Published monthly, except July and August, by the NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES 1201 SIXTEENTH STREET NORTHWEST, WASHINGTON, D. C. Entered as second class matter October 28, 1920, at the postoffice at Washington, D. C., under the Act of August 24, 1912. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized January 26, 1921. The Convention A Great Program-Herbert Hoover, Judge Ben Lindsey and a host of other national and international celebrities will be heard. An opportunity to visit some of Iowa's open country consolidated schools. Auto trips to these buildings every day. Exhibits of work done in the Iowa Consolidated Schools. Every one interested in the rural school movement will want to see what Iowa is doing. Special concerts and musical programs will be presented by the musical organizations of the city. There will be something doing all the time. Special efforts will be made to provide entertainment for the idle hours. Daily excursions to the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts at Ames. The Coliseum-Capacity 10,000 Where General Sessions will be held Des Moines-A City The Capital City of Iowa-the richest agricultural area of equal size on the face of the earth. The State House-beautiful for situation, overlooking the cityis one of the finest buildings of its kind in the U. S. The Historical Building is the depository of rich, rare and valuable manuscripts. Nowhere in the Middle West is there a finer collection of archeological, historical and scientific material. Experts in town planning declare the Des Moines Civic Center to be one of the best conceived and beautifully executed of any city in America. Des Moines is appropriately the greatest center in the world for agricultural journals and farm papers. Spacious and delightful parks. cerns. con Free auto trips will be provided all visiting teachers. Iowa In Iowa it is but a short spin "From prairie lands to fairy lands." In Iowa 93.4 per cent of all the land is under cultivation and productive. Iowa leads in the production of corn and livestock. Iowa stands first among the states in per capita wealth. Iowa has never known a crop failure. Ninety-nine per cent of Iowa's population is literate; one in four is in school. Iowa ranks seventh educationally as shown by the Russell Sage Foundation. The State University of Iowa will offer exceptional opportunities to do summer school work and at the same time attend the convention. No university has ever offered as numerous and varied courses in the field of education as will be offered here. Come to Iowa---the Great Food Producing Center of the World Ideal Weather A Wonderful Program The Glad Hand of the Great Middle West The Birth of Our National Association "T WELVE YEARS ago, in the central city of the Empire State, the first1 State association of teachers in this country was formed. Some of you gentlemen who were present at that meeting, and were instrumental in calling it, can well remember the 'fear and trembling' with which that enterprise was commenced. Until that period, the teachers of that State not only, but those of every other State as well, were almost entirely unacquainted with one another." These are the words of Chairman Valentine speaking in 1857 to the choice spirits who were making the first history of our National Association. 2 During the late forties and the early fifties, other States had followed the example of Rhode Island and New York in the formation of associations. Out of the personal fellowship and professional consciousness that had grown up in these State associations germinated the idea from which was born the National Association, first known as the National Teachers' Association. The call for the first meeting went out on May 15, 1857, over the signatures of the presidents of State associations in the ten States of New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. This call was originally proposed by T. W. Valentine, president of the New York association, and was written by D. B. Hagar, president of the Massachusetts association. The text of the call is as follows: "To the Teachers of the United States: "The eminent success which has attended the establishment and operations of the several teachers' associations in the States of this country is the source of mutual congratulations among all friends of popular education. To the direct agency and the diffused influence of these associations, more, perhaps, than to any other cause, are due the manifest improvement of schools in all their relations, the rapid intellectual and social elevation of teachers as a class, and the vast development of public interest in all that concerns the education of the young. "That the State associations have already accomplished great good, and that As A United Body GEORGE WHARTON PEPPER WE E once sent overseas an expeditionary force composed of our bravest and best. Through them America struck a telling blow for freedom and by their valor our independence was preserved. It remains for us to use the power of our independence in ways worthy of the lives that were sacrificed to maintain it. We must see to it that America's influence is always exerted to combat ignorance and to liberate the human spirit. The world is our field, and we make our influence felt in every corner of it. Over a new and greater army of occupation the Stars and Stripes must proudly float. In the vanguard the publicschool teachers of America must march as a united body, and the teachers of Philadelphia must be the first over the top.-From an address at a teachers' mass meeting, Philadelphia, October 28, 1920. must they are destined to exert a still broader and more beneficent influence, no wise observer will deny. "Believing that what has been accomplished for the States by State associations may be done for the whole country by a National Association, we, the un In a list of fifteen "State Teachers Associations organized before 1857," published in the "Fiftieth Anniversary Volume" of the N. E. A., pages 514-15, Will S. Monroe places the New York association second, July 30, 1845; and the Rhode Island association first, January 28, 1845. 2 Proceedings of the National Teachers' Association reprinted from Barnard's American Journal of Education with additions, Vol. 1, 1857, Bardeen (1909). dersigned, invite our fellow-teachers throughout the United States to assemble in Philadelphia on the twenty-sixth day of August next, for the purpose of organizing a National Teachers' Association. "We cordially extend this invitation to all practical teachers in the North, the South, the East, and the West, who are willing to unite in a general effort to promote the general welfare of our country by concentrating the wisdom. and power of numerous minds, and by distributing among all the accumulated experiences of all; who are ready to devote their energies and their means to advance the dignity, respectability, and usefulness of their calling; and who, in fine, believe that the time has come when the teachers of the Nation should gather into one great educational brotherhood. "As the permanent success of any association depends very much upon the auspices attending its establishment, and the character of the organic laws it adopts, it is hoped that all parts of the Union will be largely represented at the inauguration of the proposed enterprise." A little group of enterprising leaders from "the North, the South, the East, and the West" responded to the call and on August 26, 1857, assembled in the Athenaeum Building in Philadelphia, and listened to the speaker with whose words this sketch begins. That interesting "first speech" closed with this significant statement: "What we want is, an association that shall embrace all the teachers of our whole country, which shall hold its meetings at such central points as shall accommodate all sections and combine all interests. And we need this, not merely to promote the interests of our profession, but to gather up and arrange the educational statistics of our country, so that the people may know what is really being done for public education, and what yet remains to be done. I trust the time will come when our government will have its Educational Department just as it now has one for Agriculture, for the Interior, for the Navy, etc. Surely these interests can not be more important than those which pertain to the intellectual and moral welfare of our people. But until this But until this shall be done as it must be, sooner or later-we need some such combination of effort as shall bring the teachers of this country more together, and disseminate, as well as collect, educational intelligence. Such an effort is imperatively demanded of us, and I trust we No shall at once decide to go forward and The meeting did "go forward," a Better Speech For Better SUSAN B. DAVIS Professor of Reading and Effective Speaking, Kent State Normal College, Kent, Ohio careless and for the most part uncouth." The problem of "better speech for were Fifty-two different tongues spoken by the various peoples who passed through Ellis Isle during the year 1920. Our language by this linguistic influx is submitted to the same leveling process to which a child's language is submitted when he leaves home and goes forth to meet the influences of speech as it prevails in playgrounds, in stores, and elsewhere. A child is thus exposed to all the common things of democracy, and some of these have a tendency to reduce all to a common level; "which in terms of speech in our country today means that he is made Corrective work in diction must be centered about (1) those who through 1 1 From an address before the National Society for the Study and Correction of Speech Disorder at Atlantic City, New Jersey, March 2, 1921. K ignorance or sheer laziness fail to make adequate use of the marvelous speech apparatus that God has given them, and (2) those who, by birth or accident, are incapable of excellence in speech. The average American is lip-lazy. He is ignorant or indifferent to the fundamentals of his language. There are one-half million speech defectives in the United States. Both these classes must be taken care of by our public schools and special courses of instruction. The voice is fundamental to speech. As the individual reveals his inner nature through his voice, so the nation. proclaims the life, the mental and emotional habits concealed within its being. When we insist upon the acceptance of our speech by other nationalities, we are insisting upon the acceptance of the American voice. More leisure, more knowledge, the study and practice of the social graces, keener appreciation of all the finer things of life, are necessary in American life before the American voice will be worthy of imitation and acceptance by the "strangers within our gates." No better opportunity for the mellowing of our own voices could be afforded than in our work for the betterment of all sorts and conditions of men. In demanding of the foreign-born the acceptance of our language, let us do it with a love and pride not only for correct written English, but for a speech that shall be beautiful and clear-cut rather than inarticulate and crude. "Beautiful speech is like unto the luster of a rare pearl." INDERGARTEN SAND TABLES have infinite possibilities for arousing interest. They afford opportunity for creative work in which individual effort merges naturally into community enterprise. It is here that the first lessons of democracy are learned and habits of coöperation are developed. P UBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING can be much improved by a more intelligent grouping of children according to their intellectual capabilities and their general conduct so that instruction may be adapted to their varying degrees of intelligence, and especially to the peculiar needs of the large group of over-age children. To have good teaching there must be a fair promise of successful performance measured in terms of profit to those taught. That there are those in the class doomed to failure paralyzes teacher effort. Emphasis has been placed, and rightly, upon the necessity of segregating the educationally unfit for the sake of other children. What I wish to urge is the necessity of such segregation in the interests of good teaching. The pall of idiocy, or something only a little removed therefrom, has shadowed many a teacher's schoolroom life until work has become hateful, professional aspiration has withered, and the springs of teacher helpfulness have gone dry. Age-grade tables show that about one-third, or thirty-three and one-third per cent, of the children in the public schools are one year or more behind grade. When we eliminate the two or three per cent that are actually feebleminded, there still remains the thirty per cent who could very well get back to grade if they could be given attention according to their needs; but if instruction is not adapted to them, they are bound to become failures and remain repeaters. An experiment in the interest of the thirty per cent has recently come under my observation which promises much in the way of releasing the energies of these children and making real progress possible. The significant thing is that the instruction is so adapted as actually to encourage and secure sustained effort, self-help, and self-measurement. The mechanics of the classroom procedure in this special group are simple. Each child has a portfolio containing a series of lesson exercises and questions increasing in difficulty but expressed in plain, understandable language; each lesson in the series forming a distinct unit which may require a longer or SUSAN M. DORSEY Superintendent of Schools, Los Angeles, California shorter time for mastery. As soon as one unit is mastered, the child passes on to the next. When a difficulty is met, the teacher's help is asked, it being understood that the help given shall be such that the child will really solve the difficulty himself. This experiment undertaken in the interest of misfits and overage children has resulted so helpfully that in many instances belated children have covered two and even three half grades in a half year and have been entered into their regular grade quite able to move on with the successful pupils of their own age. A second means for securing better teaching is the application of vocational guidance to the vocation of teaching. It is a matter of regret that recent exigencies in public school education have made it necessary to stress the fact that teachers have at all times been underpaid; as a result the impression has gained strength that the profession is one for the ambitious young person to avoid. Granting that the meager compensation of teachers in the past has been a reproach, even with this disability there are many intellectual and spiritual compensations which should make the vocation attractive, not to speak of those accompaniments of the profession commonly supposed to be advantages, such as association with the young, the hopeful, the buoyant; moderate hours of service; and extended vacations. To secure better teaching, it will be necessary to guide into the profession those of good intelligence and good character. While we are guiding into other vocations, what prevents us from pointing the way into our own? And a very good one it is, to which I mean to invite the promising young as to a life of privilege and magnificent opportunity. This must be one immediate way of improving teaching. Give us fresh young blood full of ambition and enthusiasm, with the far-off look toward the future which never sees the intervening years of work and worry but always the distant glory. glory. How shall we improve teaching? By believing in it ourselves, by 1 From an address before the Department of Superintendence, Atlantic City, New Jersey, March 2, 1921. stopping our dolorous talk about its hardships, its penury, its limitations, and by seeing with the clear vision of those who love its work and believe in its regenerating destinies the road that leads. to supreme service, highest satisfaction, and most helpful accomplishment; by inviting the best of those whom we teach to enter a vocation second to none in the opportunity to live lives of contentment, of service, and of achievement so shall we have better teaching. A third measure that will contribute to good teaching is a somewhat better adjustment of teacher training given in departments of education to the everyday needs of the child. I am not one to complain of the colleges or of the type of educated product issuing therefrom. The magnificent college-trained young manhood and womanhood of our country speak for themselves. In one particular, however, there is need of a coming together of the departments of education and the public schools, since the greater number of those who graduate from the schools of education are to become the teachers of just boys and girls in the elementary or high schools. These young instructors need to understand thoroughly two things: first, that university methods, attitudes, and even standards, cannot be carried into the teaching of boys and girls; and second, that the emphasis must be placed upon the development of children rather than upon the development of subject-matter. We are starting now a general movement for more extended training of teachers. This is desirable, even necessary, because as general intelligence increases, teacher intelligence must increase apace. The mighty events of the last few years in which the youth of our Nation played their part heroically and in which our entire people participated have lifted the whole Nation as on the crest of a mighty wave far above the grade of pre-war intelligence. Every family has gained knowledge of peoples, races, lands, customs; of appliances, instruments, and modes of living of which formerly little was known. As from a mountain-top we have seen new worlds and the sweep of intelligence has broadened with the vision. Teacher intelli |