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Individual pupils are assigned the task of preparing and presenting to the class imaginary portraits of the characters in the plays and stories that are read, giving attention to both costume and personal appearance. Character studies and comparisons of personalities are especially profitable. Debates sometimes add to the enthusiasm of the study and promote careful investigation. In all the work just suggested the pupils should be required to stand out before the class and speak in a dignified and coherent manner, either with or without notes, and certainly without interruption from the teacher. Themes on subjects suggested by the reading will, of course, be assigned from time to time. Striking and vivid descriptions may be selected and compared. Selections of whatever nature pleasing to the class should be learned from nearly all the classics read; this will usually be done willingly and even eagerly if the pupils are interested. The consideration of words has a legitimate place in literary study, and may be done incidentally or in special lessons. It should, however, be done sparingly and carefully, from the etymological standpoint; the teacher drawing upon the pupils' knowledge of Latin and German, not forcing his own knowledge upon them. As to the study of the author's life, and the reading of books of criticism, these should be done, if at all, after the study of the masterpiece is completed. A little consideration of the author's life is often helpful and pleasant. I doubt the value of any extensive use of commentaries in the high school literature class. After the pupil has developed and expressed his own ideas he may enjoy comparing them with the ideas of the critics, but it is seldom wise to make the reading of criticism compulsory. It should be voluntary rather than enforced.

After the detailed study of the classics has been made the class is asked to take the time to read the piece over thoughtfully and connectedly. At the recitation time it is read aloud by the pupils, almost without comment, each one standing out in front of the class and reading his assignment with all the clearness and expression of which he is capable. This completes the study of the classic.

A word about tests and supplementary reading. Examina

tion questions ought to be on broad, general lines, which stimulate the pupils to new thought or to the new organization of old ideas, rather than on minute questions and the meanings of words and lines. Often a carefully prepared theme may serve instead of the regular examination. During the process of reading the classic, both before and after the detailed study, the pupils need not be required to do much work outside the class. They may spend the study period doing supplementary reading, for which a list has been provided by the teacher. A great deal of time is spent by pupils in aimless reading of literature lessons, which might more profitably be spent in the reading of new material.

In all his work, the teacher should not allow himself to forget that his primary aim is making the pupil like literature so well that he will want to keep on reading it;. that his secondary aim is the broadening and uplifting of the pupil's mind, and that the aim of teaching facts about masterpieces and authors is subservient to both these other purposes.

The proof of the value of his work will lie in the immediate appreciation, interest and development which his pupils exhibit, and the less directly visible affection which they retain for the masterpieces they have studied.

Strength of the Sand

ALONZO RICE

Men call me fickle, false, unstable, and
In their comparisons of things untrue,
The figure speaks about "a rope of sand,"
And none my merit rightly will construe.

A grain of sand! My strength do not condemn;
This might at once exceeds the power of man;
In their domain the ocean waves I hem,

And hold their tides beneath my iron ban!

Manual Training as a Preventive of Truancy

JAMES PARTON HANEY, DIRECTOR OF ART AND MANUAL TRAINING, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, NEW YORK CITY

W

HEN I was in my teens the school workshop was a new institution. I well remember when the school I attended erected its shop building, and organized its first courses in shop practice. The school was large and the shop was small, so few could be admitted to its attractive precincts. With what envy did those of us who were excluded see the elect pass within its doors; with what curiosity did we press our faces to its windows; with what eagerness did we hear the thumping of the sledges on the anvils, and the shrill whine of the circular saw ripping through some plank. From every shining plane and spinning lathe, from every flapping belt and smoking forge, there came an insistent call; and I doubt not were one to visit that same shop to-day, there could be found round its door, just as twenty-five years ago, a crowd of boys peering within and counting the weeks which must elapse before room for them could be found in its crowded classes.

Man is the builder, the thumbed one; and thumbed because through long ages he has been a constructive animal. Early in his life there rises within him a desire to make things, to handle tools and manipulate material. Every workshop is a loadstone that acts with irresistible attraction upon the boy. Explain the influence he cannot, but he knows that something within him draws him to the place where things are making, where wheels are going round, and craftsmen are busy at their work.

This force causes strange revolutions in boy nature, energizing the lazy and reclaiming the errant. On one Italian lad of my acquaintance it worked a modern miracle. Tony was a boy who was at "outs" with his school. His school was formal, and he was informal. Its work dealt with theory and

his every interest lay in practice. The busy streets called to him, and the docks and markets kept beckoning. Ever and anon he was off to answer, with truant officers in pursuit to bring him back, to be off again at the next opportunity. Then there was established a special class for him and some of his brother peripatetics. This class was in an ordinary class room, but it was furnished in addition with benches and with tools in goodly number. Its lessons turned on ordinary school topics, on reading, writing and arithmetic, but they turned in no ordinary way. Every lesson touched the making of some needed thing, so that Tony oscillated between seat and work bench, as he planned his work, read about it, solved the problem of its measurement, and then set about its making. At this turn of affairs he was at first surprised, then interested, then fascinated. This time he was caught to stay caught; for him the problem of the school was solved.

I have his photograph as it was taken two years later. It shows a very different Tony from him I first knew. The old furtive, hangdog look is gone, and in its place shows cleareyed power. He stands like a cadet, with broadened chest and shoulders back, while round his feet are spread the products of his clever fingers-brackets, desks, racks and boxes innumerable. Since that photograph was taken Tony has left the school to go to work, but his teacher tells me that every now and again, when there is some slackening in the trade, and he thinks he can be spared, this one time scholaphobe, this hater of class-room work, slips from his bench and is off to run away to school.

To children ideas come easily. We adults are not so fortunate, but within the last generation teachers have come upon a new idea. Within the memory of those present we have made a discovery, and the school world thrills with it to-day. That which has been discovered is the child. Through our study we have come to learn how different he is from what he was commonly understood to be-how different he is from us. We have discovered that he is not a little man; that he does not think or act as an adult thinks or acts, and does not gain ideas as an adult thinks or gains them.

It was once thought that the child grew regularly, continuously. Now it is known that he does not. Rather he passes through stages of growth, showing in each of these signs by which they may be clearly recognized. We have learned that the child is affected by many things that teachers of old recked little of the humidity of the air, the temperature of the room, the hours he has slept, the dinner he has eaten, the time of year it is, the time of day it is. All these, and more, influence the pupils in any schoolroom. No two of any group react alike, nor does any one remain the same for two hours together. All are continuously changing, physiologically changing-bodily and mentally, before our eyes. The thermometer of their interests, their energies, their abilities, rises and falls; it is never stationary. This we have but lately come to understand; even yet our knowledge is far from perfect.

Every child as he grows makes evident at different stages certain propensities—he seeks to aggrandize himself, to imitate others, to build things, to investigate them, to busy himself in play. These expressions we call instincts. There are many of them, but every one-self-seeking, constructive, curiousis a scheme of Nature aimed to conserve the interests of the boy, and to cause him to be active in his own education.

Those who have studied the development of these inherent desires have come to see that Nature has a school course of her own, a curriculum of activities in which the pupil is led by paths of interest to a knowledge of his own ability, and a knowledge of the world in which he lives. Not only does she demand that the child be given an opportunity to work with his hands, but she shows us, through his liking for certain work, the very paths by which he can best be led to master his surroundings. She writes this curriculum in terms of interests and instincts, and on every page prints an admonition that the worker be led to labor creatively so that he may become an agent in his own development.

The more plainly we have read this curriculum of Nature, the more clearly we realize that the course of study which does not include the manual arts is one ill fitted for child training. With the great difference in children also forced upon our

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