[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

REPORT OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS, LOUISIANA.

SUPT. T. H. HARRIS, BATON ROUGE, LA.

TEACHERS (white and colored): (a) Normal School gradu ates, 1,655; first grade, 1,322; second grade, 1,469; third grade, 1,229.

The summer schools were

Summer schools for teachers: kept open nine weeks for white teachers and six weeks for colored teachers. The attendance was 3,058.

School attendance: White, 173,687; colored, 82,986.

Length of session: White, 7.5 months (high schools nine months), and colored 4.7 months.

School revenues: State appropriation, $911,132; police juries, $32,796; municipal, $873,673; special taxes, $551,299. Other sources, $2,221,363. Total, $4,058,745. Increase about a million.

Appropriation for State institutions: Louisiana State University, $77,100; Louisiana State Normal School, $71,400; Louisiana Industrial Institute, $51,000; Louisiana S. W. Industrial Institute, $19,250; Southern University, $10,750; State Institute Board, $12,500.

Value of public school property, $5,737,829.

Much has been accomplished in the consolidation of country schools. The State employs a Rural School Inspector.

Expended upon school libraries, $64,705.

Departments of agriculture have been established in eight country schools. They receive no State aid.

There are 87 State approved four-year high schools in the State.

Specialists in music and drawing and in writing have been kept in the field since the opening of the session..

We have a State-wide school improvement league which keeps a secretary constantly among the schools.

Our schools are making satisfactory progress along the lines of vital importance.

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

SCHOOLROOM FENESTRATION.

N. R. BAKER, SUPERINTENDENT SCHOOLS, ENSLEY, ALA.

No more important topic presents itself to the Superintendents than that of fenestration.

It is little less than criminal that schoolrooms in even large and presumably modern cities are allowed to exist improperly ventilated, heated, and lighted. Superintendents and schoo! boards are beginning to study the first two of these subjects with a view to bettering exisiting sanitary conditions with the result that the new buildings are a great improvement over those built twenty, ten or even five years ago.

But the subject of lighting, or, as I may call it, the new science of fenestration, has as yet received all too little attention.

Dr. William T. Barry, of Woonsocket, R. I., reports that of one thousand (1,000), children examined, 334, or 33 1-3 per cent, had defective vision in one or both eyes.

I let him tell of his experiment in his own words:

"The strangest point brought out through an extensive examination of the eyes of school children, and adults as well, was that, although the eyes of many were seriously affected, the persons were apparently ignortant of the fact. The onset was insidious, and little notice had been taken until the change was irreparable. Twelve pupils were found who had practically no sight in either eye, yet who were all doing the required school work. The remaining good eye had been saddled with the work of both and was doing it as well as possible. It so happened that the trouble with the eye was in the retina and the optic nerve; and as the child did not complain, and there was nothing in the outward appearance of the eye to draw attention to it, the trouble passed unnoticed. A number of teachers frankly admitted that they had thought many pupils, who in reality were suffering most severely from defective vision, merely stupid and inattentive.

"The following table shows the result in detail:

In another city two large buildings have been noticed for seven years. In one where the lighting was improper, inadequate, and unscientific, the eye sight of the children constantly grows worse. In the other where the conditions are favorable and the fenestration approximately scientifically correct the percentage of defective eyesight decreases rapidly after entering until the pupils in the seventh grade have normal eyes almost without exception.

In my opinion all lighting for regular grade classroom work should be unilateral though some still hold to the bilateral system. This plan is only permissible, however, when the second side is from the rear and quite high and so much less in space as not to overcome the light from the left.

The light should always come from the left side and as much to the rear as possible, as that coming from near the front both interferes with blackboard work and by shining into the eyes of the pupils causes a false focus of the light through the pupil of the eye.

The bottom of the windows should be as high as the child's head when seated in order again to avoid the strain of focusing the eye to receive one strength of light yet compelling it to read by another on the book. This conflict of foci cannot avoid working harm to the eyes.

The light space on the left should be one-fifth to one-seventh of the floor space on the room.

By using steel mullions instead of brick piers, it is possible to reduce the space between the windows to eleven inches.

The necessity for this reduction depends upon the same principle as the necessity for the use of a unilateral system, namely: the elimination of cross shadows. It is perfectly apparent that where cross shadows exist they must of necessity

fall across the pages of the book in the hands of the pupils, and that to read a page or even a line of a page the eye must constantly focus and adjust itself. The effect upon the eyes will be exactly the same as if one were reading in a flaring or flickering light.

As for heating and ventilating it is better that the ceiling be not too high, so for lighting it is better that the room be not more than twenty-four feet wide. The great body of light comes at an angle of about 30 degrees, probably because the thinness of the atmosphere through more nearly vertical lines and the impurities and obstructions of more nearly horizontal lines cause a concentration of average light at this median angle. Therefore, light will fall just twice as far on the floor as the height of the windows. The light coming in at the top of a window twelve feet above the floor will fall twenty-four feet into the room.

If possible the buildings

should be long and narrow and all rooms facing east or west. South light is too strong.

North light is good, but prevents by the unilateral system any flooding of the rooms by sunlight. Sunlight is nature's greatest disinfectant.

Thus far we have discussed building construction and the ideal conditions which should obtain in new buildings. But generally the most perplexing problem is what to do with buildings already constructed which do not meet these scientific requirements. There are many well constructed brick and stone buildings destined to last for a century yet, and equally destined to ruin the eyesight of hundreds of children for life unless some remodeling is done or some simple, but well established, laws of fensteration are observed.

In many one-room country schools light is admitted from three or even four sides.

Let the windows in front of the pupils be closed up with shutters or dark green shades or the glass painted with brown or dark green paint. The same may be said of those to the right of the pupils, though slightly lighter tints would suffice. Generally the light from the left in such buildings is not suf ficient owing to the large space between the windows. Therefore the bilateral system must be adhered to.

Wings in city buildings with windows on three sides may

be treated in the same way. Where there is an abundance of light in corner rooms the windows should be darkened on the right side of the room so as to prevent shadows over the right shoulder. Care should be taken, too, that no window far to the front near the teacher's table is allowed to admit light, through even a chink or crevice.

It is generally best to have the walls tinted buff with cream tint above the picture moulding and on ceiling and a brown or mahogany wainscot. The window shades should be straw colored or about the shade of unbleached linen.

In all cases a dull finish is best as it does not dazzle the eyes nor render the blackboard useless by reflection.

In dark rooms, hall, or basements do not fail to use prismatic glass.

Where the building is already constructed along wrong lines the difficulty may be in getting the teachers to adjust the shades at various times of the day to suit the light, or consent to allow some shades used in the readjustment of the light pulled all the way down, while others are all the way, or part way, to the top. Her objection is, and will be, an esthetic and based on the looks of the rooms from outside. But when the eyes of the children are at stake, what right have we to consider even the laws of harmony and esthetics? For what shall it profit a child to gain the whole mental world and in so doing lose its own sense of sight?

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

TEACHER GOVERN

SCHOOL GOVERNMENT VS. (a)

MENT, (b) STUDENT GOVERNMENT.

PRES. ROBERT H. WRIGHT, GREENVILLE, N. C.

I THINK one indictment that may with justice be made against our modern educational system is we have done too much surface plowing and not enough subsoiling. We are in an age of educational experimentation. Experiments, if properly thought out before made, then fairly and honestly tested, add something to the sum total of knowledge on the subject. If, however, they are tested to prove some pet theory then they are pernicious.