ternoon and evening. Frequently these men went home fifty miles after ten o'clock at night.

The Governor's routing took the smallest counties, sometimes where there was no railroad in the county. Everywhere the Governor insisted upon a longer school term, upon better prepared teachers, upon better school buildings, upon higher wages for teachers, and upon the employment of a county school nurse. Every speech meant more taxes for the farmers, and eighty per cent. of the people of the state live in the country. In every address he closed with the emphatic statement that he stood behind every movement for better rural schools. And everyone knows that means it. The Governor, State Superintendent Neil C. Macdonald, and the last legislature made better schools their slogan.

he

Here he wrestled with blizzards in winter and drouths in summer, with gophers and with coyotes.

Those were ragged, rugged days for a man with vast acres of wild land to tame, and the boy took a man's part early and kept it persistently.

At the close of his university course his father died and he went to his mother's relief and took charge of the farm, buying his brother's interest and leasing his sister's, and for twenty years he grappled with real problems in real life. Five

more than the state income, and the Governor had to peel off that amount, but not a dollar did he cut off any school bill.

What about this man! He is of the Frazier clan of Scotland. It was one of this clan to whom came the command of British forces at Quebec 150 years ago when Wolfe fell.

The Rangeley Lakes of Maine attracted these Highlanders of Scotland after the war of 1763. Here Thomas Frazier was born and lived until after the Civil War the lure of the New West possessed his soul and he went with his bride into the great Northwest.

They were New Englanders in their new world and the mother named her first-born son for a New England city and Lynn J. Frazier honored the devotion of his mother by persisting in getting an education, graduating first from the State Normal School and then from the State University. Incidentally, he is the first man to occupy the gubernatorial chair who has had a university educa

tion.

After a little skirmishing the father undertook to tame a square mile of the Great American Desert in what is now Northeast North Dakota.

years ago he was doing all the farm work all winter, caring for thirty head of cattle, and all other farm work, with no hired man.

This was the man who was called all unexpectedly from such a strenuous life into the Governorship of the state. That story, too long to be told here, is as thrilling as the stories of the call of leaders in Bible times.

Lynn J. Frazier had never mixed in politics. He had always. voted the Republican ticket, but had held no office, had never attended a state convention, had taken no part in any of the many organizations of farmers or others. A man running such a farm as successfully as he was running his big farm had neither time nor taste for any public function. When, in the spring of 1916, the men who afterwards launched the

ference, he was not there, had no thought of Non-Partisan League met at Fargo for a con

being in it.

FLORENCE EARLE COATES

BY JANE A. STEWART

Philadelphia has great distinction in the fact that it is the birthplace and home of Florence Earle Coates, who has made a notable contribution to our national literature. Almost a generation has elapsed since her first modest, slender volume of "Poems" appeared; and scattered through the years have come those tender poetic gems with their message SO varied, so cheerful, so uplifting that they have won for her a foremost place among American lyrists.

"The Unconquered Air and Other Poems" (issued in 1912) and the collection last year of her poems in two volumes show this poet's power in the treatment of human experience, her spiritual and mental equipment, and the most perfect and melodious types of her poetic

art.

Born in Philadelphia, educated in New England private schools and in schools in Paris and Brussels, Mrs. Coates was married at an early age to a cultivated and skillful Philadelphian, Edward Horner Coates (long president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and an active leader in organized social and philanthropic movements), with whom she has been associated as a founder of the Philadelphia Contemporary Club and in various charitable enterprises. She presided over the Browning Society for a number of years and has also been active in the Colonial Dames of America and Society of Mayflower Descendants, and other patriotic and social groups. Her poetical output is the result of her maturer years. Through long periods of pain and suffering her genius came into flower and fruit.

At all times thoughtful and touching, her verses frequently rise to highest levels of power. They "lull the senses into forgetfulness of this workaday world and they restore the soul with draughts from the wellspring of life."

Those who best know this gifted and honored Philadelphian best realize the source of her poetic out-givings. Always a student and lover of poetry, art and music, hers is the peculiar sensitiveness which enables Mrs. Coates to feel keenly and to depict powerfully the joys and sorrows of humanity. Her songs of hope and cheer are filled with the buoyancy and radiance of a spirit infected with the joyment of the attributes it sings, ever looking up to the eternal and highest good, the Author of all human happiness. She sings:

"Our single lives are circled round
By an embracing sea;

Are joined to all that has been, bound
To all that is to be;

The past and present meet and cross
And in life's ocean is no loss.

And sorrow's self procures us

gain;

For in her steps ascending higher,

en

"Although the Present, forth from ashes sprung, Postpone from day to day what most we crave, And promising, beguile us to the grave, Yet toward the future we are always young!" Her poetry has a grace and melody, a refinement and purity which are irresistible to those who can feel the power of beauty as she does:

"Beauty's path is one forever brightening In glory to each far horizon's rim. Warm in the rose and golden in the lightning,

Love's altar flame, the upward way to Him,— Beauty, transcending all that bans and bars, Moves as the light moves on, eternal as the stars."

The poets, as a rule, emphasize the good and beautiful. It is in her expression of the loftiest thought which influences human career and character, leading life to higher planes, that Mrs. Coates' power is measured to touch, to purify, and to elevate.

"Mrs. Coates' songs come straight from a noble soul, a soul that feels and experiences the things that are expressed, a soul that is sensitive to the immortal impulses which make the poetic gift one of the world's chiefest glories and compensations," recently declared a discriminating critic.

The truth of this is best realized, as has been indicated, in contact with the gracious, gentle woman herself, whose kindly presence and help are freely given in answer to every call. She never appears to greater advantage than when upon a platform before an appreciative group, she recites with fine dramatic power, Shakespearean and other poems as well as her own, appreciation of the work of others being her conspicuous characteristic.

When "The Unconquered Air" appeared it was at once accorded a high place and by no less an authority than William Stanley Braithwaite, who rated it the best poem of the year. It has been pronounced "the best sonnet written by a poet of this generation." "The Coronation of King George the Fifth" is the longest of her poems. Many of her lyrics lend themselves admirably to music; and reading her poems, one recalls that she has been fortunate in having the friendship, advice, and helpful criticism of Matthew Arnold, whose cultured taste led her to unerring intuition of poetic effect and of selection of themes.

Nocturnes, sonnets, lyrics and odes are her most congenial poetic forms. Among those to whom she has written exquisite memorials and odes are: Tennyson, Longfellow, Gilder, Whistler, Browning, Keats, Henry James,

Franklin, Lincoln, Millet, Nansen, Yeats, Helen Keller, Lady Curzon, Joan of Arc, Edmund C. Stedman, Robert L. Stevenson, Beethoven. Equally felicitous are the Easter, Thanksgiving and memorial poems; the lullabies; poems of nature; poems to mother and to father; and others depicting the lessons of suffering and pain and the incidents and phases of war. Notable among the last are: "Place de la Concorde" (commemorating the removal on August 14, 1917, of the badge of mourning from the statue of Strassburg); "An Appeal"; "Rheims"; "A Russian's Prayer for His Horse Before Going into Battle"; and "The New Mars," with its ringing ending:

:

"I war against the folly which is War,

The futile sacrifice that naught hath stayed, The Great Delusion men have perished for,

The lie that hath the souls of men betrayed; For faith I war, humanity and trust;

For Peace on Earth-a lasting peace and just!"

Never highly dramatic, but always intense and morally high-strung; never a seeker for sensational new forms, but conservative to the core, Mrs. Coates has imbued her poetry with a spiritual significance which appeals strongly to the highest aspirations of our own day, and assures it a vogue far outlasting the present, because of its sweet savor and its ring of pure inspiration.

-Amelia J. Burr.

It has been fairly well determined that in the first six grades enough preparation can be given so that the child may differentiate somewhat in accordance with his ability and capacity in the next two, thus leaving the grades above open to work tending to much broader training than has been given in the past. In the seventh and eighth grades and beyond, the kind of work given must be determined by two factors: First, the ability of the child, and his vocational trend as soon as he has discovered himself; second, the child's environment and the demands of the community in which he lives.

No standard can be found which will fit all conditions, all pupils, and all communities above the sixth grade. It would seem, however, that in the first six years school training might be standardized.

In Sacramento we are working out a scheme for a basic six years. We divide the remaining eight years in groups of two; in the seventh and eighth we use departmental teaching; the ninth and tenth we call the Junior High School; the eleventh and twelfth the Senior High School, and the thirteenth and fourteenth the Junior College. believe, however, that it is not enough to simply say, the first six years are basic. We must make them so. This means many changes in the course of study, a reduction in the amount of material

We

presented, the establishment of minimums, and the cutting away of much extraneous material. It will mean the rewriting of most of our textbooks which have been prepared upon an eightyear plan of five and three. The essentials of the fundamental subjects must have been completed at the end of the sixth year if new roads are to be taken into educational fields with the beginning of the seventh year. Many of the schools throughout the country which have established intermediate schools, lower high schools, etc., have made little attempt to change, materially, the work of the first six years, and their pupils have approached the seventh year inadequately prepared for the changes in the curriculum found there. We are taking up this plan slowly, carefully, and we hope sanely. We do not intend to give up fundamental training in the seventh and eighth years until we are sure that the first six years have been put upon a different basis. Sound theory and practice demand many changes, but this can be done without detriment to the training of the child. We realize that it will be some time before textbooks can be arranged to meet this new plan, but feel sure that writers and publishers will very soon appreciate the necessity of either rewriting their textbooks or making new ones to meet the conditions.

It is also true with the seventh and eighth years

654

that a different type of textbook will be required. If proper attention has been given to the basic six, it will be easy through our departmental work to arrange courses in the seventh and eighth years in accordance with the taste and future plans of the pupils. Some differentiation in subject matter can be attempted in these years, and not all pupils required to do exactly the same thing, whether their future training demands it or not.

The departmental plan of teaching in the seventh and eighth grades has been in use in our department for several years; our teachers are thoroughly familiar with it and are ready and able to make it the medium of broader school work.

The separation of the first two years of the high school from the main building, and the placing of these children in Junior High Schools, located conveniently in different parts of the city, has a sound sociological basis. It has been proven that these young people do better work through this change; they take a greater interest in their work; they are children longer, because they are not thrown into association with older students too early; they are just passing, or have recently passed the adolescent period; they are great imitators; when thrown together in one great building, with the two upper grades of the high school, they associate immediately with young men and young women who love to be imitated, and very often show these younger people only the superficial side of school life. Conditions, where they The are all brought together, are bad for both. upper classes find a detriment in having novices to impress; the younger pupils are often spoiled by being impressed, and by imitating the weaknesses which are on the surface.

The upper group of the high school, or the Senior High School, is composed of students who are practically men and women. They should have different ideals of work from those who are younger, and should be taught differently. They can safely be placed with the Junior College students, and this plan we are following out in our department. The differences are not so great among pupils from seventeen to twenty years of age. The results of the establishment of the Junior High Schools have more than met our expectations during the past year.-Report.

RATIONALISM IN EDUCATION

BY IRENE E. CARTER Springfield, Illinois

The watchword of the present age in every wa'k of life, be it however humble or exalted, is aggressiveness. We We hear its challenging its challenging cry in the workshop, in the factory, in commerce. We hear it sounding forth from all the mighty machinations of capital with which the

present era is replete. It has come to be that even in the schoolroom the aggressive slogan has been sounded and teacher and pupil alike must "to arms" and "attack" at the ever insistent word of command.

1

Someone has aptly said: "Many there are who are so busy crying 'Forward' that they forget to ask 'Whither are we going?'" It is well to pause before we are too far on our way, and consider whether we are leaving in our forward march some of the things that have proven helpful to many before us in the days gone by. We should consider well: Are we cleaving to so-called "up-to-dateness” `at the expense of something really worth while? Not for a moment would I decry the forward movement. To stand still in one's profession is well nigh fatal. The old Latin proverb has it, "He who goes not forward, goes backward.”

But let us not follow unheedingly the last new cry of the last new reformer. Consider well before we "ring out the old, ring in the new," especially along educational lines. We are dealing with the human mind, not experiA menting with the materials of a chemist. mistake here means far more than in the laboratory.

Again, we have constantly to combat in the schoolroom theatrical tendencies, both on the part of the teacher and the pupil. Many things are done for spectacular display, almost purely, and not from an underlying sense of pedagogic truth involved. This is evidenced in various ways. Both teachers and pupils talk unnecessarily during recitations. Fewer words would be saner and more effective in many of our modern schoolrooms. The lesson shou'd be

presented in an art stically pedagogic manner, not with a view to amusing the pupils. Always aim to get the interest of pupils; once obtained, drive in the truth surely and securely and to stay.

It is not well to attempt anything, no matter by whom exploited, that is not going to adapt itself to specified needs. Just because it has worked out well somewhere else is no excuse for foisting it on to every workroom. Study the needs of the particular children with whom you are dealing now. No two sets will ever be alike. Those of today are not like those of yesterday. If there is a crying want for change in a certain direction, change without more ado, not because someone else does it so, but because that seems the only right and rational thing to do. To sum up, the best interests of the children are the republic's and school teachers' chief concern; and with that in mind, spectacularism, pedantry, and other pedagogic enemies will find an entrance to our schoolroom difficult to effect.

It is a fact universally accepted by educators that the period of a child's life, extending roughly from twelve to sixteen, has a special significance with reference to its pedagogical phases. At that time, which is usually designated as "adolescence," great changes, both physical and mental, occur, bringing with them a whole new concept of environment. It were trite to analyze these in detail, but there are certain outstanding features that have to do directly with school work. Today, therefore, educators are giving special attention to this problem, with the result that the Junior High School system has been evolved as the most practical solution of this all-important question. consensus of high school authorities is that the advantages outweigh any drawbacks and that the Junior High School plan is worth the cost and labor of its adoption. Let us examine briefly the most salient features of the plan.

The

The Junior High School plan was inaugurated primarily to fit the needs of adolescence. At that time there is a veritable "new birth of self." Not only is there a great increase in height, lung capacity, growth of the vital organs, and the convolutions of the brain, but also there comes a great mental change. A whole new world is opened to the individual, and he enjoys vistas of things hitherto undreamed of. His conscious thought is filled with a richer, deeper emotional tone, which passes over very easily into those sub-conscious states embodied in day-dreams and idealism. We see, then, how important is the duty of the teacher at this period, when habits of thought and action are being ingrained upon the child's nervous organismi.

First, the Junior High School eliminates that uneasiness found in the upper grammar grades. The physical changes are the real basis of this unrest, which is, therefore, natural enough in the normal boy or girl. Under the Junior High School plan classes have each a home room, but pass to separate classrooms for each subject. This minimizes unrest, nervousness, symptoms of chorea, and general manifestations of mental disturbances, and helps secure better discipline and control. It is well known that continuous sitting in one seat and one room becomes both monotonous and tiresome even for adults, and certainly the arrangement of our grade schools does not improve this.

Second, the pupils have a different teacher for each subject under the Junior High School plan. This, of course, means that the teacher can attain a high degree of specialization in her subject. with corresponding increase in technique. There is no sound reason for expecting grade teachers, under the present plan, to teach every subject with equal facility and success. It is, therefore, the logical arrangement of teacher to special subject-matter that insures better instruction, more concise pres

entation, and more lucid correlation under the Junior High plan.

Third, the pupils are arranged by groups in the Junior High School. After their ability has been ascertained, the pupils are graded accordingly. Thus the best students are not retarded by their less favored classmate, but may secure a halfyear promotion. At Old Town we promoted a very efficient group from the Junior High to the Senior High, where they are sophomores at present. After two months' trial they have not fallen down one whit in the excellence of their work as sophomores. In the grammar grades the best students are oniy too often held back by the poor members of the class.

Fourth, the Junior High School eliminates selfconsciousness. It is natural for the adolescent to be reticent and introspective. He is trying to adjust himself to his environment. Censure and ridicule are his greatest fears, as they were to the Greeks. In the grades today there is great need that attention be given to this subject. When the child leaves the grammar school, the need becomes greater. As a freshman in a big high school he feels lost, insignificant and a little bewildered. With few exceptions, there is no effort at self-assertion. Thus many a noble impulse is atrophied at the root, never to take life again. Under the Junior High School plan the child feels himself a unit, a component part of the whole. His aim is to become a senior in the school, which, of course, is the first year of high school. He develops a spirit of loyalty to the group, class spirit, and love of co-operation. This is too well known and proven to need discussion. As one educator remarked: "You can do anything with the child at this age in the way of stimulating him to high impulses. Every normal boy has the 'gang spirit,' a pride in his own ability, and class loyalty, and he is constantly seeking a way to demonstrate this." Under the new plan these laudable impulses can be trained, nurtured. and transformed into kinetic energy which works toward good scholarship and a sound basis of civic duties later. Literary societies, glee clubs, school orchestras, athletic teams can be formed with ease and great success, so that when the child enters the Senior High School he fits into the scheme of things easily and smoothly. In other words, that sudden break between the grades and the high school is bridged over, and the transition becomes easy, natural, and orderly.

Fifth, the Junior High School gives the teacher a better chance to appraise ability and to study individual differences with due allowance therefor. One of the greatest mistakes of pedagogy in the past has been the fallacy of creating an artificial standard of scholarship, based, not upon the normal, but upon the better students' ability. With this new plan the pupils are graded according to innate ability, and are marked on this basis. This