of red tape and the political boss, would set boss-ridden New York crazy. It is the difference between the green tree and the dry. Well, it is foreordained that the heart and center of the great American republic that is to be shall be found between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains. Why not in Chicago?

The Journal of Education, October 15, gives a large amount of its editorial space to an eulogium of Dr. Wm. T. Harris. The subject of this eulogium is worthy of the approval of the great minds of this or any other country. It seems to us much like commending the greatness and beneficent influence of the sun to praise in public the great and beneficent influence of Dr. Harris upon

education in America. What would edu. cation be today with this influence subtracted? But it is fitting to have the public reminded of its blessings lest they become forgetful of them. Editor Winship has done this well-as he does everything and the nation says, "Amen."

The suggestion repeatedly made by the JOURNAL, that the summer school vacation be shortened to three or four weeks, if not dispensed with altogether, is being advocated in different parts of the country. This suggestion presupposes that our schools shall first take on more of the character of ideal living than they now have. There is altogether too great tension on the part of teachers and the most conscientious and painstaking children. The careless and indifferent children will protect themselves by disregarding many of the teacher's injunctions. But a course of training that has more in it to awaken a lively, natural, and healthy interest in the work itself will not so wear upon the nerves of pupils or teacher that the need of a long summer rest will be felt. In

tense work is not good for children except as an occasional thing. Neither is it good for teachers. It is not good for anybody. The old adage that it is better to wear out than to rust out may be true as stated, but neither wearing out nor rusting out is good and both should be avoided. avoided. The school is now too much of a forcing hothouse process. So long as this unhealthful tension is kept up there will be need of vacations. But when the work is made easy and interesting, and fatigue is seldom known, then the children. will find no more need of vacation from school than of vacation from living.

Before this number reaches most of our subscribers the issues of the present political campaign will be determined, and the American citizens will acquiesce in the decision, whatever it may be. It has been a campaign that will be memorable in the political history of this country. Many, if not most of our citizens, have regarded it as another of those crucial tests that tend to strengthen or weaken confidence in the endurance of a republican form of government over so large a territory, with such varied local interests. THE JOURNAL has believed that this is one of those periods in the growth of the nation when every citizen should give his voice and influence for what seems to him to make for the best interests of all the people.

Men prominent in the church and in literature, as well as in matters of state, have raised their voices for the truth as they saw it. Education in its journals and officers remained silent for the most part, or until the work of the campaign was completed. Because of this silence of education some have been offended that this journal saw fit to be true to its convictions and let the views of the edi. tors be known. But those who had followed the history of the paper were not

disappointed that it was not silent when the call came to speak. This paper is published because the editors have convictions upon education in all of its phases and departments. Not the least important of these is the political phase. What the state shall teach is quite as important, in our opinion, as what the schools shall teach.

We regret giving offense to any one, but we should regret more if we kept silent when we ought to speak. A few of our subscribers cannot endure that politics shall be mixed with education, just as other people object to mixing religion and politics. But there is a larger view of both education and religion that includes politics, and this is the view we take. We may lose some subscribers, but we shall continue to speak the truth as we see it, upon all questions that concern the education and well being of all the people.

Illinois Normal University.

A

This institution has fully entered upon an era of great prosperity. For some years the present administration has been slowly reorganizing the instruction, and introducing new features, until, in its scholarship, and professional training, both theoretical and practical, it is now in the front rank of normal schools. superior class of men and women have for years constituted the faculty, who have grown to a high standard of efficiency and power under the encouragement to growth which the spirit of the administration has supplied. As these have shown their capacity for the management of other educational enterprises they have withdrawn and given place to others who in their turn will follow them into larger fields. But amid all these changes the character of the school has steadily improved.

The present term has a larger attend

ance of normal students than usual and their average attainments are higher. There is at present an enrollment of 620 students in the normal department. Of this number about 200 are young men. There are nearly 200 high school graduates and a good number of graduates of colleges in these classes. The professional work done is of a very high order.

The Educational Creed of Superintendent Hughes.

We note that in some quarters there is a growing fashion of collecting the educational creeds of people. This is a fashion to be encouraged for a time, for the reason that it will attract teachers to the reading of pedagogy because of the novel form of its presentation. One's creed is a brief summary of the doctrine he would teach were he to write a book on pedagogy.

Superintendent Hughes, of Toronto, publishes his creed in The School Journal of October 3. It is interesting reading to the thoughtful reader, and tends to lift his thoughts and purposes to a higher plane than the detailed work of the school room is apt to suggest. The effect of it. will be inspiring in the matter of both aim and method. A few of the articles of this creed that treat more of method than of doctrine, will tend to convey a false impression to many readers of what the author probably means.

He says, for instance:

The child's attention should be self-active. Teachers have no right to control attention. Interest and attention act spontaneously if the proper conditions of interest are provided.

What is meant by the statement that the teacher has no right to control attention needs further elucidation. The thought with most of us is that the teacher's entire business is to control and direct the attention of children. That a lively interest should accompany attention is the

theory of everybody and the practice of too few. The teacher should control the attention for the reason that the pupil cannot control it and direct it in proper channels. The fault of our teaching where it is at fault is not in the fact that the attention is controlled, but in the method by which this is done.

Another article reads:

The child's center of interest is the true guide in the correlation or concentration of studies.

The statement is either very vague, or very false. No normal child has any one center of interest. His educative interests must be supplied by the teacher. If the child had already a center of interest that would lead him on to his proper education there would be little for the teacher to do. Civilization has determined what the child must learn and what the results of his training must be. The school is to give him this knowledge. and this training by awakening centers of interest that do not now exist. It is not true, then, that the child's center of interest on entering school is to guide in the correlation of his studies, but that centers of interest are to be established and so chosen that there will be a correlation in his knowledge and training kindred to that which exists in the social order for which he is educated.

Another article reads as follows:

Nature is the most attractive, the most suggestive, the most enlightening, and the most productive correlating center for childhood.

This is not vague, certainly, and as a statement of the author's educational faith is interesting, provided we all put the same meaning into the word nature. But do we? Does the word nature here include man and all of man's activities in the world? If it does, then everybody will accept this article. If it does not, then this statement of Mr. Hughes' is doubly interesting in that a man of his

experience and observation can hold such an article of faith. Again he says:

The physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures should be trained in unity, and the weakest department of power should receive most .careful culture.

Accepting this as a general statement of the truth in respect to the three general departments named, the question arises whether the same law holds in respect to the sub-departments. If the child is weak in the "mathematical sense," for example, is he to devote more of his time and attention to mathematics than to other studies?

Another article of his creed is:

That informal training is, more productive than formal training in all departments of human power.

We will all accept this with the proviso that formal training shall be considered an essential part of the child's education. Power is worth nothing that does not realize itself in forms.

Another article of this creed is truly startling:

Coercion is always destructive of character and power.

It is probable that the author has a different definition of coercion from the one commonly held. Another name for coercion, when the word is applied to education, is authority and its enforcement.

He

Most of the life of the child is directed by authority until it becomes habit. must learn to do things because it is so ordered. It is the work of education to transfer the coercion from a force without to one within. The real self learns to obey the ideal self. He feels that he must. Character is strongest when obedience to this authority is most implicit. The road to obedience to the authority of one's self is thorough obedience to the authority of parent, and teacher, and society. There may be a time in the lives of some men when the

real self never feels the coercive influence of the ideal self, for there may be some holy persons. The doctrine that coercion is "destructive of character and power" would be a new education indeed. It would be nearer the truth to affirm that the want of coercion in education is "destructive of character and power"

It is probable that the author of this creed believes the substance of what is here affirmed. We shall need to know in what special sense he uses the word "coercion" before we can understand this article.

The last article of this confession of faith which we shall consider is as follows:

The fullest development of the individual is the true basis for the perfect community or inter-relationship of humanity.

This statement appears to be misleading. It is true that without the fullest development of the individual there can be no perfect community; but it is also true that without the fullest development of community life there can be no perfect individual. The human being is both social and individual from earliest childhood. It is not clear in what sense we are to consider the perfect individual as the basis of the perfect community. Many will interpret this to mean that education is to concern itself chiefly, if not wholly, with the development of the individual as an individual, who is to be thus prepared for entering community life. This idea was held by a part of the Christian world at one time, but it is no longer current.

Now it is more than probable that this attempt to state an educational creed illustrates the impossibility for one to convey his thought in so few words with such precision that all, or anyone, will understand it as the author does. Our purpose at this time has been not to criticise Superintendent Hughes's creed but to call the attention of the reader to an

interpretation that would easily be given to these articles, which interpretation would constitute very bad educational doctrine, unless some people have discovered some new and fundamental truths that will work a revolution in the world's conception of the aim and method of educating the young, and in civilization itself. We all believe in evolution, but only a few now believe in revolution, and they are not our leaders.

Illinois State Teachers' Association.

The next meeting of this body will be held in Springfield, during the holiday season. The full program will appear in our December number.

The evening lectures will be by Dr. Edmund James, of Chicago University; Rev. Mr. Hyatt, of Peoria; and Editor Eva D. Kellogg, of Primary Education. This is the first time that the committee has selected a woman to give an evening address. It is the beginning of better things for this association.

The subject of "Free Text Books" will be discussed at one of the day sessions in which Prof Felmley, Mr. Errant, of the Chicago school board, and Prof. James will be the leading speakers. At another general session the "Aim of Education" will be the topic, and Prof. Tompkins will give the first address, followed by Dr. Everest, and Principal Cooley.

The meeting ought to be the best in the history of the association, and probably will be. Never before have people known so much about education and been so much interested in its advancement. Illinois has been named the "Storm Center" of the Mississippi Valley by our eastern friends. But we hope it is a storm that builds up and does not concern itself very much about tearing down. The errors will disappear by substituting truths for them. It is not by attacking

but by crowding them out that advancement is made.

The following is the program for the primary section. With this the child study section is to be combined. This, too, is a step forward. It is by studying children at work that the teacher is to learn what she most needs to know. The study of the individual specimens in the laboratory, measuring, weighing, and recording is all right in its way, but it is not the teacher's best way of coming by a knowledge of them. At least we are justified in believing that the time has now come when the study of the child, and of the work he has to do, and of the methods of doing it should all go together.

PRIMARY SECTION.

Paper, "Nature Study as a Basis for Beginners in Reading." Miss Sarah E. Griswold, Superintendent of Schools, Tracy, Ill.

Discussion opened by Col. Parker, followed Lilian Taylor and others.

Paper, "Educative Value of School Room Decoration," Miss Ida A. Shaver, Principal Cooper School, Chicago.

Discussion opened by Eva D. Kellogg.

The Women and the Schools. The Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs held its last session in Springfield. The most important report was from the education committee. It declares that the schools belong to the people and that school boards are their appointed servants and are charged with weighty responsibilities. Being of the people the federation has determined to institute a system of visitation and inspection of the public schools.

Along with this visitation these clubs are to pursue a systematic study of the history and science of education, in order to fit themselves better for estimating the value of the work now being done in the schools. This is the most important of all the undertakings of these clubs. Visitations are of little value unless the

visitors know a good school from a poor one, and why it is good.

The report demands that the schools shall employ only skilled superintendents and trained teachers. It says:

"Many a superintendent is left so entirely alone in supervision of the schools that no one knows what he directs or does not direct, and while many a superintendent thus unaided follows nobly and unswervingly the course of duty, many another works only to keep his place and draw his salary. On the other hand, many superintendents and teachers of the highest possible worth have been driven from the profession by the ignoble infiuences brought to bear upon them by members of boards of education and citizens of the community. Such influences have come to be known as "pulls," and they are as various as the selfish motives of humanity. Political, business, social, family, and even the church relationships are used for the appointment and retention of possibly worthy persons but nevertheless incompetent teachers, as everyone familiar with the facts knows and as many clubs report."

The committee makes a strong plea for the elimination of political "pulls," from our school system and the election of nonpartisan, disinterested, intelligent, public-spirited members of boards of education. Then let them choose a superintedent genuinely in sympathy with modern methods and of manly courage.

Located at Milwaukee.

The next meeting of the N. E. A. will be held in Milwaukee beginning July 6. Detroit and Minneapolis were considered by the committee but Detroit had no audience room large enough to accommodate the general meetings, and Minneapolis had already arranged for the national convention of the Elks for July 6. In former times the assembling of Elks at Minneapolis might have been an inducement to teachers of natural history but the specimens supplied by this convention will be too much conventionalized to serve the purposes of nature study.