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Editorial

HE ideal teacher will recognize the fact that teaching is a great profession, on the same plane as the ministry, law, medicine, or any of the learned professions. There is a science and an art of pedagogy. Its principles are crystallizing, its literature is being written, its professional schools are becoming established. It is one of the greatest of the professions because of its universality and its unity. There is no human being living to whom it may not have reference; and it is not split up into divers sects and denominations as is religion. It has a definite place in the public esteem, and is, on the whole, well supported from the public purse. The call of the profession is, therefore, clear and strong to the talented. They are invited to take up this great and important work for humanity and make it a life work. It is a field that may well allure the ambitious, the able, the consecrated young man or woman. It will demand their best and give them opportunities for service that are unexcelled by those in any profession.

The ideal teacher will enter the profession with some enthusiasm for these ideals, and will recognize these professional relations and obligations. Such a teacher will not be content with merely marking time until a better job can be obtained. He will wish to contribute to the well being of his fellow-teachers, to grow professionally and to advance the science and art of teaching so that it may keep abreast of the best of the other professions. This will beget in him an inclination to meet with the great gatherings of his peers, such as the State Teachers' Associations, the National Education Association of the United States, and the International Societies. It will make him willing to let his light shine. in smaller local meetings, with superintendent and teachers in his own town, and with parents' and other educational associations. It will stimulate him to read the best literature, including some, at least, of the leading pedagogical magazines; and he will wish for self-expression in authorship and in public addresses as opportunity offers. In short, the ideal teacher will be alive and will wish to make his existence felt by his associates and by the educational world at large.

In bringing to a close this series of editorial paragraphs about the ideal teacher we invite the bright young people of our land who are considering the question of a life occupation, to weigh well the splendid opportunities of the profession of teaching. And upon all who have already entered upon the work we would urge the suggestion that there are heights in it that have not yet been attained. yet plenty of room at the top.

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NFLUENTIAL, practical men of large public spirit, as well as educators throughout the United States, are observing with interest the experiment formally inaugurated at the beginning of the year by the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, of a Municipal Gymnasium, erected and equipped at a cost to the taxpayers of $141,000, for the free use of older school children and adults in the town. If the interest is sustained, and the experiment proves permanently successful, no doubt several other wealthy and populous municipalities in widely separated parts of the country will follow the example of Boston's wealthy suburb. For if the example is to be followed, it will be due more to the practical wisdom of influential men of affairs than to the classical scholar who recalls that one of the two essential elements of Greek education was gymnastics.

The gymnasium stands between the high school and the municipal bath house. The latter bears the legend, "The Health of the People the Beginning of Happiness," and is used in connection with, and under the same management as, the gymnasium. The buildings front on the principal playground of the town, the center of athletic sports. In school and college and the world at large, all recognize that too few take part in athletics; here the physical director discourages "athletics by proxy." At the outset, by physical and medical examinations, an intelligent attempt is made to locate any physical defect and to provide the kind and amount of exercise that each individual requires.

In a population of about 22,000, in the first three months 1,800 registered, and the patronage amounted to 20,000. Approximately two thirds of those registered were under twenty years, and one third twenty to sixty-five years of age. The class work of the two sexes is, of course, wholly separate; in the classes for business and professional men are enrolled many of the leading physicians, lawyers and clergymen, while in the women's classes are many mothers and some grandmothers of eminently good social standing. The gymnasium has become a civic and social center of the best type.

As a municipal enterprise, the Brookline gymnasium is, we believe, without a parallel in the United States. It had no precedent. It was only after many years of agitation, indeed, that public sentiment in a particularly enlightened community was brought to realize the wisdom, from an educational and economic point of view, of so unusual and expensive an undertaking. The local Education Society in 1902 took the first step toward a public discussion of the matter. At a public meeting of that Society Dr. D. A. Sargent, of the Hemenway Gymnasium, gave distinct impetus to the unique movement. He pointed out to its members, as he did to the readers of EDUCATION

(February, 1907) that: "Business men, presidents of great corporations and managers of great financial enterprises are looking to (college) men of well-trained bodies, as well as trained minds, to carry out their undertakings;" and again that "The grand aim of all muscular activity from an educational point of view is to improve conduct and develop character." From the view-point of the public spirited and farseeing taxpayer, apparently in hundreds of American communities, a municipal gymnasium would prove a wise investment.

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WE desire to call attention to a suggestive contribution to the important subject of children's reading which has recently been made by Clara Whitehill Hunt, Superintendent of the Children's Department of the Brooklyn Public Library. Miss Hunt has carefully studied the question of what are the best books for children to own and read; and with the endorsement of the Brooklyn Library her list of sixty volumes has been published, together with a short essay on the subject containing some excellent counsel for teachers and parents. "There are," she says, "happily, many good books. There are a few universally recognized best books. When one considers the immense influence which the books a child has grown up with at home exert upon his taste and character it seems a pity to buy only a good book when doing this cuts off the opportunity of adding a best book to his store." She therefore proceeds to name what she believes to be the best sixty books with which every child of twelve years of age should be familiar. The list includes no books of science, history, biography, travel, etc, "books of information," which it is presupposed will be furnished to the child by the school. But it gives the titles, names of authors and publishers, and the prices of sixty "books of power" which it would be well for every child to have for his very own in his home. Her list is arranged in the order in which the books will appeal to the child from babyhood upward. This will make it particularly serviceable to parents and others, so many are there who feel the need of expert guidance on this subject. If any of our readers are interested in such a list of children's books we will be pleased to aid in furnishing further particulars.

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HERE is undoubtedly a widespread feeling of discontent with the practical results of school work in the United States so far as the large number of pupils is concerned who enter upon active life, at graduation or before, in business and mechanical lines. The impression that the people's money is too largely spent by the schools in giving a merely literary education which the majority of the pupils

neither want, are fitted for, nor find useful, is not wholly without foundation. Herein is to be found one of the principal reasons why so many leave school before graduation. Able educators are thinking and working in the interests of the introduction of vocational studies in the high schools; and much progress is being made in the establishment of trade and industrial schools throughout the country. But the true and adequate remedy for the defect will be found, we believe, only when this movement reaches and affects the course of study in the elementary public schools. From the first and all the way up through the grades, children who are not adapted to purely mental studies, who do not like them, and who will not lead lives wherein they are especially useful, should be furnished training of the hand, and knowledge of machinery and other kinds of technical education which is adapted to their capacity and needs. This reform is sure to come, and it is a change that can be wrought without great expenditure or enlargement of equipment or teaching force. If any of our readers are interested in the advocacy of this idea we would call their attention to an admirable Outline of a Vocational Course for the Elementary School, together with a time schedule by which it may be carried into effect, which is published by Dr. James Parton Haney, of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, New York.

TEACHING ENGLISH IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

The Scotch education department has recently issued a memorandum on the teaching of English in Scotch primary schools, which is of interest to teachers of similar schools in all English speaking countries, as the following extracts indicate:

LITERATURE AND READING

"Whether reading be begun at once or not, the teaching of literature should at first be entirely oral; it should continue to be largely oral until the mechanical difficulties of reading have been mastered; and to the end of the elementary course the reading of good literature aloud by the teacher should form a regular exercise. The main purpose of the lesson should be kept steadily in view, and not subordinated to, or needlessly complicated with, the mechanical art of word-naming, or the accomplishment of elocution. . Causal relations, on the

perception of which the development of intelligence so largely depends, appear in the special field of literature chiefly in the form of motive and act, in which form they are readily apprehended by children provided that the motives are not altogether beyond their experience."

SPECIAL FUNCTION OF POETRY IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL

"But if the understanding of literature involves no mental processes which are not also involved in the understanding of history, and even of science, its emotional appeal marks it off very clearly from such subjects, and allies it rather with music and drawing. This appeal is made, in some measure, by all literature, but most characteristically by poetry.

"Poetry, then, cultivates the emotions by presenting their objects in pure and ideal forms. Poetic ideas must be concrete, for no one is moved by abstractions; and (beyond the stage of babyhood) their connection must be intelligible. But, though the children must be able to picture the images clearly enough to feel their force, poetic images need not have the definite precision that science demands. Some emotions, and those the deepest, depend on vague suggestions, which can be felt indeed, but not digested into words. So, too, though the whole poem must have a meaning for the children, it is by no means necessary that they should comprehend its full meaning as a grown person might. Narrative, as has already been shown, is the form of connection which children can best understand and enjoy. Selections for schools should therefore consist largely of narrative poems and ballads, or of poems which contain at least a thread of narrative."