卷 BUCKEYE BELL FOUNDRY, -CINCINNATI, O., U. S. A. Best Grade Copper and Tin School, College & Academy BELLS Price and Terms Free. Name this paper. Salary for Spare Time Paid Teachers. No books or novelties. Address "R," Lock Box 66, Cleveland, O Have You General or local Ladies or gents, Agents. $75 a week. Exclusive territory. The Rapid Dish Washer. Washes all the dishes for a family in one minute. Washes, rinses and dries them without wetting the hands. You push the button, the machine does the rest. Bright, polished dishes, and cheerful wives. No scalded fingers,nosoiled hands or clothing. No broken dishes, no muss. Cheap, durable, warranted. Circulars free. W. P. HARRISON & CO., Clerk No. 12, Columbus, 0. THE RAPID Van's Mexican Hair Restorative. A Tonic FOR BRAIN-WORKERS, the WEAK an DEBILITATED. Horsford's Acid Phosphate Will restore it to its Perfect Natural Color. This we Positively Guar-is without exception, the Best antee. It will remove all Dandruff, Heal all Sores, Stop all Hair from f it does not do everything that is claimed for it. Sent to any address wanted. Remedy for relieving Mental and SUGAR OF LEAD or anything injurious whatever. Money refunded Nervous Exhaustion; and where on receipt of price, $1.00 per Bottle. Full information free. Agents the system has become debilitated Room 312. Inter-Ocean Building, by disease, it acts as a general tonic and vitalizer, affording sus tenance to both brain and body. ALLEN & CO., Commercial THE BEST AND THE CHEAPEST. ew Complete Bookkeeping, ew Introductive Bookkeeping, First Lessons in Bookkeeping, Commercial Arithmetic, Commercial Law, $2.25 Business Law, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. BOOKS 1.25 Practical Grammar and Correspondence, .75 Seventy lessons in Spelling, 1.50 Civil Government, 1.00 Descriptive Economics, 1.50 Phonetic Shorthand, Pen-written Copies (Reproduced). Complete Ed, $1.00: Abridge Ed, 50c. Also Business Practice, Blank Books, College Currency, Diplomas, and other Commercial School supplies. Sample Copies mailed postpaid to teachers at one-third of the above retail price. Catalogues and Price List on application. Address, WILLIAMS & ROGERS, Rochester, N. Y., or Chicago, III. DIRECTORY MISSOURI TEACHERS. Comprising a complete list of Public School Teachers in the State of Missouri, issued in regular form of the AMERICAN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE JOURNAL. Will make nearly SIXTY PAGES of the Journal, each page being 8 x 12 inches, and completed in three issues. August and September numbers now ready, Price 25 CENTS each. Send Fifty Cents NOW for a year's subscription and get the complete list. Specimen Copies of Journal mailed. Address: AMERICAN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE JOURNAL, 100 North Fourth Street, ST. LOUIS, MO. FRANK MULLER, Mfg. Optician, Descriptive pamphlet free. Rumford, Chemical Works, Providence, R. I. If you desire to go South to teach send 2c. stamp for blanks, TO TEXAS TEACHERS' BUREAU, PALESTINE, TEXAS. ABRAHAMSON'S BOOKKEEPING CHART Or a Complete Course of Instructions in the Art of Double Entry Bookkeeping. Price, 50 cents. Fully illustrating the Invoice Book, Sales Book, Cash Steps Into Journalism finally, how to make out a balance sheet, giving in By Edwin L. Shuman, Ph. M. New, helpful and practical book by a Chicago editor, for all young writers. It tells how to get a start, how to construct a newspaper article, and gives a thousand details in a delightful style. pp. 230; Price, $1.25. "It is thoroughly practical. I know of no other No person who expects to write, even occasionally, Evanston, III. Book, Commission Sales Book or Consignment Book, Day Book, Journal and Ledger. Showing forth how and when to enter transactions into these books. How to Journalize; how to post into the Ledger; how to open, keep, and close any set of books kept by double entry, with outlines and explanations, showing how to go about the work step by step; and, detail the condition of the business on the closing the books. It is a complete manual of Double Entry Bookkeeping which can be mastered in a few hours without the aid of a teacher. Circulars free. CHAS, M. ABRAHAMSON, Principal and Founder. ABRAHAMSON BUSINESS COLLEGE AND SCHOOL OF SHORTHAND, Established 1880. GOS Broadway. Camden, N. J. WANTED-Teachers, 8 princi pals, 2 college presidents, 2 Latin and Greek, 3 mathematics, 1 science, 4 vocal, 5 piano, 3 art, 2 bookkeeping, 3 assistants, 6 primary, 2 elocution, 2 kindergarten, 1 governess. Address, with stamp, Central Teachers Bureau, Brownsville, Tenn. VOL. X., No. 41. AWEEKLY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. PHILADELPHIA, PA., NOVEMBER 10, 1894. EDUCATIONAL NEWS, PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE EDUCATIONAL NEWS COMPANY. ..647 ..647 $1.50 A YEAR. were taught to read words from the first and behold first reader children talking off the sentences smoothly and fluently when they hadn't been in school three months. The world couldn't do a thing but stare and stare for a while. What a pity the inventor hadn't got the idea patented and placed the royalty so high no one would have dared infringe! When teachers recovered their breath sufficiently they .643 said, "Certainly, if such results can be accomplished in a .644 few months what can't we do in a few years?" Well, they .645 tried it through the school life of that generation and what .646 have we? A generation of young men and women who can neither read nor spell. This statement must be modified to some extent. Thanks to the good hard sense of some of the parents, a part of the children were rescued from this infamy in spite of the method. Some parents would insist on their children's reading at home right in .633 ....634 the face of the method which said "children must never .635 have a book in their hand except under the eye and direc.637 tion of the teacher." Some parents were even addle.638 brained enough to make their children study words from a spelling book in spite of the objections of theorists. Children of such parents have been rescued from the dreadful calamities of the method, the others are lost. ..632 Any good thing can be overdone. We constantly go to extremes. Let some man try a new method of presenting any subject. The chances are that he will make a success of it, not so much because of the method as because of the man's individuality. He is enthusiastic over his method, he imbues it with his personality, he is anxious and on the alert and of course he is successful. The man succeeded, not the method. Some one else tries it, but lacking the enthusiasm and the insight of the inventor becomes a machine, pushes the method to the limit of absurdity and presto! failure. Ten or fifteen years ago the teaching world went wild over the "Word Method" of teaching reading. Children The hand-writing is on the wall over against the word method. Weighed and found wanting. Some teachers are not yet able to read the inscription or the interpretation thereof, hence I assume the position of a Daniel and will try to assist such to a proper understanding of the signs. Go into any school above the primary grade where the Word Method has been in vogue for several years and if you can find any good readers your experience is different from mine. There will be a rare exception and close inquiry will reveal the fact that this child is in the habit of either reading or spelling aloud at home. The children will read fluently and glibly except for two things: First, they will substitute for a word they see, another that looks like it; as, felt for left, saw for was, then for when, now for member) them and sometimes he couldn't." I ought to add by way of parenthesis that the parents of this sevenyear-old boy told me about a year ago that they intended to teach him to read before sending him to school but the teacher had told them not to do it. I presume the teacher was afraid he would be like "Dodd" was, he would know so much he wouldn't move along according to prescribed rules. how; second, a much more fatal blunder, they are per-what the words were." I said what did he do, did he spell. fectly helpless on a new word, especially if it has more than them when he didn't know them? He answered, "No, he six or eight letters. They haven't the faintest conception would just try to think, and sometimes he could mind (reof the power of letters to represent sound. They can't even pronounce from the dictionary where the syllables are divided and marked. They don't know what a syllable is. Ask any High School teacher who has taught a class the Roman pronunciation in Latin, provided the class has come from a school where the Word Method has prevailed, and my word for it he will tell you the class has no conception of phonics, of syllables, or of accent. I have seen children stand and wait when they come to a new word. To sum up: A five and a half year old boy, taught to When asked what they were waiting for the invariably re-read by spelling out the words has power of himself to take ply, "I don't know what the word is." In that case the a book and read intelligently, by and for himself, a story stereotyped teacher does one of two things, she either tells containing words of eight and ten letters, and having two the child what the word is, or, worse, she asks him some and three syllables. A seven year old boy, equally as question that will enable him to guess what it is. When I bright in every way, having studied as long by the word have seen such work, and I have seen it hundreds of times method, was entirely helpless on a word of three letters unin all grades from primary to High School, I could not tell til he could "think" what the teacher called that word. Of which passion predominated in me, pity for the helpless course if the teacher had been there she would have helped child, reduced almost to an imbecile by precarious teach-him to "think" by asking "What does the teacher write ing, disgust for the system, or despair of ever seeing our with?" He might have guessed "pencil" and "chalk” schools brought to a basis of common sense. first but he couldn't have failed to get the word in that case by the third guess. This would have been "developing" the word, you see. I cannot forbear relating an incident that came under my notice yesterday, which admirably illustrates what I have said concerning the helplessness of children right from the I said, children taught by the word method can't spell. beginning when taught by the Word Method. A small Our children are fairly good spellers but it is in spite of the boy about five and a half years old has learned to read a word method not because of it. If a child can't pronounce little at home. He has read a primer a first reader and aa new word when he sees it written, he can't write it when book of fables. The other day he got a new Raub's first he hears it pronounced. He doesn't know the power of reader. His mother was a teacher ten or twelve years ago, letters to represent sound, and when he hears a word he but quit it about the time the Word Method came in style, can't make the letter that stands for that combination of fortunately for her boy, she never learned to teach that sounds. He has been taught to regard the word as the way. So what reading he has done has been by spelling unit and he sees it all at once and not as made up of letters. out the words. Yesterday he read a story which contain- He perhaps remembers how the word looked, that is he ed these three words, no one of which he had ever seen be- can nearly name its letters. He may omit a letter or insert fore, and all of which he made out for himself; viz., over- one or transpose some but such an absurdity does not coat, medicine, spectacles. He read it slowly to be sure make itself known to him; and mark you, the omitted letthe first time, but he had the power in himself to get the ter is as liable to be a vowel, the most prominent letter in thought from the printed page and he afterwards told me the syllable, as anything else. In the spelling of words the story. In the evening a neighbor boy, seven years old the memory recurs to two senses, seeing and hearing, for --a bright, keen, manly little fellow-called to play a short its information. By the word method, the use of the sense time. This seven-year-old boy has been in school, taught of hearing for this purpose, is entirely eliminated. Again, by the Word Method, since last April. The boys soon got the new first reader and began to read easy sentences. The page they turned to has the following sentences: "I see a pig," "I see a hen," "I see a pen," "I see a cat." "I see a rat." I afterwards asked the small boy if the other could read well. He replied, "sometimes he could't think taking in a word as a whole leads to pronouncing it as a whole, hence mumbling and inarticulate pronunciation are sure to ensue. I would not, however, condemn the Word method absolutely and without qualification. I believe with Dr. White that it has a use in a very limited field. That place is in the first few weeks of the child's school life. By it The queer horn-shaped stone or "petrified wasp's nest," the teacher can hold the attention of primary children for a picked up by the road-side on the way to school, might, if short time at the first, better, perhaps, than by any other it could speak, tell of a wonderful ride on an ice mountain plan. The children seem to themselves to be doing some-ages before toboggans were ever thought of. The "moss" thing right from the beginning. Even then I would tell collected from an old fence rail is suggestive of the multithe child what the word is rather than have him guess tude of the tropical air plants. from an object, a picture, or from some skillfully framed A collection of seeds, together with their coverings may question. Along with this work right from the first should become an exceedingly profitable study. Here we find be associated much spelling and phonic drill; and when the that the thistle down has a value in the ecomony of plant life child has learned, say fifty words-not more, he should and that the child who joyously blows the downy heads drop the word method forever. to pieces to find "the time o'clock," is enhancing this value in so doing. The maple wing, the seed-pods of touchme-not, that fly at the slightest touch after the seeds become ripe, speak, too of one of the many phases of nature's care of her plants,the dissemination of seeds. Then there are the provisions against destruction by the elements, food store and many other things that even these tiny seeds tell. Youngstown, O. GEO. H. LAMB, SCHOOL MUSEUM. One of the simplest and surest methods of arousing an interest and enthusiasm among pupils, of strengthening the bond of sympathy and harmony between teacher and pupil, so essential in effective work, is the establishment of a Inasmuch as the material required by any two schools school museum. If no vacant room is at hand, boxes may will necessarily vary, the discussions and topics for the be made to serve as receptacles for the specimens,-sep-study will also be different; but if the plan is entered into arated ones being used for each of the three kingdoms, with zeal, there will be no paucity of subjects for investianimal, vegetable, and mineral. gation.-Bessie L. Putnam, in Educational Gazette. The intrinsic value of the collection may be nothing, but if the proper spirit is shown in its collection, if each pupil becomes a stockholder in the enterprise, and consequently earnest in his endeavors to make a success, if the material made is the subject of real thought and study, its value cannot be estimated. Charles Kingsley says, "He is a thoroughly good naturalist who knows his own parish thoroughly;" and in making such naturalists this plan will be of no inconsiderable assistance. GRAMMAR. BY GEORGE F. BASS. There is a difference between grammar and a book on grammar; just as much difference as there is between zoology and a book on zoology. We have heard of people who wish to turn out all the books on grammar and zoology. Some of the most interesting geological collections at the We do not wish to do this. It is better to teach the pupils World's Fair owed their chief merits to the fact that they bow to use the books in studying the subjects. The books were school collections,-labeled by pupils who had gathare a means not an end. Pupils are prone to make them ered them in their own neighborhood. They testified that an end, and it does seem that teachers are prone to allow the most fascinating of the natural sciences, geology, had them to make them an end. been pursued by those pupils in a thoroughly practical manner; that the secret of the rocks over which they daily walked had been to a certain extent learned. The science teacher tells us that the way to study a lobster is to get a lobster and study him, not a book about him. We learn certain attributes, (a), (b) and (c,) that belong to the lobster. Our class-mate has examined found attributes (a)," another individual lobster and The Indian relics in some of these displays spoke of the "stone age" and suggested thoughts on the march of the human races from barbarism to civilization; and, by the (b) and (c) belonging to his lobster. The teacher calls the way, if your grandfathers had been taught to realize the class together, when it is found by comparing notes that value of these things, how much rich ethnographical mate- nearly all have found attributes (a), (b) and (c) belonging rial they might have preserved that is now forever lost! to the lobster that each has examined. The inference is The plowman of the present day rarely brings to the surface arrow-heads and skinning stones so common some two or three generations ago. that these are general attributes of the lobster. But here is one who has found only (a) and (b) in his lobster. Now what must be done? Refer to the book on zoology? No. "Look at the lobster again," says the teacher. Heine this thought," said the teacher. This thought is the looks but does not succeed in finding attribute (c.) What lobster for one who gave it. Remember now that it is the thought we are examining and not its expression. The thought is an internal something but the expression is an external, tangible something. then? Does some pupil say that my book says all lobsters have this attribute? If some one did say such a thing the student with the specimen would triumphantly present his lobster. No, we must examine the specimen. We do so, Teacher.-What did you think about? Pupil.-I and show the doubter that he has not looked carefully. thought about the pencil. T.-What did you think of the The attribute that we have denoted by (c) is pointed out pencil? P.-I thought the attribute round of the pencil. to him. Now we, of course, are glad to know, what the T. Had you the ideas pencil and round in your mind? P. author of the book has observed in regard to lobsters. We--I had. T.-Did you see that the idea round belonged turn to the chapter on this interesting animal. We find into the idea of pencil? P.-I did. T.-How many ideas it, not only his personal observations recorded, but the ob- did you unite? P.-Two. T.-Then how many elements servations of many other persons who have zoology a life in the thought, The pencil is rouud? P.--Three. study. They have all found the attributes (a), (b) and (c) The teacher asked whether each had found this true of and several others that we failed to find. Do we now pro- his thought. There were some who had not found it true. ceed to commit them to memory in order to "stand well" One pupil said that in his thought he found only two elein the coming "test"? Not at all. The testy "test" is not ments. "What are they?" said the teacher. The reply troubling us. We are too busy studying the lobster to was "My thought is the sun shines. One idea or element think about the test, (examination, we used to call it.) is the sun; another the act of shining." The teacher asked Our author says that attribute d is found in the lobster. him if he united the idea of shining with his idea of the We catch our lobster and ask him about it. Sure enough, sun. He replied that he did. "Well, then," said the there it is, just where our author said we would find it! We are delighted to find it and disgusted that we did not see it before. Perhaps it might have been better for the pupils if the teacher had said, "You have done, but one of the most important attributes you have failed to see. What an examination of every lobster would have followed! This is one illustration of the fact that a true teacher is better than the book can be. teacher, "is not this uniting that you say you did a third element in your thought? "Yes, but we have one word," said the pupil. "True," said the teacher, "but we are not now discussing words. We shall have something to say about them later. By this "lobster plan" the pupils were led to see that these are the universal elements of the thought. We hope to discuss the expression of the thought at another time.-Indiana School Journal. THE WEAVING OF THE KINDERGARTEN. But we headed this article "Grammar." The subject of grammar is just as real as the lobster. Before one could study the lobster, he must have the lobster presented to his intellect. To study the lobster through the book alone Kate Douglas Wiggin says: "Observation teaches us would prove futile. The same is true of grammar. The that the full use of our senses is only acquired by suitable subject must be presented to the intellect. What is the training. How fully this training is effected in the gifts of subject? The ideas and thoughts that each of us has. We Froebel, only the initiated can appreciated and understand. cannot examine these until we are able "to see within." It Weaving," she continues, "is one of the most beautiful is a process of introspection to do this. A child is not able to do this, so he should not be asked to study grammar. He cannot study his own ideas and thoughts and the process of mind in getting them. and useful of his occupations; it develops the eye, the hand and the memory, all affecting the child's after life, be he artist or artisan." The combination of color in this occupation sets it apart from all others, for in no other part of The pupil who begins grammar, then, should be led to the hand work is combining color an absolute necessity. center his thought not in the book, but on his own think- Mathematically considered, weaving seems one of the ing. The teacher might mention certain objects as pencil, most practical means by which to illustrate to children the house, tree, star, sun, etc. Each has ideas of these objects relationship of number. It is impossible for the child to "Can you say something of each ?" says the teacher. A weave his strip up and down, in and out, without counting, variety of sentences would follow if the teacher wishes and estimating the effect of two strips or threads up, or them. "The pencil is round," says one. "Let us exam- three down. Aside from the industry required on the part |
