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Educational Notes and Current
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BY D. M. HARRIS, Ph. D.

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Knowledge unused is a dangerous Knowledge. possession. The human mind is SO constituted that it can not attain to its highest per fection without giving forth its treasures of knowledge and wisdom. Mere study for the sake study does not lead to any very desirable end. The object of all education is, first, self-elevation; second, self-revelation. Unless these two motives cooperate in all our acquisitions we sink down in the scale of moral and intellectual being. Judge Simeon E. Baldwin, LL. D., in a recent address said: "There is a period after which mere study, unaccompanied by the putting forth of productive energy in contact with the world, makes a man a pedaut, turns learning to vanity and contracts the very soul." It is just as possible to be a miser of knowledge as it is of gold. The money miser is no poorer or more despicable than the knowledge miser. The bookworm may devour the Bodlein Library without enriching himself or the world. Indeed, there is a psychologic reason for saying that the mind itself loses its vitality unless it gives forth its power. The most practical education is the one in which theory and practice unite. Knowledge that can not be used is not knowledge and unless the pupil in some way expresses himself in speech or act, his most ardent labors will be in vain. A mind crammed with facts never used soon loses them. It is the law of mental being that it should be so. This fact accounts for many curious things daily observe. Everyone has noticed the eagerness with which a young child acquires knowledge, and has observed its brightness and intelligence of.countenance. The same child in a few years appears stupid and dull. The face has lost its freshness and its eagerness. What has happened? Nothing, except that the child made no use of its acquisitions. Young men leave college and plunge into an active business life wholly disconnected with their college studies and in a few years they seem to have retrograded. The explanation is the same. Why does all the geography learned in school life seem to oose out of us? Simply because we make no practical use of it unless we travel or continue, it as we read. This law furnishes a suggestion which teachers should constantly bear in mind, and that is that the best teaching combines theory and practice. It is very difficult to teach and train at

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the same time, but the labors of both teacher and pupil are largely lost unless theory and practice are kept close together. It is always difficult to retain abstract knowledge because it is more difficult to use it. Arithmetic, grammar, history and science can be used, and they should form a large part of a young child's education. We have sometimes doubted the wisdom of teaching geography to young children; it is impossible to use it intelligently until the period of childhood is past.

Summer

The teachers' institute has become a Institutes. fixture. It has accomplished so much for the individual teacher and for the teaching art that it can not be dispensed with. The institute is not a college or even a school in the ordinary sense of the word. It was intended originally to be an institution in which teachers of experience might aid the inexperienced by solving the countless problems that present themselves in instructing and governing a school. Formerly teachers met together and exchanged experiences and opinions, and in order to get the largest possible benefit in the shortest possible way distinguished teachers from other communities were invited to deliver lectures. Gradually the lectures have crowded out almost every other feature of institute worw. Teachers these days go up to an Institute to get instruction and not to exchange experiences. The institutes have become little normal schools, with popular evening lectures thrown in at fifty cents a teacher. Teachers appear, note book in hand, to take down all the wise sayings of their instructors, just as if they were students in a medical college of theological seminary. Nearly every vestige of the old institute has given place to the normal school instructor or the professional lecture. It seems to us that the change has not been for the better in every respect. No doubt, the old-time institute was too often converted into a debating school, in which cranks and hobbyists aired their egotism or their vagaries, but the remedy adopted to cure the evil is worse than the disease. It is easily possible to have an institute without giving it up to bores and cranks. If teachers wish it they can control their own meetings in the interest of pedagogy. Opportunity should always be given for the solution of vexed questions that arise in daily experience. New experiments that have been found helpful should always be brought to the attention of the members. The latest meth ods of instruction should be laid before the institute. Discoveries in pedagogical science should be discussed by competent leaders. New books helpful to teachers ought always to be noticed by teachers able to present their merits and to point

out their defects. The lecture system is good enough in a normal college, but it is not adapted to the needs of teachers wrestling with puzzling problems. A few lectures might and should be interspersed to give variety and richness to the program, but they should not displace the old-fashioned "experience meeting." Sir William Hamilton, the most erudite man of his times, used to say that nine out of every ten things he knew he had learned in conversing with others. The time will never come when asking and answering questions can be dispensed with. So long as there are inexperienced teachers to learn and experienced ones to teach. then the "experience meeting" will be useful and helpful.

School

Boards.

The public school system of the country depends very largely on the school boards for its success, and to them it owes most of its failures. School boards make or mar schools as certainly as marrying makes or ruins a man. The school board must decide the policy of the school and it must select the teachers. Perhaps there is no one thing in which boards are more liable to err than here. Any school can endure almost anything better than poor teachers. Two things influences boards in selecting teachers-religion and politics. The bane of every school is a board subject to political or religious prejudices. It is said that there are but few school boards broad and strong enough to act for the best good of the school regardless of outside influences. A writer in a recent number of the Atlantic, in an article entitled "Confessions of Three School Superintendents" says: "The average committee man looks at all questions from this point of view: 'How will it affect me and my friends?' not 'How will it affect the school? The man who can get upon a school committee is the man who is most in earnest to help his friends. This man is usually a politician, or one who aspires to political influence. The man next to him in evil influence is likely to be the pastor of a church, for whose members and their sons and daughters he must do what he can to find places or to maintain them in their places. The politician is looking for him and quickly offers his aid. The good clergyman in return for the aid of the politician in securing a place for A, 'who is a worthy case,' agrees to vote for B. of whom he knows little, and as to whom he shuts his eyes if the revelations are likely to trouble his conscience. Then there is the doctor, who fells under obligations to his patients, or to those for whom his patients request his favor." This is a faithful picture of many a neighborhood. It would seem that people would sometime come to realize that what is the best for the school is always best for them

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and their friends.) Being a Presbyterian. a Baptist or a Catholic, or a Republican or a Democrat or a Populist, does not make a good school teacher. The school should always be free from tarian and political influence. How, then, is this end to be secured? By selecting none but men of ability and experience to serve on school boards. Men who will be governed by nothing but the wel fare of the school. But how can such men be secured? Certainly not always by a popular election. Some plan should be adopted to rescue our schools from the hands of self-seeking politicians and maddlesome ministers. Country and city superintend ents should be appointed and not elected, and they should have much to say about the selection teachers.

School.

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The Kindergarten The kindergarten is no longer an experiment, but it has not yet gone beyond criticism. The fundamental principles of the school rest on psyschological facts too well estab lished to be questioned. The development of the child nrind has been watched by scientific and philosophical observers, and certain great and broad truths have been discovered which can never again be ignored in the education of the child. What is done intelligently in the kindergarten must result in good to the child. Of course, the foundation of this system must be psychologic. The occupations. games, songs and stories of the school are adapted to awaken the child's faculties or powers in accordance with the laws of its being. We have on other occasions called attention to the danger of overdeveloping the observing faculties. It is now a well established fact that excessive use of the eye may result in stupidity instead of intelligence. The memory may be taxed so heavily that the higher faculties will be stunted. The imagination may be cultivated at the expense of the judgment and even of common sense. Now that so much is known about the nature of mind and its laws, it takes a great deal of courage to become a school teacher. One is almost appalled at the thought of the responsibility of educating a human mind. If nature had not taken care of our ancestors we should all be idiots now. We sometimes fear that unripe kindergartners are not half so good teachers for young children as Mother Nature. The chance that overstimulation may result in an arrest of development fatal to all mental life should make teachers exceeding careful. One of the most serious errors of the average kindergarten teacher is making play of work. Children trained in this way are incapable of making a serious thing of study. They have grown accustomed to having everything made easy and even funny, and they simply refuse to proceed along any other path. The idea of buckling

SUPPLEMENT TO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, MAY, 1899.

MEETING PLACE OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, JULY, 1899.

down to hard study is disgusting to a child that has been in the habit of playing study for four or five years. It offends the memory of the dear kindergarten to hear the suggestion of work instead of play. A system that is exposed to such a peril needs to be watched with great anxiety. It is always easy to entertain young children and to amuse them, but a child is not always instructed when it is amused. Another peril very prominent is found in the symbolism so conspicuous in the work of this kind of school. While it may be admitted that every child passed through the symbolic stage of development, yet we should be sure that the symbols used convey the desired lesson. Nothing more difficult than to teach moral and spiritual truth by material objects. Many a teacher would be astounded to know the real thought of the children who have been fed on symbolism. The poor little victims of experimentation are to be pitied.

Parents

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The best school is the one in which Meetings. the parents, teachers and pupils all work in harmony and in unison. It has always been a wonder to us that intelligent parents could trust their children to teachers five or six hours every day without knowing anything about the character of the school and the teachers except what they learn from the children. In every school district there ought to be meetings of parents for the purpose of ascertaining what is going on in the school. It is not too much to say that there ought to be meetings for fathers and for mothers. Such meetings would inspire the teachers and would encourage the children. The moral effects of such meetings would be of incalculable value to every community. They would unify the interests of the neighborhood and would aid in stimulating the moral and intellectual life of the people. Most parents act as if their children were encumbrances and that the school was established to relieve them of the responsibility of rearing their own offispring. dow few parents ever visit the school house to ee what their children are doing, and how they are eing taught. The teacher is often embrarrassed ecause the parents do not understand his meth ls. The whole school is hindered because the pamts take no interest in its work. About the only ing the teacher ever hears is a complaint or a feat. Now, all this might be avoided by holding rents' meetings occasionally. The teacher is natally the proper person to call such meetings. Of arse, he should have the consent and co-operaof the directors of the school. The superindent would find it helpful to his work to he sent on such occasions. It would be well to

te a program and adhere closely to it, taking however. to make room for voluntary re

marks. It would add greatly to the interest of such a meeting to have somebody speak on the school laws, or on the duty of parents to the school. There are scores of questions that could be discussed with profit to all. The mothers would see things about the school that needed correction, and every wise teacher would be glad to have advice. The sanitary condition of the building, the well, the outhouses, the ventilation and other things would naturally receive attention. It would recall boyhood and girlhood to see the children at their sports. Some of the oid boys enjoy a long-fotgotten game. How deeply the children would be interested in such a schene. The Journal makes the suggestion for teachers, and hopes some of them will try the experiment and report the results for publication.

French Politics.

M. de Freycinet, Minister of War, has tendered his resignation to Prime Minister Dupuy, and it has been accepted, and M. Emile Krantz has been appointed in his place, who was Minister of Public Works. Senator Monestier has been assigned the portfolio laid down by M. Krantz. The cause of de Freycinet's resignation was his statement in the Chamber of Deputies a few days ago that Professor Durny had been dismissed from the Polytechnic School because of his sympathies with Dreyfus. The announcement was received by the Deputies with hisses and protestations. This conduct on the part of the Deputies indicates the remarkable change that has taken place in public and official sentiment in France. M. de Freycinet is one of the most capable and incorruptible men in public life in France. Why he took the course he did we do not know. He was not a soldier, although he was at the head of the War Department. The pressure from army men must have been very gerat. It is claimed that he desired to uphold General Mercier at the expense of justice. General Mercier was Minister of War when Dreyfus was first convicted. It was feared that de Freycinet was trying to shield the general army staff from punishment, and was keeping from the people facts they ought to know. His resignation was a surprise, but it was probably the easiest way for him out of his embarrassment.

The new War Minister has not been mixed up in the Dreyfus case, and it is sald wants to do justice to all who have been parties to the affair. He is a man about 45 years old, level-headed and strong-willed. He will rule with a strong hand. The army staff is in disfavor just now. The Figaro revelations have covered the generals with shame and disgrace. The fact that the Chamber of Deputies clamored for de Freycinet's retirement indicates very clearly that public sentiment is at last on the side of justice. The sudden change in the Cabinet was accomplished without much friction. A wild report was circulated last week to the effect that President Loubet had resigned, but it was immediately contradicted. The republic is weathering the storm in spite of the pessimistic prophecies to the contrary.