

A West Virginia official called attention to the fact that the Temperance Educational Law of West Virginia was enacted the same year that the people of West Virginia defeated prohibition by many thousands of votes. Some twenty-five years or more, practically for a generation past, the teaching of the schools has done its work with the result, he said, that when West Virginia again voted on the prohibition question it abolished the saloon by over 90,000 majority.

Of course, other efforts in the way of teaching and organization have helped in making sentiment and gathering it up as fast as it was made, but there can be no doubt, I think, that that fundamental work which Mrs. Hunt led for more than a quarter of a century has had a mighty part in changing the sentiment of the United States.

con

The employers who came up through the schools, while they may not have been at the moment sciously impressed by the teaching, unquestionably in many cases have come to the problems of business life with intelligence concerning the effect of alcohol, that naturally has helped them to grasp the results of alcohol to industry when they found themselves concerned with the problem of drink in their business life.

A graduate of the Annapolis Naval Academy, who was a member of the first class in that academy which had temperance instruction under the National Tem

perance Educational Law, told me two years ago that the level of sobriety in the naval circles had steadily risen since that time. He himself first had his attention drawn to the scientific aspects of the alcohol question in connection with that instruction.

You will pardon me for writing so much at length, but I thought you might be interested in knowing of this confirmatory evidence of your statement. F might add that officials in Kansas have affirmed that one reason for the better enforcement of the Kansas Prohibitory Law in the past ten years was the more intelligent sentiment on the part of the citizens of Kansas due to the temperance education in the public schools under the law which was enacted soon after the State Prohibitory Law went into effect. Sincerely yours,

Cora Frances Stoddard, Executive Secretary, Scientific Temperance Federation. Boston.

EVERYDAY PHYSICS. A Laboratory Manual, by John C. Packard, High School, Brookline, Mass. Boston, New York, etc.: Ginn & Co. Illustrated. 136 pp. Price, $1.

Mr. Packard is recognized as one of the most successful teachers of physics in New England. His work in a high school is of college grade in scholarship and beyond many college laboratories in inspiration, in developing a love for the subject on the part of his students; in short, he comes very near making scientists of high school students.

In this book Mr. Packard has retained to an unusual degree the spirit, ardor, and intensity of his classroom and laboratory personality.

There are sixty-one exercises covering that number of the most vital phases of the first course in high school physics. His plan is to present the principles of physics through studies of familiar objects and mechanisms of the everyday world, such as heating systems, fire extinguishers, incandescent lamps, et cetera, instead of by specially constructed laboratory apparatus. He adopts the most interesting possible medium of instruction and the one through which the practical usefulness of the science is most certain to be understood. At first he gives a list of the apparatus necessary. Then follows an "Introduction" to explain the relation of the topic in question to other subjects. Next the exercise itself is given, always clearly and concisely. Problems based on the principle involved in the exercise follow thereafter and the lesson closes with a section on Topics for Further Study and Investigation. The book meets the college entrance requirements and at the same time fulfills the more exacting demands of those who must, without assistance from a college course, understand the natural forces in the midst of which they live.

ELEMENTARY SPANISH-AMERICAN READER. Edited with notes, exercises and vocabulary by Frederick Bliss Luquiens, Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University. New York: The Macmillan Company. Cloth. 234 pp. Illustrated. Price, 90 cents. Not content with the publishing of Mr. Supple's excellent Spanish-American Historical Reader, Professor Luquiens, the general editor of the Macmillan Spanish series (in which it appeared) has produced a more elementary work intended for reading early in the Spanish course. As the title indicates, the material deals exclusively with Spanish-America. There are twenty selections, of which two are in verse, covering such topics as the discovery of America, its quest, Argentina, Uruguay, Panama. Porfirio Diaz, a parallel between Washington and Bolivar, and a number of extracts from the works of Spanish-American writers. Each chapter is followed by an exercise containing questions for oral composition and a paragraph in English for written composition based on

con

the text. The footnotes in Spanish, an admirable feature of Mr. Supple's noteworthy book (provided by Professor Luquiens), have been paralleled in the later text. In addition there is an appendix of grammatical notes explaining the purely linguistic features of the text. A chapter on the Spanish subjunctive, a table of numerals, and usual vocabulary complete the text. A noteworthy feature is the insertion of about twenty excellent illustrations consisting of reproductions of photographs of South American scenes, portraits, and maps, which add greatly to the interest of the book. Not the least of its good points is its moderate price. It is a useful and appropriate addition to the stock of really first-rate Spanish texts.

A com

GERMAN AND ENGLISH EDUCATION. parative study. By Father De Hovre, Ph.D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Cloth. 108 pp. This is an exceedingly interesting book, a book of the day in a sense that almost no other teacher's book is. It is the only book we have seen that deals discriminatingly and adequately with the inherent difference between English and German education, between English culture and German kultur.

It is an Englishman's book for Englishmen, but Americans need it none the less. We would not have missed the reading of the book for several times its price.

It is, strange to say, an arraignment of England's educational leaders. A few paragraphs should be read by you, my reader, and by a multitude of other Americans.

"The national significance of education has been a striking effect of the war. . . . There will be an educational crisis everywhere; the reforms needed in England constitute a formidable task. . . . For England to remedy intellectual backwardness will only require a short period, compared with the time it will take Germany to recover from her moral atrophy. The need of the hour will be so urgent that more intellectual culture will be viewed in an entirely new light. . . . In England the need will inspire more love of intellectual culture; the need will organize the reform. . . . The bread-and-butter motive will sooner or later be reinforced and idealized by moral motives. Sooner or later it will be discovered that although abstract and one-sided intellectualism is detrimental to the interests of moral character, at yet the same time sound intellectual ideals and work and culture are powerful means to its formation."

ences when one of the great educational leaders of twenty-five years ago graphically described the scene when all spelling books were to be brought from the schoolhouses of every city to the public square and accompanied by Fourth of July oratory converted into a bonfire for community entertainment, can but smile as we see the new spelling books prepared for a market that absorbs nearly 20,000,000 of them annually.

is

That was one of the mirages of the man who most likely to live of any of the leaders of his day. Even the spelling books by their evolution are a tribute to his criticism of the spelling books of that day. These four books have been made largely in the Forestville School, Chicago, which, probably better than any other public school in America, embodies the spirit and exemplifies and demonstrates the principles of the Great Denunciator, and we can but think that Colonel Francis W. Parker would smile serenely upon Florence Holbrook were he to follow her and her teachers through these pages of modernized teaching of spelling.

STORY STEPS. Latest volume in The Progressive Road to Reading Series. By Miss Clare Kleiser, Principal, Dr. William L. Ettinger, Associate Superintendent, and Dr. Edgar Dubs Shimer, District Superintendent, New York City. With illustrations. Boston, New York, Chicago: Silver, Burdett & Co. Price, 32 cents.

Rarely in these later days has a series of school readers won such ardent devotion on the part of teachers and children as has "The Progressive Road to Reading" by three of New York's most enterprising school people. Rarely have a New York City principal, assistant superintendent, and associate superintendent, experts all of them, combined their forces in the production of a series of school books.

This new volume in the series is an additional selection of stories adapted in simple language for beginners, to catch their attention, arouse their imagination, and hold their interest, thus creating a motive for learning to read. It is intended as a by-path of approach to Book One. Animal characters play the principal roles. The vocabulary of "Story Steps" comprises 258 words, ninety per cent. of which are identical with the vocabulary of Book One. Of these 258 words, 178 are phonetic and the remainder sight words.

Not the least of the charms of the book attitudes and expressions of the kittens and mice, pigeons, ducks and geese, dogs and pigs, foxes and rabbits, lambs and cows.

A NEW POCKET DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES. By J. H. Freese. English-Russian. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Price, $2, net.

war.

This war is doing two things for the schools and for scholars. The schools will teach Spanish in the junior high school and Russian in the best high schools. Hereafter scholars will read Russian as they never would have read it but for this world Hereafter an English-Russian Dictionary will be indispensable in every library, and on the working table of every modern scholar. High schools will need it as they have heretofore needed their English-German Dictionary.

It is as true as it is inconceivable that German is sure to be less emphasized and Russian and Spanish

GRAMMAIRE ELÉMENTAIRE. By Emma C. Armand, Morris High School, New York. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. Cloth. 112 pages. Price, 60 cents. This textbook has been written to fill the need for a very simple grammar written in French. It is well adapted for the use of young beginners on the modified direct method. Its features are short vocabularies, the study of but one principle at a time, frequent application of principles learned, the omission of exceptions and details, and abundant oral drill. There are twenty-nine short lessons in addition to the seven preparatory exercises, which may be said to provide the mechanics of the course. The vocabulary is small but of great practicality. An appendix of verb forms is provided in addition to the usual vocabularies.

INDUSTRIAL ARITHMETIC FOR GIRLS. An Elementary Text in Home Economics. By Nelson L. Roray. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Sons. Cloth. Illustrated. Price, 75 cents.

This is a highly serviceable book for emphasizing arithmetical efficiency through the domestic science work of elementary school girls. It reviews the mathematical principles most often needed by girls taking the courses in Cooking, Applied Design and Household Management as given in the secondary schools. It applies these principles to problems the girls must handle in the school shops and may have to handle in practical life. It introduces the idea of general positive number and its use in formulae and in simple equations. It impresses, by means of applied problems, the importance of saving a portion of the income of the family and of conducting the household in a systematic manner. It suggests methods of economy in the general management of the household.

"The Religious Education of an American Citizen." By F. G. Peabody. Price $1.25.-"Elementary Principles of Economics." By Ely & Wicker. Price $1.10.-"German Science Reader." By F. W. Scholz. Price $1.10.-"Hillern's Höher als die Kirche." Edited by S. L. Pitcher. Price 40c. New York. The Macmillan Company. "Outlines of Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates." By J. S. Kingsley. Price $2.50. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Sons & Co.

"English Usage." By J. L. Hall. Price $1.50. Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co. S. Croy.

"1000 Hints on Vegetable Gardening." By M. Price $1.50.-"The Margin of Happiness." By T. Q. Franks. Price $1.50. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"Productive Plant Husbandry." By K. C. Davis. Price $1.75.-"English Literature.' By E. L. Miller. Price $1.75. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. "One Thousand Literary Questions and Answers." By M. E. Kramer. Price $1.00. New York: Sully & Kleinteich. "Realization Made Easy." By K. A. Boehme.-Meditations for Life and Power.' By F. M. Kingsley. Price 35c. Holyoke, Mass.: The Elizabeth Towne Company. "First Spanish Course. By Hills & Ford. Price $1.25. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. "The Song Play Book." Compiled by M. A. Wollaston. Edited by C. W. Crampton. New York: A. S. Barnes Company.

"In the Claws of the German Eagle." By A. R. Williams. Price $1.50.-"Phonetic Section of Dent's First French Book." By W. Rippmann. Price 25c. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

"Practical Exercises in Rapid Calculation." By Powers & Loker. Price 40c.-"The Beacon Fourth Reader." By J. H. Fassett. Price 64c. Boston: Ginn & Co.

"German and English Education." By Fr. de Hovre. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

"Worth While Stories for Every Day." By L. B. Evans."For the Children's Hour." (Book I. and II.). By C. S. Bailey. "Essentials of Mechanical Drafting." By L. Frank. Springfield, Mass.: Milton Bradley Company.

"Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children." By Mabel Powers. New York: American Book Company.

275

EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

Meetings to be Held

:-:

:-:

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

3: 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 Association. Tremont Temple, Boston. 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.

retary.

sity, secretary.

FEBRUARY.

22:

Atoka,

Association.

president;

NEW ENGLAND STATES.

MAINE.

Three of Maine's four colleges, Bates, Colby and the University of Maine, will not open for the 1917-18 year until October 11. This is nearly a month later than usual.

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. Wagner, State Commissioner of Education, Dover, Delaware, chairman committee on arrangements. 15-17: Missouri State Teachers' AssoThe idea is to allow the students ciation. Kansas City. President, Ira Richardson, Maryville; secretarywho are working on farms and in treasurer, E. M. Carter, Columbia. other industries to finish their work 15-17: Joint meeting: before returning England to their studies. Association of School Superintend- Otherwise the students would be deents, Massachusetts Superintendents prived of a chance to begin their colAssociation, American Institute of Instruction lege work on time, as their positions and Massachusetts Teachers Association. Boston. are binding. 26-28: Virginia Educational Conference. Richmond. State Teachers'

proximately twelve hundred students registered in its four colleges, agriculture, law, technology, and arts and sciences, expects only about fifty per cent. of the student body back at Orono this year. Accordingly tuition has been raised to meet the added expense, board increased and instructors dropped from the roll of instruction.

The other colleges have also borne heavy losses, but the war's effect has been felt more by the State University than by Colby, Bates or Bowdoin. Bowdoin opens this month in accordance with its regular schedule.

opened with a total attendance 2,073, a slight decrease over year's total of 2,107, but with an increase of thirteen pupils in the high school reported by Headmaster Dunfield. Five new teachers have been elected to the high school staff to fill vacancies. Orwin B. Griffin, A. M., president of the Teachers' Associa tion, who was appointed Jacob Sleeper Fellow by the trustees of Boston University last fall, has resigned from the high school staff and will go to Columbia University September 24, to specialize in administration of education, and Latin, in Teachers College.

MASSACHUSETTS.

HUNTINGTON. M. J. West of Millis has been elected superintendent to succeed Leon Merrill, who has accepted the superintendency Rockland, Mass.

NORTHAMPTON. William Allan Neilson, professor of English_at Harvard, will succeed Dr. Marion Leroy Burton as president of Smith College.

Professor Neilson severs Harvard connections of fifteen years' standing. He came to Cambridge in 1900 as instructor, stayed four years, went to Columbia for two years and returned to Harvard in 1906 as professor of English. The year 1914-1915 he spent at the University of Paris as Harvard exchange professor. Professor Neilson was born in Scotland in 1869. He received the degree of A. M. from the University of Edinburgh in 1891. As a graduate student at Harvard he attained his master's degree in 1896 and his doctorate in 1898. Previously, he had begun his career as a teacher in Scotland and Canada, and in 1898 he went as an associate in English to Bryn Mawr, where he remained for two years. Then he came to Harvard.

Professor Neilson's original special field in English was the history of the allegory. In later years, however, he has specialized in English history of the Elizabethan and the Romantic periods.

More widely known, however, are the texts which he edited. These be