much part company. They are beginning to differ in every cell and tissue, and girls for a time need some exemption from competition. They have more power than boys to draw upon their capital of physical energy and to take out of their system more than it can afford to lose, for the individuals of one generation can consume more than their share of vigor at the expense of posterity. In soul and body girls are more conservative; males vary, differentiate, and are more radical. Reproduction requires a far larger proportion of body and function in females. Now the leaders of the new education for girls recommend training them for selfsupport, assuming that if wifehood and motherhood come those who have received such a training can best take care of themselves. This assumption is radically wrong and vicious, and should be reversed. Every girl should be educated primarily to become a wife and mother, and, if this is done wisely and broadly, the small minority who remain single will with this training be best able to care for themselves.

The teacher must teach more, and know more; he must be a living fountain, not a stagnant pool. He should not be a dealer in desiccated, second-hand knowledge, a mere giver-out and hearer of lessons. That is the chief and humiliating difference between our secondary teachers and those abroad, who are mostly Doctors of Philosophy, as they should be. If we could move many university professors to the college, many college professors to the high school, many high school teachers to the grammar school, and some grammar school teachers. with at least a sprinkling of college graduates, into the kindergarten, it would do much. In the German and French schools, the teacher is one who knows a great deal about his subject and is nearer to original sources; who tells the great truths of the sciences almost like stories; and who does not affect the airs and methods of the university professor. Very many secondary teachers are masters and authorities. Here, most of our university pedagogy is a mere device for so influencing high school principals and teachers as to correlate curricula, in order to corral in students, and little interest is taken in the grammar grades, and none in the kindergarten.

I have spoken frankly, and have dealt only with general principles over a vast field, far too large to be adequately discussed here. I have carefully avoided all details, although I have fully worked them out on paper at great length, for each topic to the close of the high school period or the age of nineteen, when physical growth is essentially completed. This material will soon appear in a volume. The chief petition in my daily prayer now is for a millionaire. With the means at hand, I have no shadow of doubt or fear but that in five years from the date of any adequate gift, we shall be able to invite all interested to a system of education, covering this ground, which will be a practical realization of much present prohpecy, and which will commend itself even to the most conservative defender of things as they are and have been, because the best things established will be in it. But it will be essentially pedocentric rather than scholiocentric; it may be a little like the Reformation which insisted that the Sabbath, the Bible and the Church were made for man, and not he for them; it will fit both the practices and the results of modern science and psychological study; it will make religion and morals more effective and, perhaps, above all, it will give individuality in the school its full rights as befits a republican form of government, and will contribute something to bring the race to the higher maturity of the superman that is to be, effectiveness in developing which is the highest and final test of art, science, religion, home, state, literature, and every human institution.

CO-OPERATION.

Every life is meant to help all lives; each man should live for all men's betterment.-Alice Cary.

To take life as God gives it, not as we want it," and then make the best of it is, the hard lesson that life puts before the human soul to learn. Vun Dyke.

I can hardly believe that it is worth while to correct, as you request. the false impression created by the sensational report of my speech at the University of California. The average teacher is too intelligent a person to be misled by statements which are obviously colored to suit the modern reportorial taste and too tolerant to pass judgment on catch phrases apart from all explanatory connections. My purpose was to define the limitations of the teaching profession, and to suggest the teacher's part in overcoming them. That there are limitations every teacher knows full well. The general reader of the day's news, however, may not be aware of the difficulties which the teacher daily encounters, and of his heroic struggles to better bis condition. Small thanks he gets for his striving, too, notwithstanding that every step taken to better the teacher's condition tends to improve public education-confessedly the only sufficient safeguard of American democracy.

The teacher has no voice in determining directly the standards of admission to his own profession. He takes no part in the selection of administrative or supervisory officers. His advice is seldom asked and still more seldom followed in matters pertaining to the organization of the school system. His tenure of office is, as a rule, uncertain and his remuneration absurdly inadequate. What other learned profession trusts so implicitly those outside its own ranks? What profession so dependent upon others for its professional standards and professional conduct?

The usual explanation is that these evils inhere in the nature of public services performed by the teacher, but this explanation does not explain the failure to extend civil service principles to the administration of school affairs. The average teacher in the United States holds office during the pleasure of an autocratic board. His position is too often considered the legitimate spoils of the petty politician. What wonder that he cringes before the ward boss, and submits to indignities against which his better nature revolts? Moreover, the teacher's work does not encourage self-assertion and combativeness. The teacher's energies, perforce, are directed to helping others, and the true teacher finds his greatest pleasure in the success of his pupils. To this extent teaching tends to make the teacher narrow and unfitted to cope successfully with those who would use his position for personal or partisan ends. The lawyer finds himself opposed by his equal in all his professional work; the physician gets the benefit of special criticism and advice in critical cases; the clergyman addresses adults from an open platform; the engineer does his work in the sight of all men. The teacher, on the contrary, works behind closed doors; he lacks the criticism which quickens and inspires; he is isolated professionally in a way not incident to other professions.

No one realizes more keenly the limitations of his profession than the teacher himself. He knows, too, better than any one else, how unfitted he is for his work simply because he sees more clearly the magnitude of the task. The desire for personal advancement or intellectual enjoyment is not, I venture to say, the chief motive that leads thousands of teachers to attend summer schools at an expense of one-tenth to one-fifth of their entire annual income. And if to these be added other thousands and tens of thousands who engage in serious academic and professional study during the school year we have a great army who give tangible evidence of their desire to improve the quality of their teaching by adding to their own qualifications as teachers. And altho close application to any vocation tends to make a person narrow, and over-valuation of personal worth tends to bigotry - tendencies perhaps more favored in teaching than in other learned professions- there is no class in society which can more confidently point to a record of self-denying service. It is, indeed, self-denying almost to the point of professional aunihilation, but in proportion as the teacher honestly devotes himself to the good of others and assiduously strives to increase his professional efficiency will the public come to recognize the worth and dignity of teaching and eventually to respect and defend the teaching profession.-New York Commercial Advertiser.

FATE.

Fate, Fate, Oh! Fate

Thou hast woven for me

A thread in thy mitten for Time;

I am sitting alone in the world of dread,

Awaiting the fate that thou hast made mine.

-Morris Wagner.

Official.

STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

H. T. GAGE, President of the Board

THOMAS J KIRK, Secretary of the Board.

BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER.

Governor, Sacramento. .Superintendent Public Instruction, Sacramento. President University of California, Berkeley.

FLETCHER B. DRESSLAR, Prof. of Theory and Practice of Education, University of Cal., Berkeley.

MORRIS ELMER DAILEY.

C. C. VAN LIEW

E. T. PIERCE..

SAMUEL T. BLACK

FREDERIC BURK...

. President State Normal School. San Jose. .President State Normal School, Los Angeles.

. President State Normal School, Chico. President State Normal School, San Diego. President State Normal School, San Francisco.

OFFICIAL OPINIONS.

Accredited Normal Schools and Life Diplomas.

County Boards of Education, under Section 1775 of the Political Code, as amended at the last session of the Legislature, may grant grammar school certificates without examination only upon Normal School diplomas of other States which the State Board of Education may have designated as equal in rank to the State Normal Schools of California, and only upon such life diplomas and life certificates of other States as the State Board has determined represent experience and scholarship equivalent to that required for the grammar school life diploma of California.

A list of accredited Normal Schools and State life diplomas will be given as soon as the State Board takes action on the 14th instant upon the various applications now before it.

Disturbing the Peace of a School.

If a person goes upon the school playground during an intermission or before school is called in the morning and disturbs the peace of the school by slapping one of the children he commits a misdemeanor and is subject to a fine of not less than ten nor more than one hundred dollars, as provided in Section 1868 of the Political Code. This penalty at least may be inflicted upon the offender. Upon the extent of injury done to the child would depend the nature of the greater offense and the greater punishment that might be inflicted. The children while in school, on the playground and on the road to and from school, are under the authority of the teacher and the teacher would be the proper party to invoke the law in case of disturbance of the peace of the school in the manner above mentioned.

Only graduates of Normal Schools of other States which shall have been designated as of equal rank with the State Normal Schools of California may be certificated by Superintendents or County Boards of Education in this State. Some Normal Schools will doubtless be accredited by

the State Board at the meeting to be held on the 14th inst., and announcement of such will be made as soon thereafter as possible.

* **

Only life diplomas or life certificates of other States which the State Board of Education of California shall have determined represent scholarship, and experience equivalent to the requirements for the grammar school life diploma of California will entitle the holder to the grammar school certificate.

Action upon a few applications for accrediting of life diplomas and life certifications will probably be taken at the meeting of the State Board on the 14th inst.

By the provisions of Section 1772, Subdivision 2, of the Political Code, Special Certificates are restricted to drawing, music, physical culture, commercial, technical and industrial work. County Boards of Education cannot legally grant a special certificate to teach English, German or French.

By the Political Code, Section 1662, "Every school, unless otherwise provided by law, must be open for the admission of all children between the ages of six and twenty-one years."

The same section stipulates that trustees shall have power to exclude from school children of filthy or vicious habits and children that are suffering from contagious or infectious diseases.

No provision is made for excluding simple-minded children from school, but provision is made by the State for the care of the feeble-minded. Neither school trustees nor teachers should assume to pass upon the conditions of the minds of children for the purpose of determining whether they should be admitted to school. This requires expert knowledge of mental derangement. A child may be simple in a certain sense from too rapid growth. Later the same child may recover and astonish teacher, trustees and parents by aptness of mind. A child of singular and apparently weak mind may greatly improve by association with other children. Teachers and school officials should be exceedingly careful and guarded about whom they exclude from the public schools. The public school is the great training place, sacred and free to all classes of people.

* **

A rule of the State Board of Education, standing since 1895, requires that the certificate of an applicant upon which a life diploma is asked must at the time of making the application be in full force and effect, and that it must have been held by the applicant at least one year.

My interpretation of 2 (b) (1) of Section 1775 is that diplomas heretofore granted by the San Francisco Normal School are credentials upon which County Boards of Education may issue grammar school certificates without examination and without the accrediting of said San Francisco Normal School by the State Board of Education. I am sure it was the intention of the framers of the bill which amended Section 1775 at the last

session of the Legislature to place San Francisco City Normal School diplomas in the same class as California State Normal School diplomas, and that the provision for the State Board of Education to recommend and accredit Normal Schools referred to other Normal School diplomas". Normal Schools outside of the State.

66

To School Superintendents and Boards of Education.

The action of the State Board of Education in selecting the copyrighted matter of McMaster's School History to comprise the main part of the text of a new series State history, which was undertaken to be compiled and which it was hoped soon to have published, seems to have led some county boards to conclude that McMaster's School History could be designated in the course of study as the text-book on that subject.

It hardly appears necessary for me to call the attention of a school official to the error of such a conclusion. The law regarding the use of the State series of text-books has not been repealed nor changed. No grammar school history except that of the State series can lawfully be required to be purchased by parents or pupils, nor can any other be used except as supplementary to the State book, and boards of education should be careful not to disregard the law by naming in their courses of study or instructions to teachers and schools any other book as the regular text; and if such has been done under misapprehension steps should at once be taken to make proper correction.

The outlook for publishing or securing new books of the State series until further legislation upon the subject is not encouraging at this time, but until new books are published and the announcement is officially made that they are ready for use and may be lawfully introduced in the public schools, school authorities should not anticipate changes, or jeopardize the school interests of their county or district by disregarding the law.