The need of the hour calls all who cherish American ideals to help create in the rising generation of voters a still greater vision of True Citizenship. Since coming out of the army hospital I feel that to help save the world from autocracy means to provide more education for all, or, at the very least, to make some available to all. I hope by the fall of next year to take up teaching again full time, but can't sit idly by in these critical hours without suggesting how the emergency may, in a degree, be met. The salary question is up to the public; it's up to American educators to see to it that every bit of available teaching power is put into use so that the thousands of children now without teachers may be taught. The public will be more apt to co-operate when it sees all children receiving education.

Open Schools in Summer

In the emergency I suggest keeping schools open during the summer. The following reasons are culled from Captain F. M. Hammitt's article which appeared in the School Board Journal for May, 1919, entitled "The All Year School in Ma

son City":

The school year is divided

into four quarters, of twelve

212

215

216

217

218

5 By running the school the year around the students working their way through can choose the three months in which they can find the most lucrative employment.

6 Choice of seasons is more economical and democratic.

7 The forgetting during the three months is prevented.

Undergraduates as Teachers

In addition I suggest that inasmuch as there are thousands of untrained people teaching (in many cases even without high school training), college and even some high school under-graduates be allowed to take a hand at Americanizing, i. e., educating, our youth during the summer at least. College students would thus vitalize their college work, and more would enter the profession, at least for this period

In Dr. Charles McMurry's new book, "Teaching by Projects," he says, "The term project belongs in one sense to the language of business or of plans and schemes in active life. It is an echo from a noisy world, an intrusion upon the quiet of the school, like a sharp train whistle or a noisy street wagon. But our drowsy school work may need this influx of noise and disturbance from without. At any rate the school is being brought into sharp contact with real life." On another page he states, "At the present moment we need to be jolted out of our conventional, formal school phrases and to find terms better adapted to the educational needs and forces of the hour. The term project is a newcomer among educational phrases. It seems to suggest, not the school but the shop, not the text-book but the busy mart, the industrial life, the unhallowed things of the schemer and the promoter. Perhaps this is its merit, that it forces attention upon things that have come to importance in life, things which need to break over the threshold into the school. The project idea suits our present needs because it tosses aside our con

ventional abstractions and sets up a larger practical unit of knowledge as the basis of study. The school is absorbing into itself as fast as it can the big things of life, the schemes that men and women are chiefly concerned about, and these are becoming our school topics."

The true project method of teaching is one of the strongest forces at work to-day to develop democracy and combat Bolshevism in the United States. The use of the word "true" is necessary because there are a number of fallacies abroad in the land which need correction or the power of the project work is weakened.

One fallacy which always arises when a new word enters the teaching vocabulary is, that it will become such a catch-phrase that its real meaning is lost. Witness the rise and fall of such terms as "definite aim," "object teaching," ," "interest as related to will," "the appreciative mass," "correlation," ," "abstract vs. concrete," "efficiency," and a host of others. Just now almost every new device is labeled "project." In the current educational magazines you will see such labels as "A Sand-table Project," "A Dairy Project," "South America-a Geography Project." and even the teaching of a new song was called "A Music Project." (If this article were named "The Power of Teaching," or any older word, you perhaps would not read it.) Sometimes these activities so named, are projects, but oftener they are not, at least in the sense that Dr. Kilpatrick intends in his pamphlet on "The Project Method." He makes a strong point of the purpose, too much of which has been the teacher's purpose, not the pupil's. Much of the so-called has no chance for its fruition, is not a project. May it not be like the emotional state which James warns against, where emotions are aroused which we do not satisfy? This formal education is a weakening rather than a strengthening educative process. Or is it educative at all? Is it not deadening passivity? So test your projects by the initiative, by the purpose, and see if there are a series of acts leading to a successful conclusion. More, do the activities "lead on" to further knowledge, or must the teacher constantly prod and assign tasks? Test them by the method of learning in real life situations.

Perhaps a greater injustice is being done to the project idea in many localities where it is being attempted by teachers who do not know the underlying principles. Their "spirits are willing," but their intellectual fields are unprepared. The project becomes a collection of handme-down, ready-made devices suggested by an enthusiastic supervisor. Such superficiality discredits the project method in any community. How may teachers understand these principles which must be the basis of all project work in the schoolroom? Perhaps the best way is attendance at schools where the project method is taught and practiced with children. Accompany this with a considerable amount of reading on the topic, and an open mind. In

lieu of such attendance, any body of teachers can systematically read, discuss and put into practice the project method as found in the following suggested bibliography. It is by no means complete, but it does claim to cover the basic principles, leaving the teacher to find in many other books specific needs for her individual projects. Several mistakes have been made in attempting to introduce this method in city systems without an organization of teachers to study it beforehand. The results are such that if one wishes the method to survive in that community it will be made compulsory that no teacher be allowed to try it till she has studied its fundamental principles, rather than using it after three visits to a teacher who was using it. The bibliography is submitted with the idea of its being helpful to teachers who have not yet had the chance to attend a school and see the project method in its experimental stage. Among many people who have omitted the preliminary study, a fallacy exists that organization of subject matter and materials is unnecessary. The pendulum swings too far from the cut-and-dried method of doing a certain thing always at a certain time, with the resultant criticism that time is wasted. A teacher said to a principal, “Oh, I like the project idea; it is such a 'snap' for me. I do not have to plan my work now, for the children do that as they work!" Another teacher said, "I like it because I have so much more time." Now the project method requires an absolute business-like attitude toward subject matter, materials and plans. In any large project, a vast amount of correlated material must be so easy of access that it will take plenty of any teacher's time just to be her own filing clerk. To be sure, the teacher's plans are often changed by a change in the child's purpose, but this, too, requires more, not less, planning on the part of the teacher so that she may follow several avenues of activity quickly.

Yet another fallacy exists when a teacher with that dangerous thing called "a little knowledge," construes this method into meaning license. To quote Dr. Kilpatrick again, "Some, in reaction, have resorted to humoring childish whims." A child was found lying on his stomach on the floor, while the teacher attemped group work, on the other side of the room. Upon being asked the reason for this vestigial position, she replied, "You see in this project method we allow pupils to follow their own impulses!" Nothing could be farther from the point of view which declares that "whole-hearted, purposeful activity in a social situation as the typical unit of schoo! procedure is the guarantee of the utilization of the child's native capacities now frequently wasted."

Now another mistake, also due to introducing the method with too little forethought, is that of attempting it in a one-grade room of fifty to sixty pupils, with screwed-down seats, meagre equipment, materials too small in size, and very little floor space. This is almost physically impossible and too many conscientious teachers have been discouraged by being asked to follow the project plan, but without proper equipment or assistance.

There are a number of objectors—many of them truly conscientious who claim that too little is accomplished in the three R's as contrasted with the old régime. True, these people often have closed their minds to anything different from the way they have been trained, but many parents wil' hearken eagerly to this type of criticism and it must be met if the project methoa is to grow in power as · it should. In the successful project method plan, more reading is done than in any formal scheme. Real reading is not a process of calling words, or being expert at long

lists of phonetic symbols; rather it has to do with emotion and with information, with the getting and giving of thought in real life situations with familiarity in classic lore, and with a desire to read more and more. Such insane remarks as "I see a girl," "This is mamma," "Run, squirrel, run, "Does the squirrel run?" "He runs," "Well, well, is the boy well?" "The boy is at the well," hardly come under the thought-producing term of reading. Neither is it always a virtue to declare, "My first grade class read sixteen readers last year!" The quality rather than the quantity is the first consideration. How can we prove to these objectors that the three R's are not neglected? Too many teachers of the project method are keeping no record of their experiment. A complete daily record, using the Columbia University blanks or others equally good, and adding to it any facts needed for a record of the three R's, will overcome this objection. The real test is the pupil's reading, being sure that this reading "leads on" to more reading activity with a teacher constantly setting the time, the lesson, or the place. Why not apply the standard reading tests and rate these children accordingly?

In some situations the project method is not as powerful an educative force as it might be, because the teacher has tried to graft it on to a mechanical routine program. In "carrying water on both shoulders" some of it is likely to be spilled.

A criticiasm made is that teachers fail to check up materials and that the pupils are not taught the care of the materials. In the project plan, materials are on low shelves or tables and in constant and quite free use. Make it a personal matter as an apostle of the democratic idea of the project, that your room will be taken care of, so, though it will always look "worky," it will not present a ragged, untidy appearance.

We have looked long enough at the negative side of the project method, as mistakes have been made in working it out. Let us now consider the real side, the positive side. What is the power of the project method? Is it far reaching, extending to all phases of citizenship, or is it local and restricted to a few school people and through them to the kindergarten or primary grades alone? Has it any relation to citizenship in a democracy?

Apart from politics and religion, there is nothing so difficult to change, so traditional, as education. In spite of advances in industry, science, business and government, the traditional persists so strongly in the schoolroom practice that the project method seems to many to be a sweeping innovation. It is not; it is quite the method of learning found in life outside of the schoolroom. There is a close relation between this method and the development of democratic ideals. It is opposed to militarism, Bolshevism, and to blind obedience to dogmatic authority.

Do you recall the far-from-good-old-days when the teacher's desk stood on top of a high platform? Can you see long rows of screwed-down seats with aisles sufficiently wide to discourage whispering or the help of a neighbor? The high platform symbolized the high intellectual position of the teacher as she looked down and poured knowledge on, over and into the helpless subjects below. The teacher rules as would the Kaiser, not permitting differences of opinion or action from those prescribed by authority. This platform, as a symbol, put the teacher so far above her subjects that severe penalties were placed on those who disagreed openly or expressed any opinion foreign to the ruler. In life, we teach that altruism is a virtue and that we must help our neighbor. But in this traditional type of school, it was a crime to help your neighbor. The seats were placed far enough apart to discourage the possibility. Other acts were crimes, too. For example, it was a crime to whisper, to move about, to hammer, to saw, whistle, paste, use clay, use paints - unless the royal scepter was put forth, or all the subjects performed these acts at the same time. It must be a mass formation,

like the German army, to please the ruler. Good children were those who sat with feet flat on the floor, backs stiff, hands folded on top of desks, eyes front, and who especially sat this way when an assigned task was completed before the teacher was ready to look at it. To be like a wooden statue, doing nothing, was a virtue that often the bright and clever ones did not attain. It made one think of the old hymn, "O, to be nothing, nothing!" Truly "perfect order was perfect death" in such rooms. The seats were veritable "scholastic cells." If, perchance, you wished to borrow a pencil or to compare your progress with another pupil, you might be so allowed, if you raised your hand and received the royal permission. But to do this without full preliminary permission often meant that the offender would remain in his "cell" after school.

It may be that this is an exaggerated picture to many of you, but such schoolrooms still exist in this land of ours, even after a war has been fought to establish democracy. But this is hopeful: we do keep trying for better things. A transition time arrived, when we kept much of the above plan, but removed the platform, introduced chairs, occupation materials, and a free work period.

The materials are still kept in little boxes, taken out and replaced by dictation, while the bead stringing, stick laying, card sewing, or seed outlining could hardly lay claim to developing initiative on the part of the learner.

The free work period was often a time when materials were scattered broadcast and not picked up at the close of the period. Anybody did anything anybody chose, but there was no guiding purpose, no "purposeful act.” At the close of the period, all went back to the routine. Even the routine was better than certain types of free work periods in many rooms. It was as if some German subject escaped across the border and for a few brief moments attended a Bolshevist meeting, only to be brought back again.,

Then came the cry for a sub-primary group, containing those children who were a cross between a good old-fashioned kin lergarten pupil and a full-fledged mechanical first grader. This transition served a good purpose, for it awakened both kindergartners and primary teachers. to the need of changes. We then heard much of the word "unification." With a project method rightly understood and carried out, is it not possible that the above transition words, namely, free period, sub-primary, and unification, will be dropped from our vocabulary and practice?

But wherein lies the ability of the project method to develop a democratic citizenry? Some one has said; "Without education democratic government becomes a farce or a tragedy." Education under an autocratic ruler will not function in a representative form of government. Was it not true that in the World War the Germans often retreated in frenzied haste when a leader was killed? Was it not equally true that our American boys often went over the top at the call of a private soldier when their leader was killed? Dr. Kilpatrick says that "the teacher's success -if we believe in democracy will consist in gradually eliminating himself or herself from the success of the procedure."

Does your schoolroom have to be watched constantly by you, or worse, by a monitor? Can you trust your pupils to go to one corner of your room, to the hall, to a recitation or shop room, and there teach each other in groups, work on a doll house, write invitations to a party - do all this while you conduct a reading class in your room? Or are they so unsocially trained that they need the watchful eye of the law upon them at all times? Which kind of training makes the better citizen who later may be your banker, your town treasurer, your legislator, your custodian of taxpayer's funds?

The project method has the power of making pupils "intellectually critical." They do not watch the teacher's face to catch her approval or disapproval before being sure

of their answers. They are too busy with their own problem. It is a higher plane of motive to which they have come, namely, an interest in the work itself, rather than doing it for personal approval of the teacher or even the class. If it is their own work, it must stand on its own merit and intelligent criticism is invited. A pupil was making a cupboard for a large doll house which had been constructed with the Patty Hill floor blocks. He stayed faithfully at the work bench and used his hammer, saw, knife and nails, but in the end each shelf was crooked. At last he said to a boy near by, "Can you make this shelf straight?" The boy tried, but the shelf was still crooked so an appeal was made to the teacher. By a simple showing of the need for a ruler measurement on either side, the boy made a straight-shelf cupboard. No teacher was critical for him; he did his own thinking as far as he could. Can politicians, I. W. W. leaders, false prophets, easily influence the citizen who, from his youth up, has been trained to do his own thinking, backed up by an intelligently critical attitude toward his own shortcomings?

In a certain type of project, Dr. Kilpatrick names four steps. They are, "purposing, planning, executing and judging." So it is easily seen that the project requires a high variety of thinking such as Dr. Dewey describes in his book, "How We Think." The teacher, of course, needs to think through the difficulties so that total failure may be avoided for the child. But most of all, does this type of thinking require initiative and activity.

A Hallowe'en party was to be given by the first graders for the kindergarten group. The purposing and planning steps moved rapidly, but in the executing the question of mailing invitations brought up the difficulty of not knowing the house numbers of the guests. Ways were suggested by the children and they were allowed to get the numbers according to their various plans. Some found them in telephone books, others asked older members of the guests' families, while some went to the house and copied numbers. Now the teacher had these numbers in her record book and could have given them to each child on a slip of paper. But this one point in this project brought out more independence and initiative than was thought possible in so simple a difficulty. What kind of citizens do you prefer? Do you prefer the type that handle an emergency or a difficulty by their own initiative, or that appeal to the nearest ward boss for an understanding of principles and candidates for a coming election, simply because they have never been trained to do their own thinking?

Examples of initiative in emergencies may be multiplied, for they occur in the project plan each day. A group of intermediate children needed material for working on a large play house. This house was to be set out-of-doors in the spring. Committees were appointed to care for materials, to buy supplies, and to secure funds to pay for them. The last committee faced a serious shortage, as the teacher had found it necessary to advance three dollars for paint brush, shellac and nails. It was finally decided to put the question before an open meeting and let the class vote. The decision was a pledge to earn five cents week and put it in a fund to pay the teacher. In all this the teacher suggested nothing. The point needs to be stressed here, however, that it is often the teacher's right, nay, it is what she is hired for, to suggest, guide, even lead, at times. There are also brief intervals where she must assume the role of dictator. Emergencies, such as wars, bring out that necessity. Food dictators and coal administrators are not unknown to the American people. A teacher must not be a chronic dictator, for she would be as harmful to a schoolroom as a Soviet Ark passenger is to our body politic.

An arithmetic game was suggested by a teacher where boys and girls kept scores, seeing which side won the more points in a series of games. The boys lost several games because one boy did not know the table of seven.

Two

friends volunteered their services to teach this boy. For one week this was done and it was good teaching, too real purpose was there.

The roof of the play house was to be covered with asbestos roofing about the time that area needed to be taught, so the class used this opportunity to figure the exact amount needed, and when the arithmetics were opened, the new problem of area was partially solved.

Does it sound easy for the teacher? It is far from it: hours of planning and organization of subject matter around each project are required, as well as an assembling of the necessary materials to make it complete. In a new book by Parker, "General Methods of Teaching in Elementary School," Chapter Five, on Organization of Subject Matter, is excellent to show the necessary organization in a successful project method.

A power of the project too little discussed, is the benefit to the teacher. It is rather recent that we have begun to consider her at all, except as a bit of machinery to be spent, weary and worn at the end of a day. The woman teacher, as a poorly paid public servant, was not supposed to wear as good clothes as many other employed women, to ride in parlor cars, to stay at the best hotels, to command a room with a bath, to require the services of a manicurist or hair dresser; in short, she was not expected to live as a prosperous business woman might. She was too "pore." In her new era of better salaries she will have more chance of studying education as a creative project. Truly it will be the child of her brain, and its growth and nurture carefully watched. Dead formalism does not long live in the heart and brain of a teacher who is constantly growing and developing new projects for herself and her pupils. Life becomes not only a game, but a project to her, and soon she files away much valuable data and from it becomes more charitable, sweet and human.

The project method does not need to be argued about or pleaded for. For those who see it in the light and hope of creative work, rather than the darkness resulting from dead formalism, it becomes a new gospel of democracy and a weapon against Bolshevism for future generations.

Dictation Lessons

Need for Dictation Lessons

In composition the thought is stressed all the time. "Bear hard upon your subject," says a book of advice to adult writers. "What is it you are trying to say?" we ask again and again when a child becomes self-conscious and hesitates over the form. Always the thought is kept in the foreground, and rightly so. Yet some place and some time the child must learn the rules and regulations by which expression is governed.

He must learn them and learn them thoroughly, but let this work be done by itself, not sugar coated and passed over as something else, unless both types of lesson become equally hateful. To pretend it is something else is like the plea of the primary teacher who keeps calling a sentence a story because, she says, "children love stories so." There are very few forms of mental activity which children cannot enjoy if they are put clearly and rapidly. It is not doing things which becomes wearisome, but the waiting for something to do.

The French children are among the best trained in the world when it comes to the use of language, and they have dictation work from the very earliest years. Some educators tried the experiment of dictating certain English para graphs to boys in French schools. The form was more correct than when the same selection was given to children of the same age in America. More, when the experiment was repeated with college students it was found that they, too, were inferior to the little foreigners.

Their training in writing contains much dictation work and experiments recently made in our own schools prove

the wisdom of this course.

Special Advantages

Dictation work possesses several points of advantage. The child is freed from the thought of subject matter and can turn all his energies to form until the points under discussion are mastered. Special topics can be stressed. If the class has been studying the use of the quotation mark, the example chosen can be such as to employ its use a number of times. If the pupils have no other drill than that given in the writing of themes, they may have no occasion to use their knowledge for a number of days. It is immediate and frequent use which clinches facts.

The ease of criticising the result is another point in favor of this type of lesson. The skilled teacher should be able to complete the survey in a very few minutes by means of class and self-criticism. This can never be the case when the material under discussion is not identical.

Preparation for Lesson

The preliminary work is most important. The material to be dictated should be placed before the children, prefer ably on the blackboard. Then let the teacher go over every point upon which drill is needed. "Why does this word begin with a capital?" "Why is a period used here?" "Do you find any other place where a period is used for the same reason?"

Interest is easily aroused. The children know they will have immediate use for all the facts which are run over and they are anxious to prove they know them all.

Suitable rules are not difficult to find. The following topics were discussed in a fourth grade.

Every declarative sentence ends with a period. Quotation marks are placed around the exact words of

a speaker.

A person's name begins with a capital.
The name of a people begins with a capital.
When asking permission use "may."

Every interrogative sentence ends with a question mark.

Every paragraph should be indented.

This list is given merely to show the material that is used. It is not in any sense complete. To put the matter briefly, every rule of composition, should be tested in dictation lessons.

Method of Procedure in Lesson

dictate the matter to the children, they writing it sentence When the preliminary drill is ended the teacher should by sentence. Naturally, in the first grade a sentence, and a short one at that, is all the children can manage. In given a sentence at a time) is not beyond the power of third higher grades they can take much more, a little story (if grade children. When they begin to write consecutive sentences to dictation it is best to tell them when to begin a new paragraph. The habit of placing each sentence by itself is hard to break, and it is well for them to grow used to the sight of the larger unit before too great a strain is placed upon them in the matter of deciding where the break should be made.

As soon as the writing is finished the correction should be made. If the material has been placed upon the board the curtain which has been used to cover it can be withdrawn and the children may make most of the necessary corrections self-correction, which is most desirable. Besides this, it themselves. This encourages the habit of self-criticism and gives the opportunity to say, "Why is this the way it is in the story?" The reason is emphasized.

writing would tend to make them remember the location It may seem that the drill given immediately before of the mark rather than its meaning. In theory there happen. The placing will not come exactly as it did on might be this danger. Practically I have never seen it

the board, so position will not be of any great assistance. What if the child does remember that a period came after a certain word? Have you not asked why it is there? The reason has been made plain. We see that a certain mark occupies a particular position and try thereafter to use it in the same way. Material Used

It is better that all the selections used be by good authors. We can manufacture examples to fit almost anything, but we want our pupils to feel that these rules are not abstractions formed for the annoyance of children and subject to discard when they reach years of discretion. Rather they must be brought to feel that they are studying the conventions observed by all educated people, that they may take their own places with such men in the future and feel no awkwardness in the association.

Possibilities in "The Wolf and the Lamb"

One day a wolf found a lamb drinking at a brook. The at my spring?" wolf said, "What do you mean by making the water muddy

"Indeed, sir," said the poor frightened lamb, "I did not disturb your spring; it is farther up the stream, and the water does not run that way."

"Well," said the wolf, "you trampled the mud up in my spring last year."

"No, indeed," said the trembling lamb. "I was not born last year."

"Oh, well, if you didn't do it, your father or mother did." And he gobbled the poor lamb - which was just what he had intended to do all the time. - Esop

All but two of the rules quoted in an earlier part of this discussion are illustrated in this story. We advocate the use of such material, not that the children may incidentally learn more stories, but that they may realize that these rules which they have to learn are a part of what they know to be ordinary expression.