past year was eighty-three cents. Those whose experience enables them to know, claim that after the first outlay of money, the annual expense is only half as great as when parents buy the books; and the chief cost of the books and supplies no longer falls upon the poor man, but upon those who are much better able to bear this expense. The superintendents, almost without exception, give favorable reports concerning the practical workings of the law. From but one county comes the report that the free text-book law has caused the directors to shorten the school term and reduce the teachers' wages. There can be very little justification for such a short-sighted policy, in view of the fact that the Legislature added half a million to the annual appropriation for each of the two years, 1893-4 and 1894-5.

"The supplies in the shape of slates, pens, writing materials and the like, were not always wisely distributed. Experience will help to correct this defect. Here, indeed, tact and skill are required to prevent waste, and teachers who fail to develop habits of economy in their pupils will ultimately be obliged to quit the profession."

Teachers' Institutes.

TEHAMA COUNTY.-The meetings were held in Lincoln Grammar School, Red Bluff, from Dec. 17th to 19th. Owing to the inclement weather the work was abridged, and finished in three instead of four days as was Supt. Miller's intention. It is proverbial up this way that rain will surely occur during Institute week. Supt. Miller's address was an excellent one, and many are sorry that she is no more to guide our footsteps educationally. Yet we turn hopefully to our new and popular leader, Principal O. E. Graves. Miss Margaret E. Schallenberger was the chief instructor during the first day. She won the admiration of all the teachers by her talks on "Children's Rights as Seen by Themselves" and "Development of the Number Sense." Her class drill in First Grade reading also won much praise. She also spoke about vertical (so called) handwriting. Several teachers, to the joy of Miss S., were found to have number forms, and all teachers looked for wheels during the remainder of the session. (The secretary will send you one, Miss S., when he can.) Prof. C. M. Ritter, a favorite instructor, addressed the Institute on "Arithmetic." On Wednesday, Miss Parmeter, of Chico Normal, gave a talk on "Geography." The home teachers had excellent work prepared, much of which was

shortened by the three-day session. G. K. Bingham presented Physiology; Anna P. Buckley, Advanced Reading; Clare Polsley. School Ethics; Dora Gilmore, Lillie Dailey and R. L. Douglas, History; Edna Clinton, Lilian Weitemeyer and Eva Carnes, Numbers; Nora Scott, Geography; Anna Morgan, Physical Geography; Clara McLaughlin and Mrs. J. S. Broadhurst, Literature; Mollie Owens and Roy Armstrong, Eighth Grade Geometry; J. D. Sweeney and Gertrude Bell, Ninth Grade Geometry; Bertha Hughes and Lena Naugle, Language. Several excellent papers were read during the session, among which were "Cultivation of the Memory," by Miss Alice Wright; "The Teacher's Duty to his Profession," by L. W. Warmoth; "The Order in which Studies should be Taught," by W. J. Fitzgerald; and "Some Objections to Promotion by Examination," by J. D. Sweeney. Rev. J. F. Jenness, of the M. E. Church, delivered a lecture in the Methodist church on Monday evening, which was a gem. His subject, "The Voice of Ten Silent Centuries," revealed many new beauties of Dante's Divine Comedy. The lecture was well attended. Mr. Jenness is a graduate of Stanford and a brother of Professor Jenness of that institution. At the close of the work, J. D. Sweeney, in the name of the teachers, presented Miss Miller with a beautiful piano lamp. Resolutions were adopted as usual in such cases, and the session closed.-NOTES: Miss McLaughlin's class in Literature did excellent work.--Miss Naugle in Language won much praise.-Supt.elect O. E. Graves had to omit his subject.-Miss Morgan's volcano was a roaring success.-J. D. Sweeney had 25 teachers ready to present work in Geometry, but had to omit nearly all. -Miss Schallenberger's lecture on "Dress Reform" won applause.-The entertainments, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, were well attended.-The Committee on Music deserve praise for their work. Miss Amelia Boyd, County Superintendent-elect of Shasta, was present during the entire session.—With feelings of regret we bid farewell to Miss Miller, but desire to tender our aid to Supt. O. E. Graves.-The officers of the Institute were: President, Miss Belle Miller; vice-president, O. E. Graves; secretary, J. D. Sweeney.

S.

THE ability to spell consists not in knowing how a word should be spelled, but rather in the ability to write it correctly, with little or no thought of the spelling. Dr. Balliett, Springfield, Mass.

NORMAL SCHOOLS AND STATE UNIVERSITY.

University of California.

A Pedagogical Club for the study and discussion of special problems in Educational Theory and Psychology has been formed, and meets once a month in Berkeley. For the sake of convenience and in

order to secure unity of interest, the membership of the club is limited. It is hoped that other clubs will be started at the various educational centers of the State, and that the various clubs will occasionally meet together as a Pedagogical Society. The Berkeley Club consists of the following members: Professors Brown, Slate, Lange and Bailey, of the State University; Professors Kleeberger and Holway, of the State Normal School at San Jose; Professor Yoder, of the San Francisco Normal; Professor Wilson, of the State Normal at Chico. The subjects discussed have been: "Mental Attitudes and Movements. 1. The Rhythm of Attention to Particulars and Attention to Details. Fundamental Rhythm of Activity and Receptivity."

2. The

The Observation School (Tompkins Grammar School, Oakland), under the auspices of the Pedagogical Department of the State University, is being got under way. The Oakland Board of Education, City Supt. McClymonds and Principal Markham, of the Tompkins school, are doing all in their power to cooperate with Professors Brown and Bailey. The kindergartner, Mrs. Gould, a U. C. graduate and formerly of Omaha, comes very highly recommended, and has made a fine though unpretentious start. Several teachers of the Oakland Department have been selected and have started good and earnest work. Others are to be selected. The Pedagogical Department of the U. C. does the choosing, and will be glad if they succeed in finding those of the best teachers who are most available for the work. All the Oakland teachers will no doubt strive to further the work. The school is neither a model school nor an experiment school. In it pedagogical specialists hope to put into practice the best conservative educational principles derived from thought and experience. There will be no sudden or rapid changes, no interference with the children. Sure and healthy growth is the aim. Only a beginning can be made this term. THOS. P. Bailey, Jr.

A Plea for Modern Greek.

[The Berkeleyan of Nov. 22nd, 1894, published an interesting article by Professor Putzker, from which we reprint the following excerpts :]

No one fact in the world of learning seems stranger than that in this land of ours no attention is paid to the study of the Greek language, as spoken and written by the educated classes of Greece of to-day. It may be safely asserted that in no college, in no University in the United States, does there exist a professorship, or even an instructorship in this subject; students have no opportunity offered them of studying a language of important, of vital interest; a language which once mastered, offers a broad field of linguistic, philological, literary and practical import.

It is true that continental schools are guilty of almost equal neglect. This neglect can be explained only by pointing out the gross ignorance which prevails in regard to this language, but this ignorance. itself seems inexplicable. Again and again the present writer has presented pages of elegant modern Greek prose or well-written extracts. from Athenian newspapers to graduates from the classical courses of prominent American, English and German universities, who, in every case, were able with a little trouble to read the matter, but confessed almost to a man their inability to point out exactly the differences between the present language and what they had been accustomed to read as classical Greek. Furthermore, they had had no correct idea of the close resemblance between the new and the ancient language; in fact they had known nothing of the modern Greek.

A gentleman standing high in the world of classic learning, to whom a suggestion looking to the introduction of modern Greek as a university study was made, replied in substance, "Modern Greek has nothing to do with the ancient language." Prof. W. C. Lawton, writing in a recent number of the New York Nation, goes so far as to assert that modern Greek is a phonetically debased patois, that newspaper Greek is sufficiently artificial to be "a foreign speech to the Athenian himself," and finds it strange that Prof. W. W. Goodwin feels an interest in modern Greek.

Of course, the ignorance in this regard is complete among the non-classical cultured people. And yet the Greek of to-day has come to us in a unbroken chain from the time of Homer, its linguistic monuments can be traced further back than those of almost any spoken tongue. Would that those interested would send for some good Greek

text as used in the Greek public schools. They will find that such a text would not have been difficult reading for Herodotus or Xenophon.

Any classical scholar who will, without prejudice, examine critically a Greek text, such as, for example, the History of Greece, by Paparigopulos, will see that the day is not far off when classical scholarship must include a knowledge of the present language, a language which is related to the classic tongue as Shakespeare's English is to Chaucer's, and more closely than the German of the Nibelungenlied to the German speech of to-day. (See Prof. W. W. Goodwin's report to the Archælogical Institute of America, Boston, 1883.) Whosoever will take this trouble will see that Greek is in no sense a dead language. Its roots, it is true, run far down into the soil of centuries, but its leaves are verdant and fresh to-day.

Aside from the close kinship to classic Greek, the modern language offers a most interesting field for investigation. Here is a language with a vocabulary that lends itself to express any and every modern thought, and deals with all the questions and matters of the day, from the advertisement of the dry goods store and the latest report of the cholera scare in Russia to the account of the proceedings in the English Parliament and a discussion of philosophical and metaphysical questions in German universities. The adaptation, composition, growth, transformation, enrichment of the older vocabulary, to satisfy the wants of the present time, all this is most interesting to observe. There are published in Greece, in excellent Greek, schcol text-books on mathematics, history, physiology, physics, chemistry, and every page of these is of high linguistic interest.

A great benefit from the study of modern Greek would accrue in the direction of unification and harmonizing of Greek pronunciation. The present arbitrary method of pronouncing Greek differently in different countries seems ridiculous; it would probably strike a Greek writer, were he to arise from his grave to listen, as simply barbarous. Of course, nobody would maintain that the ancient Greeks pronounced exactly as do the modern Greeks, but if the language has changed so little, it may be assumed that pronunciation has not undergone vital changes. Certainly the present pronunciation represents at least the organic, continuous development, which is more than can be said in favor of the Erasmian pronunciation, which may or may not have been in part mere clever guess work. So much is sure, that the modern Greek pronunciation with practice sounds very natural, and, what is more, even musical. It may not be superfluous to point out the prac