feelings, and impulses, we have an oracle which declares that the world and human nature are sound to the core.

More yet. There is really no clue by which we can thread our way through all the mazes of culture and the distractions of modern life, save by knowing the true nature and needs of childhood and of adolescence. I urge, then, that civilizations, religions, all human institutions, and the schools, are judged truly, or from the standpoint of the philosophy of history, by this one criterion namely, whether they had offended against these little ones, or have helped to bring childhood and adolescence to an ever higher and completer maturity as generations pass by. Childhood is thus our pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Other oracles may grow dim, but this one will never fail.

THE DEMANDS OF EDUCATORS.

Following the example of representatives of other large interests of the country, the delegates to the convention of the National Educational Association, have by resolution demanded of the government a fuller recognition of the value of their work, and a more comprehensive system of promoting and extending it. The convention did not go so far as to ask for the creation of a department of education, to be under the direction of a Cabinet officer, but it did ask for an improvement in the existing methods of the government in dealing with educational affairs.

After pointing out several reasons why there should be an enlargement of the sphere of governmental activity in matters of public education, the resolutions of the convention say: "We earnestly urge upon the Congress the wisdom and advisability of reorganizing the Bureau of Education upon broader lines, erecting it into an important department on a plan with the Department of Labor; providing a proper compensation for the Comissioner of Education, and of so constituting the Department of Education that, while its invaluable function of collating and diffusing information be in no wise impaired, it may be equipped to exercise oversight over the educational system of Alaska, and of the several islands now dependent upon us, as well as to make some provision for the education of the children of the tens of thousands of white people domiciled in the Indian Territory, but who are without any educational opportunities whatever. Such reorganization of the Bureau of Education and such extension of its functions we believe to be demanded by the highest interests of the people of the United States, and we respectfully but earnestly ask Congress to make provision for such reorganization and extension at their next session. The action so strongly recommended will in no respect contravene the principle that it is one of the recognized functions of the national government to encourage and to aid, but not to control, the educational instrumentalities of the country."

To that plea the general public will give a cordial approval. It does not ask anything that can be accounted as excessive. In fact, a considerable number of the American people would not be unwilling to have the federal government give aid to the poorer southern states in providing means for the

education of their people, and, to some extent, directing the work from Washington. That much was made evident by the favor shown to the educational bill which the late Senator Blair used to bring forward with such persistency; and, while it has become the settled policy of the government to leave the duty of public education to the states to provide for, there is still a great deal that can be done, in the way of direction and counsel, by a strong and well equipped Bureau of Education at Washington. The issue of popular instruction concerns the republic as a whole, and since it must attend to such matters, to some extent, it will be well to establish a system of attending to it properly.-Editorial, S. F. Call.

EDUCATIONAL TOPICS IN CURRENT MAGAZINES. Academy at West Point: J. T. Smith.

Donahoe.

Country Teaching for Country Schools. Longmans.
Developments in Textile Schools.

Am. R. of R.

Educational Use of Hypnotism. Harpers.

Ex-School Committee Woman, An: Dunn. Atlantic.
Harvard Fifty-eight Years Ago: G. F. Hoar. Scribners.
Manual Training in Mental Development. Arena.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Popular Science Monthly.
New Authorities in English Education. Contemporary Review.
New Psychology: H. Davies. Int. Journal of Ethics.
Physical Training in Woman's Colleges.
Spencer's Essay on Education: Jordon.
Star-Spangled Banner, The: M. Hill. McClure.
University Education and What It Costs.
Visiting Cuban Teachers: M. C. Francis.

Werner.
Cosmopolitan.

Leisure Hour.
National.

What France Does for Education. New England Magazine.

HOW TO INTEREST TRUSTEES IN SCHOOL WORK.

ALICE CAREY.

One way for the teacher to interest trustees is to talk of the improvements she would like to make in the school and to ask their help. If the teacher takes a real interest in the advancement of the pupils and of the school, it is not a hard matter to interest trustees, and if you can awaken a feeling of pride for the school in the graduation of pupils, nice appearance of schoolhouse and school grounds, you have done a great work in personal experience.

I found an article in the Youth's Companion on decoration of school grounds, and asked my clerk to read it. I talked to him often of the needs of the school. I asked him to read certain articles in the JOURNAL. I showed them all the little devices I had read of for saving supplies. O, I would that trustees and parents could know that in one year's time the teacher and pupils have just begun to climb the hill together, have just commenced to grow, and when they separate them it is like stunting a plant. start must be taken with the new teacher.

A fresh

STATEMENT: A scholar finds on the school grounds property belonging to another scholar; carries it from the grounds contrary to rules, and en route home, loses it.

QUESTION: Is it within the province of either the teacher or board of trustees to compel the parent of the scholar finding and losing the property to make payment for the same to the parent of the scholar who owned it? A prominent trustee of San Diego asks the above question. Will some one answer it?

BY PRESIDENT BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER.

No single personality, excepting the carpenter's son of Nazareth, has done so much to make the world of civilization we live in what it is as Alexander of Macedon. He leveled the terrace upon which European history built.

In Philip there predominated the characteristics which mark in modern times the practical politician.

He was perfectly unscrupulous as to the method to be employed in attaining an end. Nothing of the sort ordinarily known as principles ever impeded his movements. He was an opportunist of the deepest dye. Flattery, promises, beneficence, cruelty, deceit, and gold he used when and where each would avail; but bribery was his most familiar tool

To return now to the boy Alexander : We have good reason to justify the opinion of his father, Philip, that the training of such a fellow demanded the best coöperative steering endeavors of "many a bit and many a helm.” He was not all what is ordinarly called the "bad boy"—rather the contrary. But he was restless, energetic, fearless, headstrong, and self-willed, though his self-will was that of an intelligent, inventive independence, rather than pure stubbornness.

In Aristotle's school at Mieza, Alexander was by no means the sole pupil. Such an arrangement would have been inconsistent with one of the fundamental principles of the master's pedagogic system, for he held that education, and particularly moral education, was largely to be obtained thru personal association, and that the cultivation of noble friendships among the young was a most potent means of forming in them cleanliness and healthiness of character.

He was thinking and constructing for himself, and he could not well help conveying to his pupils, however chilling his manner, an impression of that most genuine of all enthusiasms,—that which attends the formation of new ideas and the uncovering of new truths.

Alexander declined to be a creature of small things. Within a fortnight. after his father's death he made it evident that he was either to be "the Great," or nothing. He declined to recognize defeat or failure. He took it for granted that he was to succeed. What men called failure he named, and Men came to believe in his star.

made to be the prelude to, success.

This visit to Corinth brought the young autocrat, if gossip is true, one opportunity of learning a lesson. All the men of note, soldiers, politicians, and sages, came to pay their respects to the young king. Only Diogenes, who dwelt in Craneum, a suburb east of Corinth, came not. All the more Alexander wished to see him. So he went where he was, and found him lying and sunning himself in the court of the gymnasium. Standing before

him, surrounded by his suite of officers, the King ventured to introduce himself: "I am Alexander the King."

"I am Diogenes the cynic," was the reply.

Then Alexander, as the conversation made no headway, asked if there were aught that he could do for him.

"If you and your men would stand from between me and the sun.” And Alexander marvelled, and on reflection was inclined to admire the man, saying, so the story has it: "If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."

The Greek was always human,-very human. apologized for. It was the best thing he knew of.

His humanity was never This sunlit life on earth knew worth living for.

was worth living for,- indeed, the only thing he Whatever was human, the body and the joys of the flesh, the delights of beauty, the triumphs of wit or of strength, or of craft, all were good except in excess. Virtue lay not in abstinence, but in self-control. As in the relations to the Divine, all depended here, too, upon not crossing the dangerline.

His respect for women and his moral cleanliness made him an exception to his times. Practical-minded as he was, he was swayed by ideals. He loved music and song, and the conversation and association of men; knew the charm of letters, and gave to the gods their due. Whatever his failings, these were his virtues.

Alexander was of good stature, and muscular, well-proportioned figure. He had the blonde type of the old Northman Aryans, blue eyes and golden hair, which survived latest in Greece with the old aristocratic families. His skin, as Plutarch particularly emphasizes, was clear and white, with ruddy hue on cheek and breast. A characteristic feature were the massy locks that rose up, mane-like, from above the center of his forehead, and coupled with deep set eyes and heavy brows, gave his face the leonine look to which Plutarch refers.

A man who aspired to rule the whole world had shown himself unable to rule his own temper. His weakness stood out in the powerful light of one terrible demonstration. He saw it himself and despised himself. He hardened himself against his shame and grew harsh. So our ideals slip away from us, as we discover our weakness, and paint their substitutes over "to resemble iron.”

He surely loved conquest, because he loved to achieve; he was restlessly active, because he loved to create and shape and do; but the one dominant purpose towards which all his achievements looked, and in which all the facts of his life and all his expression and action find consistent explanation, is this ideal of establishing, in the organized form of empire, coöperation and a common understanding between those two great elements of the civilized life of men around which, as spiritual nuclei, had been shaped the dualistic history of mankind thru all the time and within all the horizon that he and men of his day could explore and know,- the life of the East and the life of the West, orientalism and occidentalism.

Over city and camp there rested the stillness of death. Doubt, terror,

dismay, swallowed up grief. For the moment the pulse of the world stood still. The empires of the world lay there soulless and in swoon.

The seed ground of European civilization was neither Greece nor the Orient, but a world joined of the two.

The story of Alexander has become a story of death. He died himself before his time. With his life he brought the Old Greece to its end; with his death the state he had founded. But they all three, Alexander, Greece, and the Great Empire, each after its sort, set forth, as history judges men and things, the inner value of the saying, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone."

The Course of Study.

There has been great activity in June and July in the production of courses of study. To a practical man it would seem feasible that an educational commission should prepare a course of study for the entire United States. It would save a great waste of pedagogical powder. But it is not possible that the time will ever come when there will be national unity on course of study and on other educational problems; even tho common sense already admits the existence of unity in theory. So we have each state, each county, and each little incorporated city puzzling its educational head seriously over the problem whether to teach in the fifth grade arithmetic to page 160 or 185. It is too bad that we do not have an educational Pope, whose dictum on course of study would be infallible. We do not have, and as a result, Colonel Parker of the Chicago Institute, issues a voluminous course of study once each month, and Mrs. Emmons Blaine pays Marion Foster Washburn a handsome salary as editor. This "Course of Study" will contain partial ready lessons, outlines for nature study, mathematics, laboratory exercises, etc; all for $2.00 per year.

The State Board of Education of Washington have issued a new course of study for the state. It is a new course of study. The close correlation of subjects, the timely suggestions, the selection of supplementary reading, the nature work, the physical culture, and the treatment of the subject rather than the text-book, are all modern, progressive, and helpful. There are some serious inconsistences. The board quotes as authority on geography G. Stanley Hall, and prints the argument for the limitation of the time devoted to the supject. The board therein provides for the definite study of the subject in the 5th and 6th years, and makes the study optional in the 7th, 8th, and 9th years. Why optional? If pedagogically wrong it should not be permitted at all. The outline on history work by Miss Grupe is well done, but the selection of the subject is most unfortunate. A subject entirely unsuited to the 6th grade. It does not correlate with the history work in the lower grades, which should be local. It does not correlate with works on manners nor patriotism. If Miss Grupe had taken the thrilling story of Lewis and Clark, McKenzie, Balboa, Columbus, or Magellan, it would have made an excellent contribution to 6th grade work. The suggestions on