thoro study of public opinion on any of the many important phases of morality. The schools have their geographies and histories, their books of nature, their arithmetics, etc., from which pupils can learn a host of facts useful to them, but the wisdom of grown-up people as to how to live has never been formulated for children as a body of knowledge. This morality codes competition is to produce one important expression of public opinion in a field of knowledge most intimately related to the vital needs of the children. Children force on parents the problems of moral education, and many find themselves at a loss to decide what moral ideas to inculcate. This book of morality codes will be a guide to both parents and teachers, and a basis for harmony between school and home. Normal-school students can inform themselves by studying this book of moral codes as to what moral ideas they are expected to inculcate in the minds of their pupils when they begin teaching. Their individual ideas and experiences can be supplemented by a study of the wisdom which has come to many others thru personal experiences in the large world of human affairs. These "Morality Books," it is believed, will be of great use to the teachers in their regular classroom and personal work with pupils, in cases of discipline, and when stimulating the moral growth of pupils. They will be of use in normal schools as a means of preparing teachers for their work as educators of character, and they will influence parents to support at home the morality which is taught at schools. We have been making out a character chart by collaboration among several hundred people which seems to me to make clear the need of the child for a thoro character education. The items in this character chart can be regarded as the index to the "Morality Books." The character of the perfect human being would be about as follows: Intellectual character, needed for wise thinking: 1. Earnest, not trifling 2. Sincere and open-minded, not diverted by personal interests 4. Alert, not indolent 5. Accurate, not indefinite 6. Useful, not merely interesting 7. Inventive and constructive, not lacking initiative 8. Rational and judicious, not over-emotional, hysterical, or melancholy 10. Keen in sense perceptions, not unobserving Working character, needed for doing useful work: 1. Purposeful, not led merely by likes and dislikes 2. Teachable, not stubborn 3. Obedient, not balky 4. Cautious, not heedless 5. Ambitious, not self-satisfied 13. Adaptable, not slow to fit into new surroundings 14. Executive, not haphazard Personal character, needed for doing right by oneself: 1. Thoughtful, not merely impulsive 2. Influenced by high ideals, not content with low standards 4. Independent, not suggestible 5. Self-controlled, not weak 6. Refined, not coarse 7. Self-respecting, not dissipated Social character, needed for doing right by others: 1. Genuine, not affected 2. Honest, not thieving nor disposed to cheat 3. Truthful, not given to lying and deceiving 4. Honorable, not sneaking 5. Just, not unfair 6. Harmonious, not wrangling 7. Forgiving, not vindictive 8. Disposed to trust others, not suspicious 9. Sociable, not exclusive nor snobbish 10. Loyal, not treacherous 11. Pure, not lewd 12. Courteous, not rude 13. Tactful, not brusque nor priggish 14. Generous and sportsmanlike, not stingy nor jealous 16. Respectful, not impudent nor flippant Emotional character, needed for the joy of living: 1. Courageous, not timid 2. Capable of true love, not cold-hearted 3. Kindly, not cruel nor hateful 4. Sympathetic, not self-centered 5. Congenial, not repulsive 6. Responsive to the beautiful, not indifferent 7. Alive to truth, not uninterested 8. Devoted to righteousness, not inclined to evil 9. Humble, not conceited 10. Patient, not irritable II. Tolerant and with a sense of humor, not angry over differences of opinion 12. Hopeful, not pessimistic 13. Reverent, not irreligious Physical character, needed as a basis for human life: 1. Well-developed body, not poorly nourished 4. Ready muscular control, not bungling 5. Endurance, not quickly tired 6. Strength, without disabilities 7. Grace of figure and carriage, not frumpy 8. Expressive face, not stolid 9. Strong, musical voice, not choked nor rasping The "Morality Books" with some such index as this are to contain the convictions of the intelligent general public as to what is right in daily conduct for the child. These moral ideas which are the fruits of general experience should be inculcated by some effective method in schools and homes. No reference to methods or principles of moral instruction and training is to be made in the morality codes. Moral truth, the wisdom of human experience, should shine thru the code expressions. The words used should appeal to the minds of children and youth, and be useful as a basis for talks by teachers and parents, and for quotation in school and home discipline. The code writers should strive for completeness, definiteness, and practicability of moral ideas in their application to childhood and youth, and for clearness, simplicity, and appeal in literary expression. The code receiving the award must be easy to understand, sound and fundamental in its interpretation of intelligent opinion regarding morality, and well written. Let me plead for interest in this nation-wide study and formulation of intelligent public opinion in matters of morality. I take it that there is general agreement that the major purpose of education is to guide and stimulate each child to achieve the most perfect development of its personality. Intellectual education, vocational education, physical education, represent only important divisions of a complete education. The personal, social, and emotional life of a child also needs guidance in its development. There is a character education which each child needs. In addition to the information which schools give, they should also educate the child into the character power to live. ROUND TABLES ROUND TABLE OF STATE AND COUNTY SUPERINTENDENTS HOW NOT TO TRAIN RURAL TEACHERS EDWARD HYATT, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, SACRAMENTO, CAL. I feel some diffidence at expressing my notions on preparing rural teachers before people representing so widespread and vast a continent as this. I only know our own conditions, and we are only one phase of the problem, a faraway phase, hanging on the extreme western fringe of the nation. You will understand that I am only undertaking to speak according to my own lights, and that these may not serve very far from home, may be entirely unusitable for other regions in this great commonwealth. In our part of the country, the great agency for producing rural teachers is the state normal school. We have at present eight splendid normal schools scattered all the way up and down the state. Every one is located in a city-one at San Francisco, one at Los Angeles, one at San Diego, one at San Jose, and so on. A normal school is an asset for a city-and only a city has enough momentum to grab it from a legislature. Now these excellent normal schools are fully open to all the young people of the state who qualify. Theoretically, the rural people have the same rights there as others, and theoretically they prepare teachers for the rural schools in the same way as for the city schools. But practically and in fact, what happens? What is so natural, so easy, and so cheap as for the swarms of city girls who graduate from the city high schools to enter at once a normal school right at home? They are not ready to marry, they want a little more schooling, they would like a job that pays real money-so why not? It is actually easier and cheaper for them to take the normal course than to do anything else easier and cheaper than to stay at home. Consequently, they do take it, in larger and larger numbers, not consciously choosing the teacher's profession, but drifting into it. How different the situation of the young people in the remote and inaccessible rural regions. When they graduate from their local schools, it is well-nigh impossible for them to go to normal school. They cannot go in any such way, with any such ease, such lack of additional expenditure, as the city girls do. They must tear up their old associations, they must buy new clothes, must have money for transportation, must leave the home nest, must have cash in hand for every little act of life. They cannot do it. They have not the money. They cannot leave their homes. Only the occasional one, the one with the fixed ambition to be a teacher, can overcome the inertia necessary to break away and go to the city in order to enter the normal school. Consequently, the great body of normal graduates are girls who are raised in the cities where the normal schools are located. The great body of normal graduates go out to teach first in the rural schools. In two years' time, if they are good, they may secure employment in the city. The final result, the result in the large way, the naturally to-be-expected result is that the rural schools are taught by a body of young women who have never been in the country before, who scream at a cow, who take a fit at a horse, who cannot get up for breakfast, who cannot sleep for lonesomeness because everything is so still. These are good, honest, well-meaning girls, doing the best they can, remember. But what can they do for rural children? What influences do they exert toward making them happy in their rural environment, toward teaching them to appreciate and enjoy rural pleasures, toward inducing them to stay on the farm? These teachers cannot do it. They are not built that way. It is as impossible as for the Ethiop to change his skin. Their lives have been spent in the city. Their friends and pleasures are all there. There is the heaven to which they will return as soon as they can finish their two years of purgatory. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." In what direction, think you, will be the whole trend of such a teacher's unconscious influence upon the children with whom she associates for a year or two? Where, to them, will lie the great things, the attractive things, the desirable things of life? Where will they really desire to go as soon as they can? What will they dream about? Where will they expect to seek their fortunes? Even the ambitious country-bred teacher, who does break thru difficulty, overcome inertia, and go away to a normal school or college for a period of years, has his heart and head full of the city. Naturally so. His own adventures and successes have been there, and he looks forward there to his future successes and adventures. Ergo-I should say, that one of the ways certainly not to train rural teachers is by the agency of a normal school located in and dominated by a city. I often hear the consolidated school, the centralized school, urged as the great panacea for the ills of the rural children. Indeed, I have often urged it myself. It is a fascinating and inspiring idea-a strong populous school, with an enterprising, ambitious man for principal. What possibilities it would have! How it could organize, how inspire the young people! How it could have debating teams, literary societies, sports, athletics, student government, contests, clubs! How it could become the center of the civic life, and fill the community with wholesome enthusiasm! The picture is so attractive and so feasible that I have sometimes almost, but not quite, resigned my job, in order to work it out myself in some fortunate neighborhood! But let us hold our horses long enough to inquire as to the real influence of the centralized school upon the rural children, its power to create rural ideals, to build rural inclinations, rural tendencies. However it may be otherwhere, in our country it somehow nearly always happens that the centralized school is located in the largest town in the neighborhood. The children are transported, yes, from the country to the town! and their minds are transported no less than their bodies! Their most impressionable years are spent away from the country, in absorbing the things that will fit them for life in the city, and that will probably unfit them for happiness, content, and success in the country. The very best teachers now alive-those that get credit and renown, and money, and advancement—are those who can most skilfully and efficiently inspire their pupils and point them toward and train them for the great things of life-in the city! Really, they cannot do anything else. That is what they are trained for, that is their tradition, that is what they know, that is what is expected of them, that is what they are paid to do. Very many wise and earnest men and women-the greatest and most famous of our time-are now thinking and talking and writing about improving the conditions of rural life. They see it as a vital necessity for the future power and prosperity of the nation. They see that the people who possess the land and till it are really those upon whom our country must depend, and that it is placing the nation in jeopardy to let the land pass into the hands of indigestible aliens or ignorant, brutalized peasants. They see it as a necessity for our future to have our land owned and worked by solid, happy, intelligent American citizens, and not at all by absentee landlords and their serfs. They perceive danger to our institutions when the newly arrived Japanese or Italian is so efficient, so adapted to conditions, that he can drive the American off the farm and take possession of the soil. These wise ones are pretty unanimous in loading a redirecting of rural thought and rural life upon that patient and suffering camel, the public school. They frankly confess their inability to teach new tricks to old dogs, and ask the schools to raise an altogether new breed of pups. But to do so we must evolve a new breed of schools and a new breed of teachers to put into those schools. It is not merely a matter of education; it is a matter of thinking, of feeling, of hoping, of believing. We cannot check the exodus from the country by something superficially applied from the outside. There must be something born in the children, some change in the atmosphere they breathe, some alteration of their ambitions and aspirations. As it is, nearly everybody wants to go to the city-really hopes and desires to go, sometime. The lonesome housewife doomed to drudgery; the mother, who sees the druggist's children and the doctor's offspring better off than hers; the farmer, working long hours, without the good clothes and smug appearance of the banker and lawyer; the girl dreaming of the fairy prince; the boy tired of the everlasting chores-they all want and hope and desire to go to the city-and sooner or later they go. For that matter, you went, didn't you? So did I. But we do not want the others to go. Giving the rural people greater profits, greater prosperity, will not do. Isn't it the prosperous farmers who are the greatest sinners? Do they not lease their fine farms to |