Vol. XXX.

ADDRESS ALL COMMUNICATIONS TO

No. 5

SYMPATHY with the motives and general aims of those who have introduced the temperance physiology into the schools ought not to blind us to their errors. They have been extremists, and so have brought about a reaction even among those who agree with their purposes. The dissent of scientific men from some of their teachings has been long apparent, and at length has taken definite shape in the work of Prof. Atwater. They have overstated their case, how much it is yet impossible to say, but enough seriously to weaken their cause. They have legislated too much. Some of the later enactments are very extreme, and quite regardless of school conditions. Overstatements and perpetual harping upon one theme do not help any cause. A check must be interposed to such ill-advised zeal; and it seems to have come. The Department of Superintendence appointed a committee of seven "to report upon the teaching of physi

as to the action of alcohol on the human system, and to recommend what action, if any, by this department is justified by the results of these inquiries." This is not a movement of foes but of friends. We trust that it will result in clearing the movement from the mistakes of its leaders, and in bringing the instruction, both in matter and extent, more fully in accord with the best thot of our times.

CUTTING teachers' wages in the midst of a school year, as has been done in Chicago on account of deficiency in the school funds, seems very much like violation of contract. It is accomplished in this instance by shortening the school year, but that does not at all change the nature of the transaction. If the teacher is bound by the contract, is not the board of education also? Can financial embarrassment be pleaded as a valid excuse for violation of a contract? The case is not made any better by the fact that the weaker party is the sufferer, and that the board holds such power of removal as to make a resort to the courts to test the legality of their action of doubtful expediency. The case is not the first of its kind. Indeed its significance is increased by the fact that the same resort has been so often tried before. One is disposed to ask, "Have teachers no rights? Are they more than any other class of citizens called upon to make up a deficiency in public funds? They have undertaken in consequence of this action to expose the tax evasion by great corporations which is winked at by the authorities and is the real cause of the deficiency, a public service which it is to be hoped they will carry thro. But it is time that the question of rights was tested, and a means found for checking the practice of loading upon an underpaid class of workers the financial deficiencies resulting from political chicanery or mismanagement.

PRESSURE from the conditions of modern life is continually working to change the instruction in our high schools. This is as it should be; the schools must respond to social needs. Just now commercial education is receiving considerable attention. The revolution which

has taken place in methods of doing business, and the need of higher skill and larger training for the successful prosecution of it under the sharper competition of the present time are the basis of the movement. Our universities are shaping commercial courses, and our high schools, at least those at commercial centers, will probably follow. These courses ought, in the amount of work required and the discipline afforded, to be in no respect inferior to existing high school courses. The movement will fail of its desired results if it simply opens a way for the idle and the weaklings to secure a high school diploma. Teachers for such a course will be prepared at the higher

institutions as soon as a demand for them exists. Present conditions admit of securing such a result much more promptly than has been possible hitherto. Wherever introduced the aim of the instruction should be to prepare for business as it is carried on now, and to prepare in such a way as to give greater breadth and a truer insight to those who are to enter upon commercial life.

IN THE April number of Education is a suggestive article, by Dr. Harris, on "The study of arrested development in children as produced by injudicious school methods," which ought to be read by every elementary teacher. He illustrates by arithmetic drill, or color observation, or recognition of geometric forms in natural objects, to such an extent as to "set" the mind in these forms of activity and hinder its development along other lines. Mnemonic systems which develop fantastic associations he considers "a training in idiocy." Teaching to read by phonics may be carried to the same degree, until the child becomes dead to euphony in English sentences. "The habit of parsing every sentence that one reads may prevent one from enjoying a sonnet of Wordsworth." On the second plane of thot, that of relations as of causation, "the absorption of the gaze upon adjustments within the machine prevents us from seeing the machine as a whole," and so of grasping the ethical and philosophic meaning of life. This is deeply significant; but it seems to us that the results pointed out come not so much of what is taught thoroly, as of what is not taught because of the limitations of the teachers. They do not recognize the difference between mechanical learning and insight; the "plane of the understanding" and the "plane of the reason" are not apprehended by them. How then can they help pupils to attain these these planes? But without help most people never reach them. The "arrest," therefore, results not so much from over doing the lower as from

failure to recognize and lift to the higher. It seems to be a case of the blind leading the

BOTANY IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS.

The teaching of botany in secondary schools is undergoing rapid changes, as any one may convince himself by examining the successive text-books which have appeared during the last decade. The changes taking place affect both subject-matter and method of teaching, and the effect in the schools is considerable confusion and dissatisfaction, together with a disposition on the part of some principals to pronounce against the continuance of the branch in the curriculum. It will be much wiser to seek to understand the changes which are going on and the reasons for them, as that will lead to a fuller comprehension of the proper aims of high school instruction in botany, and will convince the inquirer of the necessity of the present development. After all a growing study is the most valuable and interesting one to work with; there is a freshness and vitality about it which appeals to both teacher and pupils, who seem in it to get into touch with the inner spirit and life of our own times. For the routine teacher it is, of course, disturbing, since it involves keeping up with the times, and a constant change and readjustment of work. readjustment of work. Sometimes there may be difficulty in securing the necessary changes of texts, but even that may have its advantages.

We may describe the type of instruction prevalent ten years ago as herbarium botany, since it culminated in analyzing and mounting a certain number of flowering plants. In its day it stood for the effort to study things instead of books, but how narrow and ineffectual the objective study was we all know; bookishness prevailed in the preparation of the lessons, and the analysis was little more than casual practice in the use of an artificial key. What of morphology and physiology was learned served only to make the key semi-intelligible, and as to the vegetable kingdom, it was composed of flowering plants in a confusing multitude of families and species, together with an outlying array of uninteresting and "nasty" things not worth studying. This kind of instruction was naturally followed by the opposite extreme; the text-book was banished, and the laboratory manual substituted in its stead. Out of the world of vegetable life a few forms were selected to be minutely studied with microscopes and reagents; and drawings and note books were patiently elaborated. Now at length the pupil studied

things, and came to see the plant as a living and working organism, whose inner structure and the relations of whose parts he worked out patiently and more or less successfully. But this dissecting-table study also has serious defects; the living world lies beyond it, and the variety and richness of nature wholly escape it. Experience shows that it gave only disconnected views of some parts and processes of the vegetable world, and left unseen that world as a whole, and those relations in it which are most informing for the spirit and most valuable for life.

From these experiences we are coming forth wiser, but to new problems and new experiments. The text-book has come back to stay, and the laboratory will be continued, but how they shall be related to each other, and what shall be the aims of each, are as yet unsettled problems. Shall we now give most attention to the lower forms of plant life and their relationships? Shall morphology and ecology be given the chief place? Shall the emphasis be laid upon the minute anatomy and the physics and chemistry of plant life? Views differ, and discussion and experiment must be relied upon to bring about a general agreement. But this may take many years, and the resulting inconveniences to the teacher are but the inevitable "growing-pains." Meantime our pedagogy has advanced to consider both what disciplinary ends are to be sought by the study, and out of the vast range of knowledge offered by it what is most useful to the majority of our pupils. We have come to see clearly that in this branch we have one of the best known instruments for cultivating the habit of exact observation, the fundamental and most indispensable requisite of scientific training. From this intelligent instruction will lead on to accurate comparison and sound generalization, for which scientific botany affords excellent opportunities, especially when the complex series of causation are carefully followed in physiology and ecology. Here is opportunity for the best kind of training which the real teacher will know how to make fruitful. That sense for what is really significant, that conscientious search for sufficient proof to support inferences, that entire intellectual honesty, which characterizes the true scientist may all be cultivated in the botany class-room. The changing plans of botanical instruction are seen to facilitate more completely the attainment of these ends of culture; and furthermore, to recognize that a broad general knowledge of the plant world and its interrelations; of the processes of plant life, as of

food-seeking, light-seeking, self-defense, seedspreading, sensitiveness, and so on; of plant adaptations of habit and structure; of survival in the struggle for existence; and so onmatters of permanent interest to all intelligent persons, and falling under the daily observation of most, if they have eyes to see them that such knowledge is sure to prove to the majority of pupils of the greatest permanent value. S.

THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCHOOLMASTER.

An article, which we reprint elsewhere, from the New York Evening Post, entitled "The Rewards of School Teachers," presents two or three topics of considerable interest. Of course when an Englishman talks of "our public schools," he means institutions entirely different from American public schools; in fact he means certain great boarding-schools for the secondary education of boys, which charge from five hundred to a thousand dollars per year for each pupil, are conducted by a considerable staff of university-trained men, and are patronized almost exclusively by aristocratic and well-to-do families. How many institutions are properly included under this designation, Englishmen are not agreed, but perhaps forty is a fair estimate, and of these a few, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, are widely known. Everybody is familiar with the picture of Rugby life presented by Mr. Hughes in "Tom Brown." Its aim is not scholarship. Prof. Cunningham says an English father sends his son to school "to be made a man of;" and years ago Taine wrote of these schools, "Science and mental culture occupy the last place; character, heart, courage, strength, and bodily skill are in the first row. Such an education produces moral and physical wrestlers, with all the advantages, but also with all the drawbacks, attached to this direction of the mind and the body." We need not dwell upon the contrasts between this and our free public schools, frequented by young people of both sexes who live at home, and seek from the school chiefly help to get needed knowledge and training. The school is not the "all-in-all" of their lives, but a factor in them together with the home, the society, and the church. There is no high school that stands in a relation to the nation, or even to the state, comparable to that of Eton or Rugby to England. Our high schools are in their very constitution local institutions, belonging to family and municipal life, and not to that of the nation.

Does the insignificance of the schoolmaster result from these conditions? Dr. Arnold, of

Rugby, stands out in English history as a schoolmaster of commanding personality and influence, who made himself felt in church and state as well as in the subsequent development of the great English public schools. But he stands alone; there is no second to him. Schoolmasters who have become bishops are no more to be cited than are our quondam schoolmasters who have become senators and governors. When the English case is examined it amounts to this: that the masters of great secondary schools are more in the eye of the public in England than in America, and this because of the social and national relations of their schools. With us the men who stand in parallel relations are our superintendents, the heads of great city school systems, like those of Boston, New York, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, for the most part men of broad views, large executive abilities, positive convictions, and force and weight of character to support them. They are determining educational policy, managing school boards, and contending strongly for great principles. If they are not to be accounted schoolmasters, then are our schoolmasters not much in the eye of the public.

It must be borne in mind that our high schools are essentially new institutions, for practical purposes the growth of the last half century, altho the first one was created in 1821. They have been absorbed in getting themselves established, determining their relations and policy, securing for themselves suitable houses and equipment, adapting their curricula to the needs of growing and rapidly changing communities, in a word, in finding themselves. The problem what and how to teach is now absorbing them, "the current prevalence of pedagogic theory." These matters are complex, difficult and engrossing, but, notwithstanding this, there are not wanting among us schoolmasters who take a broader view of their calling. They aim to influence character deeply, not, perhaps, by games as in England, but in other ways. How to make men of their pupils, men of breadth of view, courage, high ideals, public spirit, and indomitable perseverance, is persistently studied, and not without positive results. The schoolmaster who is worthy of his place shares with the American people the conviction that the safety of the republic in reality depends upon the schools. Our municipal misgovernment and corruption, the perversion of our legislatures, the unscrupulousness of our business methods, the boss system in our politics, the diversion of our laws and public service to subserve private gains, all the corroding and

destructive influences which threaten our institutions, must be overcome, if overcome at all, by building a nobler, stronger, more intelligent citizenship, by training and bringing forward a higher type of leaders. This is doubtless the great work of our high schools, and great masters turn themselves to it rather than to new schemes for teaching arithmetic, or new theories of educational values. Despite the shifting of schemes of study and the shifting of teachers characteristic of the development of the last half century, multitudes of young people warmly declare their debt of gratitude to schoolmasters who have been true to this heavenly vision of their calling. communities generally recognize and prize such masters. There is ample opportunity for such in America even tho the pupils live at home.

Our

We

The insignificance of the schoolmaster, so far as it is a reality, is then personal and not the result of the limitations of his calling. is his own defect if he is not large enough to see its possibilities and to realize them. hear one saying: "I sent six boys to college this year;" and another: "My boys won in the debate, the oratorical contest, or the football game." That at least is reaching out towards the proper test-"by their fruits ye shall know them." A few American schools are beginning to dwell upon the public services of the men whom they have trained. The future will, we are sure, bring more of this. We have hardly begun as yet to grasp the possibilities of the American high school. It is allied most closely to the home and the municipality, and so to the most sacred and the most needy of our institutions. present generation is seeing its fruits in the first-in a more refined and intelligent home life: the next will see them, let us hope, in the improvement of local government; and when its power is strongly felt in our politics, as it will be in so far as broad-gauged men seize upon and realize its possibilities, we shall to talk of the insignificance of the schoolmaster.

cease

THE MONTH.

WISCONSIN NEWS AND NOTES.

The

S.

-Many Wisconsin readers will hear with sorrow of the death, at Los Angeles, February 22, of Dwight Kinney, so long a high school principal in this state.

-The state examination for county superintendents certificates will be held at Madison, Appleton, and Eau Claire, July 3d, 4th, and 5th.

-The North Wisconsin Teachers' Association held its annual session at Ashland, March 23d. The program was practical and well carried out, and the attendance large.

-The State Normal School at Winona, Minn., is to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of its opening during the week beginning June 3d, which is their commencement week.

-Superintendent R. A. Edgar, of Forest county informs us that the voters of the town of Crandon levied a tax of $5,000 to build a new village school building at the village of Crandon.

-The very attractive cover of the excellent Arbor and Bird Day Annual of this year ought to lead to its more careful preservation. A set of these annuals will be serviceable for many occasions in our schools.

-Another Wisconsin teacher, Mr. F. H. Blondell, who was also well known by his later service for a large school book firm, died the latter part of March, at Stamford, Conn., where he was visiting his brother.

-As will be seen by a notice elsewhere, the summer school at the Oshkosh normal school is to be continued this year, opening July 2d and closing August 3d. Its teaching force will fully equal that of former years.

-Prin. C. R. Frazier, of the Cooper school, West Superior, resigned his position to engage in business, and Mr. E. A. Reynolds, who was doing graduate work at the university, has been elected as his successor.

-The total enrollment at the Platteville normal school up to the close of the third quarter was 460, including thirty-six in the preparatory class. Of the 321 in the normal department, 82 are high school graduates.

-The total enrollment at the Oshkosh Normal School has climbed to 1,073, but that includes the preparatory school, 139, which of late has not been reckoned with the normal enrollment. The normal department enrolls 650, of whom 232 are high school graduates.

-The board of South Milwaukee schools have adopted the following rules: "That no teacher be employed whose qualifications are lower than a second grade certificate; and that no teacher be employed in seventh or eighth grade who does not hold a first grade or state certificate, and who has not had two or more years of experience as a teacher."

-The latest bulletin of the N. E. A. contains partial programs for the general meeting and for most of the departments. They

indicate a variety of exceedingly interesting papers. The rates are very low-one fare plus two dollars for the round trip-and the excursions and detours are numerous and inviting. Charleston itself is an exceedingly interesting city, and the opportunity to see something of the south and to learn of educational work and conditions there is especially valuable.

-The institute list for the coming summer shows a total of sixty-five institutes. All but one begin in July or August, the exception being one at Hurley, in Iron county, beginning October 3d and holding three days-the only short institute on the list. There are

but six holding one week; thirty-two hold two weeks; twenty-three hold three weeks; and four hold four weeks. Thus the tendency to long sessions is pronounced. On this list we find but thirteen institutes for which more than one conductor is provided.

-From the report of Sup't Burnham, of Waupaca county, we make the following notes: Private schools are increasing rapidly in the county as the numbers for the years 1896-99 show, viz: 9, 12, 17, 26. During the same years the number of children of school age who have attended no school has increased from 236 to 451; the average wages of school teachers have declined, $41, $34.17, $36.87, and $32.17. In only twelve of the 156 schools has there been a change of teachers during the year, and the average teaching experience of those now holding certificates is twenty-eight months.

-The school of instruction for institute conductors, held in the Assembly room at Madison, April 9-14 inclusive, was very largely attended, and very successful. The enrollment reached one hundred and eighty, including many county superintendents and many high school principals and teachers who do not expect to do institute work, but came up to enjoy and profit by the discussions. These were earnest, practical and inspiring, and we have heard only words of praise from those in attendance. The school will not only influence greatly the institute work of the state, but also that of many of our city schools.

-Reports from the meeting of the Southern Wisconsin Association at Racine indicate that the attendance was large and the program full of interest. The address by Prof. Clark, of the University of Chicago, is warmly commended by all who heard it, both for its matter and its manner. The discussions in the high school section, especially that on