irffifu'Xm THE HORMAL School Quarterly Number 31 SUPPLEMENT Quarter Century A paper red before the Central Illinois Teachers Association, Decatur, 111., March 19, 1909 Enterd August 18. 1902, at Normal, Illinois, as second class matter, under Act of Congress of July 16, 1894. PUBLISHT BY THE ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL UNIVERSITY, NORMAL, ILLINOIS NORMAL SCHOOL QUARTERLY Publisht by the Illinois State formal University , formal, Illinois Series 7 Jipril, 1909 Number 3 / THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF A QUARTER CENTURY. Progress means something more than growth. It is easy to marshal statistics showing increase in school attend- ance, in school expenditures, in the number of teachers, in the number of meetings they have attended, in the number of volumes in the school libraries, and in all other things that can be counted and mesured. But these may be only incidental to the growth of our state in population and welth, and means of transportation. All this increase in mere bulk may be along with the absence of improvement, or even at- tended by internal decay. Institutions like men grow old. Our free school system is fifty- four years old. The man of fifty- four is usually a good deal hevier than the man of twenty-nine, but he has often lost his ambitions and sur- renderd his ideals. His limbs are stiffend, his arteries ossi- fied, his vision impaird; his tastes may be more sensual, the whole man sunk into easy-going indifference towards the as- pirations and struggles of mankind. Nor does progress mean, in this case, a mere going for- ward and its consequent change in environment, point of view, and momentum. Whether we are on the road to per- dition or bound for the New Jerusalem we move forward along our respectiv routes. Progress in education must mean not only growth but also development, added com- plexity of function, perfection of structure, and efficiency in operation. It must include forward movement, but as the school becomes increasingly conscious of its purpose that movement must be towards an ideal, towards the goal of our civilization. We still believe that the golden age is before us. In twenty-five years the expenditures for public schools in Illinois have grown from $8,891,984.45 to $32,227,605.06, 2 The Normal School Quarterly an increase of 262 per cent. In the same period our popula- tion has increast probably eighty- five per cent. School at- tendance in public schools has increast eighty-nine per cent. In public and private schools combined the increase in enrol- ment has been only forty- seven per cent. This relativly small increase in enrolment may be ac- counted for in four ways. The statistics in the state reports may be erroneous. The fashion of small families has reduced the percentage of children in the total population. The newer immigration contains fewer children. Pupils, espe- cially in the country, leave school at an earlier age. BILDINGS. The increase of expenditure has been disproportionately large in the provision for better bildings and school equip- ment. Teachers’ wages absorbd 58 per cent of the total out- lay twenty-five years ago, last year only 47 per cent. The modern house with its electric lights, plumbing, heating, its convenience and beauty, is a very different structure from the dwelling of twenty-five years ago. After bilding better houses for themselves people are considering better houses for their children. School bildings that were the pride of their town when erected thirty or forty years ago are now being torn down, altho their walls are as solid as on the day of their dedication . The towers and mansard roofs and dor- mers have gone with the outside stone steps of a former gen- eration. The simple lines and ample entrance of the mod- ern school house suggests the sincerity, dignity, and bredth of its purpose. In its interior we find every contrivance to diminish the hygienic evils inseparable from indoor life and to equip the pupil with necessary working tools. The stove in the corner of every school room was still in evidence in a majority of our town and city schools a generation ago. The Smead system of furnace heating with gravity ventila- tion, and direct steam radiation with no ventilation at all ex- cept as Providence or the open window afforded it were com- peting for recognition in the newer bildings. Windows were placed with regard to external appearance or architectural convenience rather than with consideration for the eyes of pupils or teachers. Double desks were general. Stairs were usually narrow and steep. Little space was wasted in wardrobes or corridors. Teachers’ rooms were unknown. The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 3 The sanitary conveniences usually out of doors, cold, uncom- fortable, unclean in every sense of the word. In the modern bilding we find an abundant supply of fresh warmd air secured by a blower, electrically driven, with temperature regulated by pneumatic thermostat; win- dows groupt at pupils’ left, bilt high both at top and bottom; wide corridors, broad and easy stairs, fire-proof in construc- tion; the interior finisht in agreeable and harmonious tones with walls adornd by well-selected vases, pictures, and stat- uary; program clock, electric bells, and inter-classroom tel - efones; closets for supplies, apparatus, and books; sus- pended globes and map-cases; a well-stockt library; labora- tories for science, physical, biological and domestic; studios for art instruction; shops for manual training; playrooms and gymnasium; an assembly room for extra occasions and public meetings, for the school is again to become a social center; teachers’ rooms, rest rooms, bath rooms, offices, and a hos- pital. While not all new school bildings mesure up to this standard, it is undoutedly true that nearly all communities according to their means are endevoring to realize these con- veniences in school house construction. The grounds too are put to better uses. The old play- ground devoted to tops, marbles, and two- old- cat in the winter months, and to weedy growths in the long vacation, has given place in part to a well-kept lawn with flowers and ornamental shrubbery in front, a school garden in the rear; the playground itself enricht with swings, teeter-boards, turn- ing poles, and other gymnastic apparatus. An athletic field is now regarded as a necessity in all our higher institutions, and even in high schools that have no special need of an adver- tizing department. METHODS OF INSTRUCTION. The most vital changes in our schools are those affecting the course of study and the method of instruction. The whole tendency is away from the memoriter method of a generation ago. At that time we had escaped from the old text-book printed in catechism style with questions and an- swers in type of different sizes. The topical method was in vogue. Pupils recited whole paragrafs with complete ver- bal fidelity. There was some questioning on the meaning; frequent written examinations tested the acquisitions of the students. 4 The Normal School Quarterly We have improvd somewhat on this bookish pedagogy. We teach geography thru excursions, stereographs, ste- reopticons, maps, charts, museum materials, and a welth of geographical readers and books of travel. In arithmetic the drill exercises are largely replaced by problems filld with statistical material of some present-day in- terest and value. The five readers of the old series, are sup- plemented by a large stock of juvenil classics. Oral reading is better in the lower grades, for the material is better. Our up- per class students do not read so well. There is too little oral reading. In U. S. History twenty five years ago Barnes was the book. Its pleasing style won deservd success. But fifty- seven per cent of its pages were devoted to war and battle. The gen- eration reard upon that book is now in Congress spending seventy per cent of all our federal revenues in pensions for past wars or preparation for wars to come. It is now real- ized that history deals with all the institutions of society, and that children may be interested in how people lived as well as in how they killd each other. Accordingly our ele- mentary histories deal largely with primitiv life; our advanced classes are turning to the story of industrial development and the economic problems that mankind has faced at va- rious times. Grammar is studied still; in our graded schools it is be- gun later. There is less formal parsing, more attention to definitions and to sentence structure as related to literary appreciation. In 1883 the sausage-link diagramming had given place to the straight-line system of Reed and Kellogg. It, too, is passing. Those who claim they teach geometry and grammar as separate sciences are now clearly in the ascendency. Yet we occasionally meet an old fogy who sees in diagramming a mode of expression that really stimulated the thinking of the pupils. Thanks to the diligence of our book publishers spellers are still on the market; but they are less used than twenty- five years ago. Teachers are generally agreed that the time to lern the spelling of a word is when its meaning and use are lernd. Hence the spelling list is made up from the daily work. In writing, twenty-five years ago the Spencerian slant of fifty- two degrees alone could claim orthodoxy. Copy-books everywhere. Flexible, fine-pointed pens adapted to hair lines The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 5 with proper shadings upon certain approved downward strokes were the only sort to sell. It was a mighty step in advance when a simple hygienic vertical style came in. It was easy to read and easy to write. Copy : books were scarcely needed. But it has not suited either the professors or the book men, and we now seem doomd to another era of slant. Sixty years ago, Rosenkranz wrote that next to medicin, education is the most fruitful field for quackery and humbug. Teachers are not well-grounded in the principles of their art. We flock to the latest prophet who cries Lo here! in the ed- ucational wilderness. We swallow the latest nostrum. We are the constant devotees of fads and fancies. The Speer method, the Pollard method, the no-recess craze, the Pueblo plan, the Batavia system, and dozens of other much touted cure-alls have come and gone with Beecham’s pills and Rad- way’s Ready Relief. In all progress we seem to move not steadily forward, but by alternate advance and retreat like the frog in the problem getting out of the well, two feet up each day and one foot back at night. This rhythmic action sends sleeves to the shoulders and draws them over the hand, gives us French heels and low heels, jaunty caps and merry-widows, crinolin and sheath- gowns, at the caprice or dictation of certain commercial gentlemen who create fashions in order to cater to them. Education is not wholly free from these influences. It must not inferd that nothing has been gained in edu- cation. In no other quarter- century have so many able students devoted their energies to perfecting the theory of education. In no other has the press been so prolific in edu- cational books. In no other have so many substantial con- tributions been made to educational doctrin. The child- study movement has pointed out the successiv stages of child devel- opment, and the evils physical, mental, and moral that result from ill- adapted school work. The culture- epoch theory has taught us the varying value of educational material at different ages. William James and others have taught the enormous significance of habit, and the way in which habits are formd and reformd. Gabriel Tarde and Baldwin have formulated the laws of imitation, so vital a factor in the transmission of arts and knowledge. The Herbartians have revealed to us that Interest is the greatest word in education, and have helpt 6 The Normal School Quarterly us distinguish between the spontaneous, original, well-direc- ted, and presi stent effort that springs from interest, and the sickly, aimless, halting effort produced by coercion. Hins- dale and Thorndike have successfully assaild the dogma of formal disciplin. The procedure of the recitation has been workt out in great detail; the technique of the various sorts of lessons stated; the inductiv development lesson, for arriv- ing at general truths thru the analysis and comparison of particulars, the deductiv development lesson leading to valid inference where an instance is toucht by a general law, the study lesson, the drill lesson, reviews, and examinations. Laboratory methods are thoroly establisht in the teaching of the inductiv sciences. Handwork ministers to the construc- ts instincts of childhood. The curriculum has been broad- end to include the whole child. To sum up in a broader generalization, I think it is safe to say that our education doctrin today is squarely based on the evolutionary philoso- phy, and the aim of the school is social efficiency rather than the harmonious development of individual capacities. THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. Twenty- five years ago the majority of American children still found the alfabet at the threshold of school life. Better methods in the primary school were known and widely used in our more intelligent communities. The better schools generally taught the word- method. Writing was taught from the start. Slates were still in universal use. Much copying fell to the lot of the six-year- old. Some busy work was bor- rowd from the Kindergarten but it usually had little educa- tional value apart from cultivating the virtues of patience and silence. The Grube method in number had spred from the St. Louis schools, but it was usually taught in formal fashion, with little relation to the child’s interests and activ- ities. Colonel Parker at this time was the new prophet whose star had arisen in the East. In January, 1881, John Quincy Adams, Jr. had given him a great write-up in the North American Review, then the most influential magazine in the land. Quincy had become a Mecca for all the devout. The Colonel’s summer school on Martha’s Vineyard was attended by hundreds of teachers. It is now just twenty-five years since he came to the Cook County Normal School. He did a great work. As a disciple of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 7 Froebel he insisted that education must be a natural process, that it must be the harmonious development of the powers innate in the child. He proclaimd on every platform the doctrin long ago enunciated by Pestalozzi that alike in its order and its methods education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution — that there is a certain sequence in which the faculties develop, and a certain kind of knowl- edge which each requires during its development, and that it is for us to ascertain this sequence and supply this knowl- edge. Largely because of the Colonel’s urgency arose the cult of Child- Study which had so great a vogue fifteen years ago, now so much neglected. Yet from it largely has come the greater freedom of the school life, the games, the excur- sions, nature-study and garden work, the increast use of fairy tales, folk lore, and the ideas of primitiv life, the ex- pression in construction, in clay, color, and pencil, and above all the correlation of all these activities in the life of the pri- mary school. The Kindergarten has not shown material advance if mesured by the number maintaind. Much of its spirit has past into the primary school; but all forms of school life are seen to be more or less at war with the physical needs of the child. Nature says to the child, “Run about.” The school mistress says, “Sit still!” Nature says “Seek the open air and sunshine.” The teacher says, “Come indoors, while I pull down the shades; so much sunlight makes me nervous.” Nature says, “Use the large muscles of your body in running, jumping, climbing, and throwing.” The school says, “Use your fingers in the accurate adjustments needed in writing, drawing, and sewing.” Nature says, “Use your eyes on dis- tant objects.” The school says, “Focus them on this page ten inches away.” We are all making business for the in- creasing army of eye-specialists and nervous- disease specia- lists. Parents realize the truth of Spencer’s saying that the first requisit to success in life is to be a good animal. The school rightly declares, If we are to become human and civilized, we must begin formal education while body and mind are still plastic. We are compromizing on a shorter school day, and more physical exercise. The Kindergarten will live and grow in usefulness especially in our great cities, largely because it has reformd its program in the in- terests of hygiene. The late comers into the curriculum have seen most 8 The Normal School Quarterly change in spirit and method, possibly because in these no practis had received the sanction of long use. Twenty- five years ago the Prang drawing books were of the abstract straight-line sort introduced into the Boston schools by Walter Smith in the early sixties. Drawing as a means of free expression in the lower grades, the early use of color, the study of light and shade, color harmony, the principles of design, and picture composition are, in our school cur- ricula, all developments of the quarter-century. It is recog- nized that to multiply means of rational and refined enjoy- ment is part of the mission of the public school. Art and music stand foremost among such means. Hence no con- siderable town is now without its special instructors in these branches, and grade teachers find it worth while to attain some skill and insight in singing and drawing. In many schools the pianola has found recognition as an efiectiv ally in developing musical appreciation. Manual training first appeared in the United States in 1877. At first it was a mere copy of the Russian system training the student in making difficult joints in wood work- ing; the joint after serving its day in the exhibit went to the furnace. Next came the Swedish Sloyd, setting American boys to work whittling out the domestic utensils of the Swedish pesantry. But these were exotic growths. In 1889 the Nashville meeting of the N. E. A. was largely given over to an exposition of the need, the purpose, and the philosophy of manual training. Since that time its progress has been comparativly rapid. A technique has been worked out, that appeals alike to boys, psychologists, and parents. Manual training is not to make carpenters. In the history of the race the use of the tool has been a large factor in the devel- opment of the brain. It must have its place in the growth of the individual. Boys like it, because it answers to an in- stinctiv need. When they are led to make things of real use, the liking grows into a veritable passion. I know of one boy not yet fourteen who turns nearly all his pocket money into new tools, and leaves the football field to work at his bench. In spite of the expense involvd in its installation it is des- tind to a larger place in our schools. Domestic science and domestic art have been welcomd into the curriculum with even greater enthusiasm and seem destind to spred into all our city and village communities. In all of these newer studies the problem is to make them The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 9 practical, that is to give instruction under school conditions that will vitally affect the practis of the pupils. There is much yet to be done before teachers can consider this prob- lem solvd. THE NATURAL SCIENCES. In 1872 the General Assembly past a law requiring all teachers to be examind in the elements of the natural sciences. This gave these studies an immediate place in the program of every village and city school. With teachers untraind in science there could be but one outcome; the instruction everywhere was bookish. In zoology we taught classification and distinguishing characters, as that birds and reptiles have one occiptial condyle while animals have two. Pupils recited this with- out the slightest idea of what the words ment. In botany we studied morphology, analyzed flowers, writing out the proper adjectiv to describe each detail of structure, and made herbariums. So diligent were we in this later pursuit that in some localities some rare spring-blooming species became entirely extinct. Physics was better taught. Nearly every high school possest some apparatus. The popular books were Steele and Avery, both written by great teachers with fine literary sense. The teacher performd the experiments, which were usually illustrativ and not quantitativ. There was little of the inductiv method. We have now introduced the laboratory method with much quantitativ work. Physics is more scientific but less interesting. This fault comes from two misconceptions: (1) The belief that the pupil must by quantitativ experiment rediscover many of the physical constants. (2) The belief handed down from the colleges, that the training in the method is of higher value than the knowledge obtaind. In our high school biology we spend too much time with the microscope, too little in opening the eyes of the pupils to every day phenomena. College-bred teachers have brought the methods of the University into the high school; the recent movement towards nature-study, presents a much needed correctiv. The practical trend of present day educational thought will soon modify our science courses. High school Physics and Chemistry will deal more with the explanation of natural Phenomena and industrial pro- cesses. Biology will become more dynamic in its character, pointing the way to the protection of our friends and the 10 The Normal School Quarterly destruction of our enemies. Physiology will lead straight to hygiene — not merely to personal hygiene, but to the larger questions of public sanitation. LIBRARIES. A notable feature of our educational progress is the growth of libraries. In twenty-five years the number of volumes in school libraries has increast from 66,851 to 1,158,- 233. In addition to these all of our larger towns support libraries organized to cooperate with the schools. The recent growth of libraries has profoundly modified the modes of instruction in vogue a generation ago. At that date the text- book method prevaild in the elementary and secondary schools. The pupil was assignd a set portion of the text to be masterd. In some schools the practis of rote learning existed, and the pupil was expected to repro duce the exact words of the text with the same fidelity as if he were reciting a chapter of the Bible. The teacher was little more than a drill master. In better schools the in- structor would question as to the meaning of the paragrafs studied, so as to relate them to the child’s previous know- ledge, and would frequently supplement the text with per- tinent illustrations or additional facts drawn from his own store of knowledge. In the colleges the instruction was chiefly by lectures, a method that originated before the art of printing, and was indeed a proper and necessary method when books were scarce and the teacher encompast within himself all the lerning of the world relating to his subject. With industrious and faithful professors the lectures were supplemented by oral quizzes and explanations, and an occasional formal written examination. The text-book method still prevails in the elementary school, but the library has come to supplement and enlarge. With older pupils in the high school and college the lecture or text-book now serves chiefly to open up the subject, to show its organization, to disclose its vistas. Library read- ings more and more are expected to furnish the bulk of the detail that gives significance, reach, and application to the facts or principles of the text-book or introductory lecture. A teacher to-day cannot properly organize his courses of in- struction unless he knows the resources of the library and the mode of using these as an auxiliary in his work. Hence the study of method must include the use of the library The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 11 as an educational instrument. No teacher is qualified for the modern school unless he knows where to look, for what to look, and how to look in getting information. Too many of us date from a period when libraries were few, scant, unorganized, and little used. The traind librar- ian bad not appeard. Library science was unherd of. Furthermore, the education we receivd was largely formal. Our language teachers cared more for our knowledge of in- flection and syntax than for our appreciation of Greek and Roman literature and life. To a student of mathematics in those days the library could contribute little. Hence the methods by which we were taught in the older college and our own erly practis did not reckon with the library as a large factor in instruction. The growth of the library has been parallel to a change in the aim and method of our schools. The emphasis has gradually shifted from form to content. The change of emphasis required a change in the mode of instruction, a change that from the mere inertia of habit we are slow to make even when we recognize the in- adequacy of our old ideals. The day has come when in selecting a teacher we must ask these questions: Is the candidate a library student? Has he receivd his own train- ing under teachers who had made the systematic use of the library a feature of their instruction? We must ask this question because we know that the example and practis of our teachers is a larger factor in developing the library habit than the most lerned, skilful, and patient of librar- ians. RURAL SCHOOLS. The Rural schools have not moved forward at the same pace as the graded schools in spite of certain notable im- provements. The three strongest forces in the recent up- bilding of the country- schools, all appeard about twenty -five years ago. 1. The provision for annual institutes. 2. The provision that the county superintendent should devote at least half his time to visiting country schools, and that county boards should allow him ample time and pay for this and other duties. 3. The classification and gradation of country schools with a uniform course of study, central and final examina- tions, and graduation exercises at the county seat. 12 The Normal School Quarterly Teachers’ institutes in Illinois have been held since 1850, but prior to 1883 they were supported wholly by voluntary contributions of the teachers. Where the county superin- tendent or leading teachers were devoted, zelous men, county associatious existed with frequent meetings. In some coun- ties no meetings were held. The law of 1883 created a fund, and demanded qualifications of the instructor. In 1884 and again in 1889 an institute manual was prepared. The first institutes held under this law were attended with great en- thusiasm. The teachers were not merely enrold; they at- tended, and attended all day. Many of the counties year after year continued the institute for two weeks. At present it seems to me there is not the old time inter- est. Attendance at summer schools calls many teachers away. Yet the county institute is vital to the efficient organization of rural schools and the general attendance of the teachers must be had. In several counties the date has been changed from midsummer until March. Many propose changing the date to the corn husking season, when the wether is fine, the school year young, and a vacation not unwelcome to the parents. Before 1885 the chief duties of the county superintendent were to examin teachers and examin the books of township tresurers. The County board could limit his time and pay at plesure. In one of the largest counties in the state, one hundred sixty dollars was the salary. He was furnisht no offis. The county superintendent was generally an activ teacher devoting Saturdays and vacations to the work of the offis; some times a young lawyer, a surveyor, a real-estate or insurance agent, or a minister. Since 1885 the personnel, the character, qualifications, and importance of the county superintendency have stedily improved until the offis has be- come in fact the most influential in our public school system. The emoluments of the offis as well as its legal power in de- termining text-books, teachers, course of study, and methods of instruction are likely to see a substantial advance in the near future. Since the county superintendent of the elder day had little to do but examin teachers, he usually did so with great thoroness. Renewals in 1883 equald only twen- ty-three per cent of the new certificates. In 1908 they equald eighty-eight per cent of the new certificates. Today more than half our teachers are high school graduates, more than one-fourth have attended normal schools, one-twentieth The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 13 are college graduates. The county superintendent sees their work on his round of visitations. Fewer examinations are needed to protect the schools from the incompetent. Twenty-five years ago John Trainer in Macon County had got well under way his system of county organization. It had alredy spred to Piatt, Champaign, and others. Simi- larly a group of northern counties had adopted a course and begun the grading of their schools. Such success attended the movement that in 1889 the State Department of Education issued the first edition of thq State Course of Study. During the past twenty-five years under the able man- agement of Mr. C. M. Parker and the county superintendents who have assisted him, the thin pamflet of 1889 has grown into a thick book. It is used in other states even more wide- ly than in Illinois. While possibly not in all respects the best course of its kind, it is carefully prepared, full of sug- gestion, and up-to-date. The grading of country schools has increast the average number of days attendance per pupil from seventy-five to ninety- seven. Yet in spite of these manifest improvements there are many careful observers who declare that all things considerd, our country schools are little better than twenty- five years ago. The average enrollment has shrunk from thirty eight to twenty- eight. In half the state the rural schools in actual attendance do not average twenty pupils. In hundreds of schools the daily attendance is less than twelve. The depopu- lation of the country districts, t he small families, the removal of the land owners to town, leaving the schools largely to transient tenants, has broken the spirit of many a country school. It is often too small to look respectable in the eyes of the children. The length end term graduates the boys and girls at fifteen. In former days the teacher was often himself a farmer, a man of mature years. The older boys and girls were still in school. Now the teacher is a young girl from the neigh- boring high school. The school has long sufferd from fre- quent changes of teachers. So long as school work was the mere reciting of the words of a book, the spelling of a colum of words, the cifering thru the arithmetic, frequent changes in the master wrought relativly little harm, but when real teaching begins, it is vital that the teacher know the children, know their apperceiving masses, their individ- ual peculiarities. 14 The Normal School Quarterly When a farmer- teacher was employed in winter, to teach the big boys, a young girl in spring to teach the little ones, the arrangement had some relation to the industrial life. We think we have made some gain because the same teacher is kept for the whole year, but it is the girl that is kept. The older pupils are lost to the school. There can be little im- provement in the country school with their present organiza- tion, unless school boards plan to keep the same teacher year after year. Do we want lessons in gardening and agriculture that will set the children to work? Do we want corn contests, aster shows, a harvest home celebration in the fall to exhibit the products of the children’s industry? The teacher does not plan in the spring unless she expects to be on hand in the fall. The accumulation of a school library, the adorn- ing of the school room, substantial pride in the school itself, largely wait upon the teacher. They will come abundantly when she acquires a permanent interest in the district. Faith in scientific agriculture is growing. Its growth makes new demands upon the rural school. Soil, plant, and animal are to have a large place in the curriculum. These new studies require qualified teachers, apparatus and modes of instruction out of the question in the twenty by thirty school house with its fifteen pupils. The movement for con- solidated schools is inevitable among progressiv farmers. At the John F. Swaney school in Putnam county $4000 per year are spent upon fewer than 100 pupils. Here in a most beau- tiful grass-carpeted grove near a clear stream is a $13000 school house with laboratories for physical, biological, and domestic science, all the conveniences of the city school, an athletic field, several acres for experimental plots, sheds for horses and vehicles, a home for the janitor; another for the four teachers — all this in a district of thirteen sections because the people believe that such education pays. In the top floor of this bilding is a hall that will accommodate 400 people. This means that the school is to become once more the social center of the rural community. The old fashiond lyceum will return. Its disappearance is one of the lament- able features of rural decay that has come with landlordism and an unambitious tenantry. TEACHERS. The strength of a school system lies in its teachers; everything else is secondary and tributary to their work. The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 15 The teachers of our state are undoutedly better prepared than twenty-five years ago, so far as schooling prepares people. Men’s wages have advanced from $53 to $82 per month. Women’s wages from $33 to $61. The average in- crease has been twice as great as the increase in the mere cost of living. Teachers buy more books, read more maga- zines, travel more. At least one-sixbh of them last year at- tended a summer school at normal school or university. The quality of instruction in our graded schools is generally of high quality. Foren visitors uniformly testify that our best primary schools are better than any in Europe. Another element of educational progress is the on-com- ing of the school mistress. Fifty years ago women were one- third of the teaching force. Twenty -five years ago sixty -five per cent, now eighty-one per cent. At the present rate of extinction, before the end of the century it will be with the school master as with the dodo and great auk, the American buffalo and Siberian mammoth and other big game that once roamd the earth; only a few stuft specimens in the museums of our great cities and institutions of higher learning will re- main to tell the story of a oncq mighty race. He may live in the pages of Goldsmith and Irving, of Dickens, Holmes, and Eggleston, but nowhere else. HIGH SCHOOLS. The most notable educational advance judged by statis- tics and expenditures has been in the growth of high schools. Their number is three times as great as in 1883, their pupils five times as many, their cost eight times as great. But these figures do no mean that the number of advanced pupils in our schools has increast in any such ratio or that this marks the real growth in effectiv secondary education. From colonial days we inherited two educational insti- tutions. The common school intended to instruct the chil- dren of all the people in subjects of practical utility, read- ing, writing, and arithmetic, and later in geography, Eng- lish grammar, and the history of the United States. The other, the college, intended originally to rear up godly min- isters for the church, and later discreet men for the servis of the State. The chief branches taught were the Greek, Latin, and French languages, the higher mathematics, rhet- oric, logic, and moral philosophy. Tributary to the college was the academy, teaching the elements of these branches. 16 The Normal School Quarterly Both were attended by young men destind for the profes- sions, and to a small extent by other sons of the well-to-do. With the increase in population and welth, additional branches were taught in the common school. Algebra and geometry; physics, astronomy, and chemistry; physiology, botany and zoology; rhetoric and the history of English lit- erature, ancient and medieval history, civil goverment and political economy; Latin, Greek, French, and German were gradually introduced into the schools of our cities; some of them in our villages and smaller towns. Classes in these higher branches would be organized with little regard to sequence. The preference of the principal and the wishes of the students would be the determining factors in making up the program of the high room. Then came the move- ment towards the systematic grading of schools, the adop- tion of detaild courses of study with regular examinations and promotions. With this came the setting off of the upper grades under the name of the high school with its three- year (later a four-year) course and its graduation ceremonials. Twenty- five years ago we had in Illinois 151 such schools; I suspect that in most of the 328 other communities where high schools exist today many of the so-called high-school branches were taught, many of the young people continued in school till they were eighteen, and probably came thru with nearly as good preparation for the duties and enjoy- ments of life as their daughters are receivinjg in the same communities today. With the growth of the high school has come the decline of the private academy. The college has turnd to the high school for its recruits. The plan of accrediting high schools, begun by the University of Michigan has now become uni* versal. About twenty years ago the University of Illinois began this work. University supervision has been in most respects very helpful; ambitious school boards have length- end their courses, instald laboratories, and employd more teachers in order to meet the requirements of the University. On the other hand the high school has been warpt from its real democratic function, the people’s college, the finishing school of most of its pupils, to become a preparatory school for the few who go to college. In homely terms, it has been separated from its own mother and given the college as a sort of wet nurse. The consequence has been the undue prominence of foren languages, the general disappearance The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 17 of chemistry, astronomy, and political economy from the high school, the restriction of high school mathematics and phys- ics to the topics demanded by the colleges, and the limita- tion of high school English to the particular classics dictat- ed by the Board of Uniform College Entrance Requirements. Boys have been forced out of many a high school by the insistence upon Latin, and the presence of that language today is the chief obstacle to the proper recognition of Manual Training, Domestic Economy, and other branches of high practical value. The relation between the high school and college is largely reciprocal, it being in many cases a condition of the accredited relation that the high school teachers shall have degrees. It is doutful whether the quality of high school teaching has been altogether improved by this require- ment. Twenty-five years ago high schools were taught by the most scholarly and successful teachers of the common schools who by dint of experience, ability, and character rose to the best positions in the schools. They understood the problems of the elementary school, were interested in all educational questions, and knew how to teach children in their teens. Now the high schools are chiefly taught by col- lege fledglings, inexperienced, untraind, with scant resource in the way of method except to imitate their own college teachers. For this reason has come into the high school the source method in history, botany that is mainly histol- ogy, and formal lecturing to the boys in knickerbockers and girls in braids. Along with this has come into the high school fraternities and inter-school athletics; the college pipe and club smokers; freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior classes with class pins, class stationery, class flowers and class yells, class colors and class rushes; baccalaureate ser- mons and cap and- gown commencements. It is written in the epistle of James that every good and perfect gift cometh from above, but it is from the Father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow cast by his turning. It is not yet proved that this stalactite system of nutrition is altogether best for our high schools. The universities them- selves are aware of the deterioration of high school teaching because of the immaturity and inexperience of so many teachers. They are establishing schools of education, and even training departments to develop professional interest and skill along with scholarship. 18 The Normal School Quarterly ATHLETICS. One of the most perplexing problems in school manage- ment today is how to control athletic sports. In 1884 inter- collegiate games had scarcely begun. Rugby football intro- duced at Harvard five years before had hardly crost the Alle- ghanies. Its spred has been of great value in developing popular interest in athletic contests and has made the col- lege a topic of conversation in new strata of our population ; but there has been an undouted change in college ideals, in college spirit, and in the influence of the college as a moral force. The evolutionists tell us that while the outflow of energy in any form of activity is more or less plesurable the keenest plesure is experienced when the outflow is thru those nervous and muscular mechanisms that are oldest in our ra- cial history. Furthermore, the emotional elements, the loyes and hates that thru the long centuries have accom- panied these activities are sure to be stimulated by their revival. Our athletic sports are largely modeled after an- cient modes of warfare. Their activities are running, throw- ing, or striking with a club. The clash of contest stirs the barbaric passions and brings to the surface the most ancient dregs in human nature. Men marvel at the outcropping of the trickery, the cunning, the meanness, of savage warfare among manly and honorable boys. The matured athlete whether a Sullivan or a Jeffries, finds in his riper years a congenial field in the saloon business. Yet in spite of all the dangers that attend excessiv devo- tion to athletics, we must have it. The instincts that are gratified in these sports are fundamental and wholesome. Aside from their physical value they develop loyalty, endur- ance, pluck, promptness in action, self-control, self-sacrifice- a willingness (as the boys phrase it) to take punishment in a good cause. In all ages these have been basal qualities of manhood. If athletics were not so hopelessly entangled with the advertizing interests of our great institutions it would not be so difficult to keep this important element of school life in proper subordination to the spiritual and intellectual pur- poses of our higher institutions. In its present abnormal form, practically all the athletic resources of the institution are devoted to the excessiv training of a small “bunch” of husky fellows who need it least, while the great mass of stu- The Educational Progress of a Quarter Century 19 dents “take their exercise” on the bleachers with pipes and cigarets. The wisdom of college and high school administration has not yet proved equal to the task of so controlling ath- letics as to make them clean, wholly generous and manly, temperate in amount, universal in the activ participation of the students. HIGHER EDUCATION The growth of higher education in America is one of the most significant phenomena of the day. The two greatest fortunes of modern times are in the lifetime of their owners being chiefly spent in university and college endowments. State legislatures vie with each other in their lavish gifts to their state universities. The scope of investigation and in- struction has broadend so that the old time college course is almost lost sight of in the rich array of technical courses. Yet most of this imposing progress has beeu in the last quarter century. In this period, in our own state university attendance has increast ten- fold, in our other colleges and universities more than four- fold. The University of Chicago, Millikin, St. Vincent de Paul, William & Vashti, Armour, Lewis, and Bradley, with rich endowments have been added to our list of private institutions doing work of the highest excellence. This growth has been possible not merely because with the increase of welth more students can afford to spend their leisure in the still air of delightful studies. The old college of liberal arts is making little hedway. The study of Greek has almost disappeared in Illinois. It is because the higher institutions are freely responding to the demand of modern life — the demand for increast social efficiency. In conclusion it may be said that the events of the last quarter- century reveal in unmistakable terms the faith of the people in the schools and their work. Germany and Japan in a single generation have demonstrated what a nation may accomplish that deliberately and intelligently puts into its schools the elements that it would have pervade the na- tional life. If we have fallen short it is not because the American people have not believd in the school; it is because we have been so busy with the material development of a new continent, that our best talent has been drawn into this 20 The Normal School Quarterly field, leaving education without the intelligent attention that it needed. A better day is dawning! The American people will soon see that the strength of a nation is not in railroads, or battle-ships; not even in well-tilld fields or thriving cities; but in the intelligence and character of its men and women, in the wisdom, efficiency and spirit of its education. Illinois State Reformatory Print