The possibilities of industrial education less extended than that offered in the secondary school, to be given in connection with the consolidated schools, should be demonstrated, if for no other reason, for its potency as an argument in favor of consolidation. Local training schools for rural school-teachers should be established, and they should provide reasonably well-equipped teachers in sufficient numbers to fill the existing shortage of trained teachers in these schools.

I wish to add that I am heartily in accord with Superintendent Bayliss in the view that there is work here which the National Council of Education should enter upon. Definite plans of work need to be formulated and advocated for the improvement of the rural schools. That body can undertake no other work more urgently needed than this.

LITERATURE IN THE GRADES AND HOW TO USE IT MRS. ALICE W. COOLEY, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA, GRAND FORKS, N. D.

With telescopes and microscopes, searchlights and lanterns, we are all trying to find the wasted time-lost somewhere between the entrance to the kindergarten and the exit from the college. Traces of it have been seen, now here, now there. Those most energetic in the search have even laid hands on it, each time in a different place. And still it has not been driven from its hiding-place, because the time is wasted in not doing what we are going thru the motions of doing, and the counterfeit so cleverly hides the loss of the real.

For example, we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we can teach reading first and then literature, with language lessons independent of both. When literature is given its rightful place as the basis of all reading lessons, the basis of all language lessons, oral and written, and the interpreter and highest touch of all study of nature, geography, and history, then will the program be enriched and shortened. More than that, the program will have enriched the child and shortened his hours of joyless inactivity of soul.

The expressions "children's literature" and "literature for children" seem to admit of two possible interpretations. The literature under discussion is not that which, rewritten and "written down," masquerades under this name, but real literature, used for, with, and by children as a vital element in their education.

In any consideration of this subject, one is tempted to dwell on the general cultural value of literature-the power of living thought to quicken life in others. But to do so at this time, before this assembly, would be most inappropriate; except to express appreciation of indebtedness to many members of this body. Truly, a clearer vision of the possibilities of the influence of literature on the growing mind, and inspiration to seek diligently for means of their realization, have come to us all from the clear seeing and strong feeling of many here. Their words of power and eloquence have been, and are, the "live coal" that both. kindles and illumines.

But who can estimate the results in the development of the coming generation of men and women in these United States, if this same body of educational leaders were determined that these ideals should be realized? We feel the tremendous pressure of the present scramble for wealth, for office, for show, for personal gratification in all its forms (the source of decay in all dead civilizations), and know that the schools are educating the men and women that must resist this pressure; we know, too, that the thoughts and desires of the child are shaping his life—may be said to be his life; and we say that we appreciate the quickening power of literature as an expression of life. Do we not also know that it is quite within our power actually to bring this force to bear on the young mind? We have a vision of the value to the American people of a school life in which each child, for thirty minutes of each day, should be under the subtle and potent influence of a living truth, made beautiful to him by its beautiful expression. This vision uplifts the thought and quickens the beating of the heart. And then, too often, the energy spends itself in heart-beats, instead of in the heroic effort that would bring the thought to birth in deed.

One of our eminent literary critics has truly said that "a test of the popular education of a country is the kind of reading sought and enjoyed by its people," and he frankly and forcibly charges the American public school with neglect of duty as measured by this standard. Here and there, in all parts of the country, are individual workers that have risen to this conception of duty and have accomplished much. Many others have caught the spirit, and, without either knowledge or wisdom, are making wild dashes at anything that bears the name of study of literature -a sort of helter-skelter jumping into bramble bushes. But, to be productive of its possible large results in any community, there must be united and continuous action, under wise leadership.

We must not shrink from the fact that, if the educators represented in this, the highest, department of the national organization of educational forces were to vitalize their wills by their ideals, there would be an evolution of an American people of higher tastes and nobler conceptions of life.

It is, then, the main purpose of this paper to present, in the light of this reponsibility, a few practical phases of the subject, viz.: how literature. may be so used in the grades as to realize its values; what are the great hindrances to this realization; and how they may be remedied.

First. Literature should precede all formal reading and language lessons, and the children should be allowed to live with and in it. Poems and stories given by a sympathetic teacher of literary appreciation are, in the largest sense, a development of both reading and language power, and more. Rightly chosen, they appeal to child-life, and they also lift the spirit to a larger realm than that bounded by self. Listening to these

poems and stories as they are read, recited, and told, by one who brings out their meaning and beauty, the child's mind is filled with pictures. which he expresses or lives out, in word, by hand, and in play. He is getting all that reading implies, except association of thought with written or printed forms. Familiar with the words by sound, he has their meaning in his soul and their use in his oral vocabulary. The wise teacher does not hasten to the recognition of word-forms by the eye; and the wise superintendent does not set dates for measuring her progress by the length or number of her steps. Both know that premature struggle with form arrests life, and causes waste, not only of time, but of the joy of growth.

Second. Literature should be the basis of all reading lessons, the purpose of each being to kindle the thought and feeling of the reader, and to give him power to rouse the mind of another by its oral expression. Word-mastery is the only key, and only a key, and vocal culture is a means, and only a means. Reading for information should find its place in connection with the various school exercises, but should not be allowed to encroach on the period given to reading.

Theoretic agreement to all this seems assured, but it must be confessed that practice lags behind. This is the text of the preface of nearly every modern reading book, but in many cases we find the truth expressed only in the preface, and perhaps suggested by a few inserted pages of "memory gems." We believe, however, that books of sufficient number. and variety, and of such character, are available for use in the intermediate and grammar grades that pupils in these grades may now read literature every day. But the feeling seems still to prevail that the first lessons in reading can be only the learning of written forms of words and sentences that are the repetition of statements made by the child about himself and familiar objects and actions. And most primers and first readers assume that the language used would be that of a very young child. That the child prepared for his first reading by living with literature is inclined to resent these lessons, is not a bit of theory, but of experience.

Miss Sullivan attributes much of Helen Keller's marvelous ability to the fact that books were her daily companions from the time she had learned her letters. She says:

Helen learned language by being brought in contact with living language itself, brought for the purpose of furnishing themes for thought, and to fill her mind with beautiful pictures and inspiring ideals. Greater power of expression was obtained, but this was not the most important aim. I believe every child has hidden away somewhere in its being noble qualities and capacities which may be quickened and developed if we go about it in the right way. . . . . I have always observed that children invariably delight in lofty poetic language, which we are too ready to think beyond their comprehension. And hundreds of those who teach normal children indorse the testimony of this rare teacher.

With the material provided by such pictures of child-life as are drawn by Eugene Field, Longfellow, and many others, notably by Stevenson, the very first lessons in both script and print, while based on a child's expressions of his own experience, may also be based on a simple wordpicture of a similar experience. Read to him by one who feels its simple beauty, the picture of another colors his own, and the new phraseology enters into his own. All needed repetition and variety may then be given, but the final result is his association, by sight, of his own mental pictures with the words of the writer. Thus a bit of literature is made the beginning and the end of a series of lessons; and the child, having gone out of himself and found a larger self, has tasted the joy of true reading. In addition to this, he has learned to recognize certain words, quite as readily and much more effectually than as if these words had been artificially put together for the purpose of recognition.

We certainly have evolved methods of teaching in the primary grades that have needlessly complicated the problem. That, even for the eye, the vocabulary need not be so commonplace as we have assumed has been proven. And many of us frankly confess our heterodoxy regarding the necessity of thoroness, interpreted to mean the requirement that the child shall learn to recognize, at sight, every word in the reading lesson. Is it really so harmful to tell the child a difficult word now and then, if he is alive with the thought?

The conception of the purpose of teaching reading modifies methods as well as selection of subject-matter. It is quite possible in any grade, high-school, college, or university class so to misuse a bit of literature, by making it the basis of a lesson in mere word-calling or anatomical dissection, that it shall cause not one throb of interest in the heart of the reader, but rather cultivate a distaste for what he might have learned to love. The teacher that believes that the period of the reading lesson should be one in which the child finds the enjoyment of kindled thought cannot make use of a method that builds and polishes beautiful structures of shells of ideas, of which life is later to take possession. He knows that it is life that makes and beautifies its shell-home. He feels that the study of devitalized words as a preparation for reading literature is the surest possible way to prevent reading and to prevent the right attitude of mind toward words. The teacher that feels the purpose or meaning of the poem or story, and appreciates the means by which the writer portrays this meaning-his pictures and their relation to each other, the beauty of his imagery, and the music of his words, as well as the end they all serve will so use it that the purpose, the pictures, the beauty, and the music will find some response in the mind of the pupil. To express them truly and correctly in oral reading necessitates study and practice in the mechanics of reading, which is now animated by purpose and meaning. The time will come when the daily reading lesson in school will univer

sally mean the learning to read and to love literature. It will be delayed until we reinove some of the hindrances. When it comes, we shall indorse the words of Charles Dudley Warner: "After many years of perversion and neglect, to take up the study of literature in a comprehensive textbook, as if it were to be learned like arithmetic, is a ludicrous proceeding. It is not teaching life, nor love of good reading. It is stuffing the mind."

Third. The inspiration and models for language lessons, oral and written, should be found in literature. Any principle underlying the teaching of an art is as true of language-the art of self-expression - as of painting, music, or sculpture. To teach an art is not merely to give instruction in the use of its forms; it is, first, to rouse and stimulate the thought and feeling to be expressed, which of itself generates the desire to express; and, second, to guide the practice in striving to express in terms of beauty. For we know that art is not merely doing; it is skillful doing in order to express something in a true and beautiful way. Response to truth and beauty must always precede and accompany successful efforts to attain truthful and beautiful expression. The teachers of music, of drawing, and of painting that do not build on this principle we call artisans, not artists. Why should the divorce of ideals and practice be considered in this one great universal art? Surely there is no skill in any art without repeated doing. It is equally certain that the product of low ideals and weak thought is valueless, be it ever so perfect mechanically. One must constantly look to his ideals and constantly put forth his own efforts. George Eliot voiced what every human being feels when she said: "For my part, people who do anything finely always inspire me to try. that they make me believe that I can do it as well as they. the things seem worthy to be done." And the time to act is when the influence is most strongly felt. From first to last, in the study of any art, it is by vital contact with the best expressions of thought by means of that art that they constantly breathe into the learner their subtle influence of thought and modes of expression, and thus mold his efforts into finer quality and form; and, on the other hand, by his own efforts to express, he attains not only skill, but better appreciation of the work of the artist.

I don't mean But they make

And this use of literature is not as the setting of a copy. A necessary element of art is that it shall be an expression of the individual's own way of seeing, feeling, and doing; and this means neither imitation nor reproduction. A poem should never be reproduced. Certain stories and descriptions may be rewritten; and a poem, description, or story may be copied for various purposes related to vocabulary or to study of form; but literature, as the basis of language lessons, has a far greater end to serve. It should suggest and recall, illumine and interpret, the child's own personal experiences, which he is later to tell in speech or in writing as expressing himself. It is to him really a projection of his own experience, looked