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For my part I rejoice in the priceless inspirations of Froebel. I do not doubt that the disciples of Hegel and Herbart have done vastly more than their unintelligent critics realize, to lift educational theory from the plane of capricious debate. I should like to see a genuine revival of any of those greater masters who have taken the raw material of human experience through spiritual fire until it is gold. I am glad also that we have in some cities a philosopher superintendent, provided he is like that one of your number, of whom his friends say that he can fly and also walk. He can fly with the seers and he can keep step with the children.

But there is another influence which I believe should more largely touch the public school. Of the vast social movement commonly called modern science, doubtless because of its relative magnitude in our time, we are all more or less attentive witnesses. It is perhaps too great and too near for adequate definition at present by any one; but something of the outside of its secret is the secret of every one. More of the world and more of man's life get looked at; and everything in both with more refined attention supplemented by more refined devices. The best experiences of the best observers are saved; and these are by degrees brought together, so that there emerge special laws, sciences and then general laws and the promise of science. Through this wide and delicate organizing contact with things, our race has experienced such a rebirth, such an inflow of new truth and such reenforcement or power for growth and for efficiency as that which comes to a tree in the spring. The old core of life was there, had to be there, but it has wakened up to new life of growth and productivity under the thousand touches of the outside world. The old fable of Antaeus has come true. have touched the earth and it has given us new life. We have touched the earth and it has not degraded us. There are those who think otherwise. "Tell Evenus," said Socrates on the day of his death, "tell Evenus to follow me as soon as possible into the house of death." For, he goes on in substance, as everywhere in the dialogues, it is the business of a wise man to die, to escape from the corruption of the senses, to escape from the the degradation of work with the hands, to escape every day of one's life by every means from every sort of

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contact with the earth, and by pure reflection to ascend into complete fellowship with the absolute good.

That sounds like gospel. It is gospel. But there is a better gospel. I appeal from these earth-despising prophets to a Prophet who did not despise the earth, who came eating and drinking, who cared for the bodies of men, whose last prayer and whose last command was that his disciples should not desert the world, even to dwell apart in a Mountain of Transfiguration, but should go into the earth where the people are.

There is another band of disciples not less sacred, not less brave. Their mission is not to preach but to see. What are they looking at? The dictionary is too short for an answer. At the earth from skin to core wherever it can be set eyes on -at every living thing and every shred of its body, at every man and every work of man from the playthings of a baby to the pyramids and constitutions and philosophies and to science itself. Nothing is insignificant; an earth worm is studied to as good a purpose as an empire. Nothing is uncommon or unclean; swamp and plague and boil, dark age and savage continent, uncouth dress, grotesque religion, Hotentot, Zulu, child and pedagogue, everything comes into its divine right of being looked at.

I have seen a picture of a room full of monks sitting in elegant leisure hearing the story of a returned missionary. It may be that among those who listened were good men who had faith in God, in the goodness of His world and in the triumph of righteousness. But the haggard story-teller was one who believed that the world has to be made good. And so he had gone forth to struggle with publicans and with Pharisees, to have the mother love within him insulted and tortured by those he longed to save, and to lie prostrate in Gethsemane, with every friend fled, and the face of God hidden.

I would have beside this picture another-I would have a roomful of philosophers listening to the story of the scientist. They sit aloft in peace, declaring that the world is rational. He also believes that the world is rational; but that is not enough. He must go forth and see that it is rational, and how it is so. He must go forth to be tortured by exceptions.

Again and again he must fail "though the granite seeming to see the smile of reason beaming." Again and again he must see the well ordered, schematized reason of the books shattered by pitiless reality-all this in order that there may rise vast and substantial the Reason which is.

I need not say how this whole movement of modern science has affected the world. This movement has without doubt given us an incredible advance toward the millenium. It has helped us to master the brute earth and made us all neighbors and brothers. It has changed the whole spiritual atmosphere, so that there was doubtless not a sermon preached here this week not deeply modified by what a century of science has done.

And still science is for the most part outside the public Can it come inside? Not easily. It is not easy for any good thing to get really inside of any institution. You cannot get common sense or philosophy or any sort of science inside the school between the lids of a hand-book. You can not get any of these things entirely and thoroughly inside, from a committee of great outsiders who talk at the school. There are special reasons why it is hard to get science into any kind of art, such as teaching. There are two battle lines in human progress. Some are trying to find out what is true; some are trying to find out what to do. Sometimes they are far apart. What science discovers may have to wait a dozen or a hundred years before it can be turned to practical account. Faraday was long dead before there was commercial electric light; and the discoveries of science must often pass through a long digesting process before they can be school-room wisdom.

Nevertheless, there are those who believe that elementary education and modern science cannot much longer remain as isolated from each other, and as ignorant of each other, as at present. We must short-circuit the connection between the University and the common school. The established results of science must get a quicker path from the laboratory into the school, so that the children will not be taught so many things as true which are known to be false, and so that the most certain conditions of physical and mental health will not be ignored. We need to get the method of science inside the

school, so far at least that everybody from the kindergarten baby to the educational czar will acquire the habit of not deciding questions without reference to the facts involved. We need to get the spirit of science to fill us every one with zeal for work, and infinite patience with the secret of growing along with all that is good in the old into the ever new, with humility because we have seen so little, and with reverence because we have seen so much.

All that I have said in plea for science has been more powerfully said in the person of the distinguished scientist, Professor Joseph Leconte, of the University of California. He has brought us a message not found without infinitely laborious study of minute facts by himself, and other such missionaries of science as he. That message has touched our lateborn race to the marrow; and that man stands among us a living proof that one may spend his life in scientific study of the earth, and therewith grow into the spiritual vision of a prophet.

INDUCTION AND CLASS-ROOM METHOD.

CHAS. A. M'MURRY, NORMAL, ILL.

The chapter on Induction in the General Method is an attempt to discuss the simple principle upon which instruction is based. It is a treatment of the same mental process that is described in DeGarmo's Essentials of Method. A simple practical work on the Method of the Recitation which is based upon the idea of the formal steps as elaborated and applied in Germany, is being worked out and will soon be issued.

In the effort to apply the principles of Herbart to the work of instruction, a plan of recitation has been developed based upon the general principles of inductive and deductive thinking. The problem to be solved is presented in the question, How shall we teach children important topics in different studies? What is the natural and rational process by which a child approaches and masters any given topic in a study? In the effort to solve this problem we are thrown back upon the leading principles which govern mental action (phychology) and upon the logical order and connection of ideas in a given

subject of study. In other words we must keep in mind both the child and the study. If there are general laws in accordance with which a child's mind applies itself to a study, we need to know them in planning a recitation. If the subject of study itself demands a certain logical order we must also recognize this limitation.

First of all let us answer this question, Is there a form to instruction? Is there a right way to teach? (All other ways being wrong.) Most teachers naturally resent interference; they object to being put under the control of definite requirements in instruction. They prefer to do as they please and to exercise their own originality and independence. Teachers generally sneer at the notion of a definite method or process of teaching. It is well, however, to notice the broad latitude thus granted for sinning against every principle of right method. Originality in methods of teaching, in a great majority of cases, simply means freedom to do things in the wrong way; to use slip-shod, mechanical and old-fashioned, (often irrational) methods. It means the rule of caprice, carelessness and general indifference to the principles of education. It will have to be admitted that even the psychologist and student of education do not agree on some points, but in spite of this, the experience of men in education has already developed some important fundamental principles of teaching which can be understood and applied by every intelligent teacher. The disciples of Herbart in Germany have made a serious effort to organize these principles into a plan of recitation work which has been applied to school room tasks for a number of years.

The five formal steps of instruction constitute such a combination of educational principles which can be applied to the teaching of topics in different studies in different ways. Before entering upon a statement of the principles involved in the formal steps, let us note down a few of the essentials of good recitation work which will be recognized and accepted by nearly all teachers:

1.--Self activity on the part of the pupil in seeing, thinking and mastering things for himself.

2.-Vigor and intensity of mental effort so as to establish

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