THE HE following program of one of the sections of the National Educational Association at Los Angeles will be of great interest to our readers: CHILD STUDY. (2-30 p. m., July 12 and 13.) WILL S. MONROE, President, Westfield, Mass. President's Address. Status of Child-Study in Europe. Mrs. Maria Kraus-Boelte. Division of Labor in Child-Study. John I. Jegi, State Normal School, Milwaukee, Wis. Child-Study in Normal and Training Schools. Gertrude Edmund, Principal of Trianing School, Lowell, Mass. The Child and Childhood in Ancient Greek Thought. John Patterson, Louisville, Ky. A Curriculum of Applied Child-Study for the Kindergarten and Primary School. Frederic L. Burk, Superintendent of Schools, Santa Barbara, Cal. Children's Interests in Literature. Isabel Lawrence, State Normal School, St. Cloud, Minn. Children's Drawings. Mrs. Louise Maitland, State Normal School, San Jose, Cal. The Adolescent at Home and in School. E. G. Lancaster, Colorado College, Colorado Springs. Group Activity among Children. C. C. Van Liew, State Normal School, Los Angeles, Cal. SPEAKING of the N. E. A., Los Angeles is an ideal location for this year's meeting. Some teachers with an astonishingly limited knowledge of geography object to the location on account of the supposed torrid heat of Los Angeles or the country en route. Comparatively few persons are accurately informed of the midsummer characteristics of the vast region that lies beyond the Missouri River. Everybody knows it is arid; nearly everybody has heard of the desert, and of high temperatures prevailing there, and the fear of extreme discomfort by reason of excessive heat operates with many inexperienced travelers as a grave objection to the trip in summer. This is an unfounded fear. The truth is that in midsummer the temperature of the extreme desert does sometimes reach a higher figure than is experienced in the East, but it is also true, both there and elsewhere in the arid region, that under a temperature that in the humid East prostrates a large number by sunstroke and renders railway travel intolerable, the traveler in the West suffers no serious discomfort, because by reason of the absence of humidity, and the purity and thinness of the air at high altitudes, the oppressive and debilitating effects common in a moist climate are not felt, and the sensible temperature is very much less than the figures shown by the thermometer. Blodgett says of this peculiarity in his "Climatology of the United States": The temperature of evaporation, or that marked by the wet-bulb thermometer, is a striking instrumental proof, the difference between this and the temperature of the air often remaining at 20 degrees through many days, or even months, at midday, and the difference sometimes reaching 25 degrees or 30 degrees. At all seasons this difference has a greater measure than is found in the Eastern states, and it is marked by all who traverse the country. Sensible perspiration is rarely experienced in even the warm climate of southern New Mexico under the most active physical exertion, and the languor and oppressiveness attending a heat of 90 degrees to 95 degrees in the Eastern states is never felt at such temperatures. The desert, which is far from deserving the bad reputation it commonly bears among strangers, stretches from north to south across our country, all the way from British Columbia to Mexico. Every railway that enters California crosses it, but by any route across the desert the traveler is likely to experience less discomfort than he will have felt east of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers on the same journey. Yet in point of comfort there is a choice, and the most comfortable route is that which is freest from dust, avoids low altitudes and crosses the desert in the shortest distance, the briefest time, and with the least exposure to the heat of the day. All these advantages are possessed by the Santa Fe route, as detailed below: 1. It is the shortest route. The distance to Los Angeles by the Santa Fe route (via Albuquerque and Barstow) is, from Chicago, 2,265 miles, while by the shortest route through Ogden the distance from Chicago is 2,734 miles, a saving of nearly 500 miles. 2. It is the quickest. By reason of shorter mileage the time of transit is less. The regular daily schedule of trains of the Santa Fe route to Los Angeles is, from Chicago, 82%1⁄2 hours. The shortest corresponding schedule via Salt Lake City and Ogden is from Chicago, 110 hours. 3. It traverses the smallest portion of the desert. This portion is known as the Mojave Desert and extends from the Colorado River to Barstow, a distance of only 169 miles. Passengers via the central routes cross the portion known as the Humboldt Desert, as well as that portion of the Mojave Desert which lies between Mojave and Los Angeles. 4. It crosses the greater part of this in the cool of the day— to-wit: after supper west bound, and after four o'clock in the afternoon east bound. Even on the extreme desert, at that altitude above sea-level, there is a rapid dissipation of heat in the thin, pure atmosphere after nightfall. 5. It has the minimum of alkali dust, because of its short mileage over the region where this discomfort may be looked for. Moreover, the Santa Fe route to California is well ballasted, and within the past eighteen months hundreds of thousands of dollars have been expended upon the western portion in perfecting its roadbed and track. 6. Through the arid region (which no route avoids) outside the desert it runs over a continuous mountain top. This is true all the way from eastern Colorado to the western boundary of Arizona. 7. In New Mexico and Arizona vast tracts of timber are traversed. This is contrary to the notion of many. In Central Arizona the route lies through what is said to be the largest pine forest in the United States, which the train requires half a day to cross-namely, from breakfast time until after noon. Many other portions of the way are heavily timbered. Park-like forests of huge pine trees, at an altitude of from 6,000 to 7,000 feet, cannot be associated with oppressive heat. 8. The highest midsummer temperature of this region is actually lower than that of the scores of well-known cities in the Middle and Eastern states. These are some of the many reasons for our taking the Santa Fe route. We have still others up our sleeve. SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CHILD-STUDY-THEIR SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS.* HILD-STUDY is often called a " fad," but it conforms CHIL to none of the definitions of a "fad." It is not a trifling pursuit, but the noblest endeavor of all who deserve the name of teacher or parent. Child-Study is almost as broad as education, and certainly no one will decry education as a fad. Many of the means of education often take the direction of fads; i. e., become hobbies or become trifling in nature, but education is the most serious question, the most significant question that has ever occupied or ever will occupy the minds of intelligent humanity. Certain methods of Child-Study, such as the questionaire method, the anthropometric method, etc., may develop into fads, but the study of children must enter into the intelligent consideration of every educational question. This is true as regards subject-matter, and means and methods. Education may be reduced to two ultimate questions: (a) What shall the child learn, and (b) what are the best means of attaining the desired ends? And we must look to the child in answering either. Child-Study, unfortunately, has come into disrepute in some quarters, largely because so many dilettanti without scientific training or insight are carrying out so-called investigations in the name of science and publishing to the world the worthless results of their puerile efforts. Many of this type of investigator hunt only for abnormalities or unusual sayings and doings of children, with no other end in view than the hope of contributing an article on some new and startling topic. Then many others with perfectly good intentions, through imitation, pursue similar methods in the belief that they are aiding the cause of (*) Read before the Wisconsin State Teachers' Association, Milwaukee, Dec. 27, 1898. science. The results of such misdirected efforts are published and people rightly denominate it "stuff and nonsense," but also wrongly denounce all Child-Study as worthless and the outcome of a fad. Often much valuable time is worse than wasted in the attempt to produce something new. To quote Prof. Butler: "Much of modern socalled scientific work is really unscientific. It has no beginning and no end, and is, so far, just as wasteful and enervating as would be the attempt to count the leaves of the trees of Maine or the sands of the desert Sahara. . . . Hundreds of so-called investigators all over the world are frittering away their time and wasting public and private funds in their incessant desire to do something that means nothing."-Ed. R., Oct., 1898, 283. But the foregoing does not apply to Child-Study and education alone. It is equally applicable to the investigations in any other branch of knowledge, just as abortive attempts may be cited from researches in history, geology, philology, chemistry, and other sciences. But we hear little just now of any fads except from the Child-Study side. I wonder whether the decrying of Child-Study has not also become a fad? The main reason why so much is heard about fads in education is because no other subject comes so close to the intelligence and interests of so large a mass of humanity. Education concerns not only the teacher, but the child, the adolescent, the parent, the family, the community-society. It is more vitally connected with the present and future welfare of mankind than any other phase of human endeavor. Another reason why Child-Study has been so much derided is because people have expected more from it than it was able to give or they had a right to expect. There has been too little discrimination between the work attempted by the specialist and that by the novice. But a few cynics in high places, who ought to discriminate better, have taken the disappointing or worthless results as a cue for the epithets and anathemas that they delight in hurling at |