AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS HISTORY AND PEDAGOGICS BY JOHN SVVETT Author of " History of the Public School System of California," " Methods of Teaching^ "Normal Word Book," and '■'' School Elocution ; " and Collaborator in the Authorship of Szvin ton's Language Series, Word Book Series, and Geography Series, ^ NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY u I TWO COPIES RECEIVED, Library of C«B5cet% Office of the 8 - 1900 Hegl9t«r of Cppyrlghf^f 1/ \^ vK<\ 54896 Copyright, 1900, By JOHN SWETT. Am. Pub. Sch. E-P 1 86C0ND COPY, PREFACE This book is intended mainly for the great body of American public school teachers, and, incidentally, for li- brary use in normal schools or in normal departments of other institutions of learning, both public and private. The prominence now given to American educational history by the pedagogical departments of universities has led to a similar line of study in many state normal schools. Furthermore, these historical studies have been emphasized during the past decade by a long series of able and exhaustive papers on the history of our public school system, published in the annual reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, and in special Bulle- tins of Information. But these reports, rich in historical treasures, reach only a small number of the five hundred thousand teach- ers in our country, and are not available for practical pur- poses in large classes of normal students. There seems to be room for a hand-book containing a series of studies on the vital points of public school history ; and also an outline of the psychological and pedagogical methods of instruction and management in American public schools. A knowledge of the history of public education in our own country is fast becoming an indispensable part of 3 PREFACE the educational equipment of every American teacher ; and it is to help along this new movement that the Part of this book has been written. The Second Part relates to applied pedagogics in the common schools, and treats specifically of modern courses of study in primary and grammar grades ; of school man- agement ; of professional reading and study for teachers ; and of common-sense applied to rural schools. In this part, as in the historical part, the author has made free use of quotations from the latest writings of American educational leaders in order to show the drift of modern pedagogical and psychological thought. JOHN SWETT. San FRANCibCo, 1899. CONTENTS Part I. History of American Public Schools. CHAP. PAGE I. Colonial Schools 7 II. Early American Schools ....... 34 III. Secondary and Higher Public Education . . . -73 IV. Public Schools after the Civil War 93 V. Common-School Courses of Study . . . . .118 VI. Studies on Common-School Text-Books . . , .130 VII. Educational Outlook for the Twentieth Century, . 164 Part II. Applied Pedagogics in American Public Schools. I, Management in School Government . . . . -173 II. Suggestions on Class-Room Management . . .179 III. Recitations and the Art of Using Text-Books . . ,188 IV. Professional Reading and Study . . . . .199 V. Pedagogics Applied to Reading, Writing, Spelling, and Drawing, in Modern Graded Schools .... 206 VI. The Art of Teaching Language Lessons and Grammar . 230 VII. Pedagogical Principles applied to Arithmetic . . . 240 5 6 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGB VIII. Psychological Principles in Teaching Elementary History . 259 IX. Natural Methods in Teaching Geography . . . 269 X. The Natural Method in ]SIature Studies . . . .278 XI. Modern Views on Physical Culture . . * . . . 286 XII. Modem Training in Morals and Manners .... 292 XIII. Common-Sense Applied to Rural Schools . . . 303 PART I HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS CHAPTER I COLONIAL SCHOOLS For typical studies we may begin with the four chief centers of early settlements in our country : New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The Colonists at Plymouth did not open a public school until fifty years after the Pilgrim Fathers set foot on Plymouth Rock. But the little band of one hundred and two men, women, and children that came over in the Mayflower^ at once organized a civil government, and immediately set about paying off their indebtedness to the Plymouth Company by making shipments of fish, furs, and lumber. In thirteen years the freemen of this small settlement owned their homesteads free from debt. For half a century the few children in this colony of slow growth were taught at home or in dame schools to read the catechism and the Bible ; for so much instruction the Pilgrims held to be a religious duty. In due time, when children had increased in numbers, the freeholders of the town of Plymouth set up a "■ Latin Grammar School " of the English type (1670) ; and three years later (1673) they established, after the manner of the Netherlands, where the Pilgrims had sojourned for a time, a public school for teaching the children to read and write their mother 7 8 H/STORV OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS tongue. For .the public support of this school they- aj)ph'ed the profits of the Cape Cod fisheries. The Puritans who settled around Massachusetts Bay in 1630 were stronger in numbers and richer in means than the Plymouth Pilgrims. It is estimated that at least 20,000 emigrants came over from England during the period of rapid settlement from 1630 to 1650. The Boston Latin School (1635-36) appears to have been the first public school opened in New England. It was started by subscriptions, was supported in the beginning partly by town appropriations ; afterwards entirely by the town. Sir Henry Vane headed the list of subscribers with a gift of ten pounds sterling. " There is no notice of a school among the regular entries of Boston records until 1642," says Felt's ** Annals of Salem," '* but on the last leaf of the first volume is a list, dated 1636, of subscribers and their donations towards a school of this kind." This Latin School was exclusively designed to fit boys for college. It was the only public school in Boston for a period of more than thirty years. Harvard College was founded (1637-38) for the chief purpose of training up an educated ministry. One year later (1639), a printing press was set up at Cam- bridge. Other towns in New England followed the example of Boston and established " Grammar Schools," chiefly designed to teach Latin grammar, but incidentally in- cluding a little instruction in reading, writing, and arith- metic. In order of time these schools were set up as follows: Charlestown (1636); Dorchester and Newbury (1639); Salem (1641); New Haven (1639-41); Hartford (1642); Newport, R. 1.(1640); Dedham (1651); Ipswich (1642); Plymouth (1670). COLONIAL SCHOOLS g These grammar schools were supported in part by tuition fees and in part by town appropriations. Occa- sionally they received small grants of land or individual bequests. They were public schools entirely under control of the civil government, though they had strong church affiliations. They were designed to fit boys for college. The girls of this period either attended private schools or grew up without schooling. As the settlers were trans- planted Englishmen, their schools, as a matter of course, were modeled upon the plan of the eighteen Latin grammar schools founded in England during the reign of Edward VI. It was not until two centuries after the settlement of New England that Old England took any measures for providing for the elementary instruction of the children of the common people, other than in charity schools in connection with the established church. Consequently the colonists did not inherit the '' common-school idea " from England. The legal conditions of admission to all these primitive grammar schools read as follows : " No youth shall be sent to the grammar schools unless they shall have learned in some other way to read the English language by spell- ing the same." Consequently, for many years, children were taught to read at home, or in private schools, or dame schools, or were allowed to grow up illiterate. In due course of time most of these early grammar schools became free public schools supported by taxation, and, 150 years later, girls gained admission to them. Cotton Mather in his " Magnalia," says : " When scholars had so far profited at the grammar schools that they could read any classical author into English and readily make and speak true Latin, and write it in verse as well as in prose, and perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the lO HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Greek tongue, they were judged capable of admission to Harvard College." RECORDS OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. The student of educational history must not be misled by the colonial use of the terms, " free school," '' Latin school," " grammar school," and '' public school." They were all used, at times, to designate public schools sup- ported in part by tuition fees, and were also applied to schools under church control. It is claimed, for instance, that the first '* free school " in America was established in 1621, by the Rev. Patrick Copeland, in Charles City, Vir- ginia. This was evidently a parish school, supported by subscriptions. Town of Dedham. — It was ordered in town meeting (165 1) ''that all such inhabitants in our town as have male children or servants in their families shall for each pay to the schoolmaster for the time being the sum of five shil- lings per annum ; and (2) that whatever these sums shall fall short of the sum of twenty pounds shall be raised by by way of rateing upon estates according to the usual manner." The Dorchester School. — The history of the town of Dorchester (now a part of the city of Boston) is of special interest, as it contains a record of one of the earliest of town meetings in New England. Town Records. — " Monday, Oct. 8, 1633. Imprimis. It is ordered that for the general good and well ordering of the affairs of the planta- tion, there shall be every Monday before the Court, by 8 o'clock A. M., and presently by the beating of the drum, a general meeting of the in- habitants of the plantation at the meeting-house, there to settle and set down such orders as may tend to the general good aforesaid, and every man to be bound thereby, without gainsaying or resistance," COLONIAL SCHOOLS IX Other towns followed this example, and in 1636, three years later, the General Court of the Bay Colony passed an act regulating town government and establishing the town meeting as an institution of local civil government. The town meeting laid the foundation for the town school. In 1635 the General Court of the Bay Colony granted to the inhabitants of Dorchester certain lands on " Thomp- son's Island/' and in 1639 the town meeting voted to levy a tax on the proprietors of said island for " the main- tenance of a school in Dorchester." This was a grammar school for boys, and was supported in part by tuition fees. So far as public records show, this seems to have been the first direct tax voted in New England for the partial support of a public school. School Committee. — In 1645 the Dorchester town meeting elected a special school committee of three, termed " wardens or overseers of the schools," and adopted *' rules and orders concerning the school," in part, as follows : " 2ly. That from the beginning of the first moneth untill the end of the 7th, hee shall every day begin to teach at seaven of the Clock in the morning and dismisse his schollers at five in the afternoon, and for the other five months he shall every day begin at 8 of the Clock in the morning and end at 4 in the afternoon." " 5ly. Hee shall equally and impartially receiue and instruct such as shalbe sent and Committed to him for that end, whither there parents bee poore or rich, not refusing any who have Right & In- terest in the Schools." " 61y. Such as shall be Committed to him he shall diligently instruct, as they shalbe able to learne, both in humane learning and good literature, & likewyse in Poynt of good manners and dutifuU behauior towards all, specially there superiors as they shall haue occasion to bee in there presence, whither by meeting them in the streete or otherwyse." 12 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS " 7ly. Euery 6 day in the weeke at 2 of the Clock in the after noone, hee shall Catechise his SchoUers in the principles of Christian religion, either in some Catechism wch the Wardens shall provide and present, or in defect thereof in some other." Schools in Boston.— In 1682, half a century after the settlement of the town, it was ordered in town meeting : '' That a committee with the selectmen consider and pro- vide for the teaching of children to write and cipher within this town." Accordingly, grammar schools were soon opened, with one department for teaching '' writing and ciphering," and another department for teaching *' reading and spelling." These unique schools, English in type, are explained by George H. Martin in his " Evo- lution of the Massachusetts Public School System," as follows : '* These grammar schools were double-headed af- fairs, divided into a writing department and a reading de- partment, and with a master and an assistant, the two masters having original and concurrent jurisdiction over the pupils. In the writing schools, arithmetic and pen- manship were taught to all, while algebra, geometry, and bookkeeping were optional. In the reading schools, reading and spelling, with definitions, grammar, and geography were req^tired studies, with history, astron- omy, and natural philosophy optional. The pupils spent the morning in one school and the afternoon in the other." These grammar schools of 1682, however, were open to boys only. It was not until 1789, a century later, that girls were allowed to enter them, and then only from April to October in each year, and only at hours when the boys were not in attendance. It was not until 181 8 that Boston opened primary schools for teaching both boys and girls to read and write COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 3 the English language. The town of Northampton voted in 1792 to admit girls into the grammar schools from May 1st to October 31st. In this connection it is worth noting that in 1696 the Scottish Parliament enacted a law which established a school in every parish and provided for its support partly by parish tax and partly by rate bills. The way had been opened for this law by the work of John Knox, more than a century before, in establishing parish schools in connection with the Scotch Kirk. Town of Salem. — This town, one of the first settlements in the Bay Colony (1629), ranked for a long period next to Boston in wealth and commerce. It held to English customs and educational ideas with peculiar tenacity. It established a British "Latin grammar school" in 1641 ; but made no public provision for teaching girls to read and write the English language until a hundred and fifty years later, and did not place girls on an equal footing with boys until 18 12, one hundred and seventy-one years after the first Latin school was founded. It is historically interesting as the center of the witchcraft delusion in New England. Its school records, complete from the begin- ning, afford the pedagogical student a striking illustration of the slow evolution of the common school idea. These town records are made available by Felt's *' Annals of Salem" (1845). In the first volume of this book there are eighty pages of pubhc school history, made up largely of quotations from town records. The following extracts mark a few of the successive stages of school development. Records.- " 1641. March 30. Co]. Endecot moved about the ffences and about a ffree skoole and therefore wished a whole towne meeting about it ; therefore, that Goodman Auger warne a towne meeting the 14 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS second day of the weeke." The town meeting established a Latin Grammar School (1641) in accordance with the call. 1644. "Ordered that if any poore body hath children or a child to be put to school and not able to pay for their schooling, that the towne will pay for it by rate." This " free skoole " was a Latin grammar school, free only to those too poor to pay for instruction. " Such was the practice to a limited degree in the metropolis " (Boston), says the historian of Salem, " and, to a considerable degree, in other places of the Commonwealth. This continued, more or less so, among our population till 1768." 1657. " A bill came to hand to make a rate for the Coledge [Harvard] LS 6s." 1680, Apr. 5. "Concerning the Colledge money. For building : amount raised by subscription ;^ 130-2-3." 1716. "John Swinnerton began, 25th ult. to keep the English school by the town house." [First mention of an English grammar school]. 1733, Jan. 4. " The Grammar School had 36, and the English school 30 scholars." 1743, May II. "Voted that the Latin and English schools be united under a master and usher. Each Latin scholar paid 5s a quarter, and each English scholar 2s. 6d. a quarter." 1764, May 16. Order for ^10, " to pay for learning the poorest children to read at women's schools " [dame schools]. 1767, March 9. Committee of the English school are empowered to spend the same sum for a like purpose. 1793, March 11. School committee authorized to provide for the tuition of girls in writing schools or elsewhere, " in reading, writing, and ciphering." 1796, July 19. Statement that schools for young girls had been opened. [Primary schools. J 1801, April 13. "Notice is published, that writing, arithmetic, English grammar, composition, and geography are to be taught in the grammar school, besides Latin and Greek." 1 801, May 2. Notice is published that three public schools for children of both sexes, and not less than live years old, are opened. [Primary sciiools.] COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 5 RURAL " COMMON SCHOOLS " IN NEW ENGLAND. It was outside of Boston and its surrounding group of ^' grammar school " towns, in the outlying rural settle- ments of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hamp- shire, that conditions were most favorable to the develop- ment of the colonial " common school." These pioneer settlers were a homogeneous people from the Puritan counties of England. They had no paternal government and no chartered companies to care for them ; but they were well fitted to look out for themselves. The earnest- ness of their religious convictions held them up to high standards. They had no bitter contentions arising from differences in race, language, or religion ; consequently, it was possible for them to act together in establishing town government and common schools. Like the Pil- grims, they were determined that their children should be able to read the Bible, the catechism, and the laws. Driven by the " land hunger " characteristic of English pioneers, small groups of settlers pushed out into the forest wilderness of New England, and, in the face of Indians, secured home-farms, erected meeting-houses, and built schoolhouses. Presently the people, assembled in town meeting, elected a teacher, and started a school, sup- ported in part from a scanty town treasury and in part eked out by voluntary subscriptions or tuition fees. The children were instructed in reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, and good manners. The school was open to boys and girls on equal terms. The co-education of the sexes was not a theory ; it was a condition of necessity. Pupils entered school at five years of age, and were allowed to attend up to the age of twenty-one. In these rural schools the main purpose was to teach the English Ian- l6 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS guage, not the Latin. Rude and primitive schools they were, as befitted the pioneer conditions of a people fight- ing for survival among Indians, and wringing a scanty- subsistence from a stubborn soil under a harsh sky. These schools have an accurately recorded history writ- ten in town records of civil government. They were organized directly by the common people for the free pub- lic education of all children, without distinction of class, or caste, or sex. Of free charity schools for teaching the children of the poor, the history of the world is full. Of schools established for the higher classes by centralized paternal governments, there are numerous examples. But these rural schools were not copies of European schools. They were planned neither by educational theorists nor by speculative metaphysicians. Plato had taught, cen- turies ago, that in a commonwealth the working classes had no need of any education whatever. These Puritan farmers and mechanics had never read Plato in the origi- nal Greek ; but they had faith in God and themselves, and guided by hard common-sense, they saw to it that their children learned to read and write their mother tongue, and to cipher. Their schools were rightly named *' com- mon schools," because they brought together all the chil- dren of each little democratic community, on one common level of equal legal rights to an elementary education in the English language. Many favorable conditions were combined to lead up to the organization of these schools. For defense against attacks of Indians the early settlers were grouped in vil- lacres surrounded bv stockades. There was no established Church of England to monopolize education. Each little Congregationalist church was an independent organization, governed by its own members. For more than a century i COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 7 the ministers as well as the teachers in rural towns were elected in town meeting. Consequently the ministers were strong in their support of free schools. " These were the first lawgivers," said James Russell Lowell, "who saw clearly and enforced practically, the simple, moral, and political truth, that knowledge was not an alms to be dependent on the chance charity of private men, or the precarious pittance of a trust-fund, but a sacred debt which the commonwealth owed to every one of her chil- dren. The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State ; the first row of trammels and pothooks which the little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted and blubbered across their copy-books, was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence." " The arts, sciences, and literature of England," said Daniel Webster, " came over with these settlers. That great portion of the common law which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of men, came over also. The jury came ; the habeas corptis came ; the testamentary power came ; and the law of inheritance and descent came also. But the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the church, as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to be framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things." It may be added to the preceding statements that the Pilgrims at Plymouth as soon as they organized civil government adopted the written ballot and the law which prevailed in Holland, but not in England, requiring a public record of land titles, deeds, and mortgages, as a protection against fraud, and for facilitating the transaction of business. The same rule was followed a little later by the Puritans of the Bay Colony. The Dutch settlers in New Netherlands adopted similar laws, which they brought with them from the republic of Holland. The published records and special histories of several hundred towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Con- necticut, and Maine are now to be found in the state, city, and town libraries of New England. To the student of AM. PUB. SCH. 2. l8 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS educational history they furnish an account of the begin- nings of the free American rural common school, — the most democratic institution known on the face of the earth, — a school under the control of the civil power, free to boys and girls alike, supported by a direct property tax voted by the people assembled in town meeting. The limits of this chapter will not admit of many extracts from original town records in proof of the preceding statements, but a few quotations will make luminous the origin of common schools. HISTORICAL RECORDS OF COMMON SCHOOLS. Town of Hampton (N. H.). — " On the 2 of the 2 mo., 1649. The select- men of this Towne of Hampton have agreed with John Legat for this present yeare insueing — To teach and instruct all the children of or be- longing to our Towne both fnayle a7idfeniaile (wch are capiable of learn- ing) to write and read and cast accountes (if it be desired) as dilegently and as carefully as he is able to teach and instruct them ; And so dile- gently to follow the said imploymentt at all such time and times this yeare insueing, as the wether shall be fitting for the youth to com together to one place to be instructed ; And also to teach and instruct them once in a week, or more, in some Arthodox catechise provided for them by their parents or masters. — And in consideration hereof we have agreed to pay or cause to be payd unto the said John Legat the som of Twenty pounds, in corne and cattle and butter att price current, as payments are made of such goods in this Towne, and this to be payd by us quarterly, paying ^5 every quarter of the yeare after he has begun to keep school.^ " This record was made ten years after the settlement of the town (1639). In 1670 the town record runs as fol- lows : " That the Schoolemaster's Rate for this year shall bee Raised by Estates of the Inhabitants as other Towne Rates are." Hampton Academy was incorporated in 18 10. Town of Plymouth (Mass.). — 1673. Ordered in town meeting " that the charge of the free scools which is three and thirty pounds a year shall be defrayed out of the profits arising by the fishing at the Cape." 1 Dow's " History of Hampton " (1893), Vol. I. COLONIAL SCHOOLS lo Town of Sanbornton (N. H.). — This town, settled in 1764, voted in 1774 " to hire a school teacher part of this year and raise $30 for that purpose." Capt. Eben San- born, the teacher, was paid $5.00 a month. He taught in a barn, and many of his pupils used birch bark as writing paper. Town of Pittsfield (N. H.).— This town was settled in 1768, largely by emigrants from the* town of Hampton. The following extracts from the manuscript records show that the custom of electing the teacher in town meeting had been kept up in parts of New England for more than a century. This record also illustrates the manner of elect- ing ministers, which was common in parts of New England for more than a century. It further shows the natural development of the academy. "1782. — Voted. To hire Jonathan Brown to teach a school for six months at nine dollars a month." " Voted. To build a meeting-house of the same bigness of Hamp- ton Falls meeting-house, except the posts to be one foot shorter." " Voted. To raise some money this year for preaching, to be paid in corn, grain, and other produce." 1789. — Voted, Mr. Christopher Paige a salary of sixty-six pounds yearly, the one-third part in cash, and one-third part in corn at three shillings per bushel, and a third part in good beef at twenty shillings per hundred, during his ministry in said town."i Forty years after the preceding record the farmers of this small town of less than a thousand inhabitants con- tributed labor, lumber, and money ; erected a building ; and established an undenominational academy. This institution had no endowments, no apparatus, and no library. The successive preceptors of the school were young graduates of Dartmouth College, who were study- ^ Original unpublished records of the town of Pittsfield. 20 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ing law, medicine, or theology. But this almost unknown academy, typical of many others, made a good record. It sent many students to college. Of its farmer-boy students, one became a United States senator from his native state ; another a judge of the Supreme Court ; a third, a judge in the Supreme Court of Minnesota. A large number studied law, many became teachers, and still more became successful business men in the various pursuits of life. More than half of the young men moved West, and a few reached California. Half a century after its foun- dation the academy was transformed into a town high school. Dame Schools, — These schools, both in England and New England were small private schools set up by women, generally in their own homes, for teaching young children to read in the primer or catechism. In most of the grammar-school towns the dame schools, for a century or more, fitted the boys for admission to the Latin schools, that is to say, taught them *' to read the English language by spelling the same." It was in such schools , that the little girls learned to read ; but girls were not allowed in the sacred precincts of the grammar school until about the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the course of time, some of the towns began to aid these private dame schools by small subsidies as an encourage- ment to continue their good work. Next, one town after another began to employ teachers at a regular salary. This innovation was the beginning of the modern primary school. The town of Woburn (1641) agreed to pay Mrs. Walker ten shillings for the first year. In 1673 the town records show that two " dame teachers " were paid a total sum of ten shillings, or five shillings each, for the year, But COLONIAL SCHOOLS 21 these '* dame teachers " undoubtedly collected the con- ventional tuition-fee for supplementary support. Town of Springfield (Mass.) — 1682. "The Selectmen agreed with Goodwife Mirick, to encourage her in the good work of training up of children and teaching children to read, that she should have 3d. a week for every child that she takes to perform this good work for." Town of Hadley (Mass.). — 1749, March 13. It was voted that the committee should " hire three School Dames for three or four months in the Summer season to learn children to read." In 1752 it was voted that " 30 pounds be improved to hire a scool master all the fall of the year ; and that the other 30 pounds be improved to hire Scoole Dames in the Summer." Town of Salem (Mass.). — " 1764, May 16. Order for ^Tio to pay for learning the poorest children to read at women's schools." " 1771, Feb. 12. Widow Abigail Fowler, a noted 'school dame' finished her earthly labors. She was in her 68th vear, and began to teach children before she was 18, and continued so to do till her de- cease, with the exception of a few years after she was married." Education of Girls. — The records of the town of Hamp- ton (N. H.), 1649, show that the first school established there was open to ^' all the children of or belonging to our town, botJi male and female^ In most of the rural town or district schools established after that date in New Hampshire and the small rural districts of Massachusetts the schools were open to both girls and boys. The grammar-school towns lagged far behind the rural dis- tricts in providing for the education of girls, seeming to have been content with English precedents. Town of Salem (Mass.). — 1812, June i r. The historian of this town quotes from the records of this date as follows : " In the four public schools for English there are 465 boys and 295 girls. The latter at- tended, as usual, an hour at noon, and another in the afternoon. The Grammar school (Latin) had 40 pupils." To the credit of this town it may be here stated that 1 3 years later when it had become an incor- porated city, two high schools were opened, one for boys and another 22 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS for girls. " At this time." says the historian, " the tuition of females for an hour each day during a part of the year at the masters' schools seems to have been relinquished." COLOxNIAL SCHOOL LAWS IN NEW ENGLAND. Turning to legislative records, we find that in 1642 the General Court of Massachusetts enacted that the selectmen of every town '' should have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors to see that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their fami- lies as not to endeavor to teach by themselves or others, their children and apprentices so much learning as to en- able them to read perfectly the English tongue, under a penalty of 20s for each neglect therein." The Connecti- cut code of 1650 contained a similar provision. The General Court of the Plymouth Colony (1658) proposed '* unto the several Townshipes of this Jurisdic- tion, as a thing they ought to take into their serious con- sideration, that some course may be taken that in every Towne there may be a schoolmaster sett up to traine up children to reading and writing." ' In 1677, the General Court of the Plymouth Colony made the fol- lowing order : " That in whatsoever Townshipe in this Government, consisting of 50 families or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a Gramer Scoole, such townshippe shall allow at least twelve pounds in currant merchantable pay, to be raised by rate on all the inhabitants of such towne, and those that have the more immede- ate benefit thereof by their children's going to school, with what others may voluntarily give to promote so good a work and general, shall make up the residue Necessarie to maintaine the same ; and that the proffits of the Cape ffishing heretofore ordered to maintain a Gramer Scoole in the colonie be distributed to such towns as have Gramer Scooles, for the maintainance thereof," etc. COLONIAL SCHOOLS 23 The Massachusetts Colony law of 1647 required every town of fifty families or upwards to appoint a teacher to instruct children in reading and writing ; and every town of one hundred families '' to set up a grammar school, the expense to be borne by the town or by the parents as the town may determine." This was only a legal recommenda- tion, as no penalty was attached for not carrying it into effect. The Connecticut Colony law passed a few years later (1650) enacted that every town having seventy householders, or upwards, should maintain a school for eleven months each year, and that a grammar school should be set up in every head or county town. For the support of such schools a tax of forty shillings '* upon every thousand pounds in the lists of the respective towns " was levied and collected by colonial law. The New Haven Code (1656) ordered "That all Parents and Mas- ters doe duly endeavor, either by their own ability and labour, or by improving such Schoolmaster, or other helps and means, as the Plan- tation doth afford, or the family may conveniently provide, that all their Children and Apprentices, as they grow capable, may, through God's blessing, attain at least so much, as to be able to read the Scriptures and other good and profitable printed Books in the English tongue, being their native language, and in some competent measure, to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to Salvation." COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK. The Dutch West India Company established trading posts on Manhattan Island and at various other points in the province of New Netherlands, a few years before the English made a lodgment in New England. The church and the school were established together. These sturdy republicans brought with them some of the best of the 24 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS civil institutions of Holland ; such as the written ballot, public records of land titles and legal documents, and elementary schools for the education of the children of the common people. In 1633 Adam Roelandsen was sent over from the mother country to take charge of the school in the town of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. This first public school with an established record was called " The School of the Dutch Reformed Protes- tant Church." It is still in existence in New York city, and is claimed to be the oldest school in the United States. Dutch Colonial Schools. — Schools were opened at Al- bany (1650); Flatbush (1659); Brooklyn (1661). In the town of New Amsterdam a Latin grammar school, or classical school, was established in 1659 and was supported partly by tuition fees and partly by taxation. These early schools seem to have been chiefly managed b}^ the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church ; but as the town settlements grew stronger the schools were maintained, in part, or entirely, by public moneys. The tendency was in the same general direction as in the rural settlements in New England, that is, towards providing elementary instruction for the many rather than a training in Latin for the few. Instruction was given in reading and writ- ing the Dutch language, in arithmetic, in the catechism of the Dutch Church, and in the Bible. Those early set- tlers, like the Pilgrims and Puritans, highly prized the right to read the Bible and to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. They held in living remem- brance the long and bloody war which their ancestors had waged against Spain, and in defense of civil and religious liberty. These colonists from Holland brought with them advanced, ideas about elementary schools for the educa- tion of the common people. At this time the republic of COLONIAL SCHOOLS 25 Holland was the leading nation of Europe in commerce, industries, civil liberty, and the general education of its people.^ English Schools. — But this province was seized by Eng- land in 1664, and the Dutch schools were arrested in devel- opment. Under English rule the royal governors were unfriendly to schools that were not under the protecting care of the English Church. They vetoed several attempts to establish common schools managed directly by the people. They established several Latin grammar schools, and founded (1754) King's College, now Columbia Uni- versity. One governor, in a letter to the home govern- ment, urged a charter for King's College in the town of New York, '' not only on account of religion, but of good policy, to prevent the groivtJi of republican principles which already too much prevail in the colonies^ During the reign of King James, the colony was forbidden to have a printing press. Meantime, the strongest of the Dutch colonial schools maintained a lingering existence under teachers selected by the Dutch Reformed Church, a right guaranteed to them under the terms of surrender in 1664. Thus for a long period there were two rival sets of public schools ; one class under the control of the Church of England, the other governed by the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. Both were eventually fused into a composite system of free common schools. For a century, however, "" The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," under the auspices of the Church of England, looked after the establishment of parish schools, which were mainly supported by tuition fees. From 1704 to 1 See Motley's " Dutch Republic," also Campbell's " The Puritan in Holland, England, and America," 26 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 1776 this society established twenty-one schools. These schools provided for the education of a part of the chil- dren, but not for all. They were good in their way, and were the natural development of civil and political con- ditions. The common-school record of New York, chiefly made up after the adoption of the Constitution, will again be considered in a succeeding chapter. '* We must be con- tent for the present," says Andrew S. Draper, "■ with the statement, which is abundantly supported by the facts, that under the mistaken policy of the English rule, the schools languished, and during the progress of the war for independence which raged with great fierceness over our territory, they were nearly or quite obliterated. The fury of war had closed the doors or entirely extinguished the single college, and, practically, all the academies and schools." But the Dutch and the English schools together trained up several generations into a patriotic people. During the Revolutionary War New York supplied her full quota of troops and answered all requisitions of the Continental Congress for money. The descendants of the Dutch set- tlers proved themselves worthy of their ancestors in Hol- land who had defied the power of Spain, and established a Dutch republic. English Puritans and Dutch Puritans stood together for independence. COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN PENNSYLVANIA. William Penn sent the first colony of English Quakers to Philadelphia half a century after the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. The desire for religious liberty led to the foundation of Pennsylvania as well as to that of New COLONIAL SCHOOLS 2/ England. The tolerant government of the province soon attracted great numbers of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, German Lutherans, Swedish Lutherans, Dutch Mennon- ites, Moravians, English Episcopalians, and Catholics. In 1685 only about half the inhabitants were of English descent. The Scotch-Irish, driven from the north of Ireland by the decay of the linen industry, came in great numbers, and the German immigration from the Palati- nate was large. The population of the province rose from 20,000 in 1701 to 250,000 in 1749. It has been estimated that at the beginning of the Revolution about one third of the population of Pennsylvania was of Scotch- Irish stock. ^ Parish Schools. — It was impossible for these divergent peoples to act together in organizing public schools. Consequently education was provided for by typical parish and " society " schools under the control of zealous religious sects. These sectarian schools were supported by tuition fees, though the children of the poor were some- times admitted as free charity or pauper pupils. They educated a part of the children, but not all. It was not possible at that time for the people to conceive of schools disconnected from church or society control. But the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian schools and the German schools educated their children to some purpose ; for this fighting stock contributed a majority of the Pennsylvania quota of troops during the Revolution. In Pennsylvania one third of the population was made up of Quakers who had conscientious scruples against bearing arms. The fight- ing men of this state came chiefly from the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. ' " The Puritan in Holland, England, and America," by Douglas Campbell (1892). 2 8 J f IS TORY OF AMICRICAX PrilLIC SCHOOLS The Provincial Council in 1683, on tlic i6thof October established a private school by the following enactment : ^ " The Governor and Provincial Council having taken into their serious consideration the great necessity there is of a School Master for ye instruction & Sober Education of youth in the towne of Phila- delphia, sent for Enoch Flower, an inhabitant of the said towne who for twenty years past hath been exercised in that care and employment in England, to whom having communicated their minds, he embraced it upon the following terms : To learn to read English, 4s by the Quarter, to learn to read & write and cast accounts, 8s by the Quarter ; for boarding a scholar, that is to say, diet, washing, lodging, and school- ing, ten pounds for one whole year." Friends' Public School. — A grammar school was char- tered by the Council in 1689 *' at the request, costs, and charges of the people called Quakers." This school is stil) in existence as the " Friends' Public School." The petitioners stipulated to instruct the rich at reasonable rates, the poor to be " schooled for nothing." *' With a few legislative resolutions," says Dr. J. P. Wickersham in his " History of Education in Pennsylvania," *' none of which were in the direction of the common school idea, the historian of this colony may dismiss the considera- tion of education for well nigh a hundred years." Benjamin Franklin, remembering his three years' course in a Boston grammar school, made a resolute endeavor to educate popular opinion up to the point of establishing free common schools, but he failed as Jefferson afterwards failed in Virginia. He succeeded, however, in securing a chartered academy in Philadelphia (1755), with the three departments of charity school, academy, and col- lege. This triple school eventually was developed into 1 Quoted from Dr. Blackmar's " Bulletin of Information," Bureau of Education, 1890. COLONIAL SCHOOLS 29 the University of Pennsylvania, and Franklin's school itself was a modified form of Penn's grammar school of 1697. It was not until after the adoption of the Consti- tution that any real headway was made in establishing public schools, and even then progress was slow. COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA. The English settlers in Virginia, and their descendants for more than a century and a half after the settlement of Jamestown (1607), were content with private tutors and parish schools established by the Church of England, supplemented by a. few grammar schools, academies, seminaries, and the College of William and Mary. All of these schools were supported chiefly by tuition fees. They taught the children whose parents could afford to pay for an education, and left large numbers in the rural districts with little or no schooling. In Virginia the system of land tenure, the absence of town government, a scattered rural population, the parish schools of the Church of England, and the institution of slavery, — all stood in the way of public schools for nearly two centuries. In early colonial times (1671) Governor Berkeley placed himself on record as a bluff old English Tory by declaring : " I thank God there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years." Vir- ginia was filled up by a homogeneous people from Eng- land, strong in their attachment to the Established Church. They clung to the civil institutions of England with extreme tenacity until long after the Revolution. George Washington was taught to read and write and cipher in a parish school. He was taught surveying by a private tutor. He was trained to arms in the French and 30 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Indian War, and was the one man in all the colonies best fitted to command the Continental Army, and to organize civil government as first president of the United States. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson retired from the Continental Congress and became a member of the legislature of Virginia. By his efforts the laws of entail, primogeniture, and the union of Church and State were removed from the statute books ; but the hostility of the ecclesiastical and landed interests proved an impassable barrier to his earnest efforts in behalf of a system of public schools. The '' old field schools," supported by tuition fees, were considered to be sufficient for the common people. But the work of the early educational institutions of the Old Dominion must not be underrated. They gave to the new republic great statesmen like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Patrick Henry, and sent into the Continental Army a body of patriotic soldiers worthy of their great commander-in-chief. SLOW COLONIAL PROGRESS. During the first century of settlement the colonists were mainly engaged in fighting the Indians, subduing the wilderness, and organizing civil government. In the second century there came the deadly contests with the French and Indians, soon after to be followed by the long and desperate struggle for independence. During much of this period the people guarded their homes, their churches and their schools with musket always at hand. Without compunc- tion they exterminated Indians, for otherwise they them- selves would have vanished from off the earth. Taxation was heavy ; the people were poor ; and educational prog- ress was of necessity slow and irregular. But it was COLONIAL SCHOOLS 31 during this very period of neglect by the mother country and misrule by royal governors, that in New England the common schools took root and grew strong. Almost from the beginning these schools were kept under direct control of town officers, or under the decision of a general town meeting, or the democratic vote of a school-district meeting. If in the beginning the schools were enveloped in an atmosphere more or less ecclesiastical, it should be remembered that deep religious convictions constituted the strength of Puritan character. If at first the right of voting was limited exclusively to church members, the elective franchise was soon extended to all town free- holders. If some of the schools at first were partly sup- ported by tuition fees, they soon became free, and at all times received pupils without distinction of class or caste, and, in rural districts, without distinction of sex. The fact that these primitive common schools survived in the struggle with private schools and denominational institu- tions proves their adaptation to the needs of a free people. The Colonial Crisis. — For more than a century these schools gave to the great mass of the common people a fair elementary education. Then there came the great colonial crisis which summoned men to arms against the oppression of the mother country. The minute-men who rushed into battle at Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker Hill, had been trained to arms in the French and Indian War, and drilled into intelligent patriots in the common schools. They knew what they were fighting for. These '* embattled farmers " stood by Washington in the siege of Boston, and drove out the British troops and a thousand colonial *' tories," who sailed away to Halifax on board the British fleet. They followed their great commander to New York, and Trenton, and Valley 32 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Forge. They enlisted for the war in the Continental Army, and when, after the final triumph at Yorktown, that army was disbanded, they constituted, according to the records of the war department, a majority of the rank and file of the veterans of the war. No wonder the great Virginian exclaimed : " God bless the New England troops! " But the New England troops did not stand alone in the long battle for independence. The Continental Con- gress, on the 14th of June, 1775, made the beginning of a regular army by enacting " that six companies of expert riflemen be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia. These were the first troops levied by direct act of Congress. It was a call to frontiersmen of the Alleghanies who were experts in the use of the famous backwoods rifle, and were trained in Indian warfare. The hardy pioneers of western Pennsyl- vania had met in a public meeting at Hanover, June 4, 1774, and passed defiant resolutions, the last of which read as follows : " 4th. That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to Heaven and our rifles." '* On the 1 8th of July, 1775, the first company of rifle- men, Nagel's Berks County ' Dutchmen', arrived at Cambridge, and within less than sixty days from the date of the resolution of Congress, 1430 backwoodsmen, instead of the 810 required, had been raised, equipped by themselves, and had joined the army before Boston, after marching from four to seven hundred miles over difficult roads — all without a farthing being advanced by the Con- tinental treasury." ^ 1 '• The Birth of the American Army," by Horace Kephart, Harper's Maj^azine, May, 1899. COLONIAL SCHOOLS 33 The riflemen of Western Virginia and Maryland re- sponded to the call with equal promptness. Daniel Morgan, just returned from an Indian war, led the Vir- ginians. " About two-thirds of the riflemen were of Scotch-Irish descent," says Kephart, " and nearly all of the remainder were ' Pennsylvania Dutchmen ' — that is to say, of Swiss or Palatine origin. Many of the Marylanders and Virginians were immigrants from western Pennsyl- vania. The famous rifle corps which Morgan afterwards formed from marksmen picked from the whole army is usually referred to as ' Mor- gan's Virginians,' but, as a matter of fact, two thirds of them were Pennsylvanians. including a considerable number of Penns)4vania Germans. . . . When Washington, one day riding along his lines, saw the fringed hunting-shirts of the Virginians approaching, the reserve of his naturally undemonstrative nature broke down. At the sight, he stopped : the riflemen drew^ nearer, and the commander, stepping in front, made the military salute, exclaiming, ' General, from the right bank of the Potomac ! ' Washington dismounted, came to meet the battalion, and going down the line with both arms extended shook hands with the riflemen one by one, tears rolling down his cheeks as he did so." These hardy sharpshooters did effective service in the siege of Boston. They enlisted in the Continental Army and fouo-ht during the war or fell on the field of battle. AM. PUB. SCH. X CHAPTER II EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS The seven years' war for independence was a trying time for the people of the new repubHc or confederation. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were successively occupied by British armies. Commerce was interrupted or suspended, taxation was high, and " hard times " every- where prevailed. From the close of the Revolutionary War to the ratification of the Constitution and the inaug- uration of Washington, there was also a seven years' period of political unrest, of scarcity of coin and superabundance of depreciated paper money, of high taxation, of general poverty and dissatisfaction. A general census taken in 1790. one year after the final ratification of the Constitution by nine states, showed the population of the United States to be 3,929,000. At this time Virginia had 747,000 inhabitants, or about one-fifth of the entire population of the whole country. Massachusetts, including the Province of Maine, had, in round num- bers, a population of 475,000 ; Pennsylvania, 434,000 ; North Carolina, 394,000 ; New York, 340,000 ; Maryland, 320,000 ; South Carolina, 240,000; Connecticut, 238.000; New Jersey, 184,000; New Hamp- shire,, 142,000; Rhode Island, 69,000; Georgia, 82,000; Delaware, 59,000; Kentucky (soon after admitted) 74,000 ; and Vermont, 85,000, The New England States together had a population of a little more than one million ; the four Middle States had a little less than a million ; and the Southern States footed up 1,657,000 inhabitants, including negro slaves as *' per- sons." In 1786, four years before this first general census, the 34 EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 35 population of the three great commercial cities of the country ranked as follows : Philadelphia, 32,205 ; New York, 24,500 ; Boston, 14,640. At the beginning of the Revolution the population of the colonies was estimated at 2,750,000; at the close (1783) 3,250,000. The preceding statistics will show, in part, the general conditions under which the several states began to turn their attention to the organization of public schools. At this time there were in this country no steamboats, no railroads, and no canals. Roads were bad, and land trans- portation was slow and costly. A few small cotton mills and woolen mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island had just been set up with rough imitations of the spinning and weaving machinery used in England. Arkwright's great invention of the spinning-jenny had been jealously guarded by the British government, and it was not until eighteen years afterwards that the first rough drawings were se- cured in America. At length, William Somers, of Balti- more, went to England and brought back models and de- scriptions of machines for carding and spinning wool. He applied to the legislature of Massachusetts for aid in set- ting up his models, and was granted $100 for that purpose. Application was also made in behalf of two Scotchmen by the name of Barr, who had some knowledge of the spin- ning-jenny. '* The General Court voted to the Barrs," says John Bach McMaster, '' six tickets in a State Land Lottery, and out of the money they drew, the first stock- card and spinning-jenny in the United States was made. It was not, however, till Washington had been one year president that Samuel Slater put up, in the workshops of Almy & Brown, the first series of machines worthy to be called copies of the famous inventions of Arkwright." 1 McMaster's " History of the Peo})le of the United States." 36 HIS TOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Thus were made the beginnings of cotton factories and woolen mills, that soon brought about a radical change in the industrial conditions of New England, and led up to the rapid growth of cities, towns, and villages, and an era of unexampled financial and commercial prosperity. These new industrial conditions, in turn, soon led to a corresponding development of common schools. About this time, also, there came the invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney, of Connecticut (1792), which greatly stimulated the production of cotton, and laid the founda- tion of the wealth, power, and prosperity of the cotton- growing states of the South. In 1786, the Continental Congress formally adopted a decimal system of currency, but the people were reluctant to change their local cus- toms and usages in money matters. The act creating the United States Mint was not passed until 1792, and the first regular issue of money was the copper cent of 1793. Meantime all kinds of European coins, bogus coins, and depreciated paper money, were used as a circulating me- dium. The United States Patent Office was established by act of Congress, April 10, 1790, and to Thomas Jef- ferson is due the honor of securing- it. / After the adoption of the Constitution, the inaugura- tion of Washington, and the funding of the national debt by the wise policy of Alexander Hamilton, the Secre- tary of the Treasury, the new nation entered upon an era of great industrial prosperity and rapid expansion of territory. The people had cut loose from the civil gov- ernment of the mother country, and from English educa- tional ideals. Colonial schools began a slow evolution into an American system of public schools adapted to the changed civil conditions under a republican form of gov- ernment. The separation of State from Church was fol- EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 37 lowed by the gradual release of schools from denomina- tional control. Within a decade after the inauguration of Washington, new constitutions were adopted by eight states, in which the right of suffrage was greatly extended, and religious tests were either modified or abolished. The war of 1 812- 15 greatly intensified the American dem- ocratic spirit, especially in the valley of the Mississippi. State Control of Schools. — The new Constitution con- tained no section on public education. Educational con- ditions in the thirteen original states were so divergent that it would have been impossible for the delegates in the Constitutional Convention to agree on any educational provision. At this period the idea of universal education had not entered into the minds of statesmen. Thus the maintenance of public schools was left as a matter of state rights. Of the state constitutions that were framed soon after the Declaration of Independence, only five mentioned education, and only two contained school provisions of any practical value. Thus the establishment and main- tenance of schools were left to enactments by state legis- latures. These enactments, in turn, were at first only general outlines, so that the direct government of the schools was long left, as in colonial times, mainly to the local regulations of city, county, town, or district, — that is, under immediate control of the people. LAND RESERVATIONS FOR SCHOOLS. The Old Northwest. — Virginia (1784) ceded to the general government her shadowy title to wild lands ex- tending westward to the Mississippi, with the exception of the Virginia Military Bounty Lands in the Northwest Territory. Connecticut yielded her claims, with the ex- 38 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ception of the Western Reserve. New York, Pennsyl- vania, Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina, Maryland and Georgia, one by one reluctantly gave up their somewhat indefinite claims to other parts of the western wilderness. It consequently became necessary for Congress to outline a plan for governing this vast extent of territory and for disposing of the public lands. Fortu- nately for common schools and state universities the policy pursued was wise and far-reaching. The ordinance of 1787, entitled ** An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North- west of the River Ohio," passed July 13, by the Con- tinental Congress, established the territory as one dis- trict, but provided for its future subdivision into '* not less than three nor more than five states." It prohibited primogeniture by providing that the estates of deceased persons should '' descend to and be distributed among their children and the descendants of a deceased child in equal parts ; " and secured to the widow of the deceased " her third part of the real estate for life, and one third part of the personal estate." And '' for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, con- stitutions, and governments, which forever hereafter shall be formed in the said territory," it ordained a bill of rights in six articles. Article First declared that no " person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments, in the said territory." Article Second secured the writ of habeas corpus and the right of trial by jury ; and declared that " No law ought ever to be made which should interfere with or affect private contracts or engagements, bona fide, and without fraud, previously formed." Article Third declared that " Religion, morality, and knowledge, be- EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 3^ ing necessan^ to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged." Article Sixth, most important of all for the future of the United States, read as follows : " There shall be neither slavery nor involun- tary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted : Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugi- tive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." Ten days after the passage of this famous ordinance, there was passed a supplementary act relating to the survey and sale of public lands, ivliicJi reserved the \6tk section (640 acres) of each township for the support of common schools, and also set apart two townships (46,080 acres) '' to be given perpetually for the purposes of a seminary of learning [or university], to be applied to the intended object by the legislature of the state." This reservation of two townships in each future state for university purposes was secured, largely, through the ef- forts of Nathan Dane, Rufus King, Rufus Putnam, and Manasseh Cutler. Land System. — The beginning of the present land system of the United States had been made two years before, by act of Congress (May 20, 1785), under which government land was to be surveyed in townships of six miles square, laid off by meridian range lines and parallels of latitude. Each section included 640 acres, and each township 36 sections, or 23,040 acres. This land was to be sold for one dollar an acre, in tracts of not less than one entire section of 640 acres. Section 16 of each town- ship was to be reserved for common-school purposes, which provision was secured by Rufus King, a member of the Congressional committee, at the suggestion of Timothy 40 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Pickering.^ The committee report also contained a res- ervation of one section in each township for the purposes of religion, but this was stricken out by Congress. This reservation of the i6th section for common schools was 6 7 i8 19 30 31 5 8 17 20 29 32 4 9 t 21 28 33 3 10 15 22 27 34 2 II 14 23 26 35 I* 12 ^3 24 25 36 Diagram Showing the Division of a Township. * Section. t School Section. reaflfirmed in the land act of July 23, 1787, and supple- mented by the reservation of two entire townships in each new state to be formed out of the Northwest Territory, for university purposes. The sale of public lands was a vexed question in Congress until May 20, 1800, when a land act was passed on the recommendation of William Henry Harrison, then a delegate from the Northwest Ter- ritory. Among other things, this law provided that pub- lic lands should be sold at two dollars an acre, but only one twentieth was to be paid down at the time of purchase the remainder to be paid in installments running through five years. This act also provided for the opening of four government land offices in the western territory. Half a century later (1848) Congress enacted that in states there- after formed the 36th section, in addition to the i6th sec- tion, should be reserved for common school purposes. 1 See McAlaster's " History of the People of the United States," Vol. III. EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 41 The supplementary act of July 23, 1787, is often re- ferred to as a part of the ordinance of 1787, passed ten days before, on July 13th. It became a precedent for the rule afterwards followed in the organization of new states, though in a modified form after 1889. The passage of this ordinance was hastened, if not ab- solutely secured, by the demands of the disbanded veter- ans of the Continental Army, who had been paid off in certificates of indebtedness worth ten or twelve cents on the dollar. They had returned to their homes poor. In 1786 General Rufus Putnam and General Benjamin Tupper, both veterans of the Revolution, organized an as- sociation under the name of the " Ohio Company" and issued a circular addressed to officers and soldiers of the late army who might be, under the ordinance of Congress, entitled to lands in the Northwest Territory. The pur- pose of the Ohio Company was to raise a fund, not to ex- ceed one million of dollars, in depreciated continental cer- tificates, and with it to purchase and settle a tract of land in the *' Ohio Country." Putnam, Parsons, and Manasseh Cutler were made directors. Brigadier General Rufus Putnam was a graduate of a New England common school who had been successively a blacksmith, a millwright, an engineer, and an able military officer during the Revolu- tion. Dr. Manasseh Cutler started in life as a lawyer, then became a clergyman, an educator, and a shrewd busi- ness and political agent. Parsons and Cutler went on to New York city to make a business proposi|:ion to the Congress there in session. The members of Congress, anxious to sell the public lands, lent a ready ear to the claims of veterans of the war who wished to buy and settle on a part of the public domain. Cutler and Parsons proposed to buy one and a 42 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS half million acres for one million dollars, to be paid for in government certificates at par value. But the conditions exacted were that civil rights should be guaranteed in the territory, and that slavery shotild be proJiibited. The committee, consisting of Carrington and Lee of Virginia, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, Kean of South Carolina, and White of New York, reported a bill which was amended by the sixth article, prohibiting slavery, offered by Nathan Dane, and was passed by Congress, July 13, 1787, with only one dissenting vote, and that vote was from the state of New York. The states that voted in favor of the sixth article were Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. When the land contract was finally concluded with the of^cers of the Treasury, it included the sale of five millions of acres at two thirds of a dollar an acre, of which the Ohio Company took a mil- lion and a half acres, and other land operators secured three and a half millions of acres. ^ As United States certificates of debt were worth at that time only twelve cents on a dollar, the cash price in this great land transac- tion was eight or nine cents an acre. But it proved a good bargain for the United States. After the passage of this Magna Charta of land ordi- nances, the disbanded veterans of the Revolution took up their peaceful line of march into the wilderness of the Northwest Territory. The first band of settlers from New England numbered only forty-seven, not quite half the number of Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth 167 years before. Under the leadership of Rufus Putnam this little company of pioneers started in November, 1 For details of this transaction, see " McMaster's Histor)' of the People of the United States," Vol. I. EARL Y AMERICAN SCHOOLS 43 wintered thirty miles above Pittsburg on the banks of the Youghiogheny River, built a flat boat which they named the ** Mayflower," and early in April, floated down the Monongahela into the Ohio, and landed in the wilderness of the West, as their ancestors had settled the wilderness in the East. Dr. Manasseh Cutler soon despatched a second party of settlers who followed in the wake of Putnam and united with the first expedition in the set- tlement of Marietta in Ohio. The^e pioneers carried town government and the common school into the North- west Territory and founded a " Greater New England " in the heart of the Mississippi Valley. The eastern contin- gent was swelled by veterans of the Revolution from New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. It is estimated that ten thousand emigrants poured into the Ohio region during the year 1788; and in ten years it was fortified by log schoolhouses and made sure forever to free labor. SCHOOLS IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. Ohio became a state in 1802 ; Indiana in 18 16; Illinois in 1818; Michigan in 1837; and Wisconsin in 1848. In these states the school land reservations were not immedi- ately available, but the recognition of public schools by the general government greatly stimulated the educational efforts of pioneer settlers. The money to pay the first teachers at Marietta, in Ohio, was sent on from Massa- chusetts by Dr. Manasseh Cutler. The first state school law in Ohio (1821), was modeled after that of New York. It provided for the subdivision of townships into districts, the appointment of school committee men, and the levy- ing of rate bills. Four years later (1825), the law was re- 44 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS vised, and provision was made for levying a county tax for school purposes. In 1837 a state superintendent of schools was appointed by the legislature. In 1853 ^ ^^^^ was enacted making each township a school district, and creating a township board of education. This board was authorized to establish a high school in each township upon a majority vote of the people, and to levy a tax for its support not to exceed two mills on the dollar. As a result of this town provision, Ohio ranks as one of the foremost states in respect to the number and excellence of high schools. The other states of this territory de- veloped their school systems later in time, but after the manner of Ohio. All had the usual number of private and denominational schools and colleges, but these were soon overshadowed by the rapidly developed common schools and high schools. Here, as in all the other new states of the West and the Pacific Coast, public education proceeded from the common school upward to the high school, and, finally, to the college and the free state uni- versity. The precedents of both Old England and New England were in a measure reversed. Up to this time it had been generally believed that the only possible scheme of education began with the foundation of the college or the university for educating the professional classes, which was afterwards to be extended downward through the Latin grammar school to the parish school, the charity school, or the common school for the mass of the people. ^ SCHOOL LEGISLATION IN NEW ENGLAND. Taking up once more the subject of common schools in New England, we find that the Massachusetts law of 1789 required " every town of one hundred families or upwards to maintain one school six months in the year, or two or EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 45 more schools for terms that should together equal six months." Towns of two hundred families and upwards were also required to maintain a grammar school. This law required instruction in '' orthography, reading, writing, the English language, geography, and decent behavior." It ordained that the masters or mistresses of schools for primary instruction should be approved in respect to character and qualifications. It provided for official examinations of schools by the ministers, the selectmen, or a special school committee. It authorized the selectmen to divide the town into school districts. This law was. soon amended (1800), by empowering the district to levy a tax for building a schoolhouse ; was again amended ( 1 8 1 7), by making the district a corporation, with power to sue and be sued, etc. ; was further amended (1827), by requiring towns having districts to choose for each district a '' prudential committee man," who should have the care of school property and the power to ap- point teachers. The law allowed these committee men to be elected by vote of the electors in special district elec- tions, or to be appointed in the general town meeting. Most of the districts preferred to elect their own com- mittee man, who held office for the '' term of one year." Thus the school district became a political unit, subject only to the general state law. The amendments of 1827 provided that the district schools should be maintained by a compulsory town tax. Notwithstanding some de- fects, this law contained several foundation principles, which were subsequently adopted by the other New Eng- land states, by New York, and by the Western states. In Massachusetts it was disastrous to many of the original town '* Latin grammar schools," but, on the other hand, it led to the foundation of academies. If these new insti- 46 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS tutions fitted fewer boys for college, they recognized the hi^ MODEL FOR SLATE WORK IN ADDITION. 2 (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) 2K %i% |i-50 $x I0.25 •25 3X P'X $1-25 $'A I0.50 •75 MODEL FOR SLATE WORK IN MULTIPLICATION. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) AV2 S% 6^ 6.3 $^% I4.25 4.25 X2 X3 X3 X3 X3 X3 X3 PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 249 DIVISION. (a) (b) (c) (d) Yzoi \ 4^2=? }4 of $ 4.20 $ 4 . 20 -^ 2 = ? Kof f 1-2=:? X of |i6.8o ^16.80 -^ 4 = ? Kof^^ A - 2 =. ? )4 of $ 1 . 00 $ 1 . 00 ^ 2 = ? %oi .6 6-^2 = ? iof I10.25 I10.25 ^ 5 = ? FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. This course, in general, includes addition and subtrac- tion, numbers not to exceed thousands ; multiplication, the product not to exceed five or six places ; division, divisors not to exceed two places. Tables learned and applied in actual measurements ; — square measure — inch, foot, yard ; cubic measure, inch, foot, yard. To this out- line there might be added by the teacher willing to make experiments, the following : addition and subtraction of dollars and cents ; of decimals not exceeding hundredths ; easy business examples involving the multiplication of dollars and cents by multipliers not exceeding ten, etc. If two books are used, as is the case in many schools, teachers should take special pains to correlate the mental or oral arithmetic with the work found in the text-book on written arithmetic. Teachers who may wish to give supplementary work in common and decimal fractions, and dollars and cents, will find Baird's Graded Work in Arithmetic — Fourth Year — a helpful hand book ; also Bailey's Arithmetic and any one of several other modern text-books. 250 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. Whatever may be the arrangement of the school text- book used by pupils, the teacher should modify its ar- rangement so that attention should be concentrated on accuracy in the four rules by means of practical business problems involving comparatively small numbers; on common and decimal fractions, taught inductively as far as practicable ; on the common business tables of weights and measures and their practical application in life. Un- fortunately many of the arithmetics in use contain a great deal of traditional padding, and vast numbers of examples and problems that have little or no relation to the busi- ness life of to-day. An excellent series of inductive ex- ercises in common and decimal fractions will be found in Baird's Parts IV. and V. ; in Bailey's Elementary, and in other modern text books. SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. The chief work in this year, according to the average course, will be common and decimal fractions taken up in formal text-book style, and the practical application of tables to the ordinary business pursuits of life. The ob- jective points are to make pupils accurate, and to enable them to see through reasonable problems and apply prin- ciples for themselves. They should be trained to test and prove their own work. They should also be taught how to make out a bill and reckon it accurately, how to write a promissory note, and how to write a receipt. It is de- sirable, further, that pupils should be taught the elements of percentage, and a business method of reckoning interest on small sums of money for one year and fractional parts of a year. This should be done for the benefit of large PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 251 numbers of pupils that will drop out of school at the end of the year. Omit the greatest common divisor, as a separate topic, and take only so much of the least com- mon multiple as is required in the addition or subtraction of business fractions. Omit reduction and most of the operations formerly required under the head of compound addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Take only the parts that are actually used in ordinary business pursuits and in farm life. Bailey's Comprehensive Arith- metic will be useful to teachers. SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. The main work of this year should be percentage and its applications to the business method of commission and to simple interest. The incidental work should consist of geometrical exercises and measurements. A great deal of the work found under the preceding heads in many text-books may profitably be omitted. The concentration of effort should be to lead pupils, by means of simple in- ductive lessons, to a clear conception of principles. Chil- dren should be made to realize that all operations on business problems should be as accurately performed as if they were actual business transactions. The work in interest should be strictly limited to reckoning interest, omitting altogether the work found in many text-books under the head of " Problems in Interest " ; e. g., to find the tiinej when the principal, interest, and rate are given, etc. Special attention should be given to drill in writing promissory notes, and the making out of bills. Colonel Parker, in his Talks on Pedagog-ics. makes the following trenchant criticism on text-book work in " interest " : " Of all subjects, within a few years, the subject of interest has been made the most mysterious, complex, and most confusing; still, the subject of interest 252 Applied pedagogics in itself is perfectly simple and easy. Bookmakers have crowded their terms of rate per cent, base, etc., upon us ; and when the pupils come to it they suppose that they are coming to a brand-new subject, when the fact is, if the subject of number has been developed, there is nothing essentially new to learn in interest." EIGHTH GRADE OR YEAR. The work should include simple interest ; profit and loss ; commercial and bank discount, omitting " true dis- count," which is not used in common business affairs ; simple proportion and square root. Cube root with ana- lytical explanation should be omitted, except as limited to such simple exercises as may be done by inspection ; e. g., cube root of 27 ; of 1728, etc. Exchange, stocks, and some other topics, still retained in many text-books, really belong to a commercial course. If the grade work is kept within reasonable limits, there will remain time to make a beginning of algebra, or of concrete geometry, or of both together. A thoughtful and practical monograph on Geometry in the Gram- mar School by Professor Hanus, of Harvard University, will be of great value to teachers as a guide in the right direction. A few quotations will show the trend of his suggestions : " In the grammar school the knowledge value of a subject should never be subordinate to the disciplinary value. . . . Grammar school instruction in geom- etry should give preference to those topics which have a practical application in the ordinary affairs of life. In so doing special attention must be given to those propositions which can be established chiefly through observation, empirically ; gradually the pupil must be led to undertake the easier deductive proofs. ... In the presentation of the subject, the best results will be obtained only when the pupil has no text-book which contains the definitions and propositions. When geometry is not taught as it should be, not only shall we fail to achieve the results at which we aim, but we may even produce results the reverse of those desired." This book contains a detailed outline of PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 253 work for the work in geometry for the last three years of the grammar school. BOOKKEEPING IN GRAMMAR GRADES. By state law in some cases, and by city ordinances in others, bookkeeping is made a required study in connec- tion with arithmetic as was '* the casting of accounts " in times past. To a limited extent this is well enough, but there has grown up a tendency to convert the highest grammar grade into a commercial school. This plan is not the part of educational wisdom. Other and more im- portant things ought not to be excluded by attempting to make boys and girls expert accountants. President Eliot emphasizes this matter as follows : " I believe it to be the most useless subject in the entire program, for the reason that the bookkeeping taught is a kind never found in any real business establishment. . . . What a boy or girl can learn at school which will be useful in after-life in keeping books or accounts for any real busi- ness is a good handwriting, and accuracy in adding, subtracting, mul- tiplying, and dividing small numbers. As trades and industries have been differentiated in the modern world, bookkeeping has been differ- entiated also, and it is, of course, impossible to teach in school the infinite diversities of practice."^ RELATIVE VALUE OF ARITHMETIC. During the greater part of this century, arithmetic was made the major study of the common schools, incident- ally to learn how to " reckon," but mainly for the philo- sophical reason that it was supposed to give a better " mental discipline " than any other study. In a majority of the schools of to-day it is allowed more time than any other school study. But there is a general tendency towards accuracy rather than rapidity, quality rather than 1 "Educational Reform" (1898). 254 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS quantity, simplicity rather than complexity, business exer- cises rather than schoolmaster's problems, and clearness of ideas rather than endless drudgery over wearisome exer- cises, problems in compound numbers, complex fractions, compound interest, compound proportion, and cube root. There is no shadow of doubt that this tendency will end in a general recasting of the order of presentation as found in the older school arithmetics, and in a still greater re- duction of the time now devoted to the study which our forefathers made the most important pursuit of school life. In many city courses of study, not only has the time given to arithmetical work been reduced from nine years to seven, but there has also been a great reduction in the quantity of arithmetic. Some of the time-honored topics formerly included in text-books have been eliminated, and others, though still retained in the books, have been dropped in practice. The latest type of the improved modern text-book is found in Baird's Graded Work in Arithmetic (1898), consisting of five small books, ar- ranged in specific '' Parts," one for each grade or year. Bailey's American Elementary Arithmetic for the first five grades is an excellent text-book, as is also the American Comprehensive Arithmetic, which follows it. There are several other new series of text-books, on a similar plan, all in the direction of educational reform. HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT ARITHMETIC. Essentials. — The essential parts of arithmetic which pupils should understand are the four rules, common and decimal fractions, the tables of money, weights and meas- ures with their practical application, percentage, and in- PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 255 terest. A great deal that passes in text-books under the name of arithmetic consists largely of conventional exer- cises, of no practical and of little disciplinary value. Accuracy. — Pupils in the higher grades should be re- quired to state not only ivJiat they do, but why they do it. They should test the truth and accuracy of their pro- cesses by proof, the only test they will have to rely upon in real business transactions. All grades should be trained to special accuracy in addition. One good exer- cise is to dictate a column of units to the class, the amount not to exceed 50 or 100; give ample time for every pupil to add the column upward and then downward ; when every pupil gets the correct answer, the class is trained to accurate work. Analysis. — Do not try to force upon young pupils demonstrations and analyses which are suitable only for older pupils. It is a marked defect in some school arith- metics that they are filled up with explanations and dem- onstrations. The explanations, if given at all, should be given orally by the teacher ; they do not belong to a pupil's book, unless it is assumed that the teacher knows nothing whatever about the subject. Another marked defect, arising from limJted space, is the too sudden tran- sition from very simple questions to complex ones. The teacher should remedy, in some degree, this defect by substituting development exercises. Difficult problems, requiring sustained processes of reasoning, or complicated forms of analytical explanations, if used at all, should be given only to advanced pupils. In fact, what are termed " hard problems " do not come within the province of the common school at all, if, indeed, of any school. Time. — The time devoted to arithmetic should not ex- ceed four hours a week, and in primary grades it may be 256 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS reduced to two hours, or less. Most of the arithmetical work should be done in school. Educational Reform. — Arithmetic when rightly taught is a means of promoting sustained attention ; of render- ing the memory more tenacious by retaining the condi- tions of a question in mind during the solution ; and of cultivating, to some extent, the reasoning powers. To a certain extent, arithmetic is a business necessity. There are many teachers, however, and their number is rapidly increasing, who no longer rank arithmetic as the most important subject in the common-school course of study. These reformers recognize the practical need of knowing how to cipher, but they believe that the " mental disci- pline " acquired by a long-continued study of arithmetic is greatly over-estimated by the majority of school boards and school teachers. They insist that arithmetic should no longer be made the major study in school as it was in the days of our forefathers. They demand that a part of the time now given to this study should be devoted to better things. Other Reforms. — This cutting down of time given to arithmetic is only one of several reforms now pressing upon us. The plain truth is that the grammar grades, including the last four years of the elementary school course, seem at present to form the most inflexible and non-progressive part of the entire public system, so far as the course of study is concerned. A flexible or an elect- ive course exists in all state universities and technical colleges and in many of the higher institutions outside of the public school system. The high schools have in gen- eral at least two courses, a classical course and an English course, and some of them have a broader course of elect- ives. The work in primary grades has been brought into PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 257 harmony with advanced methods and with modern psy- chological principles. But the grammar school stands alone as a monument of the past. In a few enlightened educational centers some slight modifications have been made, and that is about all. One great barrier standing in the way of possible reform is the crowding of from 45 to 55 pupils into one room to be taught by one teacher. Here is what President EHot says in his paper on the Grammar School of the Future, and every word of it is true : " It is obvious that the young woman with fifty or sixty pupils before her is attempting what no mortal can perform. ... I suppose it is practi- cable for one young woman to hear the lessons out of one book of all the fifty children before her during the hours of the grammar school session. . . . But the new teaching is of quite a different character. To double the number of teachers would not be too much ; for twenty-five or thirty pupils are enough for one teacher to grapple with. The individual requires teaching in these days, and no teaching is good which does not pay attention to the individual. We are coming to accept the doctrine that no teaching is good which does not awaken interest in the pupil. . . , But the American grammar school of the future will make that the rule which is now the excep- tion — every child without special favor to get at the right subject at the right age and to pursue it as fast as he is able to travel." Need of Some Common Standard. — All teachers are agreed that practical arithmetic should be taught in the elementary schools to the extent required by the demands of modern life. The unsettled point in question is the extent to which it shall be carried as a means of mental discipline. This point cannot be decided by discussion. It must be determined by careful examination and experi- ment carried on in a spirit of scientific investigation. It cannot be said, at present, that there is any fixed standard of attainment which is generally agreed upon by teachers, by school superintendents, or by other school officials. However, the reform is well under way, and the methods AM. PUB. SCH. 17 258 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS of old-time schoolmasters together with the ** sums " and ** rules " of old-time text-books will become more and more uncouth, and finally disappear altogether. It certainly is educational barbarism to require pupils in rural schools or in city grammar schools to cram a course in arithmetic far in excess of the standard for admission into colleges and universities. CHAPTER VIII PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING ELEMENTARY HISTORY The value of history as a school study depends on the manner in which it is taught, and on what the term " history " is made to include. Not many years ago> when learning history meant the memorizing and reciting of the pages of a text-book, it is not to be wondered at that pupils found the subject uninteresting, and that teachers regarded history as of little educational value. But history is now made to include stories, tradition, myths, biography, and poetry in addition to formal text-book study. Instruction begins with stories and oral lessons, and is made an im- portant part of regular grade work throughout the whole course. The Herbartians present history as a means of promoting patriotism, of fitting for intelligent citizenship, and above all, of moral training; in other words, as the chief means of forming character. Oral Lessons in History. — Whatever instruction in history is given in the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades must, of necessity, be mainly by oral lessons. Perhaps the majority of teachers are unaccustomed to giving such lessons. This, however, is no reason why they should not fit themselves for the work by thoughtful practice. The training departments of state and city normal schools are now sending out annually large num- bers of graduates well trained in this line of work, and many untrained teachers have the opportunity of visiting 259 26o APPLIED PEDAGOGICS their classes and learning their methods by actual obser- vation. The school journals are full of lessons and sug- gestions in this direction. Moreover, there are several books recently published which outline in detail the history work that has been done by special teachers in the train- ing classes connected with large normal schools. One of these is the Special Method in History and Literature by Charles A. McMurry, a book that is replete with com- mon sense, and is imbued with a spirit of enthusiasm that can hardly fail to convince the most doubtful teacher of the value of oral lessons and the possibility of learning how to give them. Moreover, to meet the needs of the new method of history teaching, there have been published within the last few years a large number of history stories for young children in the lower grades. Most of these inexpensive little books have been written by teachers experienced in teaching primary grades in public schools, and familiar with the wants and needs of children. These history sketches are fully in accord with the spirit of modern educational thought. They are psychological in method and interesting in style and illustration. Teachers can safely study them as models for their own oral lessons, or make use of them as supplementary reading matter in school. The following outlines are suggestive only of begin- nings, but their meagerness and simplicity can be supple- mented by reference to the elaborate courses for the train- ing classes connected with normal schools. SECOND AND THIRD GRADES OR YEARS. It may be well for a teacher inexperienced in giving PRIN/CPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 26 1 oral lessons to begin with a series of short talks in familiar homelike language about Columbus and his discovery of America; about Washington, his boyhood, his life as a surveyor, and his early experience in Indian warfare ; and about Abraham Lincoln, as a study of the poverty and hardships of pioneer life in the valley of the Mississippi. '' The oral treatment of such stories," says McMurry, " when the personal interest, energy, and skill of the teacher give the facts and scenes an almost real and tangible form — this oral treatment is the thing and the only thing to give a child the best start in historical study." As an aid in this direction, teachers will do well to secure such inexpensive leaflets of biography as are found in The Young Folks' Library, consisting of short sketches of Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln ; or in those in the Werner Biographical Booklets, such as the stories of Washington, Lincoln, Clay, Franklin, and Webster, written by Dr. James Baldwin. Teachers who think they cannot learn to tell such stories as these can at least make them lifelike by reading them to their pupils. My own faith in the awakening- power of oral lessons is made strong from my personal experience as a boy, as well as by my later experi- ence as a teacher. Mv own interest in history began, when I was six or seven years old, with stories about the Revolutionary War told by my grandfather around the fireside on winter evenings, I well remember my boyish admiration for him as he told me how he ran av/ay from home when he was only sixteen, to enlist in the Revolutionary Army. And right there, over the fireplace, was the old flint-lock gun that he brought back from the war. I also heard many stories of famous Indian fights, handed down by tradition, for my ancestors were New England pioneers. My oral lessons were learned outside of school, but in the true psychological method. When a little older, my interest in history was intensified by a book of Stories About Indians, which my father gave me. That book I read and re-read until I knew most of the stories by heart. This 262 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS method, also, was psychologically correct, but it was not then the school method. So lively was the interest thus excited that I asked the teacher to let me join a class of older boys who were studying- history of the United States. It was the recollection of my unsatis- fied longing at this time for more books to read, which led me, a quarter of a century afterwards, when State Superintendent of Public Instruction in California, to secure by the most strenuous efforts, after repeated failures, a state law which reserves a small percentage of the school moneys apportioned to each school district to be expended by the trustees and teacher in buying library books. Into these school libraries there are now going, annually, thousands of volumes of history stories, nature stories, and good literature for pupils and also books of reference for the use of teachers. FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. After giving an oral lesson, question the children on the succeeding day to find out how much they remember about it. It may be well in this grade to let pupils begin to make notes of a very few important points. In country schools taught by only one teacher, when there are only two or three pupils in a grade, it will be advisable to put several grades together. It will be well, also, when the teacher is crowded for time, to let pupils take home some suitable history stories from the school library, if the school is provided with a library. In graded city schools, which are now quite generally provided with sets of his- tory stories for supplementary reading, such books can be read in school to supplement talks by the teacher. TOPICS FOR ORAL LESSONS. Stories of the settlement at Plymouth by the Pilgrims, and at Boston by the Puritans. Stories of the settlement of Virginia at Jamestown. Stories of the settlement of Pennsylvania. PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 263 Stories about the settlement of the pupils' own state, city, or town. Connect history with geography by locating on the map the places named in history lessons. BOOKS FOR THE TEACHER'S DESK OR THE SCHOOL LIBRARY. Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans. Brookes' Stories of the Old Bay State. Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. Clarke's Story of Csesar. Mara Pratt's American History Stories, Vol. I. Guerber's Story of the Greeks. McMurry's Pioneer History Stories. (This book is especially de- signed for schools in the Valley of the Mississippi.) Wagner's Pacific Coast History Stories, Vol. I. (This book is specially designed for schools in the Pacific Coast States.) Hittell's Brief History of California, Vol. I. Discovery and Early Voyages. (California Classes.) FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. In this grade pupils may be required not only to put into their notebooks a few main points of topics pre- sented, but also, occasionally, to write out a report of all they can remember in the form of connected narrative. Topics for Talks. — The Settlement of New York. Stories about Washington, ending with an account of Braddock's Defeat. Stories about Benjamin Franklin. Story of Sir Walter Raleigh and his attempts at settlement. Settlement of the French in Canada. Settle- ment of the Spaniards in America. Conquest of Mexico by Cortez. The Indians of America. Stories of Indian Wars in connection with accounts of pioneer hfe. Books for Teachers or for School Libraries. — The following books will be useful to teachers either as models of oral lessons, or as sources from which to make selections to be read to the class, and they will be useful in the school library for home reading by pupils : Swinton's First Lessons in our Country's History. Eggleston's Stories of Amer- 264 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS ican Life and Adv^enture. Guerber's Story of the Thirteen Colonies. Wright's Children's Stories of American History. McMurry's Pioneer Histor}-' Stories. Montgomery's Beginner's American History. Johon- not's Stories of Our Country. Dodge's American History Stories. Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. In schools provided with sets of suitable history stories, oral lessons may be varied by selections to be read in class, or at home, and talked about in succeeding oral exercises. TOPICS FOR LESSONS. 1. A more extended treatment of the four great centers of settlement in our country, namely : Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania. 2. Further accounts of the settlement of the children's own state. 3. Stories of the French and Indian War. 4. Stories of pioneer life in log cabins. 5. Common schools in colonial times. Books for Teachers and School Libraries. — Eggleston's First Book in American History. Pratt's American History Stories, Vols. H and HI. McMurry's Pioneer History Stories. Mowiy's First Steps in the History of Our Country. SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. In many graded city schools, pupils in this grade begin to use some primary history of the United States, such as Swinton's, or Eggleston's, or Montgomery's, or Mowry's, either as a supplementary reader or as a text-book for the formal and regular study of the subject. In ungraded country schools, also, it is desirable, if practicable, that some primary book should be read or studied by pupils. But the use of a book should not be allowed to super- sede altogether the oral lessons by the teacher. However, PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 265 the use of a book will mainly determine the order of topics. Teachers should now call in the aid of literature to reinforce history lessons by reading, for example, " Paul Revere's Ride," ^'^ Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle," " Lodge's Story of the Battles of Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill." The life of Washington may be made the thread on which to string the events of the War of the Revolution. Short biographical accounts should be given of Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, Putnam, Greene, Morgan, Sumter, and other American patriots. Books for Teachers or for School Libraries. — Scudder's Life of Washington ; Lodge's Story of the Revolution ; Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. EIGHTH GRADE OR YEAR. In the eighth grade, or in the eighth and ninth grades where the school course includes nine years or grades, the history of our country will be completed up to the pres- ent time. The manner of using the adopted text-book, whatever it is, must be determined by the judgment and skill of the teacher. John Fiske's History of the United States will prove useful, partly on account of its excel- lence as a schoolbook, and partly on account of the great value of the work of Dr. Hill in the way of topical anal- ysis, suggestive questions and directions for teachers. As additional books of reference, use John Bach Mc- Master's School History of the United States (1897); also McMaster's History of the People of the United States, for reference. HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ON TEACHING HISTORY. History and geography are correlative studies, and 266 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS skillful teachers will make each supplement the other. In this study, more than in most other elementary school branches, the teacher, by his skill, tact, and stores of in- formation, can make the subject one of living interest. Assignment of Lessons. — When an advance lesson is assigned, call attention to the leading points, and let pupils note them with pencil marks. A considerable part of the history is intended, not to be memorized, but only to be carefully read. If there are any reference books in the school library, or if pupils have any at home, suggest to the class some particular topic or topics about which they may find fuller information. Selection. — Of the early discoveries treated of so fully in most text-books, single out three or four to be studied with care, and let the remainder be read at home or in the class. In the period of settlements, select the four great centers, namely : Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. So in the Revolutionary War, single out a very few marked events and have them learned so that they cannot be forgotten. Dwell at length on events that happened in the pupil's own state. Literature. — If the battle of Bunker Hill is the subject of a history lesson, read to your class the vivid picture of it in '' Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle " by Oliver Wendell Holmes. If the battles of Lexington and Concord are included in the lesson, read " Paul Revere's Ride," and the story of these battles found in Lodge's " Story of the Revolution." When the battle of Gettys- burg is reached, read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Bret Harte's " John Brown of Gettysburg." Main Points. — Fix in the memory the causes and the results of the War of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the War with Mexico, the Civil War, and the War with Spain ; PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 267 but do not attempt to make pupils remember the dates of many battles. Chronology. — Do not attach much importance to chronological tables, except for reference. Fix in the minds of the pupils the dates of a few great events, and fasten them there by frequent reviews. A multitude of minor dates may be temporarily learned for to-day's les- son, only to be crowded into oblivion by to-morrow's recitation. " By means of history,*' says Montaigne, '* the pupil enjoys intercourse with the great men of the best periods ; but he must learn, not so much the year and the day of the destruction of a city, as noble traits of character ; not so much occurrences, as to form a correct judgment upon them." A comprehension of the great events of history, of their causes, results, and relations, is more important than the verbatim memorizing of pages of text-books. Method. — Questions for written examinations should be confined strictly to leading events and should include very few dates. In part, assign lessons by topics, and allow pupils to recite in their own language. Close the text-book yourself, and you will be better satisfied with the answers of pupils. Supplement the dry, condensed statements of the text-book by anecdotes, incidents, stories, and biographical sketches of noted men, drawn from your own memory or from books. In his Essentials of Method, De Garmo sums up the serious defects in the teaching of history as follows : " History, like geography, records a wilderness of facts. If our analysis of right methods is correct, these facts should be grouped, not only so that they may be remembered, but so that the lessons they should teach may appear in the consciousness of the learner. This is true, not alone of the ethical lessons with which history always abounds, but also of the immediate ends for which men struggle. When the objective point for which a 268 APPLIED PEDACOGTCS war, a campaign, or a battle is conducted is once understood, it be- comes a beacon-light by which the meaning of every movement may be examined. Historical facts are then vitally related and easily re- membered. But to require an unthinking memorizing of facts, to im- part a knowledge of whose rational connection and significance de- pends upon accident, and whose application never appears, is to pursue a method as uni)edagogical as it is easy." Outlines of the World's History. — There seems to be no good reason why pupils in the grainmar school should not learn something about the history of the world. By means of oral lessons many thoughtful teachers are giving their pupils general outlines of the great events of the past. There are many more who would give such lessons were they authorized to do so by the course of study. There are many educators who would welcome the ap- pearance of a small handbook of general history suited to the needs, not of high-school pupils, but of boys and girls in the highest grade of the common schools. CHAPTER IX NATURAL METHODS IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY The following rough outlines of a course by grades consists chiefly of practical hints and suggestions about modern methods now generally pursued in teaching this subject. SECOND AND THIRD GRADES OR YEARS. Oral Lessons. — As no text-books are used by pupils in these grades, oral instruction must be given by the teacher. In accordance with psychological method, a beginning should be made by a study of that small part of the earth which children see daily at school or at home. Pupils should be taken to some good points of view near the schoolhouse and their attention directed to such natural divisions of land and water as they can there see. In this way pupils may be made familiar with hill, mountain, valley, plain, brook, river, etc. They can make a real study that will fill their minds with pictures which may afterwards be used in forming conceptions of things that are represented by pictures, or described in words. The attention of pupils should be called to the phe- nomena of day and night, sunrise and sunset, the sun, moon, and stars, clouds, wind, dew, rain, frost, snow, and ice. This will set them to thinking about the causes of what they observe. They should begin to collect speci- mens of plants, and to learn the names of trees that grow in the neighborhood of the school. If there is a mill, or 269 270 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS factory or blacksmith's shop in the vicinity, the class should be taken on a visit to it. In rural schools, pupils should make out lists of all the food products grown on the farms of the neighborhood, lists of the birds in the vicinity, of the occupations by which the people earn their living, etc. The importance of this kind of introductory teaching is emphasized by M. Elisee Reclus as follows : *• Certainly we must always take as a starting-point what the child sees ; but does he see nothing more than the school and the village ? That is the tip of his abode ; he also sees the infinite heavens, the sun, stars, and moon. He sees the storms, the clouds, the rain, the distant horizon, the mountains, the hills, the downs or simple undulations, and the trees and shrubs. Let him attentively notice all these things, and let them be described to him. This is real geography, and to learn the child has not to go beyond the things which surround him, and which are exhibited to him in their infinite variety." Further than this, a few lessons may be given in connection with the school globe, showing the shape of the earth, the rotation of the earth, the continents and the oceans. Helps for Teachers. — Among numerous good books for use by teachers there is one that reaches the high-water mark of modern elementary instruction in geography — Red way and Hinman's Na- tural Elementary Geography. Suggestive exercises for beginners will be found in Geographical Nature Studies by Frank Owen Payne, and in McMurry's Special Course in Geography. FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. In this grade a Primary Geography is usually placed in the hands of pupils, though in some schools, the use of a text-book is postponed until the fifth year. The intro- ductory pages of local geography will naturally be suc- ceeded by special oral lessons on town, city, and state geography, and by an extension of the nature study begun in previous grades. Pupils should now begin to study maps and to draw rough outlines. The wall-maps NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 27 1 most needed for school use will be a county map, a state map, the United States, North America, and the hemi- spheres. A little modeling with clay or sand is desirable if conditions and surroundings are favorable. The inductive lessons on home and state geography must soon be followed by a general view of the earth as a whole, its great natural divisions of land and water, its im- aginary divisions, and some of its political divisions. The psychological or inductive method must be carried along with the logical or formal method. Pupils must now begin to pass from the home-world of direct perception to a broader world, pictured in imagination after a study of maps, descriptions, and pictorial representation. Teachers should take great pains in training pupils how to study text-book lessons. No intelligent teacher will follow the old method of requiring pupils to memorize in detached lessons, the entire text-book. There are some things in the text-book that should be memorized, but much of the text is only to be read, or to be used for ref- erence. The skill of the teacher will be shown by a wise grouping of important things. The work to be done must necessarily be determined, in part, by the kind of a text- book in use. Out-of-door Studies. — If possible, pupils should be taken on excursions to points of interest in the neighbor- hood, or the surrounding country. They must be shown how to study the plants and animals which they see with their own eyes ; to observe the farms, gardens, shops, factories, and the industrial pursuits of the people among whom they live. De Garmo says : " Geographical instruc- tion must, above all, stimulate the creation of vivid mental pictures which shall come close to the reality. To awaken and to form pictures of the imagination must be 272 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS considered the great purpose of geography, however dif- ficult the task may be." Helps for Teachers — Redway and Hinman's Natural Elementary Geography. FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. The study of local state geography should be a con- tinuation and extension of the work of the preceding grade. In accordance with the arrangement of most text- books, it will be advisable for the class to take up the study of North America as a whole, and of the United States as a whole, and by sections. Map Drawing. — Special attention should be given to the proper study of maps, and to map-drawing. In gen- eral, blackboard map-drawing in the rough is better than labored drawings with pen or pencil. Map-drawing should not be made a hobby ; kept within due limits, the exercise is good, but it often runs into a waste of time and labor. Let pupils draw upon the blackboard, from the open book, on a large scale, an outline map of their own state, and, if possible, of their own country. Then them let outline the grand divisions. Finally require them to outline off-hand, from memory. The school globe should be used to enable pupils to form a correct idea of the relative position on the earth of the continents and oceans represented on maps. Clay modeling if practicable. What to Omit. — As school geographies are designed for use in all parts of our country, they are necessarily crowded with details to meet the wants of each state or locality. The sensible teacher will omit all that belongs to the local or special geography of states other than that in which the pupils reside. Do not expect children to NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 27 X know more of a lesson than you remember without re- ferring to the text-book. If you forget details, it is a sure sign that your pupils will forget them, and therefore it is best not to require such details to be learned at all. If oral lessons in history are given to pupils, or if some book of history stories is used for supplementary reading, it is hardly necessary to suggest that all places of early settlement in our country, or other places marked by im- portant events should be located on the map. In addition to North America and the United States, it is desirable that there should be some study of Europe, on account of our commercial relations with European countries. Special attention should be given to the Brit- ish Isles. If the Primary Geography is to be completed in this grade, a few general lessons will be required on South America, Asia, and Africa. For reference and reading. Carpenter's Geographical Reader — North America. SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. In this grade pupils generally begin the use of the larger or complete text-book. Some attention must be given to the introductory lessons and to the outlines of mathematical and physical geography. The United States should be taken up by groups or sections. Main Points. — Pupils are not expected to learn the boundaries of all the states nor even to name all the capitals. But they should be able at the end of the year to name the leading products of each group of states ; to locate from two to five of the chief cities in each group, and to locate the chief rivers of commercial importance. Also to name the chief mountain ranges and the most impor- AM. PUB. scH. — 18 274 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS tant rivers of the United States as a whole, and to name the leading industries of each group of states. Special Topics. — The major topic of the class should be the geography of Europe. The following are a few among many special topics to be studied by pupils : (rt) London, as the center of the world's commerce. {b) Glasgow, for building iron ships. (^) Manchester, as a typical manufacturing center. i^d) Paris, the city of arts, (^) The scenery of Switzerland. (/) The scenery of the Rhine, (j^) Rome and its architecture. (/z) The Mediterranean Sea, its commercial and historical impor- tance, etc. SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. The work in this grade should include a general study of Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, and the island groups of the Pacific. The main topics for Asia will be British India, China, and Japan ; of Africa, the gold and diamond mines of South Africa, Egypt, the Nile, the pyramids, and ruined temples; of South America, the Andes, the Amazon, Brazil, Chili, Peru, and the Argen- tine Republic ; of Australia, its peculiar animals and plants, its gold mines, and stock farms. EIGHTH AND NINTH YEARS. Some time should be given to a detailed study of the political geography of the United States. The main work should include a special study of physical geography, and of the commercial relations of different countries. Teach- ers will find The Natural Advanced Geography, by Redway and Hinman (1898), a desirable guide in teaching NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 275 geography in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, sup- plemented by any other modern text-books at hand. HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ON METHODS. Value. — Geography is a treatment of man's material relations to the earth on which he dwells. It is an intro- duction to the political, industrial, commercial, and social relations of mankind. It is a medium through which pupils can be led into elementary science work. It is an important aid in the study of history. William T. Harris says, in the report of the Committee of Fifteen (1895) : ''About one fourth of the material relates strictly to the geography ; about one half to the inhabitants, their manners, customs, institutions, industries, produc- tions ; and the remaining fourth to mineralogy, meteor- ology, botany, zoology, and astronomy." Method. — During the past ten years there has been a marked advance in the general method of teaching ele- mentary geography. In the latest school text-books the subject is introduced in a psychological manner, that is, by directing the attention of children to the phenomena of earth, air, and water, about which they already know something. Topography has been simplified, and more space is given to the industrial and commercial relations of mankind, and to the fauna and flora of the earth. In criticising the common method of teaching geography, De Garmo says in Essentials of Method : " But perhaps the most serious fault of the current methods of teaching geography is, that the child is not taught to look within and beyond the individual fact he learns. The subject remains in its individual stage. There is no passing from in- dividual to general notions, no application of geographical principles to new particulars. For this reason, no geographical fact appears to have more than a momentary and accidental relation to any other. 2/6 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS Facts are learned only to be forgotten, or to lie in the soul isolated and devoid of significance." Essentials. — It is essential that teachers should keep clearly in view the main things which ought to be learned so well that they will be retained for life. These should be welded into a chain of relations and associations. For instance, it is important for pupils to connect history with geography by learning the geographical situation of places marked by events of great historical importance. It is evident that pupils should know the location of cities and countries most frequently mentioned in newspapers as they report the daily history of the world. It is evi- dent that the geography of Europe is vastly more im- portant than the geography of Africa, South America, or Asia. It is important to know something about the great trade centers of our country, such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc. ; it is unimpor- tant to know the exact location of Timbuktu, Haidar- abad, Ujiji, or Chingtu. Natural Science. — As about one fourth of the matter in school text-books on geography relates to botany, zoology, mineralogy, meteorology, and astronomy, it is evident that lessons in geography are closely connected with lessons in natural science. The disconnected facts as they appear in the description of the plants and minerals of different countries must be gathered into con- nected groups in the lessons on nature study. The cor- relation of geography and history is self-evident and needs only to be mentioned. Examinations. — In schools where promotions from one grade to another are made by means of written ex- aminations, the questions given by principals or superin- tendents will of necessity mainly determine the kind of NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 277 instruction which will be given by teachers. If the questions are chiefly on unimportant details, the teaching will run in that direction, and all hope of reform will be vain. The Modern View. — In a recent paper read before a meeting of the Chicago school principals (1898), Colonel Parker said: " The most essential truth in modern psychology is the doctrine of apperception, which is that every image consists of an expansion and concentration of images already in the mind ; that fundamental images are gained through the senses ; and the function of the text-book is the union of such images into wholes. The best schoolhouse on earth is out of doors. Descriptions of things cannot take the place of actual contact with the reality. The line of progress in the future must have its root in out-door work. Field excursions have a stimulating influence. Children must see the animal in its habitat, the tree with its surround- ings, must feel the earth under their feet. The history of the earth is written in its surface — erosion of river valleys, the making and mix- ing of soils, the washing of the surface, and countless other interest- ing and profitable problems are ours to study. A child must go through the same process eventually in arriving at truth as scientists do, though he may be so guided that his line of resistance is shorter, but human development has forever the same laws, and at the base of these laws is the great one of self-activity." " It is extraordinary," says President Eliot, " what interest and train- ing power are imparted to geography simply by the addition of one means, namely, photographs of scenery. There is no point in refer- ence to the formation of plains and plateaus, of mountains and valleys, of lakes and rivers, which cannot be beautifully illustrated by photo- graphs. I say, therefore, that the grammar school of the future will have within its walls a large assortment of models, charts, maps, globes, and photographs for the teaching of geography." CHAPTER X THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES Nature study was begun in the schools of this country in the form of " object lessons," introduced from the schools of England. These lessons partook largely of English formalism. As indicated by the early text-books, the leading aim was to crowd great masses of " facts " upon children. In the Oswego normal school the method was made successful by Mr. Sheldon, and in the city of New York, by Mr, Calkins. But in the hands of unskilled teachers object lessons often became a dead formalism. Still they led up to nature study which, during the past ten years, has been so generally pressed upon the atten- tion of teachers. The desirability, not to say the necessity, of beginning in the earliest years of school life some course of instruc- tion in nature study is now generally recognized and acted upon. It is impracticable to mark out definitely any course adapted to the diverse conditions of differ- ent schools. One teacher will make a special study of plant life ; an- other, of animal life ; a third may choose metals and minerals ; a fourth, physics. Whatever line of work is taken will prove profitable, if it is patiently carried out in a spirit of scientific observation and investigation. The elaborate courses that are successfully carried out in the small classes of normal training schools will fail in the crowded classes of city primary schools. The needs of a 278 THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES 279 small country school having all grades of pupils and only one teacher are widely different from the wants of city classes. All that I purpose to do, therefore, is to offer a few hints, and make a few rough outlines which may possibly be of some use to teachers that attempt to lead their pupils in the paths of nature study. FIRST AND SECOND GRADES OR YEARS. From some suitable book on nature study select a few lessons and read them to the children, or better still, learn the lessons and tell the story in your own words. In season, plant in flower-pots a few sweet-peas, beans, and grains of wheat, etc., and let the children watch their growth. Give, occasionally, an object lesson on fruits and flowers. If you take the Primary School Journal, select from it such exercises as you find available. Start con- versation lessons about frogs and fishes. If possible, take the children where they can see live frogs and fishes in their native element. Within the last few years, there have been published large numbers of nature stories and nature studies, de- signed to meet the needs of children in primary grades. They have been written, in general, by teachers engaged for years in instructing young children. They are charm- ing in style and in illustration. They are also psycho- logical in general method. Secure some of these inex- pensive books and study them as models for your own oral lessons. If you have little or no time for preparing oral lessons, begin your work by reading short extracts from some one of these books. In time you will become interested in your work, and will make up your own ex- ercises. 28o APPLIED PEDAGOGICS THIRD AND FOURTH GRADES. Plant Life. — Ask the children to plant at home, in flower-pots, boxes, or garden beds, peas, beans, wheat, and corn. Ask them to make a memorandum of the date of planting, and of the date when they come up, and re- port in writing to the teacher. Then ask them to make, once a week, a rough drawing of the appearance of each plant, and hand it in to the teacher. It will add to the interest of this lesson if the teacher will plant a few of the same kinds of seeds, dig up one, from time to time, and show pupils the progress of germination. Take into school specimens of plants, leaves, and flowers, distribute them to pupils, and show them how to make a study of them. Let pupils begin to make rough outline sketches of leaves, plants, and flowers from objects. The teacher's desk should be supplied with an inexpensive magnifying glass, to be used by pupils, or children should be en- couraged to buy glasses for themselves. Set the pupils to observing forms of plant life in the gardens and fields. Ask them to bring in lists of all kinds of trees they can find, etc. The teacher will do well to use as a handbook, Bailey's First Les- sons with Plants. In this little volume. Professor L. H. Bailey, of Cornell University has fully sustained his reputation as the author of numerous books on horticulture and agriculture, and of the school bulletins on plant life that have been so widely distributed among the common schools in the state of New York. In his preface to this book the author remarks that the lessons are designed to awaken an interest in plants and in nature rather than to teach botany. When the teacher thinks chiefly of his subject, he teaches a science ; when he thinks chiefly of the pupil, he teaches nature study. Mr. Bailey sets forth four chief requisites in nature study if the pupil is to catch inspiration from it : *' ( I ) . The subject itself must interest the pupil. This means that the THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES 28 1 instruction begins with the commonest things, with those whicli are actually a part of the pupil's life. " (2). The pupil must feel that the work is his, and that he is the in- vestigator. " (3) . Little should be attempted at a time. One thought or one sug- gestion may be enough for one day. The suggestion that insects have six legs is sufficient for one lesson. We obscure the importance of common things by cramming the mind with facts. When the pupil is taught to take systematic notes upon what the teacher says, it is doubtful if the lesson is worth the while, as nature study. " (4). The less rigid the system of teaching and the fewer the set tasks, the more spontaneous and, therefore, the better, is the result. A codified system of examinations will choke the life out of nature study." Animal Life. — Observation studies on bees, or ants, or butterflies, first, at home, or in field or garden ; after- wards, in school. In season, secure a few cocoons and let the children watch the transformation of the chrysalis into a butterfly. In tadpole season, ask the boys to catch a few polliwogs and bring them to school in a glass jar filled with water. Then set the whole class on the watch to see the wonderful transformation of the tadpole into a frog. Miscellaneous. — Take incidental lessons on various kinds of fruits, in season ; on the thermometer and the weather changes of heat and cold, rain and snow, winds and clouds, etc. On the moon and its phases; on iron, gold, and coal, etc. Rough outline drawings of suitable objects under investigation. Read to pupils nature stories from selected books, and afterwards lend the books to the children. If possible, take your class out into city parks or country fields and woods to study nature at first hand. FIFTH AND SIXTH GRADES. Plant Life. — Special study of a few common wild flow- 282 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS ers, such as : the violet, buttercup, and wild rose ; of the blossoms of fruit trees, such as : the apple, peach, pear, and plum ; the growth of plants, etc. As a handbook use Bailey's First Lessons with Plants. Animal Life. — Typical specimens of radiates and mol- lusks, such as : the star-fish, the clam, or the oyster ; in- sect life, such as bees or ants ; bird life, as shown by the birds of the neighborhood. Metals and Minerals. — Short lessons on common rocks such as granite, sandstone, marble, slate, etc. ; metals such as iron, copper, lead, etc. Encourage pupils to begin the collection of a school cabinet. Observation lessons in connection with geography. Physiology and Hygiene. — Rules of health in respect to wholesome food, pure air, and personal cleanliness. Effects of narcotic and alcoholic stimulants. SEVENTH TO NINTH GRADES. Plant Life. — As a guide to pupils who are to be put to a real study of nature, the teacher will do well to use Bailey's Lessons with Nature, which is the larger book of which the First Lessons is an abridgment. For use in rural schools and as a library book this volume is un- equaled. The preface is in itself a good manual of sug- gestions. In connection with geography, the teacher can take up occasional lessons on the distribution of plant and animal life on the globe. The wise teacher will be in no haste to begin technical botany by classifying plants. First in order of study comes empirical knowledge ; afterwards scientific knowledg-e and nomenclature. Beginners store up facts by items, often in an indirect and desultory THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDHZS 2cS^ manner. Mere text-book study of natural science, with- out observation and experiment by the pupils, is not knowledge. The real guide to true knowledge is a Jiabit of observing. Agassiz says, " The difficult art of thinking, of comparing, of discriminating, can be more readily ac- quired by examining natural objects for ourselves than in any other way." Physics. — The extent to which elementary lessons in physics can be carried depends upon conditions, but something can be done in any school. Experiments can be made with the simplest kind of improvised apparatus. Encourage pupils to make simple experiments at home or by themselves. Physical Geography. — Climatic zones and their effect on the distribution of animal and vegetable life. The sea and its inhabitants. Ocean currents and their effect on climate. Real Work. • — By well-put questions, set pupils to ob- serving the habits of animals and birds, of ants, bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies. Persuade them to buy a magnifying glass or a cheap microscope, and begin ex- amining things for themselves. If you wish to succeed, you must do the actual work of the naturalist, and must make your pupils do it. You must fit yourself to do this work by taking an interest in it. It is not at all necessary that you should be a specialist in botany, zoology, or natural philosophy ; but it is essential that you should know something about the true methods of the specialist. Taken up in the right spirit, instruction in the natural sciences can be made one of the most effective means of education. " The first teaching a child wants," says Huxley, " is an object- lesson of one sort or another ; and as soon as it is fit for systematic 284 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS instruction, it is fit for a modicum of science. If not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask foolish questions, tliere is no limit to the intellectual craving of a young child, nor any bounds to the slow but solid accretion of knowledge, and the development of the think- ing faculty in this way." Charles W. Eliot says in the Unity of Educational Reform : " Into the curricula of schools and colleges alike, certain new matters have of late vears been introduced, for teaching which the older methods of instruction — namely, the lecture and the recitation — proved to be inadequate, or even totally inapplicable. These new matters are chiefly object-lessons in color and form, drawing and modeling, natural sciences like botany, zoology, chemistry, physics, min- eralogy, and geology, and various kinds of manual training. In school and college alike the real effective teaching in all these sub- jects is that which is addressed to each individual pupil. The old- fashioned method of teaching science by means of illustrated books and demonstrative lectures has been superseded, from the kinder- garten to the university by the laboratory method, in which each pupil, no matter whether he be three years old or twenty-three, works with his own hands and is taught to use his own senses." Nature Study for Grammar Grades (1899), by Wilbur S. Jackman of the Department of Natural Science, Chicago Normal School, is an in- valuable book for teachers that desire to undertake substantial prac- tical work. The author in his preface sets forth general principles worth keeping clearly in mind. " That pupils need some rational and definite directions in nature study, all are generally agreed. But to prepare the outlines and suggestive directions necessary, and to place these within the reach of each pupil, is more than the ordinary teacher has time to do, even granting that she is fully prepared for such work. With a manual of directions in hand, each pupil may be made responsible for a certain amount of work, either in the field or in the laboratory. The author would suggest that the teacher assign a certain topic and then give appropriate opportunity for the pupils to study it, either in the field or in the laboratory, along the lines sug- gested in the book. After such study, the pupils will be prepared to meet in general class discussion, and the subsequent steps, drawing, painting, modeling, writing, etc., may follow in proper order." Helpful Books for Beginners. — Burt's Little Nature Stories for Little People ; Morley's Seed Babies ; Deane's Little Talks About Plants ; THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES 285 Burt's Nature Stories— Plant Life and Animal Life ; Bailey's First Lessons With Plants ; Herrick's Chapters on Plant Life ; Kirby's Stories About Birds ; Miller's Little Brothers of the Air ; Andersen's Stories Mother Nature told her Children ; Strong's All the Year Round, Four Parts — Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ; Johonnot's Feathers and Fur, and Claws and Hoofs ; Kelly's Short Stories of our Shy Neighbors. Helpful Books for Grammar Grades. — Bailey's Lessons with Plants (1898); Herrick's Chapters on Plant Life ; Needham's Outdoor Studies ; Burt's Birds and Bees (from John Burroughs) ; Newell's Reader in Botany, Vols. I and H ; Scudder's Life of a Butterfly; Seaside and Wayside Series, Vol. HI (for 4th and 5th Grades) ; Vol. IV (For 5th to 9th Grades) ; Dana's Plants and their Children (7th to 9th Grades). Reference Books for Teachers in Graded Schools. Mrs. L. L. Wilson's Nature Study in Elementary Schools ; Boydon's Nature Study by Months (1898) ; Jackman's Nature Study in Grammar Grades (1889); John Muir's Mountains of California; E. S. Thompson's Wild Animals that I have Known. CHAPTER XI MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE One of the most hopeful features of modern education is the growing recognition of the importance of physical training. It may be true that the leading purpose of the public school is intellectual training. It must be admitted that the physical condition of children depends, in part, upon home surroundings and inherited constitution. But though teachers have no direct control over pupils in respect to diet, clothing, exercise, rest, sleep, work, or play, they must not, on that account shirk their appro- priate share of responsibility in relation to the health and physical development of school children. Negative Duties. — There are certain negative duties which are self-evident. Teachers should at least protect their pupils against impure air, too long confinement, overwork, and the deadening effects of mental woriy, caused by severe competitive written examinations. A' great deal more than this ought to be done ; but in many schools not even this is attempted. Nevertheless it is the duty of teachers, whether in the primary, grammar, or high school, whether in city or country, to impress upon pupils, by emphatic iteration, the laws of health in relation to food, air, cleanliness, sleep, rest, exercise, play, work, and personal habits in general. President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University, says in a paper on child study : ' 1 llic ForiDfiy Dec, 1893. 286. MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE 287 " The juvenile world now goes to school and has its brain titil- lated and tattooed, and we have entirely forgotten that men have been not only good citizens but great, who were in Idyllic ignorance of even the belauded invention of Cadmus. Now, if this tremendous school engine, in which everybody believes now with a catholic con- sensus of belief perhaps never before attained, is in the least degree tending to deteriorate mankind physically, it is bad. Knowledge bought at the expense of health, which is wholeness or holiness it- self in its higher aspect, is not worth what it costs. Health condi- tions all the highest joys of life, means full maturity, national pros- perity. May we not reverently ask. What shall it profit a child if he gain the whole world of knowledge and lose his health, or what shall he give in exchange for his health ? That this is coming to be felt is seen in the rapidly growing systems of school excursions, school baths, school gardens, school lunches, provisions for gymnastics of the various schools, medical inspection, school polyclinics, all of which have been lately repeatedly prescribed and officially normalized. Not all, but many of these, are quite new. The assumption is that all must be judged from the standpoint of health, and that an edu- cational system must make children better, and not worse, in health." Systematic Drill. — It is sometimes said that systematic drill soon becomes irksome to children ; that boys dislike the gymnasium, and that girls find calisthenics wearisome ; that it is not natural for children to use wands and dumb- bells ; and that boys and girls should be left to follow their own inclinations and impulses about exercises and amusement. Now school drill is designed not to super- sede, but to supplement, the natural games and plays of children. In mental training, we recognize the principle that intellectual development is attained only by repeated, long-continued, and systematic exercises. Mental school gymnastics are rigidly enforced for many years. The same law holds true in physical development. Would not the physique of a class of boys under gymnastic training for ten years be superior to that of a class left to run wild ? And would not their accumulated stock of trained mus- 288 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS cular power be quite as serviceable to them through life as a great deal of what is called mental discipline ? iVll the world's best workers know that success depends largely upon sound health and power of endurance. Sinewy frames as well as trained minds are essential to the sons of workingmen who have to make their own way in the world. For them muscular power means food, clothing, and a living. Their only capital in the struggle for existence is an elementary education and a sound body. " Health is the first wealth," says Emerson. Practical Suggestions. — In every school, whether in city or country, there should be given a daily drill of five or ten minutes in free gymnastics. Without apparatus and without music, a skillful teacher can secure very good results from what are termed, " free gymnastics," exe- cuted by counting in time. To these there may be added *' breathing exercises," and concert exercises in vocal culture or in singing. Both wands and dumb-bells can be used in any schoolroom. If there is a piano in the schoolroom, the light gymnastic drill can be made quite varied and thorough with no other appliances. Athletics. — The man who understands boys will either join with them, or will encourage and direct them in their games of baseball and football ; in boating, swim- ming, skating, coasting, and snowballing ; and will take an interest in their games of marbles, in kite-flying and top-spinning. On pleasant Saturdays, or after school in the long summer days, he will take his pupils on ex- cursions in the fields, woods, or hills after collections for the cabinet, or to see nature, or merely to have a good time. The woman who understands little children will invite them to pleasant walks with her for the same purpose. MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE 289 Games and Plays. — The games of the primary children must not be forgotten. By a little attention to the play- ground, their sports may be regulated and made delight- ful. Marbles, tops, kites, balls, and hoops are all a part of educational apparatus. A visit to a kindergarten and a careful study of some kindergarten manual will be very suggestive in the direction of play and amusements. Teachers must study variety, for monotonous repetition soon becomes distasteful. Notice how marbles succeed tops, and kites follow ball, as often as the moon changes. The indirect lessons of the playground are often more valuable and more lasting than the formal teachings of the class-room. For it is in the hours of play, when off duty, that the teacher can best win the confidence and love of children. " From a health point of view," says Francis H. Tabor, " There can be no comparison between a good healthy game — in which every muscle is suitably exercised, and brain and lungs join in the complete happiness of the honest laugh and the careless shout — and the "dead alive" military drill, or formal gymnastics, which, while developing many muscles abnormally, leave the brain torpid and the spirit depressed. But the game must be regulated, if its full benefits are to be reaped. Unselfishness must be practised at every turn ; the strong must help the weak ; and the weak must be aroused, that they may not be a drag upon the strong. . , . The code of honor among true sportsmen is so rigid that truth and fair dealing become as im- portant as a well-balanced bat or sound ball. Manliness, energy, courage, endurance, all follow, not because they are said io be good, but because they seem to be good and a.Ytfelt to be absolutely essen- tial to the attainment of an object that is all in all to the boy." 1 Manual Training as an Educational Factor. — The recent introduction of manual training into city schools marks a very important step in advance. The pioneer 1 The Forum, May, 1899. AM. PUB. SCH. — 19. 290 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS schools of manual training were founded and endowed by wealthy business men who desired to supplement the elementary education of the public schools by af- fording boys a technical training which would enable them to earn a living. The success of these schools at- tracted the attention of public school officials, and ex- periments were made by organizing classes, first in high schools and afterwards in the higher grades of grammar schools. Plan. — The plans, as carried out in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and many other cities, involve the introduction of woodwork, cooking, and sewing in the higher grammar grades, two hours a week being given to each subject. In 1896 manual training was an essential feature in the public school course of ninety- five cities. In the beginning, manual training was urged mainly as a special preparation for some industrial pur- suit, but now it is advocated as an important factor in a general education. Training in the use of tools in the shops leads to mental habits of careful attention. It leads to interest in drawing and the practical application of arithmetic and geometry. Indeed it seems to be doing for the grammar and the high school what kindergarten training does for the little children. " The best education has come from contact with nature," says Earl Barnes. " It is absurd to say that Abraham Lincoln was uneducated because he did not have the advantages of the schools. He was educated for the work of his life, ev^en if most of his clay work was done with a hoe, his wood work with an ax, his physics with a crowbar. A face-to-face struggle with nature has given the best men of the country to-day." The Report of the Commissioner of Education (1896- 97) says: " Strong opposition was met among school- MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE 291 men for a time, but manual training has steadily grown in popularity, and, with its growth, it has constantly im- proved in matter and method, and consequently in use- fulness." In this Report the statistics and courses of in- struction are given of 66 manual and industrial training schools and 24 industrial schools for Indian children. On the pedagogical value of manual training Professor William James, of Harvard, writes in a recent article as follows : ^ " The most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of the manual training schools ; not because they will give us a people more handy and practical for domestic life and better skilled in trades, but because they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual fiber. Laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the difference between accuracy and vagueness, and an insight into nature's complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena, which once wrought into the mind remain there as life-long possessions. They confer precision ; be- cause if you are doing a thing, you must do it definitely right or de- finitely wrong. . . . They beget a habit of self-reliance ; they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher's disciplinary functions to a mininum." '^ Atlantic Monthly, March, 1899. CHAPTER XII MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS While intellectual training is made, in practice, the most prominent object of the public school, the importance of moral training is universally acknowledged. ** The vital part of human culture," says William Russell, " is not that which makes a man what he is intellectually ; but that which makes him what he is in heart, life, and char- acter." Indirect Training. — Now there is no doubt that the strict discipline of the public school is in itself a powerful means of indirect moral training. Pupils are trained to habits of order, silence, regularity, punctuality, industry, truthfulness, obedience, and a regard for the rights of others. The influence of school, continued for a series of years, in these respects, is very powerful in the formation of habit and character. But beyond these incidental and indirect results, what is it possible for the schools to ac- complish in the way of moral development ? There are some who believe that there can be little or no moral culture unless it is given in connection with author- itative religious instruction in creed or catechism. But at present in our public schools, by law or by custom, purely secular instruction is the rule ; religious exercises, other than the reading of the Bible, are the exception. In so far, then, as moral training is connected with relig- ious instruction, the matter must be left to the home, the Sunday-school; and the church. What remains to be 292 MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 293 done in the public school, and how shall it best be ac- complished ? While there are many who seem to think that nothing whatever can be done, except indirectly, there are others who believe that much may be accom- plished by direct training and instruction. Motive. — If moral training consisted merely in telling children what is right or wrong, or in dealing out maxims and proverbs ; if it would make children truthful and honest to learn commandments by rote, — then the teach- er's task would indeed be an easy one. But moral culture concerns the feelings, the emotions, the will, the con- science. Hence the successful teacher must be a trusted friend and guide, not a mere bundle of philosophical ethics. The moral nature must be called into daily exer- cise until habits of right-thinking result in habits of right- doing. And this process of development is slow and al- most imperceptible. ** Whatever moral benefit can be effected by education," says Herbert Spencer, '* must be effected by an education that is emotional rather than perceptive. If, in place of making a child understand that this thing is right and the other wrong, you make it feel that they are so ; if you make virtue loved and vice loathed ; if you arouse a noble desire and make torpid an inferior one ; if you bring into life a previously dormant sentiment ; if you cause a sym- pathetic impulse to get the better of one that is selfish ; if, in short, you produce a state of mind to which proper behavior is natural, spontaneous, instinctive — you do some good." Methods. — Methods of conducting moral lessons in school must be gathered up by experience and observa- tion. A warm heart, a genial nature, an even temper, a beaming eye, a cheerful countenance, a sincere voice, 294 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS an earnest manner — these are the potential agencies by which you can win, direct, and control young pupils. Teachers should keep fresh in mind their own feelings, passions, emotions, impulses, sympathies, and experiences when they were children, and thus avoid the grievous mistake of applying to school children the moral philos- ophy suited only to adult metaphysicians. Children should not only be taught what is right ; they must also be made to do what is right. The school is a miniature world ; in one way or another it affords opportunities for the practice of most of the moral virtues. Strict discipline trains pupils to habits of obedience and order, corrects bad habits, and compels the lawless to respect the rights of others ; but in addition to this it is possible for a teacher to breathe into a school a spirit of honor, truth- fulness, and honesty which will put down profanity, vulgarity, slang, slander, tattling, lying, and meanness generally. Stories and Books. — One of the most effective ways of giving moral lessons is by reading or telling to pupils stories or anecdotes illustrating some virtue to which the teacher desires to call attention ; such as honor, truthful- ness, courage, or honesty. " Stories of great and noble deeds," says Bain, *' have fired more youthful hearts with enthusiasm than sermons have." If there is a school library, make good use of it by calling the special atten- tion of pupils to the biographies and story books that you think best fitted to become your assistants in moral development. The high ideals presented in good books will result in a rich harvest of noble sympathies and right actions. Weems' Life of Washington was one of the few books that fell into the hands of Abraham Lincoln when he was a boy living in a log cabin ; who can estimate the MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 295 1 high ideals which this patriotic book, in spite of its exag- gerated rhetoric, suggested to this soHtary boy, as he pored over it by the Hght of the open fireplace ? Though Lincoln owed little to school training, we cease to wonder at his character-development when we know that he read and re-read, at home, in early life, a select library consist- ing chiefly of the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Plutarch, Washington, spelling book, reader, and arithmetic, and an old volume of the statutes of Illinois. Dr. George H. Martin, of Boston, in his unequaled ad- dress on " The Unseen Force in Character Making," said : ^ ** Our boys and girls, all unknown to us, often uncon- sciously to themselves, are admiring the characters they find in the books they read, and are fashioning themselves into the same image. Through literature and history, there is no limit to the possibilities within the reach of every teacher. Character in history, character in liter- ature, illuminated in the portrayal by the enthusiastic admiration of the teacher, glows before the student and kindles within him a responsive emotion. As the long line of men and women who have lived, and wrought, and suffered moves before him, he feels nobler impulses stir- ring within him, and sees himself living such a life, and with the thoughts and impulses, the work of transforma- tion begins." One of the most valuable books for use by teachers of the higher grammar grades, or by teachers of country schools, is Thayer's Ethics of Success. It is the special excellence of this book that the moral lessons are not sermons or lectures, but inspiring anecdotes from the lives of successful men and women. 1 Read at Columbus ; y^\x\:i\\%\vtdi'm\\\^ Journal of Education, March 16, 1899. 296 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS History. — By the new school of Herbartians, great stress is placed on history as a means of moral culture. The general term history is made to include, not only the formal text-book study of history, ancient and modern, in the higher grades, but, also, fables, myths, stories, tra- dition, biography, and poetry, for children in the lower grades. In McMurry's General Method, a book based on the principles of Herbart, the use of history in moral training is set forth as follows : " Although history has many uses, its best influence is in illustrating and inculcating moral ideas. It will strike most teachers with sur- prise to say that the chief use of history study is to form moral notions in children. Some of the best historical materials (from biography, tradition and fiction) should be absorbed by children in each grade as an essential part of the substratum of moral ideas. . . . Examples of moral action drawn from life are the only things that can give meaning to moral precepts. Moral ideas always have a concrete basis or origin. Some companion with whose feelings or actions you are in close personal contact, or some character from history or fiction by whose personality you have been strongly attracted, gives you your keenest impressions of moral qualities. To begin with abstract moral teaching, or to put faith in it, is to misunderstand children." De Garmo, in Essentials of Method, emphasizes the uses of history as follows : " For the reason, then, that we first grasp the general through the particular, all ethical instruction should proceed from individual cases of action involving a moral content. Hence it does not suffice to preach in school, except from the text of an actual event. Children can best get the first points of crystallization for moral truths from stories involving a moral content. Here the emo- tions are not unduly aroused, as they are likely to be where the action is one that touches them personally, so that the irrational nature of wrong action appeals to the understanding as well as to feeling. History fulfills its noblest mission to the race on account of its ethical content and of the individual nature of the presentation. Every deed of heroism, of benevolence, of charitv, of patriotism is a concrete em- bodiment of a precious virtue ; while every mean, cowardly, dastardly act is an individual protest against meanness, cowardice, or villainy. MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 297 We can only continue the deposit about these starting-points until at last the soul is strong in itself to stand against temptation." Occasions. — Talks on morals should be given at the proper time and in the right way. The events of a school week will often furnish practical illustrations for a short but effective talk to the pupils on manners or morals. Omit no fitting occasion to impress a principle upon the moral feelings. Kindergarten Training. — It will be Avell for all thoughtful teachers to consider wiiat has been accom- plished in kindergarten schools in the way of molding the characters of little children, and of reforming the waifs gathered in from neglected homes. The annual reports of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association written by the late Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, the philanthropist of San Francisco, are filled with proofs of the possibilities of moral training at a very early age. In one of her reports (1891), she says : " During the twelve years we have had nearly nine thousand chil- dren under our care and training. The children who were with us in the earliest years of our work are now from fifteen to eighteen years of age. We have followed these children as closely as possible since they left us, and after the most rigid investigation we do not find our kin- dergarten children among the juvenile offenders. Their names are not to be found upon the police records ; and this, too, in face of the fact that our kindergartens are located in the districts where crimi- nals are made. We have perused every avenue of information, only to find one arrest for petty offenses among the 8,000 children that have attended the kindergartens during the last eleven years — and as he was a feeble-minded boy, with an inborn mania for setting fire to things, we counted him out entirely. He was deemed irresponsible, and placed in confinement to keep him from mischief." A Teacher's Testimony. — The following letter was written by Agnes M. Manning, who has been for many 298 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS years principal of one of the largest primary schools of San Francisco, in answer to a letter of inquiry from my- self when City Superintendent of Schools : Dear Sir: I wish to tell you why I am so strongly in favor of kin- dergartens. My school is in a crowded neighborhood. I have many children from tenement-houses and from the narrow streets off Market street. Before the days of the kindergarten these children as soon as they could crawl, spent their waking lives on the sidewalks. From the age of two to six years they pursued the education of the street. The consequences were that at six they came to us with a fund of in- formation of the worst description, and a vocabulary that might excite the envy of the Barbary Coast. At the commencement of each new year they tumbled over each other in their rude haste to take up the unexplored life of a school. They were in tens, fifties, hundreds in our yards. The novelty being past, the hard struggle commenced of keeping them from joining the army of truants, and leading them into habits of work and cleanliness. . . . The kindergartens have changed all this. They have taken the babies that used to be consigned to the curbstone, trained and guided them along a path of develop- ment. They have wisely attempted no cramming of the infant brain with premature scholarship. They have surrounded the young lives with a fresh atmosphere. They have passed the hours in pleasant games, taught a purer language, and led the little feet into a new civ- ilization. The children of tenement-houses and narrow streets still come in tens, fifties, and hundreds to begin life in a new school at the beginning of each school year. The little ones are clean, self-respect- ing, eager for knowledge. They have opinions of their own on many things, and are quite anxious to express them. They neither know how to read nor write. They have been taught to see, to observe, to tell about what they see and hear. They have been taught to respect older people, to be honest, to tell the truth. It is a rare thing now to find a child that does not know it is wrong to steal. If you meet one you may be sure he has never been in a kindergarten." Character. — The exercise of good principles, confirmed into habit, is the true means of forming a good character. Children do not learn arithmetic and grammar merely by MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 299 repeating rules and formulas ; neither will they apperceive and assimilate the foundation principles of right and wrong as rules of action merely by the process of repeat- ing mottoes and maxims. The moral faculties are of slow growth ; they need daily culture and exercise until habits of right-thinking and right-doing are formed. There are evil tendencies in the child's nature to be repressed ; there are germs of good qualities to be warmed into life and quickened in their growth. Canon Farrar says : " Plant a fleeting fancy and you reap a thought ; plant a thought and you reap an action ; plant an action and you reap a habit ; plant a habit and you reap character ; plant a character and you reap a destiny.'' The practical teacher who has begun to make a direct study of children at first hand will find occasion to make use of the doctrine of interest and desire as set forth by the Herbartian school of thinkers, as well as the creed of duty and the ivill expounded by the Hegelian school of philosophers. In the kindergarten and the primary grades children will be won by sympathy, influenced by desire, and stimulated by interest. In succeeding stages of develop- ment, as good habits are strengthened, and higher ideals are created, character begins to be formed, conscience is developed, and duty becomes more and more a controlling power. " The development of the character," says Dr. Jordan, " is the for- mation of the ego. It is in itself the co-ordination of the elements of heredity, the bringing into union of warring tendencies and irrelevant impulses left us by our ancestors. The child is a mixture of imper- fectly related impulses and powers. It is a mosaic of ancestral hered- ity. Its growth into personality is the process of bringing these ele- ments into relation to each other. " Doing right becomes a habit if it is pursued long enough. It be- comes a second nature or a higher heredity. The formation of a 300 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right and doing right, is the basis of character-building." William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, closed a paper, read before the California State Teachers' Association (1896) with the following summary : " In closing, let us call up the main conclusions and repeat them in their briefest expression. " I. Moral education is a training in habits, and not an inculcation of mere theoretical views. "2. Mechanical disciplines are .indispensable as an elementary basis of moral character. * " 3. The school holds the pupil to a constant sense of responsibility, and thereby develops in him a keen sense of his transcendental free- dom ; he comes to realize that he is not only the author of his deed, but also accountable for his neglect to do the reasonable act. " 4. Lax discipline in a school saps the moral character of the pupil. It allows him to work merely as he pleases, and he will not reinforce his feeble will by regularity, punctuality and systematic industry. . , . " 5. Too strict discipline, on the other hand, undermines moral char- acter by emphasizing too much the mechanical duties, and especially the phase of obedience to authority, and it leaves the pupil in a state of perennial minority. He does not assimilate the law of duty and make it his own. The law is not written on his heart, but is written on lips only. He fears it but does not love it. 6. The best help that one can give his fellows is that which enables them to help themselves. The best school is that which makes the pupils able to teach themselves. The best instruction in morality makes the pupil a law unto himself. Hence, strictness, which is indis- pensable, must be tempered by such an administration as causes the pupils to love to obey the law for law's sake." PRACTICAL SCHOOLROOM LESSONS. (i) Beginnings in First, Second, and Third Grades. — Talk to pupils about kindness to animals, particularly to dogs, cats, birds, and horses. Read extracts from " Black Beauty." Read short stories that have a moral wrapped up in them. MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS -qi For Use by — Heart Culture, by Emma E. Page will prove a valuable assistant to teachers. The purpose of the author cannot be better expressed than by the following quotations from her preface : " The aim of this book is to teach kindness to animals by quickening sympathy for them, arousing a sense of justice toward them, and instilling the fundamental principles of right care of them. How to care for domestic animals is dwelt upon with considerable detail, because these things must be taught in school to get down into the family life of all the people. Not to know is often as cruel as not to care." Fourth and Fifth Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Put everything in its right place. Why } Have a regular time for home study. Why } Be punctual at school. Why } Why is it your duty to study your lessons ? Kindness to children younger than yourself. Duties to other pupils. Duty to home and parents. Kindness to animals. Kindness to little children. For Reference by Teachers. — Dewey's Ethics or Stories of Home and School. Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book I. Sixth and Seventh Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Topics may be brought before a class by reading some anecdote or story, or by means of conversation lessons. Fighting and quarreling. Calling nicknames. Truthfulness. Word of honor. Cheating. Promises. Profanity. Slang. Cruelty to animals. Courage. Duties at home. Duties in school. Duties to others. For Reference. — Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book H. Topics for Eighth and Ninth Grades. — Earning a living. The read- ing of good books. Economy. Patriotism. Obedience to law. Duties of American Citizens. For Reference. — Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book II. Everett's Ethics for Young People. HINTS ON LESSONS IN POLITENESS. " A beautiful behavior," says Emerson, " is the finest of the fine arts. Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes." It is too often assumed that children learn manners at 302 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS home, or unconsciously acquire a polite behavior from their teachers, schoolmates, or friends. But whatever they may learn through unconscious tuition, it is very desirable that they should receive specific instruction in politeness. It is said that the winning manners of Henry Clay were owing in no small degree to the careful training in man- ners given him at an early age in a log schoolhouse in Virginia. Topics for Short Talks in Second and Third Grades. — Politeness to schoolmates. Politeness to teachers. Manners at the table. Polite- ness to parents. Politeness to brothers and sisters. For Reference. — How to Teach Manners in the Schoolroom, by- Julia Dewey. Topics for Short Talks in the Fourth Grade. — Manners at home ; at school; at places of amusement. Minor rules of politeness : (Adapted from Miss Dewey's How to Teach Manners in School.) 1. When you pass directly in front of any one say " Excuse me." 2. Never fail to say " Thank you " (not " Thanks ") for the smallest favors. 3. When a schoolmate is reading, or is answering a question, do not raise your hand to correct a mistake until after he has finished. 4. Do not stare at visitors who enter the schoolroom. 5. When you stand to recite, stand erect like a well-bred gentleman or lady. 6. In handing a pointer, pen, or pencil, hand the blunt end towards the person to whom you wish to pass it. 7. It is impolite to chew gum or to eat in school. Fifth Year or Grade — Topics for Short Talks. — When you do a favor, do it cheerfully. A cheerful countenance is always welcome. Give up your seat to older people. Apologize to any one you have wronged. Do not bluntly contradict any one. Look persons in the eye when you speak to them. Whispering in company is impolite. Avoid the use of slang expressions. For Reference. — Gow's Primer of Politeness. Sixth to Eighth Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Rules of polite- ness in society. Politeness to strangers. Politeness in traveling. How to write notes of invitation and acceptance of invitations. How to introduce persons in a proper manner. CHAPTER XIII COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS It requires great tact and judgment to manage suc- cessfully a rural school in which the whole work is done by one teacher. In the graded schools of town and city the course of instruction is definitely laid down in printed manuals ; the work of each successive grade is directed by principal and superintendent ; the results are tested by written examinations ; and each class teacher is only a cog in a complicated system of wheels. But in the country school the teacher combines the function of as- sistant, principal, examiner, and superintendent. He is an autocrat, limited only by custom, precedent, and text- books. When we consider that about one half of the school children in our country receive their elementary education in rural schools, their importance as a part of our school system is obvious. Many of these schools in the sparsely- settled districts of some states are kept open only from three to six months in the year, and even then the at- tendance is irregular. The whole schooling of many children, from the age of five to fifteen, hardly amounts to five years of unbroken school attendance. For such pupils, what instruction will best fit children for their life duties ? What knowledge is of most worth to them ? The subject under consideration is so important that it seems to require special treatment by itself. As an axiom, we may safely take this statement of John Stuart Mill : 303 304 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS " The aim of all intellectual training for the mass of the people should be to cultivate common-sense." It is of the first importarice that pupils should be trained to speak, read, and write the English language. At fif- teen or sixteen years of age they should be able to read readily, to keep their conversation free from provin- cialisms in pronunciation, to write a letter in a neat and legible hand ; and they should have a taste for reading good literature. In arithmetic they should be trained to work examples in the '' four rules " ; to perform business operations in common and decimal fractions ; to reckon simple interest ; and to make out a bill, a receipt, and a promissory note ; and to keep simple accounts. Wise teachers will concen- trate their drill upon what the pupils most need. In geography they should acquire a general knowledge of our own country and of the world as a whole ; but it is not necessary that they should be compelled, term after term, and year after year, to memorize text-books. Present the subject in a natural way according to modern methods. Begin with a study of local geography from nature and proceed according to the methods presented in a previous chapter on geography in graded schools. The text-book study of grammar should be preceded by a course of elementary exercises in language les- sons, such as are found in the best modern text-books. Children cannot be trained to speak or write correctly by parsing according to Latinized formulas. They will never learn to construct a good sentence by analyzing complex or compound sentences, or by memorizing and repeating the rules of syntax, though this method be followed until they grow gray. Require, then, at least, one short composition exercise a week, upon subjects COMMON-SEySE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 305 about which the pupils have learned something. Let them write about farming, about animals, birds, fishes, flowers, trees. Read them short stories to be reproduced in writing. Require pupils over eight years of age to write at least one short letter a week, until they can write it in due form, punctuate it, capitalize it, spell correctly most of the words they use in it, fold it neatly, and direct it properly. After this preliminary work is well done, let the older pupils study grammar from a text-book, by taking up a few essential points in etymology, by learn- ing to apply a few important rules of syntax, by taking a little parsing and a minimum of plain sentence analysis without diagrams, and with as little as possible of the scholastic forms of logic in which the subject is often enveloped. Pupils should acquire a general knowledge of the lead- ing events in the history of our own country. Teachers should present the subject by means of oral lessons, which will include stories, anecdotes, incidents, and well- selected extracts. Narrative and biography constitute the life of history to the young. A text-book may be used to supplement this work. It will be one of the pleasantest of duties to awaken country children to the beauties of nature by which they are surrounded. It is here that teachers may do their best work, by drawing out of pupils all they know of the world around them, and by encouraging every effort to increase their knowledge. Country boys and girls generally have a considerable stock of crude knowledge about animals, plants, and the phenomena of every-day life. Draw out these fragmentary stores of facts, and supplement them by the facts of science. Set the girls to collecting and pressing plants and flowers. Let the AM. PUB. scH. — 20 3o6 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS boys bring in specimens of minerals, shells, woods, and grains for a school cabinet. Open their eyes to the beauty of the world in which they live. In the Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools (1897), Wilbur S. Jackman, of the Chicago Normal School, in a special paper on a course of study for rural schools, makes the following sug- gestions about nature study : " In the earlier years, especially, great attention should be given to the picturesqueness and natural beauty of the surroundings. Without trained and careful effort in this direction, the intensely practical char- acter of their contact with the various things about them will close the eyes of the children to many beautiful things that should be a source of joy and pleasure throughout life. Much out-door study should, therefore, be encouraged. The children should be familiar with every brook and waterfall ; \\ ith every cliff, wooded copse, and ravine." From personal experience I deeply realize the force of Mr. Jackman's suggestions. In my^ boyhood I attended a villaee school in one of the mountain towns of New Hampshire. From the schoolhouse door we could see, not two miles distant, a granite mountain which rose to the height of more than a thousand feet. Away in the distant western horizon Mt. Kearsarge rose still higher. At our feet, not a stone's-throw from the schoolhouse, there flowed the winding Suncook River, an important tributary of the Merrimac. But nature study was un- heard of when we boys went to school. None of us ever connected the mountains that we read about in the geog- raphy with the real mountains right before our eyes. We failed to assimilate the rivers traced in spider lines on the atlas with the clear-running stream in which we went a-swimming every day in the hot summer time. We boys never once thought of climbing to the summit of the mountain near by, though we could have reached it by a two hours' walk. No one of our teachers ever COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 307 thought of suggesting to us that it would be a good geog- raphy lesson to find out what we could see from that familiar mountain top. We were blind as bats to the beautiful panorama of nature spread out everywhere around us. No teacher ever once in all our lives called our attention to the mountain, or the river, or the ponds, or the farms, or the woods, or the beauty of the landscape. It was only after an absence of many years in California, that my eyes were opened to the wondrous summer beauty of my native town, a landscape of hill and mountain, farm and forest, unequaled by anything that I had seen in my distant wanderings. Then I climbed to the top of Cata- mount and looked out on the scenery that tourists travel hundreds of miles to behold. I brought away with me, as a special treasure, a piece of quartz delicately grooved and polished by the great glacial ice-mass that once moved over New England and sculptured the rough outlines of the varied landscape spread out in all its wondrous summer beauty. In the appendix to the report of the Committee of Twelve there is a paper on " The Farm as the Center of Interest," by Col. Francis W. Parker, of the Chicago Normal School, which so graphically and truthfully sets forth the field for nature study in the country school that it cannot fail to prove an inspiration to all who read it. Among other things he says : " Nowhere on earth has a child such advantages for elementary education as upon a good farm, where he is trained to love work and to put his brains into work. The statement of what a farm does for a boy in its general lines may easily be taken from the experience of a farm boy in New England, for instance. It is possible for me to give the story of such a one from actual experience — what he learned, what he studied, and what he acquired. As soon as he found himself upon the farm, at eight years of age, he began to study — to study in the best sense of that much-abused word. He began the study of geography — real geography. He observed with ever- increasing interest the hills, valleys, springs, swamps, and brooks upon 3o8 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS the old farm. The topography of the land was clear and distinct ; its divisions into fields, pastures, and forests were to him the commonest facts of experience. . . . He studies botany. All the kinds of grasses he knew — timothy, clover, red top, silver grass, pigeon grass ; how they were sown, how they came up, grew, were cut, cured, and fed to the cattle ; what kind of hay was best for sheep ; and what for oxen. He knew the trees, the maple with its sweet burden of spring, the hemlock, and the straight pine which he used to climb for crows' nests. He knew the wild animals, the squirrels, the rabbits, the wood- chucks ; the insects, the grasshoppers, and ants ; bugs- that scurried away when he lifted a stone. With the birds he was intimately acquainted. " He observed, investigated, and drew inferences, perfectly uncon- scious, to be sure, of what he was learning, or how he was learning ; but still, he learned, and he studied, and the best lesson of all was his personal reaction upon his environment. His plowing, hoeing, haying, digging, chopping, lumbering, his mending of sleds, and making of cider, sugar, lye, and soap were all so many practical lessons in life which exercised his body, stimulated his mind, and strengthened and developed his purpose in life. He lived to become a school teacher, and taught school earnestly and bunglingly for twenty years before he had even a suspicion of the value of his farm life and farm work." It is not necessary that you should teach ethics as a science. What pupils most need is that plain preceptive morahty which is diffused among the people as their daily rule of action. Your work here must be an outgrowth of your own life and character, observation and experience, combined with the best thoughts you can glean from books and society. It is desirable that pupils should know something about the laws of health in relation to diet, sleep, air, exercise, work, play, and rest. Teach the plain truth that sickness is the penalty of violated laws ; that bad habits are physical sins ; that poor health, unless hereditary, is the result of carelessness or ignorance. These things can be taught either with or without a text-book. COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 309 Teach drawing in a natural way by giving pupils a few hints, and then setting them at work in trying to draw from real objects, such as leaves, fruits, flowers, animals, birds, ships, boats, houses, and easy landscapes. There is a fine opportunity in the country school for allowing pupils to follow their individual bent. Allow a reason- able time for singing, recitals, dialogues, the reading of compositions, and other incidental exercises. The arrangement and length of recitations are matters of judgment to be modified according to conditions. When one class is reciting, set the others about some specific piece of work at their desks. The few advanced pupils ought not to monopolize your attention. Assign older pupils lessons to be learned at home ; for children who attend a school only a part of the year cannot easily be overtaxed with brain work. Train them to depend upon themselves, and to find out things by hard thinking. In recitations, explanations and illustrations must be con- densed, for time is limited. If there is a school library, make good use of it by recommending suitable books for pupils to read at home. Many a dull boy, lazy and listless over his lessons, has been made alive by books suited to his age and capacity. If you have tact, good-nature, and firmness, and know how to interest children in their work, you need not have much trouble about order, discipline, or government. Win the good will of the older pupils, and they will be- come your assistants in school government. On the morning of the first day, that crucial test of a teacher, introduce yourself by a few cheerful remarks, distribute slips of paper on which pupils are to write their names, age, class or grade, and studies ; and, having col- lected these, proceed at once to business by giving out a 3 TO APPLIED PEDAGOGICS sheet of paper to all who can use a pen, and require them to write a composition about their last vacation. This will keep them at work an hour at least, during which time you can attend to the little ones, and make out your rough program. The art of the first day is to keep pupils busy. You will avoid much mischief by getting every- body hard at work in ten minutes after school opens. If you know how to tell a good story, close school with one ; if not, read one from some book. The true economy of teaching in an ungraded school is to make the fewest possible number of classes, and to consider both age and capacity in making the classifica- tion. If the school is a large one, do not attempt to hear daily recitations in everything, but alternate the studies of the more advanced pupils. Economize time and in- struction by means of as many general exercises as possi- ble, in which all except the youngest pupils can join; such as drill exercises in the four rules of arithmetic, mental arithmetic exercises, the spelling of common words, short compositions, review questions on the leading facts of geography and history. Take an hour, weekly, for select readings, recitals, dialogues, and lessons on morals and manners. Occasionally give written examinations. In most city schools, written examinations are carried to extremes; but in most country schools there is not enough of writ- ten work to give readiness and exactness in the wTitten expression of thought. For a young teacher, whether man or woman, there is no better school of practice than a country school. Nor should the educational advantages of the rural school for pupils be underrated. In the long race of life, boys edu- cated in such schools often come out ahead of those COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 311 ground out by the graded machinery of city schools. During a part of the year country boys work on the farm, and get, not only muscular strength, but also a habit of ivork. They go back to school with a keen relish for study, and a habit of steady application. Hard work on his father's farm, from sunrise to sunset, hoeing corn, or haying, or digging potatoes, has made school-life seem a play spell to many a boy, and has laid the foundation of steady habits that have led to success in life. The trouble with many city boys is that they have no work to do out of school, and never learn what hard labor means until school-life is over. Herein lies the great advantage of the country school ; both boys and girls have a com- bination of mental and manual training. The morn- ing and evening "chores" on the farm, and in the house- hold, prevent undue mental application. Pupils are not surfeited with school and books ; school, indeed, is a relief from hard labor. Many a man has reason to be thankful that he was trained to habits of farm work in his boyhood, and was sent to a country school, where he was not crammed to repletion, nor worried with credits, nor made wretched with competitive written examinations. In this connection, I cannot forbear quoting the following extract from the concluding paragraph of Col. Parker's paper in the appendix to the Report of the Committee of Twelve : " No method, no system of schools, no enrichment of courses of study, not even the most successful of teachers, can ever take the place in fundamental education of the farm and the workshop. No matter how good the city schools may be, or may be made ; no matter how good the state of society may be, the vital reinforcements of city life that lead to progress and prosperity, so far as we 312 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS can see, must always come from the sturdy stock of the farm. This fact, upon which most educators agree, puts upon the country school an immense responsibility. When skill, expertness, and insight control the methods of country schools ; when excellent teachers remain in the same schools year after year, the already powerful influence of country life upon the destinies of the nation will be mightily enhanced." Finally, perhaps the greatest service I can render student- teachers who are looking forward to a country school, is to call special attention to the Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools. This report of 227 pages is one of the most notable educational documents ever published in this country. In it the young student of pedagogics will find a detailed course of study, a report on Instruc- tion and Discipline ; a report on program ; an enrich- ment of Rural School Courses ; a Course of Study for Rural Schools, by Wilbur S. Jackman ; the Farm as a Center of Interest, by Colonel Parker ; the Country School Problem, by Dr. Emerson E. White. INDEX. Academies, Age of, 64; endowed academies, 65; Phillips-Andover Academy, ']'] ; Phillips-Exeter Academy, 64, 'j'j. Agricultural Colleges, 85-90; Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, 55. Alaska, Schools in, in. American Institute of Instruction, 78. Animal Life, Study of, 281, 282. Appleton's Readers, 140. Arithmetic, Methods and text-books in, 141-146, 191-194, 240-258, 304; Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic, 122. Armstrong, S. C, and the Hampton Institute, 99. Athletics, 288. Bailey, L. H., quoted, 280. Baldwin's Readers, 141, 208, 215. Baltimore, Schools of, 59, 116. Barnard, Henry, 71. Barnes, Earl, 121, 184, 290. Benton, Thomas H., 62. Berkeley, Governor, of Virginia, 29. Bible, The, 135, 292, 295. Bookkeeping, 253. Books for children, 160-163, 215, 261, 263, 284, 294. Books for school libraries, 263, 264, 265, 285, 301, 309. Books for teachers, 158-160, 170, 200-205, 263, 270, 285, 312. See Text-books. Boston, Schools in, 8, 12, 47, 56, 74, in, 130. Branches of Instruction, 118-120. Brown's (Gould) Grammars, 150. Calhoun, J. C, 62. California, Education in, loi-iio; high schools, 82. Chicago, Schools in, 115. ^14 INDEX Child Study. 183. Children, Books for, 160-163, 215, 261, 263, 284, 294. Chinese Classics, 134. Civil War, The, 71 ; public schools after the, 93-117. Class-room management, Suggestions on, 179-187. Clay, Henry, 63. Clinton, George, 50. Colburn's Arithmetic, 145. College of the City of New York, 52. College of William and Mary, 29, 58. Colleges, Colonial, 80. See Universities ; agricultural colleges, 85-90; Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, 55. Colonial Schools, 7, 36, 118, 141; colonial newspapers, 162; school laws, 22, 23, 26, 29. See Legislation. Colored Schools, 97, 98, 99. Columbia University, 25, 83. Composition-writing, 'j'], 237. Connecticut, Early schools in, 49. Conservatism and Progress, 127. Copy Books, 119, 218. See Writing, Cornell University, 83, 86. Correlation in Reading Lessons, 217. Country Schools, 303-312. See Rural Schools. Courses of Study, in high schools, 76. Credits and checks, 188. Curry, J. L. M., quoted, 94, 96. Dame Schools, 20. Dedham, Mass., Early Schools in, 10. Defining, 224. De Garmo, Charles, quoted, 128, 239, 267, 271, 275, 296. Development Method, 195-198. Dewey, John, quoted, 213, 214, 221. Discipline, 120, 175, 177. ^^^ Management in School Government District Schools, 66, 122. See Rural Schools. Dorchester, Mass., Early Schools in, 10. Drawing, Methods of Teaching, 119, 225-228, 309. Dummer Academy, 65. Dutch Colonial Schools, 24, 51. INDEX 315 Dvvight's Geography, 154. Early American schools, 34-72, 118. Eaton, John, quoted, 94. Economy, True, in educational affairs, 168. Elective Courses of Study, 58, 83, 127. Eliot, Charles W., quoted, 84, 182, 186, 213, 257, 277, 284. Emerson, George B., 74. Endowed State Universities, 80. "English Reader," Murray's, 139. Enrollment in public schools of the United States, 164 ; in high schools, 75 ; in normal schools, 79. Examinations, 186, 276, 310. Farm, The, as a center of interest, 307 ; education of farmer's chil- dren, 66. Federal Aid for higher education, 89. First day of school, The, 174, 309. Fractions, Teaching, 191, 242, 247. See Arithmetic. Franklin, Benjamin, 28, 68. Freedman's Bureau, The, 94. Friends' schools, 28, 61. Froebel, and the kindergarten, 125. ' . Games and plays, 289. Geography, Early text-books in, 153-158; methods of teaching, 269- 277, 283, 304; Redway and Hinman's geographies, 158, 271, 285. Georgia, Early schools in, 60. Girard College, 57. Girls, Education of, 21, 60, 74; first academy for, 65. Grammar schools. Early colonial, 8, 10. Grammar, Text-books and methods in, 138, 146-153, 194-196, 304. Grant, U. S., 72. Greeley, Horace, (i"]. Grube Method in arithmetic, 240. Guyot's Geography, 158. Gymnastics, 287. Hadley, Mass., Early schools in, 21. Hall, G. Stanley, quoted, 178, 286. ■5 1 6 INDEX Hall, Samuel R., ']']. Hampton, Va., Normal Institute, 99. Hanus, Paul H,, quoted, 76, 123, 252. Harris, W. T., quoted, 61, 70, 90, 112, 213, 300. Harrison, William Henry, 40, 63. Harvard University, 8, 83. Herbart Society, The, and Herbartian methods, 115, 221, 227, 296. Higher Public Education, 73-92; in the South, 98-100. Historical Records of Common Schools, 18. History, Text-books and methods 259-268; in rural schools, 304. Home education, 66. Hornbook, The, 130, 131. Imperfections in school system, 167. Improvements, Modern, in methods, of instruction, 124, 166. Industrial education, 85-90. Instruction, Branches and methods of, 118. 124. See Methods. Inventions, Early, and their influence on education, 35. JaCKMAN, Wilbur S., quoted, 284, 306. Jackson, Andrew, 62. James, William, quoted, 196, 291. Jefferson, Thomas, 30, 36, 58, 63. Johnson, Richard Malcolm, 60. Jordan, David Starr, quoted, 92, 299. Kephart, Horace, quoted, 32, 53. Kindergartens, 125, 297. Kirkham's Grammar, 1 50. Lancastrian schools in colonial times, 52, 55, 59. Land Grants, 85 ; Land Reservations for Schools, 37, 39, 80. Language lessons, 1 52, 232-236. See Grammar. Legislation, School, in the colonies, 22 ; in Ohio, 43 ; in Massachusetts, 44; in New York, 46, 50, 113; in Connecticut, 50; in New Jersey, 53 ; in Pennsylvania, 53 ; in Virginia, 58 ; in South Caro- lina, 59; in North Carolina, 61 ; in California, 102, 104, 107. Letter-writing, 233. Libraries, School, Books for, 263, 264, 265, 285, 301, 309. Lincoln, Abraham, 63, 71, 86, 294. INDEX 317 Literature in connection with American history, 266. Lukens, H. T., quoted, 221, 227. Lyon, Mary, 65, 68. Lyte's Grammars, 239. McAllister, James, 57. McGuffey's Readers, 140. McMurry, C. A., quoted, 183. 195, 198, 296. Management in School Government, 120, 173-178, 309; in class- room, 179-187 ; in r.ural schools, 303-312. Manhattan, Schools in, 23, 51, 56, 113. Mann, Horace, 70, 74. Manners and morals, 292-302. Manual Training, 289. Map drawing, 272. Marietta, Ohio, 43. Martin, G. H., quoted, 65, 71. 79. 141, 295. Massachusetts, Schools in, 8, 23, 45, 46, 73, 75, 112. Mayo, A. D., quoted, 60, 93, 97, 165. Methods and text-books : Reading, 130-141,207-212; spelling, 135- 137, 207, 210, 222-225 ' writing, 119, 206, 218; arithmetic, 141- 146, 191-194, 240-258 ; grammar, 138, 146-153, 194-196, 230-239; geography, 153-158, 269-277, 283; drawing, 225-228; music, 228; history, 259-268; general methods, 180-184, 188-191. Military Academy at West Point, 91. Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 184, 304. Morals and manners, 292-302. Morse's Geography, 1 54- 1 57. Mount Holyoke Seminary, 65. Mountain States, Education in the, no. Muir, John, 121. Murray, Lindley, 139, 146. . Music, Vocal, 228. Mythology, Excess of in lower grades. 214. National Schools, 90; a national university. 91. Natural Geographies, The, by Redway and Hinman, 158, 285. Natural methods in teaching geography, 269-277. Nature Studies, 278-285, 305. •5 1 8 INDEX Naval Academy at Annapolis. 91. Negroes, Education of. 96-100. New England, Education in, 7-23, 44, 64, in; colonial school laws in, 22 ; normal schools in, 78. New Jersey, Early schools in, 53. Newspapers, Colonial, 162. New York, College of the City of, 52. New York, Schools in, 23,46, 49, 56,71, 111-114; normal schools in, -JT. Normal Schools, 77-80, 83, 108; public normal schools, 78; statistics of, 79 ; private normal schools, 80 ; state normal schools in Cali- fornia, 108. North Carolina, Schools of, 60. North Central States, Education in, 114-116. Northwest Territory, 37; ordinance of 1787, 38; land system, 39; schools in, 43, 71, 80, 114. Ohio, First permanent settlement in, 42 ; early schools in, 43. Ordinance of 1787, for Northwest Territory, 38, Oregon, Schools in, no. Outlook, Educational, 164-170. Pacific States, Education in, loi-iii ; state legislation in California, 102, 104, 105 ; school beginnings, 102 ; parochial schools in San Francisco, 105 ; normal schools, 108 ; state publication of text- books, 109; the mountain states, no. Parish schools, 27, 49. Parker, Francis W., quoted, 230, 245, 251. 277, 307, 311. Peabody, George, 94 ; Peabody Educational Fund, 95. Pedagogics, Applied, 204; books on, 158-160, 170, 200-205. Pedagogy, Departments of, in state universities, 83. See Norinal Schools. Penn, William, 26. Pennsylvania, Schools in, 26, 46, 53, in. Periodicals, Educational, 78. Philadelphia, Schools in, 55, 57, 113. Phillips-Andover Academy, 64. "j"] ; Phillips-Exeter Academy, 64. Physical Culture, Modern Views on, 286-291. Physical Geography, 283. INDEX 319 Physics, 283. Physiology and Hygiene, 282. Pike's Arithmetic, 142-145. Plants, Studies of, 280, 281, 282. Plymouth Colony, Schools in, 7, 17, 18, 22. Politeness, Lessons in, 301. Practical value of common schools, 67. "Primer, The New England," 62, 131-134. Princeton, University of, 53. Program, 187, 310. Promotions, 185, 276. Psychology, 202; psychological principles, 221. Public School Society. The, 52. Punishments in school government, 120, 161, 177. Puritans, Schools and educational ideas of the, 8, 30. Quakers, Schools and education among the, 26, 28, 61. Question and Answer, 180. Reading, Methods and text-books in, 130-141, 207, 208-212, 215- 217, 304. Reading and Study. Professional, 158-160, 199-205, 312. Recitations, 121, 180, 188-198, 309. Records, Historical, of common schools, 18; of grammar schools, 10. Reform, Educational, 256. Revolutionary War, Effects of, on Education, 31, 34. Rural Schools in colonial times, 15 ; in the South, 61 ; in New Eng- land, 15, 66; common-sense applied to, 303-312. St. Louis, Schools in, 115, 126. Salaries, Teachers', 120. Salem, Mass., Early schools in, 13, 21. San Francisco, History of schools in 102-105, 124. Schlee, E., quoted, 190. School committee, 11. " School Keeping, Lectures on," Hall's, 'j'j. Science, Natural, and geography, 276. Scotch-Irish, The, in America, 27, 33, 50, 58, 59, 6r. Secondary and higher public education, 73-92, Sherman, Roger, 68. Slater Fund, The John F., 96, 320 INDEX South Carolina, Schools in, 59. Southern States, Education in, $8, 93-101, 116. SpelHng Books, 118, 135-137. Spelling, Methods of teaching, 135-137, 207, 210, 304. Spencer, Herbert, quoted. 293. State control of schools, 37; state public universities, 80 ; state normal schools, 79 ; state agricultural colleges, 86. Stevens, Thaddeus, 54. Study, Courses of, 1 18-120, 123-129; habits of, 181-183, 310. Supplementary Reading, 208, 212, 215, 261, 263, 264, 266, 284. Swinton's Readers, 141 ; Grammar and Language Lessons, 153. Tabor, F. H., quoted, 289. Taxation for Support of Schools : In the South, 100 ; in California, 107. Text-books, State publication of, 109; studies on, 130-163; use ot, 189-197. See Methods and Text-books, Tompkins, Arnold, quoted, 181, 187. Township, Congressional, Division of, 40. Training Schools, JJ, 81. See No7'7nal Schools, Tuskegee, Normal Institute, 99. Ungraded schools, 303-312. Universities, State, 80-85, 108. University, A National, 91; California, 82, I08 ; Columbia, 25, 83; Cornell, 83, 86 ; Harvard, 8, 83 ; Michigan, 82 ; Princeton, 53 ; Purdue, 87 ; Texas, 82 ; Yale, 83. Virginia, Schools in, 29. 58. Vocal music as a means of culture, 228. Washington, Booker, T., 100. Washington, D. C, Schools in, 116. Washington, George, 29, 30, 63, 92. Webster, Daniel, 68. Webster, Noah, 118, 135, 137, 140, 148. West Point, Military Academy, 91. White, E. E., quoted, 186. Willard, Emma H., 65. William and Mary, College of, 29, 58. Willson's Readers, 140. Writing, 206, 2 1 S.J S^ Co^y Books. Yale Universit^^/ ' **^