Lit 
 
Class 
 Book__S-^ — 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
Little Talks on 
 School Management 
 
 By 
 RANDALL N. SAUNDERS 
 
 School Commissioner First District 
 Claverack, New York 
 
 NEW YORK 
 A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 
 
>> 
 
 lUSR^BYofCQf^eHESS 
 
 iTwo Copies Received 
 DEC 13 1906 
 
 ' /JCrOpyright Entry , 
 QlhSB ^ A xxc, na. 
 
 ^Jj 30lf 
 
 Copyright, 1906, by 
 A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 
 
 New York 
 
TO 
 
 MR. OSSIAN LANG 
 
 IN HUMBLE RECOGNITION OF HIS 
 VALUABLE EDITORIAL SERVICES IN 
 THE CAUSE OF EDUCATION, AND 
 AS A MODEST TOKEN OF THE AU- 
 THOr's PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP 
 AND APPRECIATION. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I AM asked to write a fore-word for this 
 little volume, and I scarcely know what to 
 say. It seems to me to be a bootless task ; 
 for, in the guilty knowledge that I seldom 
 read a "Preface," I imagine that the ma- 
 jority of readers are hke myself and are 
 more anxious to know what the author has 
 to say in the intentional part of the work 
 that is the real occasion for the publica- 
 tion. There is an object in the' pages which 
 follow, and you are at liberty to drop this 
 and turn to them at once. In them I have 
 striven to give briefly a history of the 
 things that helped me in my work as a 
 primary teacher, and I have striven to 
 make the "talks" practical and also inspi- 
 rational. All but one of the chapters, or 
 divisions, of the little book have been pub- 
 lished in the pages of educational periodi- 
 cals, and I am happy to say that I have 
 received commendation for them from 
 teachers of experience, as well as from 
 those who have but recently entered the 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 profession. I know, from experience, that 
 no matter how thoroughly one has been 
 prepared — no matter how much experience 
 one has had — in managing a school and in 
 attempting to influence a community, a 
 thousand and one problems will arise to 
 test ingenuity and demand solution. "In 
 a multitude of counselors there is 
 strength," and if this little book, as one, 
 shall be found, in the slightest degree, sug- 
 gestive and helpful, its mission will have 
 been fulfilled and its author rewarded, in 
 addition to the pleasure he has derived 
 from the labor expended in its prepara- 
 tion. THE AUTHOR. 
 Hudson, N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Before School 9 
 
 II. Opening Exercises 13 
 
 III. Getting to Work 17 
 
 IV. Classes and Divisions 21 
 
 V. Keeping Pupils Busy 26 
 
 VI. Eecesses 30 
 
 VII. Unifying the School 34 
 
 VIII. Parental Co-operation 39 
 
 IX. Assistance from Pupils 44 
 
 X. Journalism in a District School. 49 
 
 XI. Character in Hiding 34 
 
 XII. Our Glorious Heritage 57 
 
 XIII. Education for Usefulness 60 
 
 XIV. Home Lessons. 64 
 
Little Talks on School 
 Management 
 
 BEFORE SCHOOL 
 
 I AM satisfied that the moments spent by 
 both teacher and pupil before school have 
 a great influence on the character of the 
 sessions. The good feeling — or the ill feel- 
 ing, that may be engendered in those mo- 
 ments of relaxed tension when the pupils 
 are left largely to follow their own inclina- 
 tions, will surely follow thru the day and 
 be manifested in every exercise and recita- 
 tion. 
 
 If the day has opened with an alterca- 
 tion in the school yard, if it has opened 
 with some trespass that demands a trial 
 and a punishment, a spirit of controversy, 
 of revenge, of sadness, or of sulkiness will 
 pervade the whole day and destroy the pos- 
 sibility of getting the best results from that 
 day's work. On the other hand, if the day 
 be opened in the schoolyard with some 
 game in which all have been interested and 
 
 9 
 
10 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 all have enjoyed, and the pupils come in 
 tired for the moment, with that dangerous 
 superabundance of animal spirits in a 
 measure reduced, and with the glow of the 
 brisk pleasure still in their hearts and on 
 their faces, that day will have a briskness 
 and a glow that will be inspiring to both 
 teacher and pupil, and the teacher will close 
 his room with a feeling so seldom experi- 
 enced, that the day has approached the 
 ideal. 
 
 There is always an unknown quantity in 
 the daily experience of many teachers — a 
 quantity that exhausts nervous force, en- 
 genders senseless apprehension, and is par- 
 alyzing to the best effort. This quantity 
 is found in the equation, "X equals 'what's 
 coming next'," and the constant dread of 
 the solution has been the hete noire that 
 has frightened many a teacher from the 
 profession. 
 
 It strikes me that one of the prime 
 requisites for a successful teacher is ubiq- 
 uity, that omnipresence that will enable him 
 to anticipate the events of the day, dissi- 
 pating the potentiality of the problem by 
 being "on deck" first, last, and all the time, 
 having a thoro knowledge of the "what 
 next" by guiding the impulses that influ- 
 ence its production. In many years' expe- 
 rience, I have found that the moments I 
 spent with my boys and girls "before 
 school" were the most valuable moments of 
 the day. There will be little likelihood of 
 
BEFORE SCHOOL 11 
 
 flagrant transgressions under the eye of a 
 kindly but inflexible teacher. His pres- 
 ence alone, among the boys and girls while 
 at play, is a safeguard, even tho he be 
 meditative and seemingly oblivious of what 
 is going on. And what may not his in- 
 fluence be if he joins heartily in the play? 
 
 Whenever I came out in the spring with 
 a hastily fashioned kite or a pair of tempt- 
 ingly treacherous stilts, I was at once the 
 centre of an expectant group, anxious to 
 see me do something which I did not, for I 
 entrusted the trial of all contrivances to 
 the many who were willing to experiment. 
 Need I say that the girls were treated to 
 paper doll dresses that would have made 
 Worth green with envy? 
 
 To ball and bat, to croquet and other 
 out-of-door games, to snow forts and snow 
 men, to conundrums, to quiet "sitting 
 down" games "before school," I attribute 
 many of the "best" days for which we ever 
 long. Such days I sincerely believe are 
 to be largely attained thru the "before 
 school" influence of the teacher's interested 
 presence among his pupils, with them, heart 
 and hand, in everything, as a good, but not 
 a goody-good child (?) himself, instruct- 
 ing, by active example, controlling by un- 
 ostentatious assumption of the leadership 
 when the game evinces alarming tendencies. 
 
 That group of idle boys, over there, with 
 their heads together, giggling and sly- 
 glancing, without plot or intention are con- 
 
12 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 cocting that which in its influence will make 
 your school-room a miniature sheol for the 
 whole day. Get them busy without delay. 
 There is still another phase of the sub- 
 ject, on which just a word, and that only 
 a question. Will not the teacher be fresher, 
 better tempered, and less likely to make the 
 very errors against which he would guard, 
 if he spends a portion of the play time on 
 the play ground? 
 
II 
 
 OPENING EXERCISES 
 
 A moment's calm after the pupils are 
 seated tends to ensure a receptive attitude 
 in schools where the opening exercises are 
 varied and the discipline is good. With 
 the pupil fresh from exercise, that moment 
 of expectant tranquillity is the opened 
 vestibule for the earnest introduction of 
 some sweet or noble guest of thought to 
 the passive mind, ere the workmen, duties 
 of the day or of the session, throng to their 
 places. 
 
 As we have staples of diet ever present 
 at the table, so I believe that the Great 
 Teacher's injunction should be followed, in 
 a^broad and non-sectarian sense, and that 
 His lambs should regularly be fed the bread 
 of life without sermon or sanctimonious- 
 ness. The reading of the Bible, the great- 
 est code of ethics and the grandest litera- 
 ture ever compiled, was the one staple ever 
 present, and I always strove to make the 
 morning lesson from the book of books one 
 of the most interesting of the day. Rev- 
 erence for things considered holy and to be 
 respected, a reverence so much needed at 
 the present time, — will grow out of the 
 manner in which this thing is done. Treat 
 
 13 
 
14 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 the book with care, — put feehng into the 
 rendition of its passages, and the children 
 will catch the spirit of reverence and re- 
 flect, but don't be sanctimonious or you 
 will be promptly and properly suspected, 
 and the good influence to be desired will 
 be dissipated. 
 
 I varied the reading of the Bible. For 
 a week (for illustration) we would read 
 the First Psalm every morning, or until we 
 could repeat it from memory. In this way, 
 in time, a school would learn many of the 
 shorter songs of David and other short 
 selections. Then, again, I would select a 
 portion, reading it a few lines at a time, 
 the lines to be repeated by the school, — a 
 short responsive exercise that is good for 
 fixing attention and that was most thoroly 
 enjoyed whenever I used it. Then, again, 
 I asked some of the older boys and girls 
 occasionally to read, and being selected to 
 read was always treated as a privilege, — 
 a responsibility, — and the reading, without 
 an exception, was always conducted in a 
 manner nowise lowering the dignity of the 
 office. 
 
 Sometimes the Bible text suggested an 
 ethical lesson to be briefly and beneficially 
 developed, and sometimes the text was 
 chosen for the ethical lesson it contained 
 and which I had in mind as needed by the 
 school. We were like a big family at this 
 exercise, and seldom did any mischief creep 
 in to mar it all. 
 
OPENING EXERCISES 15. 
 
 I 
 
 As to the singing. In some schools I 
 had an instrument, and was fortunate in 
 having several girls in each to play for 
 me. Altho I knew something of both vocal 
 and instrumental music, I believed that it 
 was far better to employ the talents about 
 me rather than to display those I possessed. 
 It is better to have boys and girls beg a 
 musical treat (?) from you than to become 
 a bore by constantly doing something that 
 several in your school can do as well so far 
 as the simple needs demand. 
 
 We varied our singing. The morning 
 song would be in character a hymn, stirring 
 or tender as the mood of the morning 
 needed guiding, or as the nature of the 
 Bible reading or the ethical lesson demand- 
 ed. A song from the song book, patriotic 
 or sentimental, opened the afternoon exer- 
 cises, and this was varied occasionally by 
 a solo or a duo, if I had a prospective "bella 
 donna" or two among my charges. A short 
 nature or information lesson followed the 
 song, and I found my boys and girls never 
 weary of learning facts, developed if pos- 
 sible thru objects, about the animals and 
 things by which they were surrounded. 
 
 At this time boys and girls were given 
 commissions of exploration and investiga- 
 tion, and at this time reports of research 
 and expeditions were received. There could 
 be, of course, no routine, — no succession, — 
 no regular method ; but rather an irregular 
 method that was more effective from its 
 
16 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 very variability and novelty. At this time, 
 new inventions and discoveries were ex- 
 plained briefly, and discussed in regard to 
 their value to the world; and every day I 
 demanded of each pupil old enough to read 
 the papers a news item (excluding all rec- 
 ord of crime), the more important of which 
 received a word of comment. 
 
 Thus varied and conducted, my opening 
 exercises were often the green spots in 
 many a desert day, and I believe that they 
 watered and made fertile many a day that 
 would have been an arid Sahara without 
 them. They engendered the growth and 
 strengthening of attention, reverence and 
 cheerfulness ; three buds that are often 
 blighted by a sharp rattling hail of fixed 
 routine or a cold air of indifference at the 
 very threshold of the dawn. 
 
Ill 
 
 GETTING TO WORK 
 
 I ASSUME that you agree with me that 
 little of permanent value can be accom- 
 plished in school work without good order. 
 The secret of obtaining this without being 
 "cursed for a tyrant or kicked for a tool" 
 is almost as difficult of discovery, for those 
 who have it not, as the fabled philosopher's 
 stone; and those who have become pos- 
 sessors of this magic property of turning 
 all to bright and pleasing gold find it as 
 difficult of description as it was of dis- 
 covery. Yet this power can be attained, 
 and quickly, by one who has a natural en- 
 dowment for leadership, and also by one 
 who is under good self-control and prac- 
 tices exactly what he preaches. 
 
 In a well regulated school the pupils 
 come in quietly when the bell rings, without 
 laughter, giggling or talking across the 
 seats. After the opening exercises there 
 are two ways of getting to work: One of 
 a careless, noisy, petulant preparation, a 
 hunting up of books, a sharpening of pen- 
 cils, the doing of a hundred things that 
 should have been done before sehool and 
 that keeps the room in an uproar for from 
 
 IT 
 
18 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 five to fifteen minutes, while the teacher 
 stands helplessly rapping for calm; the 
 other, of a quiet, orderly taking up of the 
 implements at hand for use in the tasks of 
 the session. For the attainment and main- 
 taining of this latter condition we must 
 strive. 
 
 What a shock it gives a school undis- 
 ciplined to have an order compelling teachr 
 er take control ! How injured the big boys 
 look when they find they cannot go for the 
 neglected pail of water! How dreadfully 
 uncomfortable the hot, fussy, red-faced 
 children look when they find they cannot 
 spend ten or fifteen minutes quarreling and 
 splashing like greedy ducklings about the 
 water pail, each in order or rather in dis- 
 order, to guzzle down a dipperful of water 
 for no other purpose than to kill time! 
 How they make blunt pencils squeak ! How 
 they will idle for want of the book for 
 which they are not allowed to turn the 
 school-room topsy turvy, and how the tardy 
 ones open their eyes to find their lost time 
 charged up to them, to be made up out of 
 play time — in short, how these little ob- 
 structionists will squirm and kick until they 
 are satisfied that order is inevitable, and 
 that the teacher is as kindly and inflexible 
 as the power that brings in the days and 
 the seasons with benign and undisturbed 
 regularity. 
 
 It takes but a short time to create a "new 
 heaven and a new earth" out of such a little 
 
GETTING TO WORK 19 
 
 chaos — a new regime of neatness, quiet, 
 and punctuality that enables the teacher 
 at five or ten minutes past nine to view his 
 little charge silently at its individual tasks. 
 
 You demand that everything be in readi- 
 ness. Desks in order, books arranged, pen- 
 cils sharpened, hair combed, hands washed, 
 thirst assuaged — everything in readiness 
 for taking up the work of the session ; and, 
 when this condition has been attained, there 
 is nothing^ under the sun left to do after 
 the opening exercises but to go to work. 
 
 Boys and girls are not infallible, neither 
 is it to be expected that they will always 
 be thoughtful, and, as one does not wish 
 to seem unreasonable and may even desire 
 to be indulgent, I have found that a warn- 
 ing bell rung five or ten minutes before 
 the final call is an excellent means of re- 
 minding all of duties unperformed, while 
 it removes often the necessity of speaking, 
 and leaves no possible excuse for the pupils' 
 not being prepared for work at the proper 
 time. 
 
 Perfection in any condition will ever re- 
 main an ideal, yet it is worthy of a per- 
 sistent attempt at attainment. There will 
 always be the boy or the girl who dislikes 
 school, and is forever tardy ; there will ever 
 be the innocently forgetful to deprive whom 
 of some prized pleasure will bring tears to 
 your own eyes; there will ever be the per- 
 sistent one who spends the largest part of 
 the time inventing excuses for breaking in 
 
20 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 on the regular order ; but, by witchcraft (I 
 have grave doubts about the value of 
 switchcraft at any time), you may get 
 these discordant elements harmonized — in- 
 spired with your own zeal for the general 
 good, and make of them aids instead of 
 hindrances in your plan, plea, and progress 
 for good order. 
 
 There will ever be lots of little things 
 to keep the school-house about seven doors 
 below Paradise ; but with the good Persian, 
 you can walk the bridge Chinvat, which is 
 said to be a hair in width, and ever strive 
 with the Divs and the Jinns of disorder for 
 the peace of your soul. 
 
IV 
 CLASSES AND DIVISIONS 
 
 In ungraded country schools, the prob- 
 lem of keeping down the number of classes 
 and of arranging divisions is one that gives 
 the teacher no little trouble and anxiety. 
 
 The country school, offering unre- 
 strained an opportunity for the individu- 
 ality of the teacher and the individualities 
 of the pupils as well, is likely, in the matter 
 of classes and divisions, to assume a ka- 
 leidoscopic character, — ever changing in 
 relation to the punctuality, ability, and ap- 
 plication or energy of the various pupils. 
 
 In a graded school, where the teacher is 
 a part of a mechanism that turns off so 
 many pages in so many days, regardless 
 of the fact that some pupils are overwork- 
 ing at the same task that others find mere 
 play, regardless of the fact that the slow 
 ones are constantly discouraged and the 
 bright ones are forming habits of hstless- 
 ness, there is no room left for the exercise 
 of the discretion with which the rural edu- 
 cator attempts to harmonize these inequali- 
 ties and to reconcile many an inconsistency. 
 The smaller the school and the closer the 
 contact of teacher and pupil, the more com- 
 plex becomes the problem, until, in some 
 
 21 
 
22 SCHOOIi MANAGEMENT 
 
 instances, classes cease to exist altogether 
 in many of the more difficult studies. 
 
 While we can not find it in our hearts to 
 retard the progress of some exceptionally 
 bright pupils we should not forget to stir 
 the exceptionally dull ones to greater effort 
 to keep pace, and even then we can scarcely 
 avoid a division of the class which must in- 
 evitably come. At this point, when it is 
 reached, to avoid multiplying classes, I 
 have dropped the slower pupils into the 
 brighter division of the class in the next 
 lower grade, — in fact, to preserve harmony 
 in the homes and in school, have made this 
 measure an apparent elevation of the bril- 
 liants into a higher grade. 
 
 Comphcating the problem in rural 
 schools is the diversity of text-books, ren- 
 dering special lessons necessary. After 
 determining the grading and finding many 
 different books in some one class, I have 
 found that to teach without a book was a 
 course that, while it necessitated some extra 
 preparation, obviated the necessity for sep- 
 arate recitations. 
 
 To develop a recitation and not have it a 
 mere fact-mill for a two, three, or five min- 
 utes revolution turning out dust and ashes, 
 one must have time, and to get time a re- 
 duction of the number of classes and an 
 increase of general exercises, — lessons in 
 which the greater part of the pupils can 
 join, — should be made. 
 
 With forty classes, with varying text- 
 
CLASSES AND DIVISIONS 23 
 
 books, inequalities in age, attainment, and 
 ability, and with special subjects asked and 
 needed by special pupils, — with forty 
 classes, or thirty classes to manage, what 
 justice can be done to any one of them, or 
 to any individual in any one of them ? With 
 a doubling up of some of the classes, with 
 a combination of correlated subjects, with 
 a discarding of some extras that could not 
 be continued, with a revolution that deposed 
 some old, cherished methods from the throne 
 beneath the popular dome of thought, I 
 was not spared the consequences of my ig- 
 norance and mismanagement, and closed 
 my first year of teaching with twenty 
 classes and a case of fever that made me 
 a better student of economy, — school and 
 physical economy combined. 
 
 I think we should not deny ourselves the 
 privilege, which is a duty, with the Hberty 
 we have in this country, of advancing as 
 far as possible the brighter pupils, nor do 
 I think we should deny ourselves the pleas- 
 ure of stimulating and gratifying some 
 natural talent of some thoughtful lad or 
 lass with a special subject outside of the 
 ordinary curriculum, provided we can find 
 the time for it. The country teacher has 
 an added responsibility not so strongly felt 
 by the city teacher. The main burden on 
 the mind of the average urban teacher is 
 the passing of a certain percentage of her 
 grade for promotion, knowing that the 
 greater need of her pupils will be supplied 
 
24 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 in the order of their ascent toward gradua- 
 tion; but the rural teacher is handhng all 
 grades, and, if true to her trust, is ever 
 yearning to awaken the spirit that is like 
 the electric flash to the mingled but unseen 
 gases, unrealized, uncentred, and uncon- 
 trolled powers, that it unites into a crystal 
 drop reflecting the universe and dazzling 
 with a brilliance more to be desired and be- 
 yond that of the diamond. The country 
 teacher has the responsibility of awakening 
 and centering the powers and ambitions of 
 "the great minds, brave hearts, strong and 
 willing hands an age like this demands," 
 and this responsibility must not be shirked 
 or neglected. 
 
 There is a class of pupils, the irregular 
 ones, who multiply classes and perplexities. 
 They are a class to which I have shown 
 few favors, unless the pupils were unfor- 
 tunately kept out of school by necessity. 
 That being the case, they received every 
 attention I could possibly bestow when 
 they were able to attend. Irregularity is 
 usually the fault of the parents, and if they 
 do not have more interest in the future of 
 their children than to allow them to ignore 
 advantages, I do not believe it is the teach- 
 er's duty to retard the progress of others 
 for their benefit. 
 
 If you become wise unto your own salva- 
 tion and institute a new order, make use 
 of every available time-saving method. 
 You may fear the loss of popular favor; 
 
CLASSES AND DIVISIONS 25 
 
 but duty to yourself and to your school 
 may demand such a sacrifice, which will 
 be lighter than you imagine. In fact, a 
 gain in favor will be made if methods in- 
 telhgently applied bring, as they will, re- 
 sults to be desired. Find comfort in Schil- 
 ler's thought, as favor is accorded : "If by 
 your art you cannot please all, content the 
 few. To please the multitude is bad." 
 Among "the few" count yourself the first 
 to be contented. 
 
V 
 
 KEEPING PUPILS BUSY 
 
 The inexperienced teacher, tho "to the 
 manor bom," — tho thoroly qualified edu- 
 cationally, — tho zealous and conscientious, 
 will puzzle over the spirit of unrest, of list- 
 lessness, of consummate deviltry that again 
 and again will pervade the school-room to 
 paralyze endeavor and create disorder. 
 Often, in such cases, by the exercise of a 
 little ingenuity, or thru a knowledge of 
 common helps at hand or easily accessible, 
 the strain on nerves could be relaxed by 
 occupying the wandering or exuberant 
 energy with novel and educating tasks. 
 
 I assume that we all realize the bearing 
 on good order and good work that is had 
 by a judicious seating of the pupils. If 
 our seating is not done with reference to 
 the natures, temperaments, and discovered 
 habits, which we desire, in a measure, to 
 balance by bringing, so far as we can, op- 
 posites into correcting contact, we might 
 plan to have all of our work "busy work" 
 and then fail of attaining the object at 
 which we are aiming. 
 
 I assume also that we have our higher 
 grades so interested in the "business" of 
 
 26 
 
KEEPING PUPILS BUSY 27 
 
 school that we are seldom, if ever, forced 
 to resort to pedagogical "sleight-of-hand" 
 to lure them back into the path of rectitude. 
 
 With my older boys and girls, I have 
 seldom had much occasion to consider the 
 question, aside from regular tasks present- 
 ing sufficient variety in the course of prog- 
 ress to keep them "busy." But occa- 
 sionally I have had pupils who were extra- 
 ordinary and very active, and have suc- 
 ceeded with history and historical romance 
 in keeping them interested and occupied in 
 moments that without such helps would 
 have been spent in idleness. While I had 
 no regularly appointed reading table, such 
 as has been successfully used by many 
 teachers and is to be recommended, I al- 
 ways had a large number of magazines and 
 the better class of papers which served a 
 good purpose for those able to make use of 
 them in unoccupied periods. 
 
 The nature of "busy work" in the lower 
 grades must be carefully studied. In fact, 
 the teacher, like the chess player, should 
 make no move for which he cannot clearly 
 give good reasons. He should aim to have 
 this "busy" work bear on the evolution, — 
 the education, of the child mind. Any- 
 thing that will lead pupils to think while 
 keeping their attention and occupying their 
 hands ; anything that will lead to a cultiva- 
 tion of the senses, quickening sight, touch, 
 smell, taste ; anything developing ingenuity 
 and an exercise of the powers of observa- 
 
^8 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 tion and expression is permissible and only 
 advisable. But anything done without a 
 method under the seeming "madness" — as 
 much of tliis play with sticks, pictures and 
 color and letter cards would be called in 
 rural districts, — anything done merely to 
 kill and not beneficially to fill time, would 
 better be left undone, as it would tend to 
 shatter the powers which it is desired to 
 strengthen and concentrate. 
 
 It is not permitted me here to go into 
 detail regarding helps or apparatus for 
 "busy work." There are many excellent 
 works published on the subject and much 
 assistance will be found in the pages of 
 Teachers Magazine, where also stimulus 
 to individual and original invention will be 
 found. Let me say that it is not necessary 
 to have expensive paraphernalia, for good 
 results can be gotten from a bundle of 
 twigs or a handful of pebbles gathered on 
 the school grounds. If helps are not at 
 hand the resourceful teacher will not be 
 long without substitutes improvised from 
 materials available. Let us strive for 
 adaptability and the fullest development of 
 intelligence. 
 
 The true artist takes a little pigment, a 
 brush, and a stretcher of canvas, and, after 
 a little, rounds out an object of beauty that 
 is pleasant to contemplate. The savage 
 potentate would knock a hole in the canvas, 
 wear the stretcher around his neck, stick 
 the brush thru his nose, plaster the pigment 
 
KEEPING PUPILS BUSY 29 
 
 on his person and make himself superla- 
 tively ridiculous with the misused materials. 
 Let us strive to be artists. 
 
VI 
 RECESSES 
 
 The need of a recess in the middle of a 
 session or the lack of it, is something of an 
 indication of the quality of the teaching in 
 a school. If the teacher be an old-fash- 
 ioned routinist, a dull and prosy parrot 
 trainer, his httle poUies will get tired of 
 repeating their want of a cracker, and then 
 the ten or fifteen minutes of relaxation will 
 be found to be an absolute necessity. But, 
 on the other hand, if the teacher is wide 
 awake and up-to-date and makes every mo- 
 ment of the session interesting, little need 
 of the intermission will be found, as the 
 recreation that comes of a change of occu- 
 pation will be continuously enjoyed. Under 
 such a teacher the "rush" at recess is not 
 a "storming out to play," but is a gather- 
 ing about the teacher's desk to glean more 
 of that which has been dropped during the 
 period, or a grouping of classes for a com- 
 parison of notes, so that nothing of that in 
 wliich the interest has been centered may 
 be lost. 
 
 In many of the rural districts it would 
 be an unpardonable heresy for the teacher 
 to discontinue recesses. I, therefore, never 
 
 30 
 
RECESSES 31 
 
 left the regulation allotment of playtime 
 oif the schedule, but left the matter to be 
 decided by a vote of the school ; and, hap- 
 pily, almost invariably a large majority 
 decided to continue sessions without inter- 
 missions. In a way, I have measured my 
 influence and usefulness in a school by this 
 delicate but unmistakable barometer, the 
 popular will. 
 
 In winter, when country schools are the 
 largest, I seldom had more than a brief 
 breathing moment when the school-room 
 was thrown open for needed ventilation and 
 as quickly closed for a resumption of work. 
 When the season changed, and the weather 
 became milder, and the school reduced to 
 an attendance of the younger children, the 
 recesses became longer and more regularly 
 an institution, and on very warm or very 
 fine days often a full fifteen minutes' al- 
 lowance was given. 
 
 As in the country very young children 
 are sent to school to remain there all day, 
 to relieve them of inevitable weariness, I 
 gave them frequent and lengthy play spells 
 out of doors when the weather permitted, 
 allowing them their own will as to when 
 they should return. I seldom had to call 
 them; for, tiring of play, or curious to 
 know what was going on in the school- 
 room, they would steal quietly in and up 
 to their seats, and surprise me by being 
 there, where I had not expected them, when 
 wanted for an exercise. 
 
32 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 When I first began teaching, I was prim 
 enough and foolish enough to imagine that 
 boys and girls should not be allowed to 
 have recesses together, and consequently 
 deprived myself of the aiding corrective 
 that resides in a mingling of the sexes, and 
 had a sterner struggle to keep the order 
 and morale of the school at par. Of course, 
 circumstances may sometimes be such that 
 it would be better to have separate recesses, 
 but they are a nuisance and a relic of that 
 barbarism that excluded women from male 
 assemblages, — perhaps wisely in the middle 
 ages, because the action and the conversa- 
 tion of the Launcelots and Galahads were 
 far from fit to be witnessed by the Viviens 
 and the Guiniveres. Happily a higher 
 chivalry has been developed, with a loftier 
 conception and a more earnest and intelli- 
 gent quest of the Grail, than was possessed 
 by the knights who reveled at the round 
 table. 
 
 Any privilege or any usage in school 
 management should be considered in its re- 
 lation to the physical, mental, and moral 
 well-being of the pupils ; and in the matter 
 of recesses, m my mind, they are only ad- 
 visable when the pupils have been prepared 
 to make the best use of them. In spring, 
 summer, or autumn, if your boys and girls 
 use the few moments in wildly rushing 
 themselves into a heat and excitement that 
 require an hour to reduce to normal temper- 
 ature and calm, then recesses are more of 
 
RECESSES S3 
 
 a detriment than a benefit, and regardless 
 of prejudice I should discontinue the lib- 
 erty until I could educate the pupils in a 
 proper use of play time and up to an ap- 
 preciation of the privilege. It would be 
 vastly better in winter for the pupils to 
 remain in the school-room if they know no 
 better than to deliberately wet their feet, 
 or if they snowball until half frozen and 
 have to spend an hour perched about the 
 stove drying and warming, or, escaping 
 notice, have to sit thru the remainder of 
 the session uncomfortable, with their health 
 in jeopardy, and unfitted to carry on the 
 work which is the main object of their 
 presence at school. All work and nO' play 
 makes Jack a dull boy, indeed; but if in 
 any way Jack's play impairs his capability 
 for work, it is better that he run the risk 
 of becoming dull. 
 
 For weeks together my recesses were mo^ 
 mentary affairs for ventilation, to avoid the 
 "Please^may-I-go-out .f^" nuisance, and the 
 forming of the terrible and contagious 
 drink habit, and for a brief and rapid 
 preparation for the work to be continued; 
 and this was not in obedience to the ukase 
 of despotism, but in submission, as has 
 been intimated, to X)Ox populi in a little gov- 
 ernment whose motto was Pro Bono Publico, 
 
VII 
 UNIFYING THE SCHOOL 
 
 In every country community there are 
 more "sets" than sects ; — in truth, there 
 are usually several sets in each sect, and 
 am sorry to say it, but it is true, each "set" 
 secretly carries a chip on its shoulder for 
 all of the others. Yet there is occasion for 
 hope, for all kneel on the Sabbath and with 
 one accord beseech deliverance from "envy, 
 hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," 
 and implore forgiveness for their "enemies, 
 persecutors, and slanderers." There is 
 usually no open hostility among the fac- 
 tions, and the casual observer would de- 
 clare the community to be in a state of 
 idyllic calm and accord ; but the doctor and 
 the school-master know only too well that 
 this calm is the calm before a possible 
 storm, — the strained stillness of an armed 
 neutrality, whose masked batteries are 
 manned (should I have said "womaned".'^) 
 and ready for terrific and pitiless carnage 
 at a moment's notice. Like parents, like 
 pupils. Mrs. Jones barely nods to Mrs. 
 Brown in public, and in private they criti- 
 cise and condemn each other without mercy. 
 
 34 
 
UNIFYING THE SCHOOL 35 
 
 Their children, lacking, thank heaven! the 
 "discretion" of the parents, fight openly, 
 or openly refuse to associate. 
 
 There is one in town with the scar of an 
 indiscretion as much in evidence as tho she 
 wore Hester Prynne's scarlet letter on her 
 breast. Her fatherless child goes to school, 
 — an innocent boy, and such was the King 
 of Kings, — and the school becomes Sanhe- 
 drim and Roman tribunal in one and would 
 crucify him. The children of the rich mill 
 owner and the children of the farmer wear 
 better clothes and have better lunches than 
 the other children and also have not a little 
 money to spend at the store for sweets. 
 With a following of sycophants, they form 
 a "set" and become as important and as 
 supercilious as it is possible to become, even 
 tho unstimulated in this direction by home 
 example and influence. The editor's, the 
 lawyer's, and the minister's boys and girls 
 form the brainy "set" and put on airs ac- 
 cordingly, and from necessity of self-pro- 
 tection, the poor and the dull boys and girls 
 ally themselves to one or another of the 
 dominant factions or become tribes or in- 
 dividual representatives of the house of 
 Ishmael. Without going farther we have 
 factors enough for a problem of "unifica- 
 tion" that is as difficult to solve as is the 
 one you give the "smart" boy on the rela- 
 tion between the cost of a jackknife and the 
 number of cubic feet in a brush heap ; and 
 if, like the lad, we are unable to solve it, we 
 
36 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 in the end will be made to feel as cheap 
 as he. 
 
 We have the factors, but where are the 
 parentheses for uniting them in one, — ^we 
 have the elements, but how shall we combine 
 them in one smooth, homogenous fluid, in 
 which each will have lost its peculiar un- 
 pleasant property and will have gained in 
 the mingling an added quality of strength 
 for the mellifluous liquid, — a harmonious 
 and united school? 
 
 Several years ago, I was called to a 
 neighborhood that had been in a state of 
 internecine discord for over twenty years. 
 I was told that I would not stay there six 
 months, as many an older and more ex- 
 perienced teacher had won only the title 
 "yearling" in the ungracious community. 
 I found on getting acquainted that the peo- 
 ple were not as bad as they had been pic- 
 tured, — that they were an average aggre- 
 gation with the aims and interests and 
 ideals usual to dwellers in isolated localities, 
 but that, for some forgotten reason of of- 
 fense or injury, every man's hand was 
 against every other man's, and neighborli- 
 ness and the graces of kindness and good 
 will that make life in the country endurable 
 were unknown. I found there were about 
 as many feuds as there were families, and 
 that Killkenny kittens were the products of 
 this condition, and with them I had to deal. 
 I began with a strict impartiality, making 
 as much of one as of another, and said not 
 
UNIFYING THE SCHOOL 37 
 
 a word to anyone about anybody. I did not 
 recognize that discord existed, and innor 
 cently (?) devised plans that took the chil- 
 dren of one family into the home af an- 
 other. By constant care and watchfulness 
 that thwarted any attempt at meanness on 
 the part of one youthful coterie to another, 
 and by joining in and directing many 
 things of a social nature among the older 
 boys and girls, they came to forget, in my 
 constant example and earnest teaching on 
 the topic, that one was not as good as an- 
 other, and to learn that spiteful bickerings 
 were unprofitable and prevented the enjoy- 
 ment of the pleasure and profit to be ob- 
 tained thru a community of interests and 
 action. I could reach the community only 
 thru the children, as I could not call on all 
 and therefore called on none; but I was 
 assisted in an unexpected way by a young 
 evangelist, who, happily, organized a so- 
 ciety of the undenominational Christian 
 Endeavor, and this soon worked in the 
 home what I was working in the school, and 
 I am told that to this day there is no hurt 
 or destruction in that httle rural mount, — 
 that the lion and the lamb still lie down 
 together. 
 
 I taught lessons of a practical broadness 
 that made any smallness or meanness seem 
 beneath the boys and girls. I taught a 
 charity that overlooks defects of body or 
 of character, — ^that inspires pity for and 
 tenderness toward the unfortunate and 
 
S8 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 gives birth to the desire to help better by 
 kindness and consideration the condition 
 of all with whom daily contact is a neces- 
 sity. I taught Ruskin, and, tho unworthy, 
 I taught Christ ; and of the four years that 
 I taught in that community, I had three 
 years and more of a harmony that in many 
 of its resolutions was satisfying to the soul 
 thru sights seen and sounds heard. Every 
 discord but one was a "discord of the 
 seventh" that added strength and beauty 
 to the symphony of the years. 
 
 Need I add, in closing, that the teacher 
 must infuse himself into his school, his com- 
 munity, in uniting factions, — need I add 
 that it is love, divine love, that is just as 
 well as merciful, that alone is able to unite 
 antagonisms in such a manner that each 
 loses its disagreeable elements? 
 
VIII 
 PARENTAL CO-OPERATION 
 
 Without support in the home, the few 
 hours of influence in the school will scarcely 
 suffice to counteract the many hours of re- 
 laxed discipline outside. "We plan for our 
 powers the divinest we can, — ^we do with our 
 powers the supremest we may," and then 
 are discouraged because we do not succeed, 
 — because there is a counter current of op- 
 position, — an eddy unseen, that snatches 
 success out of the swift flow of our zeal and 
 delays it in idle circlings until we are in 
 despair. 
 
 To keep your school together, proving 
 that you are master of the situation, over- 
 riding opposition, superior to fear and not 
 to be bribed by favor, is a very difficult task 
 to accomplish gracefully, the while you are 
 striving to keep free from bitterness toward 
 betrayers and attempting to win their 
 esteem. 
 
 "There are two ways to victory," says 
 Thoreau, "to strive, or to yield ;" and while 
 it is not in exact harmony with the meaning 
 of the hermit of Maiden Pond, yet, in these 
 days, many teachers are holding their posi- 
 tions seemingly in great favor thru yield- 
 
 39 
 
40 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 ing to the caprices of their pupils, know- 
 ing that the children are the rulers in many 
 of the homes. But what becomes of con- 
 science and that happiness which is the 
 true reward of duty well done, — what, when 
 this tide of false popularity turns, as it 
 surely will ? There is another way of yield- 
 ing, — probably the one intended by the 
 great naturalist, — expressed by Espinoza: 
 "He who Hves according to reason, endeav- 
 ors to the utmost of his powers to outweigh 
 another man's hate, anger, or despite 
 against him with love or high-mindedness. 
 He who chooses to avenge wrong by re- 
 quiting it wdth hatred, is assuredly miser- 
 able. But he who strives to cast out hatred 
 by love, may fight his fight in joy and con- 
 fidence. As for those he doth conquer, they 
 yield to him jo^^^fully, and that not because 
 their strength f aileth, but because it is in- 
 creased." 
 
 In every community there are people who 
 look upon the teacher as the natural enemy 
 of their children and ^dgorously uphold 
 them in any misdemeanor or impudence, 
 and listen raptly to the wildest misrepre- 
 sentations. Tho having repeatedly pun- 
 ished unmercifully their children for mis- 
 chief and falsifying, they inconsistently 
 deny the teacher the exercise of even the 
 mildest forms of corrective. We all know 
 that the average child is a little angel ; but 
 we also have a misty reminiscence of the 
 early days of Lucifer. There are the peo- 
 
PARENTAL CO-OPERATION 41 
 
 pie who do not think it necessary for their 
 children to attend school regularly, and 
 who think that punctuahty is far from 
 being an absolute necessity. There are 
 those who neglect, day after day, to pro- 
 vide proper books for their children, — 
 there are those who wanted some other 
 teacher hired and are trying their very 
 best to make life as nearly unbearable for 
 the present incumbent as they can ; and, 
 thank goodness ! there are those who, if he 
 deserves it, stand at the teacher's back thru 
 thick and thin, and without whom in many 
 instances life would be almost unbearable. 
 This latter class are among the old-fash- 
 ioned folk who believe that children should 
 be seen and not heard at all times, — who 
 believe in having not only the respect, but 
 also the love and confidence of their chil- 
 dren, — who see that their children keep 
 good company and are at home after 
 nightfall, — who know how lessons have 
 been learned and recited at school thru 
 daily interest in school work, who discour- 
 age tale^bearing with its fungi of exagger- 
 ation, and who strive in every way to aid 
 instead of to multiply the cares of the in- 
 structor. 
 
 How to gain the co-operation of the op- 
 position and still retain dignity, self-re- 
 spect, and supreme control is the problem. 
 Some teachers yield, but not in the manner 
 first instanced at the outset of this brief 
 talk, but, apparently, by not declaring 
 
42 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 open war. Thru firmness and the exercise 
 of inherent quahties of attraction, they 
 finally draw unto themselves a following 
 that is productive of books for the bookless, 
 of notes of explanation and apology for 
 detained pupils, of demands for severe cor- 
 rection for the obstreperous, of bouquets 
 for the desk, and of invitations that turn 
 life from funeral marches to the grave into 
 an endless procession of triumph in which, 
 so to speak, each former enemy is at the 
 teacher's chariot tail, so scorched are they 
 in mind by the particular brand of coals 
 that have been heaped upon their heads. 
 
 Love and patience are virtues only up to 
 a certain point, and when they have been 
 exhausted they are vices, weakening and 
 degrading. Open war is sometimes inevi- 
 table, and what cannot be gained thru uni- 
 versal and uniform courtesy, — thru warm- 
 hearted interest in pupils and parents, — 
 thru evident good fellowship and ever ap- 
 parent sincerity and ability, can often be 
 gained by a bold stand on dignity and 
 authority, — ^by an exhibition of the right- 
 eous wrath that drove the desecrators from 
 the temple and that restored the peace and 
 the sanctity that had been profaned. . A 
 friend of mine, who had traveled in the 
 west in the days of the gold fever and who 
 had seen a deal of rough life, used to say : 
 "Never argue with a drunken man ; if he 
 insults you, knock him down, — it will sober 
 him into a repentance for the meanness he 
 
PARENTAL CO-OPERATION 43 
 
 felt toward you and didn't dare perpetrate 
 when he was sober." People drunken with 
 envy, hatred, or conceit need knock down 
 arguments often to insure you from im- 
 munity from insult. 
 
 The principle to be maintained is the 
 kind of dignity most admired in your com- 
 munity. Attempt to satisfy the people 
 thoroly that you are first competent and 
 then kind, — that you wish to be friendly 
 with everybody, — ^that you are not a prig 
 or a snob, but a good fellow, — that your 
 interests are the interests of the community, 
 and that you are willing to go more than 
 half way to be friendly and helpful; and, 
 somehow, the obstruction sand and gravel 
 will work out of life's little stream, and you 
 will glide on to a degree of success that will 
 be gratifying and compensating. 
 
IX 
 
 [ASSISTANCE FROM PUPILS 
 
 When I was a lad, I attended a school 
 in which I was one of the teachers and in 
 which nearly all of the "big boys" and 
 "big girls" took turns in running things. 
 The neighborhood did not appreciate our 
 efforts, however kindly put forth, and when 
 the term closed, our master was gathered 
 unto his predecessors and another ruled in 
 his stead. Remembering this when I came 
 to teach, only when closely pressed for time 
 and for some easily-managed recitation, did 
 I ever call on my older pupils for assist- 
 ance, and I have had many that have made 
 good teachers and who are to-day in the 
 profession, which they are ornamenting. 
 
 In each school where I have been, I have 
 been so fortunate as to have among the 
 pupils one or more of those large-hearted, 
 womanly girls,- — the material from wliich 
 good mothers are made, — who shared with 
 me the respect of all, and who quietly gath- 
 ered the httle ones under her wings, and 
 with the softening, soothing influence that 
 only a good woman can exert, has smoothed 
 the rough places, made the crooked paths 
 straight, and has driven away the showers 
 
 44 
 
ASSISTANCE FROM PUPILS 45 
 
 by the sunlight of her presence. Having 
 the affection of the wayward, to whom her 
 example is a corrective, she is a valuable 
 aid and worthy of confidence and every 
 privilege that can be granted. She is the 
 girl to whom you can safely send the little 
 and even the larger folk for a recitation 
 when time presses. Do not let the interest 
 and pleasure manifested by your pupils 
 under her ministration make you jealous, 
 for she merits a nobler sentiment. We all 
 know this girl, but do we all make the 
 developing use of her that we could and 
 should .f' Do we strengthen her, or do we 
 estrange? 
 
 How many of us have a secret service 
 bureau.^ How many of us have the dis- 
 cretion and the self-control necessary for 
 making a service "secret" and effective ; 
 and how many of us have the tact necessary 
 for properly using boys and girls as de- 
 tectives without letting them know they are 
 youthful Pinkertons .f^ Do you make a 
 handle of tattling? If you do, you en- 
 courage a spirit that makes liars of your 
 pupils and will make you distrusted and 
 disrespected by everybody. Haven't you 
 had boys and girls in whom you confided, 
 with whom you held confidential conversa- 
 tions about the school and the pupils, who 
 gave you, if you have the art of hearing 
 words between words, "pointers" about 
 things of which you never dreamed and 
 which forewarned you of threatened dis- 
 
46 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 orders or enabled you to correct abuses 
 that had existed without your knowledge? 
 In a word, are you "one of the boys" — 
 one of the girls, — yourself, while being the 
 cautious and watchful teacher almost un- 
 consciously underneath? If you are, then 
 you are the chief of a secret service bureau, 
 who will often surprise the school and the 
 community by courses of action that will 
 show that you "know what is in the wind" 
 and will win the "well done" of the gods 
 of the rural community expressed in the 
 words, "He was up to snuiF." 
 
 I have always made it a point to study 
 the special talents or bents of my pupils 
 and to elevate (?) them to "positions of 
 trust and responsibility" for which they 
 seemed best fitted for the good of our little 
 school commune. Some of my girls have 
 been musical. Such played the organ or the 
 piano for marching and for opening and 
 other exercises, and diversified our daily 
 program with solos and duos on invitation 
 or vote of the school. Some of my boys 
 have been mechanical in turn, and such 
 have been allowed to do odd jobs of tinker- 
 ing, or make some simple device or appa- 
 ratus needed for some lesson. 
 
 One of my boys in a certain school was 
 a natural-born artist. By universal con- 
 sent, he had control of one blackboard, and 
 never less than three times a week he spent 
 a part of the noon hour in materializing 
 his ideas in various colors. As an instance: 
 
ASSISTANCE FROM PUPILS 4*T 
 
 One day I came in, and there was the then 
 celebrated locomotive "999," with coaches 
 attached ready to steam out of the Grand 
 Central station on her flight to Buffalo. 
 Here was a chance for an interesting lesson 
 not to be lost, as the children seldom saw 
 a locomotive, being miles from any railroad. 
 On the birthdays we celebrated, he would 
 reproduce portraits and views in connection 
 with them with marvelous skill, and in these 
 ways made himself a valuable and a valued 
 ally. Three times a week I counted on his 
 aid for some subject for a brief opening 
 lesson; and he, being of an earnest and 
 thoughtful nature, and a thoroly good boy, 
 I seldom made a suggestion for his work, 
 or put any condition of restraint upon his 
 efforts. I kept a list of subjects from 
 which to conduct an occasional review. Per- 
 haps it would have been better to have 
 guided this boy's efforts into a connected 
 series ; but I felt that his genius was spon- 
 taneous, and that the element of novelty 
 in each surprise in this lack of system was 
 better, because it gave the task of develop- 
 ing the lesson he set for us an interest of 
 the extemporaneous, inspiring both teacher 
 and pupil to their best effort. 
 
 Do your pupils do jury duty.? You may 
 not be aware of it, but they do settle every 
 case that comes before the pedagogical 
 tribunal, and try not only the culprit, but 
 the judge and executor of the court's de- 
 crees, and woe to the one or to the other if 
 
48 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 anger instead of due mercy tempers jus- 
 tice, if the tyrant instead of the teacher 
 pronounces the sentence and inflicts the 
 penalty! Knowing this, I have used my 
 pupils as a bench of judges for trying 
 cases, allowing a discussion of the crime 
 (?) and for fixing the proper degree and 
 the nature of the expiation to be demanded ; 
 and I found strength in adapting our civics 
 lessons to the government of our little re- 
 public. 
 
 I have always had a ministry or cabinet 
 composed of my better, more intelligent 
 pupils with whom I have discussed school 
 polity and considered plans ; and thus have 
 won a co-operation and assistance that 
 could have been gained in no other way, 
 and without for one moment degrading my 
 dignity or losing the essential leadership 
 and control. 
 
JOURNALISM IN A DISTRICT 
 SCHOOL 
 
 The idea of a school paper, or review, is 
 not a new one. This class of periodical 
 usually has for its object the preservation 
 of class gossip, or outlines the work and 
 relates the occurrences of the school com- 
 munity of which it is the mouthpiece. But 
 The Maple Grove Gazette, of which I shall 
 speak briefly, was a semi-monthly news- 
 paper having for its editors and reporters 
 the school children of an isolated country 
 district. The only part I took in the affair 
 was that of censor-manager, thoroughly be- 
 lieving in the wisdom of the French in in- 
 stituting such an office, provided, of course, 
 its privileges are not abused. 
 
 I secured as editor-in-chief a girl of six- 
 teen who had displayed much good taste 
 in the selection of her reading, and whose 
 efforts in composition had clearly indicated 
 a desire for saying the most in the fewest 
 words. There were others in the school 
 who had livelier fancies in producing, but 
 I felt they were not to be implicitly trusted 
 to keep the erratic staff within bounds and 
 to enforce rigidly the rules of purity, per- 
 
 49 
 
50 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 spicacity, and propriety, on whose strict 
 observance we insisted. 
 
 The editor carefully perused the pile of 
 papers I kept on my desk, among which was 
 Our Times, on whose columns of condensed 
 matter tremendous onslaughts were made 
 with the shears. The Scientific American, 
 Harper's WeeUy, The Youth's Company- 
 ion, St, Nicholas, The Ladies' Home 
 Journal, The American Agriculturist, The 
 Country Gentleman, and Good Housekeep- 
 ing, to say nothing of local and other minor 
 pubhcation too numerous to mention, were 
 the mines from which the boys and girls in 
 their homes drew forth treasure and gems 
 for our bi-monthly enrichment. 
 
 At recess, if we were having recesses, or 
 at noon and after school, the editor would 
 confer with her staff, and one or another 
 would gravely discuss with her the chances 
 this matter or that would have of being 
 generally interesting or profitable to the 
 subscribers, as they fancifully termed the 
 pupils of the school. 
 
 One week would be devoted to this sort 
 of preparation, and then the editor would 
 make out a table of contents for the next 
 issue, and on my approval the subjects 
 would be assigned to the several assistants. 
 No article was allowed to be copied. It had 
 to be rewritten from memory, after its main 
 features had been assimilated by a careful 
 reading, and had to be expressed in the 
 pupil's own language. 
 
JOURNALISM m A DISTRICT SCHOOL 51 
 
 Others would be detailed to gather brief 
 news items of the immediate vicinity; and 
 here the utmost care had to be exercised, 
 for gossip of the petty, rural sort would 
 often creep in, and this had to be supi- 
 pressed, or our paper and our school would 
 have gone to pieces in a hurry. I thmk 
 in this one department a most valuable 
 work was done; for boys and girls were 
 taught, as they could be most easily, their 
 duty to their neighbor in a practical appli- 
 cation of the Golden Rule, that is the one 
 essential element in producing harmony in 
 a country community. 
 
 Boys and girls are not devoid of a sense 
 of humor, by any means, and early efforts 
 at being funny in the paper were rather 
 painful. Without the clearer discrimina- 
 tion and taste that come with culture,^ a 
 coarseness pervaded their fun that was in- 
 excusable. This again offered a sure means 
 of elevation morally and intellectually, for 
 expurgation and the reason for it soon 
 taught that nothing should be amusing 
 that contains the slightest double entente, 
 or that is rough and impure in expression. 
 When the telegraph editor had culled the 
 most important news from his "ticker," a 
 New York semi-weekly, — ^when the poetry 
 editor had clipped or copied those verses 
 that had appealed to his growing apprecia- 
 tion of beauty, — when all of the various de- 
 partments had fulfilled their functions, 
 then the chief took the mass of manuscript 
 
52 SCHOOL, IIANAGEMENT 
 
 in hand and went through it carefully to 
 note, mark, and make suggestions for elimi- 
 nations and corrections, and I have had the 
 pleasure of having whole stanzas of my own 
 verse, published annonymously, crossed out 
 by the inexorable blue pencil in the hands 
 of the clear-eyed girl, who, unconscious of 
 the author's identity, asked him if he didn't 
 think the lines were somewhat superfluous, 
 when we together went through the work 
 for a final examination. 
 
 On Friday afternoon, the items of the 
 issue having been arranged, under their 
 departmental headings, the editor would 
 read the aggregation to the school, each 
 member of which was eager to hear what 
 the others had written, and an interest 
 grew that incited a rivalry as to who could 
 find and best re-write the most interesting 
 matter. 
 
 At first, criticism had to be mildly given, 
 but soon open discussion of the work could 
 be tolerated, and, properly governed, made 
 profitable, if not at all times logical and 
 influenced by a full knowledge of the finer 
 proprieties. 
 
 An advertising department had early to 
 be discontinued, as the fertihty of the 
 youthful imagination knew no bounds re- 
 garding property to be sold or exchanged 
 and regarding situations wanted. 
 
 The venture was a success from its first 
 issue to its last, and it had an influence on 
 each subscriber far greater than any other 
 
JOURNALISM IN A DISTRICT SCHOOL 53 
 
 periodical in the land, because each sub- 
 scriber was a contributor, not receiving ed- 
 ucation so much through its columns as 
 through the reflection of what he put, there 
 himself, and by far the greatest benefit 
 from what he was not allowed to pubhsh. 
 
 In the latter part of the year much origi- 
 nal work was approved and used, and one 
 story from the lowly sheet found its way 
 into The Teachers' Institute, the predeces- 
 sor of Teachers' Magazine, to be repro- 
 duced, doubtless, by thousands of little folk 
 throughout the land. No one knows how 
 many well written items for the local county 
 papers and the farm papers can be accred- 
 ited to the influence and training of the 
 Maple Grove Gazette, 
 
 Its. editor is a married woman ; its con- 
 tributors are scattered far and wide; its 
 manuscript pages, Hke those of "The 
 Ephemeris" of Pompeii, are ashes; the 
 visible evidences of its being have been de- 
 stroyed. But, as none can tell to what ex- 
 tent its ashes have beautified the plant life 
 into which they have inevitably found their 
 way, so none can estimate the broadening 
 tendency to beautiful ideas and usefulness 
 the conscientious occupation of a few lei- 
 sure hours of that year may have eff*ected. 
 Certainly I have never used an extra exer- 
 cise that gave me less labor and more pleas- 
 ure, and that I felt was more freighted with 
 future possibilities than the bi-monthly 
 preparation and discussion of The Maple 
 Grove Gazette, 
 
XI 
 
 CHARACTER IN HIDING 
 
 A BACKWARD glaiice to early education, 
 in the contemplation of its results in the 
 characters. of the men about us, might of- 
 ten prove beneficial to many of us who, in 
 our zeal, often feel that the essence of our 
 best eifort has been dissipated and lost. 
 
 I am an admirer of a certain young me- 
 chanic of my acquaintance, — of his intense 
 f eehng of moral obhgation as a citizen, and 
 of his strong sentiment of spiritual re- 
 sponsibility. His present development has 
 often been a matter for wonder to me ; for, 
 from early hfe, he has been thrown into 
 associations that have wrecked thousands. 
 It was all clear to me the other day, how- 
 ever, when I stepped into his shop, unno- 
 ticed, and found him talking to himself. 
 
 What was he saying? Was it a passage 
 from a book he was then reading in leisure 
 hours ? Was it a section of the "Insurance 
 Bill" in which he was deeply interested? 
 
 No: it was the concluding Hne of a 
 temperance poem in one of the old "Sand- 
 ers" school readers. 
 
 Finishing, he turned, and, beholding me, 
 exclaimed: "Ah- Saunders, listening to my 
 
 54 
 
CHAUACTEE, IN HIDING 55 
 
 declamation, eh? Well, I didn't think you 
 would turn eavesdropper." Continuing, he 
 said: "Do you know, all of the pieces in 
 my old reading books come back to me, as 
 I work here at the bench? 
 
 "There's 'The Rapids Are Before You' 
 and 'The Little Boy That Died,' and the 
 old fables and proverbs, and a host of 
 things I never understood at school whose 
 meaning comes now in a flash. 
 
 "Say, I don't believe you teachers pay 
 enough attention to reading. Now, I'll 
 tell you what I mean. You don't explain 
 the lesson as carefully as you ought, — ^that 
 is, they didn't, when I went to school. 
 
 "I was a first-rate reader : could call all 
 of the words and mind the punctuation; 
 but I didn't know anything about what I 
 was reading. I was always wondering 
 about the meaning of the combination of 
 words, and only after I left school did the 
 ideas take definite form." 
 
 We talked over many selections familiar 
 to both, and I left him, wondering at the 
 solid structure the old fellows had so care- 
 lessly built, and wondering if the effort 
 we are expending on the reading lesson, — 
 on every lesson, — ^would be rewarded in 
 proportion. I am a rational optimist. 
 
 When we come to consider that the read- 
 ing lesson is the first to be impressed, that 
 first impressions last a life-time, and that 
 this lesson is the most laboriously wrought 
 and the most frequently repeated by the 
 
56 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 pupil, does it not seem, most worthy of care- 
 ful study, from the selection of a text-book 
 to the preparation of the lesson? 
 
 When the Shah-Jehan wished to build 
 a shrine to the memory of Noor-Jehan, 
 "The Light of the World," he sought out 
 the best Spanish architect of the Seven- 
 teenth Century. 
 
 The builder went to India, displayed his 
 design, built the foundation, and then dis- 
 appeared. For seven long years the prince 
 sought the missiag architect in vain, and 
 then one day he reappeared and finished 
 his work. 
 
 To-day, on the marshy banks of the 
 Jumna, stands a glimpse of heaven without 
 a flaw, because the foundation had time to 
 settle in the soft soil before the weight of 
 the Taj -Mahal was superimposed. 
 
 Do we burden the plastic mind with finely 
 wrought casuistry? 
 
 Let us select our readers for the lessons 
 that will give a firm foundation, and then 
 wait until the child mind can sustain the 
 larger analysis, — the column and the in- 
 tricate arabesque of the design that we 
 have set so high as an ideal. 
 
XII 
 OUR GLORIOUS HERITAGE 
 
 At any season of the year a contempla- 
 tion of nature will be amply rewarded, but 
 in Spring the varying tints that clothe hill 
 and vale inspire in their tenderness those 
 emotions that prove our kinship to the 
 divine and those thoughts of beauty that 
 are the voices of divinities within. The 
 most stolid and illiterate appreciate and 
 grope for the words to express that which 
 is stirring in the unexplored recesses of 
 their souls, and, lost in the labyrinth of 
 the manifold, the anthem of their silent 
 adoration mingles with the incense from a 
 million buds, that sweetly, tho invisibly, 
 arises to caress the mighty groins of the 
 temple arch sprung so sublimely overhead. 
 
 The man of culture is somewhat removed 
 from this mere sensual appeal, for he has 
 the power of knowledge which makes him 
 master of this heritage, accumulated and 
 enriched by the heroic struggle of the ages ; 
 and, in the enjoyment of his sacred birth- 
 right, his soul is broadened to that god- 
 like philanthropy which embraced the chil- 
 dren and demanded their development in 
 His name. 
 
 57 
 
58 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 It is this sentiment that has proAdded a 
 breath of fresh air for thousands of stifled 
 little ones, but more than this all children 
 need. The "Complex Cliinese toy" that in- 
 spires wonder, but only a degree of joy, in 
 the unopened mind of city or of country 
 child, must be taken apart and carried piece 
 by piece into the dim recesses of the little 
 brain, until mere wonder and admiration 
 are supplanted by the pure dehght the 
 Creator must feel in knowing how the "toy" 
 was fashioned, and, finished, made to go. 
 
 Take the boys and girls into the country, 
 where at every step an object appears for 
 an impressive lesson. Let them breathe the 
 ozone tinctured by the breath of hemlock 
 and of pine. Let them pluck the anemone 
 and hunt the arbutus. But surprise them 
 with a feast of beauties underlying all of 
 these. 
 
 The season belongs to the children, and 
 they have an inalienable right to all of its 
 treasures ; and we, who have reveled in 
 these riches, will be greatly enriched in 
 sharing them. 
 
 The saddest thought of the season to me 
 is that so many country children seem 
 utterly oblivious to their surroundings, and 
 I never enter a school-room without feeling 
 that I should attempt to arouse the chil- 
 dren to an appreciation of the grace and 
 beauty by which they are encompassed in 
 every moment of their freedom out of doors. 
 
 City children long for the beauties and 
 
OUR GLORIOUS HERITAGE 59 
 
 the privileges of the country, and the need 
 to-day is the awakening of the country 
 child to the glories and advantages of his 
 environment. 
 
 In these buds of future men and women 
 are the possibilities of a rich and rewarding 
 harvest. Awaken them ; warm them ; show 
 them the wonders of the long past of prep- 
 aration for the kingdom they inherit with 
 the flowers ; and point them to a material 
 progress, as well as to a progress beyond 
 that of the finite plant, flower, and fruit,— 
 that progress in the evolution of the mani- 
 fold that will not cease even when man un- 
 folds, an amaranthine blossom for the 
 adornment of an eternal destiny. 
 
XIII 
 EDUCATION FOR USEFULNESS 
 
 The need of the rural districts in educa- 
 tion is immediate, and the call is insistent 
 and should be at once answered inteUigent- 
 Ij, if agriculture is to be re-estabhshed as 
 a foundation of our national importance 
 and if rural districts are to be repopulated. 
 
 The attractiveness of those occupations 
 which pay large rewards for intelKgence 
 has lured the boys and the girls, generation 
 after generation, to the cities, until in the 
 East over 70 per cent, of the population 
 is crowded into the towns and less than 
 30 per cent, is left to lonesome hving in 
 districts more than half depopulated. 
 
 There is no reason why agriculture intel- 
 ligently pursued, — pursued in the Hght of 
 modern discoveries, with modern imple- 
 ments, after modem methods, and with 
 sectional limitations and modern market 
 needs in view, — should not pay as large, or 
 larger, returns than the average small 
 business in the city, or the average pro- 
 fessional occupation. In every instance, an 
 agricultural specialty intelligently followed 
 will be far better rewarded than any clerk- 
 ship in any city. 
 
 60 
 
EDUCATION FOR USEFULNESS 61 
 
 For long years past, teachers and foolish 
 parents have held up a false picture to 
 the youth of the country. They have dilat- 
 ed on the country boy who has gone to the 
 great city and has become a great lawyei, 
 a great physician, musician, merchant 
 prince, or a captain of finance, forgetful 
 of the fact that few country boys from the 
 great mass have reached a point where they 
 have become noticeable, still fewer are high 
 in finance, and none are in "high" finance 
 whose characters would exalt them as mod- 
 els for emulation. Teachers have let the 
 glamor of the limelight fall on the isolated 
 cases of the country boy who has made a 
 hit in the city, while all around the small 
 disc of light upon the curtain, but hidden 
 in the contrasted intensity of darkness and 
 obscurity, are the thousands and tens of 
 thousands of country boys and girls who 
 have gone to the city and have met nothing 
 but hardship, disappointment, and failure, 
 to say nothing of fates more dismal, dis- 
 tressing, or disgraceful. 
 
 The time has come in rural education to 
 show both sides of the city: its East side 
 as well as its West, — its First avenue as 
 well as its Fifth. The time has come for 
 thq tidal wave that has so long flowed city- 
 ward to be reflected from the congested 
 canons of commerce and to flow more calm- 
 ly back toward the wellsprings from which 
 its particles were drawn. 
 
 The need, then, in rural education is a 
 
62 SCHOOL. MANAGEMENT 
 
 school properly equipped and having a 
 trained, conscientious, and discriminating 
 teacher, — a school in which, every human 
 relation is placed in its proper position 
 and shown in its actual proportion, — a 
 school in which the beauty and sublimity 
 of nature shall be given prominence, and 
 in which the dignity, attractiveness, and 
 profit of rural occupations shall be given 
 their proper value, — a school in which the 
 child is taught the practical things of life ; 
 is taught something of the principles of 
 government and of successful agriculture, 
 the foundation of all national prosperity. 
 
 I do not mean that a desire for higher 
 education should be stifled, but, on the con- 
 trary, as I have urged elsewhere, it should 
 be stimulated, but not by false ideals, — by 
 firing the youthful imagination with false 
 views of human greatness in artificial lines, 
 leading to the erection of false hopes and 
 the cherishing of idle dreams that lead too 
 often to dissatisfaction, despair, and flat 
 failure. 
 
 How often you have heard it remarked 
 of a college graduate who has failed to con- 
 nect with some useful occupation : "There 
 goes a five thousand dollar education 
 wasted on a fifty cent man." The fact is, 
 that there goes a most useful citizen side- 
 tracked by false conceptions of what spells 
 success and by improperly formed ideals, 
 influenced in the formative period by un- 
 wise instructors or foolishly ambitious 
 
EDUCATION FOR USEFULNESS 63 
 
 parents. The five thousand dollar educa- 
 tion is all right, and the man is infinitely 
 better off in possessing it, but the pity is 
 that in getting it he did not spend some 
 time in studying how to make practical use 
 of it. 
 
 This is what is being aimed at by the 
 Education Department of New York State 
 in introducing civics and agriculture and 
 nature study into the course of instruction 
 for common schools. It is a step in the 
 right direction, toward the need of the 
 rural communities, and is one that, if fol- 
 lowed out by the teachers and supported by 
 the district organizations, will have its in- 
 fluence in making the country and its life 
 and occupations attractive to the boys and 
 girls and will eventually increase the rural 
 population, improve farm values and the 
 value of farm products, and, above all, the 
 value and enjoyment of the inhabitants of 
 rural communities in which are found the 
 men and women who right the wrongs and 
 maintain the tone of the nation, in which 
 too often false standards have been fol- 
 lowed toward apparent disaster. 
 
 It is back to nature we must hark ; back 
 to contact with the soil ; back to the simple 
 life, the standards and the high purposes 
 of the founders of the republic; back to 
 truth and an honest strife for a true wealth 
 that will represent a true prosperity. And 
 on the teachers is the burden of inaugurat- 
 ing the era of renewal. It is a worthy 
 trust, a noble and ennobling opportunity. 
 
HOME LESSONS 
 
 With your classes reduced to the small- 
 est possible number, you have gained the 
 great advantage of a larger allotment of 
 time for each recitation, but at the outset 
 you will be checked in the ampler devotion 
 by the knowledge that you are encroach- 
 ing on time which should be spent in study. 
 You are a college or normal graduate and 
 you long to revel in the pleasure of play- 
 ing the professor who has forty or sixty 
 minutes in which to lecture, to experiment, 
 or to amphfy the day's lesson. You see so 
 many opportunities for adding collateral 
 strength to the recitation, — so many 
 things suggest themselves for making the 
 period interesting. You loved your note- 
 books and clasped them close, forgetful of 
 the midnight oil you burned in poring, 
 delving, hoarding, that you might prepare 
 yourself to appreciate the hour in the 
 class-room in which your knowledge has in- 
 creased and your intellect expanded in the 
 manner ever new and delightful, and you 
 naturally long to treat your boys and girls 
 to the same enjoyments; and here let me 
 say, it is possible for you to create a taste 
 
 64 
 
HOME LESSONS 65 
 
 for such pleasures in your pupils, pro- 
 vided you can inspire them to a sacrifice 
 of time in study at home. 
 
 There may be but four or five of your 
 twenty classes that you would or could 
 treat to ampHfied recitations, and, per- 
 haps, but two of the four or five lessons 
 need be prepared at home ; but the alacrity 
 with which your pupils in advanced grades 
 acquiesce to the proposition and the assi- 
 duity with which they maintain the home 
 study will depend on your ability to make 
 the need of extra work apparent and to 
 keep the text conned an enticing prelude 
 to the larger interest awaited in the class- 
 room. 
 
 I used to think it would be a grand thing 
 if all of my pupils could come to school 
 with lessons prepared in the way in which 
 I early went to school, but I overlooked 
 the possible condition into which the 
 younger and more mischievous would fall 
 while unoccupied with recitations. There- 
 fore, I have come to think it unadvisable 
 for the lower grades to have more than 
 one or two lighter lessons, — preferably ex- 
 ercises, — to prepare out of school, as the 
 time which can be devoted to a just devel- 
 opment of their recitations necessitates 
 small allotments from text-books, very eas- 
 ily mastered in the various branches dur- 
 ing inter-recitation periods. We all know 
 what a real nuisance the smart little fel- 
 low becomes, — the one who gets all his les- 
 
66 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 sons at home, and so idles and plays in 
 school that he has forgotten them by the 
 time he is called upon to recite. We all 
 know it is better for him to do the larger 
 part of his studying in the school-room, 
 under our eye and subject to our guidance. 
 But for the older pupils, to whom you 
 could and should give more time, as you 
 feel that their days in the school-room are 
 growing fewer and still fewer in the ma- 
 jority of cases, the more lessons you can 
 get them to prepare at home the better, if 
 3^ou are going to exert to the utmost the 
 broadening effect of thoroughly developed 
 lessons, and do your utmost to inspire a 
 desire for higher education. With a high 
 school in every large village and a univer- 
 sity with state assistance in free scholar- 
 ships, we are not doing our duty if we do 
 not do our very best to inspire our ad- 
 vanced pupils to their best endeavor for 
 that education which will enhance their 
 pleasure in living and broaden their influ- 
 ence and usefulness in the world. 
 
 This is done most effectually, not so much 
 by direct appeal as, subtly, by the hidden 
 power of knowledge which the more un- 
 covered in its beauty the stronger becomes 
 its attraction for the pupil, until met by 
 barriers of limitation, until unsatisfied, the 
 pupil, grown student, finds the courage to 
 lift the veil, — to leap the wall and stand 
 face to face with mysteries more enticing 
 than those practised by the Egyptian pas- 
 
HOME LESSONS 67 
 
 tophori. They came to college, raw coun- 
 try boys, from the furrow and the sheep 
 trail, — from the hills of the charcoal pits 
 and the obscure valleys, — with the quench- 
 less light of a Maccabean miracle, their 
 only attraction, a gleam in their eyes, and, 
 to-day, they are preaching, pleading at 
 the bar, teaching, experimenting with 
 natural forces, amply repaying those who, 
 in log cabins and little red schoolhouses, 
 on hillside and in valley, took the time 
 and trouble to make learning so attrac- 
 tive that the light of pine knot and tallow 
 candle falling on the page of reason illu- 
 mined a vista that did not vanish in the 
 labyrinth of calculus. 
 
 Common school progress is necessarily 
 slow. "It is the resultant of a multitude of 
 forces aiding and opposing one another," 
 says Peabody. But the individuality of 
 the teacher is the strongest force amid the 
 multitude. That altitude, where home les- 
 sons become a necessity in your countr^'^ 
 school, can be reached only by a long, 
 steady pull, — ^by an unoppressive, but 
 ever-expressed zeal, — ^by a constant exer- 
 cise of all the faculties and artifices that 
 are the attributes of a good teacher. 
 When you have stimulated the conception 
 of a desire, a new necessity is soon born. 
 
 We shall have children physically too 
 weak to make home lessons advisable for 
 them. We shall be opposed by parents 
 who think their Willies and their Kitties 
 
68 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 
 
 work hard enough in the school-room, and 
 discourage them from home study ; and we 
 shall ever have those whom nothing but a 
 stroke of lightning would inspire to grasp 
 the higher thought; but, never discour- 
 aged because of the limitations of speci- 
 mens that defy theories and exhaust in- 
 vention, we must ever strive to do the best 
 we can with the means and material with 
 which we have to work ; and, planting and 
 watering incessantly, at last lie down in 
 trust that the increase, some thirty, some 
 forty, and some one hundred fold, will be 
 granted by the powers we have striven to 
 evoke, but which, in the last analysis, we 
 are forced to admit are absolutely beyond 
 our control. 
 
DEC 13 I90e