of our schools prevents that close, personal contact of the teacher which is so necessary when old, deep-rooted ideas are to be modified or made to give way to new ones, and his way into the new language has to be learned from his companions of school and street.

Before we dismiss the boy a word must be said about his capacity for receiving, his capability for learning new things. As I have already suggested, one of the most astonishing things in educational discussions, in courses of study, in the increased requirements for college, is the bland way in which the real boy has been unconsidered. He has been talked about and work has been set for him as if he were nothing less than a Milton or a Macaulay. How successfully he repudiates the assumption is a matter of everyday experience in school, and of all who may rejoice over this repudiation none ought to do it more freely than his teachers. I have great faith in the average boy as he is, and believe him capable of learning, usefully, many important things, both of those which the school now offers him, and others at which he has never had a fair chance. But not to recognize the fact that there are some things he can never learn beyond a certain degree of excellence, and some, perhaps, not at all, is both to close the eyes of one's common sense and to do the boy himself the greatest injustice; one of the worst forms of which is to shut him out from those things he might do excellently well and keep him at those he can never hope to do better than indifferently well.

In the latter class, language as language certainly belongs, as the fact that so few learn it with any great degree of proficiency bears witness. But study the English he must, for it is his only instrument of expression and social intercourse, his workaday tool; and within the range of his needs and his powers he is able to learn it with respectability of varying degrees. If the needs and limitations of the average boy are fully recognized and carefully kept in mind the task of teaching him his English with propriety ought to be little more than a matter of good sense coupled with some skill and experience. But to try to make him use a tongue quite out of his own world, and quite apart from any need he is ever likely to have

for it, is easily seen to be foolish, and to teach him as if the only end to be sought were to make of him a writer, lacks even the slightest grain of good sense. Further, the boy's English ought to be expected to suit itself only to the growing enlargement of his world, that is, when he is through the grammar school his English ought to be better than when he entered it; the high school may reasonably be expected to speed him still farther along the good way; and when he graduates from college, his language ought to begin to be that of an educated

man.

The task of school and college is then, not at all to make a finished product of the boy in his English, but to start him in the right direction; to assist him to make his own speech better and more careful; to make him sensible not so much of his errors as of his possibilities and obligations in the use of good English; and to induce him, by any and all means, to become familiar with the great masters of the language, not as models to be imitated but as wells of English undefiled to be drawn from unceasingly.

In conclusion, I reassert my contention, that whatever criticism may be made of the English which the boy of the school and college writes and speaks it is, all things considered, as good as anybody has a right to expect. I believe, most decidedly, it is capable of further improvement if the improvement be sought in the direction of good sense and a clearer realization of what real improvement means. As one of those in the line along which the boy is passing, I have no apology to offer for his English or for anything else he offers to the world, for however far he may fall short of what we should desire him to be, he is the best there is. And I wish to enter an emphatic protest against that sort of criticism of the school and college boy which does not take into serious consideration all the elements of the case, a criticism as unfair as it is ignorant.

The Worth of Music in Education

M

LUTHER L. FENTRESS, NEW YORK, N. Y.

R. AUSTIN BIERBOWER'S article in the February number of EDUCATION, will seem so conclusive to any one accepting his analogous way of treatment, that it seems opportune to supplant some of his views by others from a higher viewpoint. His man, eating beefsteak, is, I presume, supplying some imperative need of the physical body; while the habit of listening to music, he says, is cultivated mainly because it furnishes entertainment. His analogy is that they are alike in kind. I suppose a man may eat a beefsteak for entertainment, but I do not know any such men. If there are such men I believe the number to be so small that the example is hardly a fair one.

Music is not essential to the sustenance of the physical body; but to follow the weave of a story through music, which expresses an emotion that is characteristic of that being or situation with which it deals, leaves our thought wholly dependent on that current of feeling; and feelings are quite necessary to the life of our thoughts.

Music has its ethics, and if we but look for them we can find them, different natures differing in degrees. To many its ethics are vague, very vague, and only the extremes of anger and pathos may be known, but because one does not more fully understand the language is no reason for its discontinuance; unfamiliarity with music's meaning does not make it to be wholly coarse. That it should be misinterpreted indicates neither that the public should desist from active interest in it, nor that there is no hope for them to more fully interpret its meaning later. To eliminate music from our midst may mean the cutting out of much that the future otherwise has in store for us. One cannot know just what chord in one's nature is to be struck that will be of influence in the shaping of character. We cannot afford to eliminate anything that benefits us.

The

welfare of each man depends to a great extent on sympathy, and what medium can one call to mind which more fully promotes sympathy than music? Sympathy is begotten within the soul as we successfully repress the antagonistic elements; while simultaneously the social elements develop, of which sympathy is a great factor. None need the quality of sympathy more than those active in educational pursuits.

That music "requires a receptive state instead of active” needs some modification. Much of the music we have to-day has the educative qualities of stimulating thought. That it has not for its theme the discovery of that planet that it appears must be nearer the sun than Mercury is quite true; its activities are more introspective. Within most of us there exists a capacity of being affected by music which produces intense delights, emotions. We become sharers of happiness with others through its harmonies and melodies. Consider briefly Beethoven's Symphony in C minor: how it stimulates us to thought as it pictures a struggle with Fate-indicating at different periods the Hopes and Despairs that play the part so strongly, until finally through these alternating conflicts triumph succeeds. All this is pictured in tones of expression strongly emotional. Emotional-yes-but its plane is high, its passion is strong; it is too strong to dally with any coarse thought. There is no loss of control, or of petty passions between lovers. It is sublime (as only music can reach sublimity) and not coarse. Its peculiar quality of augmenting introspection carries one at times away from the commonplace and suggests the infinite in emotion. With this symphony one's own physical person plays no active part in the struggle; he is absorbed through the play of his imagination in the herculean struggle of desire and effort to combat those forces in collusion against him. Success is within sight and it is now to be realized. As we know the emotional language of music then can we weave into it the products of our own imagination more fittingly. Then will we find that we have in music a vehicle carrying us to the highest points of emotion, permitting us to look beyond and into another realm. To predicate coarseness to its meaning is a reflection upon the individual, and this mis

interpretation prevents the following of its intent in creation. Those whose thoughts are coarse and sensual will naturally seek for a meaning reflecting their own natures. Thought naturally follows the channel grooved by previous workings, and which it now follows with the least resistance; but with another music accelerates new thought. A young scholar is credited with saying, "It (music) brightens my other studies and makes me happy." With this child it had stimulated to pursuit of the highest. Thoughts are aroused that lead to great interest in things before dormant, urging on to experience. Education is the result of experiences, and no matter is learned more quickly than one in which our interest is first aroused. To study that in which no interest is had-how hopeless is the task!

To follow music to excess is hurtful, as is the following of anything to excess. It will dwarf the other qualities, those which under better circumstances would have been favored. But we cannot urge the individual to throw off music in so light a manner. The individual must determine when it interferes with duties and its mark of hurt is becoming evident; but we cannot generalize that we are always by it "relaxing our forces." It does not seem that the receptive state supersedes the active. One is receptive when reading; he must allow the writing to make its meaning clear, but the conditions, receptivity and activity are meanwhile steadily alternating.

Music is the product of civilization. Our sciences, philosophies and other enterprises had a start not dissimilar to the savage's music; though we do not call the savage sounds by the name of music, nor do we call the common beginnings of sciences and philosophies by the names we now apply to them, but each have acted on one another and are not independent. Music from its reaction on language has made language more expressive, nor is its teaching yet at an end. The majority of us lose the middle ground of music's meaning, but this does not signify its omission. We need to know it more and have it react further on our voices and language.

Our duties are done just to the extent of our abilities; let us study more the best things in life to the extent of our abilities;