procees of starvation, by the greater development of the good, thus leading to the formation of desirable habits and the building up of a stable character. We hear a great deal in the present day about the decline of the influence of the Church in education, and the great increase of the influence of the State, which will, of course, become greater as the days go on. Whether that change is an unmixed good it is not for me to discuss; but this is selfevident, that as education comes more under State influence, as private schools disappear, and as the tendency increases for large companies of children to come under exactly the same influences, without the slightest reference to the personal equation or predisposition of the individual, so the part which the parent will have to play in the education of the child becomes a more and more important one.

It did not need the genius of a Herbert Spencer to discover how utterly incompetent the average parent is to take any useful part in the education of his child. No matter in what school of thought he has been educated, the one subject which has been studiously neglected thruout his training has been that which has to do with the most important work of his life—the bringing up of his child.

The general theory with regard to treatment of young children is one of repression. "Go and see what Johnny is doing, and tell him he musn't,” is the great fundamental line of policy adopted by the average parent. iting an infant school, the teacher draws your attention, with evident pride, to the discipline exercised by which large classes of small children are repressed-the one object in early training appearing to be to keep children, who are naturally exuberant and full of energy, in an unnaturally quiet position during infant lessons. Of course any number of exceptions to this typical method of infant instruction might be given.

The eternal questioning of the child, which, properly used, may become such an extremely valuable instrument in education, is vigorously repressed. That most awful dictum, "Good little children should be seen and not heard," sums up the repressive attitude. Of the many wise things which Froebel said, a very prominent place should be given to his condemnation of this fundamental mistake of the treatment of children. He says, "Do not send it away ungently, do not drive it from you; be not impatient of its questions, its continual questioning; with every cross repelling word you des troy a bud, a shoot of its life-tree."

But the average child must go to school, and the average parent has no power of determining to any large extent the kind of instruction the child will receive. He therefore not only has to be ever on the watch for those

he has to do the harm done

elements which go to the making of character at the school by the general attitude of repression. The formation of such societies as the King Alfred Society, the Parents' National Education Union, the Childhood Society, the British Association for Child Study, and other societies of a like nature, are signs of a healthy awakening with regard to the responsibilities of parents in this direction.

Let us look for a moment at the normal disqualifications of the average parent. First, we have to deal with the utter ignorance of what may be termed common-sense psychology, and also of common-sense physiology, which is of far more importauce in education than is generally supposed. Then there is the sheer inability to answer truthfully and rationally the natural questions of an intelligent child. In this respect very few parents are fit companions for their children in country walks. Many of my readers have doubtless heard the answers to questions and explanations of natural phenomena given by parents to observant children — answers and explanations which must eventually destroy the beautiful and implicit confidence which the child places in his parent or teacher. The time will surely come, unless these matters are regarded seriously, when "Father told me so," or "Teacher told me so," will cease to have that terrible finality which it generally has to the trusting young child. The longer the parent can by hard work and due regard to truthfulness retain his position on the pedestal of omniscience on which he has been placed by his child, the better.

In a recent minute issued by the board of ducation to rural schools, it is interesting to see that the attitude of the board towards its teachers is still that of the very young child towards its parent. In this minute teachers are urged to take their children into the country and satisfy their questionings by a liberal course of Nature study. Not one teacher in a hundred is qualified for such work. There will be a rude awakening in country districts when this minute is carried into effect.

Another important point in which the average parent is very frequently absolutely unfitted for the bringing up of his child is in his want of selfcontrol, and, if I may so term it, general deportment. It is an awful responsibility to live under the continual observation of an intelligent child. The teaching of morality in the school may be of the very best, but the most lasting influence in the moulding of character of the child will be the examples he has before him in the home. A child who hears his mother tell a servant to say she is not at home to an unwelcome visitor will hear lessons and read books on the beauties of truthfulness in vain. The child who receives a severe punishment from a bad-tempered father or a neurotic mother, a punishment out of all proportion to the offense committed, will

have his sense of justice rudely shaken. A child is a born mimic, and will naturally imitate those with whom he is continually in contact. The child reared in an atmosphere of domestic wrangling will naturally assume a quarrelsome attitude towards his companions; a boy is often punished severely for taking up an attitude towards his sister which he has seen his father take up towards his mother on innumerable occasions. It is possible by watching a child for half an hour to gain a vast amount of information as to his home surroundings.

So that, generally speaking, the influence of the home is not calculated to have a good influence on the formation of a desirable character in the child, and this is largely because people will not take education seriously; they will not grasp the enormous persistent influence environment has upon the younger members of the household. Measles, croup, hooping-cough, and other childish ailments are taken seriously, but moral ailments are rarely considered. The child goes on getting worse and worse, developing habits which are sending their roots deeper and deeper into its very nature, without causing any alarm, the general impression being that a good whipping or a term of attendance at a strict school will soon remedy such defects.

In regarding the child as the director of the parent's education, it is necessary to divide the course of the parent's instruction, roughly, into two periods: that required for the management of the child before it is fit to go to school, and that in which the main object is the development of intelligence. It is, of course, impossible to make any hard and fast division. The development of character and the development of intelligence are interwoven all along the line, and the combination should result in the formation of a sound judgment and the formation of a stable character. Dr. Stockmann, in Ibsen's "Enemy of the People," says: "The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone." It appears to me that one of the greatest and noblest aims of education is so build up character and develop saneness of judgment as to make the possessor self-dependent — in other words, to enable him to stand alone.

The attitude of the parent in the first stage should be one of continual watchfulness for those instinct propulsions which appear to be quite beyond the control of the child. Nothing is more interesting than to see the struggle which is eternally going on, the result of what appears to be a primitive consciousness of right and wrong. It is most instructive to watch the first dawn of the child's tendency to rebel against authority; it puzzles the child as much as it does the parent. This is a very early development. In one's efforts to develop certain instinct propulsions and check others, one is soon aided by this primitive moral consciousness of the child, who very early

realizes the fact that a struggle has commenced, and that there is an impulse to do wrong which must be fought against. There is something dellghtfully pathetic in the prayer of the small child: "O Lord, make me a good boy, and if you don't at first succeed, try, try, try again." There is in this a full recognition of the difficulty of the task he is asking the Almighty to perform. One must distinguish here between the robust, normal child, and that degenerate product, the self-conscious little prig.

As has been pointed out by so many authorities on the early education of children, represslon has to play a most important part in the development of character - not repression as it is generally understood, but that valuable repression which results in the development in every possible way of certain natural tendencies by the neglect of those which it is necessary to destroy. In this first stage of the parent's education it is therefore necessary to made a very diligent study of child nature, including the best which has been written by experts and people with direct vision on this matter. It is a melancholy reflection that most of the standard educational works which have been published in England have had a remarkably poor circulation in this country compared with that in foreign countries. Where one copy of Quick's "Educational Reformers" is sold in England a dozen are sold in America. But in this respect there has been a vast improvement during the past few years. The fact that we are now simply inundated with very excellent books on all phases of educational activity shows that there must be a considerable public interested in this matter- a result which, I believe, has been very largely achieved by the good works of the societies to which I have referred, and others of a similar nature, which have created a very definite appetite for a knowledge of all that concerns the education of children. Further than this, there is at present going on in America a vast amount of useful research on child nature. The influence of this movement has already been felt in England. I should not like to estimate the number of people now carrying on useful investigations in this department of human knowledge. The results are collected, grouped, and discussed; experiments have been repeated again and again on debatable points, until some generalizations have almost been raised to the dignified position of natural laws. If this spirit of investigation and serious treatment of educational problems continues, we shall have built up in days to come a true science of education. Of course, some of the investigations and some of the methods adopted have been, and may still be, very faulty, and give an excellent opportunity for the expression of harsh judgments by the conserative scoffer. recently had articles in magazines and educational papers pointing out many weak places in methods and the rashness of rushing into hasty generaliza

tions on inadequate and untrustworthy data, but I think we may derive great comfort from the fact that these attacks do not seriously affect the fundamental principles on which the investigations are based. There is no question about it that there is a great field for these inductive studies on children. If ever we feel pained by the attacks of the scoffer, and the absence of results of laborious investigations, we can derive comfort from the reflection that only a very small proportion of the research done in our science laboratories produces any result worthy of publication. The value of an investigation, however, must not be judged by its success or failure; we must have negative as well as positive results.

Tho, of course, only the most intelligent parent will ever reach to the position of an investigator, everyone should know something of the results that have been achieved, and should take an interest in the couclusions that have been arrived at by great thinkers on educational matters. If a parent is sufficiently serious to qualify himself or herself in this way for approaching the education of children with a certain degree of intelligence, a great point will have been gained. It would be impossible to enumerate the various directions to which such a course of study may benefit the child thru its parents.

The cutting of a tooth is often the cause of rejoicing in a home where the development of some good habit, which can be produced as definitely, and show itself as clearly, would pass unnoticed. When a child has some physical ailment, the expert, such as the trained nurse, or the medical man who has gone thru a long course of training, and is not allowed to practise until he has obtained recognized certificates of proficiency, is called in. The father or mother, by a proper course of study on child nature and the education of children, should stand in the same relation to the child on its mental and moral side as the trained nurse or doctor does on its physical side. I suppose it is, however, too much to hope for, that certificates of proficiency in this direction will ever be demanded of people before they are allowed to undertake the very serious responsibility of bringing up a child.

To meet some of the difficulties to which I have referred, a compromise has been arrived at which I think is a little dangerous. An important movement has been set on foot for securing more highly-trained nurses, who, in addition to being thoroly competent to look after the physical well-being of the child, have also received a course of training such as that suggested above for the ideal parent. If the child were given over entirely to such a highly trained nurse, and the parents practically abdicated their position, all might be well; but a competent nurse under the control of incompetent