A PLEA FOR THE MISFIT CHILD.

"That one man should die ignorant, who has the capacity for knowledge—I call this tragedy."-SARTOR RESARTUS.

It is yearly more heavily borne in upon me that the cast-iron round or rise of our graded schools, with shibboleths and notches and resultant impalement of applicants in cog-wheel progress, is working a great wrong upon one-sided pupils and those whose stay is necessarily short.

Admitting that the scheme of grading is excellent in conception and operation for children in constant attendance to the end, and granting that a great mass of our children go on, more or less regularly, through the grammar grade, yet the "least of these" make a large enough proportion to demand attention and to cry out to us against the greatest wrong that man can do his fellow creature-the hindering one from scaling the walls of ignorance and knowing the joys bounded by ever-widening horizons of knowledge.

In a school loosely graded the teacher may place a student in variously advanced classes, according to his standing therein, giving the advantage of a special course. Here, by judicious guidance and utilization of effort, the child may assimilate, in a term, the essentials. that three years of routine, interwoven with skeins of less necessary work, would scarcely give.

The teacher in the orthodox, well-graded school can do nothing but apply her tests to the child and by some arbitrary standard classify him with those approximately his peers in some one branch, no matter what his general knowledge or special aptitude or probable term of attendance.

Now, why need we follow a certain artificial scheme of study irrespective of special needs?

Because a certain spiral educational incline has been found good. are there no "cut-offs" for the upward course-no weights that we can cast aside for the already handicapped?

This is a day of elective courses in the colleges of honor to specialists; why try to give every child the same cut and finish in the lower schools? Why not aim for a certain standard of intelligence with the least waste of time and power, and then give every child his bent?

Practically why should not every town of considerable numbers set apart rooms to receive misfit boys and girls-those left over repeatedly in grade or applying unsymmetrically prepared or known to be coming for only a short time-this school, by measures heroic and otherwise advisable, to put these light-weighted, illy-balanced, time-straitened ones into the best working order in briefest training.

The night school partially fills this want, but brain work at night robs the young of sleep and therefore of strength and grace. It is better than no mental expansion, of course, but only a fine physique and a well-balanced brain can prosper under it. My plea is not for those who must seek the night school, but for boys and girls who have a few months of leisure, often at a great sacrifice from some one at home, and for the dull children who cannot keep step with their fellows and the children who by nature or accident excel in some special studies at the expense of others. Let these children be set apart and let us give them the wisest teacher in the corps for their instructora teacher sensitive to possibilities, broad and deep in sympathies, alert and expert in methods, ready in emergencies and in touch with deepest truths.

Under this eclectic tuition, surcharged with the individuality of a man or woman of marked nobility of character, who shall say that order and beauty shall not arise?

In just such schools, well-nigh unclassified, each pupil for himself and the teacher for all, some of the grandest men in America have been nurtured. I can recall instance after instance where such a course might have saved the intellectual life of a weakling or one early shut off from mental nourishment.

Here is a case which haunts me : A boy of fourteen some years ago came to our school, seeking admission. He was tall and lank and bent with the awkard curve that marks the teamster habitually squat upon a low seat.

I drew from him that his mother was dead; that he and his father had both been driving cart. He had not been to school since mamma grew so very sick, and now his father had coaxed him to come for his last year. The same unindividualized story as of the blade of grass, but the poor, dead mother seemed to plead for the common-place lad, as yet unquickened by any touch of outer or inner power, and I was glad that, while there was yet plasticity, we might give him a little touch of what he had missed.

Fresh from a country school and its privileges, I saw large potentialities in this little school time. He might have practice in English, written and spoken, learning to put his thought throngh either media. He should master the tools of arithmetic and work with fractions and easy accounts. He should get a little perspective of the world in time and space, and draw in the ethics of manhood and citizenship. He should make friends with one or two good books and have his attention wooed and flattered by hints of others which he should want to know.

These had been our objects and attainments with sojourns in the country, tarrying a little space from ranch or mine and eager for more and more from day to day.

This boy could not take in so much, perhaps, but we could wake him up and start him right. But, alas for the lad from the carts! He was examined and found barely ready for the arithmetic of the fourth grade. He who had done a man's work on the streets must sit with trim little girls and sleek little boys who smiled to each other at this Gulliver come among them.

The poor, stiff hands could not draw the fretted patterns for wallpaper and oil-cloth. The rough, cracked voice could not sing songs about the birdies. The pretty language and number work only bored the child homesick for the out-of-doors.

The busy, overworked teacher could rouse no interest in his breast. He lounged, dull and inattentive. Then I begged, as a favor, that he might come in my room and sit with boys of his size, where I might work with him at odd moments, and where, perhaps, the enthusiasm of larger pupils in larger subjects might infect him; but system forbade his transfer. For a few weeks he shambled in and out with the little ones and then he dropped out disgusted with school.

I sometimes meet him now, squat upon his dirt cart, with dull eyes growing duller and vacant mind stirred only by dreary, petty details of animal existence, and always, with a pang, I feel that, in the name of system, we dealt this motherless creature an unforgiveable wrong.

A little coaxing and stimulating of the lad's intellectual appetite and he would have assimilated something of the stores we held in trust for him, and yet we sent him away without a crumb.

Every city teacher has her store of tales as sad as this. There are foreign children of one type who come sturdy of body and strong of brain; who take the work of our children as play. We can help them on by an occasional skipping of a grade, but we cumber them with extras when the bare foundations are what they need, coming to us, as they do, only till they can take a wage earner's place in shops or stable or laundry.

There are the children who travel. In general knowledge they are in advance of the average eighth-grade pupil, but some ruthless standard keeps them down with infants, where their hours are mostly barren.

And then there are the girls, who have what we name-“ beaux on the brain"-a malady incompatible with genuine studying and incurable save by matrimony, the crisis coming early.

Why should these pretty, dreaming simpletons be kept lagging at details of geography and arithmetic and grammar? The virtue of the systematic drill is lost upon them. Would it not be better to teach them physiology and general chemistry to utilize in homekeeping, and try to give them a hold upon literature and books-the only hope for their future luminousness of mind?

This dealing with the latter type may not be practicable, though every teacher knows girls who cannot take beyond a limited range of education. But we can provide a remedy for those that we know are weak and heavy laden in the earlier years and for those whose stay is avowedly short.

Let us give kindly nature a matrix and she will provide recompense and corrections for all lacks. But let us not waste, for these children, her most precious stuff-the time that we hold in our hands.

ANNA C. MURPHY.

CALIFORNIA

SUMMER SCHOOL OF METHODS FOR

TEACHERS AND KINDERGARTNERS.

For several years there has been a growing desire among our most progressive teachers in California for a Summer School of Methods, similar to the best Eastern Summer Schools, where teachers could spend part of their summer vacation in some line of special and professional study, rest and recreation. Recognizing this need, Mr. C. H. McGrew of San Jose resolved last March to organize such a Summer School of Methods at Pacific Grove in July. In order to effect the organization and make it a general movement, he chose a Board of Directors to assist in its management and assumed the expenses of the session. The members of the Board are:

Prof. C. W. Childs, Principal State Normal School, San Jose; Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, President Golden G. K. Association, San Francisco; Prof. J. B. McChesney, Principal High School, Oakland; Prof. James G. Kennedy, Principal Cogswell Manual Training School, San Francisco; Dr. F. F. Jewell, President Pacific Grove Retreat Association, Pacific Grove.

With the advice and assistance of the members of the Board, the following programme was arranged and presented during the three weeks' session, from July 17th to August 6th :

1.—“Educational Psychology, Science and Art of Teaching and Kindergartening," Mr. C. H. McGrew; 2.-" Principles and Methods of the Kindergarten," Mr. E. G. Greene; 3.-"Methods in Science Teaching, Experiments in Alcoholics and Narcotics," Mrs. Ida M. Blochman; 4.-" Industrial Drawing, Clay and Sand Modeling and Their Applications to Geography," Miss Florence A. Densmore; 5.— "Methods in Reading, Language and Literature," Mr. E. B. Warman; 6.-"Morning Talks" were given by Mrs. Greene, Mrs. Blochman, Mr. McGrew, Prof. Warman and Prof. Childs; 7.-An excellent course of "Evening Lectures" was given by Prof. E. E. Barnard, Dr. F. F. Jewell and Prof. E. B. Warman of Chicago.

The sesssion was a very pleasant and successful one. The interest and enthusiasm increased daily to the very close of the session. The classes were daily visited by a large number of persons interested in the New Education. Among those who came specially to visit the school