uses the broad and easy, and so far as effort goes unconscious avenues of contact, absorption, immersion of the child in an atmosphere in which it is infected with the speech. The advantages are in the proportion of the many open roads to absorption compared with the one hard road of digging.

The child loses itself in the atmosphere; and so, nolens, volens is identified with the speech. Every one of its senses is an avenue of approach. All its aroused feelings make the teaching vivid, unforgettable, welcome, a part of him. He has been captured without formal surrender-magically transferred to his destination. Note that in three years or less the child has a usable language which saturates him to the fingertips.

Which shows that such a process is feasible, and, with minor shifts and adaptations, it may be carried forward to the more adult. This implies that, however reluctantly we may assume the burden, we must provide the agencies for this method; we must get upon this basis for teaching foreign language. We need to take the matter seriously. Fortunately, if these conditions are met, the stage will be reset, and fortune awaits us in teaching foreign language.

Without doubt, H. G. Wells is right in his The Salvage of Civilization in advocating the use of the gramophone in the teaching of foreign speech with pure accent and spirit in our schools: this to fill the gap where adequate foreign-language teachers are not to be had-and it must be confessed that these are a rare commodity.

The scheme is as wise and practical as many another scheme which has been thrown into the discard because it was a "departure," and yet has gone on to complete success. The mechanical age and trend now with us, looked at on its optimistic side, may be taken as the age of taking the good things which the individual can do, projecting them into a machine, multiplying them, and fixing them so we can use them all the time and as we please. The trend, in this part of the field, is directly at the back of culture and knowledge.

The writer predicts the time when in our school work the gramophone, the precise reproducer of sounds, carrying an ample assortment of discs, will be as much a part of our equipment for speech as the projectoscope, is for the things of sight. The talking machine is the projectoscope for the ear. It is as capable of filling a niche and inaugurating a reform as the historically famous picturebook given the educational field with permanent uplift in it generations back, or the recent cinematograph now firmly entrenched as a help. Why not?

The mechanical speech-maker stands ready to give, and to repeat over and over with perfect normalcy, the fundamental and characteristic sounds of a foreign tongue. It is the perfect and the tireless drill-master. It crosses for us one of the highest bridges between us and an alien speech. It is a platitude that a foreign speech without correct vocal utterance is foreign speech with half of it cut off. We stumble sadlyoften unrecognizably, on pronunciation. To this the authentic mannikin is a royal antidote.

The chosen range of words, phrases, sentences put into the instructor may well, as a starter, cover a useful foundation vocabulary, to which brick by brick and layer by layer others may be added in a systematic, progressive course.

These simple or more composite elements. of speech, ever with the same fine example, are at command by the pressure of a button or the turning of a knob. It is the counterpart of the relentless drill by the competent, and ever-correct piano-teacher, with the same emphasis upon accuracy and the tendency to like results. Like the piano pupil, the language pupil must, of course, constantly repeat and perform until by imitation he can do it for himself.

Importantly to be mentioned, it affords. a rare opportunity to teach wording in blocs, which meets one of the capital difficulties in "fluent hearing.

An endless and flexible menu of uses and applications go with the mechanical help to speech when we become wise enough to

avail ourselves of its genuine opportunities for genuine foreign language. It brings the foreign country to us. It may be widely diffused through our schools. It is at least an open question whether the American teacher, with American sympathies and American approach to the pupil, plus the foreign-speaking phonograph, may not be a better instructor than the imported native. This holds most strongly in the lower or common-school grades, where it is most needed.

The foregoing facts as to foreign language hold true, whatever be the given alien speech. Each or any of these carries material advantages as reward for its study. But it remains to be said that there is an individual character and special influence in each one of the group. We may draw upon this or that for its special features. We may diet the student upon this or that for its special results. That is, we may choose this or that foreign language with discretion. The field is not a blank one. We may make, and by all means we should make, a scientific application of language. What use here or elsewhere of our education being haphazard? Here is German which specially builds the fibers of exactness. Not only in what it teaches, but in what it shows. It carries on its face the qualities of a people whose life it clothes and who have made it a people who by resistless energy and care have particularly pushed themselves to highly conspicuous membership in the family of nations. They are a shining example of what may be done and is to be sought by exhaust less work. They are par excellence believers in completeness, in leaving nothing undone, in working every ounce of possibility and raw material to within a hair's breadth of what it will yield. In many phases-in its structure, in its spirit-the language itself reveals these traits of the people. The one who is immersed for a long time in a realizing German course-who has been within the pales of the language comes out stained with these qualities. He is, to a degree, Germanized in spite of himself.

If German definiteness and German confi

dence has produced an overassurance and a taste for despotism, that too is in the tincture, and you must not forget it. Does your ward whom you advise need to court or to shun these qualities? If you are a levelheaded educator, you need to figure the answer into your plans.

Spanish and the Spanish spirit is the antithesis of German. It stands at the opposite pole. The amenities, the proper relations of man to man, the inner truths of the spirit, personal pride in all its applications to be still more tautological, characterthese are its guiding stars and mark.

It is easy to see how the Spaniard, hence his language, became saturated with chivalry. The language stands for that today. If you want to fix the attention of your child on the refined and refining things of life, (if that is his major need), let him study Spanish.

French, to be brief, and on good authority, lies between the two. Its mark is activity, esprit, spontaneous insight. It is the nation which, as it were, effervesces into genius. A trifle less regulated than German; not so seriously rooted in the deep proprieties as the Spanish, but brilliant. Take your choice.

There can be no doubt that immersion in a language is a staining-agent by which we may affect a character thus or thus. Do we use it intelligently in education?

But there is a wider view to be taken. Having another life through language means more than the development of a man for himself. There is a world-phase to the question.

"Why a foreign language in education?" This has its relations and finds its answer in man as a world citizen. He must be educated with a view to such citizenship. Here education finds its duty, and here education finds its opportunity. The highest test for foreign language as an element in education finds itself in this field. Does it contribute to world unification and peace?

We are at a time of stress when no man knows but that civilization is going to be self-destructive and commit suicide. All de

pends. Can we spare an ounce of prevention? Especially of all, can we forego the things which look to mutual acquaintance, mutual knowledge, mutual respect? I cannot think-can anyone think?-of an equal way to give a man a "world-consciousness" to make him a citizen of the planet, to transform him into a neighborly friend to his fellow-men, compared to building bridges of language by which they may pass over one to the other and mutually understand? Volapuk or esperanto would not meet the requirements; for they cancel the "personalities" of the peoples.

Finally, we come back as in a circle to the question: What is it to study, to enter into, and to know a foreign language?

We do not get a true perspective unless we see that the controversial side of our topic is simply another chapter in the now century-long struggle between realism and its opposite in education. The conflict is irrepressible, like the warfare between light and darkness.

The fight is on since Comenius, prince of educators and the reformatory educational Luther, some three hundred years ago saw the distinction between valuable things themselves and formulas and symbols connected with those things. The crusade went successfully to England and the countries of continental Europe. Unfortunately, aftershadows, down-reaching fingers, relics of the fight still persist in America. It must continue to vex and obstruct us till realism has won its final victory.

Realism is what we are struggling for in every field where we are trying to get at the truth. To reach it is another name for evolution and growth. We are fighting all the time to get out of the shadows, the confusions, the misses, the don't-see-straights. When we emerge in any line, we are there; we have arrived.

Let us summarize; for realism is the central truth of all knowledge and all right attainment.

As to both method and object

Realism does not confuse our estimates of things with our rating of what belongs to those things.

It has no flunkeyism: it takes things at their worth.

Borrowed glory does not "go" with it, and does not dazzle it.

It has no fetishes; indulges no fetish worship.

It does not believe in fictions or glamors.
It just sees things as they are.

As to foreign language, the fight is resumed from time to time in National Educational Association meetings, and serious, stated committees appointed to report.

Krause's brave and lucid campaign ten years ago through the pages of the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW for the direct method of instruction in foreign language-a contention involving exactly the principles of realism -was at once a fine exposition and a proof that the issue will not down until it is crowned with acknowledgment and success.

A nation-wide survey to discover how foreign languages are taught in American schools, and what improvements should be made in methods. The fact, according to statement, that the work is being carried out for the Modern Foreign Language Association largely on funds provided by the Carnegie Institution; the concrete further fact that the association will meet this summer in New York to determine future policies-all is a proof that realism has a charmed and justified life, and will "carry on."

Indeed it has won many victories, and is the hope of education for true education hangs on doing the genuine, true and useful thing.

T

HE enormous educational values growing out of what we are pleased to call extra-curricular activities marks one of the greatest advances in present day educational progress. In a very large measure these activities and their accomplished results are the answer to the fears and solicitude of those who think of our young people today only as wayward youth.

It is true that authority in some of its phases has crumbled and that youth has broken away from ancient moorings but it is also true that the present day youth is far better fortified and strengthened from within than any generation the world has as yet known. Indeed, the very changes taking place before our eyes each day in which external authority is giving way to self

control and to inner control and inner selfdirection in the lives of our young people recapitulates in a measure the age-long struggle of the race as it won its way upward out of ignorance, slavery, and darkness.

Among our most cherished goals in educational endeavor we place first the development of ethical character and training in higher ideals of citizenship. We have not all seen clearly, however, that we have at hand one of the very best instruments for the realization of these ideals. This possibility is to be found in and through the activities of the school which give the chance to practice and thus habituate those qualities that make for these highly desirable ends. Citizenship is not something taught from a text-book, neither is it to be attained alone from a discussion of civic responsibili

ties. It must come from the actual practice of the ideals of give and take, square-dealing, fairness, generosity and altruism. By learning how to get on with their fellows in so many situations in the school and how to be fair and generous with others, boys and girls will so habituate desirable qualities in their lives that they will be fortified and prepared for life's later problems.

Genius and ingenuity applied in the old days in outwitting faculty members and in playing pranks on fellow-students, are today used in a splendid way in getting out a newspaper, preparing a hand book, gathering materials for an annual, practicing a dramatic production, working up an assembly program, rehearsing for an opera, conducting a road-show, organizing a military camp, planning for Hi-Y, organizing an orchestra, practicing with a quartette or glee club, and doing a hundred other things in and about the school. In doing so many things on such a high plane and in such an excellent way the student is learning those valuable habits, skills, attitudes which will be of inestimable value to him in his later life.

Better than this he is now entering upon a program that is as real to him as any possible life-situation. Pupils who carry forward such activities are learning to take on responsibility. One learns responsibility only as one practices responsibility. Activities offer a larger degree of freedom and responsibility than class-room work. This fact makes them of great worth in developing the qualities of initiative, leadership and responsibility itself. Having once assumed responsibility for a project, the student

dentifies himself with its success so closely, hat he is determined the more to carry it through to completion.

CREATIVE ENERGY

Again, activities give an unusual opportunity for the release of creative energy and the finest and best forms of expression. Life at its best is creative. It is not in its reception but in its expression and use that an idea has value and meaning. Individuals can be led to more adequate responses and higher forms of behavior only as they grow step by step in the accomplishment of worthwhile tasks and activities. Man is what he is largely because of what he has achieved, for, it is the "backward kick" of every act or accomplishment that gives life its zest and emotional coloring. The sense of joy and mastery which comes with wide accomplishment in activities makes for self-reliance and determination. Activities give a multifarious number of opportunities for various forms of good expression and all of this means growth and development. It is through and by means of expression that the finer and deeper qualities of the individual are developed. Indeed, it is often true that the many chances thus offered for many types of achievement help the individual discover within himself unusual gifts and extraordinary abilities. It has doubtless been the good fortune of every principal to see a quiet, reserved, or diffident boy or girl enter some serious play or program for the first time and note the most extraordinary ability in the accomplishment of the designated part. The student that is shy, diffident, and timid needs to be set free. It is our privilege so to provide chances and opportunities that every student may find release from the inhibitions and repressions so common in the lives of many of our young people. With such opportunities will come also that chance for pioneering, for discovery, and for exploration in so many fields of worthwhile achievement that there will be given full chance for the play of creative thought and energy.

SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE

The spirit of adventure and the urge for exploration is implanted deep within the adolescent. Courage and determination lead youth into many sorts of experiments. Life is to be lived at its highest point of energy and as and as a result the number of shipwrecks and losses is still far too many. But young people are using their powers and abilities in a better manner than in earlier years. They are now far more capable of genuine living and achievement. If they are brutally frank they are nevertheless. marvelously capable. It is true that they have understanding and wisdom far beyond the years of their grandparents, but they are genuine at heart and, most of all, they are willing to learn and to understand still more of what the world and society have in store for them.

We who are a little older have come to learn that life is dynamic, mobile, fluid. Change and growth are the significant manifestations in this tortuous, tumultuous world. Our hope with the oncoming generation lies not alone in teaching them tribal forms of living and ancient folk-ways. We must even come to understand that we do not know all that children should think. We can only teach them how to think that they may find their own ways through the ever growing mazes of change, vicissitude and fortune. Standards of critical judgment and detached thinking can come only as the student is given an opportunity day by day to exercise these qualities in concrete life-situations. The schools of yesterday were very anxious to furnish the pupil with the results of thinking by some "authority." Ready-made factory ideas constituted the current form of exchange. The schools of today with all their activities constitute a great trying-out field in which boys and girls will come to learn the ways that succeed best. It is not the pure "trial and error" method of the old days, however, for there is the combined wisdom of the group and the guiding hand and judgment of the sponsor to point the way.