ism? Certainly he should understand what it all means. Everybody should be alive to a force which is shaping the destinies of the human race. There are vital reasons, however, why teachers especially should become acquainted with the facts and principles of this social, economic, and politcal force. In the first place, there are at the basis of the movement those ethical ideals which the teacher labors to establish and to foster within his own field of activity. The inculcation of such ideals lifts the growing youth to a higher plane of social and civic life.

Since this development of international politics, leading directly toward a federation of the nations, vitally concerns our own country which has taken on during the last ten years a new economic and political significance among the nations of the world, the teacher of geography and history should understand the progress of the international movement. The pupil should learn through geography that the resources of all countries are needed to supply our wants-in fact, that every active man, wherever he may be, makes some contribution to the world at large.

To give the proper interpretation to the historical records of our country, whose federation of States foreshadows the federation of nations; whose National Congress, the congress of the world; whose Supreme Court, the permanent international court-the teacher of history must bring out the fact that our history is a part of world history, and that we have a racial inheritance to which people of various lands and ages have made invaluable contributions. Our national life, in all its phases, is closely interwoven with the life of European countries. Our teachers, too, must point out the special mission of the United States, the grandest experiment in the development of democracy, in the movement for the completion of the great union of nations.

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

THE PRINCIPLES OF SCHOOL HYGIENE.

WILLARD S. SMALL,

Principal Eastern High School, Washington, D. C.

WE sometimes fail to distinguish between rights as such and the historical recognition of rights. All of our most precious rights are acquired so far as full recognition and enjoyment of them are concerned. The right to life itself is historically an acquisition. Perhaps the intensity of the struggle for life itself and for liberty account for the long delay in the recog nition by the human race of the right to health. Another factor has been the lack of scientific knowledge. People have looked upon health rather as a gift than as an attainment. With the mass of people this is still largely true, and human health in consequence is miserably in arrears of its attainable possibilities. But with our present knowledge of sanitation and hygiene, and, in general, of the conditions of normal human life the absurdity of this position is apparent. Health is a gift no more than any other human endowment is a gift; health is a right in the same degree that liberty and happiness are rights; health, like other rights, is secured not by special dispensation, but by a constructive public policy and by intelligent individual effort.

The fact that health is a right and the fact that health is an acquisition for each individual, are fundamental. The old adage, Mens sana in sano corpore, has figured in the literature of education with blithe assurance, but it has never had a fair deal in actual practice. An implicit dualism has always emphasized the mens and has subordinated the corpus. Neither has been truly served. Health must be conceived as a right, therefore as an end in the educative process, not as a means towards more knowledge. Until we understand that the word health comprehends three of the most essential values of life— efficiency, vitality, joyousness-our theories of education and our organization of educational procedure will be equally perverse. When we get that conception we shall understand that the school must be a constructive factor in the promotion of health. The key to the situation is the education of teachers

into an understanding of health as a right, of its acquired character, and of the role of the various factors of school life in promoting or hindering this acquisition. The specific problem of the normal school is to formulate a course in school hygiene that shall accomplish this purpose.

The content and method of such a course are not so simple. The field for possible selection is wide; the time that can be given to the subject is limited; the problem is, therefore, one of selection. The first determinant in shaping a course of study in school hygiene for the normal school is that school conditions and practices should be examined with respect to their relation to normal development of the child. The injurious factors must be clearly defined and the health promotive factors must be explained with equal clearness.

The second determinant is the usableness of the subject matter. What can the teacher do with the knowledge thus acquired? Is this knowledge largely of matters outside the control of the teacher? If so, it is idle. This is not to say that it should consist merely of practical items, the control of which lie entirely within his power. It should not be merely prescriptive; it should be explanatory and enlightening, but it is wasteful of time and energy to deal largely with matters that will not come into the perspective of the teacher. It is important to utilize the immediate interests of the prosepective teacher and to lead him to understand the relation of the various factors of the school environment to the health of growing children.

The very best way of organizing such a course would be to have a hygienic model ever present in the conditions and practices of the normal school itself and in the training school adjunct, without which no normal school is complete. If in each normal school there were exemplified the essentials of construction and equipment, of organization of curriculum, of class management, of methods of instruction, and of personal regimen the problem would be greatly simplified. On the one hand the teacher-in-training would become habituated to hygienic conditions, and would reap the benefits both personal and professional that naturally grow out of a life of good habits; on the other hand, the school environment would be an ever-present laboratory for the first hand study of proper

hygienic conditions. The method of instruction would be the explanation of the function of each important factor in the school environment in promoting health. For example, the function of proper lighting would be made known by demonstration, by explanation of the several factors involved in adequate lighting, and by comparison with improperly lighted

rooms.

Lacking such ideal conditions, the content of the course should consist of an examination of the important factors of the school environment in order that the students may understand their hygienic significance. The laboratory method may still be used; the wholesome factors in the school environment should be selected for positive demonstration and explanation, and the faulty factors as material for demonstrating improper conditions.

The factors of school environment are many and various, but for convenience may be grouped into three classes: Material equipment, organization of instruction, miscellaneous. The first of these includes all the important topics of general sanitation, such as site, the unit of construction, ventilation, heating, lighting, toilet sanitation, water supply, also the hygiene of such instructional equipment as furniture for the pupils, blackboards, maps, gymnasiums, etc. Under organization of instruction would be included such topics as fatigue and its relation to the distribution of studies and time, home-work, discipline, hygiene of the several school subjects-e. g., reading, writing and drawing with special reference to the eyephysical training and exercise. The miscelleanous group will include, at least, communicable disease, physical defects, nervousness, diet of school children, physical examination of children, the teaching of physiology and hygiene, and effect of the teacher's health upon the school.

In a normal school course not all of these topics would be treated extensively. Some would be ignored or merely mentioned. The problem of selection will differ in different normal schools. Both in material and in emphasis, a normal school preparing teachers chiefly for rural schools must differ from an urban normal school .

The order in which the various topics are taken up is immaterial.

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

THE SOUTH AND ITS LITERARY PRODUCT.

D. F. EAGLETON, AUSTIN COLLEGE, SHERMAN, TEXAS.

"THE surest pledge of a nation's present is her faith in a heroic past; and the best guarantee of a nation's future is her full use of her present opportunities." As Dr. Kent uttered these truths to an audience of culture in the University halls of Knoxville ten years ago, he summed up in a sentence the spirit of our Southland today.

Here the geniality of the Irish, the loyalty of the Scotch, the breadth and foresight of the English, the intellectual acumen of the French, the music and romance of the Spanish-have all united to give us the most glorious civilization the world has ever known. The nobility of the man, the gentleness of the woman, the passion of the poet, the eloquence of the oratorhave all these been so insignificant as to justify the slurs of generations upon the South as the land of intellectual midnight, poisoned by the exhalations of a deadly upas tree, the home of Uncle Tom and his humble cabin?

The readiness with which these misrepresentations have been accepted is strange beyond belief. It is inconceivable that the Puritan with his unsavory record in Britain prior to his transference to American soil; with his uncertain military record of 1776 and 1812; with superstition and unitarianism sapping his intellectuality at a time when national patriotism should have been dominant; with his malignant spirit of abolitionism that plunged his country into a great civil war-it is inconceivable. I say, that such conditions should have produced the only real literature of this great country of ours, or that it should have developed the most stable government the world has ever known.

It is further beyond credence that a motley horde of convicts, gamblers, and drunkards which, according to the accepted historians, constituted the early citizenship of Virginia and the Carolinas, could have founded a William and Mary College, or institutions like the University of Virginia and Davidson College, or should have produced statesmen like