Students are quick to read character, and they are im- for it is the mathematical exactness of weight and measure; partial judges; when they are treated fairly and honestly but what about such exactness being the basis of educathey will go more than half way to meet such treatment tion? It is to be hoped that it is such; for the practical with all the loyalty of their young hearts. To illustrate teacher longs for some exact basis and method for conductthis point, we quote an incident of Longfellow's professor-ing that intangible, subtle, and complex process of educa ship at Cambridge: "His uniform courtesy also told upon ting. Day and night he is haunted by the feelings of inhis pupils, and I well remember that during an abortive definiteness, vagueness, and uncertainty. If the problem rebellion which occurred in our senior year-one of those can be reduced to one of bulk, weight, and motion, and boyish affairs which the elective system has extinguished thus brought under the laws of mathematics and physics, -when a crowd of turbulent students filled the college the practical teacher could escape the tormenting indefiniteyard and several of the professors had tried in vain to get ness of spiritual problems.

a hearing, Longfellow attempted it at last, and was met In illustrating his thought, using the first three or four with the cordial response, We'll hear Professor Long-years of school life, the writer says: "The method is simfellow, for he always treats us like gentlemen. He was ple; if children are to be measured or questioned, they are thus indeed the pioneer in that improved tone of manners taken, two or three at a time, into the dressing room of the now prevailing between teacher and pupil.”

school, where the calipers are applied for the diameter of Thanks to Longfellow for setting so worthy an exam- head or body, the tape for lengths and circumference, ple! Would that all teachers would follow it faithfully! scales for weighing, dynamometers for testing strength, Believing as we do that the school stands as a medium and many other special devices." Now this is exact; but between the family and the world, and that the school is it the kind of exactness on which to base education? room should represent the enlarged family circle with the Suppose that I apply the calipers to two boys' heads and teacher filling the place of parent, we argue that the disci- find that the diameter of one is greater than that of the pline of the school should be modeled after the parental other, and that the ratio of the different diameters in one is discipline. As in a family no two children require just the different from that in the other. It is an interesting physsame method of treatment, one being sensitive, another ag- iological fact, and falls into its place with other curious gressive, a third nervous, a fourth spirited, just so the phenomena of the world to be investigated. If such facts school discipline should be made relative, adapted to the are the basis of exact education, I must see their concrete individual as to the requirements of the case. The teacher relation to the actual teaching process as I produce it, and who understands his boys, who governs by love as a pa- not to some pedagogical phantom patched up out of the rent should, who knows that one needs encouragement and unique, odd, and exceptional facts of child nature. Now, another restraint, will need no list of rules, no list of de- I may be too directly practical; but with these these two boys merits; he will have no time for penalties but, instead, will before me in the class, and calipers, tape line, and dynamoemploy his hours in the sowing of seed that will fall upon meter having yielded their exact mathematical results, supthe fertile soil of young, loving hearts and bring forth a pose I am to try to educate them a little by having them harvest of good deeds in after years that will do honor to measure a rectangle, or observe the glittering forms of his name for generations to come. BROCK.

AN EXACT BASIS FOR EDUCATION.

PROFESSOR ARNOLD TOMPKINS.

You have no doubt read, as all students of education should do, Pres. G. Stanley Hall's article in the December Forum, on "Child Study: the Basis of Exact Education." Its chief value is in reminding the teacher that he must

study the real live child, rather than the "pedagogic phantom" called the child. But the purpose of the article is more specific than this; it proposes to suggest a method of studying the child which will furnish a basis of exact education. The writer convinces the reader of the "exact,"

snow crystals, or look up through the night at the stars and count the Pleiades, or touch them with the story of "Poor Little Jim," then what must I do with my calipers?

We are told that, from the age of eleven or twelve, boys are taller than girls; that girls then begin to grow rapidly, and for the next few years they surpass the boys in both height and weight; and that boys pass them soon after that, and remain taller and heavier. Now such are curious and interesting facts, but what pedagogical guidance in them? Ought we to try to change the way of nature? or

will the facts determine our curriculum and methods of in

struction? Are there not great spiritual laws of growth which, though not reducible to the accuracy of scales, do really have an accuracy in them which the scales know not

of? The article speaks of the fact that the heads of girls extended and imponderable will not yield its secret to caliare a little rounder than the heads of boys; and that girls pers and scale. No one can doubt that such investigations have wider faces than boys during their twelfth year. Is as are here referred to will not fail to bring great good; but this an argument for co-education or against it? What that this good will be in the form of an exact basis of edukind of nutriment do the roundheads require as different cation may be doubted. The teacher may well plunge infrom the squareheads; add the brood-faced period of devel- to Dr. Hall's article, and all such, in good faith; for, if he opment from the long-faced? Let us proceed to teach does not find healing in its waters for his pedagogical ills, them the golden rule, and what must be the mathematical he will find exhilaration, and many curious shells in the accuracy in the difference of procedure among pupils thus pebbles below.-Public School Journal. differing? Is not the great fact that all of them have heads and hearts, and faces to the front and heavenward, to guide me with much more accuracy than the mathematical skulland-cheek-bone accuracy? How long would it have taken The question as to whether electricity may have an inaccurate measurement to ascertain that we need a golden fluence on the nutrition of vegetation, or may favor the rule, and that its inculcation is necessary to the process of germination of seeds, or cause more complete assimilation, education? is not a new one, says C. Crepeaux in the Magasin Pittor

ELECTRICITY ON THE FARM.

success, and in view of the youth of the whole subject and our ignorance of all conditions, it seems likely that the failures have been due to defective methods. The experiments date, from the middle of the last century. In October, 1746, at Edinburgh, Membray succeeded, as he sup

and at the same time similar trials were made by Abbe Nollet in France, by Menou in Stuttgart, by Bose in Wurtemberg, by Jallabert in Geneva, and by Gardini in Turin. In 1783, the Abbe Bertholon of St. Lazare published a whole book on the subject; but in 1787 the famous botanist Ingenhouse denied that electricity has any effect at all on vegetation. Later Humboldt and others were numbered among the doubters.

While it looks a little more plausible, I do not see how esque, Paris, but the results of numerous experiments have the exact measurement of nerve processes can be a basis of been so contradictory that the skepticism of many great exact education. Physiological psychology is throwing authorities on the subject seems warranted. Hosts of light on physiology, and is an inspiring branch of study; these experiments, however, have met with remarkable but I fail to see any hope for an exact basis of education in it. Among other things, for instance, in educating a pupil he must be stimulated to strive for better things than he has yet attained. This feeling must be made to take possession of him. No doubt there is correlated with this feeling, a series of changes in the nerves; and we might say posed, in electrically stimulating the growth of two myrtles in the whole matter. Suppose now that just what this nerve action is could be known; suppose a movement at the rate of so many feet per second-a movement different from that which accompanies any other feeling or idea entertained by the soul. This would be charmingly accurate and the discoverer would be honored as if the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, or of America. It would go into the great sum of things by which the pupil is educated but how is it to be a basis to guide one in teaching? We Space would not suffice to give the names of those who cannot get hold of the end of the nerve, and by some me- have experimented on the subject in more recent times. chanical impact from another body regulated in rate of Their methods have been threefold, including electrificamotion produce the exact rate necessary to stimulate the tion (1) of the earth about the roots (2) of the growing aspiration desired in the pupil. This would be as exact as plants, and (3) of the seeds during germination. The first mechanical law could make it. But after all this knowl- method was that pursued by Paulin of the agricultural knowl-method edge of the rate of vibration, we should still have to begin school at Beauvais, France, who collected atmospheric at the other end of the process in the old fashioned way, electricity by a pole about forty feet high, surmounted by a and let the nerves take care of their own vibrations while brush of diverging metallic points and conducted it by a we attune the other instrument. network of underground wires to the earth about the plant. Descartes' philosophy reduced everything to mathemat- His apparatus, named by him a geomagnetifer, was inical and mechanical laws. It was simple and accurate; but vestigated by a committee of the Monthrisson Agricultuit left the soul out of things. There is something in the ral Society, who found that of two patches of potatoes, world for which mathematics and physics can not account, one under its influence and one not, the former yielded 50 and that something is the subject of education. The non- per cent. more by weight than the other. In other cases,

burned over.

however, no effect has been observed, and sometimes the to do exactly the same thing-this became not only a weariresult appears to have been actually injurious, one patch ness to the flesh, but also a burden to the conscience. of land acted on by the geomagnetifer appearing as if To be sure I faithfully presented to the class the most Barrat and Spechnew adopted a similar common errors, with instructions for avoiding them; but plan, but supplied the electricity directly from a voltaic children have somehow a marvelous faculty for misapplybattery. In some cases they succeeded in apparently ing generalities. Once or twice I wrote little notes on the trebling and even quadrupling the yield by their method, backs of the compositions, telling each pupil of the chief but in others, as with Paulin, the results were negative or

unfavorable.

The second plan, that of electrifying the growing plants, was followed by the Russian scientist Lemstrom, who used a friction machine connected with a system of wires having points directed downward above the plants. His results were favorable as regards cereals, radishes and beans, but unfavorable with peas, carrots, The outcome can scarcely be said, therefore, to be satisfactory, the reason for the discrimination not being evident.

etc.

Finally, the third method-the electrification of the germinating seed-has been tried by Spechnew, who, after soaking the seeds to render them conducting, caused a current from an induction-coil to traverse them. The result was that peas sprouted in two and a half days instead of the customary four, beans in three days instead of six and sunflowers in eight and one-half days instead of fifteen. This method, however, could hardly be put to practice on a large scale.

faults, and, of course, some of the virtues, of his paper; but though that kind of work always "pays," the time necessary for its faithful performance was often positively not to be found.

At length however, I devised a plan which relieved me of a great number of the more common mistakes, and made essay-reading once more a pleasure, with only an occasional dash of red ink. The plan was this: After the compositions were written, I had the pupils exchange papers, I taking care to assign the most unpromising papers to the most careful pupils, and those least likely to need correction to the pupils least capable of intelligent correction. I then had the pupils read twice over the papers handed them, marking the mistakes in black ink. The system of marking was necessarily a simple one. A straight, horizontal line(I made a special point of insisting that it should be straight) was drawn through mis spelled words, the correct form being written above. If a small letter was to be capitalized, Cap, was written over it; P stood for "make a new paragraph;" and so on. Pupils were told to read the papers over the first time to correct the spelling, punctuation and capitalizing; the second time, they were to see that the composition should be divided into suitable paragraphs, that long sentences put These are but a few of the army of experimenters on together with a string of and's should be broken up into this subject, but their results are fairly typical, apparently shorter ones, that no word should be repeated a great nummarked successes being mingled with negative and with sentences relating to the same part of the subject should ber of times in any one sentence or paragraph, that those ber of times in any one sentence or paragraph, that those unfavorable results. The subject is yet young, however, be placed together. The name of the pupil by whom it despite its century and a half of existence, and it may be was corrected was then written at the close of the composition, and the papers handed in to me. that it is destined, when all the conditions are better un- then corrected the remaining mistakes, and perhaps the Using red ink, I derstood, to work a revolution in practical agriculture.-corrections, if faulty. Then the papers were given to Philadelphia Press.

CORRECTING COMPOSITIONS.

BY MINNA C. DENTON, FT. SMITH, ARK.

Those monthly compositions! How I sighed as my pen ploughed its gory path through them! Not that I do not enjoy reading a set of papers from school children, always, their childish blunders and original ways are sure to be entertaining. But to take my red ink and insert commas and make capitals over small letters, to strike out superfluous and's, to chop the long sentences into respectable lengths, and to connect detached fragments into something like order to go through this forty-three different times, for forty-three different compositions, and, worst of all, to know that the very next time I should have

pupils for re-writing, the number of red ink marks being the inverse measure of the proficiency of the critic.

The advantages of this system, after the pupils became accustomed to it were numerous. Those pupils who did not do good work had an opportunity of examining work that was good, and the contact with it seemed to create for them a new ideal. All pupils took a pride in marking papers so that they should be returned with as few red ink marks as possible, and all, from noting the mistakes of others, became more careful concerning their own. They were always eager to find out the reason of the obnoxious red ink mark, and listened more attentively than usual as I explained the distinction between two words, or the reason for a change in the arrangement of subject matter, or some error which their untrained minds would hardly have been expected to recognize.

The above plan was tried with children thirteen years old, but I should think a class of younger children might correct some of the simpler errors with benefit to themselves and some little relief to their teacher.

-Popular Educator.

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EDITORIAL NOTES.

Dr. Rice, the educational critic, has done the Americans good in stirring them up to do better, but we cannot say that we indorse his methods or agree with his conclusions. In the words of another "he has taken the extreme worst from the American Editer school, and, setting up against it the best from Germany, has invited us to look upon this picture, then upon that." The pictures of excellence from the German $150 schools which he has held up to our view are no better than what may be seen in the best schools of this country whenever an educational critic may care to look for them. But Dr. Rice's search for them we fear was much like Sam Weller's search for Tony, his father, when Sam didn't want to find him.

75

The criticisms made by Dr. Rice were much like the ordinary newspaper correspondent's items of the

We give below the names of twenty-six extra good stand-day. They were written to make a sensation, and in ard books, any one of which will be sent free as a premium that they were successful. They were written by a will send $1.50 in advance for the paper for one year and 10 critic not an expert, for educational experts have cents to pay postage on the book.

to each subscriber to the WEEKLY EDUCATIONAL NEWS who

1. Robinson Crusoe..

2. Arabian Nights Entertainments.

followed him, and with eyes open for the good have found it where the educational critic found nothing but cause for criticism.

The editor of the Western School Journal writes, "Does any educational good thing exist outside of Germany? is a question Dr. Rice invariably answers in the negative. His criticisms are grossly unjust, and his caricatures of American schools preposterously absurd. The American school system has its weak points—a fact of which its best friends are fully conscious; but, with all its faults, our teachers need be neither afraid nor ashamed to place it alongside of any other school system on earth. The good it has done for this land, in fitting for citizenship the children of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, cannot be estimated in coin."

Success in teaching depends to a great extent on one's power to bring himself to the level of the child there are many teachers who make, the serious misand think on the same plane with the learner. But take of trying to bring the child to their level. It is this which in a measure vitiates the work of many a professor. No one accomplishes anything shooting over the head of the learner.

It is a well-known fact to teachers of experience the educere, to draw out, that is so important but the that frequently a pupil will learn a process of reason-educare, to foster, to nourish, that is all important, and ing much more readily from one of his classmates this in all grades of schools. In a hitherto unpubthan he will from the teacher. Is it not because of lished lecture by James Russell Lowell, just presented the fact that the pupils think on the same plane? in the College daily at Harvard, he says: "Mere There is such a thing as the teacher's forgetting that scholarship is as useless as the collecting of old what may be very simple to h'm may present great postage-stamps." Hearing recitations is necessary, difficulties to the child whose reflective powers are not giving instruction is important, but the development yet fully developed or matured.

of thought, the forming of character, the training of the whole child is of vastly greater importance than A superintendent lately expressed his belief with the usual school routine of pouring in and drawing regard to one of his teachers that she never read a out, by means of lectures or the question-and-answerbook on pedagogy or took a single educational jour-method of recitation. Shall we ever have our school nal. His criticism was that she was a fair teacher work in such a shape that it will be educational in the but made the mistake of believing that her whole work true sense?

consisted in hearing recitations verbatim and keeping

the pupils quiet. If we could look into the school- We think our readers will agree with us that we rooms of this land, college recitation rooms included, have been exceptionally fortunate lately in securing what a quantity of this kind of teachers we should excellent practical communications from our corres

find!

For this kind of pedagogues the Summer Schools of Methods ought to do a great work, but, alas! those who need the study of pedagogy most are those who think they need it least.

pondents.

Personal Items.

John Dewey, professor of philosophy in the University of Michigan, has accepted a similar chair in the new University of Chicago. It is a position envied by the best men in the country, as Prof. Dewey will be at the head of a department consisting of five men.

Do we not all need to study the subject of teaching? The science grows day by day, do we grow with it? Is the man who comes fresh from the lecture room of, it may be, a great university, the one who will probably do the best teaching? Alas! the history of pedagogy shows us that the educational field has been Mr. Evelyn Abbott is to be the biographer of the covered with the wrecks of such. Why should it not late Master of Balliol. His work will contain a large be so? Why expect a man to be a first class teacher selection from Professor Jowett's correspondence, inwithout preparation for his work any more than we cluding, it may be hoped, a considerable number of should expect a thorough scholar to be a successful his letters to Archbishop Tait, Bishop Temple and clergyman or a successful lawyer without professional preparation? There may be exceptions; there probably are, but, as a rule, the successful teacher prepares conscientiously for his work and that preparation continues from day to day as he progresses from plane to plane in his profession.

Dean Stanley.

Prof. B. F. Tweed is just one week older than Henry Barnard.

Pres. Breed of Benzonia College was formally inaugurated March 20.

Eugene Jorolemon, an alumnus of Union College, The best teacher, undoubtedly, is he who succeeds has been elected principal of the Antioch High School, in having his students do most for themselves. Edu- Cal., to succeed Principal Foster, whose journalistic cating does not consist in pouring in knowledge; it and judicial duties now require his entire attention. does not consist in drawing knowledge out; it is not Mrs. Jorolemon, an alumnus of the Oswego State