loyal to their superior officers; it is time that we recognized a loyalty in the other direction as a necessity for civic and moral training. But there is a farther and positive side to the aid that may be given the teacher by the principal and others in authority. This positive aid may first of all be given by the use of the modern classification of pupils according to learning-ability. It is outside the province of this article to discuss the use of mental tests as a means to this end; let it be said that both the writer's experience and study of other workers' results have shown the efficiency of the method. The pupils who resist positive civic and moral training are, in the writer's experience, in three out of four cases, those pupils who are intellectually misplaced: boys in the eighth grade with tenth grade ability, and hence plenty of chance to loaf; pupils in the seventh grade with fifth grade ability and not able to understand the work of the grade; and the like. The proper classification of the pupils is an aid to the teacher who takes seriously the task of moral and civic habit-formation. The positive aid that the principal and others may give is further increased by impartiality. Lament it as we may, the fact remains that even in the upper grades the athlete is allowed a certain amount of greater laxness than is permitted to others; the daughter or son of the prominent local merchant, politician or office-holder is excused where others are punished or coerced; the son or daughter or nephew or niece of the member of the school board expects and gets greater consideration than others in many schools and many systems. The principal who will have the courage to resist this and insist democratically upon the same standard for all, irrespective of "influence," will not only render a great aid to the teacher in civic habits, but will be doing a bit of civic education that is of itself most desirable. And, since we live in a coercive world, it is only fair that the children should know and be accustomed to that fact while in school. The pains and sorrows of school life, however hard, are less hard on the pupils than what they may suffer for anti-social conduct when they have grown up. For the pupils, few in number, but almost always present in a school, who simply refuse to obey the State as embodied in the teacher, there is a remedy available: one that the writer has seen work effectively. This is the use of the penalties of suspension and expulsion. To be effective, they must be done without too much delay, and must be in effect on not more than one pupil in two or three hundred at a time. By expulsion is meant, of course, permanent and irrevocable separation from the school; not, as in certain Hudson County, N. J., districts, a suspension of two or three days. Moreover, an important part of the use of either of these penalties-suspension as the usual one, and expulsion for hardened repeaters of offenses-consists in forbidding and enforcing the prohibition of coming onto the school grounds at any time for any purpose whatsoever. Whether an announcement to the school that a certain pupil has been suspended or expelled, and the reason for it, should be made, is a question of local policy. It corresponds to the publicity that the newspapers give to the crimes and punishments among adults; yet it may be entirely without educative effect upon the pupils, and hence to be omitted. Teacher, principal, superintendent, and board alike need, in the positive program of civic habit-forming, to treat defiance as the most serious punishable offense: it corresponds to bomb-throwing or treason among adults. The writer can imagine many who, as they read all that has been said, will wonder what becomes of the civic training of pupils co-operating in projects and in games; of the social virtues arising from the free mixing of pupils; of the civic responsibility generated by pupil self-government. These all operate in a different field from the habit-forming procedures which have been outlined. They are all valuable for civic training; but the authoritarian habit-forming program sup plements each of these at the point where its weakness is greatest. All these "modern" forms of civic and moral training are weak in that they require a series of established habits and attitudes as guides to the volitional activity of the children: the proposed positive program supplies just this lack. The purpose of this article is not to urge that authoritarian habit-forming supplant these, but that it be added to them, in the same schools and on the same pupils, within the same school days. Thus, in short, the positive program of moral and civic training, using the socially approved and socially needful habits and attitudes, proceeds to do the work that the home has ceased to accomplish. The essential of method is habitformation, relying upon the fact of human nature that an action repeatedly done becomes by that very doing not unpleasant, and making strong efforts to allow no exceptions to occur to the doing of the right action. In the positive program the teacher, representing the state government directly to the child, insists upon his authority exactly as might the governor of the state. To bring home further the social situation, some approximation to the coercive power which the government has, is applied to defiant resisters. All this is not to be isolated, but is to be as basis for other forms of civic and moral training that require the habits formed by the positive program for their success. Song. Around the next corner joy lies; Beyond the next mountain dream castles rise; These are yours if you will it so, And to the day's task right merrily go. ELINOR C. WOOLSON, Naugatuck, Conn. Dictionary Delights LINDA RIDER, HEAD OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, N an intelligence test given in 1922 appeared this question: "What relation to literature is Noah Webster?" The relationship is, indeed, a close one. If, to one, literature means story, he like the old woman, will not enjoy the dictionary because "he will not be able to get the connection." But, if he accept Dr. Johnson's description of literature as something designed to make familiar things new and new things familiar, the result will be different. If he accepts Carlyle's definition of literature as the thought of thinking souls, he will find its kinship in the dictionary. Goethe said he had as many souls as he knew languages. True, is it not? How can one come at the soul of a people in a translation? So are the souls of words reIvealed in their lives set down. As the Realms of Gold were filled for Grant Showerman's delight with the spirits of men, so is the dictionary filled for our delight with the spirits of words. On entering the dictionary we enter the realms of poetry. This need not surprise, for poetry is, as someone has said, the native language of the savage. Nicknames, folknames, slang, all rise from the poetical in man. "Tis their imagemaking power makes them so. Saxifrage, rock-breaker, was so named because it grew in cracks in the rocks. Sarcasm is, literally, flesh-tearing. Mignonette means to soothe: so it does with its odor and modest loveliness. It has a French soul: ette, the sign of smallness, mignon, also small and therefore darling. Is not this the most dearly beloved, as are children? Cicero is a revered name, that of a stately Roman Senator. But, alas! his name meant chick-pea, and came to him through a pea-shaped wart on the side of his nose. Likewise the Fabians, aristocrats of Rome, derive from the bean. Of course, the bean was in better estate in those days, being used as ballots and as offerings to the gods, and not condemned to association with the lowly, despised pig. (In the new world, Boston has done much toward its restoration.) Indians use such names altogether: Chief EagleFeather, Bending Lily, Pale-face. A nickname is an eek or also name, to distinguish one. These words are live words, calling forth images. Imagery is the distinguishing trait of poetry. When Max Eastman defined a poetical person as one who could see the figure 6 sit down, he proved that there is poetry in the dic TWIAA tionary. The suggestion causes one to see each member of the alphabetical family assume an attitude if he has it not. Turn to the pages devoted to H. Look hard. Ere long the individual folds his arms. In like manner watch T turn into a traffic cop, heels together, both hands extended to stop the oncoming tide. Or see the wabbly W turn into two lank lazybones, back to back, shoulders together. The heads will naturally in such case be negligible. Oh the pin-head, I, will walk for you gaily along his page. Or, to end at the beginning, turn the pages back to A. / is a maiden bending forward; \is a youth bending forward in the opposite direction; A are youth and maiden face to face; instinctively their hands are outstretched, and thus they stand A A stands for Amo, to love. Love extends to words. Here are some I love. You, gentle reader, have yours. In the dictionary I have learned their past. It is a joy as of hearing of the childhood of a human |