bravery, courage, honesty, truthfulness, kindness, politeness, and courtesy should be frequently read to the pupils and made the subjects for questioning and conversation, and may well be reproduced in the form of compositions. All that is good and true, elevating and refining, should be held up before them as worthy of their regard and admiration, and no good opportunity of pressing home some moral lesson allowed to pass unheeded. Care should be exercised, however, lest some over-anxious teacher may lecture his pupils too much, and thus cause the pupils finally to weary of his moral instructions.

Most of the school vices grow out of or are the concomitants of idleness. Idleness always causes confusion and insubordination, while work insures order. Get the pupil to work, and most of the virtues of the school-room will be readily adopted or imbibed. How to do this, however, is a problem difficult to solve and put into practice.

In the first place let the teacher exercise great care in seating his pupils, so as to place them as far from temptation as possible. Many an idle boy has developed into an earnest worker by being placed near those who performed their work regularly and properly. Let changes frequently be made, and in the course of two months see that all the pupils change their seats.

In most schools it is necessary to alternate the classes, or sometimes divisions of the same class, requiring one division to prepare a lesson while the other is reciting. During the recitations, of course, much will depend on the manner, interest, and enthusiasm of the teacher. It should be made so attractive and interesting to the pupil that he naturally wishes to give his attention to the lesson. Not so, however, with those who are to a certain degree left to themselves to prepare the next lesson.

Some of them will idle unless something is done to compel them to work. At such times it may be well to send the idler to the board and have him work long examples in addition, division, fractions, or division. of decimals. Sometimes he may be required to draw the map that he has recently studied, and even to write out the lesson, or a synopsis of it, on his slate.

The best method of securing the pupil's attention to his work, however, is to be found in the awakening of his ambition. Prizes and rewards serve a very good purpose when they lead only to an ennobling desire to excel. But so often do they cause rivalry, envy, and even hatred, that it is at least doubtful if they should be employed as schoolroom incentives. The awakening of a pure and holy ambition, on the other hand, is productive of the highest good.

Read and have read the lives of the great and good of earth. Let the most eminent models of manliness be held up before the pupils, and admiration will soon lead to imitation, and the best traits of their characters brought out and strengthened.

Let brief biographies of Washington, Franklin, Clay, Lee, Jackson, Lincoln, Stevens, Edison, and Grady be read and talked over in the school-room, and beneficial results will be sure to follow. These biographies may be substituted occasionally for the regular reading lessons or employed as part of the Friday afternoon exercises. The desire to succeed and to do good is beneficently implanted in the breasts of all, and may be readily fanned into a flame, the heat of which may permeate a community, a State, or a nation.

However, no teacher can excite all his pupils to ambitious effort. Whether from home or street influences, previous training, physical inability, or a natural disinclination to study, some will resist all the advances or efforts of the teacher. For such pupils other methods must be employed, either to allure or to compel to work.

Some children are timid, modest, and retiring, and have not sufficient confidence in themselves to think that they can accomplish much. These are tender plants and need great care and attention. A harsh word or a severe rebuke may discourage the pupil and lessen or destroy the teacher's influence. Such pupils need encouragement and sympathy, and the patient and loving teacher may inspire them to renewed effort, help them to gain confidence, and exercise a lasting influence over them. When one of these timid ones fails and seems discouraged, offer a kind word or a helping hand. He will then see that his teacher is his friend, and will soon give gratitude and affection for kindness and sympathy. By all means gain an influence over such pupils. Try to find some common fondness, and a bond of sympathy will be formed at once that will strengthen the teacher's influence and make the pupil more anxious to please and assist him.

Sometimes much may be accomplished by appealing to a pupil's pride, by calling on each one to make and sustain the reputation of the class. A little judicious ridicule may be occasionally introduced to make the pupil ashamed of his ignorance, and thus give him a desire for knowledge. Great care, however, should be exercised in its use, and its effects. studiously observed. Sometimes a private talk with the pupil may prove beneficial to all concerned, and a visit to the parent will almost always be productive of good.

If a pupil continues to idle, some proper remedial punishment should be called into requisition, such as a becoming reproof, extra work, solitary confinement. Whispering, disorderly movements, insubordination, and injury to school property are to a great extent the resultants of idleness. If the one is cured the others will vanish.

But something must be done to prevent such evils, even if idleness cannot be cured. Some punishment must be administered, but not such improper punishments as pulling the hair, pinching or pulling the ear, holding a nail in the floor, excessive or injudicious ridicule, or calling the

pupil names. Let the teacher rather inflict a loss of privilege, a kind reproof, restraint or confinement, the imposition of a task, actual chastisement, and, in severe cases, suspension and even expulsion.

Much is being written on the subject of corporal punishment. Though most educators think it should be used with due discretion, still. the tide of public opinion is against it, and it is rapidly disappearing from our schools. As it disappears suspension and expulsion must to a certain extent take its place.

Surely the teacher should not complain of its disappearance, since it relieves him of an unpleasant and repulsive duty, renders his administration more popular, and at the same time results indirectly in ridding the school of the most annoying characters. To cast these idle, mischievous, and often malicious ones on the world, probably to go from bad to worse, is, however, a sad effect, and one that necessarily increases the teacher's responsibility, and hence he should exercise great patience and forbearIn case of continued misbehavior or insubordination it is best to require the parent or guardian to punish the offending one. This may have the desired effect and, in some cases, will become a successful substitute for the use of the rod in the school-room.

ance.

For the views and methods here offered for the consideration of thoughtful teachers no claim is made to originality. The importance of the subject, and more particularly the importance of the work, demand not so much new ideas as the utilizing of the best of those already advanced. A single error in the government of a school may result disastrously to the future of a possible Milton, Bacon, or Newton, and though mistakes must occur, it is the teacher's duty to make them as few as possible.

It is with the hope that something may have been said to encourage or assist some teacher in his arduous and important work that this article has been prepared. Failing in this it fails in all.

Our Schools and their Responsibilities.

BY PRESIDENT J. L. PICKARD, IOWA CITY, IOWA.

Even a casual reader of the daily news must be alarmed at the evidences of increase in juvenile crime.

What is the cause? What agencies may be employed to stay its course? Wherein does our system of education fail in its professed purpose?

I. We must distinguish between the occasion and the cause of crime. The former is a weak spot in the dike-result of sudden passion

or temporary dethronement of reason under alcoholic stimulants; the latter is the natural flow from some fountain often quite remote from the breach in the dike.

Causes are primary and secondary. The primary cause is our rapid increase in population.

Secondary causes, flowing naturally from the primary cause, are: a. A lowered sense of individual responsibility as the unit is the more easily hidden in the mass.

b. Loss of regard for the rights of neighbors, consequent upon a less intimate acquaintance.

c. The increased complexity of social life, which turns the thought into selfish channels.

d. Luxurious habits of living prevalent in urban society which are beyond the means of youth starting in life, but the influence of which the young cannot easily overcome through fear of losing caste.

e. The formation of social classes, with a growing disregard of those who are upon the manual labor side of the line of distinction.

f. The thoughts of parents tending more to social success for their children than to character, the latter are allowed greater freedom in their movements, are encouraged in their separation from home influences at a time when such influences are most needed.

g. The attractions of a city life, with the seductive wiles of evil associates, and the extinction of all home feeling and loss of interest in home affairs as the young man lives in chambers and boards at restaurants or at clubs; as the poorly paid young woman is subjected to a boardinghouse life far removed from the home surroundings she once enjoyed.

h. The rapid increase in unskilled laborers whose services machinery has relegated to the coarser forms of manual labor.

These seem to me to be the chief secondary causes of youthful crime, growing in intensity as population increases in density and especially as the increase tends toward cities.

What agencies are employed to counteract the tendencies evidently strong and rapidly growing stronger?

My thought turns toward three fundamental and organic agencies. for the preservation of social order-the home, the church, the school.

Of the homes, so called, how many fail to meet the purpose of their organization. There are some where evil influences are positive, where example and precept lead to criminal practices; there are others where indifference results in negative encouragement of crime, whose members act after their own will without counsel or restraint, the parents seeming to be the happiest when they know least of the lives of their offspring; there are others where, with the purest intentions, time is wanting for any other thought than the ever pressing demands for food and clothing; there are still others, where, with time at command, knowledge requisite

for proper training of children is lacking. Still further must we go in this process of exclusion, as we see homes where time, means and knowledge are at command, but where social customs decree the abnormal management of children by nurses and governesses not always wisely chosen. Can the homes that remain be relied upon to stem the tide of evil without help? But there is help in the church. Unfortunately, the majority of those who most need such help, do not avail themselves of it. The good homes use the help of the church most frequently. While the church cultivates the noble view of the worth of the individual, she does not reach enough hearts to make sure that her teachings are accepted in their entirety. A half truth is as dangerous as an entire error. When the doctrine of individual worth is not accompanied by the practical acknowledgement of individual responsibility, but half the truth appears.

If the home and the church, noble allies, prove insufficient, society must secure for herself a supplemental agency. Both home and church have recognized the need of such an agency, and have agreed upon the school. It is to this organized agency I would turn for help. The ideal school, whether private or public, may do much in arrest of the prevalent tendency to crime.

From its peculiar structure and patronage, it will not be found difficult to emphasize influences which go to the building of a virtuous character, the foundation of social order. Following not very closely the order of causes enumerated above in sketching the cures :

He

1. We need to check the tendency to loss of responsibility which the hiding of the individual in the mass creates. The school steps in with its requirements, its restraints, and puts each pupil upon his individual merits. He must be punctual, attentive, orderly, obedient of himself and for himself. The general average of his class will not suffice. His personal attendance is noted each day. His recitations show the degree of his attention to his daily study. His conduct is observed in all his personal relations to his fellows and to his teachers. His faithful performance of tasks and his direlictions in duty are recorded against his name. is one of many, and not one in many. He cannot shirk duty without personal reproof. To his teacher he bears a distinct personality. His personality is so constantly, and in so many ways impressed upon his mind, that he grows into the habit of assuming personal responsibility. Motives to its acceptance and exercise are drawn from his relations to his fellows, to his teachers, to his parents and to his Creator, for the true teacher can not fail to guide the thoughts of the child upward to a power above his own source of his life and of his blessings. The relation of the creature to the Creator, both home and church expect the school to teach, while they reserve to themselves the right to indoctrinate the child after their own forms of faith.