from Europe, was called for on this subject. He said the German tendency is to continue High School teachers with their pupils for four or five years. The best American schools do the same in the grammar grades. The personality of the teacher is of more value than what is taught.

The increased attendance at the Council required an adjournment from the Supreme Court room in the New Capitol. The report of the Committee on Normal Education was, therefore, given in the East Denver High School. The value of the report is assured by the name of the chairman, John W. Cook, of the Illinois State Normal, at Normal, Ill. Considerable discussion followed the recommendation as to the place of practice teaching in the Normal. There was a strong sentiment in favor of teaching in the first year's work, and few dissented from the statement that the children in the practice schools need not suffer from the experiments of pupil teachers, if under wise supervision.

On Tuesday morning, after a business session, the Council adjourned. Stronger than any other factor in the unification of our schools is the work of the Council.

The report of the Committee on State School Systems was presented on Saturday morning by Henry Sabin, of Des Moines. While the ungraded school received the attention it deserves, the questions considered were largely those that California has already answered. Professor Barnes declared that the schools of a county are colored by the County Superintendent. If he is elected because he needs the place, or in order to let him study law or medicine, instead of receiving the office because of his qualifications, the voters are to blame for lowering the standard of the schools. The chairman of the committee, who had differed with Barnes regarding childish tendencies, indorsed his statement with the words, "If I don't agree with Brother Barnes regarding the natural state of the child, I am with him most heartily in regard to the natural state of the County Superintendent."

George Washington would not have made a good, all-round reporter, for he could not have been present at all the department sessions, and he would not have written out the program in pretense of being present.

The departments that now comprise the N. E. A. are those of Kindergarten, Elementary, Secondary, Higher, Normal, Music, Manual and Industrial and Business Education, Child Study, the Herbart Club and the Department of Superintendence. The last named holds

its meetings in February, and will meet next in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1896.

A new department has this year been added to the N. E. A. It is that of physical training. The purpose of such training was thus set forth at the first meeting: "To promote bodily training, to give teachers and specialists an opportunity to exchange methods, to give the general public an interest in this work, to discuss military training now used in many schools.

Miss N. D. Kimberlin, of the Detroit School of Expression, read a paper prepared for the National Association of Physical Training. "The average child of healthy parents lives a natural and healthy life until he is five years old. When he enters school our work must be preservative. The accuracy and alertness of physical movements is secured by military drill. In the Detroit schools exercises are given in the primary grades every twenty minutes. We must keep ourselves elastic enough to seize the good coming from any new idea."

A general session was held each forenoon and evening in the Central Presbyterian Church, each department conducting its own work at an afternoon session.

SHOT AND SHELL.

Co ordination was an association word. It bids fair to enter the domain of Denver slang. President Charles de Garmo, whose “Essentials of Teaching" is favorably known, opened the subject. All connection of studies not based upon essentials is a mere educational device.

It is the fashion to talk freely of theory and impracticability. Is the association that urges these principles open to this charge? How shall we teach children to appreciate the heritage of freedom won by blood? Teach them that the women who gave up their tea were as patriotic as the men who threw it overboard. The boy who stopped the leak in the dike was a patriot. Whoever for his country sacrifices time, pleasure, health, money is a patriot.

Bad men sit on the fence and light their pipes with the Magna Charta and the Constitution. Too many good men shirk the primaries, shirk jury duty, shirk citizenship. If it is wrong to go into politics for selfish ends, it is still more culpable to stay out for selfish ends. Will the true citizen fight the gambling interest, fight the saloon interest, fight boss rule? That is the test of the spirit of 1776.

Dr. Joseph Baldwin, Principal of the Kirksville, Missouri, Normal, prior to 1882, and present Professor of Psychology in Texas

University, is, in appearance, the Moses of the Association. After fifty years of teaching he expresses a wish to begin again with new methods, new fields. He said: "Conduct studies are coming to take first place. The artist and the author get their ideals from what has already been done. The child must get his ideals from the great patriots of history. The teacher may enter the mind or heart of the child. Patriotism is not narrowing. It is broadening. All the world loves a lover. All the world pities the man without a country, as it pities the poor bachelor. Who loves his own country is ready to become a citizen of the world, to love all countries. Cultivate heart power till it takes in all the world, the universe and centers in the infinite God."

W. H. Bartholomew, principal of the High School, Louisville, closed an excellent address with the words: "One of the speakers has said, 'If I were not an American, I would be an Englishman.' don't want to be anything but an American!" That reminds me of a boy on the cars who looked sadly at a Spaniard and said: "How dreadful it is to have to be a foreigner!"

At no time during the Association did enthusiasm rise to a higher pitch than on the morning devoted to patriotism. The tone of the whole was convincing of the fact that the spread eagle is giving place to a more practical fowl that keeps its city politics out of the hands of boodlers, and is not above the daily duties of good citizenship.

Never was "America' sung more heartily, with the spirit and with the understanding also, than when that great audience, 2,200 strong, broke forth with "My country, 'tis of thee."

The instruction and improvement of teachers now at work in the schools proved a fruitful theme.

Would that every school trustee could hear Arvin S. Olin, of the Kansas State University, on the subject of Teachers' Institutes. It is the preventative of stagnation. It is the economical and ready means. of introducing needed work into the school. Let it be vertical writing, for example. One Institute will accomplish more than two years of educational journals.

Earl Barnes' directions in regard to teachers' classes were practical. There must be willingness, enthusiasm, bodily comfort. Friday afternoon sessions and a few disinclined members will hurt any class. Class study introduces the student spirit among the classes, and gives unity and purpose to the work of the school department.

Supt. L. H. Jones, of Cleveland, Ohio, a pioneer founder of teachers' reading circles, gave a somewhat peculiar, but very practical, method of getting teachers to read. It was simply the laying out of a course of reading for children and young people. Three books were named for each month, and the pupil might read one or all. The teachers gave in reports of books read by their pupils. They had to read the books themselves in order to be able to discuss them with pupils. The longest way round may be the surest way home!

A number of excellent, practical suggestions were made by those who took part in the discussion that followed. Pennsylvania's State Superintendent, N. C. Schæffer, who has the heart of Froebel and a heartiness all his own, said: "Many teachers reach the dead line. They die before they are ready for burial. Neither institutes, teachers' classes nor reading circles can resuscitate them. In my despair, when I could not arouse them, I have gone to my catechism, but even that says nothing about a resurrection in this life. Better marry them off or put them on the emeritus list."

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATION.

It was not annual enthusiasm alone that made the speakers at the closing meeting of the N. E. A. pronounce this the best session ever held. The efficiency of its officers, the exactness with which the program was carried out, and the generous provisions made by the city of Denver were factors of success. Evidently no "may be's" in regard to attendance were accepted. The ruling that papers may be read only by their authors, may also account in part for the small number of absences of those on the program.

The attendance of listeners at the National Council of Education is smaller than one would expect. Any one is admitted to the deliberations of the Council, though none but members may take part, unless by special wish of the body. Every teacher who plans to attend the N. E. A. should count the Council as an important part of the Association.

The subject of Moral Education was of utmost interest as showing the attitude of the foremost teachers of the country toward what is more and more acknowledged to be of prime importance. The discussion was opened by Earl Barnes, who spoke of religious instruction as a part of moral training. It has been the faith of the civilized world that moral conduct springs from religious instruction. Only France and America have cut loose. By his ignorance of theological

lore, the modern child is shut out in large part from the treasures of art and literature. We have lost the feeling of the force that lies back of things, that gives strength and sanity. In compromising, we have cast aside foundations. Can sparrows, grass,blades, Abraham Lincoln or Whittier's poems take the place of the religious foundations we have thrown aside?

The venerable Dr. Baldwin, of Texas State University, declared: "Conduct takes the first place in education. We are working to get the best into the schools. The Committee of Fifteen have done much in making history run through the primary school in oral lessons. History may be made the center in working pupils up to their best. Character growth will be the next specialty. In the next decade the school principal must be a specialist in conduct.”

The President of the Council, C. C. Rounds, of Plymouth, N. H., left the chair to give an account of a definite course in morals introduced into his schools: "While known to the children as stories, the subjects are definitely graded. They are so selected as to appeal to the experience of the child. We guard against drawing conclusions from what has occurred in school and we do not make personal applications-it tends to hypocrisy."

The unanimity with which these educators demanded more and better moral education spoke eloquently of the need of the time. The Bible in the public schools was asked for as the storehouse of literature and art, and the best cyclopædia of morals. A conservative point of view was presented by J. W. Cook, of the State Normal of Illinois: "This is the Age of Manhood, and we cannot keep the Bible out of the schools. It now goes in in song and poetry and art.

At the first afternoon session Miss Bettie Dutton, of Cleveland, Ohio, gave the report of the Committee on Economy in Primary Education. Economy of time and energy were urged. This report, more than most others presented, was closely in accord with the old education. It urged that pupils be taught to read at five instead of six, in order to save (?) a year. Some of the best points of the report were : Require no busy work that does not lead to something definite. not exact fixed attention to study while some interesting work is going on. Do not expect specialists among fourteen-year-old pupils. Defer work that cannot be assimilated. Make the science sense keen. Build up the character.

SNAP SHOTS FROM THE DEPARTMENTS.

The kindergarten is our greatest success in teaching sociology