be satisfied with anything short of a thorough appropriation of the facts as at first presented. It will pay to stick to one topic till the victory is complete. The children have no books to study and if they ever get the facts they must do it now. The welding must take place while the iron is hot or it will never be done. Close attention is indispensable in this work, and if it can be first secured by the teacher in the class-room, its effects will be felt in their home and private studies. If children dawdle when studying at out with alternate presentation and reproduction, it is in place to call for a full narration of the whole subject by one or more pupils. The brief outline on the board ought to be sufficient to guide the pupil without questions from the instructor. Success in this reproduction is a final test of the mastery of the story. The topics presented one day, however, should be reviewed the next by the students, and this repetition continues till the mastery is felt to be satisfactory. The children should keep a blank book, Contemporary Review a valuable paper upon the teaching of civic duties to the children in the public schools of England. We make the following extract, hoping that our readers will procure the entire article, which they can find in the two numbers of the Intelligence, September 15 and October 1: "You may ask me in what the habits of civic duty consist which the schoolmaster may seek to form in his pupils and by what methods he is to form them. The habits are, I think, these three-To strive to know what is best for one's country as a whole. To place one's country's interest, when one knows it, above party feeling, or class feeling, or any other sectional passion or motive. To be willing to take trouble, personal and even tedious trouble, for the well-governing of every public community one belongs to, be it a township or parish, a ward or a city, or the nation as a whole. And the methods of forming these habits are two, methods which of course cannot in practice be distinguished but must go hand in hand-the giving of knowledge regarding the institutions of the country-knowledge sufficient to enable the young citizen to comprehend their working-and the inspiring of a love for the nation, an appreciation of all that makes its true greatness, a desire to join in serving it. "In speaking of the methods I come upon practical ground, and feel some diffidence in making suggestions to those who may, as practical teachers, be expected to know better than I can myself what it is possible to effect under the pressure of many competing subjects and with children, most of whom leave school before fourteen. The outline of such a course of instruction as I am contemplating would be something like the following. It is, and must be, an outline which includes only the elements of the subject, but you will not fail to remember that there is all the difference in the world between being elementary and being superficial. "The teacher must not attempt to give many details, or to enter upon difficult and disputed questions. But it is essential that whatever is given should be thoroughly understood, and so taken into the learner's mind as to become thenceforth a part of it. That abstract ideas and technical expressions ought to be avoided goes without saying. This, however, must not prevent us from trying to make the pupil understand the meaning of such terms as the nation, the state, and the law. You need not trouble yourselves to find unimpeachable logical definitions of these terms; that is a task which still employs the learned. What is wanted is that he should grasp the idea, first, of a community-a community inhabiting a country, united by various ties, organized for mutual protection, mutual help, and the attainment of certain common ends; next, of the law as that which regulates and keeps order in this community; next, of public officers, great and small, as those whom the law sets over us, and whose business it is to make us obey the law, while they also obey it themselves. With these conceptions in his mind, the pupil may be led to give substance and actuality to them by being referred to his own country, and applying to the nation of today what he has doubtless already learned from his manual of British history. The names of Queen and Parliament are already familiar to him; it may therefore be explained to him what is the place and what the functions of the Sovereign, and what the powers of Parliament are, how it makes laws, of what parts it is composed, how it is chosen. Thus he comes to elections, and sees how the people, through the representatives whom they choose, are ultimately the law-making power. By this time he will have been led to ask what the Government does for us, and will be referred to the army, .the navy, the postoffice, the police, the maintenance of law courts, the relief of the poor, the public schools. As the police and the schools, though established by law, are managed by local authorities, he will pass into the field of local government, and will hear about school boards, town or county councils, magistrates and justices, and persons who administer the poor law. Not that the whole of this complex machinery need be explained, still less that the pupil should be required to carry it in his memory, though he certainly ought to have some short and simple book so stating the facts as that he may be able to ascertain any particular point. "What is really of consequence is that he should understand, in a general way, the nature and spirit of the system, the way in which the people exercise their power through their representatives and their officers, what the duty of the officer is, why we ought to obey the law, because it is our law, expressing the will of the majority, and the officers, because they are the ministers of the law, appointed to carry it out. Here again history may come in, and the learner may be reminded of times when it was necessary for the people to contend against their rulers for the right of making the law, and to resist the officer, because he was the minister of tyranny; as he may also be told of countries where today free government does not exist, and where in consequence the officer has neither the confidence of the citizen nor a due sense of responsibility to the community. It is fortunate for us that in all this field, and in every similar exposition of what is meant by Liberty with its rights, which also involve duties, and of order with its duties, which also involve rights, the teacher is on ground so familiar and so uncontroversial that no suspicion of partisanship ought to attach to his explanations. The same remark applies to the United States, where the work of the instructor, if more difficult in one way because he has to explain the complications of a federal system, and the working of a rigid constitution, is in another way easier, because the fundamental principles of the government are set forth explicitly in public documents, whose authoritative language he may employ. The American scheme of government is intricate, no doubt, but it is also symmetrical, and offers comparatively few of those contrasts between the form and the reality of things with which our British monarchical arrangements are replete, and which it is not easy to make young people comprehend. "It may be remarked upon these suggestions that the topics I have outlined for treatment are in no small degree abstract, and therefore above the comprehension of boys and girls of thirteen. I have stated them for the sake of brevity in a somewhat abstract form. But they all admit of, and of course they ought all to receive, concrete treatment. The pupil should be made to begin from the policeman I and the soldier whom he sees, from the workhouse and the school inspector, from the election of the town councilor and the member of the legislature which, if he be an American boy, he will see pretty often, and about which, if he be an English boy, he is likely to have heard some talk. The old maxim of Horace about eyes and ears ought never to be forgotten by the teacher either of geography or of history, or of elementary politics. An ounce of personal observation is worth a pound of facts gathered from books; but the observation profits little till the teacher has laid hold of it and made it the basis of his instruction. must therefore qualify the warning against details by adding that wherever a detail in the system of government gives some foothold of actual personal knowledge to the pupil, that detail must be used by the teacher and made the starting point from which general facts are to be illustrated and explained. Above all, let the teacher never be satisfied with the pupil's giving him back his own words. Every good teacher will admit this if it be put to him; but in topics which our books treat in an abstract fashion, the danger of resting in mere phrases is doubly great, even to the good teacher." That "One Hundred Per Cent;" How Not to Do It. Editorial note. Dr. J. A. McLellan is president of the Ontario School of Pedagogy, and inspector of normal schools in the province of Ontario, Canada. He is the author of one of the very best books on the application of psychology to teaching that is published in the English language. Prof. John Dewey, of Michigan University, is associated with him in the authorship of this book, but, as we understand, only so far as the psychological doctrine is concerned. The application of this doctrine to teaching is Dr. McLellan's own work. Dr. McLellan is a regular and careful reader of THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL JOURNAL, or he would not have noticed the note on page 46 of the September number. Our readers will read the following with pleasure: he lose? The proposed method, which I suppose is intended to be typical of a general method of dealing with problems in "percentage," is, in my opinion, a shining example of "how not to do it," and I do not wonder that arithmeticthe logic of the public school is in danAmerican ger of being, driven from schools, if this is a fair example of the prevailing logic in arithmetical teaching. After giving the "solution" in full, you concede, no doubt out of the goodness of your heart, that "all this is quite correct," but wisely reject the "lugging in of the one hundred per cent," and the mischievous verbiage. But is it "quite" correct, either in matter or method? 1. Is any method quite correct, as a method, which darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Justifying this language I subjoin the Socratic "argument," using chiefly arithmetical symbols for "clearness" and brevity: Is Is there logical continuity here? there absence of vain repetition? Are the questions perfectly definite? e. g. "How many hundredths equal $200?" Might not the well-taught pupil properly answer twenty thousand, arguing that as there are 100 hundredths (cents) in $1, there are 20,000 hundredths in $200. Are the propositions perfectly true, or are some of them, at least, loose expressions of loose thinking? e.g., Is it correct to say that 100% $200 (etc.)? Finally, is the law from known to unknown" followed with such precision and directness that the "new matter" is apprehended and assimilated with the least waste of power? For an answer to this, we have only to glance at the propositions, (1)-(12) of the argument. = 2. Your criticism is short, but it is the very soul of wit: "The pupil knows, or should know, that 5 % and mean exactly the same thing, and one-twentieth of $200 is $10." This is the whole thing in a nutshell, the very pith and shorthand of the method of dealing with percentage. The "new material" which the pupil has to attack in percentage is a matter not of principles but of words; i.e., he has to learn, for example, that "5% and one-twentieth mean exactly the same thing." Apply this hint of yours to the arithmetical solution of the following: Sold a horse to gain 10 %; had the horse cost $40 more, the same selling price would have lost 10 %. Now, 10% and mean exactly the same thing," So we have: Selling price 66 66 = cost; supposed cost cost. Sup. cost = 1 cost. Difference between supposed cost and actual cost actual cost $40, etc. Instead of this simple solution by your suggested method, I should like to see the cumbrous method of the circumlocution desk applied to this, or a similar problem. Long before the end could be reached, the disgusted pupils, to say nothing of the perplexed teacher, would cry aloud for rest. I cannot help thinking that the prevalence of circumlocution methods in all departments of school work, is in no small degree owing to the crude ideas of the weaker brethren among the evangelists of the new education. Their fundamental maxim seems to be: Develop strength by making things easy. In the attempt to make things easy, mental pabulum is atomized and administered in homeopathic doses to passive minds; questions on trite or trivial matters are multiplied till the monotony-point-which is far worse than the fatigue-point-is reached or passed, and the long-suffering children are all but goaded to the cry of Israel: "Our souls loatheth this manna. Wit ness the infinitesimal doses prescribed in model number lessons, etc. Witness the mob of questions which the young teacher is recommended to ask upon three or four lines of a common reading lesson. Witness the trivial development" questions suggested for the evolution of ideas. which are already in the child's mindassuming that he has a mind. Witness the countless stories" which excite fictitious interest, and "illustrations" which darken presentation: "The fish-bone sound, followed by the little lamb sound, followed by grandpa's watch sound, form the vocalized expression of the word cat!" #= .714285 = 1.142856 25 = 3.571425 By examining these decimals we find each one less than a unit to be composed of exactly the same figures arranged in the same order, but. beginning with a different digit. We also find that each one greater than unity lacks the addition of the digit in the units' place to make the decimal the original series. Thus, in the value of, the addition of the 1 in the units' place of the decimal .142856 gives the original series. 142857, and the addition of the whole number 3 in the value of 2 to the figure in the units' place of the decimal .571425 gives .571428, the original series. Recognizing this as always a fact, we may write at sight the product of 142857 by any other number. Thus, if the product of 142857 by 328416 is required. we divide 328416 by 7, which gives for The Country School House. Superintendent Orville T. Bright, of Cook county, Ill., offers the following suggestions for a country school house, in his report: (a) The girls' wardrobe should be separate from that of the boys. (b) The teacher's desk should be in the opposite end of the room from the entrance. (c) This end of the room should have no windows. (d) The pupils' desks should face that of the teacher, of course. (e) The black board should extend across the end opposite the entrance and the entire sides between the windows. It (h) A shield should protect the children from the direct heat of the stove. (i) There should be at least one extra chair for the directors when they visit the school. (j) A fresh air conductor should open into the room underneath the stove. (k) Ventilators to remove foul air should be built adjacent to the chimney. Patches. BY MINNIE C. HUGHES. Pair of ragged trousers, Loving little woman, What is it she sews? Just a patch of flannel, On some worn-out clothes? Maybe if you try, It is love she's weaving, Worked in strong and tight; Say we take a lesson From those ragged clothes; Stitch a patch of love. The question "where do all the flies come from?" has been solved by a correspondent of the Rochester Post Express, who says: "The cyclone makes the house should be four feet wide and twenty fly, the blacksmith makes the fire fly, the four inches from the floor. The best blackboard is the cheapest. In the best modern teaching plenty of good blackboard is absolutely essential, and it must be within the reach of little children. (f) A maple floor is cheapest in the long run. (g) There should be no platform in the school house. carpenter makes the saw fly, the driver makes the horse fly, the grocer makes the sand fly, and the boarder makes the butter fly. Activity, rather than repose is the nature of children; and, in the kindergarten this activity is directed to the attainment of definite ends.-McMurry. |