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so necessary a first step in mental awakening-what nurture for the imagination does the child get from hours spent in finding the greatest common divisor and least common multiple? I speak feelingly of this particular grind, for I recall many tedious hours wasted on it. My little boy of five and a half got more mental development from having Stanley Waterloo's Story of Ab read to him three or four times than I did at twice his age out of many weeks of tiresome work over the greatest common divisor and the least common multiple. And to this must be added the intense enjoyment the story afforded — and, above all, the desire for more knowledge which it awakened.

It is not necessary to discuss the question whether pleasure is the chief end of life, but we must agree that a life which has known no pleasure is a blighted nubbin, a stunted tree, a sorry spectacle. In every human soul there is an insistent demand for pleasure in some form. This cry is most clamorous in childhood. With the child, indeed, pleasure is the mainspring of action, the central object of desire. Shall we check or ignore this longing for the joy of life when it takes the form of a thirst for knowledge, of a craving for high companionship, of the fresh soul's aspirations toward the ideal? And is there any greater pleasure to the child who has been early led to a liking for literature than to lose himself in the pages of a fascinating book? I have known more than one healthy, active-bodied boy who had not yet learned to read, who would gladly leave a game to listen to a reading from such a book as Hiawatha, Tanglewood Tales, or Stories from the Fairy Queen. Pleasure is essential to the young life. Without enjoyment it cannot blossom, but is blighted and withered like a plant without water. If, then, we take no account of the culture and inspiration of literature, if we regard it merely as a means of pleasure, we cannot deny it to the child. We owe it to the nation, which intrusts us, as educational experts, with the development of its children; we owe it to our high office to see that this elevating pleasure early enters into the lives of the young people committed to our care. If for no other reason than the substitution of higher for lower, of intellectual for physical enjoyment, it is our duty to inculcate in our young charges "this habit of reading," which, as Anthony Trollope says, "is a pass to the greatest, the purest, the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for his creatures."

We can recall incidents of our childhood which illustrate the various sources from which pleasure came to us; and we find the emotional life of a child charmingly pictured in Pierre Loti's Romance of a Child. This little book shows how objects and events, striking from their brightness, their somberness, their horror, or even their mere suggestiveness, make instant and indelible impressions on the super-sensitized plates of the young mind. Now, every boy and girl cannot be brought up in a country house with a pretty garden containing old fruit trees and a fountain, with

views of magnificent sunsets across field and marsh and sands to a stretch of the illimitable ocean. Not every boy has a forest to roam thru in summer, or an island with its novel life to enjoy. Not every embryo man, like the hero of Edith Lanigan's charming sketch in the January Atlantic, finds in his father's library the means of aërial trips to all countries and ages, personally conducted by the most affable and entertaining guides. But every boy and girl can, and should, be supplied by school and library with voyages to all lands, with cinematographic views of man's upward progress, with mental pictures of forests, seas, and islands- famous islands such as Treasure Island and Crusoe's island; vast forests inhabited by pygmies and gorillas; seas of Sinbad and the Maelstrom and the Ancient Mariner. Above all, every child should be furnished with winged cap and shoes that will bear him to the realm of fancy and fairy land. Every child should be introduced, not only to Alexander and Hannibal and Cæsar, to Franklin and Washington and Lincoln, but also -and earlier to those even more interesting, those fascinating personages, Little Jack Horner, the Three Bears, and Cinderella; Quicksilver, Perseus, and Ulysses; King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, and the Red Cross Knight; Christian and Robin Hood and Mowgli. All this the school and the library, working together, can do for the children of the nation. Especially to children of narrow home horizon, of sordid, and perhaps vicious, surroundings, are we called upon to give glimpses of the great world into which they have been born, some conception of the heritage which they may claim, and of its cost to countless generations in blood and tears, in sorrow and suffering. We can fill the white tablets of their minds with beautiful pictures which will cheer them thru life; we can impart to them an ambition and a determination to make the most of their powers; we can implant in their souls ideals which will lead them away from sordid desires and base pursuits, and make them better citizens of the republic. Is not this the purpose of education?

When I say "we," I mean teacher and librarian. The librarian alone cannot do it. And, let me add, the teacher can never reach this goal with the text-book for his only staff. A farmer might as well hope to raise fine horses and oxen on an exclusive diet of dry oat straw or corn shucks.

Achievement and character are based on the ideal. Whence is the child to gain high ideals? For the average child there is but one source - the lives and utterances of the idealists of the world-the dreamers, the prophets of all ages. They will teach him what education is, what character is, and how precious it is above all things. They will teach him that the total of philosophy is not summed up in Iago's "Put money in thy purse;" that he may gain wealth and be impoverished in soul; they will show him that he may master science, but that "the measuring rod of science can never measure the ends of living;" they will make

clear to him that "though he speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, he is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." As a citizen, too, he will realize that it is not prosperity, "it is not piety but righteousness that exalteth a nation." While possessed of the spirit of righteousness, he will not be devoid of piety. He will have the allpervading piety that Dr. Harris speaks of "the piety not merely of the heart, but the piety of the intellect that beholds the truth, the piety of the will that does good deeds wisely, the piety of the senses that sees the beautiful and realizes it in works of art."

My friends, as I said in the beginning that it seemed a work of supererogation to urge co-operation of school and library before this body of alert and advanced educators, so, in conclusion, I must offer the overpowering importance of the subject as my excuse for giving final emphasis to a thought which I hope is never wholly absent from our minds and is the guiding influence of our lives-the supreme importance of the work intrusted to us. As Wendell Phillips said: “Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful man."

In Louise Jordan Miln's Little Folk of Many Lands I find this striking presentation of the thought I wish to leave with you in closing. As she and her father were seated on the Italian seashore one day, "he pointed to the half-clad children playing near. 'There is nothing in all the world so important as children,' he said, 'nothing so interesting. If you ever wish to go in for some philanthropy, if you ever wish to be of any real use in the world, do something for children. If you ever yearn to be truly wise, study children. We can dress the sore, bandage the wounded, imprison the criminal, heal the sick, and bury the dead; but there is always a chance that we can save a child. If the great army of philanthropists ever exterminate sin and pestilence, ever work our race's salvation, it will be because a little child has led them."

SOME OF OUR MISTAKES

PRINCIPAL G. M. GRANT, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO,

CANADA

This is a safe subject to take when addressing an educational association anywhere, whose object must be mutual criticism rather than mutual admiration. Is not the object of all true educators to stimulate thought and correct mistakes, that we may profit by the shortcomings of the past and make present life more complete? It may, indeed, be said that I know too little of the United States to speak with any authority concerning their mistakes. That is perfectly true, and you must, therefore, consider that my speech refers mainly to Canada, tho, as all here are fellowworkers and the conditions of the two countries are in the main alike, I

may be permitted to take the position of confessing common sins, instead of acting as the "ill bird which fouls its own nest." You are the older, wealthier, and more populous country, and it may even be, thru our giving you that sincerest form of flattery known as imitation, that you are responsible for our mistakes, as well as for your own, in educational as in commercial matters. As regards the latter, by affinity to Great Britain and tradition, as well as by reason, we are free-traders; but you are steadily influencing us into becoming protectionists; and tho our wall against your products and manufactures is not yet anything like so bad as your wall against us, it is clear to me that ours will get worse if yours does not get better. We sympathize, you see, with the brotherliness of the moderate drinker who, going home with unsteady gait, saw a more thorogoing toper lying in the ditch: "I cannot help you up, my dear fellow, but I can lie down beside you."

Our first great mistake is that we have systematically undervalued the teaching profession. If mind is greater than the body, if ideas are more important than dollars, and character of more consequence than anything else, then only the best and the best-trained men and women should be allowed to teach, and these should be honored above every other class in the community. How dreadfully we have failed here! Public-school teachers are often no better taught and no better paid than clerks or millgirls; some high-school teachers have not even our easily attained college degree, and not a few university professors would not be allowed a post in a German gymnasium. We think that anyone can teach our children, and, therefore, those who offer to teach for the smallest salaries are preferred by boards of trustees.

As the history of the world is the judgment of the world, let us ask what its judgment is regarding the importance of teachers. According to its verdict, they have been the great benefactors of the world both in the East and in the West. To this day, the educated youth of Britain, of the United States, and of Europe sit at the feet of those two great teachers, Plato and Aristotle, when studying for the highest degree in literae humaniores. Plato and Aristotle again were the disciples of that genuine teacher, Socrates, who taught the youth of Athens so effectually that they gave him hemlock to drink, a reward such as was usually given to the prophets of Israel. What a tribute to the intellectual supremacy of Socrates have the centuries steadily paid, because he insisted on getting to a rational foundation for life and tested every other foundation with quiet, remorseless dialectic! His spirit, thru his disciples, has ruled all the western world from his urn for more than 2,000 years. The phrase which the Greeks used with regard also to their great dramatists was that Æschylus taught this, that Sophocles taught this, that Euripides taught this. other words, each play was a lesson, and the poet was a teacher. the East, and the record is the same. Buddhism is the most widely

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spread religion there. The Buddha was simply a teacher, one who taught his disciples the secret of life and character, making the deepest truths familiar to all by means of parables, like Him of whom it was said that without a parable he taught nothing. Who, again, is the man that the teeming millions of China have revered for twenty-five centuries, to whom they raise temples, and who has molded their compact civilization? Confucius, who from first to last was a teacher, who, while secretary of state or prime minister, based his successful administration on what he had taught his disciples, and who retired from his high office to resume the work of teaching, when his aim was deemed too high by a sovereign who had yielded to sensual temptations. Going higher still, by what title was Jesus known, during all his public life? By the title of rabbi, or teacher. He taught the inner circle of his disciples and the multitudes, "without hasting, without resting."

What was the great characteristic of all these teachers? They taught with authority. Every one of them knew his subject, took it seriously, loved it for its own sake, continually found new wealth in it, was enthusiastic about it, and so made his disciples enthusiastic. To come in contact with such a mind is of itself a liberal education. That is what Garfield meant when he defined a college as President Hopkins sitting on one end of a log and he on the other end. Such a teacher makes his subject interesting to his scholars, unless they are hopelessly bad or hopelessly imbecile. Because we seldom get such teachers, we demand subjects of study which in themselves are interesting, such as dime novels, shilling shockers, penny dreadfuls, Henty's histories, and the sporting columns of yellow journals. Fond parents, seeing the dear children devouring literature of this kind, are filled with admiration at their devotion to books and love of learning, and sigh over the educational advantages which this generation has, compared with the condition of things. in their days. The scholars should, of course, be interested. But there is a great difference between interesting by inspiring and by amusing or exciting. We seldom attempt more than the latter. We have substituted for discipline merely interest.

Here I touch on the second great error we have made. Thru not caring to get the best teachers and not valuing the best, we are continually on the hunt for a royal road to knowledge. There is no royal road. To become educated, a man must work, and work is what the natural man hates. Unless we overcome that bad, deep-seated instinct, we do not educate. Nothing is so destructive to manhood or womanhood as laziness. There has been much talk in our day of the dangers of strong drink, and of the thousands ruined by drunkenness. It would be more to the purpose to talk of the danger of idleness, and of the tens of thousands it ruins. Everyone can see that drunkenness is a sin, but few see the sin of mental inertia. A good school is one that has a good

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