perception, memory, imagination, and reasoning in individual pupils, not as though these processes were distinct from each other, but in their essential connections and unity. She should know when a pupil is failing in the work of the school what the reason is; and that she may be able to do this she must know something of the amount and kind of knowledge the pupil possesses at any time; what phase of mental activity is specially called into play in the study of each subject of instruction; and what, if a pupil is deficient in any phase of intellectual activity, should be done to overcome the defect. She must further and particularly be able to observe and appreciate the interests of different children, the intellectual activities which are most prominent at different periods of their school work, the contents of the minds of pupils who have had different experiences, and the difference in readiness of response to the stimuli of instruction.

In the third place, and perhaps most important of all, the teacher should be able to analyze in some measure the child's emotional personality, in order to discover the predominance of physical emotions, as fear, anger, pride, joy, love, and the effect of her instruction and discipline upon the emotional and volitional nature. She ought to be familiar with so much as has long been established, and with the results of studies that are being constantly made upon children's emotions; as to their causes, the effects upon the individual of their frequent manifestations, the method of dealing with them, etc.

It is believed, that, if the teacher may in this way observe and study in her pupils the prominent physical, intellectual, emotional, and volitional characteristics, she will be capable of better adapting her instruction to the needs of particular pupils of different ages and capacities. This work should bring her into close sympathy with child-life, leading her to constantly grow in understanding of the true nature of children and the best method of employing school agencies to train the intellect and develop moral character.

CHILD STUDY WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF THE PARENTS.

BY DR. C. C. VAN LIEW, ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL UNIVERSITY.

I did not expect to address this meeting until last evening, when asked to do so by your president. I beg, therefore, that you will be indulgent if I confine my remarks to a comparatively simple field of child study, one with which I am at this time perhaps most familiar, which is freshest in mind, having recently been interested in testing its practical value at the Illinois State Normal University. In the Illinois Society for Child Study, of which you have already heard much during this meeting, we now have about 530 members, and are rapidly increasing the membership. But with this rapidly increasing interest in the field of child study, we are soon to be forced to meet a very serious problem. We dare not be content with this abstract enthusiasm in a comparatively new field. If there is not something to introduce the teachers, soon and thoroughly, to a concrete utilization of their new enthusiasm, there is danger that the cause will suffer at their hands. In appealing to the great mass of teachers, we have to remember that we are dealing with those who are immediately interested in the practical phases of school-work. While all fields of child study look ultimately to the establishment of more rational methods of education, the teacher may well question the wisdom of any proposed line of work that does not at once bring her into a closer touch with child-life. In enlisting the interest of teachers at large in this work, therefore, two things seem to be needed: (1) An appeal to the teacher's practical field of work, which will always constitute her first measure of the value of any new line of thought, and (2) a fitting introduction to the problems of child study as a whole. There can be little doubt that certain lines of child study are better fitted for this introductory work than others.

I have been very much interested in the paper to which we have just listened, by Professor O'Shea, which, it seems to me, recognizes the two requirements just stated, and which also seem to imply the line of work I now have in mind. To be able to diagnose the child, physically, mentally, and morally, is one of the very first obligations of the teacher of to-day; and to be able to diagnose the child upon entering school implies, on the part of the teacher in the first primary grade, a look into the past life of the child. Almost all advocates of child study agree that the first practical benefit to the teacher, to be derived from the concrete study of child life, is a closer, more sympathetic touch with the child itself. It is this, certainly, which the

primary teacher needs at once with the child that has just entered school for the first time. How is it to be attained? Certainly, in the end, by means of the close and detailed study of the personality before her. But the question may fairly be asked whether parent and teacher may not here, at the outset, work together; and whether, in fact, the former cannot be of value to the latter in furnishing some information concerning the child's past life and development that will constitute an appropriate introduction to the teacher's study of the child. The first attempt to answer this question was made by Conrad Schubert, at Jena, Germany, by means of his so-called "Eltern Fragen," which, as has been above stated, have been rearranged and adapted to American needs, and are now to be found in the "Handbook of the Illinois Society for Child Study" (Trans.), Vol. I., No. 2. It is the idea of these "Questions to Parents" to put to the parents questions that shall reveal something of the child's past development. They have reference to the physical, mental, and moral development of the child. In the majority of cases, they may be so framed (should, in fact, be preferably so framed) as to aim directly at concrete events in the life of the child, from which the teacher is at liberty to draw her own conclusions, e. g.: What sicknesses has the child passed through? Do you know if any traces of these illnesses are still apparent? Has the child made any long journeys? If so, where? Has it experienced any sudden and important or unusual events, such as some accident, wedding, funeral, fire, etc.? What are its favorite toys, plays, occupations, fancies, stories? Who are its favorite companions? The questions are made to cover also the emotional and volitional development of the child. It will be seen at once that this work cannot lay claim either to completeness or to perfect reliability of results. Undoubtedly it needs to be supplemented, for the purpose of heightening its practical results,-by the work of the medical examiner, for instance,-in the case of every child that enters school. But if we may, at this stage of the development of child study, look to practical results for the measure of the value of any line of work, the "Questions to Parents" certainly have a very significant function to perform. Practical tests have already shown that the teacher may, by this means, at once become cognizant of physical limitations in the child which would otherwise have remained unknown, though a constant annoyance to the child, or would have been discovered only with embarrassment to the child. This is true of more children than we are prone to suspect. Again, one of the most fruitful outcomes of child study is the more complete study of the child's environment into which the teacher is necessarily forced. We study each individual as a product, largely, of an individual environment. The past is ever present

as a factor in that environment. It is this which the "Questions to Parents" seek to recognize. The child that enters school for the first time is the reflection of some specific home life and home surroundings. It is these to which the primary teacher is introduced through the "Questions to Parents."

One would naturally expect parents to object to these interrogations. In the experiences upon which these remarks are based, such was not the case. Nearly all seemed to enter at once into the spirit of the work, and responded readily and honestly. In but one instance was it found necessary to doubt the replies of the parent interrogated. As a rule, parents are alive to whatever is for the interests of their children. In this work, which requires so little expenditure of time or energy, I believe they will, as a rule, be found reasonable, and one of the best results of the attempt is the closer sympathy that is established between parent and teacher in the work both are undertaking for a common end.

REPORT ON SCHOOL HYGIENE.

BY DR. EDWARD M. HARTWELL.

[ABSTRACT]

Hygiene is applied physiology. It is the science and art of promoting and preserving health, which we take to mean the greatest energy of each part compatible with the greatest energy of the whole organism. School hygiene as an art is concerned with all measures that science and experience have shown to be helpful and efficacious for securing the normal growth and development of pupils and the normal activity of teachers under the conditions incident to schoollife. Nearly one-quarter of the total population of the United States is at present subject to the conditions of school-life; or, in other words, is engaged in the sedentary occupation of attending school. Of our school population, over ninety-six per cent is found in elementary schools and over eighteen per cent is found in cities. Urban conditions, at their best, are less favorable than rural conditions for rearing full-grown, vigorous, healthy children. City-bred children of school age in America—at least, in the six great cities on the Atlantic seaboard-are less favorably situated than their contemporaries in certain European cities, it would appear.

Thus the death rate per 1,000 living at the age-period five to fifteen, which is the healthiest decade of life among civilized man, is less in London than in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, and Baltimore, or in Boston, whose death rate is higher than in any of the cities named, while Berlin has a lower death rate than any of these cities except Washington and Baltimore. The mortality from diphtheria among children of school age and from consumption among female school teachers is markedly greater in Boston than in any other of the American cities named above. No class of wage-earners in Boston, so far as the mortality rates, analyzed by occupation, of the United States Census Bureau go, has so high a death-rate from consumption as women school teachers, excepting marble and stone cutters. The fact that Boston is the only one of these six cities which habitually neglects to wash her schoolhouse floors and corridors from year to year and decade to decade is not without significance.

It cannot be denied that municipal sanitation and school hygiene are more highly organized and successfully administered in the leading cities of Europe than in the leading cities of America. Indeed, school hygiene has no place or standing among the arts and sciences in America. There appears to be no department of public health so miserably endured, so incompletely organized, so well-nigh universally neglected by publicists, scientists, and publishers as school hygiene. Without resorting to foreign books, periodicals, and official reports, it is quite impossible for the student to inform himself as to the nature and results of the investigations and experiments made during recent years for the improvement of the health of the school population of the continent of Europe.

The public schools are organized, maintained, and regulated by the state, which clearly owes it to itself to take adequate measures to prevent the school population from contributing to the spread of epidemic diseases and thereby endangering the public health. It is also the duty of the state, particularly where attendance in school is compelled by law, to provide schoolhouses so placed, arranged, and furnished that their occupants, both pupils and teachers, shall not be subjected to unsanitary influences or allowed to engage in unhygienic procedures in prosecuting their work. School boards as at present constituted and teachers as at present trained for their profession are unequal to organizing or administering a genuine and effectual system of school hygiene such as the times demand in city schools. Experts in medicine, sanitation, and hygiene are necessary -nay, indispensable for such a purpose.

If the public health is to be effectually guarded, the schools and those that frequent them should be subject to inspection by properly trained representatives of the board of public health, which board