TH HIS picture, and the three following pictures were shown upon a screen before a hundred boys and girls of high-school age. Nine per cent recorded themselves most attracted to this schoolhouse because of its "dignity," "'beauty,' "grandeur," "magnificence." etc. Pictures through the courtesy of the School Board Journal. NINE per cent would wish to attend school here because the building has "sublimity," "cathedralness," "splendor," besides all of the qualities ascribed to the preceding building. WHEN this picture came on the screen it was greeted with cries "no, no". The most frequent characterizations on the ballots were "factory," "dismal," "dreary," "uninteresting". EIGHTY-TWO out of the hundred chose this schoolhouse as the one they had rather attend. Their characterizations were: "homey," "interesting," "jolly," "cute," and "unmonotonous.' M EDUCATIONAL REVIEW NOVEMBER, 1927 A REVIEW OF MATTERS OF MOMENT THE EDITOR Can't we, ILTON POTTER'S PICTURE BOOK.-"My dear school board," says the Superintendent of Milwaukee's public education, "I have to make another annual report. Isn't it a bore? No one but me reads it. mayn't we, mustn't we, try something different? I've tried to get you into the schools. You can't possibly know what they are, now, twenty-five years after you took your diploma and got out. About all you see is buildings, bids, bills, and budgets. Oh, come now, Board of Education, let me show you what education is in Milwaukee in this year of grace." Whereupon Preceptor Potter issues "The 67th Annual Report of the Superintendent of Milwaukee Schools." It is a delight. Ninety per cent of it is pictures. It starts with views of the little kissables in the kindergartens playing fireman, keeping house; it carries you smiling up the grades, through the three R's, into health, music, art, cooking, dramatics, civics, among the deaf, the blind, the crippled. Either all the children in Milwaukee are handsome or Papa Potter presumes that a picture must contain what's worth looking at. If we reproduced in this magazine all the pictures in this unique annual report, succeeding is sues of the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW would make the anticlimax. We let you have four pages only. Smut and School.-Joseph Egan, under the heading, "Character Chats," discusses life in Doctor Winship's Journal of Education every week, giving anecdotes, comments, and suggestions in a form intended for a teacher's talk to a class. One of these conversations is about the boy whose dirty stories affects you so that it takes a considerable amount of time to wash your mind clean. This is timely. Most of the schoolmasters I know like to assume that the moral atmosphere of the school is so good that there is no need of including moral cleanliness in the matters considered necessary for assembly talks. We might as well assume that Algebra, Latin, and Science will be all right without our taking the trouble to teach them. All the books on American public-school purposes I ever saw give a front place to the training of character. The first enabling act for public schools in America made more of training children in morals than of any other intent. If you look into the school readers current up to 1850 you are impressed by the predominating emphasis on conduct. On the first opportunity the makers of America found to put their educational ideas into working form, their Congress of 1787 resolved that schools should be forever encouraged so as to teach religion, morality, and that knowledge which is necessary for good government and the happiness of mankind. While we are splitting hairs in discussions on whether morality should be taught by the direct or the indirect method we run a danger of not teaching it at all. It was never mentioned in the reputedly excellent elementary and high-school system through which I went. The school |