should be a proper understanding as to who shall be eligible for transfer and who not, as to health, age, blood, and grade, but with some latitude to meet special cases. A register of eligibles for transfer should be kept at each agency or school, parent's consent obtained, and the desired school designated. Non-reservation schools should transfer to training schools those who give promise of using to advantage the greater opportunities when they have finished their term or course at such school. No better method at present appears than co-operation between agents of non-reservation schools and local agents and superintendents, the visiting agent proceeding only on authorized lines, and using discretion. TO WHAT EXTENT DO AGENTS AND SUPERINTENDENTS READ THE RULES AND REGULATIONS? THOMAS W. POTTER, SUPERINTENDENT, SALEM INDIAN SCHOOL, The rules of the department were made for the protection of the interests of the government and of the Indian, and for the successful and systematic conduct of its business. It is our imperative duty as faithful servants to obey cheerfully orders and rules, whether written twenty-five years ago or yesterday, so long as they relate to our work. When we consider the great variety and magnitude of business which the Indian office must control, the large number of employes with more or less business ability and good judgment who are trusted to do this work at long range, and the different conditions and requirements that must be met in different reservations and localities, we are forced to see the wisdom and necessity for every rule made. Probably the chief fault of ambitious agents and superintendents is in making improvements and purchases without first obtaining authority, and, after failing to get the approval of the office, in endeavoring by various irregular methods to settle the indebtedness thus incurred. This is a very dangerous practice. The rules and regulations make ample provision for all emergencies. They do not, however, permit officials to make other than emergency purchases without first obtaining the approval of the office. Therefore, it is very necessary that we endeavor to cultivate the ability of looking ahead and correctly estimating the future needs and requirements of our schools. To carry out these rules it is, of course, necessary that we read and study them carefully and diligently, determined to master them fully and understandingly. THE VALUE OF DAY SCHOOLS JAMES J. DUNCAN, DAY-SCHOOL INSPECTOR, PINE RIDGE, s. d. The day school is, I think, the most powerful factor in Indian civilization. The teacher and housekeeper have opportunities for exerting a moral influence by instruction and example that none else have. The Indian learns by visiting the school and the teacher's house to love the beautiful and appreciate the orderly arrangement of things and the value of promptness. His children carry home to him each day the lessons they have learned at school. They put in practice what they have learned at school in the way of home decorations and arrangements in keeping the home neat and clean. The day schools reach the home and affect everything there, doing it so quietly and unobtrusively that the parents and older members, who would resist active influences, yield and find themselves falling into a better life without knowing it. By visiting the different homes and studying their conditions the teacher and housekeeper may be the means of greatly influencing these conditions, either directly or thru the pupils. The gardening and dairying that can be successfully carried on at a day school can be just as successfully carried on in the vicinity of the school. The day schools are intensely practical. The common bath-tub, and washboard and tub, flatiron, needle, hoe, and rake, are made use of, and the parents see the practical results of their use. Children go home at night in citizens' dress, thus introducing it into the camp. THE NECESSITY FOR BOOKS ESPECIALLY ADAPTED TO INDIAN CHILDREN CLAUDE C. COVEY, TEACHER, INDIAN SCHOOL, PINE RIDge, s. d. After careful study and observation in the field of Indian work, the superintendent of Indian schools has prepared a course of study especially adapted to Indian education. This is indorsed by the best educators. Since, then, we need and have a special course of study for Indian schools, it must follow that we should have text-books in line with this course and especially adapted to Indian children. Many books prepared for use in white schools may meet the requirements of the Indian school. The first essential is simplicity—simplicity of language, style, and subject-matter. Another is interesting subject-matter and method of presentation. This is a requisite of all texts; but what would interest the white child would often be dull to the Indian, and vice versa; hence again the necessity for specially prepared texts. In the Indian school- especially the lower grades. some of the best results obtained are from home-made text-books; that is, lessons worked out by the teacher and pupils. These lessons include stories of industries, geographical excursions, and nature-study lessons. This gives an opportunity to learn words that actually occur in the everyday life of the child. The lessons should be talked over, written, read, and preserved. The child is thus given a vocabulary fit for everyday use. It is almost impossible for teachers to prepare these home-made textbooks properly, because of their lack of time and the necessary reference books. If we had books specially prepared, giving subject-matter in convenient form, and models of presentation in nature study, geography, history, etc., for the lower grades, it would save teachers much extra work and also improve the teaching. NEWSPAPERS IN INDIAN SCHOOLS HON. W. T. HARRIS, UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION One of the most important, perhaps the most important, object in the school of modern times is to prepare the pupils to read the printed page. No eloquence on the part of the teachers, no talking or demonstration, no pouring out of information, is or can be a substitute for teaching the child how to read and how to understand what he reads. The child who learns how to read becomes his own teacher. By reading the printed page he can find the most systematic and the most accurate presentation of the knowledge that he seeks. He can look up information in the encyclopedia, in a history, or in an elaborate treatise. On acquiring skill in using the printed page the pupil emancipates himself from dependence on a living teacher. The lecturer goes from paragraph to paragraph, and the hearer does not have sufficient. time to recall and understand. The book waits on the pupil's leisure. If he does not understand on the first reading he reads it a second time, and a third time. If he finds himself weary and dull-minded he lays aside the book and resumes it in the fresh period of the morning. There are two kinds of attention: that of alertness and that of absorption. In listening to the lecturer one must be alert. He must keep up with the reading and not allow his mind to dwell on the sentence that he hears so long as to lose the sentence which follows it. This is all well enough for half of the purposes of attention. But the other half is at least quite as important. The student must learn to give an analytic attention, forgetful of what is present before him, but going down step by step into the depths of the subject, tracing back the casual chain of explanation down to the tenth, the twentieth, the fortieth step. The printed page encourages this cultivation of absorptive attention, whereas the oral method of teaching encourages alert attention, which watches carefully what is going on before it, but does not go down step by step into a consideration of the causes and explanations of what it sees and hears. In reading the printed page one becomes "eye-minded" as well as "ear-minded." The eye-minded person thinks in printed or written words. The ear-minded person recalls sounds and tones. The eyeminded person can think accurately because he finds and learns in print a technical vocabulary that is not used in colloquial speech. The newspaper brings the citizen into a greater world of public opinion than he can find in the oral speech of his village or community. The newspaper elevates village gossip into world gossip. It follows that the newspaper reader acquires a habit of adjusting himself daily to a view of the world. The person who does not read the newspaper limits his adjustment to his immediate community. It is a wonderful education to be able to think sympathetically on great human events. The laborer in the city of Minneapolis, thru the printed page of the daily newspaper, acquires an interest in the life of the inhabitant of China, or of Russia, or of South Africa. It is one of the best ways to educate the heart to get the person interested in his fellowmen, for sympathy follows a knowledge of their deeds. The newspaper gives one a reflection of the sympathies of his fellow-men. He notes that one person has one class of sympathies and another a different kind. When the pupil can motive the different and strange ideas, and understand how that which is not his own method of doing things may really seem to be the best method to his fellow-men, he broadens his mind into toleration. He reinforces his mind with the ideas of other people, and the newspaper is one of the best means of this kind of education, because it continues thru the year. It makes the citizen a spectator in the great drama of life that is unfolding before him on the world-stage. Every Indian school should have the newspaper. The pupil should read first that which interests him. He will go from that to the far-off events of the world, according as he grows in intellectual capacity. Pictorial newspapers are a great help to those coming up from a tribal form of government to the most civilized form. The most civilized government makes most of the individual and teaches him how to think and act for himself in the light of all human experience. Before the newspapers came into so much vogue there was more village gossip in regard to small and personal things. The worst novel is not so bad as village gossip, even the gossip that one finds in the best families. Let the Indian child read the newspapers. He works from day to day acquiring a knowledge of the public opinion of the Anglo-Saxon race, and then he comes to see how the other races think. Thru presentation by picture and by word great events can reach all classes of intellects. You may teach the Indian scientific facts; you may teach him history and literature; but if he does not get interested in the newspaper and become a reader of it he will not come into the Anglo-Saxon world of public opinion. He will not become educated in the highest sense of the word. ABSTRACTS OF GENERAL ADDRESSES I. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY It is a pleasure to come before this department to testify publicly to my profound personal interest, and that of university students and teachers in general, in the valuable and significant work which you have made your own. Your work has for us an interest both pathetic and inspiring— pathetic, because of the many things we should have done and the many things we should have done differently; inspiring, because you are applying the most modern educational methods to the uplifting of the descendants of the aboriginal people of this country. I should like to emphasize just one fact in relation to this work. Every professionally minded person in our modern life is prone to exaggerate the importance of his own work and that portion of the field into which he himself is called to labor. The teacher is apt to treat the school as an end in itself and to try to make it bear the entire burden of the educational process. My view is that the function of the school in education is rather restricted and definite, and that we must depend for the completion of its work upon the educational influences of those other great human institutions which work in alliance with the school-the church, civil life, and the family. The child who comes to school to be educated, whether Indian, Teuton, or Anglo-Saxon, is not thereby taken out of all his natural and inevitable relationships and made a new unit in a new mass. He carries with him his family relationships. All of these relationships are educational in the highest sense. We only get a sound and scientific view of the task of the educational profession when we understand that those other institutions must co-operate with the school and assist it in the performance of its functions. We are apt to err in overloading the school with non-scholastic duties and thinking that if the school does not do a thing it will not be done at all. It is of the highest importance not to deprive other educational influences of their proper parts in this process. II. DR. MICHAEL E. SADLER, DIRECTOR OF INQUIRIES AND REPORTS, EDUCATION OFFICE, LONDON, ENGLAND. The very problem the solution of which the Indian educators have come together to promote is all over the world the question to which statesmen and educators are giving their closest thoughts. The Indian |