cepted as a ground for the location of the school, as well as the body of traditions and associations which have grown up around the school in its present location, ought, it would seem, to settle the matter.

Edu

-The Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association holds its next meeting at Chattanooga, Feb. 22d, 23d and 24th. One topic for each half-day session is the general plan of the program. The first topic on the program is The Township High School, presented by State Sup't Baxter, of New Jersey, and the discussion opened by Sup't Emery, of Wisconsin. cational problems of the south, elementary schools, child-study, school hygiene, vacation schools, grading and promotion, and aesthetics are the principal themes. The educational press association meets at the same time and place, and the round table of the Herbart society also. There is held also each day a conference of state superintendents.

-Massachusetts has made great advances in the matter of school supervision of late years, and now leads all the states. The sixtyfirst report of the state board of education shows that in the state there are 155 superintendents, 6 supervisors and 3 assistant superintendents of schools for 262 towns and cities, 49 being district superintendents for 149 towns with a minimum salary of $1,500 each, of which the state pays half. Ninety-three and eight-tenths per-cent. of the children of the state are under supervision. Ninety towns are not under supervision, of which 79 have a valuation less than $2,500,000 each, and are therefore entitled to state aid should they form districts and elect superintendents. The number of superintendents whose salary is $4,000 or more is 3; between $3,000 and $4,000, 13; between $2,000 and $3,000, 32; between $1,000 and $2,000, 103; below $1,000, 13.

-The Library Journal, reviewing the progress in library work during the past year, says: "Among the states, Wisconsin has done admirable work through its vigorous library commission, and the Massachusetts commission reports but ten towns without free libraries, several of these, however, having subscription libraries. Efforts toward obtaining a commission in New Jersey have been made by the library association of that state, which, it is to be hoped, may have the desired result, and an increasing desire for library legislation has been apparent in many other states. Georgia, through the energy of Miss Wallace, has a state library commission; Tennessee has a new library law; and a successful library meet

ing at Macon, Ga., paves the way for the proposed A. L. A. conference at Atlanta, which, it is to be hoped, may follow, in 1899, a successful Chautauqua meeting in 1898.'

-A Wisconsin Child-Study Society was organized at Milwaukee immediately after the adjournment of the state association. At this meeting the following officers were elected: President, J. I. Jegi, Milwaukee state normal school; Secretary-Treasurer, Elnora Cuddeback Fulcomer, Milwaukee; First Vice-President, B. T. Davis, Oshkosh; Second Vice-President, J. T. Edwards, Marinette; and as members of the Executive Committee, M. V. O'Shea, University of Wisconsin; Mary D. Bradford, Stevens Point normal school, and J. B. Estabrook, Racine. This committee held a meeting at the Hotel Plankinton, at 2:00 o'clock P. M. of the same day, to determine on preliminary lines of work. A second meeting of the committee will probably be held early in February. All members of the Wisconsin Teachers' Association may become members of the Wisconsin ChildStudy Society by sending their names to the secretary-treasurer, accompanied by the membership fee of fifty cents. Other persons interested in Child-Study may become Regular members of this society by paying the secretary-treasurer the annual fees of the association plus the fees of the Wisconsin Child-Study Society. Child-Study Society. Parents and others, not teachers, interested in Child-Study may become Associate members by sending the secretary-treasurer their names, accompanied by the membership fee of fifty cents.

Su

"Mere book knowledge" is used to express that aloofness from the affairs of the world and parrot-like committing of texts which still too often characterizes many of those who pass teachers' examinations. perintendent Lamont, of Marathon county, has a paragraph on this subject in his last report, which we quote: "I believe that the teachers of this county compare very favorably with the teachers of the other counties of the state. I know that they can extract square root, diagram a difficult sentence successfully and spell "anthropology" correctly. I know that after three years of drill in summer schools and institutes fifty per cent. of them do not know the difference between percept and concept. Seventy-five per cent. cannot tell who wrote Hamlet nor what is the form of government in the Hawaiian Islands. Ninety per cent. of them cannot tell you what "sixteen to one" means, and forty per cent. do not know whether McKinley is a republi

Great Britain, some have imitated America, in the details of government, but all have imitated us in the great idea of having a written constitution to clearly define and limit the powers of government and to establish the rights of individuals.

causes.

A. O. WRIGHT.

THE RURAL SCHOOL PROBLEM.

The decadence of the country school, in so far as decadence exists, is due to a variety of Speaking of the country at large and not simply of Wisconsin it is evident from statistics that there has been within a generation or two an exodus of the younger men and women to the cities, the "old folks" remaining on the farm. This tends to increase the school population in cities and decreases it in rural districts. Furthermore it is true that the birthrate over large areas of the United States is steadily decreasing, and where it is holding its own or increasing it is found to be among certain classes of foreigners who value but little the school privileges that were so dear to the early New Englanders and their descendants.

The first cause of decadence, then, is decrease of rural school population resulting in lack of enthusiasm on the part of all immediately concerned. On the heels of this as a natural consequence follows the employment of inexperienced and unqualified girls and boys as teachers and the dropping out of many pupils that might have been kept long in school under a strong teacher and a good school sentiment.

Another cause operating unfavorably in many sections of the country is the decrease in land values. In some places this decrease is enormous and the result in every case is an increase in the rate of taxation and a consequent indisposition on the part of farmers to tax themselves heavily for school purposes. To this may also be added the fall in prices of farm produce that has been so general in recent years, and the almost universal failure of farmers to adjust their industries to the changed conditions of to-day. It is with the greatest difficulty that the most wide-awake and progressive farmers keep up with the car of progress, owing to their isolation from and distance from the centers of trade and inteltectual activity; but those who are not progressive (and they constitute no small part of the population) are a clog to the wheels of progress and thus give rise to numerous sociological problems that other people are called upon to solve.

School districts have been reduced in size in many cases far below the limit at which a good school can be maintained. The writer has had personal experience in dealing with this phase of the question and knows what tremendous pressure, political and other, is brought to bear upon those who have it in their power to change school district boundaries and establish new school.

With reference to the merits of teachers there is often (shall I say generally?) an astounding ignorance on the part of the community. I spent a portion of a brief vacation early last spring in visiting country schools in southern Ohio. In one district an election of school officers was about to take place. The man who was teaching the school at the time was favored for reëlection for the coming year by every person in the district, so far as I was able to discover. One man, the best qualified for such a position of school officer of any one in the district, failed of election because he would not commit himself positively on the question of supporting the teacher alluded to. A half-day's visit to this school was disheartening in the extreme. The teacher was an ignoramus, and the teaching was the poorest I have ever seen anywhere. Vulgarity and profanity were rife in the school. In an ordinary spelling exercise at least one-third of the words were mispronounced by both teacher and pupils, and the "spelling" was if possible worse than the pronunciation. This was in one of the best communities in that part of the state, and the school was in no sense a backwoods school.

Once while conducting a summer institute in one of the richest and best counties in the state, I discovered a surprising amount of absence of members from the institute. Inquiry revealed the fact that many persons who should have been in the institute were engaged in a mad scramble for positions as teachers. The county was flooded with incompetent young people who were offering to teach for $4 or $5 a week and were displacing the old teachers who could not or would not compete with them. This was probably an extreme case, yet such things certainly happen far too frequently. Such things cannot happen, however, where county superintendents with iron courage rule out such would-be teachers by refusing to grant them certificates. To this end a board of three examiners is far better than one man power of certification and that one dependent upon political favor for his position. Only the strongest can resist the temptation to certificate incompetents when refusal to do so seems likely to cost the county superintend

ent his office at the next election. I have large faith in the ability of an educated, competent, determined county superintendent to solve in a practical way many of the problems of the country schools. But he should not be dependent upon political favor for his office.

The remedy that commends itself to me most in the case of sparsely settled districts is consolidation and the transportation of pupils to and from school. There should also be such a modification of the work done in the country school as to bring it more in touch with the natural environment of the pupils and at the same time more in touch with the best thought of past and present times.

Finally, there remain many sociological problems connected with rural life that cannot be solved by legislation or by any short-cut process. As regards the charge that the legislature and the body politic are indifferent to the needs of the country schools, I believe it to be utterly false. The people most indifferent in the various sections of the state are the very people as a rule who are most in need. The state can do but little for those who are not trying to help themselves.-C. P. Cary, Milwaukee State Normal School, in the Milwaukee Sentinel.

THE SCHOOL ROOM.

RHYTHMIC BEAT IN POETRY.

Do you yourself enjoy and want your pupils to enjoy the rhythmic beat in poetry that makes music of the sounding lines? Then put it into the air of your schoolroom. Let the ictus fall where the accent comes, and let it fall hard. Lead your pupils in scanning the lines in concert, or by classes, and have them scan not detached lines only, but the poem from beginning to end. Nothing is more easy than for little boys and girls, all of whom sing, to know and recognize promptly the two common feet, the iambus and the dactyl, or the same reversed in trochee and anapest; or to know exactly what is meant by the metre abbreviations in the hymn book, which are the same measured lines as found elsewhere in very much of our best poetry. Soon they will know how to do this easy and pleasant work as well as the teacher or any one else. do not teach it, this simple scanning, as a leading thing, or as a great thing. The thought is always the great thing; then the fitting words by which it is expressed; then the arrangement of these words into musical lines, -though it is the music of the lines that may first attract and please.

On the wharf in Philadelphia a few days since my ear caught the beat of a trochaic tetrameter line. 1 looked in the direction of the full, rich voice, and listened for the words as the question repeated:

"Tell' me war' yo wan' to go' to."

It was warm. The black man sat on a stone bald crown, good head, kind face. A boy had step, hat and coat off, trying to keep cool, sat down beside him, and was leaning towards him, a look of "help wanted" in his eyes and all over him; and the black man wanted to help him, but must first know just where he wanted to go. "Tell me where you want to think the old man knew that he was talking in go to." It was a pleasant picture, but I hardly

Labor is life! 'Tis the still water faileth.
Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth;
Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth;
Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.
Labor is glory!-the flying cloud lightens;
Only the waving wing changes and brightens;
Idle hearts only the dark future frightens;

Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune! Anapest:

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud-
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Have your head full of these good things; quote them freely; note the bright eye and the ready ear, as your pupils are becoming educated; and presently the tone of every-day acquaintance, in which these lines and verses and poems may come to be repeated-for teacher and pupil should constantly be adding to this store of treasure better than gold. Hear Longfellow in "The Day is Done:"

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice,

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

As you know, when we quote a fine thing in verse we usually do it with a flourish, or on stilts, or at half-breath. Let the schools think poetry more, in all the charm of its exceeding beauty and excellence, and they will come to talk it more as a mother-tongue. Teachers who have this high-grade work in their schools, themselves and their pupils enjoying it, are never forgotten, but are remembered with increasing gratitude because they were good to live with.

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL COURSE IN ENGLISH.

What should this course be for boys and girls who are to have no further school training in their mother tongue? It should certainly enable them to use that tongue correctly, if not aptly and gracefully-to speak, read, and write English well, if not very well. Some teachers may say that this is enough; twenty-five years ago very few would have thot of attempting anything more, but nowadays we are beginning to see that any school course in English should include some instruction in literature as well as in language; that boys and girls who have learned to read should be taught how to chose their reading after they leave school-trained to recognize what is good in literature, and to prefer it to what is poor or bad. They should have got in school at least a taste of good literature, enough to give them a taste for it which they can never lose in after-life.

Some will say at the outset that this can not be done in the grammar school. But if it should be done, it can be done, and that it should be done is indisputable. If children learn nothing else in school, they should learn how to use their own language. This is the key to the learning of all time, the instrumentality whereby all knowledge is shared and distributed among men. It is, moreover, the only branch of a school education of which we may say that all the pupils will find all they have learned in it of positive practical use at all periods of their life. Beyond the merest elements, how much of the arithmetic learned in school is of real use to one pupil out of ten? How much of it is remembered by the very

large class who have no occasion to employ it in later life? Beyond the great facts that could be taught in a few lessons, how much of the geography is remembered in after-years by the vast majority who learned it in school? In traveling in Europe, and even in parts of our own country, one has to learn the geography all over again. I have to go to the gazetteer for hundreds of facts that I had to commit to memory in my school days, and if I want some of the same facts again six months later, the chances are that I shall have to go to the gazetteer again for them. I do not care to lumber up my memory with such knowledge when I know where to find it if I have occasion to make some temporary use of it. And so with the minutiæ of history, which are memorized so laboriously in school It is only and forgotten so easily afterward. teachers and critical students of history who remember them, or to whom they are of sufficient value or interest to justify any special effort to retain them in the memory. But all that we learn in the study of language, if it is taught aright, is of immediate and enduring value. Every new thing of beauty that we come to know in literature is a joy forever. Your schoolboys and schoolgirls, after they have become fathers and mothers, will testify to the truth of this. I am old enough to speak on this point from my own experience. I began teaching English forty years ago, and from the start I combined work in literature I have met many with that in language.

of my pupils long after they had grown up and become settled in life, and I have found them enjoying good books and training their children to the same habits and tastes. They tell me that of all the lessons they had in school these in English have been the most helpful, stimulating, and inspiring ever since.

Whatever else, then, may have to be omitted, abridged, or treated superficially in the grammar school, the course in the English language should not be so treated. If, necessary, throw away half of the arithmetic or two-thirds of the geography, or both, and give the time thus saved to English. Even if history, as generally studied, is cut down somewhat, the loss can be more than made good by judicious selections of historical matter, both prose and verse, for a part of the study in literature. -Elementary Study of English by Harper & Brothers.

VALUES OF BOOKS.

Paper and ink have had their vicissitudes in this world. The Hebrew once gathered up every scrap of writing, lest haply it might con