"Since every child is born totally depraved, his will must be broken through stripes and blows and rough usage, his natural inclinations thwarted, and his childish affections repressed." But even this view of the child is nearer the truth than the theory of some modern scientists who teach that the child is born a savage. "Is there in sober truth,” asks one of these writers, "any other living creature's offspring so passionate, so selfish, so noisy, so troublesome, so exacting, so offensive in some respects as the human baby?"

Perhaps such views of child nature explain why society has permitted commercial greed to send little children to work in damp mines and dangerous factories for cruel masters and under strange overseers.

Results of Neglecting the Child.—Society reaps a terrible harvest for its neglect and abuse of little children. “In all the years that I have served on the criminal bench one thought has been constantly uppermost in my mind. I have never tried a criminal case or sentenced a criminal to the penitentiary or worse, but I have felt like a giant, placed there by society to take its revenge for what society itself has made." This is the statement made recently by Judge Tuley, of Chicago, in discussing the necessity for immediate action for the salvation of friendless and wayward boys. "If I were asked to name one product of vice and crime that would soonest touch the hearts of all good people, I would say a neglected child. Every case of vagabondage has its root in some neglected child," said W. T. Harris. In "Bleak House," Charles Dickens voiced the same thought in describing the conditions of child life in the slums of London: "There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not an obscenity or degradation about him,

not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the high."

The Great Defect of the Old Education.-The old education took little pains to understand children. The State took no interest in primary education. Educational writers spoke of the younger pupils as the "fag-end" of the school for whom little could be done.

Fénelon said of the schools of his time: "There is no liberty, no enjoyment, but always lessons, silence, uncomfortable postures, correction, and threats." "Day and night," complains one teacher, "we do not cease to chastise the children confided to our care, and they grow worse and worse." In writing of a boys' school, Montaigne says: "It is the true home of correction of imprisoned youth. Do but come in when they are about their lessons, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution and the thundering noise of their teachers, drunk with fury. A pretty way this is to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their books, with a furious countenance and a rod in hand."

No wonder that such schools were schools of vice, that knowledge learned was soon forgotten, that pupils hated schools and teachers, and that teaching was usually a degrading and despised vocation.

The New Education Based upon a Knowledge of Children.-Rousseau was the first great writer to insist that education should be based wholly upon the nature of the being to be educated. His book, "Émile," has been called the "gospel of educational freedom for the child." According to Rousseau, the child is not all bad. He is made bad by bad example and wrong education. He is punished before he is able to know his faults. His first

gifts are chains. His desires are crossed at every stage. We make him bad, and then complain of finding him so. The child has a tendency to grow into the type of the race, and this is the education that nature gives; but we thwart nature at every step, and then are surprised that the result is deformity. Nature would have children to be children before being men. Childhood has its own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute our ways for them.

The true aim of education is not knowledge, but how to live. The common vocation of all men is manhood, and whoever is well trained for that cannot fulfil badly any work he may do. To live is not to breathe; it is to make use of our organs, of our senses, of our faculties, of every element of our nature. This is the trade that the teacher has to teach.

A teacher! It is by considering what he ought to do that we shall see what he ought to be. He ought to be a father, or more than a father, for his ruling motive must be the love of the pupil. Recollect that before presuming to form a man, you must become a man yourself; you must needs find in yourself the example which you are to propose for others. Respect the child's individuality, and leave the germ of his character at perfect liberty to unfold itself.

These thoughts from "Émile" reveal the nature of the New Education and disclose a sure basis for a science of teaching. Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart built upon this foundation. Wherever teachers have caught their spirit, school life has been transformed; for interest has banished dulness, instruction has been vitalized, and discipline has become humane.

That every child should be educated, that the State should provide public schools, that the body must be

trained as well as the mind, that rich and poor alike must be taught to use their eyes and hands, that power is developed only through self-activity, that all instruction must be adapted to the actual present needs of the pupil, that teachers must be professionally trained, and that all methods must be based on the laws of the mind-these are some of the cardinal principles of the New Education.

The Modern Teacher Must Study Children.-No one can grasp these principles or successfully apply them unless he becomes a student of childhood. Insight into child nature and sympathy with child life are absolutely essential to really successful teaching. Without these, scholarship will fail and methods and devices are all in vain.

Mr. Quick says: "It is our business as teachers to try to realize how the world looks from the child's point of view. We may know a great many things and be ready to teach them, but we shall have little success unless we get another knowledge which we can learn only by patient observation, a knowledge of the mind of our pupils and what goes on there. When we set out on this path, teaching becomes a new occupation with boundless possibilities and unceasing interest in it. Every teacher becomes a learner, for we have to study the minds of the young, their way of looking at things, their habits, their difficulties, their likes and dislikes, how they are stimulated to exertion, how they are discouraged, how one mood succeeds another. What we need is a knowledge of the child's mind with the object of influencing it."

Aptness to teach and tact in management are the results of understanding the stuff with which we work, and "first, last, and all the time this stuff is children, or, to put it more broadly, human beings." Without this knowledge of children one teacher worries, repels, fails; with it, another

teacher cheers, inspires, succeeds in the same school. Careful and constant study of children will help the teacher in many ways.

To Understand Educational Aims and Values.— Aimless teaching is a great educational waste, but a wrong aim may be worse than no aim at all. All true aims of education grow out of the nature of the child and must be in harmony with that nature. These aims are the teacher's only true standard by which to measure educational values. There is much to learn, and the average child's school life is very short. What shall we teach him? What will it pay him best to learn? Where shall we place the emphasis in education? To answer these questions intelligently—in other words, to apply a course of study intelligently, or to plan a lesson properly, or to teach inspiringly-teachers must study their pupils.

(2) To Avoid Mistakes.-The teacher must realize the physical needs of the pupils, know their individual traits, understand their nervous temperament, discover their physical defects, or run the risk of inflicting upon them untold injury. Phelps's teacher whipped him one day because she thought he made ugly faces at her when he was scolded. All the other children knew that Phelps was afflicted with a nervous twitching of the muscles of his face when disturbed mentally, but this his teacher had never discovered. In spite of the fact that defects of vision and hearing are so common among pupils, the unobserving teacher still punishes such pupils for their supposed stupidity. Often the children with such defects do not know that they are defective.

A teacher who understands the nature of the nervous system will know that physical health and strength are the only sure basis for good mental work; that to the healthy