grades who inspire every boy that comes under their touch with the desire for the high school or for a wider education; and that there is another class of these teachers, principals, or supervisors who have none of this power-strong teachers in many ways, but hard on boys of this age. A boy can often be held for the high school by transferring him from at teacher of this type to one of the other type. Where lies the fault? Who can tell? I think possibly a boy of twelve years gave me the correct answer when he said: "Mr. Stableton, she just don't know what a kid likes, that's the trouble."

Have you read of David in James Lane Allen's Reign of Law? I picture to myself David, as he stood with his scythe in the old briar path, tall, angular, ungainly, half-clad for a back-woods Kentucky boy of that day. I can see the disappointed father and the bullet-headed mother who know not their son and set no value on him. I can see David a few days later at the church; a visiting professor is telling them of a college soon to be opened at Lexington, and the great opportunities it would offer young men. David is drinking it all in, and is thinking, planning, deciding; the decisions of that hour are to affect his whole after-life. It is Sunday afternoon, a number of neighbors have called at David's home, and are talking about the professor's lecture. They ask David's father and mother if they are going to send David to college; but his parents shamefacedly make no reply. The neighbors have gone home. David's father and mother talk to each other as they would not dare talk to their neighbors; the father wishes he had a son fit to send to college; the mother says she always "knowed" there was nothing in David, and the father says he always "knowed" so too; they are without hope in their boy. Just then. David comes in, bashful, awkward, hesitating, and then, wonder of wonders, he tells them of his decision to go to college; that it is made, and that they must not attempt to turn him from it; for he has settled the matter that he is going to the college at Lexington. They had not known their boy; and they are not the only parents who do not know their boy at this time of life; and there are many teachers handling boys of this age whom they do not know and understand; and for this reason they fail to enter into the boy's life and to direct aright.

Does not the boy long for some friend-his superior, man or woman in whom he can trust; not one ready to ask him impertinent questions, not one who mistrusts him, and whose very manner jars on the boy's highly sensitive nerves; but a friend who loves boys, not because they are without fault, but who loves them with their faults with a love that will stimulate them to overcome their faults? This friend they know intuitively they can trust not to question them too closely, and yet they are free to tell him almost everything that comes into their lives. Why is it? Is it not because this friend has somewhat of common-sense linked with such a big sympathy for boy life that by mere suggestion he puts them in

harmony with himself? Does not his very presence suggest the right attitude in the boy?

. It is not a difficult thing to come to a boy's confidence at this period of his life, and it is an enjoyable companionship to live near him; in fact, to know him is but to enjoy him. Several years ago I heard Edward Everett Hale preach a sermon. His theme was the enjoyment of God. He said that the answer to the first question in the old catechism had never been improved upon: "What is the chief end of man?" Answer: "To glorify God and enjoy him forever." And then he said, "especially to enjoy Him." Here is much of the secret of dealing with adolescent boys; it is not only to know them physically, mentally, spiritually, and in their environment, but it is to cultivate that within ourselves which enables us to enjoy them.

I do not believe the ability to interest, control, and inspire adolescent boys is all a gift. Natural aptitude there no doubt is, but he who is skillful in the work has become so by a careful study of boys and a close training of himself. And there are those, both men and women, who seem possessed of a power over boys at this time of life which to the ordinary observer is almost wonderful. Could we secure for grammargrade teachers and for high-school teachers those who possess this ability in so marked a degree, one of the most difficult problems of holding boys for the high school would be solved -grammar-grade teachers to interest, control, and inspire the boys with a desire to go to the high school; highgrade teachers strong and sympathetic, inviting the boys to come on. And may I stop one moment to say that it is often an unfortunate thing for adolescent boys and girls that young men and women, fresh from colleges or universities, untrained in the actual work of teaching, and too often unconscious of the critical period of life thru which the boys and girls at this age are passing, are employed to teach in our grammar grades and high schools. They have the information our high-school teachers must possess, but they lack that knowledge of boy life so necessary to deal wisely with boys at this stage of their development.

While courses of study must contain food suited to this stage of mental growth, above all we need for teachers great, warm-hearted, commonsense men and women; for there is nothing that can shape the character of an adolescent boy, lifting him above himself and inspiring him to nobler things, like the thrilling touch of a strong, warm-hearted, sympathetic personality.

For, after all things have been considered that tend to carry the boys over from the grammar grades to the high school, the greatest of all is the work done by these great-hearted, masterful teachers, whether men or women, whose intimate knowledge of the awakening period of adolescence and whose keen appreciation of the same enable them to work along broad lines that continually inspire the boys to higher things.

DISCUSSION

SELF-DIRECTION AS A MOTIVE FOR INCREASING ATTENDANCE COLIN A. SCOTT, PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, BOSTON NORMAL SCHOOL, BOSTON, MASS. Superintendent Stableton's advocacy of strenuous, almost evangelical, educational advertising for the high school reminds us of what we already have four years later, when competing institutions use every means to convince the youth of the advantages of a college course. When these methods do not descend to mere educational drumming, they are without doubt useful both to the boy and the community.

The question, however, still remains after every attempt to portray the advantages of a high-school education. There are still left pupils who do not wish to go on, even for a year. It is this class of pupils who are able to see the disadvantages of a highschool course that we should, if we are wise, observe with the closest scrutiny. Even if we succeed in converting them outwardly, we may not have done the best either for them or for the high school. It is possible that many of those who actually attend the higher institutions belong to this class. Some years ago I had in writing an expression from about five hundred of those belonging to the entering class of the Chicago Normal School, which convinced me of this possibility. Of this class there were actually 45 per cent. who claimed that they were going to that school, not because they really desired to do so, but because they did not see what else they could do. This state of affairs exists also in the first year of the high school, and largely accounts for the drop in attendance observed at this time. To fill up our schools with pupils of this type is to degrade the quality of the courses that can possibly be offered, since the eager attitude is lacking, and to fill the higher circles of society with a race of pseudo-intellectual pessimists.

This condition no doubt depends upon a variety of causes. Ill-health, hereditary inertia, the stupefying effect of bad teaching in the grades, enter in. But, apart from these, and if not more important, at least more manageable, is the character of the high school itself in comparison with the opportunities which loom up big with the promise of freedom before the boy who desires at this stage to attack what seem to him the real problems of existence.

I have no doubt that the variety of different high schools, the manual-training school, and the variety of courses in the older type of schools meet the case of a considerable number. The statistics of the growth of attendance at these institutions point in this direction; but electives, however varied, have always one fatal feature. Each one may still be as rigid, and is generally assumed to be as rigid, as any course that was ever offered at any time. Modern electives are like the ready-made clothes of many sizes, and, altho vastly superior to the old-fashioned single garment into which everyone had to crawl, are yet far from fitting all the needs, and even many of the most vital needs, of individual modern minds. A stirring boy of the eighth grade wants to help make his own spiritual clothes. He wants to feel that he is getting his hand in; and too frequently it is because the high school offers no opportunities for such constructiveness of life as those for which he feels himself yearning, that he strikes out boldly into what seems to him a larger sphere. But surely this is the very boy of all others that we would wish to save for the high school, even if some of those more easily won by the enthusiasm of conversion methods should be allowed to go; and in this I am sure Superintendent Stableton will agree.

But why, it may be asked, does such a boy not see, or why can he not be brought to see, that the courses in Latin, English, science, etc., are just those that prepare him for anything he may want in life? Alas, the argument is too fine. The boy is longing for self-control. He already has ideas, such as they are. He hastens to put them into effect, to incarnate, however rudely, his budding schemes. There are stages in the growth of the practical life as well as in the intellectual, and at the lower stages it is impossible to see

that the things of higher culture have any value for the purposes and plans which now occupy the brain. The only practical thing to do is to meet this instinct where it really exists. If our curriculized material in Latin construction, mathematical construction, iron construction, wood construction, are too differentiated for this type of boy, let us give him a chance in life construction; and by this we must mean that the actual plans . and purposes of the boy, however unacademic, be taken as the material to be educated, and the forms be fitted to these concrete actualities as best they can.

In the case of the boy who will, for a part of his time at least, let him make his own time-table and his own course of study. If this course is not at present in the books, or even lies entirely outside of the possibility of books, it does not follow that it may not be real and full of life. I would not specialize this notion by calling it original research, tho no doubt it partakes of something of its spirit. That such work could be original is quite certain, but this is not a necessary characteristic. The essential point is that the boy stakes himself on something that he has at heart, no matter where he may have picked it up; that he feels himself a cause and learns a little of the joys as well as the anxieties of real control.

Such schemes will rarely be purely individual. In order to withstand inner temptation and overcome outer difficulties, a social relationship will rise up almost spontaneously. Here comes the opportunity to influence others and be influenced by them, from which are wrested the difficult secrets of masterhood. This becomes true self-government based on real needs and the sense of sovereignty, and will parallel very closely the conditions which are actually found in life in democratic communities, where it is left to the individual to say what he shall do, but where the community passes judgment upon his output. It therefore avoids the disadvantage of using motives and building up habits in school that have no counterpart in the larger school of life.

INFLUENCE OF MEN AND WOMEN TEACHERS

SANFORD BELL, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO,
BOULDER, COLO.

Five hundred and forty-three men and 488 women have testified to me concerning the teacher who did them most good. These people received their schooling between the years 1870 and 1896 in a section of the middle West where at that time the general distribution of teachers was approximately forty-one men to fifty-nine women. All of the men and all but two of the women had had teachers of both sexes. On the whole, they had come under the influence of more women teachers than men teachers, thus giving the women the advantage in opportunities for doing good. Notwithstanding this, 81 per cent. of the men and 50 per cent. of the women testify in favor of men teachers. The kinds of influences named are such as the moral uplift and inspiration, the stimulus to the intellectual awakening, and the spur to scholarship, help in getting a clutch upon the great vital issues of life, personal kindness, special interest, encouragement at crises, sympathy when things seemed crushing, self-reliance, hints in social graces, etc.

Among the men who testified, women teachers had led in none of these influences; among the women they had led only in personal kindness, self-reliance, and social help. All thru the thousand testimonies is abundant evidence, in the form both of explicit statement and of implicit suggestion, that the influence which was felt to be the best was not the effect of subject-matter taught, nor disciplinary drill, but the effect of the personality of the teacher. The following are typical expressions: "He was my ideal, and I wanted to be like him;" "he laid the very foundation of my character;" "he was grand, understood people and could manage them; was masterful - he could do things;" "he was a noble, dignified leader among men;""he was fearless of opinion in doing right;" "he saw the beauty in everything;" "he taught me the dignity of duty;" "he set me afire;"

"I wanted to be the greatest and best man in the world." "She inspired me to everything good;" "by her purity of life;" "she was so quiet, lady-like, and controlled;" "gave me a taste for the higher, more refined and beautiful life;" "she was a pure, tender, noble, beautiful, sweet Christian."

With both sexes, the man teacher who had done most good was one who to a high degree was the incarnation of massive strength and masterfulness in relation to vitally significant things. Vigor, courage, independence, fearlessness, ability to do, ability to lead, are the aggressive manly virtues emphasized. Purity, refinement, beauty of spirit, self-control, tenderness, kindness, sweetness, patience, are the passive feminine virtues admired in the favorite women teachers.

Eighty per cent. of the thousand who testified received this most helpful influence during adolescence. The period of greatest susceptibility for good is at fourteen in girls and sixteen in boys. This, taken in connection with the above facts, points in favor of men teachers for adolescents. We are not justified in making the general statement that men are better teachers than women for children of all ages. Up to the age of nine the child needs mothering and the tender sympathetic patience so necessary in giving him his alphabets of life's useful habits. Women are better teachers than men for this period of life. From nine to adolescence both sexes are equally good teachers. During adolescence the men seem to be the better teachers. During all periods the child needs the influence of both sexes.

The advantage of men teachers for adolescents lies in the fact that the adolescent needs powerful, masterful leaders; and thus far in racial advance men have been the leaders. He feels broadly and keenly the problems of life, and his growing strength to meet them. It is the most rapid formation period of life, when the influence of massive strength and the aggressive virtues are needed. The adolescent is a hero-worshiper for racial as well as for individual reasons. During childhood he learns the necessary automatic adjustments to the general conditions of existence. At adolescence he is inspired to an aggressive mastery over special conditions of existence leading to advance, growth, development, evolution.

Twin-born at this time are the instincts to lead and to follow. All racial advance has been made by the leaders of men. He who by power, originality, courage, endurance, or ability of any sort could hit upon a better way for himself and fellows, survived. On the other hand, those who were able to follow such a leader survived, and others were cut off. These two instincts are not antagonistic, except in their very superficial relations. Both are very powerful in the adolescent. The following by adolescents is very different from the following by children. The latter is prompted by dependence and helplessness; the former, by co-operation and helpfulness.

Nearly all genuine racial advance has been made by adolescents. They are fundamentally original until made commonplace by conformity. By nature they are not ready for conformity; they are prophets, not priests. They love power, for they feel its freshness and significance developing within them. They love the man of power, the man of ability, the masterful man. Such men they need for their teachers. Such men they will follow without artificial inducements. There is no allegiance so whole, intense, self-sacrificing, loyal, as adolescent allegiance. The man of power will be their teacher, whether in the school-room or out. Him alone will they follow. Him will they follow as long as he is their superior in masterfulness. After that they will be followed. Put such men in our schoolrooms, and our youth will storm doors and walls to get in. At present not enough such men are there.

But if the adolescents of both sexes do need the massive strength of masterful men, the example and encouragement of the leaders among men, the influence of the masculine, aggressive virtues, they also need the less spectacular, but none the less essential, influence of the refining, inspiring, beautifying virtues of the leaders among women. Naturally, it seems to me, the more decisive, aggressive influences of men who command