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of mechanism and personality is important. Too much preoccupation with them in a general fashion, however, without translation into relevant imagery of actual conditions is likely to give rise to unreal difficulties. The ethical personality does not go to school naked; it takes with it the body as the instrument through which all influences reach it, and through control of which its ideas are both elaborated and expressed. The teacher does not deal with personality at large, but as expressed in intellectual and practical impulses and habits. The ethical personality is not formed-it is forming. The teacher must provide stimuli leading to the equipment of personality with active habits and interests. When we consider the problem of forming habits and interests we find ourselves at once confronted with matters of this sort. What stimuli shall be presented to the sense organs and how? What stable complexes of associations shall be organized? What motor impulses shall be evoked, and to what extent? How shall they be induced in such a way as to bring favorable stimuli under greater control, and to lessen the danger of excitation from undesirable stimuli? In a word, the teacher is dealing with the psychical factors that are concerned with furtherance of certain habits, and the inhibition of others-habits intellectual, habits emotional, habits in overt action.

Moreover, all the instruments and materials with which the teacher deals must be considered as psychical stimuli. Such consideration involves of necessity a knowledge of their reciprocal reactionsof what goes by the name of causal mechanism. The introduction of certain changes into a net-work of associations, the reinforcement of certain sensori-motor connections, the weakening or displacing of others this is the psychological rendering of the greater part of the teacher's actual business. It is not that one teacher employs mechanical considerations, and that the other does not, appealing to higher ends; it is that one does not know his mechanism, and consequently acts servilely, superstitiously and blindly, while the other, knowing what he is about, acts freely, clearly and effectively. That

some teachers get their psychology by instinct more effectively than others by any amount of reflective study may be unreservedly stated. It is not a question of manufacturing teachers, but of reinforcing and enlightening those who have a right to teach.

The same thing is true on the side of materials of instruction-the school studies. No amount of exaltation of teleological personality (however true, and however necessary the emphasis) can disguise from us the fact that instruction is an affair of bringing a child into intimate relations with concrete objects, positive facts, definite ideas and specific symbols. The symbols are objective things in arithmetic, reading and writing. The ideas are truths of history and of science. The facts are derived from such specific disciplines as geography and language, botany and astronomy. To suppose that by some influence of pure personality upon pure personality, conjoined with a knowledge of rules formulated by an educational theorist, an effective interplay of this body of physical and ideal objects with the life of the child can be effective, is, I submit, nothing but an appeal to magic, plus dependence upon servile routine. Symbols in reading and writing and number, are both in themselves, and in the way in which they stand for ideas, elements in a mechanism which has to be rendered operative within the child. To bring about this influence in the most helpful and economical way, in the most fruitful and liberating way, is absolutely impossible save as the teacher has some power to transmute symbols and contents into their working psychical equivalents; and save as he also has the power to see what it is in the child, as a psychical mechanism, that affords maximum leverage.

Probably I shall now hear that at present the danger is not of dealing with acts and persons in a gross, arbitrary way, but (so far as what is called new education is concerned) in treating the children too much as mechanism, and consequently seeking for all kinds of stimuli to stir and attract-that, in a word, the tendency to reduce instruction to a merely agreeable thing, weakening the child's personality

and indulging his mere love of excitement. and pleasure, is precisely the result of taking the psycho-mechanical point of view. I welcome the objection, for it serves to clear up the precise point. It is through a partial and defective psychology that the teacher, in his reaction from dead routine and arbitrary moral and intellectual discipline, has substituted an appeal to the satisfaction of momentary impulse. It is not because the teacher has a knowledge of the psycho-physical mechanism, but because he has a partial knowledge of it. He has come to consciousness of certain sensations, and certain impulses, and of the ways in which these may be stimulated and directed, but he is in ignorance of the larger mechanism (just as a mechanism), and of the causal relations which subsist between the unknown part and the elements upon which he is playing. What is needed to correct his errors is not to inform him that he gets only misleading from taking the psychical point of view; but to reveal to him the scope and intricate interactions of the mechanism as a whole. Then he will realize that while he is gaining apparent efficacy in some superficial part of the mechanism, he is disarranging, dislocating and disintegrating much more fundamental factors in it. In a word he is operating not as a psychologist, but as a poor psychologist, and the only cure for a partial psychology is a fuller one. He is gaining the momentary attention of the child through an appeal to pleasant color, or exciting tone, or agreeable association, but at the expense of isolating one cog and ratchet in the machinery, and making it operate independently of the rest. In theory, it is as possible to demonstrate this to a teacher, showing how the faulty method reacts unhappily into the personality, as it is to locate the points of wrong construction, and of ineffective transfer of energy in a physical apparatus.

This suggests the admission made by writers in many respects as far apart as Dr. Harris and Dr. Munsterberg-that

scientific psychology is of use on the pathological side-where questions of "physical and mental health" are concerned. But is there anything with which the teacher has concern that is not included in the ideal of physical and mental health? Does health define to us anything less than the teacher's whole end and aim? Where does pathology leave off in the scale and series of vicious aims and defective means? I see no line between the more obvious methods and materials which result in nervous irritation and fatigue; in weakening the power of vision, in establishing spinal curvatures; and others which, in more remote and subtle, but equally real ways, leave the child with, say, a muscular system which is only partially at the service of his ideas, with blocked and inert brain paths between eye and ear, and with a partial and disconnected development of the cerebral paths of visual imagery. What error in instruction is there which could not, with proper psychological theory, be stated in just such terms as these? A wrong method of teaching reading, wrong I mean in the full educational and ethical sense, is also a case of pathological use of the psycho-physical mechanism. A method is ethically defective that, while giving the child a glibness in the mechanical facility of reading, leaves him at the mercy of suggestion and chance environment to decide whether he reads the "yellow journal," the trashy novel, or the literature which inspires and makes more valid his whole. life. Is it any less certain that this failure on the ethical side is repeated in some lack of adequate growth and connection. in the psychical and physiological factors involved? If a knowledge of psychology is important to the teacher in the grosser and more overt cases of mental pathology, is it not even more important in these hidden and indirect matters-just because they are less evident and more circuitous in their operation and manifestation?

(Concluded in December.)

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girl, for any more mathematics than the ordinary amount of arithmetic that everyone acquires whether he be an educated person or not? This is old ground, often threshed over. But is it to be regarded ever as res adjudicata? It is maintained that mathematics is for the training of the mind-for broadening the student's reasoning power. I may be in error in supposing that a mathematical course is unnecessary except for specialists who are to use it, but I am sure that I am on the right ground in holding that English should be emphasized in our schools over and above all else. Lan

guage is a common heritage.

common

Neither

mathematics, nor science, nor anything else is like language, a universal requisite. Am I not right in contending that a thorough study of languages, if there be room and time for more than one language, would yield the same results in mental training as are claimed for the study of mathematics? If this be true, will not the study of languages be more useful to the student, since it is not only a mental exercise but a useful acquisition for all days? I should therefore say, give us more English, English, English, and as many other languages as the curriculum can provide for.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE GERMAN KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM.

CARINA CAMPBELL EAGLESField.

Among most Americans the idea prevails that all German children attend the kindergarten, but a nearer and more intimate acquaintance with German life discloses the fact that this is by no means the case.

The idea of child training originated in Germany, it is true, and in no land has the child been studied more scientifically, but so deeply ingrained is the feeling of class distinction and caste that the kindergarten is not half so generally used as one would at first sight suppose. In its tiny realm true democracy must necessarily prevail, but this equality is so repugnant to all the traditions of the upper classes that they can not reconcile it with their cast-iron notions of rank and precedence. The idea of a little count or baron or the son of an officer romping with the children of a burgher is enough to make their hair stand on end, so we find upon visiting the different private kindergartens of any large city a noticeable absence of children of the upper classes.

These little folks are of course not debarred from the delightful training which Froebel insisted should be the birthright of every child, therefore a well-born and well-bred kindergarten teacher is engaged by a group of families of the same social

class, let us say, officers, titled people and officials of the highest rank, and she goes from one home to the other, staying usually one month, and meets there the assembled children of the group. These little aristocrats are brought morning and afternoon to their destination, by servants in livery, and we hope their enjoyment in the beautiful round of plays and works is as hearty and natural as that of the less favored burgher children.

Sometimes a trained teacher is kept for the sole use of the children of one family, but unless there are many children, this is not considered as beneficial for the little ones as the intercourse with others of the same age. Wealthy merchants, bankers and professional families also employ a kindergarten teacher, and as the families are usually larger than in the highest classes, the number in one group is not so large. In Germany, as in America, one notices that the higher one goes in station the fewer the children to a family, and the causes are probably the same in both countries.

The burghers, or what we would call the people of moderate means, for with us no such distinctions in occupation or income are made, all send their little ones to private kindergartens, it would be an un

heard of thing to make use of the public or Volks kindergarten, though they are quite as good, and to a foreigner the difference in the appearance of the children is not so apparent as to explain the horror which the burgher class entertains for people who take advantage of the cheaper schools.

Private kindergarten tuition is very low, averaging only three marks or about seventy-five cents per month, and the teachers employed are thoroughly trained and fitted for their work. A course of two years is always taken and the young teacher leaves the training institute with a fair knowledge of French, English, music and drawing, besides much advancement in the ordinary school

branches. It is insisted upon that the children must be kept happy and amused, and that requires a constant change in games and plays and much tact on the teacher's part.

No kindergarten is entirely free in Germany, but the tuition is always very low and the children can enjoy the privileges of the Volks kindergarten by paying the ridiculously small sum of twelve cents per month. There is, besides these excellent schools, an institution which is surely a source of great comfort and pleasure to the children of the very poor. It is called Kinderwebewahranstalt, or "Home for the Care of Children," and for twelve cents a week any child from a few months to several years is taken early in the morning and kept, fed and beautifully cared for till night, or when the mother

can take it away. These homes are under the auspices of the Protestant church and supported by private subscription, like our own American charity schools.

Here the children of the lowest classes find warmth, care, kindness and more tenderness than they would receive in their own squalid homes, and no charity is as conducive as this towards the growth and formation of the child's character. Usually it is indeed all the moral or religious training he gets. The Germans spend a great deal of money in home missions and charity work, and the buildings of all their charitable institutions are very handsome, spacious and comfortable. One sees no small or cheap buildings, and when I asked where the slums were was told that there were none. Their immense houses contain hundreds of people, and the station of the inmate is told by his position in the house. Down in the damp and dismal courts or high up in the attic may dwell the poorest of people, yet one stairway does for all, and one may meet every class jostling elbows or panting for breath as they toil up and down the cold stone steps.

Many a lesson in social democracy might be learned on the stairways of German houses, but one so soon grows accustomed to meeting all kinds and conditions that the strangeness wears off and the contrast is not noticed, and the momentary contact with those beneath us in worldly advantages fails to bring us any nearer to them.

FATE.

"The sky is crowded, the rocks are bare, The spray of the tempest is white in air; The winds are out with the waves at play And I shall not tempt the sea to-day."

"The trail is narrow, the wood is dim,
The panther clings to the arching limb;
And the lion's whelps are abroad at play,
And I shall not join in the chase to-day."

But the ship sailed safely over the sea,
And the hunters came from the chase in glee;
And the town that was builded upon a rock
Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.
-Bret Harte.

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