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The Riverside School Library

50 Volumes, bound in half leather at 50, 60 and 70 cents Containing the best literature which has stood the test of the World's best judgment. With Portraits, Biographical Sketches and the necessary Notes and Glossaries. The list chosen with the advice of the most prominent Educators of this country.

Descriptive Circular, giving the table of Contents and price of each volume of the Riverside School Library, will be sent on application.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,

4 Park Street, Boston; 11 East Seventeenth Street, New York; 378-388 Wabash Avenue, Chicago.

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New School Readers. STEPPING STONES TO LITERATURE

By Sarah Louise Arnold, Supervisor of Schools, Bos ton, Mass., and Charles B. Gilbert, Superintendent of Schools, Newark, N. J.

Eight Readers-one for each grade; beautifully illustrated, of the highest literary quality from the first to the last grade.

This series of Readers may justly be said to signalize a new era in school reading books, both from the excep tional character of the text and the number and beauty of its illustrations. Five volumes are now ready.

A First Reader. 128 pages. Over 130 beautiful illustrations, including 8 color pages. 32 cents.

A Second Reader. 160 pages. Over 100 illustrations, including 8 beautiful color pages. 40 cents.

A Third Reader. 224 pages. Beautifully illustrated with reproductions of masterpieces, portraits of authors, etc. 50 cents.

A Fourth Reader. 320 pages. Beautifully illus trated with reproductions of masterpieces, portraits of authors, etc. 60 cents.

A Reader for Fifth Grades. 320 pages with 70 beautiful illustrations. 60 cents.

Single copy for examination sent to any teacher on receipt of price.

"Your Readers surpass all others in attractiveness and typographical effect, and, above all, in the reading matter, and its arrangement to grades."-W. A. FRASIER, Superintendent Schools, Rutland, Vt.

Adopted in New York, Brooklyn, Boston,
Chicago, Baltimore, Bunalo, counties
of Sauta Caa and Napa, Cal., the
State of Ohio, etc., etc.

SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY.

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But

Such a methods paper as the Teachers World is a necessity to every wide-awake, conscientious teacher. The dollar it costs is no measure ofits real value to you. you also need a home paper to keep in touch with local and state educational events, and for that purpose (not forgetting the additional material it contains) there is nothing better than the Western Journal of Education to supplement your methods paper. BOTH PAPERS ONE YEAR, $1.25. Leaders in their respective classes, you will find in them everything you need in your work, and much more than you might get elsewhere.

Send $1.25 to the WESTERN JOURNAL OF EDU CATION, 723 Market Street, San Francisco, and both papers will be mailed to you for one year.

To save $1.25 and miss the helpfulness of such a combination

is mistaken economy.

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The past month has been characterized by school scandals and school fights" in a degree that is appalling. Kansas City led off with an attack on Greenwood, the President of the N. E. A; then Chicago followed with an agitation on teachers' salaries that stirred the entire city; then San Francisco's exposé of methods of selection of teachers, and the indictment of one of the principal members of the Board for asking a bribe; then Los Angeles with charge and counter-charge of boodle methods in its Board of Education; then Seattle followed in its fight with Supt. Barnard, and even Eureka has made its fight on Supt. P. M. Condit. These fights are connected with our system of education, but are usually due to a lack of the right kind of education. The men who indulge in the scandals of school boards have not yet learned the lessons of life, although they have the essential elements of "readin', 'ritin' and 'rithmetic."

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Supt. Cubberly speaks in his Course of Study on overcrowded schools eloquently as follows: "As to overcrowding the course of study, I do not believe it. With all the cry about the 'terrible crowding of the pupils in our schools,' we have many pupils each year who are able to go ahead of the grades and do much more than the course of study calls for. As soon as our people become educated to the necessity of contributing more money for educational work, so that teachers may be provided with the best of teaching equipment and not be expected to teach over twenty-five to thirty pupils, I firmly believe that all that is now taught in the first eight years will be taught in six or six and a half at most. The course of study is not overcrowded, but the schools are."

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Music hath charms not only to soothe the savage breast, but as well to quiet the unruly members of many a boisterous school. Music in school never means a loss of time, as many teachers are wont to give as their excuse for not having more singing. It really means more time for the study of arithmetic, history, geography, and every other study. Gather up the roving, straggling thoughts of the boys and girls, and have them united into a grand chorus of cheerful singing, and begin again all together in a united effort on the difficult problems of study. It pays to have music in the schoolroom.-Pennsylvania School Journal.

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Mistakes in Dr. E. E. White, the well-known student of Peda. Methods. gogy has written of Mistakes in Methods as follows:

* Permit me to add with no special reference to 'ratio' method, that the early forcing of abstract relations and logical processes upon young children has been been a wide and serious error in primary ins ruction, especially in arithmetic. In the past forty years I have seen a half-score of new methods of teaching numbers to young children, each attended with exhibitions of wonderful attainments. Forty years ago mental analysis was the hobby, and even primary classes were put thru persistent drills in analytical. reasoning. The marvelous feats in such reasoning by young pupils occasioned a genuine pedagogical sensation! An excellent training for pupils twelve to fourteen years of age was forced upon children as early as eight years of age. What was the result? Over thirty years ago one of the very ablest mathematicians in the United States, Dr. Thomas Hill, then president of Harvard College (Ohio Educational Monthly, pp. 5-10, 168-173, Vol. 11.), with unusual facilities for ascertaining the facts, published the opinion that this early training in analytical reasoning had not only been fruitless, but "an injury to pupils." Pupils who were marvels in mental arithmetic at nine years of age became indifferent, if not dull, at fourteen. Teachers in grammar grades were surprised at the weakness of pupils in written arithmetic who had been prod igies in mental arithmetic in primary grades.

"The Grube method, tho not so great a pedagogic 1 sinner, has had a similar history. What superintendent or teacher has found in the fifth or sixth school year arithmetical skill or power that could be traced back to the Grube grind in the first and second school years? Who now regrets to see the method retiring from the primary schools which it has so long possessed?

"The forcing of young children to do prematurely what they ought not to do until they are older, results in what Dr. Harris calls "arrested development," and whether this be due to exhausted power or burnt-out interest, the result is always fatal to future progress. The colt that is over-speeded and over-trained

when two years old, breaks no record at sir. The same is true in the training of young children. There is such a thing as too much training in primary grades; an over-development of the reason. A little child may be developed into a dullard. More natural growth and less forced developments would be a blessing to thousands of young children. It is not what the child can do at six or seven years of age that settles questions of primary training, but what he ought to do-i. e., what is best for him to do at this stage of school progress. The position has never, to my knowledge, been questioned that the pupils in our schools pass thru, as they go up in the grade, three quite distinct psychic phases— a primary phase, and intermediate phase, and a scientific phase. A clear recognition of these phases, with their activities and attainments, has resulted in fruitful reforms in school instruction, especially in primary grades. The tendency just now in some schools is to go back to the theory that an infant is a little man capable of causal reasoning, logical inferences, and philosophic insights; that he cannot only understand but can appreciate the highest literature!

"For one, I am very thankful that I was not forced when an infant over these elaborate "development" courses; that when a child I was permitted "to think as a child," and was not forced to think as a philosopher."

*

February is a patriotic month for the schools. Lincoln Day, Washington's Birthday, Arbor Day, etc, are effective teachers of love of home and country. The Maine affair is not without its lesson of patriotism to people in the old schools of life.

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THE RHODODENDRON

The State Flower of Washington, From N ture's Stories of the Northwest; by Herbert Bashford.

Dr. LeRoy Decatur Brown.

On January 13, 1898, Dr. Brown, after thirty-four years of active service in the cause of education, passed peacefully away at his home in San Luis Obispo, California.

He was born November 3, 1848, in the State of Ohio of New England ancestry. At the age of fifteen, having been refused the privilege of enlisting in the army he ran away from home and enlisted in an Ohio regiment, and was in active service in 1864-5.

On returning home, he entered a district school and the following year taught a school adjoining the one he attended. He again entered school and passed successively from academy to college and at length graduated from the Ohio Wesleyan University. During his entire co.lege course he devoted more or less time to teaching.

In 1871, he was appointed County School Examiner in his native County. In 1873, he took charge of a graded school at Newport, O., and shortly after assumed the office of Superintendent which he filled with marked success.

In 1878, he was admitted to the bar ard in the same year was married to Miss Esther E. Gabel, of Eaton, O., who survives him.

He was an officer of the National Educational Association in 1880, presided over a department at San Francisco in 1888 and at the time of his death was one of the life directors of the organization from California.

While Superintendent of Schools at Hamilton, O., he was granted leave of absence and made a trip to Europe to study the school systems there, and on his return delivered a series of popular lectures upon his summer abroad.

In 1883 he was elected State Commissioner of Schools for the State of Ohio and served with distinction, introducing many notable reforms During his encumbency of this in the prevailing school system. office he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Baker University. In 1887 he was appointed by Gov. Foraker a trustee of the At the close of his Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans Home at Zenia, O. official career in Ohio, he accepted a position in a banking house, but was soon called from that place to the Presidency of the University of Nevada which place he resigned in 1889.

Removing from Nevada, he took up his residence in Los Angeles, and there occupied various positions including that of City Superintendent of Schools and principal of the High School. In 1895, he was made principal of the High School of San Luis Obispo and inaugurated some creditable reforms in that school, raising the standard of scholarship.

His health failing him, Dr. Brown resigned the principalship and retired to the country where for a time he taught a district school. Toward the close of last year he returned to his family at San Luis Obispo and in a few days passed to his eternal rest with the cheerfulness of a philosopher and Christian.

A Ballad of Poverty Row.

Brave old neighbors in Poverty Row,

Why should we grudge to dweli with you? Pinch of poverty well ye know

Doubtful dinner and clouted shoe,

Grinned the wolf at your doors, and yet

You sang your songs and you said your say,

Lashed to labor by Devil debt,

All were manful, and some were gay.

What, Old Chaucer! a royal jest

Once you made in your laughing verse:
"Do more goldfinch-song in the nest-
Autumn nest of the empty purse!"
Master Spenser, your looks are spare;
Princes' favors, how fleet they be !
Thinking that yours was the self-same fare,
Crust or crumb shall be sweet to me.

Worshipful Shakespeare of Stratford town,
Prosperous-portiy in doublet red,

When of the days when you first came down
To London city to earn your bread?

What of the lodging where Juliet's face

Startled your dream with its Southern glow, Flooding with splendor the sordid place?

That was a garret in Poverty Row !

Many a worthy has here. I ween,

Made brief sojourn or long abode;

Johnson, dining behind a screen;

Goldsmith, vagrant along the road;

Keats, ah, pitiful! poor and ill,

Harrassed and hurt, in his short spring day;
Best Sir Walter, with flagging quill
Digging the mountain of debt away.

Needy comrade, whose evil star,
Pallid-frowning, decrees you wrong;
Greatly neighbored, in truth we are;
Hold your heart up and sing your song!
Lift your eyes to the book-shelf where,
Glorious-gilded, a shining show,

Every man in his mansion fair,
Dwell the Princes of Poverty Row !

-Helen Gray Cone in Century, New York.

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PROF. ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLY.

Recently appointed to the Department of Education, Stanford University.

Ellwood P. Cubberly, Superintendent of San Diego City Schools,. who has recently been called to a professorship in the department of Education in Stanford University, is a native of Indiana, being born in Andrews that state in the year 1868. Mr. Cubberly received his early education in his native town, his father being a prominent merchant of the place. In 1886 he entered the freshman class of the University of Indiana. After two years work he left and engaged in teaching, returning to the University in 1886 and graduating in 1891.

Soon after graduation he was elected to the chair of Physical Science in Vincennes University one of the oldest educational institutions in Indiana which boasts of having Wm. Henry Harrison as first president of its Board of Trustees. This position he filled acceptably until 1893 when he was selected President of the University. Shortly after his installment as president Mr. Cubberly began to show the strong qualities which have since characterized his work. A new life and spirit began to manifest itself in the school and Vincennes took a long leap forward. The whole institution was modernized. A comparison of the catalogs of the year previous and the year following his accession shows in a measure some of the things acomplished.

In 1896 Mr. Cubberly resigned the presidency of Vincennes to become superintendent of San Diego City Schools. The coming of Mr. Cubberly to San Diego makes a distinct epoch in the growth of our schools. He found a body of wide-awake,earnest and intelligent teachers ready to co-operate for the betterment of the system. It would be impossible in a sketch of this length to give an adequate idea of excellent work done by our superintendent in his two years work in our schools. Briefly, two things of much value have been accomplisned.

He has given us a most excellent "Course of Study" in line with the best educational thought of the day.

Mr. Cubberly's departure means a great loss to San Diego. This will be especially felt by those who have been most closely associated with him in his work.

66

W. F. CONOVER.

Prin. "B" St. School, San Diego, Cal.

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