that there is a content and method for this subject which is as much more interesting than school subjects geenrally as life itself is more interesting than sums and sentences, as inherently wholesome and timely as any nature-study or literature that can be devised. It is merely the study of the child's best self and his best and happiest relations.

Naturally the teacher's course will include a survey of the educative and moral significance of play and recreation as well as of school conduct and studies. Happily some of our treaties on school management are character-centered rather than school-centered. Methods in arithmetic mean something vastly more inspiring when mind and character are the criteria of progress instead of marks and promotions, or even mathematical efficiency. Every special method and every kind of school activity may be reviewed, or studied de novo from the standpoint of its character-making value. The student in observation work may well be called upon to analyze teaching exercises and conditions as to their elements that make for sincerity, for certainty and clearness of idea, for purity of aspiration or loftiness of purpose, for unity and worth of the personality, as well as for habits that count for character. No teacher anywhere, much less a practice student, should presume to go before a class of children without the consciousness that every act of his, and more significantly, every act of the pupil, is making for character. But all such thoughts and analyses will be vague unless organized into a system.

Have we the requisite knowledge available? All knowledge of educational values, whether of method or matter, is of this sort. So, probably is all that is not merely mechanical, traditional or speculative. While this ordering of topics will doubtless have great value discovering gapes in our pedagogy and thus leading to new research and attainments, its newness will be more in viewpoint and arrangement than in content.

Can we find time for additional courses with more now than any of us can cover? If these vital topics have been treated in other courses, a resumé with new relations and significances will be an ideal review. If not, there is none that we can afford to omit. Why cannot a shifting of topics and viewpoint give us an inspiring, practical, character-centered pedagogy for the common-school teacher who has but the one course with which to start?

Criticisms of school work are rampant. Inefficiency is the charge. Despite their varying excellencies, the best institutions, systems and methods are constantly being censured for some partial failure. It is not because we deliberately choose one kind of development and pay for it by giving up another, but with our eyes on some partial aim we lose sight of some other. Then the pendulum swings to the neglected side and hoi polloi cry out on another "fad." Can we do better than to try centering our attention upon the whole aim-characterbuilding? May we not investigate and progress as well in subjects, methods, schools and systems of schools, and even in the development of faculties, by regarding them as tools instead of ends? Not merely in theory, but in actual practice? Can we bring this about better than by teaching teachers thus to teach? The greatest teachers have always been those who have had the clearest and highest aims and have kept closest to them. Nor can the humblest laborer in the teaching industry be specialized as a mere piece-worker so long as it is a whole child that comes to school to him.

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

ILLUSTRATED LESSONS IN MORALS.

MILTON FAIRCHILD, BALTIMORE, MD.

"ILLUSTRATED Lessons in Morals" designated a new method of moral instruction. The most influential instruction given by the teacher is that given at the time of some incident in school life. General opinion has been favorable toward this incidental instruction. In the home, the instruction of parents is largely incidental, and the reason for this is, that when something happens, boys and girls are interested in the discussion of the right and wrong involved. It was very natural to suspect that if incidents of real life could be photographed and made into lantern slides and thrown on a screen before large audiences of boys and girls, they would be interested in and influenced by the discussion of the right and wrong involved, if the discussion was carefully adjusted to their degree of intelligence.

From long observation of the free life of children on the streets and playgrounds, and at work, it became evident that they themselves were disposed to discuss the right and wrong of matters in their own world with keen interest and strong convictions. It seemed, therefore, that it might be possible by photographing these episodes in the lives of boys and girls themselves, which they themselves were likely to discuss from the standpoint of morals, we should be able to inject into their own thought about these things the intelligent opinion as to right and wrong which comes with maturity of mind and experience. Photographs were taken, and the first attempt to construct an "illustrated lesson in morals" dealt with the topic, "Boys' Fights." It was exceedingly difficult to secure the necessary photographs, and finally I devised a camera which will take thirty pictures in a minute; thus enabling me to secure a series of instantaneous photographs covering these real happenings in the every-day life of children and adults. Later, other illustrated lessons were developed, and in 1906 practical experiments began in the public schools. They were very successful, holding rapt and intense interest for periods of three-quarters of an hour to an hour, provoking personal discussion among the children themselves, affording an excellent opportunity for the teachers to continue the discussion, and influencing profoundly the personal convictions and conduct of school children. The lessons are very interesting and yet not sensational. They are kept on the high plane of true education. Within the last three years these illustrated lessons have been given to an aggregate audience of about one-hundred thousand boys and girls in some twenty different States.

The titles of the lessons used were, first, "What Men Think About Boys' Fights;" second, "What I Am Going to Do When I Am Grown Up," and third, "The True Sportsman." The first two were for grammar schools and the last for high schools. During the past summer, with the assistance of Mr. Bernard N. Baker, of Baltimore, two additional lessons have been prepared for high school use: one on "Personal and National Thrift," which urges boys and girls to make good use of their high school opportunities; and the second, "Who Is the Gentleman," which explains to high school audiences, intelligent public opinion on that topic. The Moral Education Board includes

one hundred and fifty members, many being leading educators, and among them your President, James H. Van Sickle, and Edw. F. Buchner, Professor of Education in Johns Hopkins University. The clergy are somewhat represented in the membership as being particularly interested and intelligent in matters of practical morals, and I am happy to say that almost all the different denominations are properly represented.

Your interest and coöperation is desired, in order that as great a good as is possible from this system of moral instruction may be achieved. Such formal instruction as this is interesting and influential if under favorable circumstances, but will, of course, carry little weight, unless coördained with the other accustomed means of moral education: viz., personal influence of the teacher, school organizations, indirect influence of studies, and incidental instruction and discipline.

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

KENTUCKY'S EDUCATIONAL AWAKENING.

J. G. CRABBE, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, FRANKFORT, KY.

IN 1907, under the old cumbersome, iniquitous district school system, Kentucky faced squarely certain facts:

1. There were twenty-five thousand Trustees; five thousand could not read nor write; out of the twenty-five thousand, fifteen thousand were merely appointed, leaving about ten thousand who were elected in a poor sort of way. It is an old story to say that twenty thousand of these Trustees were not at all interested in the schools and that the vast majority only cared for a kind of graft to secure certain teachers and perquisites available.

2. There was no local taxation, therefore

3. There was no money for schoolhouses, school supplies, equipment, repairs and incidentals.

4. There were no high schools.

5. Salaries were poor, for the teachers simply received "the draw."

6. There were but few trained teachers and there were but little opportunity to secure professional training.

7. There was no well-defined plan of instruction for the rural schools.

8. There was practically no supervision. The field was too big. The Superintendent's salary was ridiculously small. He did not and could not devote his entire time to the schools. Perforce, he practiced law, or practiced medicine, or farmed or otherwise.

9. There were no school libraries.

10. There was no school interest among the people. Of course, there was but little interest among the teachers and pupils.

In 1906 a beginning had been made when the General Assembly voted an annual appropriation of twenty thousand dollars each for two State Normal Schools, one at Richmond and one at Bowling Green. But the school forces and their friends were marshalling for a desperate struggle. On the firing line were the Kentucky Educational Association, the Kentucky Development Association, and best of all, the Federation of Women's Clubs. On January 6, 1908, the writer became head of the State Department of Education. On the same day the General Assembly met in biennial session. The enactments made were momentous and this Assembly will doubtless be called "The Educational Legislature."

1. It passed the County School District Law, or the Sullivan bill, which called for a complete reorganization of the school system and for the establishment within two years of a high school within every county in Kentucky.

2. It made State College a State University and enlarged the scope of its usefulness.

3. It appropriated a half million dollars for higher education and another seventy thousand dollars annually for additional maintenance for State University and the Normals.

4. It passed a bill creating an Educational Commission and instructed it to make a thorough investigation of the whole school system and report to the next General Assembly.

5. It passed a bill appropriating forty thousand dollars for additional improvements at Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons.