THE PROBLEM OF VACATION.

We do not anticipate that all those who read this editorial note will endorse the sentiments which are expressed in it. But with a firm conviction that we are right, we here enter a protest against our present method of running our schools for nine months, and turning children loose for three months at a stretch. Our present system is ill-suited to contemporary conditions. It was originated at a time when we were a rural people, and when children were required to labor for profit during the summer months. We have continued this system, with some slight modifications, on to the present time, when seventy-odd per cent of all school children are in urban communities where they have no opportunity to labor; where, indeed, there is nothing for them to do when the schools are not in session. Some of the larger cities are beginning to appreciate the problem, and are establishing vacation schools; but nine-tenths of the communities in Wisconsin which should have school-work during the summer have nothing of the kind.

The writer has asked many people in different communities why there should be such a long break in school life; and while some have thrown up their hands and declared the thing was beyond them, the majority have said that children need this free period for rest and recreation. The readers of this Journal know that the present writer is hammering away every month upon the requirements for improved mental and physical hygiene in education. We have let no opportunity pass to make a point in favor of shorter hours in the school, and more fresh air and out-of-door life for pupils of all ages. What we are about now to say in no way conflicts with the position we have taken heretofore in respect to these matters. Experience

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and modern research alike endorse the proposition that frequent short vacations during the year are far better for health and for intellectual advancement than one long one. A shorter school day, but with a greater number of school days in the year, would conform to the laws of psychology and hygiene far better than our present plan of a long school day, with three months' total abandonment of school work. The present writer thinks it would be better to have school six days in the week, not more than three or at the outside three and one-half hours a day, forty-eight weeks in the year, than to have a six-hour school day with a three months' vacation period. Given a certain number of hours that a pupil should spend in a school in year, then they ought to be distributed evenly throughout the year, rather than to be massed into eight and one-half months. Everything we know about human nature leads to the conclusion that what is required in the school is short periods of concentrated attention with no long breaks. We have seen pupils forget most of what they have learned in spelling, say, when they have had none of it for three months.

VACATION DISCIPLINE.

The problem of control of the young in a community would be vastly easier if they had some work in the school for most of the days of the year. It would be of advantage to have one week's break four times during the year, but the vacation ought not to be longer than this. Of course, adults who like long vacations so that they may change their place of abode and apply themselves to new activities will interpret the child's need from their own experience, and they will say, "Why, of course, the child must have three months so that he may cultivate new interests." But the interests of practically all the children in any community are

such that they can be best indulged by having several free hours every day in the year, rather than by being crowded for nine months, and then having three months wholly free. The majority of children in the city do not know how properly to employ their time for a long idle period. They grow weary of the activities which are repeated over and over again in urban communities. They would be much better off from the standpoint of their own feelings if they were in school two or three hours during the summer months, engaged in concrete work such as the vacation schools undertake. The conflicts between children and their parents and the officers of government increase greatly during the months of complete vacation. There really is no justification whatever under modern urban conditions for the existing régime in respect to the division of the school year.

SPELLING MATCHES.

At a recent spelling match held in the auditorium at the Winona Lake Assembly the winner was a woman said to be about fifty years of age. She had as competitors persons of all ages. The press in commenting upon the affair called attention to the remarkable fact that a woman of this age should be able to spell better than young people just out of school. The inference seemed clear that the schools are not now teaching spelling as effectively as they did a generation ago. One Chicago paper lambasted the whole system of modern education because it gave so much attention to "frills" and neglected the essentials. Doubtless some of the readers of this note are already bored nigh into death with talk about essentials in teaching; but at the risk of adding the last straw to the camel's back, we wish to ask what difference it makes whether or not a woman of fifty years wins a spelling match? The writer sent an inquiry regarding the matter to an educational man in Winona Lake, who responded to the effect that this woman was accustomed to go around to spelling matches, and he thought she made her living in part in this way; i. e., she was a spelling expert. She had made it her business to spell for the purpose of public entertainment, and not because it would be of service to her in other ways.

Any sensible person will acknowledge that 999 persons out of every 1000 occupying the station of life that this woman did would not use in their

daily expressions more than one-tenth of the words she could spell. The other nine-tenths were mainly debris, taking up space in the mind that ought to be occupied by something else of more service. From all accounts the woman who won this spelling match was lacking in respect to much that makes life really worth while. If every one in the world was like her; i. e., if every one had his head full of words but practically empty of other things, what a footstool this would be!

The writer of this note may possibly be pardoned for making a confession here; it will perhaps point a moral. He can remember that away back in remote times he used to be taken long distances to spelling matches. More to his discredit than to his credit, he won in the course of a few years a great number of matches throughout the part of the country in which he lived. He amassed a vast body of words, a considerable proportion of which he has not used since, though his needs in this respect have been greater than nineteentwentieths of the people who were in school with him. Now, if he had to do the thing over again, and he had anything to say about his educational training, he would urge upon his trainers that he be permitted to take the time spent in learning useless words, and employ it in learning more of history and literature and human institutions, and

more of nature as it is described in the various sciences. It really signifies little to say that a person can spell an entire dictionary of words. What counts is the ability to use them readily and properly when they are needed. It is a simple enough fact that many good spellers are stupid as owls in matters of vital importance. It fills the system of the present writer with various ills and aches when he hears people praising or damning an educational system on the basis of the success of its pupils in spelling matches.

HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETICS.

Throughout our own state, as well as throughout the country at large, there is a growing tendency to restrain high-school students in their athletic excesses. Reports have come to us of a number of boards of education which have adopted rules prohibiting inter-academic athletic contests. There seem to be a number of valid reasons why such action is justifiable, at least in many communities. The chief interest in athletics in some