study in history, and that the intelligent, interested use of authorities for the facts they contain has come to stay.

The inquiries as to the teaching of history below the grammar grade elicited the fact that in two thirds of the schools such instruction is given. Some of the work is very excellent, judging from the reports. At Ft. Atkinson it is taught in connection with the supplementary reading of Grandfather's Chair and Eggleston's Elementary U. S. History. At Oshkosh in the third, fourth and fifth grades, work is done in American biography for use directly in language and indirectly in history. The fourth and fifth grades each have thirty or forty copies of Eggleston's First Book in U. S. history for supplementary reading. At Poynette the instruction takes the form of stories of adventure, accounts of heroic deeds, biographical narratives, etc.

It has been shown that the principles and methods of the historical seminary are in harmony with those of other great educational factors, that they are applicable to all grades of school work and that they are already to a greater or less extent used in the best high schools of the state. In the Seminary, then, can be found that which unites all the varying methods and expedients of the best history teaching in our high schools. And it suggests

the irresistible conclusion that were the Seminary method understood and used as it should be, it would go very far toward making history one of the strongest studies in every high school course.

Madison, Wis.

O. G. LIBBY.

SEMINARY: EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL

STANDPOINT.*

A

The volume is divided into five books. The first treats of Education and Selection. nation, like an individual, has its own instinct, genius, and a sense of its mission. Genius is developed by hereditary influences, embryonic life, and national environment. The power of education is the power of ideas and sentiments. Every idea tends to work itself out. The fittest survive; so education is a work of intellectual selection. Normal suggestion should be used. It creates artificial instincts which counterpoise hereditary instincts. Every man possesses a totality of general ideas which are the source of all his actions. Thus through the false ideas of its individuals a nation becomes feeble or vicious. The result of heredity is, as Galton says,

*Education from a National Standpoint. By Alfred Fouillee.

"regression to the average," but while this is true of stature or color of eyes, it is not true of intelligence or morality. Education raises mediocre men to the level of anterior generations, and enables higher natures to surpass it. Physiological superiority is necessary to psychological. Instruction may be either dynamical or statical, but intellectual power and not knowledge is transmitted from one generation to another. The essential objects of education are to give fixity and solidity to the love of the good, the beautiful and the true. Truth and beauty are only relatively good. Morality alone is absolutely good. In science it is the beautiful that elevates. The important truth was first a truth sought and admired for its beauty. We often confound education of the faculties with encyclopædic instruction. The nation must be elevated by the existence of individuals and groups elevated above the mass by talent, merit and morality, but the nation must not be individualized.

Book II. takes up the Scientific Humanities. The object of the humanities is to connect the mind with the whole of humanity. The faults of science as now taught, are that it is too material, too utilitarian, and too special. It must be simplified and unified. To simplify, less stress must be put upon the nomenclature and more upon the scientific aptitude acquired. To unify a philosophical spirit must be introduced. A sound training in philosophy should be given. When properly reformed by this means the natural sciences become scientific humanities, and transform the material sciences into moral sciences.

Book III. treats of the classical Humanities. The development of the individual and the race should proceed along the same line since heredity has adapted the brain to this course. The child must therefore begin with literature and pass on to science. He must pass from: form to depth, from the concrete to the abstract. In education personal activity is necessary. Translation, composition, analysis and explanations set the child's intellect to work. Science is passive, so a literary education is better than a scientific. But the nation' needs literary, scientific and political elite. There must be a hierarchy. It needs hands, but also brains. Primary education is one thing, secondary another, and the secondary must be in harmony with the forms and conditions of national evolution, which means liberal education. The study of one's own language is not enough since it tends to narrow the mind of the nation, and it is enough only for exceptionally gifted individuals. The study of the language of others is productive

of reflection.

Latin is the most productive since it furnishes solidarity. The great writers of the modern world had classical training. Neo-Latin people must have it. Latin also represents the literature of Christianity. It was the language of a heroic people of majestic reason, a cosmopolitan people, "a microcosm of the intellect of all nations. The language and thoughts of modern nations are strongly marked with their individualism. Thus the boy who studies the classics will have acquired by influence and suggestion, faculties which are human and national and which are developed only by literature and philosophy.

Book IV. treats of Modern Education. Unity must be maintained and yet a certain variety is indispensable. A taste for literature makes a training in science more necessary to a balanced nature and vice versa. But secondary education should be practically the same for all. The cry that this will unclass many is a false one.

Those whose capacity is small will drop out. Less stress should be put upon the modern languages. The tendency is to consider them from a utilitarian point of view. The literature of modern languages is too passionate for children. Parents favor the socalled educational reform because the boy gets into business sooner. The boy favors it because he sees there is his work. Secondary instruction must be unified, higher instruction strengthened, and professional organized. The reforms Fouillee proposes to take up in the secondary schools, Ist, the mother tongue, 2nd, Latin, 3rd, General History, 4th, the elements of Mathematics and Physics, 5th, Philosophy and Ethics, and allow diversity in Greek, secondary and applied science, and modern languages. The final examination is to be based upon the humanities with Philosophy, Mathematics, Natural Science and Industrial and Economic Science as alternatives. Primary education must not be allowed to usurp the position of secondary through a desire to be democratic. Primary education is intended to make good receivers, secondary to make producers.

Book V. treats of Philosophy, Ethics and Social Science.

Modern education lacks concentration. Nations of to-day with their different classes of society and different political parties must be unified by the study of mental science. Positive science can not do this since it tends to mechanism, neither can literature alone for it tends to form. What modern society needs is self-knowledge. Moral and social science (1) cause reflection, (2) cause activity of mind, (3) are not overloaded with a multiplicity of

details. Philosophy tends to coördinate knowledge. Teaching of morality is the most necessary. The objections to giving religious teaching should not go thus far. History taught from a philosophical point of view is necessary to a sense of human and national solidarity. Civic instruction, common law and political economy must be taught but in an unbiased manner. In the study of literature, whether ancient or modern, the æsthetic value should be brought out and dwelt upon and the tedious parts kept in the background. Make literature active by having the pupils write. The mind that understands and craves the beautiful is becoming a beautiful mind. Philosophy should not be materialistic. History of Philosophy should not be substituted for the real study. It should be obligatory since it is the most useful of all studies to all men and especially teachers. With this training examinations can be based upon what the pupil has worked out for himself and not upon textbook knowledge.

The book leads to the conclusions, Ist., that organization is more necessary than acquisition of knowledge; 2d, that a higher intellectual, æsthetic and moral culture is necessary; 3d, that this will be gained through literature, general theory of the sciences and philosophy; 4th, that philosophy is the great unifying power. LILLIAN B. HEALD.

een.

THEORY AND PRACTICE.

EXPERIENCE WITH BOYS.

A teacher, Miss Sarah E. Wiltse, of Boston, once tried an experiment with 113 school boys between the ages of thirteen and eightLike all such experiments, the results signify little, but as a curiosity it is a great success, and more than that it is very suggestive. It must be borne in mind that they were above thirteen years of age. They were given three or four words each day, one word at a time, and were to write the thing each word suggested to them. The exercise. was continued from day to day, so that nothing could be attributed to the unexpectedness of the exercise.

Literature: To twenty-six it meant books, to seven reading, three history, three Longfellow, three Scott, three Waverly, one each Ivanhoe, Dickens, the Inferno, Shakespeare, Homer, and Milton, two dime novels. Others had special visions," such as a man printing a book, an immense library with books of all ages, ancient Greece (especially Athens), a

painting, funny compositions, piles of papers, something classical.

Abstraction: Thirty-seven blanks; others said flavoring ice cream, flavoring in bottles, getting a tooth pulled, apples and baskets, spoke of a wheel, kindness, a man with his head resting on his hand and his elbows on a marble-top table, a boy seeing something far away, sitting at a window in the country looking blankly in the air, a crazy person, a man in deep thought, works of nature, goodness, grammar, future, a wood, part of speech, an abstract person, something small, basket of flowers.

Play: Seven said children; others kittens, thirteen thought of base ball, four of the theatre, four lawn tennis, three piano, Lady of the Lake, Richard the Third.

Coldness: Twenty-six winter, seven ice; others, man with a stern face, field of ice, frosty ground with stumps, the look of a hightoned boy toward his poorly dressed comrades, anger, shivering, Greely's expedition to the north pole, a proud person, firmness in a man, making a call on a young lady who is not at home, dressing in a big overcoat, unsympathetic to the poor, inhospitality, kicking the feet against the dashboard of a horse car, an ulster with a high collar, Iceland, cutting wind, frost and snow, a haughty person, dark gray objects.

Heat: A stove, a furnace, a furnace for melting glass, a smelting furnace, a register, a gilded radiator, the schoolhouse boiler-room, summer, fire, the sun, Desert of Sahara, a parade, a red-hot ball, melted butter, anger, a day in East Lexington with buzzing locusts, a fat man out of breath.

Faith: Fourteen blanks; others said dogs, a cross, a church, a catechism, a prayer-book, Daniel in the lion's den, a tableau of faith, hope, and charity, the Supreme Being, the water cooler on the Common, the story of St. Elizabeth, a frightened child clinging to its father for protection.

Fun fell flat; no answers of any value.

Horror: Murder, assassination, death, fire, an avalanche, drowning, battle, ghosts, a man hanging, a beer saloon, accident at Roslindale, a horrible-looking word that would spell hell, some one in distress, a horrible accident, a woman and a mouse, a lady looking at an alligator, seeing a man run over, a boy stabbed, a boy run over by a horse car, a fellow holding his hands in the air, a man with his hair standing on end, an old lady holding up both hands, a man falling from a great height, the time I was chased, a spider crawling over me, feeling as though I was drowning, a robbery,

something cringing, a smash-up, piercing shrieks, a dream of snakes, a house on fire with a little girl at a high window.

The surprising thing about it is the age of the boys and the fact that the exercises were given daily, so that they knew what was expected of them. It suggests experiments for teachers.-N. E. Journal of Education.

MODERN SAINTS.

The Advance maintains that the saints did not all live in the early ages of the world and they have not all been canonized. Just how many are now in the world, there is no census-taker who can find out; but it is known that there are some among public school teachers. The Advance testifies from personal knowledge that there are some among the three thousand teachers in the public schools of Chicago, and mentions one in particular who has just passed away:

But al

"Her large yet happy martyrdom in service was followed by a painful martyrdom in suffering. During these twenty and more years, there has burned in her heart, deep and constant, the passion of her life, to help every life that touched her own to better things. Every fresh roomful of young boys and girls assigned to her was a new world for her to conquer. Not her desire only, but her purpose, to conquer them was simply absolute. ways her victory was their self-victory. With plenty of thought and ingenuity of appliance, but without fear or worry, she moved on with undiscourageable determination, should it take all the season, to gain the conquest. And if there was one person more than another who appealed to her deepest sensibility, it was that 'worst boy' or that uncanniest girl in school. Of course she had her special friendships--friendships which glorified her life. Out of school as well as in it, in the community to which she belonged, the same burning impulse of divine helpfulness penetrated everywhere, making every one near her feel that at any rate there was one person who would take keenest delight in noting every sign of gain in the real struggle of life. Like the other saints, 'of whom the world was not worthy,' she made not the least account of her own worthiness. Untroubled by any sinister self-reference, the whole heart was free for the business in hand. And so, though she would never have said it of herself, every one who knew her could not refrain from saying: 'She hath done what she could.'

"Now this particular case is not mentioned because of its peculiarity, but rather because, as we believe, there are so many others among

the teachers in the public schools throughout the country whose lives are actuated by essentially the same spirit. Their ideals of life, in respect of helpfulness to others, especially to others in the most formative and critical period of it, are at once most exacting and most animating. Whether the public knows any thing about them or not, or whether even parents have the sense to discern it and to manifest any appreciation of it or not, they go on fulfilling the sacred mission given them. If parents and others would be somewhat quicker to show some due appreciation of what, with such utter unselfishness of spirit, is being done by some of these truest friends their children have ever had, or are ever likely to have, it will be well for them. But whether this be done or not, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and none of the saints known by him, are at all events ever lost out of mind."

WHERE EXAMINATIONS FAIL.

But as

The visible and certain nuisance of written examinations is an evil which is present, before a community as civilized as ours, all the time, excepting the summer vacation of the schools and colleges. It involves an absurdity equal to the absurdities of the decline of chivalry. It waits for some Cervantes, who shall ridicule it so thoroughly as to drive it from the public mind, so that the twentieth century may know of it only as most people know of the squires of chivalry by Sancho Panza, or of knights errant by Don Quixote. the schools of the larger towns of Massachusetts open for the autumn, this month is perhaps the best month for bringing forward, with however little courage, a statement of the misery inflicted upon scholars, upon parents, and upon teachers by this rigmarole, if it were only that one should discharge an annual duty, and at the bar of any judge be able to say, "I sounded my little trumpet, but the world was making such a noise that it did not hear." Jules Simon, now better known as a statesman than as a distinguished professor of the University of France, used to say, "When I was young, we prepared students for life; now we prepare them for examinations." The bitter satire of this statement could be repeated by ten thousand teachers in Massachusetts to-day. It must be that a good many of the committeemen and supervisors, who have to do at least with the outside machinery of the thing, will sympathize with the teachers. We shall have half a dozen letters, before the week is over, to explain to us that, unless there is a system of mechanical examinations in the Boston schools, nobody can tell which school is "up to the mark" and which school

is not. Nobody can tell, for instance, whether half-a-dozen Italian boys, eleven years old, who are at work in the Hancock School, with the difficulties of a new language before them, and with national peculiarities of early training, can answer on paper, with ink, the same questions which a set of boys of Boston parentage and training, who in the Dwight school, or in the Dudley School, can answer. It is perfectly true that, without a fixed examination from printed papers emanating from the central office, nobody can tell this in such a way as pleases the statistical people. But, without any knowledge of one individual of either class in the Hancock School, the Dwight School, or the Dudley School, I can tell, without having seen one of the examination papers.

What earthly or heavenly reason can there be for driving all these boys, in these three classes, through such a series of questions, merely for the purpose of giving the statistical answer in a supposed inquiry, where everybody knows the real answer before the inquiry is made, and where the answer is of no importance when it's attained? Do you really want the Hancock School, for instance, to be the exact counterpart of the Dwight School or the Dwight School to be the precise counterpart of the Dudley School? Do we not really want that the genius of of the teacher in one shall show itself in his way, and the genius of the of the teacher teacher in another, shall show itself in his way? Are we really trying to turn out fifty thousand clothespins, of precisely the same pattern, in the Boston schools, or are we trying to make of each boy and girl the best that can be made, and to encourage as we can the particular genius of each separate child? In some transfer of children from one building to another, last summer, there were examinations of unusual strictness, and the pupils were drilled for days in advance, by what might be called mock examinations. A careful and conscientious teacher, worn out by a day spent in this drill, lamented to a friend, "Oh, it is so hard. They think so much of their writing-for they'll be marked on their writing-that they forgot their spelling; or else they think so much about the spelling that they forget to put in the quotation marks. And some of the boys are so thoughtless and indifferent!" Upon inquiry, it appeared that the average age of these boys, who were indifferent" to the niceties of quotation marks, was eight years and a half! Is it possible to conceive of rigmarole more absurb than that involved in a system which produces such results?-Edward Everett Hale in the Boston Commonwealth.

FIVE REASONS FOR SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE INSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Seek ye first the temperance education of children, and all other temperance blessings will be added unto you.

1. Universal total abstinance from alcoholic liquors would solve all phases of the temperance problem.

2. Such abstinence, to be permanent, must be the result of intelligent and early choice.

3. A knowledge of the real nature and evil effects of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics is a prerequisite of such intelligent choice.

4. To be timely and effective such knowledge must be acquired before the taste for such substances is formed.

5. The public school is the institution which reaches humanity in the largest numbers, before habits are formed, and at an age when the mind is as wax to receive and granite to retain.

The public school is therefore the medium for the rapid and universal dissemination of the warning truths revealed by modern science concerning the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics.

B. E. B.

A pretty little Frenchwoman went into one of the newspaper offices last Tuesday, and with a positive air passed an advertisement through the window. The clerk looked at it for a moment, smiled and then said:

"The English is a little bit awkward, miss. Would you like to make any changes?"

The pretty little woman tossed her head. "No, m'sieur. I zink I knows how to write ze good Inglis."

The clerk smiled again.

"All right," and he watched the little woNext man as she sailed out of the door. morning the "ad" appeared:

PUPILS WANTED.-Mlle. Marcotte respectfully announces that she wishes to show her tongue to the young American ladies.-Boston Budget.

BOOK TABLE.

APPERCEPTION: a monograph on psychology and pedagogy, by Dr. Karl Lange, edited by Charles De Garmo, (D. C. Heath & Co.; 279 pp.; $1.00) presents to American teachers the first results of the labors of the Herbart Club, formed somewhat more than a year ago under the leadership of Pres. De Garmo. Thirteen names appear upon the title page as members of the Club who have participated in the work of translation. This work was selected by them for translation because of its happy combination of popular presentation with scientific insight, and as opening the way for detailed study of education from a psychological point

of view. Here is a single doctrine of psychology, summarized under the term apperception, which in the first part of the treatise is examined and expounded scientifically. The second part, which is much the longest of the three, is devoted to unfolding the application of this scientific doctrine to practical pedagogy. It is found to develop into three main topics, the choice and arrangement of the subject matter of education; the investigation, extension and utilization of the child's experiences, and the methods of instruction which flow from these two discussions. We can hardly conceive anything more vitalizing for the common school teacher than the doctrine carefully elaborated in this chapter. It is not erudite and difficult to understand, but under Dr. Lange's treatment proves luminous and full of interest. There seems no good reason why any one should leave one of our Normal schools, for example, without a firm grasp of this important doctrine, so clear and effective is this discussion of it. The third part is devoted to a history of the term apperception, which carefully traces the development of the doctrine from Leibnitz through Kant, Herbart, Lazarus, and others, to the latest study of it by Wundt. From this brief account of it the importance of this volume to the study of pedagogy in the United States will be recognized, and the Herpart Club is to be congratulated on the excellent service it has rendered by this very acceptable translation.

-Outlines of PEDAGOGICS, by Prof. W. Rein, director of Pedagogical Seminary at the University of Jena; translated by C. C. and Ida J. Van Liew, (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.; 199 pp.; $1 25) furnishes a brief introduction to the Herbartian pedagogics in their modern applications. The discussion falls into two parts, practical and theoretical. The first discusses home education, school education in its external organization, and school administration. These are viewed from the German stand point, and hence the second topic for example divides into the people's school, the real school, the gymnasium, and schools for girls. The discussion is terse and pointed, requiring close reading to get at its richness of content, which would require much expansion to adapt it to popular apprehension. This makes it a fruitful work for handling by a well instructed and penetrating teacher. The second part treats of the aim and means of education, the latter treated under the captions of theory of instruction and theory of guidance. The discussions under these two ciptions are especially rich and valuable, involving the Herbartian conception of concentric instruction on which rests the construction of a unified and logical course of study, and of the formal steps of instruction, the elaboration of which has proved of great practical value in Herbartian schools. The theory of guidance discusses government and the formation of character, in regard to which the teachings of this school have been recognized as especially valuable. The work is one of great suggestivepess, and its publication in English is to be welcomed as an important addition to the scientific study of education.

-EDUCATION AND EDUCATORS, by David Kay (C. W. Bardeen & Co., Syracuse, N. Y.; 490 pp.; $1.50) has the same general characteristics to be found in the same author's work on Memory, published in the International Education Series. These are, a text rather heavy and inclining to the commonplace, supported by an immense array of foot-notes which make up more than half the volume, and do not add to its force or scope. The author discusses in the present work the several meanings of education (falling into the old etymological error of deriving the word from e and duco, an impossible derivation); the nature and importance of education; the hereditary effects of education; education and the state: education and religion; and the different kinds of educators. Turning, for example, to the chapter on religion and education, we find, in place of an account of the different schemes tried in various countries for fixing the relations of church and school, or a clear and logical effort to deal with the problem so puzzling to statesmen, a good orthodox sermon on the value of religion and the optimistic conclusion that school and church must get on together, each performing its appointed task. This is good exhortation but not helpful discussion; and it seems to us a fair sample of the author's method. His book is orthodox, safe and erudite, but lacks reality, face to face dealing with practical problems and a scientific spirit.