North Carolina education

              JOIN THE CLUB AT YOUR COUNTY INSTITUTE
NORTH CAROLINA
EDUCATION A IVfontlily Journal of Educatioi^Rviral
Progress, and Civic Betternn*^ t
Vol. VI. Mo. lO. RALEIGH, N. €., JUNE, 1912. VF*ricc: $1 a Vear.
B greed for County Institutes
We believe that the county institute should aim to give to teachers a clear
and definite idea of what a good school is ; that it should show by illustrative or
model teaching what good methods of instruction are ; that it should furnish a
clear and definite view of the present trend, or tendency of education, with special
reference to such movements as public health and sanitation, the teaching of agri-culture
and nature study, manual training and domestic science, and the general
relation of education to right living.
—
Illinois School Bulletin.
JUNE, 1912
Contents of Cbis number
CONTRIBUTED ARTICLES.
C<iunty Institutes for. tliis Summer, J. A. Biv-lUS
History of the First Confederate Flag, William
Winston 20
Home School at Wintlirop College, Claud Ben-nett
. 14
How to Teach the Elements of' Reading, Logan
D. Howell 6
.Tunaluska: the Great Cherokee Chief, W. M.
; AWrr . 17
r 'stalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude, Holland
Holton . , 15
Plan to Make the Teachers' Assembly a Dele-gated
Body, R. D. W. Connor 21
Program for a One-Teaclier and a Two-Teacher
School, E. C. Brooks 11
Some Things That Interest and Win Children,
Miss Evelyn Royall 10
Standards of Southern Colleges for Women,
.Miss E. A. Colton 12
Steps in Oral Language for Beginners, Miss
Susie Fulghum 9
PAGE.
Studies in North Carolina Poems: XVII.—Dr.
Mitchell's Grave; XVIII—The BeUs of Trin-ity
19
Teachers' Reading Course for 1912-1913, J. A.
Bivins 5
EDITORIAL.
A Notable Confei'ence 23
.\rthur Herbert Merritt 23
Changes in School Work 23
E.vaniination for High School Certificate 22
Mclver Monument Unveiled 24
Pith and Paragraph 22
I'orti'ait of Governor Aycock for Framing. ... 24
The .Montessori Metliods 22
Women on School Boards 22
DEPARTMENTS.
Advertisements 2—3 and 28—36
Editorial 22—24
Educational News 29—31
News and Comment About Books 26—28
Teachers' Reailing Circle 5
IVnSCELLANEGUS.
Value of the Library SO
Wider Use of the School-House 24
NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
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June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION
GREATER TRINITY COLLEGE.
Trinity is in many ways different from all other
colleges. One striking uniqueness is this: It is a
great, new, modern college with a long, proud, suc-cessful
past.
The charter of the College dates from 1859, but
Trinity was founded then as the successor to a
school that had already established a fine reputation,
and this reputation for honest work the College has
ever since maintained.
The whole tendency of modei'n times is to educate
f_pr service. Great institutions of learning to-day,
therefore, are to be found in the important social
and industrial centers ; for in these cities the students
of colleges, while being trained for efficiency and ser-vice,
may have the opiiortunity to observe the larger
life of the world, and after graduation may the more
readily adjust themselves to it.
So, in 1892, Trinity College was moved from the
small village where it had been established, to Dur-ham,
a growing, prosperous city, in many ways typi-cal
of the great industrialism and material progress
of the New South. Here, then, the old college, with
its fine traditions uninterrupted, began its new ca-reer
in large buildings erected to meet the demands
of its growth.
Buildings, grounds, and equipment can be bought
;
but the rich heritage of love and devotion of alumni
and friends, and the precious possession of the in-fluence
and memory of the lives of good men given
to the service of their fellows, come only with time.
Combined, however, these material and spiritual pos-sessions,
as they are found in the New Trinity, make
its future secure.
The equipments are complete and the advantages
are superior. Trinity College has the largest endow-ment
of any College in the South Atlantic States,
and by the end of this year a million dollars will
be added to the present endowment.
OPPORTUNITY FOR TEACHERS.
Trinity College offers decidedly superior advan-tages
to those wishing to become teachers. In 1907
when the Department of Education was established
six students were enrolled in it. But the enrollment
for the year 1911-1912 was 158.
The purpose of the Department of Education is
(1) to develop a greater appreciation of the value
of the school as an institution in the history of man-kind;
(2) to impart a knowledge of educational prin-ciples
and methods of teaching; (3) to acquaint the
student with the status of primary and especially
secondary education of the present day; and (4) to
make a careful study of the conditions and needs in
North Carolina.
COURES FOR TEACHERS.
1. The Learning Process.—(1) How to study; the
purpose of the text-book ; and the relation of text-book
and the school to the life of the pupil; (2)
Educational psychology and application of psycho-logical
principles to the learning process.
2. Principles of Education.—(1) Principles under-lying
the selection and arrangement of subject-matter
for the- different grades; (2) principles of child-study
and the relation of the child to the school.
Grading of the course of study with reference to the
mental development of the child.
;?. History of Education.—(a) Pre-Christian and
mediaeval education, with special emphasis on He-brew,
Greek, Roman, and mediaeval culture, and
their relation to institutional life of the people, (b)
Modern education with special emphasis on the pur-poses,
aims, and methods of elementary and second-ary
schools. How religious, political, economic, and
social changes produce changes in educational con-tent.
Educational theory and practice contrasted
;
comparison of aims and methods.
4. Comparative Education.—School systems in
America and Europe compared, with special empha-sis
on the systems of the United States, England,
Germany, and France.
5. School Management.—The school of to-day ; ar-rangement
of the course of study; the care of the
child ; formalism in education ; the school-house and
grounds ; life in the school-room. Three times a
week.
6. History of Culture.—This course will be given
jointly bj' the Departments of History and Educa-tion.
The aim is to study the principal intellectual
movements from Plato to the nineteenth century,
with special reference to political, social, and educa-tional
problems. Extended readings from sources,
biographies, and criticisms.
7. Aims and Methods in Education.—This course
. is primarily for teachers of Durham and adjoining
counties. Recitations are conducted only on Satur-days.
No tuition. Room rent reasonable. For further
information, apply to
R. L. FLOWERS, Secretary,
Trinity College, Durham, N. C.
WORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
THE COUNTY INSTITUTES FOR THE SUMMER OF 1912
By J.A. Bivins, State Supervisor of Teacher Training.
New Conditions.
The institutes this summer will embrace three
classes of teachers who will be required by law to
attend either an institute or a well-accredited sum-mer
school.
(1) Rural teachers.
(2) Graded school teachers.
(3) High school principals.
There will be two classes of rural school teachers —those who have attended an institute before and
have had some experience in teaching, and those who
are becoming teachers for the first time and are
practically without any professional training. All
of the graded school teachers may be presumed to
have had more or less professional training. It
would be manifestly foolish to require all of these
classes of teachers to receive the same instruction
in the institutes. The following plan will therefore
be put into execution to meet the needs of the situ-ation
:
(1) To have a joint morning session, at which
general topics of interest to all teachers will be
treated.
(2) To have sectional meetings in the afternoon
devoted to the needs of the various classes of teach-ers
represented and taking into account their pre-vious
professional training and experience.
The morning sessions will consider such questions
as keeping the register ; gradation, classification and
promotion ; school and class management ; relation of
school to community; the Reading Circle for 1912-
1913; a daily lesson taken from McMurry's "How
to Study," or, Colgrove's, "The Teacher and the
School," with concrete illustration in the form of
a recitation conducted with a class of children or
with the teachers present ; the school library and
how to use it ; general discussions on Spelling, Draw-ing,
and Nature Study, etc.
One section of the afternoon meetings will be de-voted
to the new and inexperienced teachers on
the subjects of phonics, primary rading, language,
number, seat work,—in other words, general primary
methods.
In another section will be considered the teach-ing
of the new text-books on geography, language,
history, and arithmetic.
If a sufficient number of high school men be pres-ent,
still another section will be devoted to a con-sideration
of the peculiar problems pertaining to
their work.
Local Talent.
In almost all of the counties where institutes are
to be held there is much valuable local talent that
could be made use of in the institutes. There are
teachers to be found who can do one or more things
exceedingly well. It should be the purpose of the
conductor, with the help and advice of the County
Superintendent, to discover and make use of all good
material that is available. Some institute conduc-tors
have been doing this regularly, and always to
the increased interest and profit of the institute. By
this method not only is a fresh viewpoint intro-duced,
but a fresh voice and personality as well, and
under conditions where tired neiwes are sometimes
almost ready to cry aloud for change. Then, too,
the modifications in the institute plan above referred
to necessarily demand more work of the conductors,
a part of which they might wisely delegate to oth-ers.
Furthermore, this would be a good plan for de-veloping
new institute workers. It is the idea to re-cruit
the ranks of institute conductors, as far as pos-sible,
from those teachers who are most directly and
vitally in touch with rural conditions. A teacher
who has "made good" as a, rural teacher is the
logical one to instruct others of that class.
Subjects to Be Emphasized.
As above indicated, the new text-books will re-ceive
especial consideration, both in the primary and
intermediate sections. Dodge's geographies need
close attention, for the subject of geography is poor-ly
taught as a rule. Then there are the new books
on drawing and writing which teachers must learn
to teach. The day for temporizing with these sub-jects
has passed. The time is rapidly coming when
the teacher who does not know how to draw will find
herself without a position. Nature study as related
to agriculture is another subject of increasing im-portance,
involving, as it does, the simple study of
soils, birds, insects, brooks basins, trees, weather
conditions, plant diseases, etc. The adopted text-boolv
on agriculture, the geographies, the new Read-ing
Circle book, entitled "Checking the Waste," and
Government bulletins, all contain helpful material
and suggestions for this kind of nature study. Con-siderable
attention will also be paid to the teaching
of language and grammar, especially in their prac-tical
applications. Furthermore, some period of
State or National history will be presetited in its en-tirety,
illustrating, as it will, all phases of history
teaching.
Certificates of Attendance.
These were introduced last year for the first time.
They are signed by the County Superintendent and
the institute conductor, and will be honored by any
superintendent of any county. They are given only
to those teachers that comply with the law regarding
attendance at institutes and summer schools. If a
teacher a'ttends a well-accredited summer school in
lieu of an institute, a similar certificate attesting that
fact will be given to that teacher. In other words,
no teacher may hope to get a position in the public
schools of North Carolina who does not present a
properly attested certificate of attendance upon an
institute or summer school. This applies to new
teachers as well as to old.
Manuals.
Two manuals will be distributed from the central
office for use in the institutes. One is a bulletin
containing a selection of songs suitable for opening
exercises ; the other is a pamphlet containing a sepa-rate
program for each day's work, with suggestions
for carrying out the same.
Conference of Conductors.
Every well-conducted enterprise or movement de-pends
for its success upon the Calling of its leaders
together for consultation. So far as the institutes
are concerned, the conferences held in Raleigh in
1910 and 1911 have fully justified the truth of this
statement. Another conference will be held here
June 11th to 14th in the auditorium of the High
School. Plans are being devised for making this
an unusually helpful conference. It will open
promptly at 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning, June
11th. All of the institute workers will be required to
attend, or they cannot be given work in the insti-tutes.
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION
THE TEACHERS' READING COURSE FOR 1912-1913
By J. A. Bivins, Supervisor of Teacher Training.
Since the Reading Course for the previous years
has been confined almost entirely to books of a pure-ly
professional character, some change has been
thought advisable for the ensuing year. Conse-quently
two books of a non-professional and infor-mational
nature are hereby announced.
Checking the Waste. A Study in Conservation.
Gregory. Bobb's Merrill & Company.
As the study of geography will receive great em-phasis
during the institutes and teachers' associa-tions
of the coming school year, this book will prove
timely and helpful. The publishers explain the
scope and purpose of the book as follows:
"The great theme of conservation is here
shown to be not merely a problem for the Fed-eral
and State Governments, public service cor-porations,
mine owners and lumber companies,
but one in which every citizen has a share of
individual responsibility.
"The whole problem of the conservation of
our national resources and material wealth is
treated in a manner interesting, logical, and
authentic. The value and waste, the use and mis-use
of soils, minerals, forests, water, fuels, ani-mal
foods, birds, and beauty of landscape are
dealt with so simply that the general reader may
understand, and so thoroughly that the scientist
may be instructed. There are chapters devoted
to the subjects of health, orchards, and insects.
"Every statement has been verified by Gov-ernment
reports and scientific societies. Many
of the illustrations were made especially for the
book by the United States Forest Service."
Americans have been waiting for just such a book,
and it has appeared none too soon. We have been
making such wholesale slaughter of our natural re-sources
that we are at last waking up to the fact
that unless we conserve them we will lose them.
Untold good will result from the judicious reading
of this book by the teachers, provided they will ac-quaint
the pupils of the facts and truths therein pre-sented.
The chapters on insects and birds are ex-eedingly
vital to country dwellers, while that on
health is of interest to all. It is a good book to
place in the hands of any intelligent American citi-zen.
Story of Cotton. E. C. Brooks. Rand, McNally
& Company.
This book was placed on the "suggested reading"
list last year, but is elevated to the forefront this
year on account of its intrinsic worth to North Caro-lina
teachers. The author is a North Carolina teach-er,
and the book tells in a most entertaining and in-structive
way the story of our great staple product.
No teacher can properly understand the history or
geography of the South without becoming acquaint-ed
with the Story of Cotton.
Reading in Public Schools. Briggs and Coffman.
Row, Peterson & Company.
This book was also placed on the list of suggested
titles last year. A number of teachers purchased
the book and read it with delight and profit. Sev-eral
city superintendents have required their teach-ers
to read it, and it has been made the basis of
some lively work in reading in teachers' meetings.
In fact, this book is one of the best that have ap-peared
on the subject. We want our rural teachers
to become acquainted with it—hence we are placing
it on the required list this year.
North Carolina Education.
Teachers who belong to the Reading Circle will be
required, as heretofore, to become regular readers
of this valuable educational journal. This journal
has always aimed to be of immediate help to North
Carolina teachers, and it has realized this aim more
closely year by year. Articles will appear each
month covering every phase of the Reading Circle
work, while special reports will be given showing
how the various teachers' associations are using the
books of the Course in their programs. Other inter-esting
features of these teachers' meetings will be
reported. By this means a dissemination of the best
educational ideas and practices will be effected, mak-ing
our educational paper indispensable alike to the
teacher and the County Superintendent.
Review.
It is expected that the teachers will keep in con-stant
review Hamilton's "The Recitation," McMur-ry's
"How to Study," and Colgrove's "The Teach-er
and the School." These books are too valuable to
be east aside after a mere cursory reading. The
teacher should know them intimately. For various
reasons too scant attention was paid them in the
teachers' meetings. It would be a good idea to have
the "model" lessons given in these meetings so
planned as to illustrate the principles laid down in
these books, especially in The Recitation and in How to Study. In other words, the review above-indicated
should be as concrete as possible. For
instance, how does a given recitation or lesson illus-trate
Preparation, or Presentation, or Special Aims,
or Supplementing the Thought of the Author, or
Judging the Worth of Ideas, or Application, or How
to Use Ideas? The teacher should be as familiar
with these terms and what they mean as with the
multiplication table; and it is only by constant re-view
and use that this can be accomplished.
Diplomas.
Those teachers who complete the course for the en-suing
year and who have completed the course for
the three years preceding will be entitled to a di-ploma
from the State Department of Education.
County Superintendents as well as teachers should
keep this in mind. A bona fide list of the teachers
deserving diplomas in any county will have to be
sent by the County Superintendent to the Supervisor
of Teacher-Training in Raleigh. Upon receipt of
this list a diploma will be sent to each teacher signed
by Mr. Joyner and the Supervisor of Teacher-Train-ing
with a blank left for the signature of the County
Superintendent. The diplomas will be attractive in
form and will be a certificate, to the owner, of a
certain amount of professional training. Since pro-fessional
training is getting to be so much in de-mand,
the diplomas should be worth while to those
who get them.
6 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
HOW TO TEACH THE ELEMENTS OF READING
By Logan Douglass Howell, Author of the Howell Readers.
The Two Meanings of the Work Reading.
The word reading has two meanings in our lan-guage
; and this fact has led to contusion in the un-derstanding
of the word, and to some ab.surdities in
the teaching of this art. Reading may mean the
calling of written words, without regard to their
meaning. For example, all persons that can read
these pages, if called upon to pronounce quim, would
utter the same sound; they would all read tluxt com-bination
of letters in the same way, though it would
not convey the least idea to any. The word reading
is used also to mean getting the thought from a
written page ; it is used to mean the study of liter-ature.
Now, it is unfortunate that the word has these
two meanings, because the two things are entirely
diii'erent, and have no necessary connection. We
can study literature witliout knowing a letter; liter-ature,
in fact, existed before letters: Homer never
wrote his poems ; he sang them. And just as we
may study literature without reading it, so we may
read literature without getting one thought from
the page. It is said that Milton 's daughters used to
read to their father after his blindness iji languages
they did not understand ; but Alilton understood it
when they called the words. Thus, according to
one definition, the daughters were reading, because
they were calling the words; but according to the
other definition, they were not reading, because they
were getting no thought.
It is, therefore, necessary at the beginning of the
discussion of the teaching of reading, to make it
clearly known just what we mean by this word.
Because this is not always done, much of the discus-sion
of the teaching of beginners is wasted, the
writer often confusing the two meanings of the word,
using it first in one sense, then in another.
We all agree that the ultimate aim, the chief, if not
the only, object in learning to read, is the power
to get thought from the written page. There is no
particular advantage in being able to pronounce
combinations like quim that have no thought in them
;
and not many of us shall ever read to a blind man
in languages we do not luiderstand. This consider-ation
has led many teaehei's of late to plunge be-ginners
immediately into what they term "liter-ature,"
before the children have mastered the art
of calling written words. This is just as reasonable
as it would be of a piano teacher to plunge his be-ginners
immediately into Chopin 's Nocturnes, be-cause
nobod}' wishes to studj' music for the sake of
playing five-finger exercises.
Teach Literature and Elementary Reading
Separately.
The trouble with such teachers is, they confuse the
two meanings of the word reading. By all means,
teach children literature ; but it is not necessary to
put them into a book for this : tell them stories ; let
them memorize poems ; give them all the good liter-ature
you can ; but do not think it necessary to in-troduce
this into their stud.y of the mechanics of the
ealling of written words. Music includes singing;
and it is closely allied to poetry and dancing; yet a
piano teacher would not think of making these a
part of his recitation with a beginner at the piano.
Before a beginner can do finished work in any art,
he must first master the elements of that art, be it
music, reading, or what not.
This, then, is the only meaning of the word reading
that we have to do with in the case of a beginner : the
mastering of the elements of the mechanical art of
calling written words. This is the meaning that I
shall confine myself to in this discussion. But it is
not fair to assume that I imdervalue the study of
literature because I am going to discuss something
else. I believe in manj' things for children that I
am not going to discuss here ; such as good manners,
morality, habits of cleanliness, healthful play, as well
as literature. But just at present I am considering
only the right way to teach them the elements of the
art of reading.
What Are the Elements of Reading?
What are these elements ? Besides picture-writing,
there are, in genei'al, two ways of representing our
thouglits by writiiig: one of these, the oldest, is by
means of characters that stand for ideas. The Chin-ese
and the Japanese still use this method. This
character A, stands for the idea man in both those
written languages. I do not know what the Chin-ese
word for man is, and it is not necessary to know
;
but that character stands for the idea. To an Eng-lishman
it means man; to a Gernuxn, Mann; to a
Frenchman, homme. We have some such charac-ters
in English, such as &, %, $, and the digits,
f , 2, 3, etc. Such characters are called ideograms, or
ideographs, because they are writings that stand for
ideas. The expression, 2 + 3 = 5, can be read by an
educated German or Frenchman, though he may not
know a word of any language but his own; because
the Germans and the French use these characters to
express the same ideas as we do.
But the great bulk of our written language is ex-pressed
in characters that stand not for ideas, but
for sounds. What idea do these characters convey
:
n, m, a? What idea did you get when you read quim?
Our letters stand not for ideas, but for sounds of
speech. Even when combined into the sounds that
represent words, they still stand not for ideas, but
for sounds of speech. If a person does not know
what the English word man means, he will get no
idea from those letters; he may get the sound, be-cause
that is what the letters stand for. It is im-portant
to dwell upon this point, for, simple as it
is, the fact is not universally recognized ; certainly
it is far from being universally acted upon. A re-cent
writer, on the teaching" of beginners, says:
"Teach the child to recognize the symbols for the
ideas he already possesses." A few lines below he
insists: "The printed symbol must suggest an idea."
Now this would be true, if we were tecahing Chin-ese
; it is true when we teach such mathematical
characters as +, —, =, 1, 2, 3, etc. But it is not
true when we teach M'ords represented by letters. If
the characters, man, stood for an idea, then man, man-ual,
mansion, would have a common idea. But we
kuow^ that they ha\e no idea in common; why, then,
have they three characters in common? Because
thej' have a common syllable when spoken,- a sylla-ble
made up of the three sounds represented by the
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION
three characters: m, a, n. It is a question of sound
entirely; thought has nothing to do with it.
Teach Ideas Before Symbols.
A clear knowledge of what the art of reading is,
and of what the characters we use stand for, sug-gests
the proper way to teach this art. The rule
holds good here that holds good in teaching anything
else: Teach an idea hefore teaching the syiiihol
that represents the idea. No teacher would try to
make children learn tlie characters, 9, 10, 11, 1'2, V-i,
etc., before the children knew what is meant by the
numbers that these chai'actei-s stand for. She would
first teach them to count, to select nine objects, to
draw nine, ten, or eleven jiictures, etc. ; in other
words, by practice with things, to learn those imm-bers.
After tliey had gained this knowledge (not
before, nor while they are ac<|uiring it) slii' wovdd
teach them th(> symbols that stand for nine, ten,
eleven, etc. Then the symbols would mean some-thing
to the childi'en.
Teach the Elementary Sounds Before the Letters.
So in teaching the art of reading: Teach first the
things that our written characters stand for. Do not
try to teach the symbol and the thing at the same
time; and, above all, do not try to teach the sym-bol
before the child knows the thing it stands for.
When a child comes to school, he already uses and
knows the meaning of several hundred words. But
he does not know that nearly all these words are
composed of two or more sounds ; he has never
thought about it; it was many centuries before the
human race ever thought of it. But it is upon the
knowledge of this fact that our written laiigaiige is
based. What shoidd the teacher do first? Show him
a lot of characters that represent concepts that have
never entered his head? Manifestly not. The first
thing is to teach him those sounds that our characters
stand for. Let the symbols absolutely alone.
How are these elementary sounds to be taught?
Herbert Spencer's dictum that the genesis of knowl-edge
in the individual should follow the genesis of
knowledge in the race, holds good here, and sug-gests
the teacher's method of procedure. There was
a time when there was no alphabet. How was it
ever invented? Some man discovered that most of
the words he used were coniposed of two or more
sounds: and by analyzing words, he discovered that
the same sounds were used over and over again in
many words. So he invented characters to rei)re-sent
these sounds, and he taught others the elemen-tary
sounds, and the characters he had made to rep-resent
them. This is the method the teacher should
follow.
Ear Training—First Step.
First train the child to recognize the elementary
sounds of the words he uses. There may be ditTer-ent
devices for doing this, but the general method
must be the same. Do not, as one teacher fancied,
teach disconnected elementary sounds, as a, b, c,
etc. (meaning by this, not the name, but the sound
of each letter). But take spoken words, and separate
them into their component sounds. It is better to
begin with the names of things near to the child.
For example, ask him: "Where is your n-o-se?"
(separating the word into its three sounds. Do not
call the names of the letters). Most likely at first
he will not understand Mdiat you mean. . Repeat the
process a little more quickly; in fact, simply pro-nounce
the Avord nose rather long drawn out. He
will reply to your question by putting his finger on
his nose; but make him also pronounce the word. Ask
him, "Where ai-e your t-o-es?" And repeat, if nec-essary,
till he recognizes the word. Similarly ask
him about his m-ou-th (11ii-ee sounds), his t-ee-th
three sounds), ch-i-n, ch-ee-k, etc. Ask him to show
you something bl-ue, bl-a-ck, r-e-d, etc. Ask him to
show you a b-oy, a g-ir-1, a b-oo-k, etc.
Chilcli-en soon get the hang of this; and then they
should be drilled on any words of one syllable that
they know. The teacher may use the lists in the
llowell Primer, or make lists of her own; riming
lists, such as m-a-n, c-a-n, p-a-n, f-a-n, etc. It makes
no difference how these words are spelled, because
it is the sounds, }iot the spelling, that we are deal-ing
with ; the words b-i-te, n-igh-t, h-eigh-t, have each
only three sounds, and one can be recognized as
easily as another, when sounded to a child.
Ear Training—Second Step.
After the child can pronounce any word sounded
to him, the next step is for him to separate into ele-mentarj'
sounds words spoken to him by the teacher.
Experience has shown that in beginning this it is
better to take words of two sounds, ending in a
long vowel sound, such iis: Joe, no, go, so, toe, my,
pie, tie, high, by, may, day, say, he, me, she, the,
we, etc. (Note that each of these words has only two
sounds.) For example, pronounce the word Joe in
the ordinary way, and ask the child to spell it. (By
"spell" I mean give the sounds of; but I use the
word "spell" with the children.) This step is a lit-tle
more difficult than the first, and the child may
hesitate before giving the sounds properly; the
teachei' should aid him by pronouncing the word a
little more slowly, until he recognizes the elementary
sounds, and gives them properly. Drill on many
words, using riming lists, until this act becomes easy
to the learner.
The Second Advance in Teaching Reading.
The first advance in teaching reading is ear train-ing,
divided into two distinct processes. The second
advance is something more difficult: it is, learning
the symbols that stand for these elementary sounds
the child has been using. Up to this point, no book
has been used by the child, no letter, no written
word has been shown him. The ear alone has been
trained, not the eye. The work thus far has been to
build up sound-concepts, the things that our writ-ten
characters stand for : just as we would build up
number-concepts, before showing the digits that rep-resent
niunbers.
The thing to do now, is for the child to learn to
associate a certain sound with a certain letter. Of
course, we know that in English the phonic values
of most of the letters are not constant ; in fact, only
three never vary—j, .q, and v. The letter a, for in-stance,
is used for a difTerent purpose in each of the
following words : cat, lady, bathe, water, goat. What
sound of each letter shall we teach first? Since we
are going to teach monosyllables first, we should
teach first the sound of each letter that is most com-mon
in mouos.yllabic words. These are the first
sounds given in the Howell Primer. For the vowels,
it is the short sound, as in cat, bed, sit, top, gun.
Use at first only words with these sounds of the vow-els;
use only words with the hard sound of c as in
cat, and of g as in gun ; and in the case of every let-ter
use only one sound of it in the. written words until
8 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
the beginner learns that sound. Then introduce the
other sounds one at a time, giving sufficient practice
on it for the child to learn it. This is what the How-ell
Primer does.
A Device for Associating the Sound With the Letter.
But to associate this first sound with the written
letter, a good device is this : Take the name of some
child in the class ; for example, Tom. Ask the chil-dren
to spell Tom ; they willgive you the three sounds,
T-o-m (not the names of the letters). Then ask them,
'
' What is the first sound in Tom 's name 1
'
' They will
give the sound of t. Then tell them: "This is the
way we write that." And make the letter T on the
board. Let the children call that Tom's letter. The
association of it with a boy 's name will help them to
remember the sound. In the same way teach the
other letters first given in the Howell Primer (R, S,
B, D, G, H, M, N, A, I, 0). R may stand for Robert,
Rachel, etc. ; S, for Sam, Sally, etc. Of course the
name of the child must begin with the same sound
as is first used in the Howell Primer; it will not do
to let 6 be George's letter, or A, Arthur's; because
the sounds are not the first used. G may be Gus's
letter; A may be Annie's, etc. Let these letters re-main
on the board for several days. The children
will remember, by the position on the board, what
name each letter stands for, and from this knowledge
they can recall its sound. Teach the small letters
by placing them on the board, each beside its capital.
Have the children write these letters, from the board,
and from memory. For example, with the letters on
the board covered, ask them, "What is Tom's let-ter?"
They will say "t" (giving, of course, the
sound). Tell them, "Write T") the teacher giving
the sound, not the name of the letter).
Writing Should Precede Reading.
But it will not follow that children can read words
as soon as they know the sound of each letter; to
combine the sounds represented by T-o-m, for exam-ple,
into the one word Tom, is a more difficult achieve-ment
than to give each sound separately; the next
easiest step is not the reading of words, but the writ-ing
of words. This may sound paradoxical, but it is
true: it is also true in any other similar art; the be-ginner
at telegraphy can send a message more easily
than he can receive one. I strongly advise that be-fore
children are put to reading written words, they
write words. By this I do not mean copying writ-ten
words, but writing words dictated to them by
the teacher.
How to Start a Class in Written Words.
For example, suppose they know the sounds of
the first twelve letters in the Howell Primer; they
can M^rite any one of these letters when the teacher
er sounds it to them. Then I would send a section of
about a dozen to the blackboard, and dictate a few
words to them, a riming list to write. Take the
words in the Primer : at, bat, rat, hat, Nat, mat, sat.
Of course, dictate them one at a time, and see that
each child has written it correctly before dictating
the next word. I would have these words written
in a column. The teacher must help those that find
trouble in doing this. But she must not write the
word for them. This is the way she should give
" help : Suppose the teacher has dictated the word
bat, and she finds one child has written it hat. She
tells him that word is wrong; she asks him to spell
it. He can do this, and he gives the sounds b-a-t.
Then the teacher asks, "What letter does it begin
with ? '
' The child says " b. " " Whose letter is that ?
"
"Billy's," or "Bob's," or "Betty's," as the case
may be, replies the child. "Look at the board," says
the teacher, "and see Billy's letter." The child
looks, and changes his h to b.
When the words are all written, have each child
read his list. If you have never taught children
this way, you will be surprised to see that some of
them cannot read the words they themselves have
just written. But it is really not stirprising ; reading,
as I have said, is more difficult than writing. The
child, in concentrating his mind on the individual
letters, loses the force of them combined into a word.
Often the child next to him, who is not looking at
the board, will pronounce the word. The explana-tion
is simple : the child trying to read, is using his
eyes, and trying to associate a sound with each of
the three characters he sees; the child next to him,
is not using his eyes ; he is merely using his ears,
and he has had drill enough to know at once any
word that he hears sounded.
The Time for Patience in Phonic Teaching.
The only difficulty in teaching by the phonic meth-od
is right here at the beginning of trying to asso-ciate
written characters with spoken sounds. But
the rule for the teacher is. Make haste slowly. Give
the children time to get the hang of this thing. But
if they are not rushed by the teacher; if they are
given time to work out this new problem, it will not
be long before they will get this power of calling
the sounds that the characters stand for; and once
it becomes fairly automatic with a few letters, they
will have no more trouble. By the time they get
half-way through the Howell Primer, and come, say,
to the letter J on page 60,, all the teacher will have
to do, will be to show them the character that stands
for the j-siound,.and the children can write all the
words in that first column from dictation, without
having previously seen them ; and they will be able
to read them also.
The Best Results in an Alphabetic Language Are
Laid Upon a Phonic Foundation.
The fault of many teachers that try the phonic
method, is, they, are in too great a hurry to get what
they call '
' results. '
' If the result we are working for
with beginners is to make them independent readers,
the phonic method gives the quickest results. It
takes time to train the ear to recognize the word
from its elementary sounds; and it takes time to
make the association between written characters and
spoken words automatic. But this is the necessary
foundation. If that is well laid, the superstructure
of the building comes rapidly; In fact, the founda-tion
is about all there is to this building now under
discussion. After this the word reading means the
study of literature, or the acquiring of some other
knowledge ; and such reading may proceed rapidly
and surely upon the firm foundation of a mastery of
the elements of the reading art.
To-day is your day and mine—the only day we
have ; the day in which we play our part. What our
parts may signify in the great whole we may not
understand; but we are here to play it, and now is
our time. This we know, it is a part of acting, not
of whining.—David Starr Jordan.
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION
STEPS IN ORAL LANGUAGE FOR BEGINNING GRADES
By Miss Susie Fulghura. -f-
Have you ever watched little children at play?
What gives the joy and freedom M'ith which they
live in the "make-believe world?" 'Tis the imagi-nation
! Under its magic touch the most insignificant
object is easily and readily transformed to suit the
childish fancy. By this power a child lives in the
world which he creates for himself in his play. To
use this "supreme gift" in language work is the se-cret
of success. How may we do it?
In the first grade, when story-telling is introduced,
the teacher should see to it that every child has
such a vivid picture of the story he is to tell that
he will simply live it over in his mind as he recites
it to the class. We must discover ways to develop
this power of vivid imagining, for all children have
not equal ability along this line.
The First Week of School.
We begin the first week of school with little con-versation
lessons, or games as we sometimes call
them. Alwaj^s seeking for vivid mental pictures,
we use the memory first. 1 use these memory talks
for the purpose of stimulating clear and exact mem-ory
pictures. I relate some experience of what I saw
or did on the previous afternoon. This suggests to
one little fellow the memory of a delightful ride, to
another some game with merry companions. Memo-ries
so vivid and so pleasant that the desire to tell
them to the other children banishes all self-conscious-ness
! By frequent questions I do my best to aid the
child in giving a full account of his experience. It
is surprising to observe how rapidly the children im-prove
in this work.
In a few days I ask them to look at some picture at
home and to tell us all about it next day. The eager-ness
with which each pupil awaits his turn proves
the success of this plan. These lessons are followed
by the relating of some kind deed which I had seen
performed a few days before. The children then
watch for deeds of thoughtfuluess and kindness and
relate them to the grade. There is still no formality
;
these little "talks" are just among friends telling
interesting experiences. This is all memory repro-duction.
A picnic or party is described for another
lesson. By now the children have gained the power
of expressing themselves, and since they are really
living over again past fun, self-consciousness and
timidity have disappeared.
Training the Imagination.
Now we introduce lessons which require the use of
the imagination. All previous lessons have been a
preparation for this new work. To-day no actual
experience is asked for, but we take imaginary trips
down town, and tell what we see and where we go.
We play we are watching a boy and his pet dog. We
tell of his kindness to the animal. Another day we
are at a picnic, or perhaps we have a chance to buy
just what we wish. Oh, the joy of spending these
imaginary dollars
!
Now we are ready for more formal work. The
idea of clear visualizing is adhered to throughout
the work. Dear old Mother Goose furnishes material
for our next lessons.
The rhymes are recited, then dramatized, and each
picture produced by dramatization is clearly de-scribed.
The imagination supplies the details even
to the naming of the cows who ate the corn while
Little Boy Blue slept. This method was followed
with many of the rhymes until each character be-comes
a familiar friend. Then comes a delightful
guessing game. One child describes a Mother Goose
character, and the other children, listening with
closed eyes, rarely fail to recognize an old friend.
This same game is used in guessing the names of ani-mals
from descriptions given.
These lessons are followed by short .stories, some
little anecdote clearly told in a few sentences. Every
point in the story is clearly visualized, vivid mind
pictures of some little incident are sought. The
fables are included in this list of short stories.
The work here is varied by picture stories. Wholly
imaginative and so delightful are the stories we
have ! Sometimes difi:'erent pupils give sentences
and we weave a story, together. Sometimes one
child gives the whole story suggested by a picture.
Story Telling.
The next step is to introduce the accumulative
storJ^ The House that Jack Built or the Old Woman
and Her Pig is retold with remarkable freedom,
due to the previous training in clear mental pictures
and concise expression. As the work advances long-er
stories are told in sections, each section of such
length as to lead up to some interesting point in the
story. Each section is thus complete, and its inter-est
depends upon succeeding events. When a child
comes forward to give his reproduction of a portion
of a story, allow no interruptions. Let the child
feel that it is his chance to talk, and to live over
the events of the story. Watch self-reliance de-velop
in this way.
Try to keep the fever of interest and anticipation
at such a height that all feeling of self-conscious-ness
and timidity will vanish away. As this work
advances, in the second and third grades, our aim
is still the same—vivid mental pictures for each
pupil.
The Song of Hiawatha lends itself to this treat-ment,
and becomes the source of many delightful
lessons in the first and second grades. Robinson
Crusoe is perhaps the best of all second-grade stories.
Here the child's fancy is employed in solving practi-cal
problems. This oral treatment also applies to the
history stories and Nature Myths.
In the third grade we bring a number of mythical
stories vividly before the children. We give them
stories of heroes both mythical and historical
—
Cohimbus and John Smith as well as Ulysses—are in-troduced
to these hero-worshipping boys and girls.
An Edison or Marconi awakens their interest in the
wonder world about them.
No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him ; there is always work
And tools to work withal, for those who will
;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil
;
The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set.
Until occasion tells him what to do
;
And he who waits to have his task marked out,
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.
—James Russell Lowell.
10 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
SOME THINGS THAT INTEREST AND WIN LITTLE CHILDREN
By Miss Evelyn Royall, East Durham, N. C.
"Backward, turn backward, O time in your fliglit,
Make me a child again, just tor to-night."
Quite frequently, while planning a day's work,
this quotation comes to me over and over again.
Since it is impossible for the wheels of time to turn
backward, and meet the demands of the poet, fortu-nately,
for us who have the care of little children
memory and imagination can. It is often too true,
that wiien we were children, we thought as children,
but now we have put away childish things. If we
are to interest, train and teach little children, we
should never lose sight of childish things.
In studying the interests of the little people en-trusted
to' my care, I find it helpful to reflect upon
my own childhood. As I recall incidents, those that
impressed me most, loom up before me, from among
the others, as distinctly as do peaks from among
their neighboring mountain-tops. Only a few of
these were experiences of school life.
My Childhood Pleasures.
As a child, I was a lover of nature, especially of
flowers. If I should return to my old country home
now. I could easily find the identical fence corner,
from M'hich I gathered the dog-tooth violet, glisten-ing
with the morning dew. It would be an easy
matter for me to designate the old hickory tree, im-der
which we raked away the pine straw and wire
grass to find the sweet-scented trailing arbutus. I
could select the very tree which I frequented early
mornings, to pick up the best apples that grew in
the orchard. How well I remember the ponds where
we went in June to pick the delicious huckleberries
so peculiar to that section; the little brook below
the hill, where we played during the summer, and
on whose banks we gathered the beautiful ivy; the
thicket near by, where we hunted the turkeys that
had stolen their nests away. What a world of happy
experience was mine ! But my teachers were ignor-ant
of these things. They would, no doubt, have
considered it a misdemeanor had I discussed such
subjects in the school-room. It never occurred to me
and probably never to my teachers that these topics
could furnish material for delightful lessons in na-ture,
language, drawing, ethics, and almost every-thing
else connnected with my school life. Not
once do I remember that my teachers manifested any
interest whatever, in the things that most closely
touched my life.
I was easily attracted toward the person who
wovild relate stories to me. Not one can I recall that
was told me in school. But among the things that I
recollect most distinctly are the stories told by my
grandmother. By means of her stories she won for
herself a warm place in the hearts of all the chil-dren
of the community. A story that is always a
favorite with my little folks is "The Little Sweet
Cake." I tell it as my grandmother told it to me.
A Faded Note.
A childhood treasure wliich is yet in my posses-sion
is a faded and much-worn note. I was fond of
my teacher, and endeavored to please her and win
her approval. Sometimes I would place upon her
table a little note, assuring her of my devotion and
loyalty. Little did I think that she loved her pupils,
at any rate I had no evidence of it. One day I was
surprised and delighted beyond measure when she
handed me a note in which she thanked me for my
kindness and expressed her appreciation of my ef-forts
as a jnipil. Never before had it dawned upon
me that "teacher" cared. Aiter that nothing was
ever considered too difficult for me to attempt for
her. The little note was of too much value to be
destroyed, but was carefully laid away and fre-quently
read and re-read. That teacher has long
since died, but she ever lives fresh in my memory.
She never attained any high position in teaching ; in
fact, she never taught elsewhere except that little
district school. Remembering how she touched and
influenced my life, I feel that she did not labor in
vain.
Things That Mean Much to Children.
What child does not appreciate courtesy and atten-tion?
Let us not forget the little things which cost
only a little thought, and are worth so much to the
child. In a certain school a little girl was in the
habit of carrying flowers to several of the teachers.
Finally she ceased to carrj' them to all except one.
In reply to her mother's inquiry in regard to the
matter, she said: "I like to give flowers to Miss
Annie. She always smiles and says, 'Thank you,'
and the others do not.''
Remembering how much I enjoyed new clothes,
shoes, and hats, I try never to let any coming into
my school-room escape my notice, nor fail to bring
forth some words of admiration. One day little
Charles wore new pants to school. I failed to meet
his expectations. He stood around me on the play-ground,
anxiously waiting, for some comment. Grow-ing
impatient, and failing in all other attempts to
attract my attention, he jiroudly walked up, with
hands in his pocket, and looking into my face, said:
"Why don't you look at my pants? These are the
first gray breeches I ever had." What a rebuke!
Why hadn't I seen them? What a sore disappoint-ment
for him to feel that there was any one in the
whole world, 'especiallj' "teacher, "whose gaze was
not fixed upon those new pants. Did he not have a
perfect right to expect his teacher to rejoice with
him over his new possessions?
I frequently call to the front of the room where
all can see. children whose hair is nicely brushed.
This device serves as an incentive for tidiness in per-sonal
appearance. I have actually known little boys
to walk to school with cap in hand for fear of dis-hevelling
their hair, so carefully brushed, for teacher
to see.
Let us rejoice with the children when they rejoice,
and weep with them when they weep. Let us not
forget the cut fingers, the sore feet, the stubbed toes,
the aching teeth, and the sick children. To a little
one kept at home on account of illness, a visit from
"teacher" is of countless value. We should not fail
to notice his return to school, and assure him that
his absence was felt, and that his return is welcomed.
Children expect this attention and sympathy; and
they deserve it. One of my earliest recollections of
school is of a kind teacher who gave me some straw-berries
when I was sick.
If Ave expect to interest our pupils, and win them
(Continued on page 25.)
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION 11
PROGRAM FOR A ONE-TEACHER AND A TWO-TEACHER SCHOOL
By E. C.
The teachers of Durham County have spent some-time
working on the daily schedule. Since each
school had to be guided by the number of pupils en-rolled
and by the number in each grade, these sched-ules
necessarily vary in the details. 1 have selected
therefore two schedules, one from a one-teacher
school and one from a two-teacher school, that seem
to be well worked out.
The One-Teacher Program.
The one-teacher scedule provides for only five
classes and twenty-nine pupils. The pupils are
classified as follows: Beginners, 3; first grade, 5;
second grade, 5; third grade, 6; fourth grade, 7;
and fifth grade, 3.
Hour. Subject. Grade. Time.
8:45— 8:55—Opening Exercises. All. 10 min.
8:55— 9:10—Primer Class. Beginners. 15 min.
9:10— 9 :20—Spelling. First Grade. 10 min.
9:20— 9 :30—Spelling. Second Grade. 10 min.
9:30—10:30—Arithmetic. Second to Fifth
Grades. 60 min.
10:30—10:40—Recess. All. 10 min.
10 :40—10 :50—Primer Class. Beginners. 10 min.
10:50—11:00—Reading. First Grade. 10 min.
11 :00—11 :15—Reading. Se«ond Grade. 15 min.
11:15—11:30—Reading. Third Grade. 15 min.
11:30—11:45—Language. Fourth Grade. 15 min.
11:45—12:00—Language. Fifth Grade. 15 min.
12:00— 1:00—Recess. All. 60 min.
1 :00— 1 :10—Writing. First and Begin-ners.
10 min.
1 :10— 1 :20—Reading. First Grade. 10 min.
1 :20— 1 :30^Readiug. Second Reader. 10 min.
1:30— 1:45—Hygiene or Agriculture.
Fifth Grade. 15 min.
1 :45— 2 :00—Reading. Third Reader. 15 min.
2 :00— 2 :15—History. Fourth Grade. 15 min.
2:15— 2 :30—History. Fifth Grade. 15 min.
2 :30— 2 :40—Recess. All. 10 min.
2 :40— 2 :55—Primer Cla.ss. Begiunners. 15 min.
2 :55— 3 :10—Geography. Fourth Grade. 15 min.
3 :10— 3 :30—Geography. Fifth Grade. 20 min.
3:30— 3 :40—Spelling. Second Grade. 10 min.
3 :40— 3 :50—Spelling. Third Grade. 10 min.
3 :50— 4 :00—Spelling. Fourth and Fifth
Grades. 10 min
The Two-Teacher Program.
The two-teacher schedule provides for an attend-ance
of sixty-nine pupils—thirty-nine in the first
three grades and thirty in the advanced grades. The
number of pupils on each recitation is indicated. You
will observe that the pupils in the first three grades
recite seven times during the day, but their recitation
period is short. While in the advanced grades the
recitation periods are longer and the number is re-duced
to five. Some teachers, however, prefer to
hold their arithmetic classes in the moi-ning rather
than in the afternoon. But the arrangement of this
pi'ogram seems to me to be very good:
The Primary Grades.
Hour. Subject. Time. Pupils.
8 :30— 8 :40^—Opening exercises for all.
10 minutes. 39
Brooks.
Hour. Subject. Time. Pupils.
8 :40— 8 :55—Beginners—Phonics.
15 minutes. 5
8:55— 9:10—First Reader—Spelling.
15 minutes. 10
9:10— 9:20—Second Grade—Spelling in
the Reading. 10 minutes. 10
9 :20— 9 :40—Third Grade—Reading.
20 minutes. 14
9 :40— 9 :55—Beginners—Reading.
15 minutes. 5
9:55—10:10—First Grade—Reading.
15 minutes. 10
10 :10—10 :30—Second Grade—Reading.
20 minutes. 10
10:30—10:45—Recess for all. 15 minutes.
10:4.5—11:25—Number Work and
Arithmetic for all. 40 minutes. 39
11:25—12:00—Language to rail. 35 minutes 39
12:00— 1:00—Recess for all. 1 hour.
1 :00— 1 :10—Beginners—Phonics.
10 minutes. 5
1 :10— 1 :20—First Reader—Spelling.
10 minutes. 10
1 :20— 1 :40—Second Grade. Reading.
20 minutes. 10
1 :40— 2 :00—Third Grade—Reading.
20 minutes. 14
2:00— 2 :15—Beginners—Phonics
and Reading. 15 minutes. 5
2:15— 2:30—First Reader—Reading.
15 minutes. 10
2 :30— 2 :45—Recess for all. 15 minutes.
2 :45— 3 :10—Drawing or Nature
Study for all. 25 minutes. 39
3 :10— 3 :25—Second Grade—Spelling.
15 minutes. 10
3:25— 3:40—Third Grade—Spelling.
15 minutes. 14
3 :40— 4 :00—Preparation for next day.
20 minutes.
Intermediate and Advanced Classes.
Hour. Subject. Time. Pupils.
8 :30— 8 :45—Opening Exercises.
15 minutes. 30
8:45— 9 :00—Spelling—Fourth and
Fifth Grade. 15 minutes. 10
9 :00— 9 :15—Spelling for Sixth
and Advanced. 15 minutes. 20
9:15— 9:50—Fourth and Fifth Grade
Geography or Na-ture
study. 35 minutes. 10
9 :50—10 :30—Sixth and Advanced
Grades .Geography. 40 minutes. 20
10:30—10:45—Recess for all. 15 minutes.
10:45—11 :05—Fourth Grade—Reading
or History. 20 minutes. 4
11 :05—11 :25—Fifth Grade—Reading
or Hisory. 20 minutes. 6
11 :25—11 :45—Sixth Grade—Reading
or History. 20 minutes. 15
11 :45—12 :00—Literature. 15 minutes. 5
12 :00— 1 :00—Recess for all. 1 hour.
(Continued on page 13.)
12 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
STANDARDS OF SOUTHERN COLLEGES FOR WOMEN
By Elizabeth Avery Cblton, Chairman of Committee on Standards of Colleges of the Southern As-sociation
of College Women.
[This is condensed from Miss Colton's report given
at the annual meeting of the Southern Association of
College Women, Nashville, Tenn., April 5th. The
full text of this report will appear in the September
number of the School Review (University of Chicago
Press).]
The Committee on Standards of Colleges have dis-covered
in the South one hundred and forty-one col-leges
for women, distributed as follows: In Mary-land,
seven ; in Virginia, thirteen ; in West Virginia,
Florida, and Oklahoma, one, each; in North Caro-lina,
eighteen ; in South Carolina, ten ; in Georgia
and Alabama, nine, each; in Mississippi and Texas,
fourteen, each ; in Louisiana, five ; in Arkansas, two
;
in Missouri, ten; in Kentucky, fifteen; and in Ten-nessee,
twelve. North Carolina appears ignominious-ly
to head the list ; but an equally close-range search-light
might prove several othev States guilty of an
equally absurd number of nominal colleges, for three
institutions in Kentucky and an additional twelve
in Tennessee failed to respond to requests for cata-logues.
In fact, I am not absolutely sure that the
above numbers are complete for any State except
North Carolina. But, as hardly a fifth of the institu-tions
enumerated are giving any standard college
courses, it is safe to assume that no institution doing
any college work has been omitted.
Only four of all the colleges for women in the
South have been recognized by the Association of
Colleges of the Southern States, and only six others
are included by the Specialist in Higher Education
in either his third or his fourth class. The remain-ing
one hundred and thirty-one Southern colleges for
women have never been classified according to any
national or sectional standard. I have; therefore, at-tempted
to formulate some basis of classification
which might indicate, however inadequately, some
distinction between institutions which are merely
inferior secondary schools and those which are really
doing more or less college work. With this object
in view, I have during the past year compiled statis-tics
showing the specific admission requirements an-nounced
in the catalogues of Southern colleges for
women, and with these statistics as a basis I have
grouped all these institutions under the following
heads
:
(1) Institutions belonging to the Association of
Colleges of the Southern States.
(2) Institutions ofl'ering from three to four years
above standard college entrance requirements, but
not conforming to the regulations of the Southern
College Association.
(3) Institutions counting two or more years of
preparatory work towards a baccalaureate degree.
(4) Institutions counting from three to four years
of preparatory work towards a baccalaureate de-gree.
Best Institutions in Each Group.
The first group is limited to four colleges—
Goueher, Sophie Newcomb, Randolph-Macon, and
Agnes Scott. In the second group there are thirty-three
institutions, of which five deserve special men-tion
for their better general organization and equip-ment—
Mississippi Industrial Institute and College,
Florida State College for Women, Converse, Mere-dith,
North Carolina State Normal and Industrial
College, and Winthrop. And Salem College has re-cently
acquired an endowment which should enable
it soon to conform to the regulations of a standard
college. Of the forty-nine ifistitutions in the third
group, the following oflFer two years of work most
nearly conforming to that of a standard college:
Hardin, Hamilton, Lindenwood, and All Saints Epis-copal
College. Of the fifty-five institutions in the
fourth group, Birmingham Seminary makes a point
of offering a course which definitely prepares for
college.
But a number of equally good preparatory schools
have the greater distinction of being omitted entire-ly
from the fourth group because they do not claim
to be colleges, either by retaining the name college
or by conferring degrees. Notably among these are
the following schools which belong to the Association
of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern
States: Agnes Scott Academy, Blackstone Female
Institute, Girls' Latin School (Baltimore), Miss
Bibbes' School, Pape School, and Ward Seminary.
Three institutions included in the third group also
deserve honorable mention for not conferring de-grees
and for not assuming the name college—St.
Mary's School (North Carolina), Peace Institute, and
Southern Seminary.
Fourteen Admission Units Do Not Make a CoUegfe.
Since the famous 1906 Carnegie Foundation defini-tion
of a college ,the idea has unfortunately become
rather prevalent in the South that in order to be-come
a standard college, all that is necessary is to
announce an admission requirements of fourteen
units. In 1906, only four Southern colleges for wo-men
required fourteen entrance units ; by 1910, the
number announcing this requirements had increased
to fifteen; in 1911, the number announcing fourteen
or more units had jumped to thirty. But, with the
exception of the four already discussed in group one,
very few of "these institutions have any endowment
whatever. They are, therefore, unable to engage
even as many as six well-trained professors exclus-ively
for college work, or to provide libraries, labo-ratories
and other buildings and equipment neces-sary
for maintaining a high standard of scholarship
and efficiency. Consequently, though twenty-six in-stitutions
in the second group are announcing in
quantity standard admission requirements, none of
them has yet been recognized as a standard college.
And it cannot be too strongly emphasized that the
announcement of a requirement of fourteen entrance
units by no means indicate that an institution is able
to enforce this requirement, or that its curriculum is
of college standard, or that students are actually
pursuing the courses outlined .for baccalaureate de-grees.
In fact, only one-third of the thirty-three in-stitutions
in the second group publish a clearly de-fined
student roll, showing the pi-oportion of prepara-tory,
special-study, and college students; therefore
it is impossible to tell whether twenty-two of these
institutions have any appreciable number of "regu-lar"
sudents working for a degree.
Several show in other ways that they have not
fully grasped the requisites of a college. Brenau
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION 13
College, for example, devotes more than a third of
its catalogue to illustrations and quotations, and
barely a sixth to its courses of study; yet Brenau
confei's six degrees! And Young's nearly trebled
its admission requirements in its last catalogue, so
that presumably its present freshmen are more ad-vanced
than its sophomores and juniors.
Many other institutions in this group, as well as in
the third and the fourth group, should bear in mind
that no institution doing two or more years of prepa-ratory
work in its collegiate department can turn
into a college between June and September. The
best colleges in the second group raised their en-trance
requirements one or two units a year. And
one institution found difficulty in increasing from
ten to fourteen units in four years. Yet several col-leges
in the third and fourth groups have already
announced their intention of increasing their en-trance
requirements six or eight units during next
summer. By so doing, they will not, as they sup-pose,
become eligible to membership in the Associa-tion
of Colleges of the Southern States, but they
will probably find that, like Young's, their last state
is worse than their first.
Best Way to Improve Standards.
And since without an endowment it is impossible
to become or, at any rate, to remain a standard col-lege,
it is to be hoped that, instead of emulating the
example of such institutions as Brenau, Buford, La-grange,
and Young's, more of the best institutions
in the third group will make the slight re-organiza-tion
which would turn them into thorough two-year
colleges. As the majority of the institutions in this
group, however, have not sufficient equipment for
doing even two years of college work, it would prob-ably
be wiser for them to remain what they are—
a
sort of combination finishing school and academy—
until the old order is so completely changed that
there will be no demand for this kind of education.
But all the institutions in this group and in the
fourth would gain in dignity if they dropped the
name college and substituted diplomas for degrees.
And as our public secondary schools, junior colleges,
and near colleges continue to improve, the institu-tions
in the fourth group, if they hope to live at all,
will no doubt eventually be forced to become good
preparatory schools and so to designate themselves.
But before that educational millenium is reached,
it will be necessary for many colleges in all the
groups to eliminate not only a large proportion of
fine arts '
' specializers, '
' but for them to eliminate an
even greater number of "specials" of the kind who
drop studies simply because they are difficult. In
fact, the predominance of preparatory and "irregu-lar"
pupils constitutes the leading characteristic,
and at the same time the leading weakness of South-ern
colleges for women. Some institutions try to
make a virtue of necessity and advertise that their
upper preparatory classes are taught by college pro-fessors
; and some advocate the association of prepa-ratory
and college students, on the ground that such
association "furnishes that stimulus so necessary
for inspiration and higher ideals"; others dwell
on the benefit that their music, art, and expression
students receive from "the social and intellectual
life of the college. '
' But in reality the over-worked
professor, the immature fine-arts "specialist," and
even "the inspired" prep are apt to make the clear,
keen, scholarly atmosphere of college life' somewhat
hazy. Therefore, the rigid separation of preparatory
and college students, as well as the academic prepa-ration
of special-study pupils, demanded by the As-sociation
of Colleges of the Southern States is abso-lutely
essential to a high standard of scholarship in
Southern colleges for women.
Yet, in spite of the predominance in our colleges
of specializers of every variety, and' in spite of the
alluring appeal many colleges make by their array
of sham degrees, our Southern girls are, t think,
learning to appreciate a well-rounded education ; for
each year shows an increase in the number of those
who are willing to stay at college after they are
eighteen. It is, therefore, confidently to be expected
that, in addition to our four recognized women 's col-leges,
a few others that are now meeting standard
admission requirements will within the next four or
five years secure a sufficient endowment to enable
them to fulfil the other requisities of a college in re-gard
to faculty, curriculum, and equipment.
In order to improve the standard of all women's
colleges in the South, the Southern Association of
College Women should urge each institution to rec-ognize
its limitations, and, instead of becoming a
pseudo "college-conservatory," to try to become the
best of its kind, whether that be a preparatory
school, a finishing school, or a junior college. And
in order that the best in each group should receive
the support they deserve, our dilferent branches and
individual members should try, in season and out of
season, to inform the public on the following points
:
(1) What colleges and schools have been recog-nized
by the Association of Colleges and Preparatory
Schools of the Southern States, and what colleges
have been rated by the Specialist in Higher Educa-tion
as doing as much as three years of college work.
(2) Why institutions calling themselves colleges
are not necessarily colleges ; and, consequently, why
a good high school or preparatory school diploma is
often of more value than a nominal A. B. degree.
(3) Why the sudden increase of admission require-ments
without a proportionate increase in faculty
and in equipment injures rather than improves the
standard of an institution.
(4) Why the admitting of preparatory, special,
and special-study pupils affects the standard of ah
institution.
(5) Why, therefore, the regulations of the Asso-ciation
of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the
Southern States are of the utmost importance in the
development of standard colleges in the South.
PROGRAM FOR A ONE-TEACHER AND A TWO-TEACHER
SCHOOL.
(Continued from page 11.)
Hour. Subject. Time. Pupils.
1:00— 1:20—Fourth Grade—Lan-guage.
20 minutes. 4
1 :20— 1 :40—Fifth Grade—Lan-guage.
20minutes. 6
1 :40— 2 :05—Sixth Grade—Lan-guage.
25 minutes. 15
2 :05— 2 :30—Advanced—Language.
25 minutes. 5
2 :30— 2 :45—Recess for all. 15 minutes
2 :45— 3 :20—Arithmetic—Fourth and
Fifth Grades. 35 minutes. 10
3:20 —4:00—Sixth and Advanced
Arithmetic. 40 minutes. 15
14 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
THE HOME SCHOOL AT WINTHROP COLLEGE
By Claud Bennett.
In the educational world new and mighty forces
are at work. The best brains of the country are
engaged in the solution of problems as old as time
itself. Prom the time of Pestalozzi and Proebel to
the present day the task of adjusting the school to
the daily life of the people has been the problem of
the teacher,—especially the teacher in the rural
school. Some two years ago Dr. Bourland, agent
of the Peabody and Carnegie Fund, approached
President D. B. Johnson, of Winthrop College, Rock
Hill, S. C, and made the proposition that an Experi-mental
Rural School be established and agreed to
furnish from the Peabody Fund a part of the money
necessary for the employment of a teacher. Dr.
Johnson who had long had a similar plan in his mind
readily gave his consent and co-operation to the
scheme, with the result that there is to-day at Rock
Hill a very marvelous school.
In company with Dr. Bourland and Prof. W.
K. Tate of the Department of Elementary Schools of
South Carolina, I visited the school on the first day of
May. As we passed from the Winthrop College cam-pus
through an ivy-covered hedge row, the first
thing that presented itself was a group of children
in the garden,—some of them hoeing, two boys were
plowing, and other children were gathering radishes
for the mid-day luncheon. Soon after our arrival
the children had completed their morning's work in
the garden and were ready for the other duties of
the day. In this connection Mr. Tate, speaking of
the work in the garden, said: "The physical wiggle
is worked off first and then the children are ready
for study. We have the wrong idea about things;
we usually say study for the early morn liour and
then work ; but the physical work should come first.
This is right in line with civilization ; work first, and
culture afterwards."
The School-House.
The school-house is not a school-house in the mod-ern
sense of the term at all. There are no patent
seats, no teachers' desk, no formidable rules; but the
work is done iij a house that was previously occupied
by the family of an employe of the college and con-sists
of five rooms, one of which is used as a gen-eral
work room, one as a cook room, still another as
a museum, while the remaining two rooms are used
for work-shop and cloak rooms respectively. There
are tables and chairs in all the rooms and on the
porch which extends all the way round the house.
This model home-school, school-home, or whatever
one chooses to call it—for it is as much of a home as
it is a school—is presided over by Mrs. Hetty S.
Brown, who graduated at Winthrop and later took
advanced work at Columbia University, New York.
The Recitation.
On coming from the garden some of the children
passed into the kitchen while others stopped on the
porch for a recitation. The first lesson was on
beans. Several days previous to our visit a number
of boxes had been arranged for testing the seed and
the night before a number of seed had been soaked
in water. Mrs. Brown began the lesson by an inform-al
discussion of the various varieties of beans and a
comparison was made between the size of the soaked
beans and those that were not soaked. The children
tore off the seed coat and remarked on its tough-ness.
Then its value as a food product was dis-cussed,
after which the children passed into a room
where Mrs. Brown had put on the board a number
of words arranged as follows:
seed coat tough - feeds
cotyledons speckled swollen
plant soft softens
These words were now spelled, their meaning hav-ing
been learned in the discussion on the porch. Af-ter
a few minvites the children were provided with
paper and pencil and instructed to draw a line half
an inch from the margin of the paper and two other
lines two inches apart, and to write the word just
as they had been written on the board. It will be
seen that here was a lesson in science, agriculture,
reading, spelling, arithmetic, drawing, and gram-mar
; for it will be noted that all the words in the
first column are nouns, those in the second adjec-tives,
and those in the third column are verbs. Not
a word was said about nouns, adjectives, or verbs;
noi* was there anything said about arithmetic or
drawing, but these subjects were being taught and
being taught very efScientlJ^
In the Kitchen.
Posted on the wall of the cook-room was a sched-ule
for the day's duties. It will be seen that both
boys and girls were expected to do some work in
this department.
Schedule.
Cups—Rosy and Nell.
Dust^Mary.
Chairs-^Aggie and Bonnie.
Kettles—Lawrence and Charlie.
Water—Arthur and Conlie.
Towels—Maggie and Estelle.
Line—John.
Carpenter's shop—Estelle.
Museum—Nellie and Mary.
Flowers—Wilma and Johnnie.
Some things on this schedule were a bit puzzling
to me and I asked a little girl what, "Line—John,"
meant. "Why," said, "yesterday the line on which
we hang our towels and dish clothes fell and John
had to fix it up this morning. '
' From the kitchen to
the work-shop, where only useful things are made,
from the work-shop to the museum, and from the
museum back to the front porch the children went
without confusion or noise, though each child spoke
freely on any subject he chose and there were no
don'ts aiul thou shalt nets to hinder or prevent.
No Fear of Visitors.
Professor Tate and Dr. Bourland are prime favor-ites
with the children and the boys don't hesitate to
crawl upon the broad back of the former or pluck the
sleeve of the latter if they have something of inter-est
to point out or \vant to ask some question. I
said to a group of little girls: "You like Professor
Tate, don't you?" A little girl spoke up and said:
"Yes, sir; and we like you, too." This is character-istic
of their attitude towards strangers. There is
no fear, no hesitancy in speech or manner. All of
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION 15
them are as free as the birds that sing and build
their nests in the trees on Winthrop campus.
Luncheon.
Preparation for the mid-day meal began about 11
o'clock. It chanced that the majority of the chil-dren
were in the main work-room when the time
came for this work and Mrs. Brown called for volun-teers
to prepare the lettuce for lunch. A dozen girls
offered to do the work, but Mrs. Brown turning to
the black-board wrote the word lettuce and to the
right of this word the names of the two girls who
were to do the work. The children spelled the word
and immediately went to the kitchen. Volunteers
were then called for to prepare the dressing for the
lettuce. Again a dozen hands went up. The word
dressing was written on the board and to the right
the names of the children who were to prepare it.
Others went to the porch and began getting the
table ready, and here a problem in arithmetic was
worked out. The table was found to be eighteen feet
long and there were three guests, nineteen pupils,
and the teacher. By placing a chair at each end of
the iong table, how many would that leave for each
side? Every little head was busy, and soon all the
plates were arranged and we were summoned to
dinner. After grace had been said the plates were
helped by the teacher who sat at one end of the table.
I think it was the happiest, jolliest bunch I ever saw.
Riddles were propounded, stories were told, short
poems recited ; and in it all and through it all, there
was perfect freedom and naturalness. At the con-clusion
of the meal volunteers were called into ser-vice.
A number of girls washed and put up the
dishes, others brushed the crumbs from the table and
pulled the chairs back, while the boys swept the floor
and drew the water. I have been permitted to at-tend
a good many functions where the menu was
somewhat elaborate, but in all my life I have never
found so much good cheer, so much unaffected sim-plicity
and politeness as I found in this little Caro-lina
school where the teacher was hostess and where
the children were models of good behavior. As we
were gathered about the board, the mocking-bird
was singing in a near-by apple tree and the thrush
was calling to his mate in a neighboring hedge, while
a cat-bird was making his mid-day meal on a big fat
caterpillar that he had found on a peach tree whose
branches touched the porch on which we sat.
Ten minutes after dinner I made a note of the
following groups: using the same table that had
been used for luncheon, a group of girls were sew-ing,
making laundry bags, handkerchiefs, etc. ; just
inside the room Mrs. Brown was condutcing a his-tory
recitation ; not more than .six feet away a group
of boys were planning a net with which they hoped
to capture a bumble-bee that was needed for the
museum; out on the grass a little girl was reading
Robinson Crusoe to a group of children ; down at the
end of the porch a boy was doing some problems
in arithmetic. Thus the work went on for the three
hours that we stayed there,
—
all busy, all happy. As
I looked into the faces of these children all of whom
are, either the children of tenant farmers or cotton
mill employes, I thought of the thonusands of other
little ones all over our Southland who are only wait-ing
the touch of a master hand to make them just
as happy and just as attractive as the little Rock
Hill children.
A STUDY OF THE GREAT EDUCATIONAL CLASSICS
III—PESTALOZZI'S LEONARD AND GERTRUDE.
By Holland Holton.
Pastalozzi suggests and expands the simplest defi-nition
of the word school. In his "Leonard and Ger-true,
" school is simply "home writ large." "Leon-ard
and Gertrude" is a simple tale of every-day
Swiss and German life at the close of the eighteenth
century. The story centers around the village Bonnal
in which the inhabitants are divided into two groups,
—the prosperous peasants, who, with light dues to
the lord and free use of the village common, are
content to go on year after year in the trodden
paths of ignorance, narrow living and superstition
;
and the day laborers, mostly spinners, huddled to-gether
in the poorer quarters of the village, no less
ignorant, narrow-minded and superstitious, and la-dened
with an even heavier liability of idleness and
vice in addition to the petty oppressions of corrupt
officials and tavern-keepers. The homes of the vil-lagers
reflect the unhappy conditions within, and
there seems no possibility of progress. Even the good
pastor has gone to sleep at his post, and lives with
his head in the cloud and a melancholy eye down-cast
on time-honored abuses that go unchallenged.
Gertrude 's Home-School.
Then suddenly the revolution begins. Leonard, a
brick-mason, goes home one evening to find his wife
in tears and the children trying vainly to comfort
her as they all weep together scarce knowing why.
The good mason readily guesses that the cause of
the weeping is his own idle habit of spending too
much time at the village tavern, which, however, is
owned and managed by the lord's representative or
liailift'. He bitterly confesses to Gertrude, the wife,
that his heavy indebtedness to the bailiff for neces-sary
loans in the past puts him absolutely at his
mercy so that he dares not break away from the
tavern. From this point Gertrude becomes the cen-tral
figure of the story, and we begin to see in her
the concrete ideal of the home-spirit that Pestalozzi
believed holds the key to the difficult problems of
education. The rest of the story only tells how by
plain common sense combined with a true woman's
insight she made her home a model for the reforma-tion
of Bonnal and furnished inspiration for an
ideal school. On hearing Leonard's confession she
immediately resolves to carry the story of the bailiff's
oppressions direct to Arner, the feudal lord, who at
once begins investigation. Arner here represents
the power of the State as well as the man of means,
and we can see in turn Pestalozzi 's ideas as to what
the attitude of State and men of means should be. He
first tries to remove the evils of idleness by giving
work to al who will have it, the bare opportunity to
help themselves.
He warns the bailiff', and at last has to dimiss him
for his evil practices. He upholds the pastor in his
16 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
fight against old superstitions. He takes a more di-rect
interest in his village than ever before, and re-solves
to give the poorer peasantry an opportunity to
acquire land taken from the common so tenaciously
held by their wealthier neighbors. Thus no one in.
the village is to have an excuse for idleness, and
every one is to share the opportunity for self-help.
Still Arner realizes that he has as yet only changed
surface conditions and has not touched fundamental
causes.
More and more, however, he is impressed by the
manner in which Gertrude is rearing her children.
Their industry, reverence for authority, and whole-some
activity are in strange contrast with the man-ner
of other children, and their neatness and gen-eral
care of their persons excite his admiration. He
rightly surmises that all this comes from proper
training in the home, and with a friend he visits
Gertrude at her morning work as she attends to her
household duties and at the same time teaches her
children and the motherless children of a neighbor.
The day's teaching begins bj" first having every-thing
absolutely neat in the room before any in-struction
is attempted, and then having Bible
verses and other memory work. After this each child
is given a task and assigned to his spinning, and
this manual work is then made the basis of the
work in number—counting backwards and forwards,
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division be-ing
easily taught in this manner. For moral train-ing
other than the moral basis necessarily underly-ing
this manner of teaching, Gertrude teaches the
children songs to sing when they are tired, keeps
choice mottos and thoughts continually before them,
and devotes certain times to direct moral instruction
in the narrower sense.
Gertrude's Home School Taken as a Model.
In thus observing Gertrude's home-school Arner 's
friend sees a vision. He resolves himself to become
school-master in Ijoniial and take Gertrude as his
model. He resolves to make the school-room a great
home in which the child shall find a chance to grow
through wholesome activity in the things in which
he already finds an interest. He is going to make
the school an ideal place for children to work, a
model for every home in Bonnal. Behavior, neat-ness,
accuracy, industry, reverence for authority
—
all are going to be taught upon the basis of whole-some
manual activity.
This, as we have thus roughly sketched the story,
is sufScient to give Pestalozzi's idea as to the proper
means of meeting such conditions as existed in Bon-nal,
the very conditions that are every-day tales to
us. It remains to follow him to his logical conclu-sion.
He tells us how the ideal school patterned on
the model home was organized and in turn became
the model for the regeneration of Bonnal, the in-spiration
for a total revolution. The landed proprie-tor,
encouraged by what the school was evidently do-ing
for the children, took heart as to the older peo-ple
as well, expelled idleness from the community by
persuasion and by force, encouraged industry, and
did his part in the improvement of home conditions.
The pastor, assured of strong allies in the school and
-in his patron, scourged vice as never before and be-came
just as vital a factor as either in the every-day
lives of his flock. The children were drawn from
the streets to the school and there taught in a di-rectly
practical way reverence for labor, habits of
industry and thrift, and given an ever-present lesson
of what home should be. They learned how to work
and how to live in the fullest sense of the terms.
The Applieation To-day.
This is the picture Pestalozzi has painted for us.
We have not hesitated to accept the more glowing
tints of the vision. We all in theory have accepted
the ideal of making the school a passingly decent
place to work. We nominally accept the doctrine of
the moral basis of all education. We have, spas-modically
perhaps, undertaken in village after vil-lage
to improve home conditions. We have accepted
literally, in some cases absurdly too literally, the
doctrine of teaching through familiar objects. But
we are slow to accept the fundamental idea of de-velopment
of the child through the actual mastery
of manual work. Why is this not sound also, and
just as practical as the rest? If it is thinking that
educates, why are we so unwilling to allow the child
to think in terms of what he already understands?
When he has the innate craving for creative activ-it}^
why are we so indifferent about allowing him
to cjeate with his hands, where he can realize that
he is really doing something? Why can we not see
the meaning of the so-called "manual arts" of the
larger schools, and in our smaller schools give direct
manual training in the truest, simplest sense of the
term? No school teaches manual art to train car-penters—
not even to give the child practical use of
the tools necessarj' in mending the barn-yard fence.
The purpose is to train the eye and hand and head
—
not to say, heart—by using them in the way nearest
to hand. Why then could not our rural schools de-velop
manual training in the field, or our village
schools develop it in the mills, without raising the
protest that they are training farmers or mill-work-ers
exclusivley?. If a child must work in the mill—
and good business men stand ready to do their part,
as they usually do—why would it work him any
harder to spend five hours a day at necessary labor
and three in school instead of spending ten at man-ual
labor ? Why would it be harder for him to spend
five hours in the mill and three in school instead of
spending six in school and four doing work after
school as so many do? Or for children who spend
only half the year in school, why could not special
classes be arranged in which one of every two groups
would work one week in the mill and the next would
change places Avith the other group and be in school
with at least the work in arithmetic and English
composition based upon the work done out of school
the week before? Or why could not a practical
"home economics" course be planned, including sim-ple
hygiene and sanitation in addition to the ordi-nary
domestic science so-called, in which only dem-onstration
lessons need be given at school and the
child could try out in the home the work given on
class, reporting back for written composition the re-sults
obtained as well as samples of the work? If
power of expression is developed by such magic titles
bearing upon the child's life, as "How I Spent My
Vacation," why would it not be just as well' de-veloped
by the more concrete theme, "How I Made
Bread This Morning"? If playing with carpenter's
tools has been so effective a means of holding the
interest of boys in school and vitalizing the work of
the schools now giving manual training, why would
not regular periods of other work requiring the same
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION 17
accuracy, neatness, and other kindred virtues be just
as effective, or more effective, if the other work hap-pened
to be nearer the life of the community? These
and a hundred similar questions will bear consider-ation
if we seriously ponder Pestalozzi's great idea.
But finally, what substitute do we, in the increas-ing
trend toward city and village life, offer to the
children of this generation for the training in man-ual
labor on the farm that meant so much educa-tion
to the boy of a generation ago? The work on
the farm did not hold him there: on the contrary, it
taught him a self-reliance that impelled him to try
conclusions with other boys of nominally better
training, and it taught him habits of industry that
enabled him to come to the city and in every profes-sion
and work hold his own.
JUNALUSKA : THE GREAT CHEROKEE CHIEF
By W. M. Marr, Trinity College.
The first half of the nineteenth century was a
time in the history of our Western frontiers
when events to a great degree made men. Espe-cially
is this true in the history of the Cherokee
Indians in Western North Carolina. With few ex-ceptions,
all the Cherokee braves whose deeds and
influence still live to enrich the life of this very un-fortunate
tribe were men who attained distinction
and renown for some worthy action during or short-ly
before the time of the removal of 1838. It is very
difficult to glean from records or the minds of old
Indians enough material to give in chronological
order the events in the life of the early chiefs or
braves of the first part of the last century. The
crowning deed of a man's life, however, always
comes to tell the story. In the case of many of these
braves the good they did lives after them while the
evil was interred with their bones.
Among the old notables of Western Carolina In-dians
was Junaluska. Born about the year 1760 in
some unknown spot among the Smoky Mountains,
brought up to manhood at a time when the Govern-ment
was in the making and his nation was at the
height of its power, seeing the travail of his people
and the impending doom which was inevitable, Jun-aluska
lived to see the star of the Red Man sink in
the far off west and a new world power rise to es-tablish
itself on his old hunting ground. In early
life he was known as Gal'kala'ski, which name de-notes
something habitually falling from a leaning
position. Why such a title should have been given
to the man is unknown to any of his descendants.
Junaluska in Creek War.
The first trustworthy facts relative to the life of
Junaluska are to be had from Andrew Jackson's re-ports
of the army manevers in the war against the
Creek Indians during the second war with England.
At that time Junalaska was chief of the East Chero-kee
tribe in the Smoky Mountains. Being in sym-pathy
with the American troops under Jackson, he
raised a body of troops in 1813 to go down and, as
he boasted, "to exterminate the Creeks." Kis most
valiant service to Jackson was rendered at the battle
of Horseshoe Bend, Ala., March 27, 1814. This ter-rible
battle was the final event of the Creek War.
Horseshoe Bend is located in the Tallapoosa River
in what is now Tallapoosa County, Alabama. The
river makes a bend so as to enclose some eighty or
one hundred acres in a narrow peninsula. The
Creeks had built a strong breastwork of logs across
this peninsula which protected their houses from the
front. Along the bank were a number of canoes
which were to be used when retreat became neces-sary.
One thousand Indians manned the fort, in
addition to there being present three hundred wo-men
and children. Jackson had two thousand men,
five hundred of whom were Cherokee Indians.
Preparatory to fighting. Jackson sent General Cof-fee
with the cavalry and the Indian force to cross the
river about three miles below and surround the bend
in such a way that there would be no possible way
of escape for the Creeks in that direction, while
Jackson himself with the rest of the force made an
attack on the center of the fort. After two hours
cannonading and rifle firing verj' feeble results were
obtained. The Cherokees had been ordered by Gen-eral
Coffee to conceal themselves along the bank,
yet since the fighting was so near and they were not
engaged, they rose with indignation and rushed to
take an active part in the battle. It was under such
an impetus as this that Junaluska conceived the plan
by which to storm the fort effectivelj'. He, together
with several other Indians, swam across the river
and cut a number of canoes from their moorings,
dodging and diving under the water from the shots
that were aimed at them by the enemy who had dis-covered
their presence and intentions. A large num-ber
of Cherokee troops crossed over in these canoes
and attacked the Creeks in the rear of the fort it-self,
being led on by Junaluska.
Such an unexpected attack from the rear diverted
the attention of the Creeks from the fighting in front
and made the way easy for Sam Houston and his
Tennessee riflemen to scale the breastworks and en-ter
the fort. Being surrounded now by the Ameri-can
and Cherokee troops, the struggle was soon over.
The Creeks were practically annihilated. No mercy
was shown at any point. Those who attempted to
escape by swimming were drowned or shot. Accord-ing
to Jackson's report, not over twenty out. of 1,300
Creeks made their escape.
To Junaluska in a large measure must be given the
credit of making this victory over the Creeks pos-sible.
Undaunted courage, strategic powers, and
swiftness of action have always since been associated
with the man Junaluska. Yet in spite of all the hon-or
with which he must have been hailed after such
a massacre, Junaluska was not satisfied. Because
twenty of the Creeks had escaped from his hands he
did not think he had made a complete success. Be-ing
honored with a dance upon his return home, as
was the Cherokee custom, in one word he expressed
his state of grief, "Detsinu'lahunyu," which means:
" tried but could not." As a cue the song leader
took up the word as it fell from the lips of the war-rior
and made it the burden of his song. During
the remaining years of his life Gal'hala'ski, the dis-appoinetd
warrior, was known among his people as
"Isunu'lahunski," or "the one who tries but fails."
This word has been corrupted by the whites to Jun-
18 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
aliiska by which name all people know the old brave,
even among the living Cherokees.
Junaluska and the Removal.
After having manifested so much interest on his
part in behalf of the United States, even to the ex-tent
of risking his own life for the American cause,
it came as a shock to Junaluska 's sense of honor and
devotion when plans were being formulated for the
removal of hira and his people to the far West. Just-ly,
no doubt, he considered the Government as being
untrue to those who had been tried and found good
to her cause. Weighed down with the burden of
nearly three quarters of a century, carrying the
marks of many well-fought battle, Junaluska was
forced by circumstance to yield to the inevitable.
True to his tribal instinct, he yielded not without a
mutter, for often he was known to cry out in anguish
and grief: "If I had known that Jackson would
drive us from our homes, 1 would have killed him
that day at the Horseshoe. '
' These mutterings, how-ever,
were of no avail. In that large band of exiles
which traveled out from their native mountain
haunts in 1838 was Junaluska. I^ortunately, he did
not remain in the West very long, but returned
home. He was permitted to remain with the rem-nant
by the treaty carried out by Mr. W. H. Thomas
with the Government shortly after the removal.
For Services Rendered
For the services Junaluska rendered to the United
States in the Creek War, he was granted the rights
of citizenship, and a grant for 337 acres of land in
fee simple, but without the power of alienation, by
a special act of the North Carolina Legislature in
1847. The Junaluska Reservation was in the Cheowa
Indian settlement on the borders of what is now
Robbinsville, Graham County, North Carolina. Here
he built a little cabin for a place to call his home and
own. Free fi"om the slings and arrows of ingrati-tude,
free from molestations of all kind, he passed
the remaining years of his life. In November 20,
1858, Junaluska died at the age of almost one hun-dred
years. He was buried by the side of Nicie, his
squaw, on a beautiful ridge in the suburbs of Rob-binsville.
Junaluska the Man.
In studying the life of Junaluska the student is of-ten
impressed with his shrewdness, bravery, fidelity,
and hospitality. Rather than offer a stubborn re-sistance
to the encroachments of the white man, he
weighed considerately the conditions as they really
were and yielded to the inevitable results. So long
as pale faces treated him honestly and humanely
Junaluska stood ready to serve and not to resist. Yet
the least bit of unfairness brought forth anger and
righteous indignation. The story is told that he
tracked a little Indian girl to Charleston, S. C, where
she was carried to be sold into slavery by kidnappers
as a negro, and her freedom was secured through the
shrewdness of Junaluska by having experts to prove
from microscopic examination that her hair had none
of the characteristics that belong to a negro.
In Junaluska we find much of the characteristical-ly
human. Sympathy for and loyalty to friends or
strangers was never lacking in the soul of this old
chief. Possibly no finer demonstrations of hospital-ity
can be found anywhere than Junaluska manifest-ed
quite often to his fellow white brothers in times
of need. On a certain bleak, cold wintry night a
Baptist preacher by the name of Washington Lovin-good,
while traveling through the forest of Graham
County, was found by Junaluska almost frozen to
death in his saddle. He was taken from his horse,
carried to his house and cared for by the old chief
and his squaw until he was able to resume his travels.
Another noteworthy incident happened in the case of
a certain lunatic by the name of Gabriel North. This
fellow was found by Junaluska far in the moun-tains
frozen and starving. The old Indian carried
the victim to his house and gave him the best treat-ment
he knew how to give until death came.
Until his death Junaluska clung to the traditions
of his people. Protestant religion never claimed him
in her ranks. A dancing ground was kept and the
tribal festivities and ceremonies celebrated at the
proper seasons. He died as he had lived grounded
in the belief of a Great Spirit and the eternal hunt-ing
grounds in the far off somewhere.
Monument to Junaluska.
Twice has the name of Junaluska been honored
since his death. The first recognition came from the
hands of geological explorers when they saw fit to
name the range of mountains west of Waynesville
Junaluska Mountain.
The General Joseph Winston Chapter of the
Daughters of American Revolution of Winston, N.
C. erected a monument to the grave of Junaluska at
Robbinsville, after the grave had been left unmarked
for over half a century, on Saturday, November 5,
1910. The Junaluska Reservation passed into the
hands of Mr. George B. Walker, of Robbinsville,
several years ago who deeded the square on which
the graves of the chief and his squaw are found to
the ladies of the D. A. R. The monument is a mag-nificent
boulder .from the farm of Messrs. Robert and
Alfred Carver, in Graham- County, and presented to
the members of the D. A. R. by them. The boulder
or monument stands at the head of the graves on
which is a tablet of iron bearing this inscription
:
"Here lie the bodies of Junaluska, the noble
Cherokee chief, and Nicie, his wife. Together
with his warriors, he saved the life of General
Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horeshoe Bend,
Ala., March 27, 1814, and for his bravery and
faithfulness,. North Carloina made him a citizen,
gave him land in the comity of Graham. He
died November 20, 1858, aged almost one hun-dred
years. This monument was erected to his
memory by the General Joseph Winston Chap-ter,
D. A. R.. November 5, 1910."
A neat iron fence surrounds the monument and
two graves, and on the gate is engraven the immor-tal
name,—"Junaluska."
Martin Luther's Little Tame Robin.
I have one preacher that I love better than any
other on earth ; it is my little tame robin, who preach-es
to me daily. I put his crumbs upon my window-sill,
especially at night. He hops onto the window-sill
when he wants his supply, and takes as much as
he desires for his need. From thence he always hops
to a little tree near by, and lifts his voice to God and
sings his carol of praise and gratitude, tucks his lit-tle
head under his wing, and goes fast to sleep, and
leaves to-morrow to look after itself. He is the best
preacher that I have on earth.—Martin Luther.
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION 19
STUDIES IN NORTH CAROLINA POEMS
XVII.—DR. MITCHELL'S GRAVE.
By General Robert Brank Vance.
The Author.—Robert Brank Vance, son of David
Vance and Mira Margaret Baird, was born in Bun-combe
County, April 24, 1828. His younger brother
was the distinguished Zebulon Baird Vance. At
twenty j^ears of age he was elected Clerk of the
Court of Common Pleas and Qiiarter Session of Bun-combe
County and served in that capacity for eight
years. On retiring from this office he engaged in
merchandising at Asheville. But when the War Be-tween
the States broke out, he organized a company
of soldiers and was unanimously elected colonel. He
served in Tennessee, and was promoted to the rank
of Brigadier-General on account of his distinguished
services at Cumberland Gap, Murfreesboro and other
battles of East Tennessee. In one of his attempts to
cross Smoky Mountains and aid General Longstreet
he was captured by the enemy and confined first at
Camp Chase and later at Fort Delaware. On March
14, 186.5, he was paroll^d aiid' came" South.
In 1872 he was elected to represent his district in
Congress, and he continued its representation for
twelve years. In 1884 President Cleveland appointed
him Assistant Commissioner of Patents. He was an
active member of tlie Methodist Church and was sev-eral
times elected to the General Conference.
General Vance wrote a grat deal for the press.
Many of his verses were collected and published in
a little volume entitled "Heart-Throbs From the
Mountains," from which volume this selection is
made.
General Vance was twice married, first to Miss
Harriet V. McBlroy and later to Miss Lizzie R. Cook.
He died November 28, 1899.
DR. MITCHELL'S GRAVE.
On the highest peak of a mighty chain
Of hill and mountain fastness,
Where nature doth her primal rule maintain
Amid their solemn vastness.
There's a lonely grave that the mountains gave,
Which the sorrowing moonbeams gently lave.
No echoing sound of the city's hum
Shall reach the peaceful sleeper;
No note of joy or grief to him shall come
From plow-boy or form reaper;
But silent he'll sleep, while the ivies creep,
And the angels their sacred vigils keep.
The deafening peals of the thunder's voice
Shall never break his dreaming,
Though the tempests wild in their might rejoice
Amid the lightning's gleaming;
His rest still is deep on the mountain steep.
Though his pupils mourn and his loved ones weep.
The tremulous trills of the mother bird.
As she sings her songs so lowly.
Though a sweeter tone the ear never heard,
Touch not a rest so holy;
For God keeps him there, in the upper air.
Sleeping and waiting for the morning fair.
The clustering blooms of the flowerets wild.
Their fragrance sweet distilling.
Though ever himself kind nature's foad child,
Breaks not the tryst he's filling;
For God knows so w-ell the spot where he fell
That nothing but Heaven can unlock the spell.
The summer and autumn, they come and go.
Old winter oft-times lingers,
And spring rhododendrons after the snow
Lift up their beautiful fingers;
But changes may sweep over the land and the deep.
Yet nothing disturbs his satisfied sleep.
In Alma Mater's halls voices and tears
May speak the heart's deep yearning.
And oft to the eye Mount Mitchell appears
When fancy's lights are burning;
But the toiling bell and its mournful knell
Shall bring him no more, for he resteth well.
But a morn shall come, O glorious morn!
When the trumpet's shrill sounding
Shall reach every soul that ever was born.
And life anew be bounding:
And God in His might, from the mountain height.
Shall wake His servant to the wondrous sight.
XVIII—THE BELLS OF TRINITY.
The Author.—Plato Durliam, the author of this
and other poems, was born in Shelby, September 10,
1873. He was prepared for college at Horner's Mili-tary
School and graduated at Trinity College, Dur-ham,
N. C, in 1895. After leaving Trinity College
he attended the Yale Divinity School, Union The-ological
Seminary, and Oxford University. In 1899
he was elected adjunct Professor of Biblical Litera-ture
and Church History in Trinity College, which
position he filled for seven years. At present he is
the Presiding Elder of the Winston District of the
M. E. Church South.
THE BELLS OF TRINITY.
When weary on the storm-swept hills
I hush the climber's challenge son:";,
And yearn toward the light that fills,
The lotus-blooming vales of Wrong,
A warning song rings out to me
—
The deep stern bells of Trinity.
When bleeding on the battle-field
Where Right's uplifting banners go.
My coward soul would cry, "I yield,"
And bend before the ancient foe,
A bugle song enhartens me
—
The clear, brave bells of Trinity.
When standing where the bravest die
And scorning Falsehood's hissing whips,
I dare to own my soul and cry
The Truth, e'en though with bleeding lips
A song of triumph rings to me
—
The proud, free bells of Trinity.
When kneeling desolate and lone
Within the ancient garden dim,
I pay the price to him unknown
Who have not dared to watch with Him,
A benediction breathes to me
—
The sweet, grave bells of Tiinity.
When far my pathway lies along
The moorland of the after years.
When life sings low her evening song
And all the west a glory wears.
Then ring your vesper song to me
O sunset bells of Trinity."
20 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
THE STARS AND BARS : HISTORY OF THE FIRST CONFEDERATE FLAG
By William Winston, of the Louisburg Schools.
[The Jos. J. Davis Chapter U. D. C. offered a gold
medal to the student of the Louisburg Graded
Schools that would write the best essay on the origin
of The Stars and Bars, the First Confederate Flag.
The medal was won by Mr. William Winston, and
his interesting essay is given below.]
"Once ten thousand hailed it gladly."
Since the first rude tribe carried in its foremost
ranks some pole or spear, to lead and encourage its
men in battle, man has had some symbol represent-ing
country and home. This symbol he honors and
reveres even unto death.
Is it any wonder then that in the "sixties" when
the South felt that her liberty and honor were at
stake, that an ardent secessionist had already, in his
mind, a flag for the new nation, even before the
Senators and Representatives of the seven seceded
States had met in Montgomery, Alabama, to decide
on a new Constitution and flag? Such a man was
Major Orren Randolph Smith.
He took his idea from the Trinity, "three in one."
White stood for purity. Blue for constancy, and
Red for bravery. The three bars were for Church,
State, and Press, Red represented State—legislative,
judiciary, and executive ; white. Church—Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost; red for press, freedom of
speech, and freedom of conscience—all bound to-gether
by a field of blue (the heaven over all), bear-ing
a star for each State in the Confederation. The
seven white stars were placed in a circle, showing
that each State had equal rights and privileges. The
circle stood for eternity and signified: "You defend
me and I'll protect you."
When the Confederate Congress advertised for
models. Major Smith said: "I cut the stars and
tore the bars and got Mi.ss Rebecca Murphy to sew
the stitches for a small flag 12 by 15 inches to send
to Montgomery, suggesting that a star be added for
each State that joined the Confederacy." The flag
was accepted and named the "Stars and Bars."
So enthusiastic was Major Smith that before he
knew his model had been accepted, he determined
to raise a similar flag in his own town. Buying
dress goods from Barrow's store, he got Miss Rebecca
Murphy, then living where the depot now stands, to
make a flag 9 by 12 feet. Miss Murphy, assisted by
her aunt and Miss Nora Syles, finished the flag on
Sunday. Major Smith, helped by Furnifold Green,
spliced two poplars at the blacksmith, just above
the "old mill," making a pole one hundred feet
long. Planting this upon the court-house square at
Louisburg, N. C, Monday, March 18, 1861, two
months before North Carolina seceded, the first
"Stars and Bars" was flung to the breeze. Over
the flag floated a blue streamer like an admiral has
on his ship when '
' homeward bound. '
' On this pen-nant
was a star for each seceded State and one for
North Carolina as she was '
' homeward bound. '
'
Proudly this flag waved, defying rain and storm
until in the spring of 1865, when a part of Sherman's
army was sent here under Captain Pummel, only a
few tatters remained. Cutting down the staff, they
placed it on Hicks' corner and raised the Union flag.
But the first "Stars and Bars" had played its
part. It has returned to dust.
"Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory.
And 'twill live in song and story
Though its folds are in the dust.
For its fame in brightest pages.
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down through ages."
References.—"History of the Stars and Bars,"
Major 0. R. Smith; "Birth of the Stars and Bars,"
Miss J. R, Smith; Mrs. W. B. Winborne (Miss Rebec-ca
Murphy) ; Peter A. Brannon, Clerk of State His-torian,
Montgomery, Ala.; Mrs. M. S. Davis, Louis-burg,
N. C. ; Mr. John Allen, Louisburg, N. C.
Remarks of Major Orren Randolph Smith.
[Major Smith was to have presented the medal but
his feeble condition made it impossible for him to
be present. However, he prepared the following
story of the first flag, which was read when the
medaLwas presented. Major Smith is a veteran of
three wars, having fought against the Mexicans, the
Mormons, and in the Civil War.]
"The Stars and Bars was Louisburg 's flag. It
was made in Louisburg by a Louisburg girl of dress
goods bought in Louisburg. It was a gift from Louis-burg
to the Confederate States of America and the
Confederate States' Army.
"It was fifty-one years ago, March 18, 1861, that
in this town I raised the first 'Stars and Bars in
North Carolina. ' The whole town and country were
interested and there were many hundreds that saw
our flag sent aloft ; there are only a few here to-day
who were present that day, for a half-century is a
long time, and the war took so many of our bravest
and best that were here on that March day. Still it
is this town of Louisburg, the county-seat of Frank-lin,
that has the right to claim the honor of having
given to the Confederacy the 'Stars and Bars,' and
I am gladder than any of you that it is through you,
the Joseph J. Davis Chapter of United Daughters of
Confederacy, that to-day the medal is given for the
best historical essay on our flag.
"I am glad that the old town on Tar River will
go down in history as the giver of the first Confed-erate
flag, and I am grateful that I was the man
through whom this honor comes to Louisburg. Every-where
all over the world where there is a Daughter
of the Confederacy there will this flag be honored,
for every United Daughter of the Confederacy wears
Louisburg "s flag as her badge.
"The man for whom your Chapter is named was
one of the best men in the service. Daughters, you
honor yourselves in naming your Chapter for Hon.
Jos. J. Davis, and I am glad and proud that it is
the Chapter bearing his name- that presents this
medal. He glorified in his 'Grey,' in his town, and in
his State, and in his country. He was always work-ing
to bring honor and greatness to his home town.
"Daughters, friends, I thank you for what you
have done this day; in the name of the Old North
State, and the men she gave to fight for 'the right,'
for the United Daughters of the Conferderacy every-where,
and for my own self, I thank you."
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION 21
A PLAN TO MAKE THE TEACHERS' ASSEMBLY A DELEGATED BODY
By R. D. W. Connor.
At the last session of the North Carodina Teachers'
Assembly a committee was appointed to draw up a
plan of organization based upon local associations,
so as to make the Teachers' Assembly itself a dele-gated
body, and to report this plan at the next an-nual
session. It has long been recognized by those
who have been interested in the Teachers' Assembly
that there are many radical defects in our present
plan of organization, and several attempts have been
made at reform so as to eliminate these defects. The
Assembly as it is now organized reaches only those
teachers who attend its annual sessions from year
to year, while those who cannot attend have no part
in it. It is now an organization which represents
only the individuals present at any given session,
and cannot speak of important and vital educational
matters for the profession as a whole. Its member-ship
is constantly changing, and as a result, it has
no permanency and its influence is to a large extent
confined to the moment when it chances to be in
session.
There are many other objections to our present
plan, but these seem to me to be the most vital
ones and in themselves sufficient to require the adop-tion
of some different plan of organization. Before
we adopt any radical changes, however, we ought to
be sure that we are not jumping out of the frying pan
into the fire, consequently I am going to outline here
a plan to which I have given some consideration in
order that it may elicit discussion in the columns of
North Carolina Education, with the hope that the
discussion will develop a well-considered plan of or-ganization
that will prove effective to remedy the
present defects. My suggestion embraces the fol-lowing
points
:
A Delegated Body.
1. The Teachers' Assembly should be a delegated
body. Its officers should be elected, its business
conducted by delegates chosen from the represent-ing
local teachers' associations.
2. Any five, or more, teachers may organize a lo-cal
teachers' association, and be entitled to send to
the Teachers' Assembly one delegate for every five
paid-up members, or, to put it another way, may send
as many delegates as it choses, but shall be entitled
to send to the Teachers' Assembly one delegate for
every five paid-up member. Each local association,
immediately upon its organization, shall report such
fact, together with the names and addresses of its
officers to the Secretary of the Teachers' Assembly.
3. The annual dues of the Teachers' Assembly
shall be one dollar for each member, these dues to
be collected by the treasurers of the local associa-tions
and by them transmitted to the Treasurer of
the Teachers' Assembly at least sixty days before
the regular annual session of the Teachers' Assem-bly.
The local treasurers at the same time file with
the Secretary of the Teachers' Assembly a certified
list of the paid-up members of each local association.
4. The secretary of each local association shall
send to the Secretary of the Teachers' Assembly at
least thirty days before the regular annual session of
the Teachers' Assembly a certified list of the dele-gates
chosen to represent such local association at
the annual session of the Teachers' Assembly.
5. Each local association may have such officers,
collect such dues, and follow such activities as it
may see fit provided they do not conflict with those
of the Teachers' Assembly.
6. The Teachers' Assembly shall supply each mem-ber
with a copy of the addresses and proceedings of
each annual session.
7. There shall be no members of the Teachers' As-sembly
except persons who are members by virtue
of their membership in some local association.
These points, I believe, about cover the plan I
have in mind. I think this plan will have several
beneficial results, which I shall now point out.
Value of Such a Plan.
In the first place, let me say that I suggest five as
the unit of representation in order that the unit
may be small enough to enable a group of teachers
at certain specific schools and colleges, who cannot
or do not wish to become members of the larger as-sociation
in their community or county, to form a
local association and thus become members of the
Assemblj'. Their organization, if they wish, may be
purely informal and maintained simply for the pur-pose
of enabling such teachers to be members of the
Teachers ' Assembly.
Secondly, this plan will, I am convinced, largely
increase the membership of the Teachers' Assembly.
Each local association will, of course, desire to have
as large a representation in the Teachers' Assembly
as possible. Hence its local officers and members will
be actively interested in securing as large a member-ship
of their local association as possible. They will
be able to do this better than the general secretary
can possibly do because they come directly in per-sonal
contact with the teachers of their counties and
communities and can always be on the job. Per-sonal
presentation of the advantages to be derived
from membership in such an organization are, of
course, much more effective than presentation by
letters and circulars.
In the third place, it will make the Teachers' As-sembly
a representative body composed of delegates
chosen by and representing their constituents, and
frequently instructed by them on important educa-tional
policies, so that when the Teachers' Assembly
takes any action its members will do so as the chosen
spokesmen of the teachers of the State.
Fourthly, it will bind the majority of the teach-ers
of the State together in a close, compact, pro-fessional
organization, and will encourage, develop,
and stimulate a strong esprit de corps among them.
Many educational matters of State-wide importance
will be presented to the local associations in order
to secure instructions to their delegates, will be dis-cussed
and thoroughly considered by them, and will
thus bring all the teachers to a realization of the
fact that their work is not confined to any one local-ity,
will interest them in general problems, and will
stimulate their study of educational policies. To be
chosen a delegate from a local association will be
considered a high and important honor which will
arouse interest, and stimulate rivalry.
Fifthly, the work of the Teachers' Assembly will
in its turn react upon the whole body of teachers
throughout the State, because the delegates from
each local association upon their return home will
(Continued on page 25.)
22 NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION [June, 1912.
North Carolina Education
EDITOR:
E. C. BROOKS, - Durham, N. C.
PUBLISHER
:
W. F. MARSHALL, Raleigh, N C.
Directed by an Advisory Board, Representlnn the State Department
of Education; the County and City Schools: High Schools, Academies
and Colleges: the Primary Teachers' Association: the Woman's Better
ment Association: the Nature Study Society.
PUBLISHED IVIOIMXHLY
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, ONE DOLLAR A YEAR
Two Subscriptions - - - $1 50 1 Four Subscriptions - - - $2 60
Three Subscriptions - - - S2 10 | Five to Ten - - - - tOc. Each
Make all remittances and address all business correspondence to \V. F
Marshall, Publisher, 121 West Hargett Street, Raleigh, N. C.
EntCired as second-class matter January 21, 1909, at the post office at
Raleigh. N. C, under the Act ol March 3. 1879.
Volume VI. JUNE, 1912. Number 10.
The Montessori methods are attracting unusual
attention.
The National Education Association meets in Chi-cago,
July 6tli to 12th.
The institute season is at hand. Now is the time
to start the Reading Course of next school year. Read
Mr. Bivin's outline for next year.
Join the Reading Circle early. Start with the very
first lesson in September. Read the outline of next
year's work; it is in this issue.
Every superintendent should publish a full re-port
of the year's work. How many students have
made more than the required work ? How many will
have to repeat a part or all of the year's work?
How has the money been spent?
The regular price of North Carolina Education is
$1 a year; two subscriptions, ijjl.SO; three subscrip-tions,
$2.10 ; four subscriptions, $2.60 ; five to ten, 60
cents each. See that a special club is made up at
your county institute and join the club.
Superintendents of city schools should pay some
attention to the school grounds this summer. Why
not set apart a good space, prepare it well, and de-velop
a real school garden? The school grounds
should be the most attractive place in town.
The vacation is the time to prepare for next school
year. There is something to be done besides work-ing
up courses and preparing outline. How many
pupils will drop out this year, and why? What are
the pupils doing during vacation?
Brethren, the world is against you, if in trying to
run a graded school you are attempting to keep to-gether
all pupils of the same grade. Each room
should be broken up into two or three sections ac-cording
to the ability of the pupils. Then why will
you, mortal man, continue fhis evil
!
There are two articles appearing in this number
of Education that every teacher should read. One
by Mr. Claud Bennett on the Winthrop Normal Col-lege
Home-School, and the other by Mr. Holland
Holton on Pestalozzi's ideal home school. They are
so much alike that it appears we are returning to
the Pestalozzi idea.
EXAMINATION FOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS'
CERTIFICATE.
If you wish to take the examination for high
school teachers' certificates, you must observe the
following
:
(1) Make application to the State Superintendent
of Public Instruction by July 1st.
(2) The examination will be held in July.
(3) The State Superintendent of Public Instruc-tioi
will furnish you all the information you desire
concerning this examination.
WOMEN TO SERVE ON THE SCHOOL BOARD.
According to recent information from Tryon four
women have been elected to serve on the school
board of that town. The ladies so honored are Mrs.
J. S. Holden, Mrs. Bedell, Miss Emma McParland,
and Miss Bloise Kenworthy. It is a debatable ques-tion
as to whether women can legally serve on the
school board in this State-. This question was raised
some years ago when a woman was appointed to serve
on a district committee. However, it is a fact that
women take more interest in the schools of the com-munity
than the men. They are more active in ad-vancing
the education of children, and can detect
more readily the defects in instruction. They are by
nature more concerned than the men. As a rule
men seem to be' too busy to give more than a passing
thought to the real educational needs of a commun-ity.
It would, therefore, be better for the schools if
women were given some official recognition, and it
is to be hoped that the women of ffryon can continue
in this official capacity; and give to the schools of
that town a new enthusiasm and to the inhabitants
a deeper interest in the education of the children.
THE MONTESSORI METHODS.
A new educational movement in Italy has aroused
an interest in that country that is more than ordi-nary.
Madame Maria Montessori was interested in
the feeble-minded children in public asylums and
became convinced that their needs were as much a
matter of proper education as of medical assistance.
She applied the principle of Froebel that the child
by its own activity must educate himself. There-fore,
the room became a play-room and not a drill-room.
The teacher is not a teacher. She places
educative material within reach of the child who
June, 1912.] NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION 23
must help himself. She applied these methods with
success to the feeble-minded children, and they were
able to compete with normal children. This con-vinced
her that the education of the normal child
could be improved by applying the same methods.
Take, for instance, her conduct of the class-room
and her conception of discipline. There are no
stationary seats and desks, and the children are not
expected to remain quiet except at infrequent