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WISCONSIN JUN 11 1898

Journal of Education

Vol. XXVIII.

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MADISON, WIS., JUNE, 1898.

THE HISTORICAL LIBRARY.

No. 6

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HOW TO SEE THE POINT AND PLACE IT:

PUNCTUATION WITHOUT RULES OF GRAMMAR.

A book of forty pages which teaches punctuating rapidly by example. Many people who have studied English, Latin and Greek grammar are very careless and slovenly punctuators. This book is indispensable to all writers. Memorizing rules and exceptions wastes time and they are soon forgotten. By mail, 20 cents. LACONIC PUBLISHING CO., 123 Liberty Street, New York.

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for schools and colleges in every State. One hundred needed immediately. Life membership and duplicate registration for one fee. No commission charged on your salary for our services. H. H. HOPKINS & CO., L. B. 290, Chicago, III.

THE LAW STUDENT

Who is unable to get away from home for the first year's work may have proper direction in reading, by correspondence. In the regular Law Course, by the Chautauqua

$1.00 plan, one who does satisfactory work through the texts as

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If at any time within a year you desire to trade for one of our REPEATING Cameras, we will allow you $1.00 and take back the one you buy. The repeating camera is like a repeating rifle. You photograph one plate and instantly place another in position. No trouble or bother. You load it at home and snap the pictures at pleasure. Any child can handle it. This is a new device, never put on the market before. $3.00, $4.00, $5.00, according to size and number of plates.

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signed in the junior year, will, on request, be admitted
regularly without examination, to the senior class in the
residence work in the Northern Indiana Law College, as a
candidate for the degree of L. L. B.

Lewis D. Sampson, Director
Valparaiso, Ind.

KEMPER HALL, Kenosha, Wis.

A School for Girls under the care of the Sisters of S. Mary,
The twenty ninth year begins Sept. 21, 1898. References: Rt. Rev.
I. L. Nicholson, D. D., Milwaukee; Rt. Rev. W. E. McLaren, D. D.,
Chicago: Rt. Rev Geo. F. Seymour, S. T. D., Springfield, Ill.; Rev.
Theodore Riley, D. D, General Theological Seminary, New York
City: Edward P. Brockway, Esq., Milwaukee; Robert Elliott, Esq..
Milwaukee; L. H. Morehouse, Esq., Milwaukee; Z. G. Simmons,
Esq., Pres. First National Bank, Kenosha.
Address THE SISTER SUPERIOR.

A SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM. Our courses in journalism by correspondence embrace practical work in news writing, news gathering, editorial writing; a study of advertisements and the construction and proper use of the newspaper headline. Entire expense less than 60 cents a week. Lewis D. Sampson.

In special charge of the course in journalism, Northern Indiana Normal College, Valparaiso, Ind

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Journal of Education

Vol. XXVIII.

MADISON, WIS., JUNE, 1898.

ADDRESS ALL COMMUNICATIONS TO

JOURNAL

No. 6

Travel is common; talk has taken on a cos

OF EDUCATION, mopolitan character with the spread of news

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PRINCIPALS of high schools who desire to secure for their school libraries copies of Vol. 14 of the Wisconsin Historical Collections, now in press, should write to Secretary Thwaites, of the State Historical Society, at Madison, asking therefor. It is the desire of the Society to place the volume in each high school library which is properly maintained, and where the book will presumably be used and appreciated. The edition is too small to permit of a personal distribution to teachers.

A FETICH in primary education! What is it? Prof. John Dewey, in the May Forum, says it is teaching reading. He calls our practice a tradition from the past when books and reading were practically the only way of reaching a broader horizon. Now there are many.

papers and magazines; science has taught how to study things, and even children can be early inducted into that art; and life everywhere forces upon the attention of children innumerable matters challenging their interest. We conserve the natural tone and brightness of the children by an education of this sort, whereas our dreary drills in symbols, our iteration in first readers of perfectly familiar things formalize the mind and kill out its natural inquisitiveness. The best readers are uniformily those who have taught themselves; they come from homes where conditions create desire to read and suitable material is abundant, and they learn incidentally in trying to get at what they want to know. Our school processes can be right only when they move in this way-first create a desire to know what books say, and then in trying to satisfy this get the art half unconsciously. The intellect is not deadened and formalized by such learning, as we have to acknowledge it is by what we now do in the schools. This is good Herbartianism-and good sense.

It

A CIRCULAR from the State Historical Society reviews the work of stimulating local history and semi-centennial celebrations which that organization has been carrying on. appears that many counties were making arrangements for celebrations when the outbreak of the war with Spain absorbed public attention, and most of them have in consequence given over the enterprise. The large celebrations in Milwaukee and Madison will

The

be the most important in the state. stimulation of study of local history has been cieties have been formed in a few localities; much more fruitful. Auxiliary historical soold settlers associations have much more

largely interested themselves in this kind of work; local papers all over the state have been publishing historical sketches prepared for them by residents; and the public schools have been especially active in stimulating research by their pupils, and the preparation of historical sketches. These results are all valuable, and will be felt for a long time probably; but the latter is especially important, as

it may lead to a larger and more real study of history in the school, and to giving to the young a truer sense of what history is and how it is written.

A REPORT of the "Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction" defends the accuracy of the endorsed text-books from recent assaults. It narrates the submission of the books to a committee of representative physicians, and says that all the reports from them are now in, and "not a single member of this distinguished committee found any inaccuracy in the books, but on the contrary, the scope and teachings received their highest commendation." This paper quotes a recent writer in the Bulletin of the American Medical Association as saying: "All physicians and scientists, physiologists and chemists, who have made scientific investigations with the modern instruments of precision have arrived at about the same conclusion," reached by Professor C. F. Hodge, of Clark University, who says of alcohol that it retards, prevents, and is destructive, in either large or small doses, to normal growth and development." The report dwells upon the necessity of more effective legislation, compelling the instruction to be given to all children in the schools, and rejoices over the victory in Illinois, where the new law requires four lessons per week for ten weeks in this subject. This seems to have been the greatest gain of the year, which otherwise shows no marked changes in regard to this subject.

CONTINUOUS SESSIONS-bless you, but what mischief they will do! Look at the summer occupations that are piling up; it really seems as if vacation were rapidly becoming the busiest time of the year. And it is profitable "busy" too, fresh, earnest, interested pursuit of things worth pursuing, that ought not to be crushed out under the Juggernaut car of routine. There are the great associations-there are two of them this year, the National at Washington, and the "new west" one at Omaha which promises to be a lively rival. There are numberless excursions-a practical way of studying geography which is bracing intellectually and physically. There are the summer schools, at which one may have new scenes, new acquaintances, new inspirations, and learn. Goethe's truth, "Rest is not quitting the busy career; rest is the fitting of self to the sphere." Go to the best where you will get these things in the largest measure. And there are drawing associations, and music associations, and leagues of numerous kinds, and gatherings of innumerable kinds. If ever a body of people

have turned leisure to good account that body is American teachers, and therefore their vacation ought not to be taken from them.

AN IDEAL SUBJECT FOR NATURE STUDY.

A lad about eight years of age spent a few weeks in the country last spring, and while there an intelligent lady interested him in observing some of the birds that came about the house. He brought this new impulse with him when he returned to town, he imparted it to some of his youthful companions; the infection spread, and now a number of lads are known as "birders," and the amount of knowledge they have gathered in a few months surprises their acquaintances. Here indeed is material right at hand for nature study of the best kind, enthusiastic, genuine, and largely selfdirected. Bird day in the schools ought to be an impulse to cultivating such interests. The reasons for doing it are great-greater than the value of the knowledge. They are the development of a real interest in things and investigation, and the protection of our birds. We have heard a good deal about the devastation among them caused by the hunt for plumage to adorn women's bonnets. The story of the Florida forests resounding day and night with the distressed cries of the young herons, dying of starvation because the hunters after aigrets had slain their mothers, ought to touch the imaginations of all who hear it. But terrible as has been the destruction wrought by millinery hunters, they are not alone in the work. There are the pot hunters, who, having almost exterminated the game birds, have now turned their deadly energies, armed with the most effective modern fowling pieces, upon our song birds. Here are the egg collectors-how many of them, each of us knows-robbing the nests for mere idle curiosity. Here are the "shoots," or "side hunts," in which gun clubs bag thousands of small creatures with the idle aim of making the most "points" in a contest. Then there are the boys with guns who go for a day of sport, over hills and meadows and thru the woods, shooting pretty much what comes to hand. In fact a very large number of men and boys say again and again-"Let's have some fun-let's go out and kill something. They are not monsters-but their ways are monstrous.

What is the result of it all? We have before us a pamphlet from the second annual report of the New York Zoological society, entitled "The Destruction of our Birds and Mammals." It summarizes the results of an

extensive investigation. These questions were sent to a large number of different and competent persons, several in each state and territory: I. Are birds decreasing in number in your locality? 2. About how many are there now in proportion to the number fifteen years ago? 3. What agency has been most destructive to the birds in your locality? 4. What important species of birds and quadrupeds are becoming extinct in your locality? The answers were tabulated and averaged. As they are presented by states and territories the results are appalling. In Connecticut, 75 per cent; in Florida, 77 per cent; in Texas, 67 per cent; in Wisconsin, 40 per cent. For the whole thirty states represented in the tables the average loss in bird life for the combined area is 46 per cent. Twenty-one species are reported by these competent observers as extinct or rapidly becoming so. Is it not time to call a halt? In the name of humanity which ought to be freed from this blood-thirstiness; in the name of our native birds, who add so much to the joyousness and beauty of life; in the name of our farmers, orchardists and gardners who are suffering from the increase of destructive insects naturally kept down by the birds, is it not time to call a halt? And may not teachers and schools do something to effect it by awakening an intelligent and sympathetic interest in these humble neighbors of ours? S.

THE CRUX OF GRADE WORK.

Of course we have long since laid aside dependence upon verbal memory as the basis of school work. What have we substituted for it? We shall not misrepresent the common view by wording it thus: the pupil must be able to state the substance of a text in his own words. We may designate this view as cultivating formal memory. The pupil aims to lay hold of the thot form, instead of the verbal form, of what is placed before him. The object is to reproduce this thot form, and to accomplish it effort is directed to holding in mind the specific presentation in the book, its organization and articulation.

This

certainly is better than merely verbal memorizing. When matter is well organized in the text the pupil by this process gradually comes to appreciate how to present a subject systematically. That it is a satisfactory ideal of school work we are far from believing. We have learned that verbal memory has a proper place in the schoolroom, that the memorizing of fine literary selections is a valuable means for developing a child's sense of artistic ex

pression, for example. But verbal memory may not be pressed beyond its proper objects without serious injury to the development of the pupils. We shall also learn that formal memory is subject to a like limitation. It is useful as developing in the mind a type of wellarticulated presentation, but it is easy to see that a pupil cannot hope to carry in memory an unlimited amount of such articulated topics. Indeed it is familiar to every body that he "gets them up" for the occasion, first for the recitation and then again for the examination; after which he has after which he has no further occasion for them and lets them go. By these repeated "gettings up" somehow he grows in power and breadth of view, and we call the result education.

It is

That such a process is unsatisfactory no one will dispute; but what can we put in the place of it? Insight, will be the answer of our leaders. The truest and broadest aim of school work is to develop the insight of the pupil. From beginning to end of his training he must be held to seeing for himself most of what he is to learn, and then to giving expression to his insight. This truth is obscured by the fact that he has so many conventional, and, therefore, arbitrary things to learn; he must learn his alphabet, and to spell, and to read, and to write, and so on. especially unfortunate that our English spelling is so arbitrary; for as soon as the child begins to think he is "getting the hang of it," that is, coming to see the rationality of the way of symbolizing sounds, he is plunged into numberless anomolies, and obliged to "give it up" and betake himself to dead memorizing. So much of this dead memorizing is exacted in the first years of school life that the mind takes on this habit, foregoes all expectation of insights in school work, and acquires "the deadness of the common school tone. How shall we escape this result? Pestalozzi, who tried "to turn the common school coach about," said, by object lessons, and we have developed, following him, the nature studies, and the literature lesson, and so on. But still this dead weight of memorizing overcomes teachers and pupils, and we find it easier to cultivate formal memory than to develop insight. Indeed, when we urge it teachers look dubious or shake their heads, or say "it takes too much time; we cannot afford to work that way.

And what is the result? Complaint in all the high schools at the incapacity for insight of their pupils; they cannot see for themselves or think for themselves; their education has to be begun over again as it were. One of the speakers at the Northwestern Association

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