methods taught in the normal schools. Text-book memorizing is giving place to the method of critical investigation.

This review of methods suggests a good definition of school instruction. It is the process of re-enforcing the sense-perception of the individual pupil by adding the experience of the race as preserved in books, and it is more especially the strengthening of his powers of thought and insight by adding to his own reflections the points of view and the critical observations of books interpreted by his teachers and fellow-pupils.

In the graded school the pupil is held responsible for his work in a way that is impossible in the rural school of sparsely-settled districts. Hence the method of investigation, as above described, is found in the city schools rather than in the rural schools. Where each pupil forms a class by himself, there is too little time for the teacher to ascertain the character of the pupil's understanding of his book. Even if he sees that there has been a step missed somewhere by the child in learning his lesson, he cannot take time to determine precisely what it is. Where the ungraded school makes some attempt at classification of pupils it is obliged to unite into one class say of arithmetic, grammar, or geography, pupils of very different degrees of progress. The consequence is that the most advanced pupils have not enough work assigned them, being held back to the standard of the average. They must "mark time" (or go through the motions of walking without advancing a step) while the rest are coming up. The least advanced find the average lesson rather too much for them, and become discouraged after trying in vain to keep step with their better prepared fellow-pupils. This condition of affairs is to be found in many rural districts even of those states where the advantages of classification are seen and appreciated in city schools, and an effort is in progress to extend those advantages to the rural schools. But the remedy has been, in many cases, worse than the disease. For it has resulted that classification gets in the way of self-help which the bright pupil is

capable of, and the best scholars "mark time" listlessly, while the poorest get discouraged, and only the average pupils gain something.

It must be admitted, too, that in many village schools just adopting the system of grading, this evil of holding back. the bright pupils and of over-pressure on the dull ones exists, and furnishes just occasion for the criticism which is made against the so-called "machine" character of the American public school. The school that permits such poor classification, or that does not keep up a continual process of readjusting the classification by promoting pupils from lower classes to those above them, certainly has no claim to be ranked with schools organized on a modern ideal.

I have dwelt on this somewhat technical matter because of its importance in understanding the most noteworthy improvements in progress in the schools of the United States. Briefly, the population is rapidly becoming urban, the schools are becoming "graded," the pupils of the lowest year's work placed under one teacher, and those of the next degree of advancement under a second teacher; perhaps from eight to twenty teachers in the same building, thus forming a “union school,” as it is called in some sections. Here there is division of labor on the part of teachers, one taking only classes just beginning to learn to read and write, another taking the pupils in a higher grade. The inevitable consequence of such division of labor is increase of skill. The teacher comes to know just what to do in a given case of obstructed progress - just what minute steps of work to introduce just what thin wedges to lift the pupil over the threshold that holds back the feeble intellect from entering a new and higher degree of human learning.

It will be asked: What proportion of the teachers of cities and villages habitually use this higher method in conducting recitations. According to a careful estimate, at least one-half of them may reasonably claim to have some skill in its use; of the one-half in the elementary schools who use it perhaps two-fifths conduct all their recitations so

as to make the work of their pupils help each individual in correcting defects of observation and critical alertness. Perhaps the other three-fifths use the method in teaching some branches, but cling to the old memoriter system for the rest. It may be claimed for graduates of normal schools that a large majority follow the better method.

The complaint urged against the machine character of the modern school has been mentioned. I suppose that this complaint is made quite as often against good schools as against poor ones. But the critical-probing method of conducting a recitation is certainly not machine-like in its effects. It arouses in the most powerful manner the activity of the pupil to think and observe for himself. Machine-like schools do not follow this critical method, but are content with the memoriter system, that prescribes so many pages of the book to be learned verbally, but does not inquire into the pupil's understanding, or "apperception," as the Herbartians call it. It is admitted that about 50 per cent of the teachers actually teaching in the schools of villages and cities use this poor method. But it is certain that their proportion in the corps of teachers is diminishing, thanks to the two causes already alluded to: first, the multiplication of professional schools for the training of teachers; and second, the employment of educational experts as supervisors of schools.

The rural schools, which in the United States enroll onehalf of the entire number of school children, certainly lack good class teaching, even when they are so fortunate as to obtain professionally educated teachers, and not five per cent of such schools in the land succeed in procuring better services than the "makeshift" teacher can give. The worst that can be said of these poorly taught schools is that the pupils are either left to help themselves to knowledge by reading their books under the plan of individual instruction, or, in the attempt at classification and grading, the average pupils learn something, while the bright pupils become listless and indolent for want of tasks commensurate with their strength and the backward pupils lose their courage for their want of

ability to keep step. Even under these circumstances the great good is accomplished that all the pupils learn the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, and all are made able to become readers of the newspapers, the magazines, and finally of books.

Another phase of the modern school that more than anything else gives it the appearance of a machine, and the American city schools are often condemned for their mechanism, is its discipline, or method of organization and government. In the rural school with twenty-five pupils, more or less, it makes little difference whether pupils come into the school room and go out in military order, so far as the work of the school is concerned. But in the graded school with three hundred to eight hundred pupils order and discipline are necessary down to the last particular, for the safety of the pupils as well as for the accomplishment of the ends for which the school exists. There must be regularity and punctuality, silence and conformity to order, in coming and going. The whole school seems to move like a machine. In the ungraded school a delightful individuality prevails, the pupil helping himself to knowledge by the use of the book, and coming and going pretty much as he pleases, with no subordination to rigid discipline, except perhaps when standing in class for recitation.

Regularity, punctuality, silence, and conformity to order, — military drill,—seem at first to be so much waste of energy,― necessary, it is true, for the large school, but to be subtracted from the amount of force available for study and thought. But the moment the question of moral training comes to be investigated, the superiority of the education given in the large school is manifest. The pupil is taught to be regular and punctual in his attendance on school and in all his movements, not for the sake of the school alone, but for all his relations to his fellow-men. Social combination is made possible by these semi-mechanical virtues. The pupil learns to hold back his animal impulse to chatter or whisper to his fellows and to interrupt their serious

absorption in recitation or study, and by so much selfV restraint he begins to form a good habit for life. He learns to respect the serious business of others. By whispering he can waste his own time and also that of others. In moving to and fro by a sort of military concert and precision he acquires the impulse to behave in an orderly manner, to stay in his own place and not get in the way of others. Hence he prepares for concerted action,— another important lesson in citizenship, leaving entirely out of account its military significance.

With the increase of cities and the growth of great industrial combinations this discipline in the virtues that lie at the basis of concerted action is not merely important, but essential. In the railroad system a lack of those semimechanical virtues would entirely unfit one for a place as laborer or employee; so, too, in a great mill or a great business house. Precision, accuracy, implicit obedience to the head or directive power, are necessary for the safety of others and for the production of any positive results. The rural school does not fit its pupils for an age of productive industry and emancipation from drudgery by means of machinery. But the city school performs this so well that it reminds some people unpleasantly of a machine.

The ungraded school has been famous for its harsh methods of discipline ever since the time of the flogging schoolmaster Orbilius whom Horace mentions. The rural schoolmaster to this day often prides himself on his ability to "govern" his unruly boys by corporal punishment. They must be respectful to his authority, obedient and studious, or else they are made to suffer bodily pain from the hand of the teacher. But harsh discipline leaves indurations on the soul itself, and is not compatible with a refined type of civilization. The schoolmaster who bullies his pupils into obedience does what he can to nurture them into the same type as himself.

In the matter of school discipline the graded school has an advantage over the school of the rural district. A corps