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THE

ASSOCIATION.

EIGHTH ANNUAL CONVENTION, AT HARRISBURG.

HE Department of Superintendence | of the Pennsylvania State Educational Association met in the Assembly Hall of the High School building at Harrisburg on Tuesday, February 10th, at 2 p. m., the President, Supt. N. P. Kinsley, of Franklin, in the chair.

The devotional service of Scripture reading and prayer was conducted by Rev. Leroy S. Baker, of St. Paul's church, Harrisburg.

The President then read his inaugural address, illustrated by diagrams on the blackboard, which here accompany the text, the subject being

THE PROFESSOR AND THE PHILOSOPHER.

The Professor sat in his easy chair. In fact, the chair was the only easy thing with which he had to do. His duties were not easy; to maintain his mental and spiritual equilibrium under the varying conditions of his environment was not easy: to make his meagre salary defray the necessary expenses of living was not easy. Indeed, to own the easy chair itself would not have been easy if the owning had called for a draft on his own resources. It had been a Christmas present from his teachers, who were, perhaps, impelled to make the donation by the delusion that, through some mysterious reaction, the work he prescribed for them might be made easy.

He had been elected to his office many years before. On his induction into office he had protested-not mildly, but in vain against accepting the title of "Professor,"

alleging as his reason for the protest that, in his opinion, the title should be reserved for instructors in colleges; the more potent reason being, however, that, the very day on which he made his first appearance in his new field of labor, Prof. Blank, a specimen of humanity positively diminutive physically and comparatively smaller mentally, had opened a dancing school.

During all the years of his incumbency he had labored, early and late, to help his teachers in their efforts to be progressive and to make his schools efficient. Father Time had already begun to sift the snowflakes on his temples, and had presented him with the lenses of the optician and-a lengthened girdle.

It was at the close of one of those periods when teachers and superintendent together make a sort of inventory, in order to sum up intelligently the results accomplished since the last inventory was made. The Professor was ruminating. His meditations, at first limited to the field of his immediate work, were now busy with some of the numerous unsolved social and moral problems which the conditions existing in the community in which he lived supplied.

The "barbarous vice of drunkenness " had not been entirely eliminated, though every young man knew that, if he were known to be a tippler even, he would look in vain for employment in a position of any responsibility; and it did not occur to the Professor that things would have been materially different in this respect if more mathematics and logic, those trainers of the reasoning power, had found a place in his course of study.

Gambling, "that extraordinarily unintelligent form of pleasurable excitement," had not been wholly eradicated. But its most pernicious form, the form most dangerous to the morals of the young men (and women too), was that where men of wealth, intelligence, and social position openly "bet their sesterces" upon the rise and fall of the stock market, without law or law-officer to interfere, and not that form which, at other games of chance, hid itself from the ken of the police officer, in obscure places, behind darkened windows.

His boy pupils, when they became of age, all voted right; that is, they all voted the Republican ticket, or the Democratic ticket, or the Prohibition ticket. Each of the parties had enrolled among its members some of the most intelligent, most conscientious, and most moral citizens; so that with whatever party they voted, even when they "split the ticket" as they sometimes did in local elections, they were sure of being found in the best of company.

Burglaries and robberies were sometimes committed, even riots and murders were not entirely unknown; but it seemed to the Professor, whose reasoning power, in his own opinion, had been very well trained, that it would be quite as reasonable to parade the commission of these crimes as a reproach to the churches and the Sunday-schools as to the common schools; more reasonable, in fact, inasmuch as the commission of crime comes from the lack of moral, rather than of intellectual training. (There had been no lynchings in his community, but the Professor sometimes almost thought that the moral atmosphere might have been more wholesome if there had been, especially if he had been permitted to nominate the victims.)

Theatres presenting to the public trivial spectacles, burlesques, and extravaganzas were patronized by those to whom this form of recreation was possible only at "popular prices;" but he did not draw from this fact any unfavorable inference concerning popular education. It seemed to him that a large majority of the patrons of these cheaper forms of theatrical shows were those who, for a Fourth of July outing, rode in the street car and the merry-go-round and not in an automobile; and for the same reason. They could afford the one form of recreation; they could not afford the other.

of one who held a lithographed diploma from a medical college. as to a teaspoonful of liquid poured by an uneducated hand from a patent medicine bottle with a lithographed label.

Conflicts sometimes arose between capital and labor resulting in strikes. Other ills there were, social and political. But most of these, it seemed to him, had their origin not so much in defective intelligence and lack of reasoning power, as in selfishness and a wilful disregard of the dictates of intelligence and reason.

His thoughts now returned to the place from which they had started on the side excursion, and were again employed in a review and examination of the field of his own professional labors. He was disposed to be a severe critic of his own work. He was thoroughly conscious of the fact that his work (which he believed was a fair example of what was being done in other similar fields), was imperfect, and was, on that account, somewhat depressed in spirit; but he found some relief from the depression in the thought that perfection is seldom found and never to be looked for in anything of human origin. The work of other classes of public servants, officers of municipal corporations, members of State and National legislative bodies, executive officers of State and of Nation, passed in review before him; and in turn, each was subjected to the same severity of criticism as his own schools had received at his hands.

Then the Professor arose from his easy chair. With right arm extended, the index finger pointing at an imaginary visitor, these words came from his lips in the clear, ringing tones of absolute conviction: "I tell you, sir, that the work of no other class of public servants in this country is done so conscientiously and so well as that of the teachers of the common schools."

He was about to supplement this exclamation by words denouncing the niggardly spirit which kept the salaries of teachers so low as to be no adequate compensation for the services rendered, when a visitor was announced. (Announced is not used here in its ordinary sense, for neither clerk nor office boy was allowed the Professor, and his salary would not permit him to indulge in so great a luxury.)

The form and features of the visitor were well known to the Professor. His manner was friendly in the extreme, as was usual with him; for he had been a frequent visitor at the Professor's office. He was a man of intelligence, well educated, well versed in psychological pedagogy, or pedagogical psychology, was apparently intensely interested in the public schools and their work, had his own views about them, and de--paid his school tax promptly every year without making a wry face. But he was lacking in that intimate acquaintance with public school work which comes only from direct contact with every-day boys and girls

His people sometimes bought and, presumably, took patent medicines; but he found an explanation in the fact that the family physician's visits were expensive. It certainly did not occur to him that a remedy for this evil, if it is an evil, was to be found in more liberal prescriptions in the schools of geometry and calculus, however potential the prescriptions might be in veloping the power to reason correctly; and it did not escape his notice that the "post hoc, ergo propter hoc " form of fallacy could be applied quite as aptly to the prescription

in an every-day school. He might have made a fair minister of the gospel; not so good a lawyer, for the latter is likely to have his most firmly settled opinions called in question and their foundations submitted to the most critical analysis at the hands of an opposing counsellor. He was known to the Professor as the Philosopher.

The Philosopher thus began the conversation.

"Professor, I heard what you were saying as I came to your door. Now, what is the work of the common schools which you say is done so conscientiously and so well? What is their aim?"

The Professor replied: "I know no better way of answering your question than by going to the original sources from which their very existence is derived." And, taking from his book-shelf a copy of Smull and a copy of the latest edition of the School Laws, he read from the constitution of Pennsylvania: "The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public schools, wherein all the children of the Commonwealth, above the age of six years, may be educated, and shall appropriate at least one million dollars each year for that purpose"; and, from the School Laws :

That it shall be the duty of each county superintendent to see that in every district there shall be taught orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic, as well as such other branches as the board of directors or controllers may require," and "That physiology and hygiene which shall, in each division of the subject so pursued, include special reference to the effect of alcoholic drinks and stimulants and narcotics upon the human system, shall be included in the branches of study required by law to be taught in the common schools." After reading these quotations from the constitution and the school laws, the Professor continued: "A fair interpretation of this clause of the constitution and this act of the assembly leaves no room for doubt that, in Pennsylvania, the object for which the public schools were established is to place within the reach of every boy and every girl in the commonwealth the means of acquiring a fair knowledge of spelling, writing, reading, arithmetic, etc. And this certainly is the view held by almost all parents. The thought uppermost in the mind of nearly every parent when he sends his boy to school is this: 'I want him to be able to read and write the English language well, to know something of geography and of the history and form of government of his country, and to be so familiar with the processes of arithmetic as to be able to make for himself all computations that business in later years will demand,' and, if the father had had small opportunities in boyhood you will hear from him: 'I want my boy to have a good education; it is all I can give him. I did not have the chance when

I was a boy.' So, Philosopher, I formulate my answer to your question thus: 'The aim of the public school is to give to every child in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania a good English education,' and I might add-mindful of the age at which a large number leave the schools to earn their own living-' by the time he is fourteen or fifteen years old.'"

The Philosopher replied: "Very true, Professor; but what do you mean by the term education? Man is, as you know, a complex being; a sort of trinity in unity, having a body which, to be kept in normal condition, must be trained and nourished; an intellectual being, endowed with a mind of almost unlimited powers that need to be developed and expanded ; and-"

"Oh, cut it out," interrupted the Professor. (It grieves me to write this. But as I am simply his biographer, I am compelled to adhere closely to the facts; and, although he had that very day delivered a lecture to the senior class of his high school, taking very strong grounds against the use of slang, "cut it out" was what he said.) He continued, "I know, too, that man has a moral nature, that needs a great deal of looking after.'

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"Well then," said the Philosopher, "knowing all this, do you not see that your answer to my question is sadly, fatally defective in that it takes into account only one-third of the child-his intellect-leaving out of the account entirely his physical and his moral nature? And do you not also see that the better answer would be: The aim of the public school is to educate the whole man; that education is the building up, the developing of character; and that, putting it very briefly 'character building' would be the best answer of all, using the phrase character building' as the equivalent of the education of the whole man' and having special reference to his moral nature."

The Professor listened attentively, shook his head gently, but decidedly, and replied: "My dear Philosopher, years ago, while yet a student at college, I studied mental philosophy-it was not called psychology then, but plain mental philosophy-from a text-book written by one Upham. From that study I learned much about the intellect. I studied also a book on moral science by one Wayland, and learned something of what he taught. I exercised also at the gymnasium and played third base in the first nine of the college. Besides, I have read much that has been written on this subject by other philosophers who look at the question from your standpoint. But I see no good reason for changing the form of my answer to your question, 'What is the aim of the public school?'"'

The Philosopher replied: "Then you do not admit it to be a fact that moral training (to leave entirely out of this discussion the physical) has any claim upon the time and

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