ation upon it. We put murals in its lounge, in its dining room. But a mural in a school house exerts a hundred times wider and better influence. More people see it; they see it oftener; they are more susceptible to its influence; their minds and tastes are in the formative stage. To decorate a school in this manner reflects more credit on a town than to decorate a club. Most clubs are selfish, restricted, exclusive. A school is our best evidence of democracy." We are in greater need of good art for children than ever before. The wretched comic colored abominations of the Sunday papers are professedly sold for the children. Unless the schools supply more and better antidotes our coming generation will be Mutts and Jeffs.

With Greenfield, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana, in the lead, examples as they are of what can be done, you in your town can organize a movement greatly to enhance the refining influence of your schools.

New York was not the first city to put murals in its schools but the movement there is in so vigorous an advance that it is worth your attention. Charles Snyder, school architect, promoted it by leaving great bare spaces, marked in the plans "mural painting." To put a finished picture on the left of the auditorium stage while the top and the other side are bare is a good lure. The empty spots seem to say, "satisfy yourself by putting something here." Every time you show a visitor through you say, "when you make your million you can put a painting there." Mrs. E. H. Harriman saw the bare spots in the foyer of the Washington Irving High School and filled them all. DeWitt Clinton High School has heroic size paintings of the development of the Erie Canal. I think the ablest genius in this line is a quiet, modest, deep-thinking public servant named Elias Silberstein, who is principal of the Jonas Bronck public school. If I had time to write a beautifully illustrated beautifully illustrated book: "Public School Paintings," I would put him in as frontispiece. He has a philosophy: "Mankind," he says, "put murals in their cave dwellings several years before you were born. You want children to love

and revere education, don't you? Then make its surroundings beautiful, dignified, adorable. Use beautiful books, employ beautiful teachers, erect beautiful buildings, fill them with refinement and beauty." He preached this irrefutable gospel to his parents' association: "You can't afford in your homes the costly pictures you need. But many homes uniting can buy the best. This is your children's home. Come on, beautify it." He started with a fine canvas of Jonas Bronck negotiating with the Indians for a settlement where the school now stands. One after another, Siberstein has decorated assembly, library, classrooms. He had the children vote what characters they wished depicted. William Clarke Rice, Willy Pogany, Leo Kober, Edith Woolf, Robert Hamilton, Aaron Bogdanove, have painted nursery rhymes, historical personages, the progress of civilization, industry, poetry, nature, all in three years. This REVIEW in December, 1924, reproduced some of the Jonas Bronck pictures. It will pay you to keep your eye on Principal Silberstein. He is experimenting with a big idea: the unconscious tuition of beauty. The mystics have over and over insisted that it purifies, inspires, enobles. Silberstein believes it does. He is trying it out on a splendid scale.

Not far from the Jonas Bronck school is another where our good friend Simon Hirsdansky radiates almost every kind of public service there is. I never ask Simon about anything without getting more than a mere surface reflection.

"How about murals?" I said.

"We must have them," he answered. "All of Europe is rich with them. That's what gives it so many more artists per thousand than we have. That's why the most of the workers in the industrial arts here are not of American birth. Surround the children with beauty and it permeates them. If you had lived in Greece in the golden age you would have drunk in beauty all the time. Put the beautiful murals in the schools and they will carry the souls of the children far off from the noise and the cheapness of life to the realms of pure delight. The themes.

are endless: legends, myths, noble deeds, the great epic of the seasons, the happiness of child life. Charles Basing, with the coöperation of parents, children, and teachers, painted the mural in our assembly, 'The Spirit of the School.' Others for athletics, the arts, music, science, noble deeds, are to come later."

Murals as Memorials.-A beautiful and appropriate use of a permanent painting is that of commemorating some respected and beloved friend or relative. Select an inspiring theme and a painter of dignity and thus honor the departed. It is not uncommon in older schools to see mortuary tablets of marble: "Sacred to the memory of Jane Doe, for thirty years a beloved teacher in this school. Erected by her former pupils." New York had an epidemic of this kind. Some dear man or woman went to heaven and immediately a good-hearted old boy of the school started a subscription for a tablet. Frank Wilsey, chairman of the committee on school buildings, himself prominent in ceremonies honoring teachers, protested against turning the schools into cemeteries. Resolutions against mortuary tablets were passed. The enthusiastic mortuarian could then be told, without hurting his feelings; "It's against the rules; but a picture, instead, --something interesting, something beautiful, dedicate it to the memory of the dear departed." The Eastern District High School, Brooklyn, has a memorial mural in honor of its students killed in the World

War. Frederick Stoddard painted it. It was reproduced in the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW in March, 1925.

George Germann, principal of the Parkway School, Brooklyn, sends us another of Mr. Stoddard's murals. It is in honor of Isadore Springer, former principal. "Upward" is its title. The figure with bowed head typifies us in discouragement. Hope, touching us, awakens us to the fact that others no stronger are climbing to the temple of achievement illuminated by the bow of promise. The great rocks signify the solidity of learning; the sea, its wide expanse. Youth and age are both climbing up; there is no limit to the time of learning; you, child, and I, old man, have the happiness of always improving. The painting was presented by parents, teachers, and pupils. It was unveiled and dedicated with suitable addresses by appreciative speakers along with an impressive ceremonial arranged by Mr. Germann, the present principal.

Artistry and Industry.-Edward McClain, in Greenfield, carried his decorative scheme, with remarkable discrimination, into the shops and kitchens of the school. The Alexander Hamilton High School of Brooklyn, which specializes upon commercial training, has recently entered the procession of mural enthusiasts. In his article, “Mural Decorations in High Schools," Morris Greenberg tells, in this number, how you can join the movement and make your own school more dignified and beautiful.

-FRANCIS WILSON'S Life of Himself.

H

UNDREDS of men, since Thoreau said "Thank God, I've quit reading newspapers," have pointed out the duty of schools to supply antidotes to the corrupting influences of a dissolute press. Fred Scott's latest book: The Standard of American Speech, (Allyn & Bacon) concedes the daily newspaper to be the most powerful influence of our day and nation. Not even the holy scriptures can now compete with it. It is read in every American family. It sinks into the minds of children. It shapes their characters and their conduct. Would that it were honest; Oh, that it were courteous! From any living man who any living man who peddled grossness, crime, brutality, and sin as newspapers do, the mass of mankind would hold aloof. "Every newspaper I read is a boor and a cad. Its vulgarity is profitless. This quality does not secure it a single subscriber or advertisement. Only an old encrusted stupidity keeps the vicious practices alive in newspaperdom. By wording of headlines; by size of type; by editorial comment; it is possible for a newspaper to make out of a sordid little commonplace, of no value to anybody in the world, a story that will be read with itching curiosity by the people of a whole nation." Fred ought to know. He served his term as newspaperman before he became professor of rhetoric and journalism in the University of Michigan.

Now, if a newspaper can secure the reading of a whole nation for a sordid little commonplace it could and often does gain attention to the large service rendered by the public schools. The periodicals which deliberately belittle the school system are hard to find. When I get time and money I am going to write a book to show the positive and measurable aid the daily press has rendered education. There isn't room for it here. Only

one per cent. of what the clipping bureau sends me finds a place in this magazine. From the comments made by EDUCATIONAL REVIEW readers I find that this monthly paste-and-scissors work is counted as first among this magazine's efforts to be of service.

Newspaper Editors and Preconceptions

to

In September, 1924, the Chicago editors received the same exhortation that was sent to 400 newspaper writers in America by the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW. It was an invitation to investigate the opening of schools before displaying the moth-eaten stories that the children were weeping their way back to the class-room. Some of the editors came half-way around, some omitted the libelous cartoons, depicting reluctant school boys confronting female frumps intended represent teachers. In September, 1925, from omission of campaigning, maybe, there were relapses into the former stupidity of insinuating that school is a hateful place and teachers are unattractive. This is in the face of occular demonstration by this magazine of picture after picture of groups of typical teachers, bright, handsome, the sort children love to know. That any Chicago newspaper should, with opportunities all around it to see what teachers are, be so cautious of its acknowledgment of their winsomeness, shows that newspaperdom has not yet emerged from its dark age of ignorance of school conditions. The editorial is from the Evening Post. The author of it wants to say that teachers as a class are interesting. But years of mockery prevent him. He says "in many instances." Notice his gratuitous shaking of the finger at the end? We keep harping on this theme because we consider it an interesting duty

"Once return to school was looked upon as a mournful occasion for youth. That is no

of the Mushy Sort

"The path to learning has its arduous passages, but there are many compensations. Once we thought it must be hard always, like the way of the transgressor. Now we know that it can be entertaining and beautiful and replete with the delights of comradeship and adventure.

"Classroom and textbook, yes, and teacher in many instances-have undergone a transformation. Light and air and comfort, pictures and models and statuary, have made the classroom a place of charm for young eyes; textbooks to-day are written and illustrated in a manner which makes them competitors with the books that once alone were thought to be fit for hours of leisure. Teachers have learned the possibilities of the little, curious humans which sit before them, and have discovered and applied new ways for their development. For them the task is no longer that of driving knowledge into empty heads, often protected by a shell of inattention; but more largely that of drawing out the capacities which lie in these heads, and the values which are hidden in the souls over which they preside.

"Chicago's schools are ready for the army of 500,000, each unit of which is no less important than any member of that smaller but more dignified army of teachers, principals and superintendents which must meet and conquer the confidence and affection of these children.

"That smaller army is on trial. We have no doubt as to the splendid promise that resides in the half million. We await proof

Dear old Stanley Hall (green grows the turf above him for he was a kindly scientist), got so pleased with sand piles that he seemed to many, fooling people with the idea that a joy saloon was education. Listen to an editor of the Chicago Tribune who speaks as though he or his children had attended one of "the New Education" schools, where nobody did what he didn't want to:

"Some 20,000,000 school children up and down this country are getting ready to go back to school if they aren't back already. In anticipation of the event, the National Educational association has sent out a letter reminding us that 'newspapers do not now assume that the typical American child thoroughly hates school and his lessons and his teachers.' The editor of today, we are advised, does not consider the teacher 'an entirely contemptible public servant.'

"That lets us in as an editor of today. We think enough of the quality of the teaching to advocate subjecting children to it for twelve months a year, abolishing the long vacation for children whose parents want to send them to school in summer. Perhaps there is still here or there a spinster of acid temper ruling a schoolroom but we doubt if they guide educational practice. In general, we believe, the atmosphere of the schoolroom is more genial than it was a generation or two ago and we are glad of it.

"Having said that much, we hope we may add a word for the teacher whose pupils do not love her too dearly. The atmosphere of the schoolroom ought not to be too joyful. We are old fashioned enough to believe there are a good many things to be learned in school which cannot and indeed ought not be made too pleasant. Multiplication tables for instance. They have to be learned tediously because there isn't any other way

one of them has qualities undesirable which a Buchner, a Bigelow, a Bowers, a Strachey could so describe as to suggest an apology for each of these eminences. But our authors put the pictures of these notables in the book and hold them up to admiration. Carlyle, of course is for it. Herbert Spencer thinks it a tradition handed down from the babyhood of the world. Truth, not panegyric is what your sociologist demands. I see two types of civic writers, the one who makes democracy a science, the one who makes it a religion. Our two Denverites are warm with the glory of the race but not blinded by it. They say that newspapers do not tell the truth and that reporters lie about schools. Denver people certainly know this. It is a new idea and a healthy sign when a schoolbook says that newspapers sadden and ruin the lives of innocent men. 'Business is 'Business is sometimes run on a wholly selfish basis but religion does influence it from the smallest transactions to the accumulation and use of fortunes. John Wanamaker was prompted by deep religious convictions to refund money in all cases where customers were not satisfied.'

"I think I am with Phillips and Newlon for the emphasis upon our best. Our our best. Our youngsters will find out soon enough the spots upon the sun. If we told all the frailties of heroes and all the crookedness of our government I fear the practice of citizenship would be even worse than it is. A supervisor who mostly tells me the defects of my teaching chills and paralyzes me. The Phillips-Newlon book informs the youngster he is living in an age of hope and promise, in a blessed moral world, marvelously varied, full of surprise and beauty. This introduction to civic life is five hundred pages of spirited, varied, inspiring matter of high consequence."

Ostrich Civics and Telling the Truth. "Did you ever consider?" asked our suburban disturber whom we call the Signpost, "the remarkable difference in method between us and certain other agents of betterment? The law schools familiarize their

students with the most famous disagreements between men and what remedy was applied by the judges of the law; the schools of social service now give their apprentices casestudies of moral derelicts and describe corrective treatment; Mr. Edison's factory trains effective foremen by giving them deranged instruments that they may find out the defects and cure them. The medical student is introduced to the great array of bodily ailments and the processes that have been more or less successful in relieving them. There can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who considers the proposals of Franklin, of Washington, of Jefferson, and of a long line of American statesmen, that they intended education as a public provision for preserving the ideals on which our nation was established. The fact that schools are made a public charge instead of an expense to parents of children imposes the original civic function upon every one of us and all the time. Anyone who reads or looks or listens must be aware that diseases which have come upon the body politic require us, as mainly teachers of civic duty, not only to equip citizens with a full understanding of what perfect social and political living the founders intended, but what the present impairments are that prevent American ideals from being realized. Doctor Buchholz who, I am told, sometimes writes with the nom de guerre, Ezekiel Chever, publishes a diagnosis of our civic condition. It could be called Diseases of Democracy. It is a continuation and amplification of an earlier stirring volume: Of What Use Are Common People. Buchholz is never dull. Nor is he petulant. But he is as sharp and as outspoken as any doctor would be who found you carelessly contracting disease and going about endangering others to its contagion.

"What is the worst disease of politics? Bossism. Buchholz ridicules the innocent teaching of civics in the public school, the agency that is supported on the theory that it is saving democracy. The schoolboy is

1United States: A Second Study in Democracy. H. E. BUCHHOLZ. Warwick & York, Balti400 pp.

more.