work roses, vegetables, the shovel, the hoe, and other things of a child's environment, as the cubes and cylinders and squares of paper.

The great aim of the kindergarten, it seems to me, should be to lead the child into a realization that play is as important as work, and that work is as pleasant as play, and that the keenest joy of school life is to be a helper of his fellow-pupils and his teacher in all the occupations of daily school life. In this way he will come truly prepared for the primary school. When you do this, the primary teacher will say: "I must study my business in the light of kindergarten methods."

The primary teacher should know more of your work, and you should know more about the primary teacher's work. When the time comes that the child shall indeed lead both kindergartners and primary teachers, we shall not be troubled about defining the relation of the kindergarten to the primary school.

DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

FIRST SESSION.-THURSDAY, JULY 11, 1901

The department met at 3 o'clock P. M. in the assembly room of the Central High School, and was called to order by the president, J. W. Carr, of Anderson, Ind.

The following songs were rendered by Miss Esther St. John: "The Clover," McDowell; "The Parting," James Rogers; "The Open Secret," Huntington Woodman. A paper on "The Church and the Public School" was read by T. A. Mott, superintendent of schools, Richmond, Ind.

The discussion was opened by N. C. Schaeffer, state superintendent of public instruction, Harrisburg, Pa., and was continued by R. A. Ogg, superintendent of schools, Kokomo, Ind.

The second subject, "Economic Basis of Art," was presented by Charles De Garmo, professor of science and art of education, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.

The paper of Dr. De Garmo was discussed by Mr. George Gunton, of New York, and Miss Roda Selleck, of Indianapolis, Ind.

The Committe on Nominations was appointed as follows:

George B. Cook, Hot Springs, Ark.

Adda P. Wertz, Carbondale, Ill.

Robert Hamilton, Huntington, Ind.

SECOND SESSION.-FRIDAY, JULY 12

The department was called to order at 3 P. M. by President Carr.

The meeting was opened by a vocal solo, "Spring," by Miss Lois Inglis.

Dr. William Goodell Frost, president of Berea College, Berea, Ky., addressed the

department on " Educational Pioneering in the Southern Mountains."

A paper on "Nature Study in the Public Schools" was read by Rev. William J. Long, of Stamford, Conn.

Music "Endymion," Liza Lehmann - by Miss Isabel Weir.

Mr. Long's paper was discussed by Miss Adda P. Wertz, critic teacher, Southern Illinois Normal University, Carbondale, and Mrs. Mary Rogers Miller, lecturer on nature study, Cornell University.

Amos W. Butler, secretary of board of state charities, Indiana, presented a paper on "Education and Crime."

The nominating committee reported the following officers for the ensuing year:

For President-R. A. Ogg, Kokomo, Ind.

For Vice-President- J. J. Doyne, Little Rock, Ark.

For Secretary- Adda P. Wertz, Carbondale, Ill.

The report was adopted and the officers declared elected.

The meeting was then adjourned.

B. F. MOORE,

Secretary pro tem.

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

THE CHURCH AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

T. A. MOTT, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, RICHMOND, IND. In the history of the race the influence of the church is as potent as that of any of the institutions of civilization. Our religious views, feelings, and biases are among our strongest sentiments and motives. The religious beliefs of the individual and of the nation are among their most sacred treasures, and as such must be vital factors in any complete consideration of questions of the education and development of the race. Religious thought, sentiment, and purpose bear so important and vital a relation in the outward life of mankind today that it is hardly possible that any intelligent citizen, teacher, or parent should deem it best for a child to grow to maturity without the elements of a religious education.

The appreciation of the meaning and scope of education is the greatest problem now before mankind. The supreme center in all education is the child in its relation to its environment. What the child is, its development, the end in view, the means to be employed, its relation to nature, to men, to society, to divinity, are all questions involved in considering the subject of method and scope in education. The problem in education is quite definite. Given the children at the age of four, what shall be done with them until the age of eighteen or twenty, so that they shall evolve into desirable types of men and women?

Education has been rightly defined as "the adaptation of a person to environment, and the development of capacity in a person to control environment." By "environment," in this definition, we mean two things: first, physical surroundings, and, second, that vast accretion of knowledge and its results in habit and conduct which we call civilization-civilization crystallized into the institutions of home, state, school, society, and church.

The free citizen must take his place in the world of society of which he is a part. The child is born into a pre-established ethical order, that of law and institutions. These he must take up and objectify in his own life, if he reach his highest freedom. The family, state, church, and society are the pre-established institutional order into which he comes. These he must make a part of himself; he must make them over, re-establish, and reproduce them in his own life. Becoming a man, he is to re-create the family in his own household; he is perpetually to renew the state, for he is the final lawmaker; especially is he to preserve and reconstruct society in accordance with new times and new ideas; he is to perpetuate the universal church by reproducing in his life, and thru his

life, the fundamental principles of true living which he has ever tried to exemplify.

The school as an institution is the organ of education. It is set apart and dedicated to the work of forming a better individual and thru the individual a better social life. Its function is performed thru the interaction of the individual and the social group of which he is a part. Between society, on the one hand, and the growing individual, on the other, the school stands as a mediator, controlling and directing the play of each on the other.

A vital part of the school's work is to lay hold of the complexity of human experience, as existing in the institutional life in which we live, simplify and organize it, and then bring it into the closest touch with the life of the child. In this process the school must take the adult expressions of life and bring them to the plane of the child's understanding. Each of the institutions embodies vital experiences of life, which are by inheritance the right of every child. Church doctrines, principles of government, social customs, laws of business, are all material upon which the life of the child must feed.

The school must know what principles of activity are valuable to the growing individual, and must select these principles from each of the fundamental institutions and emphasize them in the life of its pupils. In this manner the life of the growing child is adjusted to the larger social life of which he is a part. It must not be forgotten that each individual will contribute to, as well as share in, the values of social life. As he partakes of the best life the race has evolved, so will he return to this best experience of the race the results growing out of the interaction between his life and that of the social whole. As he takes, so shall he give.

The great movements in the modern educational progress have all sought to bring closer together the life of the school and the life of the people. Students of education are recognizing that the true purposes of the school can be rendered possible of fulfillment only by the fuller co-ordination of the life of the school and the life of society. The new education seeks to remodel our thought of the school, to the end that the child's experiences may be so nearly continuous that when he leaves school he shall be able to enter into the activities that surround him, thru the life he has already lived. The school has year by year become more socialized in its organization, methods, and curriculum. We are everywhere recognizing the fact that, if the child be able to enter the world of experience when he leaves school, he must be made familiar with the chief values of social activity: the school and the state, the school and industry, the school and home, drawn together in a closer union.

The place and importance of religion as an element in human life hardly need discussion. The fact is that "there has not been a single tribe or people known to history or visited by travelers which has been

shown to be destitute of religion of some form." It has been argued by some that all religion has had its basis in superstition and fear; that it was not universal, and not a vital element in the civilization of man. These contentions seem to me to arise from an ignorance alike of the history of the race and the laws of human nature. Religion is a part of man's psychical being. In the nature and laws of the human mind, in the intellect, emotions, sympathies, and passions, lie the well-springs of all religions, modern or ancient, Christian or heathen. To these we must refer, by these we must explain, whatever errors, falsehood, bigotry, or cruelty have stained man's creeds; to these we must credit whatever truth, beauty, piety, and love have glorified and hallowed his long search for the perfect and the eternal.

There seems to be a general response from the human heart, as well as from the history of the race, to that clear statement of Hegel's, when he says: "Religion is, for our consciousness, that region in which all the enigmas of the world are solved, all the contradictions of deeper-reaching thought have their meaning unveiled, and where the voice of the heart's pain is silenced-the region of eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal peace." If religion is defined, in the words of Dr. Martineau, as "the belief and worship of the supreme mind and will directing the universe and holding moral relations with human life," then civilization is unintelligible without it.

But it is said by many that morality takes the place of religion, and that a satisfactory substitute for religious training is instruction in morals and civics. This view has been widely held and is defended by many able minds. We believe, however, that the field of moral and civic instruction is quite distinct from religious training. The moral phases of life have long been closely related to the religious life; nevertheless the two are quite separate. Dr. Butler, in discussing this question, has called attention to the fact that religion has not infrequently, in the history of the race, been immoral in its influences and tendencies, and insists that to confuse religion with ethics is to obscure both. Religion must be apprehended as something distinct and peculiar, if it is to be apprehended at all. When Matthew Arnold said "that religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; and that the passage from morality to religion is made when morality is applied emotion," he was surely and clearly wrong. "If the history of civilization bears unerring testimony to any one proposition, it is that morality requires for its highest efficiency some kind of religious basis."

A system of morality based upon mere expediency, solely upon deductions from human experience, or upon utilitarian grounds, can never produce the highest practical moral life. Some kind of religious belief, sanction, and aspiration lies at the foundation and root of every system of morality that has borne noble fruit in the world. In the conflict