of things by calling up a picture of the circulatory system, the artery branching out into numerous capillaries, and these again collecting to form a vein. In like manner, when a stimulus is received in the brain it usually branches out into a number of connected sensory and motor cells, but at last it is collected and sent out along one system of motor nerves to the muscles to be moved. The process of branching is what we call on the mental side, association, deliberation, reasoning, or, in general terms, intellection, while the settling into a definite channel of action is will, which is followed by the overt act.

Now, if the last part of the process, the act, is prevented, what is the effect? Evidently, the nervous energy is blocked and must flow back over the ground already traversed or overflow into new and uncontrolled ones. Mentally this means that the person will either be confined to a world of ideas or will act in unregulated and unreasonable ways, ways which have no natural connection with his thinking and feeling. Which result we get seems to depend largely on the strength of the ideas. If the stimulus and the thought are very strong, the unregulated action almost certainly follows when the normal outlet is dammed. But if the blocking is a constant thing, the usual outcome is that the person becomes less sensitive to his surroundings, his thoughts and desires become less distinct, and he becomes more and more satisfied with stopping at the mental picture and allowing it to stand for his reality.

This, I would submit, is to a large degree the result of our old system of education, in which there is little or no application of the ideas gained through study. A child comes to school curious and lively. We set him down before a book, give him certain mental pictures and tell him to keep still. His brain and his body both rebel at first, but after three or four years of chiding he becomes acquiescent. He sits still, he reads his book, he asks no questions. To be sure, his book means little to him, but that is because he is stupid, not because he is stupefied.

How different is this from a true education, where the school is simply a convenient place for children to act out their ideas, and learn how to act them out in a still better way. Free action

is necessary for a free play of thought, and this in turn is indispensable in order to make a person of any value to society. When a child goes into the world, he finds a premium set upon efficient action for practically all of humanity. Making a living by abstract thought is so recent a development, and so unusual even in the most highly civilized communities, that it has little educational significance. Thought for a purpose, and in most cases thought that directs some part of the body, usually the hand, is the mental tool that the average man needs, and this, naturally, is just the same discipline that makes him a wellbalanced character.

We seem thus committed to a defense of what is sometimes called the "new education." According to this theory, the school is concerned with living the ways that men have lived and do live. It assumes that the child is fundamentally interested in living, since both his instincts and his plans are concerned with it. The school aims to present to children the fundamental things in living in ways simple enough to be understood by them, and to have them themselves live these fundamental forms of life as they reach the appropriate stage of development. In method, its fundamental maxim is to be sure that all thought finds its rational expression in an act; in content, to select such material from history and contemporary society as is significant of the race development.

When we go into one of these modern schools the first thing that strikes us, I might say that shocks most of us, is that the children are moving around, talking to each other, sewing, hammering and apparently doing just what they please. The schoolhouse seems to be a museum, or perhaps we would more appropriately call it a manufactory, for we see looms and other such machines. There is as complete an outfit as possible of things necessary for the children to use in reproducing the fundamental activities of mankind.

Now, what is the effect upon the children? To begin with, they are livelier than children undergoing the old system. They are brimming over with questions. They are interested in everything going on around them. When they meet an obstacle, they settle down to overcoming it. They have a

vastly greater amount of information than other children, and in the end they are ready for college work between one and two years sooner than others.

These results seem to come as the direct effect of the handwork, the constant carrying out of ideas into action, and so we seem justified in saying that the best way to develop a wellbalanced, strong character is to keep before the child's mind the connection between thinking and living, allowing him constantly to test his thoughts by applying them. The opportunity to experiment, and to fail or succeed, is the only thing that will develop good judgment and the respect for law which we call morality.

Martin Luther

Father of the Primary School

FREDERICK ANDRES

Deep down beneath the surface of the earth
The miner finds a hard and lifeless mass;?
Ignite it, and what wonders come to pass!
Lo, light and heat and power are given birth!
Deep down below the men and things of worth
A miner's son beheld a helpless class,
The peasants' children, poor man's lad and lass,
Inert and hopeless as are clods of earth.

"Set fire to these!" he cried, and showed the ways
That schools could make the dormant force to blaze,
Producing light and heat and power. His aim
Is ours, though centuries have passed, the same;
His method ours, to kindle lifeless coals;
His motive ours, the love for human souls.

A Seven-Year Course for Elementary Schools and a Five-Year Course for Secondary Schools

T

SUPERINTENDENT J. M. GREENWOOD, KANSAS CITY, MO.

THE SUBJECT FOR DISCUSSION

HE subject for discussion is Janus-faced; or it is more properly an elementary course of study with a rider attached. On several occasions I have publicly maintained without any qualifications as a fundamental proposition in elementary education, founded upon an experience now extending almost over thirty-three years, that children admitted to school when six years old or older can complete reasonably well, as well at least as the children of any large or small system of city schools in the United States can complete, all there is of real value in an elementary course of study in seven years, and that they are just as well fitted for high school work, or for business, as are those children who are kept sauntering through their elementary studies eight years. The experiment I have made is a good experiment. It gives information outside of mere detached facts, and it enables one to foresee results, or to generalize, which is the real test of any experiment. In fortifying the position I advocated, I submitted courses of study, the work done as to quantity, quality, and time, and showed that under the conditions existing in the schools of Kansas City more children entered high school, remained in as long or longer, and that a larger per cent graduated from the high schools than in any other large city system in this country; furthermore, that forty per cent of those who enrolled in high school were boys, and forty per cent of those who graduated each year were boys, and this has been true of all classes for more than twenty years, and the ratio remains unchanged between the

sexes.

It is true that I have united these isolated facts from year to year in a continuous line from one city only, and I have for years challenged any other city of a hundred thousand or more inhabitants to show a higher record of high school attendance,

graduation of pupils, or a larger per cent of pupils in high school as compared with the total school enrollment, the voting population, or the population of the city. I attribute this condition of the high school situation to the simple fact that Kansas City has always had a seven-year course below the high school, and not to the fact that the people of Kansas City entertain a higher appreciation of high school opportunities than the citizens of other cities. Moreover, from my observation in teaching children, and in watching children in school work, I am thoroughly convinced that if a child of average ability is kept out of school till it is eight or nine years old, and then entered, it will furnish a solid elementary course of study in from three to five years, and will understand all the subjects as well as the pupil of the same ability who begins school at the age of five or six years, and continues in school regularly the full period assigned for elementary work. There is, I am satisfied, a sort of automatic movement of classes in some schools that is very detrimental to the progress of pupils.

The statistics I have collected show that where pupils are given the opportunity under an elastic system of promotions, as many pupils finish the elementary course in six years as those pupils who require eight years, while more than eighty per cent complete it in seven years under the limitations I have given. With these well-established facts which I have verified time and again, I can see no valid reason for changing my views in reference to a seven-year course for elementary schools. For those wedded to an eight-year course, I will say frankly that I do not agree with them, and never have since I began an investigation of the subject.

FIVE YEARS IN HIGH SCHOOL

As to a five-year course in high school, except for slow pupils, I take the negative. There are two valid reasons, in my opinion, why a five-year course, or any other number of years above that number, is unnecessary. The first is the additional expense. High schools cost a great deal of money as now conducted on a four-year basis, and were they stretched out over a longer period they would still be more expensive. There is a limit to the tax-paying ability of every community