but whether peopie are so well satisfied as to be willing to give them proper support is another question. New York has successful schools at Chautauqua and at the Thousand Islands. Pennsylvania ought to do something like that and other states. We ought to be helping our teachers to additional education. It does not matter how much we know if one is satisfied to stand still. A teacher who will do absolutely nothing in a vacation of eight weeks does not amount to very much; any active mind will want to do something. He had no experience as a pupil in a summer school, but had beeu connected with one as an instructor, where Dr. Schmucker taught botany and Dr. Brumbaugh literature. If teachers If teachers could be brought in contact with such work as that of the lady last night, it would be of great value. These schools make proper provision for recreation, they work only from 9 to 12 a. m. He wished the State of Pennsylvania would put her hand in her pocket and liberally help her teachers to a better education in these schools. In all other directions, manufactures, art, invention, we recognize the necessity of keeping up with the times; and we would earn big interest on this investment for the improvement of teachers. "Put grease where the squeak is" proves good philosophy in mechanics; and this work is in that same line, and reaches the precise spot.

Principal H. H. Spayd, Minersville, said that for a number of years he had felt that the progress of the schools had not kept up with other departments of life. And Pennsylvania is not keeping up with other States. He had attended four summer schools since 1883, and the inspiration gained there had helped him wonderfully. All the teachers who attend these schools are benefited. It must not be taken for granted that every one is in favor of these schools; some directors are opposed to them, and discourage their teachers from attending, saying it is no use to spend money in that way, and they had better take it easy during vacation. He was not sure just what was the best plan. He used to think the Normal schools might help us, but was not so sure now. We want the best men in the country for instructors-not theorists, but men of experience. In some summer schools the classes are too large for personal contact with the big men at the head of them.

Dr. Schaeffer: A bill appropriating $5,000 to help the summer schools has been reported from committee, which is practical, and if enacted will be helpful. No doubt we shall make some mistakes here, as we have in other things heretofore, but we will get up and try again. In attending the educational gatherings in other states, he found our own did not compare with some of them. They bring before their teachers men of the type of Schurman. If we can have a few hundred dollars to bring some of these eminent men to our conventions, it may arouse an interest. Even one such man at this meeting of Superintendents and one at the Directors' meeting that is to follow, would help us all. He hoped some action would be taken to help along legislation that will put Pennsylvania abreast of the foremost of other states.

Supt. J. A. Gibson, of Butler, offered a resolution that it is the sense of this body that the bill should be enacted making an appropriation in aid of summer schools.

On motion of Supt. Lamb, the resolution was referred to committee, with instructions to report it favorably.

Supt. H. C. Missimer, of Erie, then read the following paper on

NEEDS OF OUR SCHOOLS.

The public school system of Pennsylvania is of native, original growth, and the laws by which it is governed are the result of the adjustment of the system to the varying needs and conditions of the people.

It is not possible, therefore, to answer the question of needful legislation for our schools without considering the general character of the legislation upon which our school system has been erected, and without inquiry as to whether there are any new conditions which the legislation we already have can or cannot meet.

When the illustrious founder of our Commonwealth put into his Frame of Government for his Province the provision: "The Governor and Provincial Council shall erect and order all public schools;" and when the Provincial Council in 1683 highly resolved: "And to the end that poor as well as rich may be instructed in good and commendable learning, which is to be preferred before wealth, Be it enacted, That all persons in this Province and Territories thereof having children, and all guardians and trustees of orphans shall cause such to be instructed in reading and writing, so that they may be able to read the scriptures, and write by the time they attain twelve years of age; and that they may be taught some useful trade, or skill, that the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want, of which every court shall take care;" thus, then and there, the germ of our free public school system was planted.

The colonial public school made those pay who could pay, and those who could not pay received instruction gratis. This was the policy of education for the first century and a half of the existence of our Commonwealth. That distinction between a school for the rich and a school for the pauper precipitated the conflict, and the struggle which was fought to a finish in the Legislatures of 1834, '35 and '36, and finally ended with the great fundamental law of 1836 providing for the education of rich and poor alike by the proportionate taxation of all citizens alike. The distinction between education for the rich and education for the poor was wiped from the statute book.

That law established school districts and school boards. To the school board was given the power of levying taxes and employing teachers. But the law left its adoption or rejection to the voters of each school district. There was no minimum school term. There was no school supervision. There was no standard of qualifications for teachers. The school board could employ anybody for this purpose. There was no teaching beyond spelling, reading, writing and arithmetic.

The original free school act contributed nothing practically to the public school system except the two underlying principles: (a) The maintenance of schools for all by the taxation of all; (b) The administration and management of such schools by the people of each school district. The lack of school supervision, the lack of any expert authority to pass upon the qualifications of teachers, the acceptance or rejection of the common school system by the voters of each school district, retarded the growth of the system and brought about conditions, in the course of twenty years, which naturally led to the passage of the Act of 1854, which, if not the great charter of our school liberties, organized the common schools into the present public school system, and to-day is the fundamental school law of the Commonwealth.

The framers of that Act built for all time. Its general provisions are the vital organs of the entire system. School Boards and directors were assigned definite powers and duties. School taxes were separated into school and building funds. The schools of each county were subjected to the personal supervision and inspection of a county superintendent. Teachers were compelled to qualify by examination under the superintendent for the business of teaching; only those duly certificated could be employed by the Board. The common English branches, as well as such other branches as the Board of Directors may require," were to be taught.

From these general provisions of the Act of 1854, all our important subsequent school legislation has naturally come. From the provision confining the school Board to the employment of teachers only who were duly certificated by examination of the superintendent, there naturally followed legislation for the preparation and training of the teacher. The establishment of the Normal School under the Act of 1857; the teachers' institute, the professional and permanent certificate system, city and borough supervision under the Act of 1867, were legisla

tion addressed directly to the greater efficiency and improvement of the teachers.

Under the general clause of the Act of 1854, permitting the teaching of "such other branches as a board of directors may require," the high schools in the various cities and boroughs of the State were organized. The high school act of 1895 extended the idea, and carried the same boon of higher education to the boys and girls of the township as well. The free book law of 1893 removed the last barrier to the free attendance in school of the children of the Commonwealth, and the last distinction between the children of the poor, who had to declare their poverty to get their books free, and the children of the well-to-do who had to pay for them.

Since 1854, all our school legislation has only enlarged and regulated the application of the provisions of that great act. There has been but one important exception. The Compulsory Law is the result of social conditions. The increasing number of children in our cities and towns of school age, who were being employed in manufacturing and mining labors, in violation of the law, or were out of school through the selfish indifference of parents, or their helpless pauperism, and were living on the streets in idleness and mischief, and constantly recruiting the ranks of juvenile crime, inevitably forced the legislation to bring all such children, by the arm of authority, into school, and to train into habits of industry and usefulness an element of population threatening to the future welfare of the State. Whatever further legislation for the improvement of the school may be needed must come from conditions revealed by the operation of previous laws, or from new social and industrial conditions calling for new educational needs.

The operation of the compulsory law has made three conditions conspicuous, which may call for further legislation: First, The census of children between six and sixteen as taken by the assessors of voters is a universally defective piece of work. Being a political job, it is done indifferently for the political pay there is in it. I believe that fully ten per cent. of the children of school age in each school district are missed. School boards may also take the census, to see, I presume, whether the assessors' census is correct; but the work should be done by the school boards alone, because they are the interested parties, and it may be done without much expense during the summer vacation by the janitor of each school building for his own school district. Second, There are parents who will lie about the age of a child in order to get it into school before the legal age of admission; and there are parents who will lie about the age of a child in order to keep it out of school and evade the requirements of the compulsory law We should have a birth registry law. Third, Of the children brought into school by the compulsory law, many can be taken care of in the grades. Some, by reason of long absence from school, and habits of idleness, must have individual and special instruction in a special school. A few must be brought to school every day by the attendance officer, when he can find them. These are the vagrant waifs and young criminals of the street whom parents cannot control; who are practically fatherless, mother

less and homeless, and whom no school can hold. They are often dirty and filthy, and without proper and sufficient clothing to go to school. In a school in which they would be removed from evil influences and associations, where they would be fed and clothed and given a home, these children might be trained into good and useful citizens. The State should provide two or three such schools to which such children might be sent. The reform school is not the place for them; that is for those who have already become criminal, and have been committed under the law. These children are not yet of that character, and under proper training, may yet be saved. They should be a charge upon the State.

How to secure the best teachers possible for the schools is the most important duty of the School Board and the most vital part of the whole system. Three things do it: (1) An adequate rate of salary to hold the teacher; (2) A high standard of qualifications for the teacher; (3) The training of the teacher into greater efficiency.

School boards, however, generally hire their teachers in the open market under the competitive law of supply and demand. In raising the money to run the schools of their respective districts, the general custom is: First, figure up the amount of the state appropriation; second, figure up the additional amount of money to be raised by taxation. The rate of wages for the teacher is, therefore, no higher than will secure the services of the first applicants that offer, and will only hold those another year who can get no better wages elsewhere. Under this direct business method, Pennsylvania, the first State of the Union in the size of her appropriation for schools, really pays less than the average salary for the whole Union, and is third from the bottom in the list of States representing the most wealth in the Union. The majority of our school districts do not pay over $35 per month. Indeed, there are many districts which pay but $25 per month, and even less, to their teachers.

The remedy is apparent. (a) Compel each school district to raise by taxation at least as much as it gets from the State appropriation. (b) Fix by law a minimum salary for the teacher. The State has been steadily raising the standard of qualifications for the teacher; why not fix a salary below which the School Board may not go? The question of supply and demand has nothing to do with getting the best teacher. She will always go where she can get the most money. Pennsylvania should have, with the amount of money she gives to the support of her schools, the best teachers in the Union.

Notwithstanding the gradual enlargement of the standard of qualifications for the teacher, the certification issued by the superintendent still remains the same. "Fair knowledge of the branches to be taught" will still procure a provisional license to teach. And as what may be "fair" knowledge rests with the judgment of each superintendent, the provisional certificate represents a varying standard, suitable to the conditions of each school district. The professional certificate rests upon skill, competency and a “thorough" knowledge of the branches to be taught. Our schools should

certainly be taught by this class of teachers. And yet, two-thirds of the 30,000 teachers of Pennsylvania carry provisional certificates. Year after year, they measure up only "fair." Should not the provisional certificate be regarded, as it was originally, as a trial certificate, and after three years of teaching, should not the teacher be refused a certificate at all until she qualifies up to the standard of "thorough demanded by the professional certificate? A teacher who cannot reach after, say, three years, the standard called for by that certificate, should not teach in our schools at all. The teacher in the elementary grades who has the power is always the one whose scholarship is beyond the subjects she is called upon to teach. In the high schools, the best teachers are those who have been educated four years beyond the high school branches, and I venture to say, that if our township high schools are to produce the results they ought to produce, the teachers should possess the scholarship which extends far beyond the subjects of the township high school course. The township boards should provide the money to get such teachers. They should rank in scholarship with city high school teachers.

The teacher should constantly grow in grace, culture and power. Principals' meetings, grade meetings may strengthen her methods and discipline, but they may not broaden her views of life, or widen her sympathies. The institute is generally supposed to quicken her enthusiasm and give her greater inspiration in her work. After many years of listening, I am inclined to think that it helps to stimulate the teacher into greater efficiency in occasional features only. Its dominant characteristic has come to be one of literary and scientific entertainment and amusement rather than one of helpful and practical instruction. In its present tendency, I do not believe that the County Institute is a positive force in awakening in the teacher a desire for greater individual power, or for inspiring her to greater individual effort. Beyond the general professional spirit engendered by bringing all the teachers of a county together in a body, the institute is of indifferent educational value. subjects discussed by the "instructors" in the four days of actual institute work, are frequently beyond the range of common school instruction, as well as beyond the comprehension and the power of assimilation of the majority of the teachers, many of whom are either still within, or just over the border of the age of legal infancy; or, have not sufficient education and general culture to grasp the points of the subject presented by the instructor.

The

If the teacher's methods are to be improved, she must be met by the instructor on the ground of her own fund of knowledge, and should have thoughts presented to her within the touch of her own experience. Her own observation, her own thinking, her own reading will make her strong, and whatever stimulates in her the desire for better scholarship, better thinking and simpler and directer methods will make her a better teacher. I believe with our State Superintendent that a summer school, of a four or six weeks' course, equipped with skillful and actual teachers, and paid by the State sufficient compensation to get the very best, will do more

in the way of making our teachers, who desire to improve, more efficient than any other agency. Such schools should be free to all who desire to come, and should involve no expense whatever beyond board and lodging.

The advancing tides of social and industrial civilization have been creating within the last twenty-five years new educational needs. Year by year, "it is becoming harder," says President Jordan, "for the untrained man to find profitable employment. At the same time, there never was a time when young men, sober, industrious, intelligent, and trained to do things, are in such great demand. The time is coming when the unskilled laborer will have no place at all in the industrial system; because a bucket of coal and a bucket of water will do his work better." The laborer of the future, to be in demand, must therefore put brains into his work. He must be trained to greater effectiveness, and for such effectiveness, for the young men who are ready to do the best work they can do, there will always be room in any calling. The demand for such industrial training of the pupils of the public school, as will render their mental training most effective, is an imperative and increasing demand. It cannot be evaded. The boy who learns to make something by hand, accurately and well, will not only have received a valuable educational lesson, but will also have gained a wholesome respect for labor and labor's products. The girl who learns how to care for the house, how to sew, or cook food rightly, even though she may not be called upon in after life to do any one of these duties, will always be in sympathy with those whose lot in life it is to sew and to cook. The boy who will not obey the law of the school, who is restive under its restraints and lessons, the "incorrigible," the truant who must sometimes be eliminated for the good of the school, may, under the training which puts him to work, find the latent power that will yet bring ont of all the useless rubbish a good, true man. Such a feature of public education is the direct fulfillment of the practical needs of the community; because it reaches directly into the homes of the people, makes them better, more comfortable, and, therefore, happier. The right to a knowledge of the nature and character of work is a moral right, and just as imperative as the right to live, the right to grow, the right to know. No school is a good school which educates its pupils away from work. No school should give a boy the idea that it is better or more respectable to be a lawyer than to be a farmer. A good carpenter or blacksmith is as good and useful and respectable as a doctor or a minister, and infinitely better than a poor doctor or a poor minister. A system of education which trains the young to some form of practical work is performing one of the highest of moral duties, and is the only system that will remove the social conditions which breed bodily and mental feebleness, apathy and sloth, drunkenness and pauperism. Is the time ripe for legislation making such a feature of school work a mandatory part of the school system?

The public school exists for the perpetuation of the State. For that purpose the State requires it, and the people support it. Through it the children of the State are supposed to ac.

quire the general intelligence and morality necessary to make them useful members of society and render them capable of carrying on the government of which they will be a necessary and integral part. General intelligence, however, that is, the sum of knowledge and reasoning power in the masses, does not make them moral. And yet morality, not intelligence, is the living principle of a nation's life. The school does not teach it as a special feature of daily work, and yet it puts forth the claim that it is teaching morality. The school teaches punctuality; punctuality is a virtue. It teaches promptness and industry; promptness and industry are virtues. It teaches self-reliance and obedience; self-reliance and obedience are virtues. It teaches order and neatness; order and neatness are virtues. But all the virtues which the school teaches are the result of repeated effort, which becomes automatic habit. They are habits. They do not reach far down into the real moral nature. Truth, reverence, justice, sympathy, purity, honesty spring from a deeper source. They come from the subjugation of self, the subjugation of will, impulse and desire to the command of conscience.

I believe that the public school can develop the deeper moral nature, that it can teach morality. I do not mean that it should preach morality, but that it should teach it. Forbearance, justice, magnanimity, truth, goodness; men reap what they sow-these ideas lie at the basis of moral life, and the school can teach them, not preach them. No boy or girl is equipped for citizenship, is fitted to take a place in the home and in society, who has not been taught the principles of the Ten Commandments. The stories and parables of the Bible, setting forth the right principles of human conduct, the Sermon on the Mount, the parables of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Talents, the Sower, should be fixed in every mind. Paul's Song of Love, his Ode on Immortality in First Corinthians, some of the Old Testament tales. Joseph, Ruth, passages of Job, many of the Psalms are unsurpassed, if not unequaled, as a means for creating noble ideas and developing noble feeling.

Forty, fifty years ago, the New Testament was a reading book in many of our common schools. I can recall to-day verses and parables I had to commit to memory as a penalty for violation of school law. I did not understand those verses then, but memory preserved them until their force and beauty furnished in after life an impelling motive. Understanding is a thing of degrees. Place in the memory of the child a story, or a passage embodying a moral truth, and let it stay there. We need not talk about it. It may lie dormant, but the day will come when the seed will sprout into spiritual bloom. Spiritual truths lie all around us for the teacher to make use of. The sky, the mountain, the sea, the social world, history and literature are full of them. The passing word will often carry a touch of celestial fire to the heart of a little child which it will never forget. A few minutes each day of indirect moral instruction, whether it be a song, a story, a poem or a passage from the Bible, should be a feature of the opening of every school in the Commonwealth. General intelligence is an element of

citizenship; the training of the industrial activities is an element of citizenship; but whether citizenship shall be exerted to a good end depends upon moral training. That training is just as imperative and legitimate a part of education as the training of the mind and the development of the body. I believe that it should be demanded by the State. There is common ground on which Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, Believer and Non-Believer, can meet, on which the moral nature and conscience of all may be quickened into right action. The State should be able to find that common ground.

Drunkenness, gambling, the debauchment of the ballot, indifference to mob rule, riots and lynchings, trashy cheap reading, the low quality of the theater, the popular weakness for patent medicines, the spoils system, are evils, said President Eliot, recently, to be attributed to the lack of individual perceiving and reasoning power among the masses, owing to the poor teaching and teachers common in our public schools on account of the low school expenditure per child per year throughout the country. That may be true in sections, but is it not rather a low standard of moral education which renders all these and similar evils possible and flourishing? Who is responsible for them? Is it the law? The law to restrain them is upon the Statute book. Is it the authorities who fail to enforce the law because public opinion is against it? If it be public opinion, then who is responsible for public opinion? Is it the church, which addresses itself to respectable humanity one day in the week? Is it the home, which is concerned mainly with the problem of living? Or is it the school, which has charge, five days out of seven, of that part of the people who will make the public opinion of the generation to come? The responsibility may rest with all, but not upon all in like degree. The need is pressing. It is summed up eloquently by Frederick Goss, as quoted in a recent number of our School Journal: "The great lack of this age is spiritual vision. It is the absence of ideals. It is the loss of reverence. And yet it is better to be a peasant and reverence a king than to be a king and reverence nothing. All that has been won out of the evolution of the race from the slime of the ocean, is the power to look up into the sky, and down into the deeps, and around on human life with reverence. When that is lost, all is lost. This is the great gift of the ages-one to another. It is the lighted torch which (like the messenger of antiquity) each generation, spent with effort, has handed to the next. Shall it be darkened in our hands? When we pass it to the boys and girls who come after us, shall we give them a charred coal for a burning flame?"

Supt. Samuel Andrews, Pittsburg, agreed in the main with the paper. Its style is pleasing, its statements are true, and in some places it is grand. Yet it may be well to add a few words on a subject so important to us and our people as the question where we are and what we can do for the benefit of our schools. Looking over the statistics we find that

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Pennsylvania stands twenty-third in the list in respect to teachers' salaries, and we wonder why and how this can be, when we have such pride in our schools and in our state. In the paper this morning I read a head line, $22 per month for male teachers," and in the article is quoted a case in Wyoming county, where the lady received $18.40, and the following figures are given for several other counties-Susquehanna $25.43, Crawford $27.63, Bradford $26.42, Columbia $29.89, Huntingdon $28.79, Tioga $26.46, Wayne $27.21. We read such things with shame and wonder that they can have any schools at all in such communities. How can we expect men to teach school at such prices, when even street sweepers are paid $60 a month? Evidently there is something wrong. Are we superintendents doing our duty when snch facts exist and our protest is not heard against them? The Legislature is now in session in this town; every one of us knows some of the members and has some influence; why do we not all go directly to them, and urge them to vote for such laws as will make these things impossible. had been doing what he could in that way since he came here. Ask your members to vote for the law that requires every district to pay at least $40 a month, or receive no appropriation whatever. That is a good beginning; let them pay as much more as they will. The State Superintendent has called our attention to the bill appropriating $5000 to aid the education of teachers. There should not be a single vote against the $5000, and he believed there could be a majority got for $50,000. The State Association wants the best men, but cannot afford to secure them. If we had control of $10,000 or $15,000 we could get these men. There is also before the Assembly a bill providing $200,000 for township high schools. The cities have their high schools and their great libraries; in the country, where the majority of our boys and girls go to school, they do not have these advantages; yet most of our leading educators come from up the country to the city. Dr. Schaeffer is working for this high school appropriation, and every one of us should be helping it all he can. He was glad the Legislature had made it possible to place a library of books suitable for children at the command of every school. His own community was especially blessed in the matter of library; and