The report of the Committee on Nominations was as follows: For President- Frederic Burk, president State Normal School, San Francisco, Cal. Will S. Monroe, of the State Normal School, Westfield, Mass., took as the thesis of his presidential address the "Status of Child Study in Europe." Communications were read from Miss Kate Stevens, of London, England; M. Gabriel Compayré, of Lyons, France; and Dr. Joseph Stimpfl, of Bamberg, Germany. These communications outlined clearly the activity in child study in these countries of Europe. An extended account was also given of the child-study movement in Italy, together with brief summaries of the recent Italian literature on the subject. This address on the status of child study in Europe is published entire in the Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1899, Vol. VI, pp. 372-81. CHILD STUDY IN NORMAL AND TRAINING SCHOOLS BY GERTRUDE EDMUND, PRINCIPAL OF TRAINING SCHOOL, LOWELL, MASS. It is encouraging to note that many of the newer, as well as several of the older, professional schools have called to their chairs of psychology and pedagogy men and women of college training who are not unfamiliar with biology or the history of philosophy and religion; who know something of savage myth, custom, and belief; the instinct of the animals; the psychology of the deaf, blind, idiotic, insane, and criminal classes, as well as of the normal adult-men and women especially prepared because of their earnest, sympathetic love for childhood and youth. The child is not apt to suffer materially when doctors of philosophy tell us that they have "fallen in love" with the children whom they are studying, with the "naïve, artless, fresh faith and willingness of childhood;" [It is a matter of regret that the large number and the unusual length of papers submitted in this department has made necessary the omission of the president's address, and the abridgment and omis sion of several others.-EDITOR.] when teachers are taught to revere the spontaneity, rhythm, poetry, and originality of the little child, and to appeal to his feelings, his interests, his loves. As New Englanders we take pride in pointing to Massachusetts as the original home of child study, and in telling our good friends of the West that a large number of their child-study leaders passed thru the portals of Clark University; but we have to acknowledge that the new movement has taken root more vigorously in the virgin soil of the West, and it is a significant fact that many of our eastern workers have been touched by the spirit of western push and enterprise. Outside of Clark University and its summer school, I know of nothing in the East to compare with the child-study congresses of Chicago-with the work of Colonel Parker as president of the Illinois Child Study Society, or with that of Professor Barnes, of the Pacific coast. Judging from letters, pamphlets, articles in magazines, and visits to various schools, there is a wholesome interest in child study from the pine trees of Maine to the peaceful waters of the Pacific. From Farmington, Principal Purington writes: "All of our psychology is taught with reference to the child, and opinions advanced in those classes are verified or contradicted as far as may be by observation of the children." "So far as I can claim any philosophy of education, it is based on child development," says Dr. Van Liew, of Los Angeles. Fifteen leading graduates of the Worcester Normal, the first professional school to introduce child study, have told me that the work they did in child study, more than anything else, helped toward making them unconscious of themselves, leading them into all-round observation of childhood, and desirous of helping humanity. The Trenton State Normal has molded, to a large extent, the schools of New Jersey, and out of nearly two score graduates, now teachers in good standing, with whom I have personal acquaintance, I have never met one who did not speak with enthusiasm of the work of Miss Williams in collecting returns for Dr. Hall's questionnaire. Said a prominent principal: "Even if these returns proved of no value for scientific purposes, they served their primary purpose in turning our minds to the hearts of childhood." Dr. Jenny B. Merrill, superintendent of kindergartens, New York city, formerly instructor of pedagogy in the Normal College, and Dr. Emily Conant, of the psychological department, were among the first to make use of child study in the training of teachers, and today are among the firmest advocates of such training. Several normal principals used these ' words in speaking of the benefits from child study in their schools: "It has helped to put students in sympathy with children; has enabled them to see mind unity as unfolded in childhood; to make psychology a living subject." The methods are many and varied, ranging from the miscellaneous written collections without any hypothesis to investigation along definite lines. Methods, however, are always of less importance than the interest, sympathy, intelligence, persistence, which the teacher brings to the work. Miss Sutherland, of the Columbus Normal, sums up her work in these words: "My plan is rather to create a living interest in the individual child than to lead any young people to imagine they are doing 'original work,' or making any very valuable scientific generalizations." President Seerley, of Cedar Falls, is evidently of the same mind: "Our purpose is more to interest teachers in children than to make any contributions to child-study literature." The child-study work carried on in thirteen different institutions is in accord with these lines marked out by Dr. Boyden, of Bridgewater "Our course includes the usual lines of physical, intellectual, and moral phases of child life; tests for physical characteristics and weaknesses; means of correcting evils so far as they lie within the teacher's control; studies of peculiar children and means employed in teaching them; the study of a class of children as a preparation for teaching them; studies of stages of child development from the kindergarten upward; study of the literature of the subject, and investigation along certain practical lines." In the Providence, Fitchburg, and Westfield normal schools each student in the normal department and each pupil in the practice school undergoes an examination in the psychological laboratory in reference to his sense organs and motor powers; and all serious defects observed in regard to children are reported to the parents. During the past year Miss Hunt, of Providence, Mr. Kirkpatrick, of Fitchburg, and Mr. Monroe, of Westfield, have issued various studies along the lines of the child's physical and mental development which have formed the basis for much of their work in child study. Our own practice school being located in a manufacturing city, we find that in many homes both father and mother begin work in the mills at 6 o'clock in the morning, and do not return until 6 at night. Seventy per cent. of the children in the grammar school must be excused at 11:15 to prepare and carry dinners to their parents and other relatives. Fifty per cent. of our entire number are orphans or half-orphans. Many girls of twelve and thirteen have the entire responsibility of preparing food for, and taking care of, a family of small children. Several of our training teachers, especially fitted for this work, have been of real service to these little mothers, and even to mothers of older years, by teaching them the principles of cleanliness and of ventilation, how to wash garments with the least expenditure of time and energy, how to bake bread, how to cut out and make clothing. "Man is what he eats and what he does with it," says Dr. Hall. I am convinced that six cases of poor eyesight in our practice school were brought on by lack of proper food. Dr. Fitz, ol Harvard, tells us that defective hearing may often be traced to defective sight, and defective sight back to malnutrition. May I say here that the tests we have made for sight and hearing, and examinations made of teeth and, in several cases, throat, nostrils, skin, and scalp, and measurements of chest expansion, have been of much practical value? It is of little use for teachers to diagnose children, unless remedies can be applied for defects; and I hesitate to say to a boy, “It is wrong for you to go into the saloons, to sell papers, to black boots, to clean up the floor at 12 o'clock at night," unless I can tell him where to go and what to do to earn money to buy his breakfast. We have tried to ascertain the line of the children's interest in reading, to direct such interests along safe lines, to find out their sources of amusement, and to provide innocent recreation and good companions; and, above everything else, to learn at what shrine of human character our boys and girls are worshiping. The chief business of the professional school is to train the student to translate herself into her pupil's environment; to put herself at his exact stage of development, so that she may be able to think with his mind and experience the embarrassments under which his struggling brain labors, and view her own tuitional approaches to him thru his eyes. But to put yourself in his place, scientifically, sympathetically, and habitually, is the simplest, hardest, and most important lesson that a professional school has to teach or an intending teacher to learn. I have found that actual experience in organizing, teaching, and governing a room of children, and child study, as we understand it today, have contributed more than anything else toward this end. It is during the period when they are in charge of a room that our teachers become vitally interested in the ambitions and interests of children. The final test of a teacher's power is her ability to govern a school, to get into sympathy with the children, to get a strong hold of their inner life, and to strengthen their moral character. The power in the actor or public speaker which holds his audience is the power used by the teacher in controlling a class of children thru the force of her personality, and I have never yet had a pupil who could read or recite with dramatic effect who failed to govern children easily and well. The public speaker must train himself to judge of the feelings of his audience by the attitude and varying emotions depicted on the faces of the people who are before him. The teacher should also be able to judge emotion thru expression. A short time ago I gave the pupils of our training school a character sketch-the story of a little newsboy's love and care for a younger brother. For one month they studied the newsboys in our practice school, their life on the street, the advantages and disadvantages of their home life, their facial expression, intonation of voice, mental and moral characteristics, honesty of purpose. They also studied a boy of fourteen who helped support an invalid mother and a little sister. This increased interest in the poor little fellows bound them more closely to the school; it awakened the teachers' sympathy, and their impersonation of the character served ever afterward to guide them in their understanding of child nature. Whenever it is practicable in our school work, expression should always follow impression, and the above method of child study tends to develop the motor, as well as the sensory, side of the human being. The training which comes from the impersonation of various characters is of immense advantage to the teacher, who must live, to some extent, the life of some thirty or forty children every day she is in the schoolroom. Mr. Street, of Clark University, in his valuable paper on "Suggestion " tells us that there is much ground for urging a fuller and higher use of the dramatic instinct in teaching. In the studies made of the spontaneous school-yard plays of young children we find that the dramatic and representative plays-those having the greatest physical action are predomi nant. Twenty-two professional schools are making investigations along lines. of various methods of rest and recuperation; proper use of play instinct and motor activity; children's interests; proper arrangement of program and courses of study. Child study, physiology, biology, and physiological psychology have contributed more new truths bearing directly on education during the last twenty-five years than were discovered during the preceding two hundred. I quote from Dr. Minot, of Harvard: "Certain it is that the idea of the difference between the brain of the child and that of the adult is steadily spreading, and this appreciation of the difference is growing, not alone year by year, but month by month." We have learned that each organ has its nascent period, and when these periods are definitely settled we shall have some basis for our work in physical and manual training. We have learned something of the nascent periods of mental processes, enough to give us reason to believe that their final discovery will be a great step in school economy; for we shall then know when to teach certain subjects and methods. We have learned that the brain acts not as a whole, but that different portions have different functions; that we have not "a memory," but "memories ; not "an imagination," but "imaginations;" that each memory and each imagination, as each sense, must be trained by specific means, and that there is no one study whose main function it is to train the memory or imagination. We have learned that some children are eye-minded, some ear-minded, some motor-minded, and that all children should be approached thru the lines of the least resistance. The truth has been brought home to us as never before that obstinacy and dullness are often due to physical, rather than to mental or moral, |