for word and as art wholes-not in detached quotations. If they reach the secondary school without this rich experience, we know that it is very difficult to arouse an interest later.

The university has come to our aid in declaring that a written examination cannot be made to reveal all that a pupil knows of literature; that oral reading gives much of feeling and appreciation that cannot be expressed in a written test. This ought to have a very helpful influence upon the teaching of reading in the elementary school. Higher schools all believe that reading is not well taught in the grades below.

Good reading means a high degree of intelligence and an automatic command of the mechanics of the printed page; in oral reading, physical organs perfectly adapted to the utterance of thought and feeling; sympathy, courage, good temper, and vital force. It requires the training of every power of body and mind, and is therefore the greatest discipline of powers. It calls all other disciplines to its aid. The results of training, even in science and mathematics, are found in language. As the child in the school speaks more and more from interest in the subject and from real experience; as the teacher becomes a more appreciative and inspiring listener, we may hope for improvement in reading.

I have tried to call attention to the influence of art in forming ideals, the influence of ideals upon interests, and their final expression in language and conduct. The creatures of the imagination remain with us longer than the things which we call realities. We know Cordelia and Esther Summerson better than we know our best friends.

The thing we long for, that we are

For one transcendent moment,
Before the present, poor and bare,
Can make its sneering comment.

It is well understood that discipline through the common branches (reading, arithmetic, geography, history, and grammar) depends much upon preserving the right relation between thought and expression, between the theory of the subject and the art which tests the pupil's knowledge of the theory. These branches are fundamental, and may be made to include, in their extension, nearly all forms of activity; but, in my opinion, not quite all that are necessary at this period of development, when we consider that there is no reaction from the study of books through industrial training in the home. We have not the best conditions for the effective teaching of the five fundamental studies.

The useful arts are said to comprehend, not only those which "lie next to instinct, as agriculture, building, and weaving, but also

practical chemistry and the construction of all grand and delicate tools by which man serves himself."

It is the "arts which lie next to instinct” which the growing child so much needs as self-expression. The art of making a box is not so fine an art as the art of reading a poem. It does not require such a high order of intelligence; it may not even require so much vital force or muscular strength. It is a rough adjustment to things compared with the fine adjustment to thoughts. For this reason, if for no other, it is needed for the training of undeveloped minds and as a reaction from a finer nervous tension. It is a way of expressing purpose through muscular action-a training of mind through the nervous system which is valuable in itself at this period of growth, and valuable in preparing the mind and body for higher service. Its value is still greater if the motive for work be some human need, and if it be directed by some necessary relation to other studies, like mathematics and physics.

We look with alarm upon the life of growing boys in cities, without the discipline of physical labor, without any proper purposeful expression of life through physical activity, as a reaction from the tension necessary to the training of higher and more complex powers. A thorough system of industrial training I conceive to be, not a mere incident in a course of study but one of the immediate needs of the elementary school, as a condition for making all instruction more effective.

Instruction in the common branches should be more interesting, more thorough, more heroic. This can be accomplished, not by an increase in the number of hours of daily recitation but by shorter hours, greater skill and knowledge on the part of the teacher, and proper reaction for the children. I believe the quality of our work in the grammar schools would be much improved if the first four hours of the day could be given to the ordinary studies (with proper relaxations) and the afternoon to the workshop and gymnasium and one period of study. This may require more teachers, and may be one solution of the teacher's difficulty in preparing for recitations upon a variety of subjects.

It seems to me that much of the manual work now given in high schools should be given in the elementary school, and that this work should be one element in making pupils capable of more sustained, more advanced, thinking. Pupils go to the high school without material for reflection, without power of sustained effort. We have required much analysis and explanation and little information and expression.

Manual work should stop short of a high degree of skill, excepting where the skill is a necessary means to an end, as in writing.

This marks the difference between the manual training school and the trade school.

"Church and State," says Goethe, "may have reason to declare themselves dominant, but in the sciences absolute freedom is necessary. In the study of nature it is necessary to inquire whether that which has been handed down to us from the past is really to be relied on to such a degree that we may safely build upon it in the future."

I believe that the spirit of observation and investigation which is natural to children should be fostered; that the habit of investigation is a training in individual freedom, and that it is helpful if directed by proper motive. Experiment for the sake of experiment is not helpful to character.

Art rests upon nature and some direct experience of its influence is necessary to the interpretation of art. We must feel the spirit of nature in the wind, in the brook, and in the "tempered light of the woods." To the child, and to men, one of the most valuable influences of nature is the feeling of something beyond the outward appearance, which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard"—the influence of the supernatural. Art has this great blessing to bring to the soul; it can take a few elements-sense objects in their isolationand bring them into unity with life; can create the spirit, the atmosphere which gives them supernatural power.

Each study has at last only a relative value. How to secure the right relation of powers in the individual is the greatest problem in education. What is the true relation of the spiritual powers to the understanding and the senses? And in the unfolding of these powers, how is action to be related to reflection?

No one of the factors of the child's life and growth has any separate existence. His emotions and interests influence his will and forecast his behavior. His physical state conditions in some degree his knowing and doing, and the quality of his knowing may well explain the motive and method of his deed.

We assume that there are higher and lower interests; or, at least, that normal interests may become abnormal, and that it is the right relation of interests and powers in our natures that makes for sanity and health.

I think that Charles Dickens has done much for education by placing before us so vividly the deformities of one-sided training— Richard, who had no steady purpose, no aim in life. "He had been eight years at a public school, and had learned, I understand, to make Latin verses of several sorts, in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt

any kind of knowledge to him. He had been adapted to the verses, and had learned the art of making them to such perfection, that, if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again, unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it." And the Smallweed family, discarding all amusements, story books, fairy tales, fictions, and fables, "were never children, but were born, for several generations, lean, anxious-minded, complete little men and women."

We have found no better way to learn a child's needs and his capacities than in the community-the school-of which he is a part. As a citizen he has rights and duties which must be definedmust be respected. And we must in this community provide for full living, and in harmony with the complex life of the community. We should ask, as he enters the secondary school, not only "What does he know?" but "What does he love? What does he reverence and obey? To what degree, and in what ways, can he freely express his power?"

DISCUSSION.

SUPT. F. TREUDLEY, Youngstown, Ohio.-There is one part of Miss Cropsey's paper to which special attention should be given, viz., the influence of the beautiful in all its forms upon life, and the desirability of its cultivation.

There are certain elements of training that literally force themselves upon the schools, because they represent necessities that cannot be ignored. They are the equipments of the bread winner,-the man of affairs,-of those conditions of life into which men come whether they will or not.

All know what they are. But over and above these lies the domain represented by art, whose ministrations are o fthe utmost value to the human soul. This influence will not proceed from itself alone. The beautiful does not seem to be a necessity, and the public school must charge itself with its development.

But further, let it not be forgotten, that, in the higher ranges of thought, the beautiful invests very fully what in the lower stages of development seems commonplace or utilitarian in its aim. Take mathematics. It leads ultimately into the very mechanism of the universe, a mechanism whose order and form is beauty itself. Take literature. Literature may be but the artistic setting of history. It is history, as Froude most justly remarked, referring to Shakespeare.

Study such a life as that of the great English painter, Sir Frederick Leighton, lately passed away. The painter's art allies itself to history, to literature, to nature.

There is no such thing as complete severance. As Austin Phelps remarked, beauty, truth, and goodness are essential phases of whatever is worth study and reflection.

What the schools need most of all is the taking by the hand of art, the essentials of human instruction and beautifying them by its power and influence.

What Lowell could do as an instructor upon Dante, what Emerson could do as a teacher of philosophy, what Pierce could do in the realm of mathematics, what Barker could do in the domain of physics, the teacher must do as far as in him lies with the material upon which and with which he works.

Correlation ends in knowledge, but adequate knowledge embraces every element and relationship of the subject studied.

SUPT. C. F. CARROLL, Worcester, Mass.-In her excellent paper Miss Cropsey made reference to freedom as a necessary part of the education of children, recommending dancing as one form of physical exercise for the kindergarten. I am not certain that it should be confined to the kindergarten, and know of no reason why children in the earlier grades should not receive the benefit conferred by such exercise. Dancing has long been taught in the kindergartens of Connecticut (and there are many in the state), and has, as I understand, been introduced into the kindergartens of Detroit. Possibly it may be found elsewhere. Nothing brings into play so perfectly every part of the body; nothing so surely gives grace and beauty to movements.

Miss Cropsey's discussion of the elementary curriculum suggests that all the common forms of the human knowledge should be early introduced into our schools, and that the study of nature is especially valuable because it compels both teachers and children to deal directly with the concrete. An examination of a cross-section of the course of study of any grade of school work to the fourth or fifth shows that we have, within a few years, largely increased the content of the work of the schoolroom in the leading cities of this country. What we need most is that this problem should be formulated.

WHAT SHOULD THE HIGH SCHOOL DO FOR THE GRADUATE OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL?

BY F. LOUIS SOLDAN, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, ST. LOUIS, MO.

The query, What should the high school do for the graduate of the elementary school? is easily answered as regards those pupils who resort to the high school for the purpose of preparing themselves for college. Here the high school is a preparatory school, and can, and should, prepare the pupil for any college that he wishes to enter, by arranging a course of study that meets the college requirements.

In many high schools the number of pupils intending to enter college is a very small factor of the total number of the school. For by far the largest number of pupils the high school is the last step in their school education. The course of study for the college class, therefore, cannot fitly apply to the high school at large.

While elementary education has a preeminently psychological aim, namely, to develop the best powers of the child, higher education, such as represented by the university, has for its aim the trans