he will meet. It is difficult to give this view-point to students who are bound closely to any text-book. It is true that the teacher who uses no text-book whatever may give his students the formal, rigid conception of the subject which is worse than no knowledge at all, but there is less danger from this source than from slavish subjection to a good text. A text-book I should certainly use for all elementary work in economics, and there are several that will serve very well. But the text-book which gives the student the impression of finality, and relieves the instructor of the responsibility of personal and original presentation of his subject, is, in my opinion, the greatest possible hindrance to good economic teaching.

The first requisite, then, for good work in economics in secondary schools is specially trained, thoroly equipped teachers. If such a teacher cannot be obtained, omit the subject from the curriculum, give such disconnected economics as may be worked into a course in history or geography, and then leave the student to the tender mercies of the partisan press and a not over-intelligent political platform. Unhampered by false teaching, indelibly impressed upon him at the time when his mind was most plastic, he will be more likely to arrive at correct conclusions in the discussion open to every reader of the newspapers.

Many enthusiastic advocates of economic teaching were disappointed in the oft-quoted recommendation of the Committee of Ten, and some denounced it as reactionary. The committee recommended, you will remember, "that there be no formal instruction in political economy, but that the general principles be taught in connection particularly with United States history, civil government, and commercial geography." A flood of light is cast on this recommendation for this manifestly unsatisfactory method of indirect teaching of economics thru the medium of history, civics, and commercial geography by this statement of the committee: "Few schools have teachers sufficiently trained to discuss and illustrate the general subject." Few, indeed, there have been, for the standard of competency is high. In this subject, as in many others, the qualifications for successful elementary work are much higher than those for advanced work. The instructor in elementary economics must not only know a subject of some difficulty, but he must have the rare power of selecting the essential and established facts from a mass of doubtful material, and of organizing these facts for vivid presentation. He must have a judicial mind, so that in presenting questions that are debatable he may give his class the impression of absolute fairness. Advanced students may discount an instructor's prejudices, but the elementary students are helpless in his hands. The success of his work is not to be judged by the quantity of facts regarding industrial history, trade relations, or labor conditions which he crams into his students, but rather by the attitude of mind which he cultivates in them. If he furnishes even a

small stock of facts which will help them to understand the economic environment in which they live, if he explains the settled principles of the science which will interpret the tendencies of the time, and if, above all, he establishes by example a habit of open-minded consideration of disputed questions, he has succeeded, and succeeded gloriously, in his mission. And experience proves that this is not an unattainable ideal. Conditions have changed since the report of the Committee of Ten was rendered. The universities are sending out year by year scores of young men and women splendidly equipped for economic teaching. A few years ago the colleges absorbed these teachers, but now they are available for secondary work. It is a reasonable hope that in the next decade they will establish secondary instruction in economics upon a plane which the Committee of Ten apparently considered unattainable.

I doubt whether it would be profitable to consider here, even if time permitted, the precise method of attacking the subject. One group of teachers believes in approaching economics by a purely descriptive route; another contends for an explanation of economic theory in advance of the historical description of economic conditions. Each party has text-books representing its specific method. My experience in teaching elementary economics has led me to believe that it is wise to choose the point of attack with some reference to the economic topics under popular discussion at the time. The development of the trust is the great question of the hour. Every high-school boy and girl knows something about it and has more or less interest in it. Many have a surprising amount of information, invalidated by a more surprising amount of misinformation, and positive prejudices of various kinds. But the main point is that there is initial interest, a point of contact. course, then, slide gently and rapidly over definitions and plunge into the trust. Capture your students, and you may safely take them a long and rapid flight back to the hunting and fishing stage of society, and develop with as much logic as you will the history of industrial development. They will then have your goal in view from the beginning, and will realize that it is worth reaching.

In opening a

The laboratory method? Certainly. And in what subject can you apply it better? The social laboratory is all about the student; his home, his school, his father's factory, his community, the whole world as reflected in the newspapers. Arrange papers on assigned topics, reports. to the class, debates- anything and everything which will teach him to think and will show him that there are two sides to the shield.

To those who believe that in the direction of popular economic education lies social safety the progress of the past few years has been most gratifying. Economic instruction is newly organized even in the colleges. It is less than a quarter of a century ago that a group of men returning from Germany gave form to the modern economic curriculum

of the institutions of higher learning. For a time there was little force available to spend on popular education. But economic instruction is now filtering down from the colleges, and the attitude of the real leaders of economic thought is fairly represented by Professor Laughlin, of the University of Chicago, when he says:

The work of research, however brilliant, is in a way of no greater importance to the good of our nation than that elementary teaching of economics to the great masses who never enter a college, but who form a majority of those who enter the polling booth.

THE TEACHER AS A SOCIAL-ECONOMIC POWER REUBEN POST HALLECK, PRINCIPAL BOYS' HIGH SCHOOL, LOUISVILLE, KY. The social forces have helped to accomplish all the greatest reforms of the centuries. The highest type of economic development never comes without healthy social growth. The genius of the twentieth century is calling to teachers to stop rainbow chasing for a few years and to learn to apply some of those great social truths which our sainted mother, the nineteenth century, left us as a legacy.

In order to have the greatest economic value the teacher must be 1 social. In Switzerland higher wages are given to a good-natured milkmaid, who treats the cow kindly and sings to her while milking. It has been found that the cow under such treatment gives more milk. Under similar treatment pupils show increased mental and moral development.

The teacher who is anti-social commits a crime if he does not immediately follow some other vocation. Those vested with authority in the educational field, whether boards of education, superintendents, or principals, who try to rule teachers by the anti-social feeling of fear, are an abomination in this new era, as is also the teacher who tries to secure results from pupils by making them afraid. The slave-driver with his lash did not secure for the South the benefits that have come from free and willing labor.

The teacher who would be a social economic power must learn and apply certain social theorems which psychology offers. Take the law of suggestion, which is so powerful in school and society. Suggestion deals with actions as well as with ideas, and it is the great social law of psychology. The power of suggestion is merely the tendency which one person feels to carry out the action indicated in an idea implanted in his mind by another.

The teacher who does not know the power lurking in suggestion is as dangerous in a schoolroom as a boy brandishing a revolver which is loaded, altho he is unaware of the fact. Every live idea is "loaded," and it will do either good or harm. I have known teachers to suggest to their classes more unsocial actions, more forms of disorder, more acts of doubtful morality, than the most brilliant rascals in the class could have devised.

I can remember how a temperance lecturer made my childish mouth water, the muscles of my throat contract, and an incipient arm movement develop by describing a sparkling, cool drink of champagne with its seductive fizz. His immediate "don't" was joined to no motor idea. I remember wishing that as fine a glass of champagne as he described was within reach of my arm. I have known teachers who habitually violated the most important psychological laws by suggesting vivid ideas of evil courses of action, thinking that a "don't" idea, an idea without form and therefore void, would inhibit the suggested action.

In a school where I once was, a snapping-match happened to be accidentally stepped on during chapel exercises. The principal then gave a vivid description of how wicked boys would take sharp jack-knives and cut the heads off snapping-matches and scatter them on the floor. The ideas of action thereby suggested were so clear and forcible that I thought what a nice thing it would be to have a sharp knife and a box of matches. There had at last been suggested in school one kind of action to which I felt myself equal. I wanted to do something; I didn't know what, but the kind principal had finally suggested the "what." For the next three days the school was in Fourth of July disorder. This might have broken up the school, had not a young psychologist on the teaching force asked the principal to tell the school that a long-wished-for excursion would be given the boys, if each one would get a vaulting-pole and practice with it in order to cross a stream where there was no bridge. If any more matches were brought to school, the excursion would not be given. Some of the larger boys who wanted to go threatened to thrash anyone who brought more matches to school.

As a corollary of the psychology of suggestion, we may frame the following theorem: Dislodge an idea of wrong-doing, not by a "don't " idea, but by a "do" idea. If the "do" idea is a social one, it will have quadruple power.

Imitation is another social law. It is really a child of suggestion. Here the first impelling force is an action which begets in the child's mind an idea, a tendency toward a similar action. The idea of an action always tends to complete itself and to produce the action. The more social the community or the school is, the more powerfully does imitation work. In a well-directed school of large numbers, the pupils learn more from unconscious imitation than from the direct instruction of their teachers. The folly of confining a pupil to the teaching of a private tutor is thus apparent. Such a child will tend to grow up unsocial. If . at a future time he must do business with the outside world, he will be compelled to learn from associating with it at a time when there is no guiding hand to direct him. Social life should be taught both at school and at home under the direction of such a guiding hand.

Intelligent sympathy is a complex power which has never failed to

move the world. Whenever a teacher is found capable of displaying intelligent sympathy, the child-world will sit contentedly at his feet. Suggestion and imitation will work with double power. The old type of schoolmaster determined to adapt the child-world to himself. Sympathy requires the reverse step. The teacher must thru imaginative guidance reshape himself to fit that world. The teacher has been a child once; the child has never been a grown person. Psychology analyzes for us the basal elements of sympathy, and it is wise for every teacher to review them frequently. To the teacher who would unlock human minds as well as human hearts, it should be said: "With all thy getting, get sympathy." Such a teacher is not only a social power, he is an economic power as well. He can raise to the fourth power the productiveness of a school, measured by both intellectual and moral growth.

One effective way in which to develop pupils both socially and intellectually is to make them do something for others as well as for themselves. Unless they are in some way taught to minister to the wants of others, they can become neither social nor economic powers in more than the barbaric acceptation of the terms. I protest that no single study or pursuit, whether manual training or English composition, is absolutely necessary for social growth. Either may be absolutely dwarfing; in fact, both as taught are usually dwarfing to social and imaginative growth. Young Indians learned manual training before any of our modern manual-training schools were dreamed of, but the Indian did not grow up a social being. I believe that English composition may be as productive of social development as manual training, altho in both subjects. everything depends upon the teacher and his methods.

Since English composition is ordinarily called the most unsocial of subjects, let me suggest one of the ways in which it may be humanized and made palatable to the young. Less than two years ago there came to my school a letter bearing an English stamp and addressed "To the head boy." The writer, a brown-eyed English schoolboy, not quite fourteen, evidently tried to interest the "head boy" in his English school, sports, and home; and he succeeded. He then wanted to know something about Kentucky - its Indians, for instance. The letter had mistakes enough in it to make it seem human, but it was written for the love of it. That little Columbus had sent the letter out on a voyage of discovery to far-off Kentucky, and it proved a social stimulus to me and all my pupils. I read the missive to fifteen hundred people, and I noticed that they were sufficiently interested to lean forward to listen. The "head boy" needed no prompting to answer that letter.

I have made experiments enough in this interchange of letters between pupils to prove that the social stimulus thereby developed gives life and vigor and interest to English composition and improves it more than a I See HALLECK's Psychology and Psychic Culture, pp. 257, 258.