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ish the ward school course.

As it is, one or two attempts to keep up with their classes. generally satisfies them that their education must close. It is very desirable that as many pupils as possible shall complete the ward school course, which is the proper preparation for life and for citizenship. All the arguments All the arguments for free schools for all children are arguments for so shaping these schools that no unnecessary barriers shall stand between the child and a good common school education.

2. Another sort of children for whom an ungraded department is much needed are those whose deportment is so bad in the graded schools as to interfere with their own school work and that of others, and also those who frequently stay out of school without their parent's consent. These children are likely to turn out badly if simply expelled from school or allowed to drift away from it. They ought to be saved. An ungraded school with a skillful and firm teacher will save many of them from the idleness and other bad influences of the street. It is better to reform these children at home if we can rather than

in a state reform school. In many cases these children are not very bad, only they have no great love for study, and the teacher has not tact or time to attract them. A little personal influence would save them, but that little is not given, for the reason that we cannot get all the wisdom and patience and power of a great teacher for thirty dollars a month. With cheap teachers we get cheap work. If this class of boys and girls are sent to the ungraded school it will be necessary to have a man of special character and power of government as well as tact in managing and making school attractive. He must be a born teacher but he need not be a great scholar.

Such an ungraded department ought to cost something. But it would pay, in relieving the regular schools of some hard problems, and in saving the boys and girls.

CONCERNING SCHOOL FESTIVALS.

W.

Closing exercises, for which in later times the schools have substituted the singularly inappropriate college designation commencements, are an old time feature of school life. There has always been a sort of exhiliration about them. The excitement of those who are to take part in the exercises is shared by their fellows who are looking forward to future occasions, and the well filled school house or hall with the holiday attire, and a certain pomp of circumstance give a dignity and attractiveness to the last day of the term. This

is, as it were, the flowering time of the school. Its value is very great both to the school and the community, for it serves to rekindle interest in the higher welfare of the children by bringing to the consciousness of the people their progress and their promise-a time of kindly emotions and enlarged sympathies which makes for the higher things of life. How it may serve to entrench the school in the affections of the community need not be told. How it promotes the growth of the pupils every thoughtful teacher knows.

Arbor day has done much to develop a sense of the value of school festivals. It stands as a yearly example of the practical worth of a school festival in moulding the ideas and habits of a people. Trees and birds have added interest by reason of it, and the state looks forward to more attractive towns and villages, to wiser husbandry and more humane conduct in consequence of it. Authors' days in a similar way look to improving the life of our people by means of the interest in good literature thus awakened. For the cultivation of patriotism we have school celebrations of such occasions as birthdays of Washington, Lincoln and Grant, as Decoration day and Forefathers' day.

Parents' day has much to recommend it for general adoption. The name indicates sufficiently its purpose to bring the parents into closer relation with the school, and suggests several forms of observance. One may be by declamations, compositions, and parades by the pupils; another by addresses from prominent citizens and educational leaders; another by an exhibition of the work of pupils, kindergarten work, sewing, baking, wood work, drawing, calesthenics, etc. Sometimes the school building and appliances may be shown to advantage at a social evening gathering, especially when additions to apparatus or library, to the building, or to the teaching, such as singing, or manual training, have been made. It is best that such a festival should come in the winter, perhaps in February, when out-of-door attractions are few and when the school year is advanced enough to have produced something to be shown.

Two or three out-of-door occasions are deserving of mention. School athletics just now take the form of contests between different schools. These awaken much interest, but have drawbacks in the way of undue excitement and effort which it is difficult to keep under control. But already we are escaping from the phase of development in which football and baseball usurp the whole attention, and "meets" with a variety of "events" are

springing up. growth and may well be promoted by discerning principals. The school excursion has not yet taken a strong hold in this country, but has great possibilities, as will be seen by the account published elsewhere in this number of such a festival in Germany. School exhibitions, especially at county fairs and educational gatherings, deserve mention in this connection as akin to the subject under discussion and of approved value.

This is certainly a wholesome

But these things interfere with the regular work of the school, it will be urged, and the suggestion deserves consideration. It is quite obvious that too much time and energy may be expended upon school festivals, and that they may be so managed as to keep the young people almost all the time in a fever of excitement. Good sense and wise management are necessary to hold this feature of school life. within proper limits and in due relations. That they may be abused, however, is not sufficient ground for refusing to recognize their usefulness. We have held too exclusively to the conception that the object of the school is to fill the children with knowledge. We must recognize now that it has the broader mission. of helping to form them for life. They must learn to take their part in common enterprises, to prepare carefully for public appearances and to bear themselves well in them. Their school life must call out and strengthen useful social emotions; it must refine them by appreciative contact with nature, with art, (especially in literature), and with graceful social forms. The school festival founds its greatest claim upon our support in that it serves effectively these educative purposes, and at the same time helps to keep in sympathetic touch the school and the community.

S.

THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF THE SCHOOL.

Doubtless the highest evidence of success in teaching is that a powerful influence is exerted upon the character and tastes of the pupils. To such a result mere formal acquisition, whether of knowledge or skill, is wholly secondary. For when the character and tastes. are determined the direction of effort for a long time after the school period has closed and even for life is established. The desire after attainment, the impulse or purpose steadily to pursue it, are thus of much more importance than the actual attainment. Clearly to recognize this will cause a great change in a teacher's way of working. The teaching will become vital. The specific thing to be taught, the immediate aim, will be taken up into a

larger purpose, to engage the pupil in hearty, sympathetic, genuine effort after knowledge and culture. When instead of being passively receptive he becomes active, eager, enthusiastic a great step has been taken. Upon this fervor, which, in youth is apt to be fleeting, is to be welded, by patient tact and skill, the habit of steady, continuous pursuit until the fascination of it and of growing insight is felt, and has had time to lay strong hold of the nature. This is the essence of modern methods, to secure the result we have indicated.

Formalism is the great impediment to its attainment. Formalism results from failure on the part of the teacher in fully recognizing the larger aim. The immediate aim, the thing to be taught, becomes supreme, and shuts out of view the state of the learner and the need of rightly influencing him. Thus the immediate is gained to the sacrifice of the more important, the formal to the injury of the vital. The great art of the teacher is to keep the pupil in a right attitude towards his work. course a great many elements contribute to the successful achievement of this task, but we must limit ourselves to a brief glance at two. A sufficient motive must be appealed to in the pupil by a person who is in such relations that he can make it operative. These are the two elements.

Of

The more the subject is studied the more certain does it become that the really valuable motives are always to be found in a large view of the thing to be done. They are inherent, but must be brought to view and made operative. Thus, the motive for learning to read is the pleasure and profit to be derived from reading. This can be brought to view not by talking about it but by reading to the pupil such things as he delights in. Thus the desire to learn to read is kindled and kept alive, if a little tact is shown in the management of the matter. Of course the difficulties to be overcome are skillfully arranged in the most helpful order, and constant aids. and encouragements are afforded to keep alive the desire and prevent disheartenment. case is typical. A pupil who has been made to feel how grammar aids to get at the meaning of sentences-and this may be done quite early by a thoughtful teacher-himself reaches out after the new and helpful study, and finds its applications attractive. When arithmetic is so brought into relation with concrete familiar things that its value as an instrument for getting accurate knowledge and practical results its real significance-is felt, the pursuit of it becomes attractive. This development of the motives inherent in a larger view

The

of the subject of study so that they become operative in the mind of the pupil is then an important element in the more vital kind of teaching.

Success in it depends in a large degree upon the relations between teacher and pupils. There must be a free and vigorous play of mind upon mind, an intellectual sympathy which brings them for the time into harmony of effort and mutual understanding. Some conditions prevalent in our schools stand in the way of this. When the number to be instructed at one time is too large it renders impossible this free and genuine interplay of minds. The individual pupil is lost among the many, his point of view is not grasped, he receives but fitful and undiscerning attention, and consequently is not stimulated and helped. A formal conception of the work of recitation. prevents free and natural intercourse in thot. Rigidity of administration hinders adjustment of the work to the needs of individuals. Above all there is too little opportunity for kindly and informal converse. Ten minutes of frank friendly conversation is sometimes worth more than an hour of recitation.

The latter is apt to be mechanical and only vaguely useful while the former may succeed in touching the springs of life. When teacher and pupil talk together and work together the stronger life of the former subtly pervades and forms the thought of the other. This is the strong point in what is called the individualistic plan of teaching; formalities are thrown off and mind touches mind directly and effectively. A private tutor, the companion and friend of his ward, has always been found to have a marvelous formative power due to this direct and sympathetic contact. The wise teacher always seeks such contact with his dull or unmanageable pupil in order really "to get at him." A sense of the larger work of the teacher, to give direction to the tastes and character of the pupil by calling out the vitalizing motives, always leads to seeking more fully after this intercommunion. S.

THE MONTH.

WISCONSIN NEWS AND NOTES.

-Mr. A. O. Wright has been chosen President of the Children's Home Society of Wisconsin, to succeed Prof. J. J. Blaisdell, deceased.

-The vacancy on the executive committee of the Wisconsin Teachers' Association has been filled by the appointment of Supt. J. E. Riordan, of Sheboygan.

-J. J. Williams who gave $25,000 to erect a building for the free library at Beaver Dam left a bequest of $5,000 to endow it when he died a few weeks ago.

-Principal Lewis Stern, of Fountain City, writes: "The JOURNAL is so valuable to me that I would not do without it at five times the subscription price."

-Stevens Point has forty-six teachers employed in its public schools of whom five are in the high school. There are four kindergarten teachers and six ward principals.

-By a majority vote of the Executive Committee of the Wisconsin Teachers' Association it has been decided to hold the next session of that body in Milwaukee Dec. 28-30.

-From the Northwestern Mail we quote: "The WISCONSIN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION for April has, among many other good things, an article on the Educational Value of Manual Training. It ought to be read by every parent and friend of education.”

-The Milwaukee Telegram says: "Just how a Wisconsin teacher can get along without the JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, published at Madison by Doctors J. W. Stearns and A. O. Wright, is a mystery. Each number is worth more to a teacher than the cost of the publication for a year."

-The township high school at De Forest, in the town of Windsor, has been growing rapidly under the management of Principal E. C. Meland. It now employs two teachers, with an enrollment of fifty-six pupils, and there is talk of employing another teacher and adding the modern classical course to its curriculum.

-W. H. Bradley, of Tomahawk, has followed the example of Senator Stout and of J. D. Witter, and has founded a system of traveling libraries with Tomahawk as a center. Last May Mr. Stout sent out the first traveling libraries in Wisconsin. Now there are six independent systems of such libraries in the state containing nearly 100 libraries.

-The total enrollment of the Oshkosh normal school for the quarter ending March 26th was 825, of whom 597 were in the normal de. partment. In addition there were 64 enrolled in the academy. Stevens Point had a total of 508, of whom 326 were in the normal department; Whitewater 448, in the normal 318; Platteville 663, with 467 in the normal.

-The Janesville high school recently held its annual competition in public speaking. The contests were of three kinds, in orations, in declamations, and in extempore speaking,

the subjects for the last exercise being assigned by the judges twenty minutes before each speaker was to appear upon the stage. The young people acquitted themselves well. -The ladies of Stevens Point have recently raised $800 for a free library and the city council has added $300 to their fund. The school board has also turned over to the new library association a good library of more than 1,000 volumes which was committed to its care by a former association. The new library is managed by a competent board and seems destined to be permanently successful.

-The Blaisdell memorial edition of "Beau

tiful Charity" contains a fine engraving of Prof. Blaisdell and a picture of his library, and another of his classroom. Any of our subscribers can secure a copy by sending a stamp to the Children's Home society at Milwaukee. It is a very beautiful memorial of a grand teacher who spent forty years of his life in teaching in this state in the same college.

-The Arbor and Bird Day Annual issued by the state superintendent, is a handsome fifty-six page brochure, containing, besides the selections, articles by Ella M. Gardner, Prof. F. H. King, Prin. Chester W. Smith, Sec. William J. Anderson, Mrs. W. H. Upham, B. S. Hoxie, Maybelle M. Park, Henry Nehrhug, Philip Wells and Sec. L. E. Gettle, with poetry by Marion Lisle, Mary F. Tucker, and Mrs. Mary M. Adams.

-The Oshkosh and the Waupaca high schools had a debate recently on the question: "Resolved that municipal ownership of water and gas lighting plants would be preferable to private ownership in the majority of American municipalities." The decision of the judges was in favor of Waupaca, which had the negative. Such practical questions as this are of real value to all concerned. The citizens of Waupaca who crowded the hall not only heard a living subject of immediate interest in their city ably discussed, but they were incidentally given occasion to see that education in their high school prepares for citizenship as well as gives scholarship.

-The librarians of Senator Stout's traveling libraries in Dunn county held their second institute in Menomonie late in March. There was an interesting program and a notable talk by Prof. F. W. Kendall of the manual training school who has been using a library of books upon out-of-door sports, hunting, fishing, boating, tenting, skating and camping with the boys of his classes with the best of results. He showed models of boats and tents

which his pupils had made and advised the librarians to interest the country boys in devising means to make better use of their opportunities for out-of-door enjoyment as the traveling libraries are unusually rich in books like "The Boys' Book of Sports." Miss Brickley, the county superintendent, asked the co-operation of the librarians in extending the interest in "traveling pictures."

Senator Stout will purchase 800 pictures of high artistic merit and send six or eight to any country school in Dunn county where the people will make the school room neat and attractive, tint the walls and make other suitable preparations. The pictures will be occasionally exchanged, passing from one school to another when the pupils desire new pictures to study, each picture may be accompanied by descriptive texts and interesting facts concerning the artists.

-The North Wisconsin Academy at Ashland had a unique entertainment recently. It was a Hiawatha pantomime in which real Chippewa Indians took an active part. Ashland is in the heart of the region on Lake Superior which Longfellow's poem, following the Chippewa legends, makes the home of the mythic Hiawatha. E. P. Wheeler, the president of the trustees, is the son of a missionary to the Chippewas, and was brought up near Ashland among the Indians and speaks their language, and is familiar with their customs. In the character of Pau-Puk-Kee-Wis he made a speech in Chippewa which was understood by the Indians present. The patomime was enacted by students of the academy, assisted by several Indians with wigwams, canoes and dress exactly after the Chippewa paterns. A real birch bark canoe was used, and the eagle plumes and head dress worn by Hiawatha were the court dress of the head chief of the tribe. The head chief "Cloud" was present and beat the war drum while other braves danced. In the scene representing Hiawatha's childhood an Indian woman sang in Chippewa a genuine Indian lullaby song. The object of most historic interest was the peace pipe captured from the Sioux at the battle of the Brule in 1842, which has ever since been a treasured relic, having been smoked when peace was made between the tribes, and twice with two different presidents at Washington. War clubs, bows and arrows, and birch bark vessels were used in abundance. The princi

pal of the academy read the poem while the students acted it out.

SUBSCRIBE FOR THE JOURNAL.

SELLING CHARTS BY A FORGERY.

Prof. J. W. Stearns, Wisconsin Fournal of Education, Madison, Wis.:

My Dear Mr. Stearns:-I learn that a party professing to represent an educational Aid Association in Chicago is canvassing for some Encyclopædia of Modern School Method Charts in the state of Minnesota, and is quoting what purports to be a letter from me recommending the Encyclopædia of Modern School Method Charts. The letter as printed is certainly a forgery.

Should any of your readers know anything about this matter they will confer an obligation on me by writing to me such facts as have come under their knowledge.

Asking you to kindly insert this in the next number of the WISCONSIN JOURNAL OF EDU

CATION,

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DR. STEARNS:-Will you kindly tell me, either by letter or in the columns of the JOURNAL, just how the cedilla is formed? If I mistake not our Wisconsin teachers teach that it is a "comma" placed just below the ç like this. I am told that the French mark is the figure five, with top stroke to the right omitted, thus 5. Will you please tell me which is right, and oblige, A SUBSCRIBER. [The form in common use is a comma. The matter is of trifling importance.-ED.]

A SECOND HELEN KELLER.

A second Helen Keller has been found in a pupil in the South Dakota school for the deaf, who is deaf, dumb and blind. Not being the child of wealthy parents, as Helen Keller is, she did not begin her schooling till she was fourteen years old. In addition the same disease that caused her double defect of the senses also left her partially paralyzed. By the use of the same methods of instruction which had such success in the other case she has in three years made remarkable progress. She can now read her teacher's lips and speak so that the teacher can understand what she says. She can write on a typewriter with proper spelling and punctuation. She can read the books with raised letters for the blind and she can write on such tablets as they

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I shall never forget the events of this day, and my readers, I am sure, will enjoy an account of it. Pursuant to a polite invitation I accompanied the teachers and pupils of the Realschule of D——, on an excursion to a

neighboring hill about four miles from the city. The school marched in companies behind a drum corps, the teachers acting as captains. The students all wore light grayish-blue flannel suits and a cap, and carried suspended from the shoulders by a strap a tin box called a botanizing drum. This contained a lunch, small hammers for breaking minerals, pinchers for dissecting plants, cork and pins for securing beetles, and a drinking-vessel. A few boys carried spades and shovels, ropes and hammocks.

The "regiment" afforded a beautiful sight as it marched from the school-yard between five and six hundred in number. As soon as the country road was reached, the music teacher began a patriotic song in marching time and the whole school chimed in. Oh, the exhilarating influence that song had! When we came to the villa of a noted philanthropist who had recently given a large sum of money to the school fund, the regiment drew up in line and gave him a serenade which wound up with three rousing hurrahs. On we went, more singing followed, but never a break in the ranks nor a case of disorder.

When we reached the foot of the hill a rest was taken at an inn, where milk was served and lunch was enjoyed as only youth can enjoy it. Then we plunged into the woods, each class by itself, one botanizing, one looking for minerals, another studying geography, and so I joined the history class. The profes

on. sor took took us to the summit of the hill and there gave us a lesson on local history which was interesting to a high degree.

"There it was," said he, "where Prince Ferdinand chased the Frenchmen across the Rhine. Yonder castle is the ancient residence of the Dukes of Jülich-Cleve-Berg, and in that castle it was where the beautiful Princess

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