Chapter IV: Methods and Organization (2)

The normal schools incline to the smallest proportion for practice-teaching, the city training-schools to the largest. It should be borne in mind, however, that city training-schools are a close continuation, usually, of high schools, and that the high-school courses give a more uniform and probably a more adequate preparation than the students entering normal schools have usually had. Their facilities for practice-teaching are much greater than normal schools can secure, and for this reason also practice is made relatively more important. As to the relative merits of city training-schools and normal schools, your committee does not desire to express an opinion; the conditions of education demand the existence of both, and both are necessities of educational advancement. It is important to add, however, that in the judgment of your committee not less than half of the time spent under training by the apprentice-teacher should be given to observation and practice, and that this practice in its conditions should be as similar as possible to the work she will later be required to do independently.

_Science of teaching--psychology._

The laws of apperception teach that one is ready to apprehend new truth most readily when he has already established a considerable and well-arranged body of ideas thereon.

Suggestion, observation, and reflection are each most fruitful when a foundation of antecedent knowledge has been provided. Hence your committee recommends that early in their course of study teachers in training assume as true the well-known facts of psychology and the essential principles of education, and make their later study and practice in the light of these principles. These principles thus become the norm of educational thought, and their truth is continually demonstrated by subsequent experience. From this time theory and practice should proceed together in mutual aid and support.

Most fundamental and important of the professional studies which ought to be pursued by one intending to teach is psychology. This study should be pursued at two periods of the training-school course, the beginning and the end, and its principles should be appealed to daily when not formally studied. The method of study should be both deductive and inductive. The terminology should be early learned from a suitable text-book, and significance given to the terms by introspection, observation, and analysis. Power of introspection should be gained, guidance in observation should be given, and confirmation of psychological principles should be sought on every hand. The habit of thinking analytically and psychologically should be formed by every teacher. At the close of the course a more profound and more completely inductive study of physiological psychology should be made. In this way, a tendency to investigate should be encouraged or created.

_Study of children._

Modern educational thought emphasizes the opinion that the child, not the subject of study, is the guide to the teacher’s efforts. To know the child is of paramount importance. How to know the child must be an important item of instruction to the teacher in training. The child must be studied as to his physical, mental, and moral condition. Is he in good health? Are his senses of sight and hearing normal, or in what degree abnormal? What is his temperament? Which of his faculties seem weak or dormant? Is he eye-minded or ear-minded? What are his powers of attention? What are his likes and dislikes? How far is his moral nature developed, and what are its tendencies? By what tests can the degree of difference between bright and dull children be estimated?

To study effectively and observingly these and similar questions respecting children is a high art. No common-sense power of discerning human nature is sufficient; though common sense and sympathy go a long way in such study. Weighing, measuring, elaborate investigation requiring apparatus and laboratory methods, are for experts, not teachers in training. Above all, it must ever be remembered that the child is to be studied as a personality and not as an object to be weighed or analyzed.

_Methodology._

A part of the work under this head must be a study of the mental and moral effects of different methods of teaching and examination, the relative value of individual and class instruction at different periods of school life and in the study of different branches. The art of questioning is to be studied in its foundation principles and by the illustration of the best examples. Some review of the branches which are to be taught may be made, making the teacher’s knowledge of them ready and distinct as to the relations of the several parts of the subject to one another and of the whole to kindred subjects. These and many such subjects should be discussed in the class in pedagogy, investigation should be begun, and the lines on which it can be followed should be distinctly laid down.

The laws of psychology, or the capabilities and methods of mind-activity, are themselves the fundamental laws of teaching, which is the act of exciting normal and profitable mind-action. Beyond these fundamental laws, the principles of education are to be derived inductively. These inductions when brought to test will be found to be rational inferences from psychological laws and thus founded upon and explained by them.

_School economy._

School economy, though a factor of great importance in the teacher’s training, can be best studied by the teacher of some maturity and experience, and is of more value in the equipment of secondary than of elementary teachers. Only its outlines and fundamental principles should be studied in the ordinary training-school.

_History of education._

Breadth of mind consists in the power to view facts and opinions from the standpoints of others. It is this truth which makes the study of history in a full, appreciative way so influential in giving mental breadth. This general advantage the history of education has in still larger degree, because our interest in the views and experiences of those engaged like us in training the young enables us to enter more fully into their thoughts and purposes than we could into those of the warrior or ruler. From the efforts of the man we imagine his surroundings, which, we contrast with our own. To the abstract element of theoretical truth is added the warm human interest we feel in the hero, the generous partisan of truth. The history of education is particularly full of examples of noble purpose, advanced thought, and moral heroism. It is inspiring to fill our minds with these human ideals. We read in the success of the unpractical Pestalozzi the award made to self-sacrifice, sympathy, and enthusiasm expended in giving application to a vital truth.

But with enthusiasm for ideals history gives us caution, warns us against the moving of the pendulum, and gives us points of departure from which to measure progress. It gives us courage to attack difficult problems. It shows which the abiding problems are--those that can be solved only by waiting, and not tossed aside by a supreme effort. It shows us the progress of the race, the changing ideals of the perfect man, and the means by which men have sought to realize these ideals. We can from its study better answer the question, What is education, what may it accomplish, and how may its ideals be realized? It gives the evolution of the present and explains anomalies in our work. And yet the history of education is not a subject to be treated extensively in a training school. All but the outlines may better be reserved for later professional reading.

_Training in teaching._

Training to teach requires (1) schools for observation, and (2) schools for practice.

Of necessity, these schools must be separate in purpose and in organization. A practice-school cannot be a model school. The pupil-teachers should have the opportunity to observe the best models of the teaching art; and the manner, methods, and devices of the model-teacher should be noted, discussed, and referred to the foundation principles on which they rest. Allowable modifications of this observed work may be suggested by the pupil-teacher and approved by the teacher in charge.

There should be selected certain of the best teachers in regular school work, whom the pupil-teachers may be sent to observe. The pupil-teachers should take no part in the school work nor cause any change therein. They should, however, be told in advance by the teacher what purpose she seeks to accomplish. This excites expectation and brings into consciousness the apperceiving ideas by which the suggestions of the exercise, as they develop, may be seized and assimilated.

At first these visits should be made in company with their teacher of methods, and the work of a single class in one subject should be first observed. After such visits the teacher of methods in the given subject should discuss with the pupil-teachers the work observed. The pupil-teachers should first describe the work they have seen and specify the excellences noted, and tell why these thing are commendable and upon what laws of teaching they are based. Next, the pupil-teachers should question the teacher of methods as to the cause, purpose, or influence of things noted, and matters of doubtful propriety--if there be such--should be considered. Then the teacher in turn should question her pupil-teachers as to matters that seem to have escaped their notice, as to the motive of the model-teacher, as to the reason for the order of treatment, or form of question, wherein lay the merit of her method, the secret of her power. When pupil-teachers have made such observations several times, with several teachers, and in several subjects, the broader investigation may be made as to the organization of one of the model rooms, its daily programme of recitations and of study, the methods of discipline, the relations between pupils and teacher, the “school spirit,” the school movements, and class progress. This work should be done before teaching groups or classes of pupils is attempted, and should form an occasional exercise during the period of practice-teaching as a matter of relief and inspiration. If an artist requires the suggestive help of a good example that stirs his own originality, why should not a teacher?

_The practice-school._

During the course in methodology certain steps preparatory to practice-teaching may be taken. 1. The pupil-teacher may analyze the topic to be taught, noting essentials and incidentals, seeking the connections of the subject with the mental possessions of the pupils to be considered and the sequences from these points of contact to the knowledge to be gained under instruction. 2. Next, plans of lessons may be prepared and series of questions for teaching the given subjects. 3. Giving lessons to fellow pupil-teachers leads to familiarity with the mechanism of class work, such as calling, directing, and dismissing classes, gives the beginner ease and self-confidence, leads to careful preparation of lessons, gives skill in asking questions, and in the use of apparatus.

The practice-teaching should be in another school, preferably in a different building, and should commence with group-teaching in a recitation-room apart from the schoolroom. Actual teaching of small groups of children gives opportunity for the study of the child-mind in its efforts at reception and assimilation of new ideas, and shows the modifications in lesson plans that must be made to adapt the subject-matter to the child’s tastes and activities. But the independent charge for a considerable time of a schoolroom with a full quota of pupils, the pupil-teacher and the children being much of the time the sole occupants of the room,--in short, the realization of ordinary school conditions, with the opportunity to go for advice to a friendly critic, is the most valuable practice; and no practice short of this can be considered of great value except as preparation for this chief form of preparatory practice. All this work should have its due proportion only, or evil may result. For example, lesson plans tend to formalism, to self-conceit, to work in few and narrow lines, to study of subjects rather than of pupils; lessons to fellow-pupils make one self-conscious, hinder the growth of enthusiasm in work, and are entirely barren if carried beyond a very few exercises; teaching groups of children for considerable time unfits the teacher for the double burden of discipline and instruction, to bear both of which simultaneously and easily is the teacher’s greatest difficulty and most essential power.

A critic-teacher should be appointed to the oversight of two such pupil-teachers, each in charge of a schoolroom. The critic may also supervise one or more teachers practicing for brief periods daily with groups of children.

The pupil-teachers are now to emphasize practice rather than theory, to work under the direction of one who regards the interests of the children quite as much as those of the teacher-in-training. The critic must admit the principles of education and general methods taught by the teacher of methodology, but she may have her own devices and even special methods that need not be those of the teacher of methodology. No harm will come to the teachers-in-training if they learn that principles must be assented to by all, but that methods may bear the stamp of the personality of the teacher; that all things must be considered from the point of view of their effect upon the pupils; the critic maintaining the claims of the children, the teacher of methods conforming to the laws of mind and the science of the subjects taught. The critics must teach for their pupil-teachers and show in action the justness of their suggestions. In this sense they are model-teachers as well as critics.

The critic should, at the close of school, meet her pupil-teachers for a report of their experiences through the day: What they have attempted, how they have tried to do it, why they did so, and what success they gained. Advice as to overcoming difficulties, encouragement under trial, caution if need be, help for the work of to-morrow, occupy the hour. Above all, the critic should be a true friend, a womanly and cultivated woman, and an inspiring companion, whose presence is helpful to work and improving to personality.

_Length of training-school course._

There are three elements which determine the time to be spent in a training school--the time given to academic studies, the time given to professional studies, and the time given to practice. The sum of these periods will be the time required for the training course. Taking these in the inverse order, let us consider how much time is required for practice work with pupils. The time given to lesson outlines and practice with fellow pupil-teachers may be considered a part of the professional study rather than of practice-teaching. The period of practice with pupils must not be too short, whether we consider the interests of the pupils or of the teachers-in-training. An effort is usually made to counteract the effect upon the children of a succession of crude efforts of teachers beginning practice by strengthening the teaching and supervision through the employment of a considerable number of model and supervisory teachers, and by dividing the pupils into small groups, so that much individual work can be done. These arrangements, while useful for their purpose, destroy to a considerable degree the usual conditions under which school work is to be done, and tend to render the teachers-in-training formal and imitative.

The practice room should be, as far as may be, the ordinary school, with the difficulties and responsibilities that will be met later. The responsibility for order, discipline, progress, records, reports, communication with parents and school authorities, must fall fully upon the young teacher, who has a friendly assistant to whom she can go for advice in the person of a wise and experienced critic, not constantly at hand, but constantly within reach.

Between the critic and the teacher-in-training there should exist the most cordial and familiar relations. These relations are based on the one hand upon an appreciation of wisdom and kindness, on the other, upon an appreciation of sincerity and effort. The growth of such relations, and the fruitage which follows their growth, require time. A half-year is not too long to be allotted for them. During this half-year experience, self-confidence and growth in power have been gained; but the pupil-teacher is still not ready to be set aside to work out her own destiny. At this point she is just ready for marked advance, which should be helped and guided. To remain longer with her critic friend may cause imitation rather than independence, may lead to contentment and cessation of growth. She should now be transferred to the care of a second critic of a different personality, but of equal merit. The new critic is bound by her duty and her ambition to see that the first half year’s advancement is maintained in the second. The pupil-teacher finds that excellence is not all upon one model. The value of individuality impresses her. She gains a view of solid principles wrapped in diverse characteristics. Her own individuality rises to new importance, and the elements of a growth not at once to be checked start up within her. For the care of the second critic a second half year must be allowed, which extends the practice work with pupils through an entire school year. For the theoretical work a year is by general experience proven sufficient. The ideal training course is, then, one of two years’ length.

Provision for the extended practice which is here recommended can be made only by city training-schools and by normal schools having connection with the schools of a city. To set apart a building of several rooms as a school of practice will answer the purpose only when there are very few teachers in training. In order to give each pupil-teacher a year of practice the number of practice rooms must equal the number of teachers to be graduated annually from the training-school, be the number ten, fifty, or five hundred. In any considerable city a school for practice will not suffice; many schools for practice must be secured. This can be done by selecting one excellent teacher in each of a sufficient number of school buildings, and making her a critic-teacher, giving her charge of two schoolrooms, in each of which is placed a pupil-teacher for training.

This insures that the training shall be done as nearly as may be under ordinary conditions, brings the pupil-teachers at once into the general body of teachers, makes the corps of critics a leaven of zeal, and good teaching scattered among the schools. This body of critics will uplift the schools. More capable in the beginning than the average teacher, led to professional study, ambitious for the best things, they make greater progress than they otherwise would do, and are sufficient in themselves to inspire the general body of teachers. For the sake of the pupil-teachers, and the children, too, this plan is best. Its economy also will readily be apparent. This plan has been tried for several years in the schools of Providence, with results fully equal to those herein claimed.

_Tests of success._

The tests of success in practice-teaching are in the main those to be applied to all teaching. Do her pupils grow more honest, industrious, polite? Do they admire their teacher? Does she secure obedience and industry only while demanding it, or has she influence that reaches beyond her presence? Do her pupils think well and talk well? As to the teacher herself: Has she sympathy and tact, self-reliance and originality, breadth and intensity? Is she systematic, direct, and business-like? Is she courteous, neat in person and in work? Has she discernment of character and a just standard of requirement and attainment?

These are some of the questions one must answer before he pronounces any teacher a success or a failure.

Admission to a training school assumes that the pupil has good health, good scholarship, good sense, good ability, and devotion to the work of teaching. If all these continue to be exhibited in satisfactory degree and the pupil goes through the prescribed course of study and practice, the diploma of the school should naturally mark the completion of this work. If it appears on acquaintance that a serious mistake has been made in estimating any of these elements, then, so soon as the mistake is fairly apparent and is probably a permanent condition, the pupil should be requested to withdraw from the work. This is not a case where the wheat and the tares should grow together until the harvest at graduation day or the examination preceding it. With such a foundation continually maintained, it is the duty of the school to conquer success for each pupil.

Teaching does not require genius. Indeed, genius, in the sense of erratic ability, is out of place in the teacher’s chair. Most good teachers at this close of the nineteenth century are made, not born; made from good material well fashioned. There is, however, a possibility that some idiosyncrasy of character, not readily discovered until the test is made, may rise between the prospective teacher and her pupils, making her influence over them small or harmful. Such a defect, if it exist, will appear during the practice-teaching, and the critic will discover it. This defect, on its first discovery, should be plainly pointed out to the teacher-in-training and her efforts should be joined with those of the critic in its removal.

If this effort be a failure and the defect be one likely to harm the pupils hereafter to be taught, then the teacher-in-training should be informed and requested to withdraw from the school. There should be no test at the close of the school course to determine fitness for graduation. Graduation should find the teacher serious in view of her responsibilities, hopeful because she has learned how success is to be attained, inspired with the belief that growth in herself and in her pupils is the great demand and the great reward.

_Training of teachers for secondary schools._

Perhaps one-sixth of the great body of public school teachers in the United States are engaged in secondary work and in supervision. These are the leading teachers. They give educational tone to communities, as well as inspiration to the body of teachers.

It is of great importance that they be imbued with the professional spirit springing from sound professional culture. The very difficult and responsible positions that they fill demand ripe scholarship, more than ordinary ability, and an intimate knowledge of the period of adolescence, which Rousseau so aptly styles the second birth.

The elementary schools provide for the education of the masses. Our secondary schools educate our social and business leaders. The careers of our college graduates, who mainly fill the important places in professional and political life, are determined largely by the years of secondary training. The college or university gives expansion and finish, the secondary school gives character and direction.

It should not be forgotten that the superintendents of public schools are largely taken from the ranks of secondary teachers, and that the scholarship, qualities, and training required for the one class are nearly equivalent to that demanded for the other.

Our high schools, too, are the source of supply for teachers in elementary schools. Hence the pedagogic influences exerted in the high school should lead to excellence in elementary teaching.

The superintendent who with long foresight looks to the improvement of his schools will labor earnestly to improve and especially to professionalize the teaching in his high school. The management which makes the high school an independent portion of the school system, merely attached and loftily superior, which limits the supervision and influence of the superintendent to the primary and grammar grades, is short-sighted and destructive.

There ought also to be a place and a plan for the training of teachers for normal schools. The great body of normal and training schools in the United States are secondary schools. Those who are to teach in these schools need broad scholarship, thorough understanding of educational problems, and trained experience. To put into these schools teachers whose scholarship is that of the secondary school and whose training is that of the elementary is to narrow and depress, rather than broaden and elevate.

If college graduates are put directly into teaching without special study and training, they will teach as they have been taught. The methods of college professors are not in all cases the best, and, if they were, high school pupils are not to be taught nor disciplined as college students are. High school teaching and discipline can be that neither of the grammar school nor of the college, but is _sui generis_. To recognize this truth and the special differences is vital to success. This recognition comes only from much experience at great loss and partial failure, or by happy intuition not usually to be expected, or by definite instruction and directed practice. Success in teaching depends upon conformity to principles, and these principles are not a part of the mental equipment of every educated person.

These considerations and others are the occasion of a growing conviction, widespread in this land, that secondary teachers should be trained for their work even more carefully than elementary teachers are trained. This conviction is manifested in the efforts to secure normal schools adapted to training teachers for secondary schools, notably in Massachusetts and New York, and in the numerous professorships of pedagogy established in rapidly increasing numbers in our colleges and universities.

The training of teachers for secondary schools is in several essential respects the same as that for teachers of elementary schools. Both demand scholarship, theory, and practice. The degree of scholarship required for secondary teachers is by common consent fixed at a collegiate education. No one--with rare exceptions--should be employed to teach in a high school who has not this fundamental preparation.

It is not necessary to enter in detail into the work of theoretical instruction for secondary teachers. The able men at the head of institutions and departments designed for such work neither need nor desire advice upon this matter. And yet for the purposes of this report it may be allowable to point out a plan for the organization of a~secondary training school.

Let it be supposed that two essentials have been found in one locality, (1) a college or university having a department of pedagogy and a department of post-graduate work; (2) a high school, academy, or preparatory school whose managers are willing to employ and pay a number of graduate students to teach under direction for a portion of each day. These two conditions being met, we will suppose that pedagogy is offered as an elective to the college seniors.

Two years of instruction in the science and art of teaching are to be provided; one, mostly theory with some practice, elective during the senior year; the other, mostly practice with some theory, elective for one year as post-graduate work.

During the senior year is to be studied:--

_The science of teaching._

The elements of this science are:--

I. Psychology in its physiological, apperceptive, and experimental features. The period of adolescence here assumes the prominence that childhood has in the psychological study preparatory to teaching in lower schools. This is the period of beginnings, the beginning of a more ambitious and generous life, a life having the future wrapped up in it; a transition period, of mental storm and stress, in which egoism gives way to altruism, romance has charm, and the social, moral, and religious feelings bud and bloom. To guide youth at this formative stage, in which an active fermentation occurs that may give wine or vinegar according to conditions, requires a deep and sympathetic nature, and that knowledge of the changing life which supplies guidance wise and adequate.

II. Methodology: A discussion of the principles of education and of the methods of teaching the studies of the secondary schools.

III. School economy should be studied in a much wider and more thorough way than is required for elementary teachers. The school systems of Germany, France, England, and the leading systems of the United States should also be studied.

IV. History of education, the tracing of modern doctrine back to its sources; those streams of influence now flowing and those that have disappeared in the sands of the centuries.

V. The philosophy of education as a division of an all-involving philosophy of life and thought in which unity is found.

_The art of teaching._

This includes observation and practice. The observation should include the work of different grades and of different localities, with minute and searching comparison and reports upon special topics. How does excellent primary work differ from excellent grammar grade work? How do the standards of excellence differ between grammar grades and high school grades? Between high school and college work? What are the arguments for and against co-education in secondary schools, as determined by experience? What are the upper and lower limits of secondary education as determined by the nature of the pupil’s efforts?

In the college class in pedagogy much more than in the elementary normal school can the class itself be made to afford a means of practice to its members. Quizzes may be conducted by students upon the chapters of the books read or the lectures of the professors. These exercises may have for their object review, or improved statement, or enlarged inference and application, and they afford an ample opportunity to cultivate the art of questioning, skill in which is the teacher’s most essential accomplishment.

The head of the department of pedagogy will, of course, present the essential methods of teaching, and the heads of other departments may lecture on methods pertaining to their subject of study; or secondary teachers of known success may still better present the methods now approved in the several departments of secondary work.

_Post-graduate year._

To those graduates who have elected pedagogy in their senior year may be offered the opportunity of further study in this department, with such other post-graduate work as taste and opportunity permit. From those selecting advanced work in pedagogy the board in charge of the affiliated secondary school should elect as many teachers for its school as are needed, employing them for two-thirds time at one-half the usual pay for teachers without experience. Under the professor of pedagogy of the college, the principal, and the heads of departments of the school these student-teachers should do their work, receiving advice, criticism, and illustration as occasion requires. The time for which they are employed would provide for two hours of class work and about one hour of clerical work or study while in charge of a schoolroom. These student-teachers should be given abundant opportunity for the charge of pupils while reciting or studying, at recess and dismissals, and should have all the responsibilities of members of the faculty of this school. Their work should be inspected as frequently as may be by the heads of the departments in which they teach, by the principal of the school, and by the professor of pedagogy. These appointments would be virtually fellowships with an opportunity for most profitable experience.

In the afternoon of each day these students should attend to college work and especially to instruction from the professor in pedagogy, who could meet them occasionally with the heads of the departments under whose direction they are working.

On Saturdays a seminary of two hours’ duration might be held, conducted by the professor of pedagogy and attended by the student-teachers and the more ambitious teachers of experience in the vicinity. These seminaries would, doubtless, be of great profit to both classes of participants, and the greater to each because of the other. (Such a training school for secondary teachers in connection with Brown University and the Providence high school is contemplated for the coming year.)

It will not be needful to specify further the advantages to the student-teachers. The arrangement likewise affords advantage to the affiliated school, especially in the breadth of view this work would afford to the heads of departments, the intense desire it would beget in them for professional skill, the number of perplexing problems which it would force them to attempt the solution of.

The visits of the professor of pedagogy, and the constant comparison he would make between actual and ideal conditions, would lead him to seek the improvement, not only of the students in practice, but of the school as a whole.

When several earnest and capable people unite in a mutual effort to improve themselves and their work, all the essential conditions of progress are present.

HORACE S. TARBELL, Chairman,
Superintendent of Schools, Providence, R. I.

EDWARD BROOKS,
Superintendent of Schools, Philadelphia, Pa.

THOMAS M. BALLIET,
Superintendent of Schools, Springfield, Mass.

NEWTON C. DOUGHERTY,
Superintendent of Schools, Peoria, Ill.

OSCAR H. COOPER,
Superintendent of Schools, Galveston, Tex.

Dissent from Dr. Harris’ Report.

BY JAMES M. GREENWOOD, OF KANSAS CITY.

I dissent from the majority report of the Committee in regard to the following points:--

_Arithmetic_

1. AS TO FRACTIONS: In teaching arithmetic there does not exist any greater difficulty in getting small children to grasp the nature of the fraction as such than in getting them to grasp the idea of the simpler whole numbers. It is true that the fractions ½, ⅓, ¼, etc., as symbols, are a little more complex than are the single digits; but as to the real meaning, when once the fractional idea has been properly developed by the teacher and the significance of the idea apprehended by the pupil, it is as easily understood as any other simple truth. Children get the idea of half, third, or quarter of many things long before they enter school, and they will as readily learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions as they will whole numbers. In using fractions they will draw diagrams and pictures representing the processes of work as quickly and easily as they illustrate similar work with integers. It is, of course, assumed that the teacher knows how to teach arithmetic to children, or rather, how to teach the children how to teach themselves. There is really no valid argument why children in the second, third, and fourth years in school should not master the fundamental operations in fractions. Not only this, they will put the more common fractions into the technique of percentage, and do this as well in the second and third grades as at any other time in their future progress. There is only one new idea involved in this operation, and that consists in giving an additional term--per cent.--to the fractional symbol. When one number is a part of another, it may be regarded as a fractional part or as such a per cent. of it. A great deal of percentage is thus learned by the pupils early in the course. Children are not hurt by learning. Standing still and lost motion kill.

Every recitation should reach the full swing of the learner’s mind, including all his acquisitions on any given topic. But if the teaching of fractions be deferred, as it usually is in most schools, the time may be materially shortened by teaching addition and subtraction of fractions together. This is simple enough if different fractions having common denominators are used at first, such as 6/2 + 5/2 = ?, and 6/2 - 5/2 = ? Then the next step, after sufficient drill on this case, is to take two fractions (simple) of different units of value, as ½ + ⅓ = ?, and ½ - ⅓ = ? Multiplication and division may be treated similarly.

In decimals, the pupil is really confronted by a simpler form of fractions than the varied forms of common fractions.

Devices and illustrations of a material kind are necessary to build up in the pupil’s mind at the beginning a clear concept of a tenth, etc., etc., and then to show that one-tenth written as a decimal is only a shorthand way of writing 1/10 as a common fraction, and so on. He sees very soon that the decimal is only a shorthand common fraction, and this notion he must hold to. This is the vital point in decimals. The idea that they can be changed into common fractions and the reverse at will establishes the fact in the pupil’s mind that they are common fractions and not uncommon ones. Fixing the decimal point will, in a short time, take care of itself.

In teaching arithmetic the steps are: (1) developing the subject till each pupil gets a clear conception of it; (2) necessary drill to fix the process; (3) connecting the subject with all that has preceded it; (4) its applications; (5) the pupil’s ability to sum up clearly and concisely what he has learned.

2. AS TO ABRIDGMENT: Under this head, I hold that a course in arithmetic, including simple numbers, fractions, tables of weights and measures, percentage, and interest, and numerical operations in powers, does not fit a pupil to begin the study of algebra. That while he may carry the book under his arm to the schoolroom, he is too poorly equipped to make headway on this subject, and instead of finishing up algebra in a reasonable length of time, he is kept too long at it, with a strong probability of his becoming disgusted with it.

There are subjects, however, in the common school arithmetic that may be dropped out with great advantage, to wit, all but the simplest exercises in compound interest, foreign exchange, all foreign moneys (except reference tables of values), annuities, alligation, progression; and the entire subjects of percentage and interest should be condensed into about twenty pages.

Cancellation, factoring, proportion, evolution, and involution should be retained. Cancellation and factoring should be strongly emphasized, owing to their immense value in shortening work in arithmetic, algebra, and in more advanced subjects. Some drill in the Metric System should not be omitted.

3. AS TO MENTAL ARITHMETIC: Till the end of the fourth year the pupil does not need a text-book of mental arithmetic. So far his work in arithmetic should be about equally divided between written and mental. At the beginning of the fifth year, in addition to his written arithmetic, he should begin a mental arithmetic and continue it three years, reciting at least four mental arithmetic lessons each week. The length of the recitation should be twenty minutes. A pupil well drilled in mental arithmetic at the end of the seventh year, if the school age begins at six, is far better prepared to study algebra than the one who has not had such a drill. There are a few problems in arithmetic that can be solved more easily by algebra than by the ordinary processes of arithmetic, but there are many numerical problems in equations of the first degree that can be more easily handled by mental arithmetic than by algebra. To attack arithmetical problems by algebra is very much like using a tremendous lever to lift a feather. Those who have found a great stumbling-block in arithmetical “conundrums” have, if the inside facts were known, been looking in the wrong direction. A deficiency of “number-brain-cells” will afford an adequate explanation.

4. REARRANGEMENT OF SUBJECTS: There should be a rearrangement of the topics in arithmetic so that one subject naturally leads up to the next. As an illustration, it is easily seen that whole numbers and fractions can be treated together, and that with U. S. money, when the dime is reached, is the proper time to begin decimals, and that when a “square” in surface measure first comes up, the next step is the square of a number as well as its square root, and that solid measure logically lands the learner among cubes and cube-roots. When he learns that 1728 cubic inches make one cubic foot he is prepared to find the edge of the cube. What is meant here is pointing the way to the next above. All depends upon the teacher’s ability to lead the pupil to see conditions and relations. My contention is that truth, so far as one is capable of taking hold of it when it is properly presented, is always a simple affair.

5. AS TO ALGEBRA: If algebra be commenced at the middle of the seventh year, let the pupil go at it in earnest, and keep at it till he has mastered it. Here the best opportunities will be afforded him to connect his algebraic knowledge to his arithmetical knowledge. He builds the one on top of the other. The skillful teacher always insists that the learner shall establish and maintain this relationship between the two subjects. To switch around the other way appears to me to be the same as to omit certain exercises in the common algebra, because they are more briefly and elegantly treated in the calculus. It is admitted that a higher branch of mathematics often throws much light on the lower branches, but these side-lights should be employed for the purpose of leading the learner onward to broader generalizations. Unless one sees the lower clearly, the higher is obscure. Build solidly the foundation on arithmetic--written and mental--and the higher branches will be more easily mastered and time saved.

_History of the United States._

In teaching this branch in the public schools, there does not appear, so far as I can see, any substantial reason why the pupils should not study and recite the history of the Rebellion in the same manner that they do the Revolutionary War. The pupils discuss the late war and the causes that led to it with an impartiality of feeling that speaks more for their good sense and clear judgment than any other way by which their knowledge can be tested. They may not get hold of all the causes involved in that conflict, but they get enough to understand the motives which caused the armies to fight so heroically, and why the people, both North and South, staked everything on the issue. Just as the men who faced each other for four years and met so often in a death grapple will sit down now and quietly talk over their trials, sufferings, and conflicts, so do their children talk over these same stirring scenes. They, too, so far as my experience extends, are singularly free from bitterness and prejudice. It is certainly a period of history that they should study.

_The spelling-book._

In addition to the “spelling-lists,” I would supplement with a good spelling-book. So far, no “word-list,” however well selected, has supplied the place of a spelling-book. All those schools that threw out the spelling-book and undertook to teach spelling incidentally or by word-lists failed, and for the same reason that grammar, arithmetic, geography, and other branches cannot be taught incidentally as the pupil or the class reads Robinson Crusoe, or any similar work. It is an independent study and as such should be pursued.

BY CHARLES B. GILBERT, OF ST. PAUL.

While affixing my signature to the report of this Committee, as expressing substantial agreement with most of its leading propositions, I beg leave also to indicate my dissent from certain of its recommendations and to suggest certain additions which, in my judgment, the report requires.

1. There are other forms of true correlation which should be included with the four mentioned in the first part of the report and which should be as clearly and fully treated as are these four.

The first is that form of correlation which is popularly understood by the name, and which is also called by some writers concentration, co-ordination, unification, and alludes in general to a division of studies into content and form; by content meaning that upon which it is fitting that the mind of the child should dwell, and by form the means or modes of expression by which thoughts are communicated. Or, it may be thus expressed: The true content of education is (1), philosophy or the knowledge of man as to his motives and hidden springs of action indicated in history and literature, and (2) science, the knowledge of nature, and its manifestations and laws. Its form is art, which is the deliberate, purposeful, and effective expression to others of that which has been produced within man by contact with other men and with nature, and is commonly referred to as divided into various arts, such as reading, writing, drawing, making, and modeling. The relation of content and form is that of principle and subordinate, the latter receiving its chief value from the former. In a true education they are so presented to the mind of the child that he instinctively and unconsciously grasps this relation and is thereby lifted into a higher plane of thinking and living than if the various arts are taught, as they too commonly are, without reference to a noble content. This relation of form to content is vaguely referred to in the report, but nowhere definitely treated. It seems to me that it is a true form of correlation, and, as such, deserves special and definite treatment. Moreover, it is at present much in the minds of the teachers of this country, often in forms that are misleading and harmful. The fact that it adds the important element of interest to the dry details of common school life makes it especially attractive to progressive and earnest teachers, and this Committee should recognize its importance and make such an utterance upon it as will guide the average teacher to a clear comprehension of its meaning and to a wise use of it in the schoolroom.

Second, there is a still higher form of correlation which is definitely referred to later in the report as that “of the several branches of human learning in the unity of the spiritual view furnished by religion to our civilization.” This in the report is assigned absolutely to the province of higher education. While I do not wish to dissent wholly from this view, since it is doubtless true that this higher unity cannot be comprehensively stated for the use of a child, yet a wise teacher can so present subjects to even a young child that a sense of the unity of all knowledge will, to a certain degree, be unconsciously developed in his mind. In regard to certain of the great divisions of human knowledge, this relation is so evident that they cannot be properly presented at all unless the relation be made clear. Such studies are history and geography.

2. The recommendations upon the subject of language should be broadened to cover the production of good English by the child himself, with the suggestion of suitable topics and proper methods. This report confines itself to the absorptive side of education and ignores that development of power over nature, man, and self, which comes from free exercise of faculties and free expression of thought. The study of language as something for the child to use himself, the great means by which he is to assert his place in civilization, and exert his influence for good, is nowhere referred to except in the vaguest way. This statement in regard to language applies almost equally well to drawing, and here is made evident the importance of the form of correlation to which I have just referred. The proper material for the training of the child in expression is that which is furnished by the study of man and nature. His mind being filled with high themes, he asserts his individuality, expresses himself in regard to them, and thereby gains at once both a closer and clearer comprehension of what he has studied, and also the power by which he may become a factor in his generation.

3. I would wish to omit the word “weekly” where it occurs in the discussion of the subjects of general history and science, unless it be understood to mean that an amount of time in the school year equivalent to sixty minutes weekly be given to each of these subjects. It is often better to condense these studies into certain portions of the year, giving more time to them each week, and using them as the basis, to a certain degree, of language work. I believe that, especially with young children, clearer concepts are produced by such connected study, pursued for fewer weeks, than by lessons seven days apart.

4. In my judgment manual training should not be limited to the seventh and eighth grades, but should begin in the kindergarten with the simple study of form from objects and the reproduction in paper of the objects presented, and should extend, in a series of carefully graded lessons, through all the grades, leaving, however, the heavier tools, such as the plane, for the seventh and eighth grades. By these means an interest is kept up in the various human industries, sympathy for all labor is created, and a certain degree of skill is developed; moreover, the interest of the pupils in their school is greatly enhanced. Manual training has often proved the magnet by which boys at the restless age have been kept in school instead of leaving for some gainful occupation.

5. I desire to suggest that geometry may be so taught as to be a better mathematical study than algebra to succeed or accompany arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades. I do not refer particularly to inventional geometry, to which the Committee accords a slighting attention, but to constructive geometry and the simplest propositions in demonstrative geometry, thus involving the comprehension of the elementary geometric forms and their more obvious relations. This study may be made of special interest in connection with manual training and drawing, while it presents fewer difficulties to the immature mind than the abstractions of algebra, since it connects more directly with the concrete, by which its presentation may often be aided.

6. While agreeing fully with the majority of the Committee that the full scientific method should not be applied to the study of elementary science by young children, yet I am compelled to favor more of experimentation and observation by the child, and less of telling by the teacher than the report would seem to favor.

7. I would go farther than the majority of the Committee, and insist that, except in rare cases, there should be no specialization of the teaching force below the high school, and that even in the first years of the high school, so far as possible, specialization should be subordinated to a general care of the child’s welfare and oversight of his methods of study, which are impossible when a corps of teachers give instruction, each in one subject, and see the student only during the hour of recitation.

8. While in the main I agree with the bald statements under the head “Correlation by synthesis of studies,” since reference is made to only a very artificial mode of synthesis not at all in vogue in this country, I must dissent emphatically from this portion of the report as by inference condemning a most important department of correlation, to which I have referred earlier. The doctrine of concentration is not necessarily artificial; rather it refers to the higher unity, of which this Committee has spoken in glowing terms as belonging to the province of higher education. It also includes the division of the school curriculum into content and form, which this Committee inferentially adopts in its treatment of language. I do not believe, any more than do the majority of the Committee, that the entire course of study can be literally and exactly centred about a single subject, nor do I believe in any artificial correlation; but there is a natural relation of all knowledges, which this Committee admits in various places, and which is the basis of a proper synthesis of studies, according to the psychological principle of apperception.

9. If by the term “oral,” as applied to lessons in biography and in natural science, the Committee means, as the word would imply, that the instruction is to be given in the form of lectures by the teacher, I cannot in full agree with the Committee’s conclusions. As I have already stated, in natural science the work should be largely that of observation, and in history and biography, while in the very lowest grades the teachers should tell the children stories, as soon as it is possible the desired information should be obtained by the student through reading. To this end the reading lesson in school should be properly correlated with his other studies, and he should be advised as to his home reading. The information thus obtained should be the subject of conversation in the class, and should furnish the material for much of the written language work of the children.