her son's chamber, and lighted his fire she had brushed his winter clothes, arranged his dressing table, put in new soap and placed cigarettes upon the little table. 66 Papa had surprised her at this work : ceived a letter from him?" "I? No. She had said nothing about it to papa. but she had decided not to go to sleep till after five o'clock-the train from the south arrives at half past four. So she lay and listened. One must live in Paris in order to appreciate the anxiety of this waiting, with the entrance door that slams every moment, the carriages that stop before the house or the house opposite, the voice that one seems to recognize in the midst of a conversation, the hour which strikes from all the clocks in the neighborhood. This anxiety the old couple felt, with no power to soften its cruelty. Since they did not want to communicate their secret to each other, they could not go to the window to see the carriages, and they could not listen at the door. So they lay and imagined that if their son should come, he would have no baggage -he would take a carriage—the station was not far that must be the carriage. -and now-but it turns the corner. Suddenly both sit up. This time the "It would have seemed hard once, but when one has slept for two months in the barracks, one does not fear the hard seats of a second-class train." Mother embraces him again, and feels his arms: You are not so thin! You look so well!" Father laughs: "You see I told you so you always exaggerate." But he is really very proud that his son looks so well, and he questions him upon the details of his new life. I have read that in old times parents waited solemnly, in their parlors, for the homage of their children. But all is now changed. And how pleasant it is, after twenty-six hours of travel, to find the two awaiting you at the door to bid you welcome! And George, who had prepared long phrases as in his college days, could only say: Happy, happy New Year!" STEPS IN INSTRUCTION. 1. Preparation, that is, recalling the previous lesson and other knowledge familiar to the child as aids to apperception, indicating also what is the aim of the present lesson. 2. Presentation, the gathering of all the facts on the lesson topic in hand. The method of presenting the facts will, of course, vary with the nature of the lesson. 3. Comparison, viz., of facts with facts to discover their meaning. (A fine field for the cultivation of a most useful mental power, too often neglected.) reaching as the fruit of his own investi* gation, those conclusions commonly called principles, definitions, laws, rules, formulas, etc. 5. Application, that is, the bringing back of the laws and principles already learned and applying them to new particular cases in science, business, and social, political, moral, or religious life. This completes the cycle. The pupil starts from individual facts or events, and returns again to them, but this time with power to interpret them. Higher than this no knowledge rises; greater 4. Generalization, that is, the pupil's power none can possess. SUPERVISION AND METHODS OF TEACHING. The special purpose of this Department is to aid the teacher to improve his methods of teaching the common school branches. That is also the general purpose of the preceding Department. We shall here present ways and means of teaching a course of study in every grade of rural or city schools. These Suggestions are intended to meet the teacher's needs each month. Those in the September number are for the first month's work; those in the October number for the second month; and so on. The Key to the Situation. The We have reached a point in the evolution of public education when the superintendent of the schools holds the key to the situation. To him, or to her, the public must look for any immediate improvement in the teaching force. He decides who shall enter the vocation, and it is the superintendent that must give inspiration and guidance to the teachers. after they enter upon their work. ideal condition is that every teacher shall have a special training before beginning to teach. But it will be long before that ideal will be realized in this country where the popular voice finally determines everything. More and more it is coming to be true that whether it be questions of finance, or of state, or of education, we must wait until we have heard from the plow and the work-shop before any decision can be reached. No longer are matters of state referred to statesmen for settlement, or matters of finance to financiers, or of education to educators, or of religion to the church. It is the common people who give the final decision of all these questions. Whether they shall decide wisely or unwisely depends upon the degree of their intelligence and moral purpose. The hope of a fortunate conclusion for our free government rests upon the fact, not that the common people are able to judge wisely what is best for the country, but that they really desire that the best thing shall be done. Their mistakes are those of the head rather than those of the heart. What they need is more information and greater power to think. Our educational, as well as our political and financial campaigns, must be a "campaign of education." This campaign must be conducted by our superintendents of schools, and by our more intelligent teachers. The only way in which the people can be made to desire good teaching and prefer it to the travesty on teaching that prevails in so many schools, is that they shall experience good teaching. The only hope of better teaching in a large majority of the schools of the country rests with the superintendents. When they are blind, or dishonest, or weak leaders, teachers and schools must fall into the ditch.. By superintendents I mean superintendents and principals and supervisors, whose business it is to guide and inspire other teachers. The first requisite in the superintendent is that he or she be a devoted student of education, both in the broad sense of its relation to our American life and in its narrower sense of ways and means of imparting instruction. He must be a broad and liberal thinker, with large sympathy and must stimulate the teachers to be students of their vocation. He must especially try to lift them to a larger view of their mission, while he urges them to pursue good methods of instruction. The superintendent who fences his teachers into a limited course of instruction by procuring for them prescribed outlines upon which they are to drill their pupils, and then sends around to them every month a set of examination questions prepared by his "outline vender," by which to test their pupils' progress, is a positive injury to education in his town or county. So is any other superintendent who works in this spirit, though by a different method. His office is to stimulate his teachers to think and plan for themselves, and not to put them into a sort of straightjacket that denies them all freedom of action. The superintendent must be able to read and enjoy reading the thoughts and investigations and experiences of others. He who looks with contempt upon the work of other teachers, is, himself, only worthy of the contempt of his own. It is surprising how many superintendents there are who seem to pride themselves on the fact that they do not read, and that they cannot read some of the best books on education. But this must change if the schools are to grow in excellence and in popular favor. The schools of the country must become systems of training schools for the teachers who are employed in them. Those who do not need this training should be let alone, and the energy of the superintendent directed to the assistance and stimulation of those that do. The difference between a county or a city where the superintendent is of this class, and one where he is merely the engineer of an educational machine is easy to see by one who examines the work in the schools. B. If a superintendent cannot awaken, arouse, inspire, and stimulate his teachers to be artistic workers, each according to his or her talent, then dry platitudes will avail little. It is a faculty largely inherent in the person. It consists in zeal and knowledge combined, exerted continually in wisely directed effort. By lectures, by courses of reading, by studying a subject and writing on it, by section meetings, by having the best and most successful teachers lift up the weaker ones, by reading educational journals, by entreaty, by encouragement, by confidence, zeal, knowledge, and uprightness of intention, all these combined and fused in a generous nature, will do much with any corps of teachers. There is also associated with the superintendent or principal of a school, the inseparable idea of, does he practice what he preaches? I take it that the personal character has nearly everything to do with getting teachers to do their very best. Col. Parker calls it Freedom! I call it intelligence, applied to doing the work of school in the most rational manner, limited by the conditions and capacities of the child's mind. In School Journal. J. M. GREENWOOD. The Lewis-Champlin School. Editor Public-School Journal: Having just read your article in the July issue of THE JOURNAL regarding the lesson on the Syringa observed in the Lewis-Champlin school in Englewood, I wish to make a statement or two in regard to that class. The children entered school September, 1892, and so were first grade pupils and not a second reader grade as stated. I judge by the article that you think they were taught by an entirely different method from that by which they really were taught. They were kept to pure phonics, taught synthetically, for nearly three months. While they had a great deal of oral language and many oral observation lessons, they saw no written sentences at all during that time-not until they had mastered all the sounds and had acquired the ability to recognize almost any word entirely by sounding it. This gave them the power of working independently and also gave them the consciousness of that power, which accounts for the interest manifested and also for the lack of stumbling over word forms. So you see these children were kept at work "constructing forms" for some time. As nearly as I am able to judge, it did not interfere in the least with their instantaneous appreciation of the thought conveyed by the form. My only excuse for writing this to you is that I am always and everywhere anxious to see justice done. If a certain method produces a certain result, I like to see that method get the credit due it. As I feel convinced that those children would never have taken that work as they did had it not been for their previous training in phonics, I am simply doing what I can to place the credit where I think it belongs. Respectfully yours, MARY E. BROWN. [We are under obligation to Miss Brown for her letter of explanation. We were under the impression that we saw the children at work in the second reader, but were mistaken, it seems. The children were very ready in making out new words, and we supposed at the time that they had acquired this skill by analyzing and constructing many words. She says that they spent three months in drilling upon the elements in words before they began to use them in sentences. This is one very prevalent way of starting children in reading, and in this case certainly it proved very successful. There is no doubt that children must learn to make out new words by analyzing them into their elements, and synthesizing these elements into a unity. This is the process by which we see everything. There is no such thing as seeing a word or anything else as a whole, without, at the same time, seeing its parts. This seeing is first vague and then distinct as this analysis and synthesis proceeds. But the element of excellence in this teacher's work was that just so soon as the children had learned the trick of making out words, she put the emphasis on the thought expressed, or to be expressed. The child used this form for expressing meaning, and it was the meaning to which the attention was prominently di rected. This drill in the synthesis and analysis of words by use of their elements is the leading work in the first stages of teaching young children to read. It is a mistake to have it limited to the study of dead forms even in the first three months. But the form must be prominent. After the child has acquired skill in seeing the elements-both letters and sounds-in a word, this wordwork becomes merely incidental, and the ideas and thoughts involved become the main thing. If we interpret Miss Brown's letter correctly, she thinks that we hold another doctrine than this. But if she had read THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL JOURNAL for years past she would have seen that it has always advocated in substance the method she pursues. —ED.] Are You Miss Flint? BY AN OLD TEACHER. Class in mental arithmetic!" Slowly the long line of boys and girls filed into their customary places on the floor, in response to their teacher's summons even more slowly than was their wont; for the morning was oppressively warm,--one of those hot, sultry days in early April, that occasionally surprise us with the suddenness of their coming, and the intensity of their unlooked-for heat. To this cause, doubtless, was also due unusually depressing recitation which followed, rasping the poor teacher's tired nerves to the last point of endurance. Even her most reliable pupils seemed to fail her, dragging out to their slow end the monotonous, stereotyped analysis of their several examples. If this was the case with the bright scholars, what can be said of the drones in the class! Clear down at the foot of the class stood a tall, awkward looking girl, whose sallow, jaded countenance marked her as somewhat older than her companions, as indeed she was. Having found the place, Ellen mechanically read the problem, and then as mechanically proceeded to solve it. Had she been called upon earlier in the recitation, she might possibly have made a more creditable appearance, for the formula was fixed in her brain by its frequent repetition, so that she could have followed it after a fashion. But that unfortunate moment of forgetfulness had driven everything out of her mind that would have given her anchorage. She floundered about hopelessly for a few moments and then gave up altogether. "It would seem," said Miss Flint, with withering contempt, "that your nap might have rested you enough to enable you to grasp some idea of the lesson, even if the entire class had not recited before you." The girl colored to the roots of her hair, but maintained a respectful silence. "I wonder," continued the teacher impatiently, "if there is a question in the book you can answer! Turn to the first page and see. Read the first question." Ellen found the place and read: How many thumbs have you on your right hand?' One." 666 Bravo!" exclaimed Miss Flint, "you quite encourage me! Go on." "How many thumbs have you on your left hand?' If you have one thumb on your right hand, on your left hand you will have two times one thumbA shout of laughter from the whole school interrupted her, and even Miss Flint, annoyed as she was, could not restrain a smile. The poor girl, bewildered, looked up with mute appeal. Evidently, she had not the least idea whither she was drifting. But Miss Flint was relentless. "Go on!" again she commanded. "We are in a fair way to learn some startling facts in science, by your peculiar mode of analysis. Pray, go on. But the discomfited girl began to realize she was the sport of both teacher and school. For a moment she tried awkwardly to smile at her own stupidity, then her lip quivered, and she quickly covered her face with her book, to hide the tears that would come. With an expression of disgust on her handsome features, Miss Flint dismissed the class, and later on, at the accustomed hour, the entire school. Weary and dispirited, she sat by her desk, resting her head in her hands for some minutes after the pupils had all gone. She was not by any means satisfied with herself or her school, during that session at least. But she was far more severe on the former than the latter. Sitting alone with her conscience, the stern monitor was reproving her for impatience and loss of temper, still more for what she now felt to be unkind abuse of a poor, unfortunate girl, when a timid, hesitating voice at her elbow suddenly broke the silence: "Please, teacher Turning quickly in amazement, Miss Flint beheld the object of her thoughts, standing by with a dipper of cold water in her hand. 66 Please, teacher," continued the girl, I thought as how you must have the headache, with your head a-leaning on your hand, and I brought in some cold water for you to put on your head. I-I do so for mother when her head aches, and she always says as how it makes her feel better." A choking sensation came into Miss Flint's throat. She was not so hard as her name. Thank you, Ellen, you are very thoughtful," she said kindly. I do not care to bathe my head, for it is not aching, only tired, but I am very thirsty, and the water is indeed refreshing. Thank you very much," she said again as she passed back the dipper. But the girl still lingered. "Please, teacher "Yes," returned the latter with an encouraging smile. "I'm sorry I'm so dull, and I'm sorry I went to sleep, but baby brother has been sick lots o' nights, and mother was all tired out. So last night I teased her to let me take care of baby so's she could sleep. He's most always good with me when he won't let nobody else touch him. He didn't sleep none-but mother did, and I kept him quiet all night some way or nuther, and I s'pose that's what made me so sleepy today. But I'm sorry to trouble you, teacher." Ah, whose eyes were glistening now! A great throb of remorse shot through the teacher's heart. "Dear child," said she, drawing the girl impulsively toward her, "never speak of it again. I was very, very wrong to talk to you as I did. Had 1 only known-but there, it is too late now. Only I must ask you to forgive me, Ellen, for you put me to blush, with your noble loyalty to duty. Never again will I lose patience with you, however hard it may seem for you to understand." And brushing the unkempt hair away from Ellen's forehead, she sealed her promise with a kiss. Coloring with surprise and pleasure, Ellen said softly, "Thank you, teacher," and hastened away. The memory of that kiss and the kind words accompanying it brought comfort to the poor, neglected girl in many an hour of sadness that came to her in after years; and but for the same sweet memory, the teacher herself would have been comfortless in the sad event which immediately followed. Ellen did not come to school that afternoon, nor the next day, nor yet the next. Indeed two weeks had gone by and still Ellen failed to make her appearance. One day at dinner, a young physician who boarded in the family with Miss Flint, remarked upon a very trying case that he had been called to that morning. It was that of a young girl whose hands had been dreadfully burned in attempting to save a younger sister whose clothing had taken fire. The sister had miraculously escaped with little injury, but the older girl had succeeded in saving the little one, at great risk and suffering to herself. |