can perform f 
 
 .rent, the teacher and the 
 
 child, this important office. Yet while for adults, 
 who, knowing most, need them least, there is 
 an endless variety of newspapers— weekly and 
 monthly newspapers devoted to all the trades, 
 arts, businesses and professions, and daily news- 
 papers devoted to everything else; and, for young 
 people, periodicals without number which tell 
 of the things which did not happen— usually, 
 indeed, of things that never could— they can 
 nowhere in this wilderness of print find— a news- 
 paper; an answer to the inquiry which the 
 healthy mind follows from infancy to old age: 
 “ What is my world made of and how does it 
 work; what are the other people doing and how 
 do they do it?” Francis B. Atkinson. 
 
 Chicago , Sept. 24, 1900. 
 
 KW 
 
 FIRST ARTICLE 
 
 THE USEFULNESS OF WATER IN LEARNING TO 
 
 swin 
 
 To the inquiry, “Just how is an account of 
 current events to be used in school work?” the 
 answer is, 
 
 “Get. rid of the e just how’ idea and the whole 
 thing is done.” 
 
 The only difficulties will be those which you 
 may put in the way. If you want life in your 
 school open the door and let it come in — in other 
 words don’t shut it out. 
 
 Nature as a Model in Nature Work 
 
 The boy, (for convenience sake I will use the 
 word throughout to include both sexes) in com- 
 mon with all animal creation, is attached to life. 
 
 3 
 
He comes to school with his mind full of it. Let 
 it stay. The great difficulty is to separate him 
 from it— a difficulty which only the unfortunate 
 ingenuity of man has ever solved. Having learned 
 how, we are now progressing rapidly by forget- f 
 ting as fast as possible. This is the whole differ- 
 ence between the old educational method and 
 the new. We used to draw our ideas of life, like 
 the artists who made the rigid and impossible ^ 
 images of Egyptian kings, from the “ inner con- 
 sciousness” and the false models left by our 
 predecessors; now we draw more from nature 
 and no longer, as Ruskin says, “ blaspheme 
 the works of God by painting the living grass 
 brown instead of green.” 
 
 The purpose of these articles, then, expressed 
 briefly, is to demonstrate that they ought not to 
 have been written; that it ought not to have 
 been necessary to write them. 
 
 However they may differ in other points— 
 educators past and present and everywhere — 
 man in the education of his children, and the 
 animal in the education of its young— agree that 
 the object of a school is to prepare its scholars 
 for life. 
 
 The proposition, therefore, to bring school 
 studies and current life into touch needs the 
 same defense, the same explanation as a sug- 
 gestion to introduce horses into a riding academy, 
 or to turn water into a swimming school. 
 
 How the Text Book Eclipses the Earth 
 
 To put the book before the thing which the 4 
 book is about; to walk around the earth and 
 among all its living sights and peoples and in- 
 dustries with eyes fixed on a Geography; to 
 4 
 
cipher through an Arithmetic unconscious and 
 ignorant of all the world’s thoughts and activi- 
 ties in which figures are playing theii busy and 
 essential parts— fast flying shuttles weaving the 
 warp of industry, knitting the fabrics of trade; 
 to commit to memory the number of bones in the 
 Physiology, to recite and listen to recitations on 
 the structure of the human ear with ears in- 
 sensible to the voices of living men; to painfully 
 drag out Compositions on assigned topics, while 
 in the world outside people are speaking and 
 writing from an impelling interest in the things 
 they see and know— is to put the cart before the 
 horse— or rather is trying to get somewhere in a 
 cart without a horse. 
 
 The best thing Nature ever did for the fish 
 was to make him take to water. The best thing 
 she ever did for her boy was to make him seek out- 
 of-door information. A boy’s interest in life is 
 his motive power. He needs it in his business 
 of being taught and you need it in your business 
 of teaching him. Hitch it on to his school lessons 
 and he will take them away with him in the 
 afternoon and bring them back the next morn- 
 ing; otherwise, when he comes into the school 
 room door he will leave his interest in life on 
 the outside; when he goes out of the school 
 room door he will leave his lessons on the inside. 
 Unrestrained he goes back to Mother Earth for 
 such instruction as, with or without your guid- 
 ance, she alone can give him. 
 
 This is the law of gravitation as applied to 
 education. Here, again, replying to the ques- 
 tion, “How shall we do it? How shall we con- 
 nect the boy with life?” the answer is: “If he 
 is not connected with life you must be holding 
 him away. Let go, that’s all.” 
 
 5 
 
The Small Boy’s Hodel of His Larger World 
 
 Before he started to school he had begun learn- 
 ing everything you may be trying to teach him. 
 He learned where the different industries in 
 the town are located, and as much as his five 
 senses could tell as to how they are carried on— 
 that was Geography and probably Physics and 
 perhaps Arithmetic; he knew where grew ti e 
 things he wanted to eat and the “pizen ” things 
 that he musn’t eat— that was Geography again 
 and Botany; he knew the habits and habita- 
 tions of the animals he wanted to catch and of 
 the animals (real or imaginary) that he didn’t 
 want to catch him— that was still Geography, 
 and, in addition, Nature Study; he wanted to 
 know why the sun rose in the East and set in 
 the West, and what it and the earth and the 
 moon and the stars were made of— that was 
 Geography and Astronomy and Geology; he was 
 deeply interested in his sore toe and in other 
 boys’ sore toes and in all his and their breaks 
 and bruises, in the ailments of his animal pets 
 and the methods of curing them— that was 
 Physiology; he assiduously won all he could of 
 marbles and eagerly counted and recounted all 
 he won, and told how and where he won them — 
 that was still Geography, plus Arithmetic, plus 
 Language, plus the combination of faculties and 
 skill which we call “Business.” 
 
 And so through the list. You find him active 
 and busy— the very embodiment of busy-ness— 
 in the little world in which he is living — a com- 
 plete counterpart and prophecy of the larger 
 world in which he is to live. 
 
 The Twin Sciences of Geography and Newsography 
 
 Now, your pleasing occupation is to introduce 
 
 - 6 
 
him to this larger world. You are to toe his 
 guide and the text books are the guide booKs— 
 the most comprehensive of which is the one we 
 call Geography. In fact Geography, as Nature 
 teaches it, is the whole thing — it is the world 
 and all that is and takes place thereon, and all 
 that we may know or learn of its brother worlds 
 in the skies that bend above it. As Professor 
 Dewey has so happily expressed it, it is “the unity 
 of all the sciences/’ 
 
 Emerson somewhere points out that the saying 
 “All roads lead to Rome” does not tell the 
 greatest truth with regard to this historic facto 
 These roads were built not from the rest of the 
 world into Rome, as the phrase “ lead to Rome” 
 implies, but were built out from Rome into the 
 world, thus giving the Roman quick and easy 
 access into all the provinces of his Empire. So 
 in education Geography can be made and is 
 logically the central science from which to lead 
 into all the others; the background of The Pres- 
 ent, from which, from day to day to move out 
 into those various provinces of human knowl- 
 edge, represented by the text books, which the 
 world’s experience and the world’s teachers 
 have agreed upon as best for the discipline, de- 
 velopment and information of the student. 
 
 As the first practical step in the carrying out 
 of this idea, draw, or better still, have the pupils 
 draw on the blackboard a map of the world on 
 Mercator’s projection so as to bring the whole 
 stretch of it, the whole background of life, into 
 view at one time. 
 
 Around the World in Thirty Minutes 
 
 Indicate on this map by figures the location of 
 notable events; here a great sea coast city is 
 7 
 
threatened by the spread of a rebellious uprising; 
 there a new seaport has just been opened to the 
 fleets of commerce; here the construction of a 
 new type of vessel has enabled grain to be -k, 
 shipped by water direct from ports on the Great 
 Lakes to Liverpool; away off to the northeast 
 there another expedition is starting for the North 
 Pole; down here in Asia Minor the Sultan is { 
 preparing to build a railroad from Damascus to 
 Mecca and the tumult of shouting trainmen and 
 the shriek of escaping steam will echo in the 
 City of the Prophet and along the crooked thor- 
 oughfare which St. Paul refers to “ as the street 
 which is called Straight;” intrenched among 
 the rocks and mountains which those little fan- 
 like lines represent are the Boers and yonder 
 are the British, and the valley echoes the robust 
 debate of their artillery; to that region the mon- 
 soon usually brings rain and because it failed 
 this year millions of people are starving and 
 yonder in the land of Egypt the waters in the 
 Nile are low; in the South too much rain has 
 hurt the cotton crop while up yonder in the 
 Northwest the wheat fields are suffering for lack 
 of it; on the ocean, storms are unusually frequent 
 and severe, and marine insurance rates have been 
 advanced, because there are spots on the sun 
 this year; the war over in China has in- 
 creased the price of sulphur there in Sicily be- 
 cause so many of the Italian vessels which carry 
 it to the market are off to China in the service 
 of the King. 
 
 At the bottom of the blackboard have figures 
 corresponding to those on the map and brief 
 statements of the facts to which the figures 
 relate. v 
 
 8 
 
In the Geography class proper the map will 
 impress itself on the minds of the pupils because 
 it is the scene of interesting events. There is, 
 ~ moreover, an immense stimulus to the child in 
 the fact that, if his desire to know of the present 
 world and its work is gratified, he is studying 
 the things in which his father and mother are 
 ] interested. This is the kind of Geography he 
 hears talked about at home. 
 
 Its benefit may still further be increased, the 
 pupil given an active part in the work and his 
 memory tested by erasing the explanations un- 
 der the map and letting him write them out ; 
 then erasing the figures and letting him relocate 
 the scenes of events on the map. 
 
 A Sure Test of Knowledge Values 
 
 Current events, moreover, perform an import- 
 ant function in determining what part of geo- 
 graphical knowledge is of most value. Parts of 
 the earth in which nothing ever happens, from 
 which nobody ever comes and to which nobody 
 ever goes, do not, obviously, amount to much 
 and knowledge with regard to them is of little 
 value. 
 
 THT 
 
 SECOND ARTICLE 
 
 THE FIRM OF “WORLD, WEATHER & CO.” AND 
 THE NATURE OF THEIR BUSINESS 
 
 The value of Life Study in the school is: 
 
 1. To show the relation of school studies to 
 the facts of life. 
 
 2. To show the relations of these facts to one 
 another. 
 
 Both these important results, are obviously 
 
 9 
 
achieved by the method under consideration. 
 
 Get in view and keep in view the fundamental 
 truth, the truth which is the basis of the modern 
 educational system— the modern educational 
 revolution— that the school was made for man 
 and not man for the school, Things will not 
 happen in Portuguese East Africa, for example, 
 because in the Geography lessons of that week 
 the pupils are expected to commit to memory the t 
 names and numbers of its sub-divisions. But 
 when they read how a cargo of American flour 
 is seized by a British ship in Delogoa Bay you 
 may in your Geography class teach eager listen- 
 ers all you like about Portuguese East Africa 
 and its provinces and follow that ship in its 
 voyage across half the world with its cargo of 
 flour and Geography, showing them such of the 
 scenes and peoples and industries, as you choose 
 on the way. 
 
 You have taught them that the world is round 
 and that, starting from any one point and going 
 straight ahead, you may go all around it. Do 
 it. Make such journeys in your classes, always 
 starting from some point where something has 
 happened which will enlist the pupil’s interest. 
 Then you have got him aboard; you can carry 
 him where you like. What the greatest of ora- 
 tors defined as the secret of oratory— of convic- 
 tion, of pursuasion, of making other people see 
 things as you see them— is action, action, action. 
 
 If you want to give somebody else a piece of 
 your mind you must attach it to something 
 that is moving. The boy will tell you that you /> 
 can’t fly kites when there is no wind blowing. 
 
 The Black Line and the River 
 
 A boy finds real Geography much more inter- 
 
esting than mere book Geography and in pro- 
 portion as teachers associate the map with the 
 events which the map illustrates the study is 
 made attractive and practical. In the book, 
 states are bounded by other states ; in life they 
 are bounded by men and these men are doing 
 things. A teacher in the schools at Rock Island, 
 Illinois, said they had many pupils every year 
 ' who hadn’t any idea, until they were told, that 
 the black line on the map representing the Mis- 
 sissippi River had any connection with the 
 stream of water that flows by the town. Illus- 
 trating the same fact from current history, the 
 fact the marks on the map stand for real things, 
 it will be noted that many men lost their lives 
 and several generals their reputations because 
 there were some kopjes in Africa that they 
 didn’t have on their maps; on the coast of one 
 of the Philippine Islands a ship went down be- 
 cause there was a sunken reef there which the 
 chart-makers had not recorded— all due to the 
 absence of some black marks on white paper 
 from the place where they ought to have been. 
 
 “ Geography,” said Von Moltke, “is half the 
 art of war.” So is it, taught as here indicated, 
 half the art of life and education. The map 
 should be before every class just as the general 
 carries with him and constantly refers to his 
 plans of campaign. Scratch the surface of 
 Geography and you have Geology; tell where, 
 as at Niagara, turbines have been set under one 
 of its waterfalls and you have Hydraulics; of 
 f how the power generated here is transmitted to 
 Buffalo and you have Electricity; talk of the 
 plant life on its surface and you have Botany; 
 of its animal life and you have Biology; of the 
 11 
 
scene of a memorable political gathering past or 
 present and you have History and Civil Govern- 
 ment; show where the mines of South Africa are 
 located and how the gold is extracted and you 
 have Mechanics and Chemistry; point out where 
 Wellman, the explorer, fell into the ice crevasse 
 and broke his leg, and where and how it was 
 broken and you have a more impressive lesson ^ 
 in Physiology and Anatomy than could be sup- 
 plied by the most perfect manikin. 
 
 The Modern Method in Geography Teaching 
 
 To show how thoroughly this whole idea is in 
 keeping with modern educational practice and 
 yet how important an advance it marks on any- 
 thing that has been done or can be done in cor- 
 relation and vitalization through the text book 
 alone, let me cite a few examples of supple- 
 mental work from one of the latest and best 
 Geographies. 
 
 This Geography, in its preface, points out the 
 fact that “Geography for schools should be a 
 practical study of man’s physical surroundings 
 in their relation to him.” Accordingly we do 
 not find the fact that the earth is round put be- 
 fore the beginner in Geography as a subject of 
 the first interest or importance to him. Alex- 
 ander won all his battles, Demosthenes delivered 
 all his orations, Achilles fought and Homer 
 sang of him, on an earth which all supposed to 
 be flat; obviously then a knowledge that the 
 earth is round is not an absolute essential to 
 high intellectual achievement. So the child, « 
 following lines of information which he can 
 more readily utilize and therefore understand, 
 discovers for himself that the earth is round, 
 somewhat as the race discovered it, by circum- ^ 
 
 12 
 
navigating it in his studies. The explanation 
 does not precede the fact; facts are first pre- 
 sented, which arouse a desire for the expiana- 
 4 tion, the explanation which only the real shape 
 of the world can give. 
 
 Yet this text book in its supplemental work 
 and its correlations stops, as all text books must, 
 ^ just short of coming in contact with things 
 * which continue to happen after it has gone to 
 press. In other words, it makes overtures to- 
 ward life and goes as far as it can toward form- 
 ing an alliance, but it can go no farther. A life- 
 book must come forward and meet it half way. 
 For example, it calls attention to the fact that 
 when the moon passes between the sun and the 
 earth the earth’s shadow on the moon is round, 
 but it is unconscious of the more impressive 
 lesson, which the world has recently been study- 
 ing through smoked glass, that the moon did 
 pass between the sun and the earth and cast a 
 round shadow on the sun. It points out that 
 people have traveled in one general direction 
 entirely around the earth to the place from 
 which they started, but it does not know that 
 Mr. Cobbold, the English traveller, has just re- 
 turned from a trip around the world during 
 which he passed through the hitherto unpene- 
 trated mysteries of the land of the Grand Llama 
 and saw and did many other wonderful things 
 which make Geography as interesting as the 
 most thrilling book of imaginary adventures, 
 f The Proper Method of Correlation 
 
 In its work of correlating Geography with 
 Literature, it suggest that the teacher have the 
 pupils read Jean Ingelow’s “ High Tide on the 
 Coast of Lincolnshire;” but it does not know of 
 13 
 
the recent great storm in England which swept 
 away the church in St. Bottolph’s Town to- 
 gether with its bell which played “The Brides of 
 Enderby” as a storm signal to fishermen. The ^ 
 teacher is told to procure a series of daily 
 weather maps from the Weather Bureau and 
 follow the course of a storm, explaining its his- 
 tory. This was months before the greatest ^ 
 hurricane in history swept away Galveston, in 
 the account of which the teacher finds these 
 daily weather maps already procured for him 
 from the Weather Bureau, the course of the 
 storm marked out for him and its origin and his- 
 tory explained. 
 
 “Find in a History,” again says this Geogra- 
 phy, “a map showing the growth of the United 
 States in territory and put a copy on the board 
 in colored crayons.” We know, what the author 
 of this Geography at the time he wrote could 
 not know, that the subject of territorial ex- 
 pansion of the United States is a burning ques- 
 tion, and that the school may now have a map, 
 colored not only with crayons, but with the 
 words of oratory and campaign transparencies. 
 
 In further correlation with the study of His- 
 tory, the pupils are told to find the names of the 
 present president and his cabinet. Just now a 
 president and his cabinet are in process of being 
 chosen and the names of all of them and much 
 more valuable and related information the boy 
 would absorb unconsciously through the pores 
 of his skin if you would let him take his text, 
 books and with him join the great, interesting, 
 educative procession of events. 
 
 Real Weather and Real Men in Meteorology Lessons 
 
 In this Geography is taught the elements ofi 
 14 
 
Meteorology. Meteorology, whether taught in 
 its elementary form in connection with Geogra- 
 phy, or in more advanced form as a separate 
 study, is a dry, and to a great extent, meaning- 
 less diagram of twisted lines and crooked ar- 
 rows; or it is a fascinating picture of the world 
 and human affairs as affected from day to day 
 by the winds and all the multiplied and com- 
 plex changes which these winds bring with 
 them— a living fact, a living force, so powerful 
 that it has shaped and continues still to shape 
 all of man’s works— in his industries, in his ar- 
 chitecture, in his paintings, in his literature. 
 
 Showing Weather at Its Work 
 
 In one of the latest works on Meteorology con- 
 siderable attention is given to the climate of the 
 Yang Tse Kiang Valley, to that of South Africa, 
 and to the climate at the North Pole. We dll 
 know what great events in the Boxer uprising, 
 in the Boer-British War and in the achievement 
 of the Duke d’Abruzzi, would impress this 
 knowledge upon the pupil’s mind and show— 
 what the book does not even hint at— how these 
 climatic conditions affect the doings of men. 
 There is in Meteorology, to put the same fact in 
 the technical language of educational science, 
 no “correlation.” Here are some further ex- 
 amples from “The Life Class,” published at the 
 time when the events referred to occurred, of the 
 supplemental information which the school study 
 of Meteorology needs: 
 
 How does the amount of rain which fell in this country 
 during June compare with the rains in June in previous 
 years ? 
 
 What effect has the lack of rain had on the lake levels 
 and on lake traffic ? On the lumber business ? On the birds 
 in the rice and cranberry bogs ? 
 
 15 
 
Why is Cape Hatteras especially dangerous and where 
 do the storms that sweep along our Eastern coast come 
 from ? 
 
 Give an idea of the business life of the farmer and par- 
 ticularly what happens along about harvest time. 
 
 How are daily weather reports to be furnished to 
 farmers ? 
 
 What part of the country has been damaged by storms 
 and what was the damage ? 
 
 What is the difference between a cyclonic wind and a 
 tornado ? 
 
 What damage has been done by recent bad weather in 
 France ? 
 
 KW 
 
 THIRD ARTICLE 
 
 PUTTING LIFE INTO THE ARITHMETIC LESSON 
 
 The aim of the old education seemed to be to 
 take interesting and valuable facts and make 
 schoolroom scarecrows out of them by giving 
 them formidable names. Pike’s Arithmetic had 
 300 rules, and called a lot of innocent and useful 
 arithmetical truths such hard names as “ Permu- 
 tation,” “Progression,” “Alligation,” “Single 
 Position” and “Double Position.” With the 
 awakening of the educational world these night- 
 mares have disappeared, but Prof. John Dewey, 
 who occupies the chair of the Chicago Uni- 
 versity devoted to the science of teaching, having 
 called attention to the fact that the problems 
 relating to compound partnership stayed in the 
 Arithmetic for 200 years after compound partner- 
 ship disappeared from business life, adds : 
 
 A great deal of what is now in the arithmetics under the 
 he^d of percentage is of the same nature. Children of 
 twelve and thirteen years of age go through gain and loss 
 calculations and various forms of bank discount so com- 
 plicated that the bankers long ago dispensed with them. 
 When it is pointed out that business is not done this way, 
 16 
 
we hear of ‘mental discipline.’ The child should study 
 his commercial arithmetic and geography , not as isolated 
 things, but in their reference to his social environment. 
 The youth needs to become acquainted with the bank as a 
 factor in modern life, with what it does and how it does it, 
 and ^en arithmetical processes will have some meaning. 
 
 The Donkey and the Bull Frog 
 
 Many parents complain that heavy books are 
 forced on immature children, and one of them in 
 bitter jest recently forwarded to the Chicago 
 school board the following problem as one worthy 
 of a place in a text book to which he objected : 
 
 If 16-47 of a bull frog will leap 45-67 of an inch in 17-63 of 
 a second, what part of an inch will 23-97 of a bull frog leap 
 in 567-817 of a second ? 
 
 If 7-11 of a yellow donkey will wag his tail at a radius of 
 6.1943 of an inch, what proportion of an inch will 19.763 of a 
 black donkey wag his tail ? 
 
 This, however, must have been a particularly 
 objectionable arithmetic, as we find in the best 
 text books in this line examples taken largely 
 from business affairs and correlating arithmetic 
 with geography, astronomy, mechanics, bank- 
 ing, insurance, brokerage and so on. One ex- 
 ample deals with an advance in the price of 
 India rubber, another with the measurement of 
 coal, another with lace making in France, an- 
 other with the diameter of Venus, another with 
 the trip of a vessel from Liverpool to Portland, 
 another with the determination of the horse 
 power of an engine and the circumference of a 
 flywheel, another with city taxes, and so on. 
 
 When you thus keep your arithmetical rules 
 in contact with the concrete instead of the ab- 
 stract, you have gone a long way in the right 
 direction. When you begin to deal with con- 
 crete things now in existence by bringing your 
 17 
 
arithmetic in touch with life, or bringing life up 
 and touching your arithmetic lesson with it— 
 you have arrived. 
 
 It is safe to say that there is hardly a bank 
 president in Chicago who could figure out for 
 himself as quickly as some of your brightest 
 pupils in fractions how much 4 16-17 times 
 8 42-97 is, and if you should ask Mr. Armour, 
 off-hand, to say how he would multiply a num- 
 ber by 333 1-3 by the method of aliquot parts, he 
 would probably do it by proxy ; that is to say, 
 he would summon one of the young men whom 
 he employs for that purpose; or if you should 
 show him a long column of figures and want the 
 result, he might call another young man, who, 
 in turn, would probably press some buttons and 
 let his adding machine do the rest. 
 
 Something that Cuts More Figure in Business than 
 Figure=Skill 
 
 Now the intention here is not to minimize the 
 importance of skill in doing quickly sums in 
 fractions or addition, but to point out the folly 
 and inconsistency of insisting upon this kind of 
 knowledge, the kind of skill which is possessed 
 by young men who get only moderate wages, and 
 adding machines which get no wages at all, and 
 omitting entirely instruction in the larger truths 
 and principles of commercial life, which only 
 regular and constant contact with the move- 
 ments of commercial life through a properly 
 edited school newspaper can supply. The young 
 man who has skill as a book keeper gets an op- 
 portunity to begin; the young man who has 
 this plus the other knowledge referred to will 
 get an opportunity to rise. 
 
 Moreover, so far as the mere acquirement of 
 18 
 
skill in figures goes, the chief need is to stimu- 
 late the interest of the pupil by giving him 
 things from current life to “ mix in ” with the 
 examples in his arithmetic. In connection with 
 the presidential campaign, for instance, people 
 * speak of the number of votes cast for president 
 in the last campaign and estimate the number 
 that will be cast this year. The bankers are 
 talking about England’s issue of bonds to cover 
 'the expenses of the war in South Africa. “ For 
 how much money has England issued bonds? 
 How much does one of these $1,000 English 
 bonds sell for and what rate of interest does 
 this represent?” is one of the questions in “The 
 Life Class.” All such subjects are starting 
 points from which you may lead the awakened 
 interest of the pupils into every branch of math- 
 ematics. Mathematics is the measure of every- 
 thing, and the pupil will constantly see men 
 measuring things with it in the story of passing 
 life. Here are some further examples from 
 “The Life Class:” 
 
 Real People and Real Things in Class Work 
 
 What is the relative taxation of rich and poor in Italy ? 
 
 What is the size of the apple and peach crops in this 
 country and the wheat crop in India ? How do they com- 
 pare with former years and what is the percentage of in- 
 crease or decrease ? 
 
 How do the earnings of the railroads this year compare 
 with those of last year, and why, although they are larger, 
 have the stockholders been paid less in dividends ? Define 
 gross earnings and net earnings. 
 
 What is the relative cost of a university and a battle- 
 ship ? 
 
 . * Do you think the bakers ought to raise the price of bread, 
 as they are talking of doing, at the present price of flour? 
 How many pounds of flour are there in a barrel ? What is 
 the legal weight of a loaf of bread ? 
 
 19 
 
Tell about the business Uncle Sam has been doing during 
 the fiscal year which ends to-day. What is the fiscal year? 
 
 What proportion of the number of jacknives used in the 
 United States are made in this country ? 
 
 How much will it cost to build the underground railroad 
 in New York and how long will it take to build it ? 
 
 Tell how the author of “Alice in Wonderland ” rebuked 
 the little girl for exaggeration and how long it would have 
 taken her to deliver the 2,000,000 kisses she sent him. 
 shipments of corn ? ^ 
 
 “How is Business ?” 
 
 Although the great majority of men are, and 
 in the nature of things must continue to be, en- 
 gaged in the production, preparation and dis- 
 tribution of commodities, in what we include 
 under the general name of “ commercial life,” 
 there has been until recent years no special 
 training in the schools for this kind of work, and 
 the general training of the schools took little or 
 no cognizance of the necessity for a knowledge 
 of business affairs. What are known as business 
 colleges are devoted almost exclusively to train- 
 ing young men and women for clerical work of 
 one kind or another. In the length of time to be 
 devoted to the work and with the facilities avail - 
 able they can go no further. Such a knowledge 
 as will qualify a graduate of one of these insti- 
 tutions for filling a clerkship in a bank or a 
 business house, he receives; but the knowledge 
 which will qualify him to rise above such a posi- 
 tion he must acquire as best he may on the out- 
 side. Now, into the colleges are beginning to be 
 introduced commercial departments, in which 
 young men are trained in a knowledge of affairs 
 which will qualify them to understand and as- 
 sume the responsibility of the general manage- 
 ment of large commercial enterprises or of some 
 of their subdivisions. 
 
 20 
 
Here again in the common school and in the 
 business college there is need for a commercial 
 education in this broader sense which will go 
 hand in hand and step by step with the scholar’s 
 progress in the study of the common school 
 5 course or of stenography, typewriting, book- 
 keeping and other branches of which the com- 
 mercial school makes a specialty. 
 
 Following are some examples of the kind of 
 
 examination questions” which a reading of 
 the commercial news from week to week will 
 qualify the student to answer: 
 
 Give some of the genera] causes which make business 
 dull in summer. 
 
 Why does such of the wheat as is shipped from California 
 to Liverpool go by water instead of by rail ? 
 
 Why is iron the barometer of trade ? How do large crops 
 help the iron market ? Why do they raise. interest rates ? 
 
 Why does a hot summer decrease the supply of window 
 glass ? 
 
 Why does a presidential campaign check business ac 
 tivity ? 
 
 Where is the black belt ” of Russia, how large is it, and 
 what is its crop outlook ? 
 
 What effect has the war in China had on Pacific Ocean 
 trade ; on the price of sulphur ; on Atlantic Ocean trade ; 
 on our cotton industries ; on the Bank of England’s dis- 
 count rate ; on the price of silver ? Tell what is meant by 
 the discount rate. 
 
 What do we export to China and what do we import from 
 China ? 
 
 Why has the lack of rain in the Northwest increased the 
 shipments of corn ? 
 
 What is the outlook for the Georgia watermelon crop ? 
 
 What is a “ corner in a commercial sense, and why is it 
 dangerous to try to corner things ? Give an example from 
 ^urrent commercial history. 
 
 How is business ?” 
 
 What plan is being considered by American millers for 
 shipping less wheat and more flour to Europe ? 
 
 What important fish industry is in its active season in 
 ^.he State of Washington ? Describe how it is carried on. 
 
 21 
 
What is taking place in the iron ore business of the Great 
 Lakes just now ? 
 
 What is the German meat bill, and who are the Agrarians ? 
 
 How large is our meat business with Germany ? 
 
 Name some important products that will be harvested 
 during the present month and tell what parts of the world 
 they will come from. 
 
 Why has the price of boots and shoes advanced ? 
 
 How will the scarcity of coal in Europe help the silk w 
 industry in this country ? What large concern doing busi- 
 ness as a partnership has just been incorporated ? What is 
 a corporation and what is it good for ? Illustrate by a well 
 known fable and an example from one of Henty’s stories. 
 
 Tell of an important effect of competition in business 
 and illustrate by the case of the “L” road and the under- 
 ground road in New York City. 
 
 What is a dividend and what Is a deficit ? 
 
 How has the Cuban war stimulated the beet sugar busi- 
 ness in the United States ? How much did the Cuban cane 
 sugar crop fall off on account of the war ? Show on the 
 map the beet sugar section of the United States. How 
 much does it cost to put up a beet sugar factory with a 
 capacity of 300 tons a day ? 
 
 W 
 
 FOURTH ARTICLE 
 
 THE APPLICATION TO LIFE OF DRAWING, LAN- 
 GUAGE, HISTORY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT 
 
 It may seem a far cry from Arithmetic and the 
 beet sugar business to the fine arts. But the 
 same truth which applies to the study of Arith- 
 metic applies to the Drawing Lesson; what is 
 wanted is to stimulate an interest in the study, 
 to give a motive for studying. 
 
 r 
 
 What Starts Artists to Drawing 
 
 If somebody should tell you of an eminent 
 artist, (with whose life you were not familiar), 
 that he was first discovered by his parents mak-^ 
 ing straight lines and drawing perfect circles— 
 
 22 
 
going through the gymnastics of art; or of a 
 writer whose literary ability was first displayed 
 in parsing; or of a speaker whose talent first 
 showed itself in analyzing sentences in the gram- 
 mar class, you would doubt the accuracy of the 
 statement because, in the case of all eminent 
 men about whom you have read, their talents 
 were first displayed in attempts to express a 
 thing which interested them — as the talent of 
 Giotto was revealed in his attempts to reproduce 
 on the rocks the forms of his beloved sheep. The 
 Drawing Lesson is simply the Language Lesson 
 in another form. Drawing is a method of ex- 
 pression, the origin of written language, since 
 letters are simply the conventional forms which 
 grew out of the pictures first made by primitive 
 people to convey information. The recognized 
 fact that children in their mental growth go 
 over the route taken by their ancestors in the 
 development from barbarism to civilization, the 
 fact which unlocks so many secrets in child 
 study, explains why children prefer the Draw- 
 ing to the Language Lesson. As drawing came 
 first with their ancestors, so it comes first with 
 them, and as with his ancestors so with the 
 child, he will draw best when he has something 
 to tell. Left to himself the child with a talent 
 for art always goes to life for his inspiration. 
 The modern drawing teacher does not begin 
 with drills in meaningless lines, just as the 
 teaching of reading and language no longer be- 
 gins with the alphabet. 
 
 Keeping the Scholars in the Art Atmosphere 
 Every issue of a properly conducted school 
 newspaper will contain examples and inspira- 
 tions for the Drawing Lesson; in such simple 
 23 
 
forms as insects and flowers and birds when the 
 insects and flowers are in the fields and the 
 birds are' flying over them; in the portraits of 
 eminent men when their names are on other 
 men’s tongues; in a painting of a storm in the 
 season of storms; in the reproductions of paint- 
 ings and accounts of the artists and their work 
 when these paintings have been placed on view 
 in the great exhibitions or in connection with 
 some timely subject in the text. 
 
 Similarly in Drawing Word Pictures 
 
 Language, as it used to be taught, consisted 
 mainly in learning grammatical rules. To-day 
 it consists chiefly in forming the habit of the cor- 
 rect use of words in speaking and writing, in 
 reading the best literature and in aiding the 
 pupil to express himself in oral and written lan- 
 guage on subjects in which he is interested. 
 The learning of the rules of grammar is for the 
 purpose of generalizing knowledge which he 
 should possess before the rules are given him. 
 
 For developing the reasoning faculties and the 
 ability to express one’s self quickly and clearly 
 as one is constantly required to do in actual life, 
 no opportunity which the school can afford 
 equals the old-fashioned debating society; pro- 
 vided always that the debates are not concerned 
 with such vague and “ungraspable ” proposi- 
 tions as “Which was the greatest general, Na- 
 poleon or the Duke of Wellington?” or “ Re- 
 solved, That intemperance kills more men than 
 war.” What the debating society needs is a 
 live and definite subject for discussion; the sub- 
 jects which are being discussed on the streets, 
 in Congress, in the exchanges, in the newspa- 
 pers. Men do not need to be incited to talk 
 24 
 
politics during a political campaign. So the de- 
 bating society and its good work will go on 
 automatically if the pupils who are to take part 
 in it are sufficiently interested and informed on 
 the subjects which men and women are talking 
 about. 
 
 Having Something to Say and Having to Say 
 Something 
 
 Remarking upon the difficulty of teaching 
 language in the routine fashion— upon the eager- 
 ness with which a child expresses himself at 
 home and his reluctance to express himself at 
 all on set topics at school— Professor Dewey says 
 there is all the difference in the world between 
 having something to say and having to say 
 something. 
 
 Vivid use of language— that is to- say the right 
 us — comes from experiences, and the child-mind 
 should be kept supplied with fresh and vivid 
 experiences by informing him of the things of 
 permanent interest and value which are taking 
 place outside the narrower limits of his home 
 and play grounds. 
 
 In the school newspaper should be found an 
 endless supply of subjects, with suggestions as 
 to their method of treatment; subjects which 
 are equally adaptable to the brief answers in the 
 various classes in the studies to which they re- 
 late, and to the more elaborate presentation of 
 the composition and the debate. An important 
 feature in connection with language work is the 
 selection of passages from standard literature in 
 connection with current events, the birthdays of 
 eminent authors and historic anniversaries. 
 Enlarging the Vocabulary by a Natural Process 
 
 The editor of such a paper should avoid “talk- 
 25 
 
ing down” to his readers, and, while giving 
 preference to the Anglo-Saxon for its strength 
 and simplicity, should not attempt to confine 
 himself to “easy words of one syllable.” The 
 right word is not always the shortest word nor 
 the one which is current on the play ground. 
 One important object of such a paper should be 
 to teach its readers to use a dictionary and books 
 of reference by interesting him in subjects which 
 require such research on his part in order to 
 fully understand them. 
 
 Following are some examples of the usefulness 
 of a school newspaper in language work: 
 
 Tell the story of the Irishman who became a great man- 
 darin. 
 
 Tell who the new King and Queen of Italy are. 
 
 Describe the new Indian reservation which is soon to be 
 opened to settlement. 
 
 Tell about the Emperor of China, how he was educated 
 and how his education helped to bring on the Boxer up- 
 rising. 
 
 Tell about the life and characteristics of the late King 
 Humbert, and which of his traits was most worthy of imi- 
 tation ? 
 
 What author is Senator Lodge said to have plagiarized in 
 one of his speeches ? Do you think it was a plagiarism ? 
 
 Who has just been re-elected President of Mexico ? Tell 
 about his adventurous career and what he has done for his 
 country. 
 
 Describe the adventures of the school ship Saratoga. 
 
 Tell about the battle of Tientsin as described in the diary 
 of the sixteen-year-old boy who witnessed it. 
 
 By whom have Kipling’s writings been severely criticised 
 recently and what do you think of the criticism ? 
 
 What famous Scotch writer is buried on one of the Sa- 
 moan Islands, and how does his grave now come to be on 
 German soil ? 
 
 Give the title of some of Ludwig Knaus’ paintings in the 
 original German. 
 
 Translate the ode of Horace which the children of Rome 
 26 
 
have been singing at the anniversary of the founding of 
 the city. 
 
 On what day of this week does the anniversary of 
 Goethe’s birth occur ? Translate “ Mignon ” from German 
 into English; from English into German. 
 
 On what day of this week does the anniversary of the 
 birth of Oliver Wendell Holmes occur? Recite “The 
 Chambered Nautilus.” 
 
 Tell in a 200-word composition what committees of the 
 House and Senate are now inspecting lake harbors andjhow 
 lake harbors are kept in good condition. 
 
 Write a composition of 200 words describing the butterfly 
 farm in New York City. 
 
 The “ sermon ” of 1,500 words in “ The Children’s Church” 
 entitled “ All the World Within Four Walls” was written 
 about what could be seen in the picture by the late Thomas 
 Faed which illustrates it. See how well you can put in 
 500 words the story told in the painting by Phillippoteaux 
 and reproduced in our last issup, called “ An Episode of 
 the Retreat from Russia.” 
 
 History Lessons Past and Present 
 
 The great utility of the study of current events 
 in connection with the school studies called 
 History and Civil Government is obvious. As a 
 prominent educator said in speaking of the value 
 of a newspaper to teachers and school children, 
 “Progressive History teachers know that the 
 most valuable study of History is the process of 
 making it.” Past history is only valuable as it 
 helps us to understand the history of our own 
 times. Such a paper as we have been describing 
 would be obviously devoted more to current 
 history than to past history. Here are some 
 examples : 
 
 What was the Porto Rican Bill, what became of it, and 
 what were the arguments for-and against it ? 
 
 What is the claim of the United States against the Sul- 
 tan of Turkey ? 
 
 What is the “ Open Door ” policy and what has happened 
 to make it talked about ? 
 
 27 
 
What has been done with the Nicaragua Canal Bill? 
 Show on the map the route proposed for the canal. What 
 is the limit as to cost fixed by the bill ? 
 
 What is pelagic sealing and why have attempts been 
 made to get a law passed prohibiting it ? 
 
 What position did President McKinley take with refer- 
 ence to the mission of the Boer envoys and what was his 
 reason for taking it? What is the trouble between France 
 and Morocco ? Name some of the most imnortant measures 
 passed by the Fifty-Sixth Congress. 
 
 But it is not only in its teaching of the most 
 important history, that which is being made, 
 and in giving a purpose and direction to the 
 study of past history, that such a paper is of 
 first importance. Events are constantly occur- 
 ring which give present interest to historical 
 events and which can be used to great advantage 
 in school work. For example : 
 
 Which two of the greatest battles of the civil war has 
 just been commemorated by a monument ? What was the 
 other battle referred to ? 
 
 Tell about a book which gives a new account of the bat- 
 tle of Cedar Creek and what it says about Sheridan’s ride. 
 
 Who was Rochambeau, where has a monument just been 
 erected to him, and why is he of special interest to the 
 children of the United States ? What other Frenchman is 
 gratefully remembered by the children of this country and 
 how have the school children shown their appreciation of 
 his services ? 
 
 What are the important historic anniversaries which 
 come during the present week ? 
 
 What American artist of note died recently ? Name some 
 of his paintings commemorating events in American his- 
 tory. 
 
 What facts have recently been discovered with regard to 
 the Plains of Abraham and what historic event took place 
 there ? 
 
 What was the Louisiana Purchase and how does St. Louis 
 propose to celebrate it 1 
 
 In what what way has the Monroe Doctrine been brought 
 28 
 
up in connection with our relations with Germany ? What 
 is the Monroe Doctrine ? 
 
 A Serious Omission in History Teaching 
 
 Not only does the school History lack the con- 
 nection with current life which would make it 
 most interesting, impressive and valuable, but 
 the unfortunate fact will be recognized as soon 
 as mentioned that while it tells so much of war, 
 is in fact largely a history of wars, it tells little 
 or nothing about the cost of war, nor of the tre- 
 mendous financial preparation and far-reaching 
 financial consequences of war. In the history 
 of our own country, for example, we not only 
 omit all this information— of far greater present 
 interest and importance than the stories of bat- 
 tles and the numbering of the slain— but, while 
 we teach the story of the Civil War and the 
 bitterness that brought it on, we do not tell how 
 the divided flag and its divided people have been 
 knit together again in the looms of industry. 
 
 The True Method of Teaching Citizenship 
 
 Whatever else he may do the boy will be a 
 citizen, and it is of the first importance to him- 
 self and to his country that he should be deeply 
 interested in and understand the duties and 
 privileges of citizenship. Yet the study of this 
 subject, if confined entirely to the text-book 
 called Civil Government, is, if we may accord 
 that distinction to any one individual study, 
 probably the dryest in the list. What he needs 
 is to see Civil Government in practice, and so 
 be able to understand such questions as the 
 following : 
 
 What is to be done in Cuba toward making a constitution 
 for that country, and how are constitutions made ? 
 
 Tell the principal “ planks of the Democratic and Re- 
 
 29 
 
publican platforms and what they mean. What is meant 
 by imperialism ? By the ratio of 16 to 1 ? What is a mon 
 opoly ? What committee in a national convention pre- 
 pares the platform ? 
 
 What are the duties of the president of the United 
 States ? Of the vice-president ? How old would you have- 
 to be before you could be chosen president ? 
 
 Why would it be a hard thing for the European powers 
 to govern China, and how are some other countries in Asia 
 governed by Europeans ? 
 
 Name some of the principal arguments for and against 
 the election of United States Senators by the people. 
 
 Tell about the rights of naturalized Americans and the 
 attitude of Austria toward a young Austrian who left his 
 country without performing the army service required of 
 him What are the terms of the peace proposal made by 
 the Filipinos ? 
 
 What is the consular service and what does it do for the 
 business interests of the country ? Who is at the head of 
 this department of our government ? 
 
 What is the National Civic Federation and what is its 
 purpose ? 
 
 Tell how the city of Paris is governed. What is the mat- 
 ter with its fire department ? How does the amount of 
 money spent by the city on its schools compare with that 
 spent by other cities ? 
 
 What does “ Buffalo Bill ” think about the buffalo and to 
 what Congressional committee has the bill for the preser- 
 vation of the buffalo been presented ? 
 
 Describe the system of self-government used in the John 
 Crerar grammar school. What do you think of it? 
 
 Tell how the coming of age of the young Crown Prince of 
 Germany was celebrated. If you were asked to step over 
 and become king of Germany, wbat would you have to do 
 and what would you have to know before they would let 
 you be king ? 
 
 
 30 
 
FIFTH ARTICLE 
 
 USE OF THE SCHOOL NEWSPAPER IN PHYSIOL- 
 OGY, PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 THE ONLY TRUE METHOD OF COR= 
 RELATION AN EASY ONE. 
 
 Nature Study is one of the most pleasant and 
 satisfactory branches of school work. Chil- 
 dren take naturally to animals and love to learn 
 their habits and characteristics. Here again, 
 however, a great deal can be accomplished by 
 connecting the study with current life. Not 
 only do the truths of Natural History thus 
 make a more vivid and therefore lasting impres- 
 sion, but by the natural correlation established 
 whenever you examine into a fact living, as all 
 living facts do, in an environment of other facts, 
 you are teaching other things beside Natural 
 History. For example, when you ask why has 
 Congress passed a law prohibiting the importa- 
 tion of the mongoose, the pupil, in order to be able 
 to answer, must not only tell about the habits 
 of the mongoose but Congressional proceedings 
 begin to be an interesting and familiar subject. 
 So the question under “Civil Government” about 
 the buffalo, if it is discussed in the Civil Govern- 
 ment class and stress laid upon the measures to 
 be taken to preserve the buffalo and how they 
 are to be carried out, is a matter of Civil Govern- 
 ment. If discussed in the Natural History class 
 and special attention given to the buffalo, then 
 it is a matter of Natural History. 
 
 Current Natural History Lessons 
 
 Here are some further examples of Natural 
 History topics which are “newsy”: 
 
 Tell about the habits of the Belgian hare and the five 
 tandard varieties. 
 
What is the jackrabbit doing that the farmers in the 
 Mississippi don't like ? 
 
 Describe some varieties of the dragon fly, tell what good 
 it is in places infested by mosquitoes and what experi- 
 ments are being made with it in New Jersey ? 
 
 Tell about the habits of the Hessian fly and what the 
 farmers do to get rid of it. Where did it come from origin- 
 ally and how did it get here ? 
 
 Tell the difference between mushrooms and poisonous 
 things which look like them. Describe and draw some 
 poisonous plant commonly met with in the woods. 
 
 Where do the pineapples now on the market come from ? 
 Do they grow in the house or out of doors ? Tell how they 
 are raised and the expenses and profits of raising them. 
 
 Tell something about ants and their habits and about a 
 prominent Englishman who carries them in his pockets. 
 
 What is the lebbek tree, where is it found and of what 
 value will it probably be in the arid regions of the United 
 States. Where are those regions ? 
 
 What do the Government experiment stations study 
 grass for? What are the qualities of blue grama grass 
 that are said to make it specially valuable ? 
 
 Men Better Than Manikins in Physiology 
 
 A boy takes as naturally to the study of 
 Physiology and Hygiene, outside the school- 
 room, as he does to fresh air. It is only when 
 you make a dry abstraction of the subject that 
 his mind gets away from it. The use of a mani- 
 kin to show the structure of the body and the 
 functions of its parts is an important step in ad- 
 vance, but when you can use living men for the 
 same purpose you have gone infinitely farther. 
 Here are some examples: 
 
 Why is sugar being given to college athletes ? 
 
 What are mosquitoes supposed to have to do with the 
 spread of malaria and in what way is a theory regarding 
 it about to be tested ? 
 
 What great bridge is being built in the East? Describe 
 the work of a bridge builder, tell what wages he gets, and 
 tell about the bridge builder whose life was saved by Ins 
 ganglia when his brain failed him. 
 
 32 
 
 \_ 
 
*Tell how Explorer Wellman broke his leg in an ice cre- 
 vasse on his way to the North Pole. What part of his leg 
 was broken, what did the surgeons do and why did they 
 do it ? 
 
 Why did the removal of a clot of blood from the optic 
 nerve of a woman who had not seen for seven years restore 
 her sight ? Show the location of the optic nerve and ex- 
 plain why this operation produced this effect. 
 
 What prominent public official in England has just died 
 of gastritis. What causes gastritis and what should be the 
 habits of one who is inclined to gastritis ? 
 
 What important discovery has just been made in the ad- 
 ministration of cocaine in surgical operations ? 
 
 Why is its use superior to that of chloroform or ether ? 
 
 Why does the injection of cocaine into the spinal dolumn 
 make the patient insensible to pain below the £>oint of in- 
 jection, and why* does he not become unconscious as he 
 does when taking ether or chloroform ? 
 
 What advantage has this method of stopping pain over 
 the use ofj chloroform and similar anaesthetics, and why ? 
 
 Why is rowing poor practice for a football player and 
 why is baseball good practice for him ? 
 
 There you have Physiology “ hot off the bat,” 
 as the boy would say. 
 
 How Physics Stops Just Short of Life 
 
 The study of Physics, which has gone farther 
 than any other study in bringing the pupil in 
 contact with realities, by that very fact shows 
 most clearly the essential limitations of the 
 school and the text-book in the work of educa- 
 tion and the need there is for a periodical source 
 of information which will supplement the work 
 of the book and the teacher. In one of the 
 standard textbooks on Physics, quoting from 
 Superintendent Seaver of the Boston Public 
 Schools, the author says: “It is a cardinal 
 principle in modern pedagogy that the mind 
 gains a real and adequate knowledge of things 
 only in the presence of the things themselves. 
 
 33 
 
Hence the first step in all good teaching is an 
 appeal to the observing powers. * * * The 
 
 theory goes even further and declares in general 
 that no teaching which is not objective can prop- 
 erly be called teaching at all.” 
 
 Yet a demonstration of the properties of air by 
 the laboratory air pump, while in one sense it 
 brings the pupil into the presence of the thing , 
 in another does not. The thing from the prac- 
 tical standpoint as well as from the standpoint 
 of the- pupil, is ” How do men use the properties 
 of air in their business, and how would I use 
 them if I went into that business?” 
 
 Give a boy an opportunity to hear a pneumatic 
 hammer driving rivets in a sky-scraper, like a 
 gigantic woodpecker trying to drill a hole into 
 some metallic roof in a land of giants, and he 
 will pursue you with a running fire of questions 
 from the street into the laboratory and drink in 
 with eager eyes and ears all you will show and 
 tell him about those properties of air which en- 
 able a pneumatic hammer to be operated. The 
 apparatus of the laboratory are the surgical in- 
 struments, so to speak, by which the complex 
 organization of physical laws in an operating 
 machine are dissected. What the pupil needs is 
 to see these laws knit together in the complete 
 organism — the machine — and actually, or through 
 clear and vivid description and pictorial illustra- 
 tion, to see the machine in operation. 
 
 “ Live Steam ” in the Laboratory 
 
 In the book referred to, the steam engine is 
 described briefly, but the form of steam engine 
 with which the boy is most familiar and which 
 attracts him most— the locomotive— is presented 
 34 
 
very briefly and he is told to “ ask an engineer 
 to explain from the object the offices of such 
 parts as you (that is to say the boy) do not un- 
 derstand.” Here is an expression of a distinct 
 desire on the part of the author of the book and 
 the teacher in Physics to be put in touch with 
 life, but the impracticability of depending upon 
 a locomotive engineer in active service to stop 
 and tell any large number of pupils about the 
 parts of his engine is obvious. Moreover it does 
 not follow that if he could be induced to address 
 the school he could make the points entirely 
 clear. Knowing how to run a locomotive and 
 how to explain its operation to school boys re- 
 quires two different kinds of talent and training. 
 
 This book tells nothing of the latest applica- 
 tion of steam in the steam engine called 
 the turbine, in which the principle of the 
 boy’s whirligig has, by the genius of Parsons, 
 been set to work in a machine which Lord Kel- 
 vin says marks the greatest advance in steam 
 engineering since the days of Watt. It tells 
 something of the telegraph, but says nothing 
 about Marconi and wireless telegraphy ; in treat- 
 ing of electricity it tells about Volta and Ampere, 
 but does not tell of the latest developments in 
 electricity nor of the men whose names are as- 
 sociated with them. Volta and Ampere are 
 mainly interesting as being among the noble an- 
 cestors of the electrical world as it is to-day. 
 How quickly a boy knocking about a telegraph 
 office picks up what there is to learn. Here Ed- 
 ison got his training and here, through the pages 
 of a paper printing mechanical news for young 
 people, other boys may be greatly assisted in 
 getting theirs. In the book he is told that a 
 
 3* 
 
cylinder weighs less than a solid shaft of equal 
 strength, but this fact will be seen in actual op- 
 eration in the great water wheels about to be 
 put in at Nigara Falls. 
 
 The Only True Method of Correlation an Easy One 
 
 In order truly to learn a principle or a fact, as 
 previously observed, two things are necessary- 
 first, to see its application to life; second, to see 
 its relationship to other facts and principles; 
 Knowledge is cut up into sections only in the 
 school room; in real life, as William Dean How- 
 ells, says, in speaking of the value of a school 
 newspaper, “ all facts are brethren and live to- 
 gether.” In real life and business, Arithmetic, 
 Geography, History, Mathematics, Chemistry 
 and all the rest are parts of one science, each co- 
 operating with the other in carrying on the 
 work of the individual and the world. It is not 
 difficult to correlate facts if you bring them into 
 the school room as you find them; the difficulty 
 is to separate them and then give a true idea of 
 them. 
 
 A foundryman, for example, must know where 
 to buy his iron and how much to buy, and where 
 he can buy cheapest— that is a Geographical- 
 Commercial-Mathematical problem; he must 
 know the kinds of iron to use and how to mix 
 them in making his castings — that is a Chemical- 
 Mathematical example which he works every 
 day, and if he doesn’t get it right he must rub 
 the resultant casting off his slate, so to speak, 
 and do it over again; he must design his casting 
 so that it will be of the right size and shape with 
 the strength in the right place; that is a Me- 
 chanical-Mathematical proposition; in building 
 up a trade for his castings, he must know how 
 36 
 
to talk to people who are interested in his kind 
 of castings, to write letters about them, to de- 
 sign advertisements of them— that’s Language 
 and a good deal of a Fine Art. 
 
 Like Boys in a Ball Game 
 
 Here we see school studies jumping about, now 
 here, now there, like the pitchers, the batters 
 and the fielders in a ball game, each independent 
 in one way, but quite dependent in another. In 
 the old school room, the Geography didn’t know 
 the Arithmetic and the Arithmetic never heard 
 of the Spelling-Book and the Language Lesson; 
 the Physics and Chemistry, which always 
 stopped just short of telling what they were 
 good for in the world’s work, were left isolated 
 from all the rest. What the pupil needs is what, 
 modern educational science calls “correlation.” 
 He needs not only to have life and meaning put 
 into each individual study, but he needs to have 
 these studies united in the larger life of the 
 world outside the four walls of his school room. 
 Tell what the world is doing from week to week 
 worth knowing and you have established the 
 only perfect correlation— the correlation which 
 is true to nature, to life, to reality. 
 
 It is obviously wrong, therefore, to speak of 
 teaching “ Current Events ” as a separate study. 
 Current events can only be studied with the best 
 results by taking up each individual event in 
 connection with the special school study to 
 which, it relates. It is precisely in proportion as 
 your teaching of current events is free from cut 
 and dried methods that you will get the most out 
 of them. In proportion as yourself and your 
 pupils are “ charged ” with current events, with 
 
 37 
 
the electric interest of the common life of which 
 your lives form a part, that your pupils and 
 yourself will make school work and class work a 
 living, inspiring, progressive thing which con- 
 stantly moves forward, which constantly gets 
 somewhere. 
 
 Life Knowledge a Natural Growth 
 
 The severest criticism the Greeks, the first 
 masters of oratory, could pass upon an oration 
 was that it smelled of the lamp. Don’t let your 
 lessons smell of the lamp. Don’t think because 
 you have such a newspaper as has been de- 
 scribed in your school room and the children 
 have it in their homes that the whole result de- 
 sired is accomplished. The effect of keeping 
 step with the world is cumulative. Get in touch 
 with it every day; keep in touch with it all the 
 year round. Read your newspaper and encour- 
 age your pupils to read it thoroughly. New ac- 
 cessions of knowledge will collect around pre- 
 vious accessions and lead each other on. You 
 will get more out of it the second month than 
 you did the first and see a hundred more ways 
 of using it the third term than you did the sec- 
 ond. You are interested in your own home pa- 
 per because you know the people; it is dry as dust 
 to everybody who does not know them. So inter- 
 est in the world’s affairs will grow as you and 
 your pupils know more about them. 
 
 Outside the school the boy goes like a railroad 
 train ; inside the school, like a push cart. What 
 you want to do, and what the school newspaper 
 will help you do, is to take him through his stud- 
 ies at something like the old gait by bringing his 
 interest in life into the school room and hitching 
 it on to the school work. 
 
 38 
 
SIXTH ARTICLE 
 
 FACTS IN THE FIELD. KNOWLEDGE NOT IN TEXT 
 BOOKS. HOW TO FIND WHAT A 
 BOY’S TALENTS ARE. 
 
 In the examples all eady given in connection 
 with previous studies are numerous instances of 
 true correlation, since in facts taken from life it 
 is not possible always to entirely separate them 
 from one another ; they are not built that way. 
 When you ask, for example, what is the cause 
 for the rise in the price of camphor, you are 
 teaching at the same time History, Geography 
 and Mathematics, and— more important still- 
 are showing the relation of them to commercial 
 life; the reason for the rise being that Japan 
 has come into possession of the Island of Formosa 
 upon which camphor is produced and has a 
 monopoly of the trade. This is History and 
 Geography, and the resultant change in price is 
 Mathematics in action. 
 
 When you tell why vessels of a certain type 
 can now go from ports of the Great Lakes to 
 Liverpool you are teaching Physics and Geogra- 
 phy and Commerce ; when you show the route of 
 the road from Damascus to Mecca for which the 
 Sultan has levied a ten per cent, tax, you are 
 teaching Geography and Commerce and Civil 
 Government ; if you show on the map where a 
 statue is to be erected to Hamlet, you are teach- 
 ing Geography and Literature ; if you locate the 
 point in Greece where the Greeks have set a 
 statue to Gladstone, you are teaching Geography 
 and History— and a love for liberty; if you have 
 the scholars in your Latin class translate the 
 ode of Horace which the children of Rome have 
 been singing in celebration of the anniversary 
 39 
 
of the founding of the city, you are obviously 
 teaching Latin as well as Roman History ; if 
 you tell them in your Nature class about ants 
 and their habits and how Sir John Lubbock car- 
 ries ants in his pocket, you are not only teach- 
 ing Natural History, but you are teaching who 
 Sir John Lubbock is ; if you dwell upon the fact 
 that he is a banker, you are helping to interest 
 them in banking, and if you add that he is a 
 member of Parliament and tell about the duties 
 of a member of Parliament, you are teaching 
 Civil Government. 
 
 In this way the scholar may learn from the 
 ant all that the sluggard might have learned— 
 and a great deal more. 
 
 If when you are talking about mosquitoes and 
 what they are supposed to have to do with the 
 spread of malaria, the method of transition 
 from Natural History into Physiology is easy 
 and obvious, and if, when you are describing the 
 great East River bridge in New York, and tell 
 how the ganglia of one of the workmen saved 
 his life after his brain grew dizzy and failed him, 
 you have not only impressed in a most dramatic 
 and impressive way the function and utility of 
 the ganglia, but you have breathed the breath 
 of life into the occupants of that valley of dry 
 bones called Physiology. 
 
 Most Valuable Knowledge Not in Text Books 
 
 I believe it is hardly necessary to point out, 
 after the numerous examples which incidentally 
 enforce the fact, that some of the most valuable 
 education in this world is not even hinted at in 
 the school books; due probably to the fact that 
 in the pigeon-holes which the modern educa- 
 tional system has inherited frcm the old, no 
 40 
 
place has been made into which it will fit. To 
 enforce this important point, however, we may 
 again call attention to a few examples. There 
 is no school book, for instance, which prepares 
 a boy to say why it is that business is dull in 
 summer, why a presidential campaign is apt to 
 check commercial activity, nor to tell what 
 ^effect a great engineering work in Egypt will 
 have on the business and government of that 
 country. If a boy knows what strikes are, how 
 they are caused and how they are settled, or 
 what a board of arbitration is, it is not because 
 he has learned it in his school books. Neither 
 do they tell him why iron is the barometer of 
 trade, nor how large crops stimulate the iron 
 market, nor why, other things being equal, stocks 
 of grain and railroad stocks play see-saw, one 
 going up while the other goes down. Yet these 
 and hundreds of other similar questions he will 
 be asked to answer when he gets into life and if 
 he cannot answer them he will not go up ahead. 
 How Unnatural It Conies to be Natural! 
 
 It is not surprising that it has taken a good 
 while to learn to be natural in the art of educa- 
 tion. We know from our individual experiences 
 and the experiences of the race that copying 
 Nature truly is difficult — otherwise the first art 
 efforts of the individual or of a people would 
 be the best because there would be the least arti- 
 fice about them. We know, however, that first 
 efforts are the worst. In speaking, in acting, in 
 drawing, we naturally begin by doing things un- 
 natural^ It requires years — centuries when we 
 take the work of our ancestors into account — to 
 learn to speak the truth in word and line. Small 
 wonder then if the art of education— so much 
 
 41 
 
younger than the art of desolation, of war, to 
 which man first devoted his energies — should 
 have gone wrong at the outset and for a long 
 time thereafter. The pictures of life whicn have 
 been drawn, the conceptions of life which have 
 been formed, with the textbook as the sole guide, 
 have for obvious reasons, been crude affairs; 
 must, in the very nature of things, have been in- 
 correct. It is equally plain that progress must 
 lie in the direction of getting and keeping be- 
 fore the school the world as it is; that there 
 should be always in the school room not only a 
 globe but a globe on which things are happen- 
 ing; not only the stage of life, but the acts and 
 the actors. 
 
 Parent and Pupil Need Pedagogy Too 
 
 With the old school school teacher, teaching 
 was maiply a matter of books. Still, to the aver- 
 age parent, the school is mainly a matter of 
 hours; being known chiefly as a place for which 
 children are expected to start at a certain hour 
 in the morning and from which they are expected 
 to come at a certain hour in the afternoon. 
 What takes place in the school during those 
 hours the parent knows very little about and 
 gives very little thought to. With all its im- 
 mense and obvious advantages, this is one un- 
 fortunate result of the public school system — 
 that parents who watch the education of their 
 children in all that the home can teach turn the 
 matter of their subsequent development over to 
 the public school and themselves give the sub- 
 ject very little further thought or attention. 
 
 It is strange and inconsistent that teachers at 
 their institutes, in teachers’ meetings and in 
 their social relations talk to each other a great 
 42 
 
deal about the science of pedagogics, but they 
 teach so little of it to the children. In other 
 words, they tell each other the object to be at- 
 tained by teaching various branches, but they 
 seldom let the children into the secret. 
 
 It is practically useless to tell the average 
 pupil that his studies will be useful some day 
 without explaining definitely what they will be 
 useful for. From his infancy up he wants to 
 know “what for;” Nature made him to ask 
 ‘what for,” and unless you answer this inquiry 
 you are not going to get out of him what you are 
 trying to get out of him— you are not going to 
 educate him. A runner does not fix his eyes 
 upon his feet, he fixes them upon the goal— upon 
 the place to be reached, the object to be attained. 
 Teaching a boy rules, teaching him how to do 
 things without letting him see what he is doing 
 them for, teaching him to figure without show- 
 ing^him what he is figuring toward, teaching him 
 Geography as a guide but not guiding him any- 
 where with it, is contrary to all good reason, to 
 all sound experience, to all Nature. 
 
 The Bird System of Pedagogy 
 
 Even in the most elementary education, the 
 rule holds good that action and instruction go 
 hand in hand. Go further back than the prim- 
 ary school, go further back than infancy, further 
 back than the child itself to animals of a lower 
 order, to a young bird in its nest for example. 
 The business of this bird when he grows up will 
 be to know in what direction his food lies, in 
 what direction he shall migrate in the Spring 
 and in what direction the living fields and the 
 green woods lie in the Fall. Now how does he 
 43 
 
get this information? No other bird teaches 
 him to say 
 
 This is East and this is West, 
 
 Soon I’ll learn to know the rest. 
 
 He learns which is South by seeing other birds 
 flying in that direction at a certain time of the 
 year, and which is North by seeing them fly 
 North at another time of the year. Knowledge 
 of other points of the compass, of weather con- 
 ditions, of the nature of the winds and their 
 effect upon the affairs of Birdland he acquires in 
 the same way; and, as intimated in the state- 
 ment of the process of acquiring it, he learns the 
 application of this knowledge to his life. This is 
 correlation as Nature establishes it; correlation 
 
 is, in other words, merely another name for ac- 
 quiring twice as much knowledge with half the 
 effort, without, indeed, any conscious mental 
 effort at all, in a given length of time, as you 
 could get without it; it is cutting across lots. 
 In teaching the map, that is to say Geography, 
 by showing things that are happening on the 
 map, you not only get the knowledge into the 
 boy’s head most quickly, most easily and, to a 
 large extent unconsciously, but you teach him 
 how he can use this knowledge after he has got 
 
 it, by showing him how people are using it, in 
 the very act of using it. By introducing into the 
 Arithmetic class the problems with which the 
 banker, the merchant, the engineer, the builder 
 are dealing, you not only help him to get his 
 Arithmetic lesson, to understand its rules, but 
 you show him what to do with these rules after 
 he has got them. When he gets out of school he 
 will not find the place for himself and his talents 
 in life by standing on the street corner and call- 
 ing out: 
 
 44 
 
“ I am the boy who can tell you in a jiffy how 
 much 44 minus 15 times 22 times 33 minus 9 times 
 21 divided by 6 minus 175 times 222 is.” 
 
 He will find where the market is for his tal- 
 ents and acquirements by knowing where they 
 are in demand and what to do with them when 
 he takes them there. 
 
 How One Finds His Place in Life 
 
 By asking “ What is it good for?” with respect 
 to everything and every piece of information 
 offered him, a boy finds out what he is good for. 
 By keeping him in contact with the real thing, 
 the life with which he will have to deal, a boy's 
 natural bent may be discovered while he has 
 teachers and parents to aid him in its proper 
 development. The mature judgment of the par- 
 ent and teacher can tell, from the kind of life 
 knowledge which he most readily understands 
 and quickly assimilates, what he is really fitted 
 for and develop him along that line. If in the 
 illustrated story of current life he comprehends 
 more quickly the questions of public policy 
 which constantly arise and presents more clearly 
 in the discussions of the class room the argu- 
 ments pro and con, this may mean the posses- 
 sion of a talent which should find its expression 
 in journalism, in public life, or in the law; if in 
 his compositions on current events which vividly 
 impress him he shows an especial skill, this may 
 indicate for him a literary career and suggest 
 the specific one of the numerous sub-divisions of 
 literary work for which he is best qualified; if 
 he grasps most readily the description of the 
 great works in mechanics and engineering which 
 characterize this age and can most clearly, in 
 word and line, explain to his classmates the logic 
 45 
 
of the laws of Nature, then his place may be 
 that of a civil or mechanical engineer; if the 
 mechanism and operation of the greatest of all 
 machines, the human body, appeals to him with 
 special force then here may be another physic- 
 ian; if his eye and mind, more than those of the 
 average boy, dwell upon the work of the masters 
 in the fine arts and how with the witchery of 
 lines they catch and hold the grand and beauti- 
 ful forms of Nature, in the shifting clouds, in the 
 restless sea, in the movements in all animate life, 
 in the quiet majesty of blue masses of woodland 
 crowning distant hills, he may be one of those 
 from whom the world is waiting to be told in the 
 universal language how beautiful it is. 
 
 T^C 
 
 SEVENTH ARTICLE 
 
 BENEFITS OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM AND OF 
 THE THREE SYSTEMS OF SCHOOLING- 
 TRUE ECONOMY OF PROPER 
 EDUCATION 
 
 A school newspaper, as here defined, is as com- 
 plete a reflection of the world, the world worth 
 knowing, the world worth living for, the world 
 worth working for — all its duties, responsibili- 
 ties, opportunities for growth mental, moral and 
 spiritual — as can be presented with the best 
 black ink on clear white paper. 
 
 Has the Merit of the Elective System 
 In introducing into school work a careful, true 
 and detailed account of the world’s work which 
 is going on simultaneously outside, we furnish 
 the most valuable and practical application to 
 school work of the elective system and all its 
 46 
 
benefits, because we bring the pupil into contact 
 with all of life’s activities and with the material 
 out of which life success is built. That kind of 
 information which he naturally takes to and 
 understands best, is, as just indicated, the best 
 
 * guide in determining his fitness for life work and 
 the lines along which his education should pro- 
 ceed. The advantages of the elective system, 
 
 , first employed in home education, later taken up 
 
 9 in the colleges, now filtering down from the lat- 
 ter into the high school and rising from the 
 former by capillary attraction first into the kin- 
 dergarten and later into the primary school, 
 have recently been stated with clearness and 
 force by Miss Gardner of the Calumet High 
 School. Two of the most important of these ad- 
 vantages are that it answers the widespread and 
 growing demand for commercial education which 
 has been drawing from the regular schools to 
 business colleges young men and women before 
 the completion of the regular course; second, 
 that it adjusts the school work to the differing 
 abilities of the pupils, “furnishing the bright 
 pupil,” as Miss Gardner says, “with addi- 
 tional employment without breaking up the order- 
 ly progression of his regular classes, and prevents 
 that loss of interest which is always apparent 
 when the bright ones are unduly held back. 
 Teachers of long experience feel that the new 
 elective system is a movement toward a richer 
 development of the bright pupil, a more careful 
 development of the average pupil, with the pos- 
 sible discovery for the dull pupil that there is 
 
 * something for which he has a special God-given 
 aptitude.” 
 
 47 
 
Private Schools, Public Schools and Life Schools 
 
 There are three systems of education, each of 
 which has its special advantages; these are the 
 Private School System, the Public School Sys- 
 tem and the education of life itself in which what 
 are known as self-made men get their education 
 with little or no aid from the other systems men- 
 tioned. Walter Yrooman, the founder of Ruskin 
 Hall, in a recent address pointed out that the 
 men who created civilization were not products 
 of the school bounded by four walls but of that 
 larger school bounded by the world’s circumfer- 
 ence. “ The men,” he says, “who gave us steam, 
 the railroad, the steamboat, electricity, the tele- 
 graph, the telephone, the ocean cable, the elec- 
 tric light, with the thousand revolutionary in- 
 ventions in modern machinery, and the discov- 
 ery of America: Watt, Stephenson, Fulton, 
 Franklin, Edison, Morse, Cyrus Field, Wain- 
 wright, Peel, Pittman, Humphry Davy, Michael 
 Faraday and Christopher Columbus; these 
 men never withdrew from the real world during 
 their most formative and plastic years to devote 
 themselves exclusively to amusement and to 
 books.” 
 
 Yet that the self-made man realizes perhaps 
 more fully than anyone else the value of system- 
 atic training in school and college is Shown by 
 the large endowments of such educational insti- 
 tutions which have been made and are con- 
 stantly being added to by self-made men. 
 
 The advantage of the Private School is that it 
 gives the teacher opportunity to deal more spe- 
 cifically with the special talent and special men- 
 tal characteristics of each pupil; that of the 
 Public School and College that they give every 
 
 48 
 
student the advantage of contact with a larger 
 body of fellow students than the Private School 
 affords; and that of what we may call the Life 
 School, that it gives a more thorough under - 
 b standing of the application of useful knowledge 
 to life work and at the same time supplies the 
 practice in its application in which the other 
 schools are largely or wholly lacking. Add to 
 ♦ this the undeniable fact that the graduate of the 
 life school achieves important results, succeeds 
 wonderfully so far as material success is con- 
 cerned, and succeeds in other important ways 
 also, in the development of features of character 
 —among which may be named concentration, 
 courage, self-reliance, breadth of view and fre- 
 quently generosity, magnanimity, and modesty 
 —and that without the kind of knowledge to be 
 acquired only in the Life School the knowledge 
 of the other schools cannot accomplish anything 
 —and the importance of making life a school 
 study is entirely obvious. 
 
 Not ilore Food But Better Digestion 
 
 Yet it conveys an idea the opposite of the cor- 
 rect one to speak of the study of life in the 
 school as an additional study. It cannot be 
 justly complained that there are not enough 
 studies in the school already. The fact is that 
 the criticism is frequently made by both teachers 
 and parents that there are too many. What is 
 needed is not more food but better digestion. 
 # Since all school studies must have originally 
 grown out of human experience, they should still 
 be applicable to every human need. Life and 
 the school must at one time have been as inti- 
 % mately associated as the two figure 2’s in the 
 49 
 
figure 4, and it must be the school’s own fault if 
 it has cut the acquaintance. The misconcep- 
 tion of things thus indicated explains the failure 
 of teachers who have not been successful in their 
 attempts to keep step with the work of other 
 schools in teaching “ current events.” 
 
 As frequently taught in schools, what is called 
 the study of “ current events ” is confined mainly 
 to the political developments of the time and is 
 carried on in connection with the work of the 
 History class. Not only is its account of these 
 events brief and dry, and subject to the same 
 criticism which Spencer made of History teach- 
 ing forty years ago, that it was largely “ a mean- 
 ingless tissue of names and dates,” but such 
 value as such current statistics may have is 
 largely lost because no connection is established 
 between this information and the regular school 
 work. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 
 information so presented should be regarded by 
 both teacher and pupil as another burden added 
 to the already overloaded curriculum; another 
 text book added to the long list, differing only 
 from its predecessors in the fact that it is not so 
 well written, is poorly printed on bad paper, has 
 miserable illustrations or none at all, is unbound 
 and comes around once a week instead of once a 
 year. It has all the disagreeable ear marks of 
 the text book with none of its attractions. To 
 suppose that a healthy boy with his mind in nor- 
 mal working condition would be attracted by it 
 is to suppose an appetite for dry abstractions, for 
 meaningless names and figures which nobody 
 ever discovered before. 
 
 A proper sort of newspaper used in school does 
 not mean the introduction of a new study but a 
 
 SO 
 
new way of teaching all the studies. 
 
 The modern maker of school books sees that 
 they are written by the best authority he can 
 get hold of, printed as well as the best typo- 
 graphical skill can print them, and illustrated 
 by the best artists in each particular line to be 
 represented. The school architect and the 
 makers of school apparatus follow the same pol- 
 icy because they know that there is no market 
 for anything but the best. A paper to be used 
 in the teaching of current events which does not 
 conform to this high standard must obviously 
 fail of its purpose, and experiments in its use 
 depend far less on the paper itself than on the 
 skill of the teacher in supplying everything it 
 lacks. 
 
 A Boy Dislikes Abstractions, Loves Detail 
 
 If papers of this sort are guides, in other words, 
 they are mainly guides in how not to do it. A 
 brief abstract statement in words or figures has 
 no value to any one who has not the previous 
 knowledge of facts and details which these ab- 
 stractions represent. This is just the kind of 
 knowledge a boy lacks and just the kind which, 
 when given the opportunity, he proceeds imme- 
 diately and eagerly to absorb. He does not care 
 for the history of Great Britain, for example, as 
 summarized in the list of its kings and queens 
 and the order of their succession, because he 
 does not possess the necessary information with 
 regard to the different interesting things which 
 took place during their reigns and which, if he 
 had it, the mere mention of their names would 
 represent. But he is fascinated by the Kingdom 
 of Kobinson Crusoe and wades patiently through 
 the interminable details of Crusoe’s life because 
 51 
 
it is a story which fits in everywhere with the 
 knowledge which he has gained and is constantly 
 gaining in the great school called “Out-of- 
 doors.” iThe very thing which you have the 
 most difficulty in teaching him when you go 
 against Nature — when you attempt to make your 
 education flow up hill — he quickly and voluntar- 
 ily assimilates when the natural course is pur- 
 sued. 
 
 A Progressive Teacher’s Ideal 
 
 The proper sort of a school newspaper is not 
 only much better adapted to carry forward the 
 work of the History class because its account of 
 current history is not a dry summary but a full 
 presentation of the subject with the detail, life 
 and color of word and picture which appeal to 
 older and younger readers alike, but it goes much 
 further than this. It covers the whole range of 
 school studies and is edited throughout from the 
 school room standpoint, from behind the teach- 
 er’s desk so to speak, with a view to supple- 
 menting the whole of the school work. The edi- 
 tor becomes the school teacher and this school 
 teacher says: 
 
 “ When my Geography class comes to recite, if 
 I could do so, I would arouse their interest in 
 the map by pointing out to them where different 
 things are happening which interest other peo- 
 ple; I would secure pictures of men and places 
 connected with these events. In order that the 
 class might benefit as widely as possibly from 
 these things and that they might come to the 
 class prepared to ask more questions about the 
 things I wish to teach them than I ask them, I 
 would have these pictures engraved, this infor- 
 mation put into type and papers printed so that as 
 52 
 
many of the pupils themselves as possible might 
 have a copy and that they might form the habit 
 of getting this information from the printed page 
 * j in school and out, not because they regard it as 
 a set lesson but because they are interested in 
 the subject. If I could do this I would not only 
 lighten the burden of school work upon myself 
 \ and the pupils, but they would get along a great 
 deal faster, would form the habit during the 
 greatest formative period of their lives of learn- 
 ing the things about current life — the life they 
 will have mainly to deal with — which they ought 
 to know, but they will have acquired the habit 
 and the ability to get it at the source from which 
 this information must mainly be derived; viz., 
 the newspaper. Looked at in its broader results 
 I will thus not only be teaching them where to 
 find and how to use the information which is 
 really valuable in the daily newspaper when 
 they grow to be men and women, but I will guard 
 them from the unwholesome influences of the 
 daily newspaper with its valuable information 
 not plain enough and other information all too 
 plain, and 1 will be helping to create a new 
 newspaper constituency which will eliminate 
 the objectionable features of the daily paper by 
 ceasing to demand them.” 
 
 Obviously the teacher, for lack of special 
 knowledge and experience, of the mechanical fa- 
 cilities and of the staff of assistants required, 
 cannot carry out this idea, and it must be car- 
 ried out as the whole process of education which 
 * we call civilization has been and is being carried 
 out, through specialization. That is to say, the 
 work is so important and so broad in its results 
 that it should be taken up by people who will do 
 
 53 
 
nothing else but carry out this ideal of the pro- 
 gressive teacher. 
 
 Why the Daily Papers Will Not Do 
 
 Children do not avail themselves of what has 
 been described by the editor of the most success- 
 ful of boys’ story papers, The Youth's Companion, 
 as “ the one regular source of information upon 
 the events of the time, the daily newspaper,” 
 and it is not, in the opinion of the same author- 
 ity— an opinion which, we believe, is generally 
 entertained — desirable that they should. 
 
 For this condition only two remedies have 
 been suggested: One, that the teacher or parent 
 shall inform children regularly of men and 
 events; the other, that by united effort all good 
 citizens shall so reform the daily press that it 
 can properly perform this function. One of the 
 authors of the first suggestion has supplied what 
 ,seem to be conclusive arguments against the 
 feasibility of the second. These in brief are: 
 
 1. That no daily paper can omit the objec- 
 tionable matter of the sensational order, which 
 almost all successful daily papers contain, and 
 hope to thrive. 
 
 2. That all daily papers, being mainly local 
 in their circulation, and ephemeral in the time 
 of issue, must give most space to occurrences of 
 merely local and ephemeral interest. 
 
 3. That to obtain the benefit of such informa- 
 tion of permanent interest and value as they do 
 contain they must be read daily, otherwise the 
 reader cannot follow the plot, so to speak; and 
 this reading must be reinforced by information 
 previously or simultaneously acquired from 
 other sources. In other words, most of the news 
 of historic, financial, scientific or artistic interest 
 
 54 
 
appearing in the daily press presupposes a 
 knowledge which young readers do not possess. 
 
 The second solution referred to is summed up 
 in the statement of an educator that “it 
 is the teacher’s business to read the daily pa- 
 pers in order to separate the wheat from the 
 chaff.” 
 
 As above indicated, however, the production 
 x* of a school newspaper of the proper scope and 
 method requires much more than the separation 
 of the wheat in the daily newspaper from the 
 chaff. A school newspaper, to meet the needs 
 of pupil and teacher, must be published by a 
 staff occupied solely with this work and pre- 
 pared and illustrated with special regard to its 
 use in school work. 
 
 AH School Study “Supplementary Reading’* 
 
 This is “supplementary reading” in a broader 
 sense than the term is generally used, and prop- 
 erly regarded we should not speak of the study 
 of life as “supplementary.” This is again putting 
 the cart before the horse; reciting the lesson of 
 life backward. The whole of school study is 
 supplemental; because its purpose should be to 
 supplement and enlarge the limited views and 
 the limited knowledge which come out of the in- 
 dividual experience with the broader experience 
 of the race and the accumulated experience of 
 the ages. The Present, This Life, should be 
 made the starting point, the inspiring point, of 
 all school work. The school book is mainly the 
 table of contents of Life; Life is the book itself. 
 
 55 
 
EIGHTH ARTICLE 
 
 THE TEXT BOOK OF THE LARGER WORLD 
 
 The original idea of education— a fact which is 
 preserved in its etymology — was not to pour in 
 but to draw out. This observation is a trite one 
 in educational literature, but it cannot be too 
 frequently enforced, because it is too frequently 
 forgotten, and it applies with particular force to 
 the proposal to put life back into education. 
 The teacher who keeps herself thoroughly in- 
 formed on the course of things in this world and 
 looks at them through her schoolroom window 
 will have accomplished a great deal in making 
 all her school work easier and more effective. 
 But she will accomplish a great deal more if 
 she teaches her pupils how and where to get the 
 same information and to bring it to the class 
 with them. The habit of newspaper reading, as 
 fascinating as it afterward becomes, is to some 
 extent an acquired one, and particularly in the 
 case of a school newspaper which omits entirely 
 the horrors and indecencies which are c nly too 
 readily understood by the juvenile mind, it will 
 be necessary to some extent to at first aid and 
 direct the juvenile reader. Such information 
 about the world as he has previously acquired 
 has not been by reading, and such reading as he 
 has done has been confined mainly to story pa- 
 pers which, in spite of their unquestionable value 
 — provided they are the right sort of story papers 
 — give him but little knowledge of the real char- 
 acter of the world in which he lives. As pre- 
 viously pointed out, his own play world was a 
 counterpart in every essential detail of the real 
 world and all its business, and showed beyond 
 
 56 
 
question his desire to know and his aptitude for 
 learning about the larger world. 
 
 The school newspaper is the text book of 
 I this larger world. In the main, experience has 
 shown that the greater part of it is attractive 
 and comprehensible to him, but in such particu- 
 r lars as experience with the pupils in general 
 'V and individuals in particular may show to be 
 necessary explanation should be given. To 
 comprehend the story of real life, one must have 
 some acquaintance with the previous chapters, 
 and as the newspaper in the very nature of it 
 must deal always with the latest chapters, a 
 summary of what went before should be supplied 
 by the teacher as occasion demands. For a sim- 
 ilar reason, the paper will continually grow, 
 both to teacher and pupil, more and more inter- 
 esting, more and more valuable. Each new de- 
 velopment will be explained by what has gone 
 before and in turn help to explain what comes 
 after, and the other school work and the schol- 
 ars will fit into it as naturally as a fish fits into 
 water. Let him get a conception of other rules 
 just as he got a conception of the rule of gravi- 
 tation long before he ever heard of Newton, by 
 seeing things unsupported fall to the ground. 
 Have him read about the lord chief justice who 
 acquired gastritis and he will have the structure 
 of the stomach and the rules governing its proper 
 care; tell him of the woman who by a surgical 
 operation was made to see after seven years of 
 y blindness and he will know the nature of the 
 optic nerve and the laws governing its opera- 
 tion; tell him of the remarkable number of 
 speeches being made by Mr. Bryan cr Mr. Roose- 
 ± velt, and the effect upon their vocal machinery, 
 
 57 
 
and you make the lessons of physiology as inter- 
 esting as a music box. Give him plenty of ex- 
 amples of this sort and the rules and definitions 
 will, to a large extent, take care of themselves. 
 
 The universal fascination of the newspaper is 
 a feature of modern life. A boy will acquire a 
 similar interest in the story of real things when 
 he becomes accustomed to getting his informa- v 
 tion from the printed page. We enjoy our read- 
 ing most when our imaginations picture things 
 most vividly. A child has a more vivid imagi- 
 nation than a man. 
 
 Hamlet With the Play Left Out 
 
 The aim of the old system of education, as I 
 have said, seemed to be to take facts in them- 
 selves interesting and make schoolroom scare- 
 crows out of them by giving them formidable 
 names. The modern and natural method is to 
 lay stress upon things and not upon the names 
 of things. It is blessed both to give and to re- 
 ceive in educational work if it is done rightly. 
 
 We know how dull the play is with Hamlet left 
 out. A mere abstract rule or disconnected piece 
 of information is worse than this: it is Hamlet 
 with the play left out— a mere abstract man in 
 connection with whom nothing happens. 
 
 Those who insist that school training must 
 precede actual experience and knowledge of life, 
 and those who condemn scholars who know 
 nothing but books, are looking at opposite sides 
 of the shield; both are half right and both half 
 wrong. Each holds a half truth to match the 
 other half. Education derived from the school 
 alone makes an impractical man; or even if you 
 should still make the mere acquirement of ~ 
 
 58 
 
knowledge the end of education, an acquaint- 
 ance with real life is essential because without 
 it— any knowledge which did not originally come 
 J from life being inconceivable— one cannot under- 
 stand the application of his knowledge; that is 
 to say he does not know what he knows. On the 
 ' r other hand knowledge acquired entirely outside 
 in the school is apt to make a man one-sided and 
 incomplete in his development; it lacks that 
 symmetry and system which the school is in- 
 tended to supply. 
 
 The teaching of children by the old school 
 method— now steadily being replaced by the bet- 
 ter method— is like training the soldier in the 
 evolutions he will not use in war. We know 
 what would happen to such a soldier in the day 
 of battle. 
 
 The A. B. C. of all Education 
 
 More and more in the schools there is coming 
 to be less of the book and more of the teacher ; 
 less of the abstract and more of the concrete; 
 less of rote learning and more of natural learn- 
 ing; drawing is taught by giving something in- 
 teresting to draw; language by supplying things 
 interesting to write or talk about; the A, B, C’s 
 by supplying a motive for learning the A, B, C’s 
 — and here is the A, B, C of all education. Edu- 
 cation has improved mightily everywhere, but 
 particularly at both ends— in the kindergarten 
 and the college. It is now being improved and 
 needs improving most in the middle, in the 
 J grades between the two. 
 
 Viewed from the standpoint of the present 
 • school system, the proposition to teach life is 
 not one of subtraction, but of addition; not of 
 antagonism, but of co-operation; not of revolu- 
 59 
 
t.ion, but of evolution. The parent, the school- 
 board and the teacher want to give the child the 
 best education in the least time possible; an 
 education which will stay with him, which will 
 become bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. 
 What for want of a better name we call “ news” 
 is life-knowledge, and the communication of it 
 in what is called a “newspaper” goes to the 
 foundation of true education in maintaining that 
 sustained interest without which education— the 
 actual assimilation of ideas— is impossible; in 
 constantly supplying fresh illustrations and ap- 
 plications of those rules and principles in which 
 education consists; in restoring to its rightful 
 owner that keen appetite for knowledge which, 
 under the old system, he always lost at the 
 school room door. 
 
 Teaching How Things Are Not 
 
 Unless the natural connection between life and 
 the school is re-established, you are sending a 
 boy out into the world after having devoted ten 
 to fifteen years to carefully teaching him how it 
 isn’t ; because unless he sees it while he has in 
 hand the school books which were made to tell 
 him about it, it is mentally impossible for him 
 to form a true conception of how it is. 
 
 The pupils go from the schoolroom by con- 
 tinually diverging ways out of the parent nest 
 into all the world ; some to be lawyers, others 
 to be physicians, others to build up commercial 
 business for themselves, others to build their 
 lives into the business of other men. They take 
 the keys to life which you have given them, the 
 lessons of the schoolroom, to make them fit as 
 best they may into the various locks they come 
 across. To send them out with keys to which 
 60 
 
they can find no locks is more futile than to sup- 
 ply them with locks to which they can find no 
 keys. What we call the self-made man, al- 
 though he may not have one of your keys, often 
 ^ succeeds in getting into the lock by main force 
 long before your weary hunter with the lockless 
 kjey arrives. 
 
 f Elsewhere in his most admirable book, “ The 
 ^School and Society,” from which we have 
 quoted, Professor Dewey has this to say about 
 real discipline (that knowledge which “ gets into 
 the blood,” as Wendell Phillips said of knowl- 
 edge acquired of newspapers) : “ In critical mo- 
 ments we all realize that the only discipline 
 that stands by us, the only training that be- 
 comes intuition, is that got through life itself. 
 But the school has been so set apart, so isolated 
 from the ordinary conditions and motives of life, 
 that the place where the children are sent for 
 discipline is the one place in the world most 
 difficult to get experience— the mother of all dis- 
 cipline worth the name.” 
 
 Wastefulness of a False Economy 
 
 As the boy is the father of the man, so his boy- 
 hood should furnish the model for his school 
 work ; let him see that the larger work to which 
 you are introducing him is his own little world 
 on a greater scale. Let him see the locomotive 
 he was always so interested in, pulling goods ; 
 the kite exploring the mysteries of the wind and 
 the wind-blown clouds ; the movements of cur- 
 rency of which the pin money in his circus was 
 ifran expression of his ability to understand ; the 
 _ traffic of which his playhouse store was a proph- 
 ecy; the great works of art which his crude 
 ^rawings expressed his instinct for ; the opera- 
 
12 0621589 
 
 tions of civil government of which the organiza| 
 tion in the baseball field was a prototype. 
 
 All schooling and all school studies constitut 
 a preparation for life. To spend all the time an 
 money required for this preparation without ap 
 plying it simultaneously to life itself is going t 
 great expense to get ready to do something an 
 then— economizing by not doing it. 
 
 62