(a) It will give students a clearer insight into the meaning of many words, thereby changing guess-work or groping for the right word into knowledge and certainty. Such a change makes for correctness and exactness, for clear thinking. (Teachers will, of course, show that frequently the meaning of a word has deviated from the original or etymological meaning, and how this very fact often throws an interesting side-light upon history and social evolution.)

(b) When we can trace strange-sounding, formidable-looking words back to simple, familiar roots, much of the difficulty disappears; such words acquire new significance and vitality; the process is pleasureable and interesting and will inevitably add to our enjoyment of the English language, not only when we read some gem of literature, but also in our daily speech.

(c) As already intimated, many students will be spared loss of time, humiliation, and the torture of studying for two years or longer a language which they have chosen in the dark and have come to hate in a few weeks. The advantage of studying something in which we are interested instead of something we hate is obvious, provided the interesting matter has high educational value, either intrinsically, because it deals with some important and useful segment of truth, some phase of beauty or ethics, or because of its by-product, the mental discipline it affords; and both kinds of value are claimed for this course. It is not intended to make it a "snap course."

(d) A high school course in a foreign language, lasting, as is often the case, two or three years, is of doubtful value unless the student continues that language upon leaving high school, and, frankly speaking, very few do. Is it not a fact that 40 per cent or 50 per cent of a class entering high school do not complete the second year? On the other hand, a course in English etymology which has created the dictionary habit for life, has shown that words are living plants whose roots reach down into and connect us with the individual and social experiences of our remotest ancestors, will add meaning and interest to language, will enrich

thought and feeling and life,-in other words, it will prove of permanent benefit to the student. One of my colleagues with whom I discussed this point was even more enthusiastic than I. He said: "I am convinced that a good one-year's course in etymology is worth more for the understanding of English than two or three years in Latin.

Some of this work is now being done as part of the English course in grammar grades and high school. By handing it over to the special "etymology course" much needed time would be gained for composition, literature and other work.

(e) It is to be hoped that at the end of the year students will, incidentally, have obtained a clear enough idea of the nature and flavor of the languages which are usually studied in high schools to be able to decide somewhat more intelligently than most of them do at present, whether to study a foreign language at all, and if so, which one.

Although this anticipated result of the study of etymologythat it would enable pupils to plan their future work better-has been called incidental, it is by no means unimportant. In fact, it was this very consideration which suggested the plan now submitted to the readers of EDUCATION, for a more intelligent choice of the first year's foreign language ought to reduce the "frightful mortality" in the first year, one of the gravest problems confronting our high schools. I need hardly say that I am fully aware that this plan is still very much "in the rough."

A natural corollary of the etymology course advocated and outlined in these pages, is a course of studies which has already been alluded to, a high school course without any foreign language. Have we not all outgrown the educational superstition that the only road to culture and intellectual salvation is that of foreign languages? And yet we all know boys and girls who do not and cannot learn a foreign language or get an appreciable advantage out of such study, but who are, nevertheless, worthy of a higher, even a highest education. Now, when we are dealing with such boys and girls, who "feel" that they lack the taste and capacity

necessary to make the study of foreign languages profitable, why should we not offer them, instead of a foreign language, more work in science and mathematics, in history, English composition, literature, and so forth? Surely, in the educational heaven are many mansions, and it may be entered by many gates. Shall any one be denied admittance because past centuries have decreed that there is only the strait and narrow gate of foreign language? Besides, we know that access to the valuable subject matter which a language contains depends by no means upon our mastery of that language, and that is fortunate, for, were it thus dependent, most of us would be doomed to comparative provincialism and stagnation. The truth is that nearly all valuable work of other nations and ages has been translated into every civilized language, and while no one will be so naive or rash as to maintain that a translation, even of the drabbest kind of prose, takes quite the place of the original, we must admit, as honest and practical men and women, that to a large extent it does, and knowing how most students "master" a foreign language, even after four or five years' study, we must confess, I repeat, as honest men and women, that, in many ways and for most readers, a good translation is preferable to the original.

As I am in favor of one high school course without foreign languages, so would I permit a pupil who has studied a foreign language for some time and finds the work utterly unprofitable, to drop all foreign language study and to select for the remaining time some other work.

To sum up: I make a plea for an etymology course which will enable students who enter high school to plan their work somewhat more wisely than they do now, which will increase their interest in the English language, will reveal the close and fundamental connection between man's life and history and his speech, will create for many students a new sense, the etymological,will encourage the dictionary habit, and will teach pupils to think. At the same time, and as a logical complement of such a course, I advocate one high school course without a foreign language.

Lack of System in the Decoration of

Classrooms

JOSEPH B. EGAN, PRINCIPAL HOWARD-FROTHINGHAM SCHOOL DISTRICT, BOSTON, MASS.

E

¤÷NVIRONMENT as a vital factor in education has not received the consideration due its importance. The average classroom, whether in the city or country, is about the dreariest place in the child's experience. The street has the blue of the sky and the shifting cloud and the complex arrangement of houses and signs, with color everywhere, though the scheme is not of the best or conducive to the cultivation of good taste. The home, even the poorest, has its hangings, its colorful dishes, its pictures, its carpets and rugs, all giving evidence of a desire, albiet a crude one in some cases, to carry over into the daily existence a little of the light and color that so abounds in the world without. The average schoolroom, on the contrary, with the passing out of the little girls, their hair-ribbons and dresses, resolves itself usually into a dull monotony of grays and browns, with here and there a still duller halftone outlined against a mighty expanse of empty wall.

This should not be. The correct and adequate decoration of the room should be as much a part of the original building plan as the foundation itself, in fact, should be of more importance, since it is against the walls and ceilings of the rooms that the vision of the growing minds within must batter themselves for five long hours each day. It is possible to imprison the vision with consequent loss of imaginative strength, just as it is possible to imprison a bird, and the effect upon the soul of the child is analagous in a way to the effect upon the bird, for inasmuch as the bird loses power of wing and becomes in time used to its cramped environment, so the child's imagination withers and the dullness.

of his daily routine narrows his horizon as it serves to impede his physical growth. Therefore the walls of the classroom must be considered in the education of the future with this one end in view, to make them serve the great purpose of broadening the mental horizon of the child, not through elaborate study of mural decorations, but through the more subtle influence of the observant eye and subconsciously recording mind. To be more explicit, there should be outlets through which, by means of the witchery of the painter's brush, the eyes of the child may look out upon the expanse of the world, as truly as though he stood on the hilltops with the wind fresh upon his cheek. For this reason the carbon prints, etchings, and other productions in which the coloring is not that of the out-of-doors, are not strictly suitable for the classroom, inasmuch as the daily impression made upon the child's mind is false, at variance with the real scene in nature, in which color predominates. Without doubt, for all purposes except those of composition, color is the vital feature; in its infinite tones and hues and subtle blendings lies the proof of the life that creates, the soul in the leaf and the blossom, the skilled artisanship of the power that lies in the simple seed.

The day will come when provision will be made for the supplying of just this lack; when parents and committees will realize that in neglecting this opportunity of subconsciously influencing the child towards the appreciation of the beautiful they are denying him one of the means, the most inexpensive and best means, of filling the days of his maturity with the joy of the world without. There need be no craving for contemplation of glory while the spring comes with its riot of flowers, or the sun sets in encompassing clouds, provided that the eye and mind are trained to appreciate. The result of modern education should be such in its influence upon the gentler qualities of soul that no one could pass by a scene of solemn grandeur without feeling the emotions stir within his breast. That this is not the case is only too evident. The vast majority look up to the sky for signs of the weather. The vast panorama of cloud and sun is played out each day to a heedless and indifferent world.