nation. Holding aloof from religious controversy and political strife, they are drawn more and more to give all their thought and energy to create schools which shall best develop, illumine, and purify man's whole being. To accomplish this, two things above all others are necessary: to enlighten and strengthen faith in the surpassing worth of education, not merely as a means to common success, but as an end in itself; and then to induce the wisest and noblest men and women to become teachers. We must help greater and greater numbers to understand and love the ideal of human perfection, and to believe in education for the transformation it is capable of working in man and in society. It doubtless equips for the struggle for existence, for the race for wealth and place; but it does better things also. It gives to human beings capacity for higher life, for purer pleasures, for more perfect freedom. It is the key which unlocks the secrets of nature; it is the password to the delightful world of best human thought and achievement, making the wisest and noblest who have lived or are now living the familiar acquaintances of all rightly cultivated minds. It makes us able to gain a livelihood; and, what is infinitely more precious, it inspires the wisdom which shows us how to live.

The more comprehensive our grasp of the meaning and power of education becomes, the easier shall it be to persuade the best men and women to devote themselves to teaching; for we shall make them feel that the teacher does not take up a trade, but the highest of arts—the art of fashioning immortal souls in the light of the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty. "A teacher," says Thring, "is one who has liberty and time, and heart enough and head enough, to be a master in the kingdom. of life."

Education is furtherance of life; and instruction is educative only when the knowledge acquired gives truer ideas of the worth of life, and supplies motives for right living. The teacher's business - his sole business, one might say· is to awaken and confirm interest in the things which make for purer and richer life; for interest compels and holds attention; and interest and attention result in observation and accuracy, which are the characteristics of cultivated minds. If our interests were as manifold as the thoughts and labors of all men, we should all find it possible to approach to completeness of living; for it is easy to live in the things which interest us. He who is shut in the circle of his family or his business or his profession is necessarily a partial and mechanical man, whose relations with God and men cannot be full and vital. The world of his consciousness is fragmentary and hard, not whole and fluid. He is alive but at points. When the flame of his existence is extinguished, it goes out in utter darkness; for he has kindled no celestial fire in other minds and hearts. Such a one cannot be a teacher, for he cannot illumine the mind or speak to the heart; and it is with minds and

hearts that he must forever occupy himself. What is knowledge but a mind knowing? What is love but a heart loving? In books there are symbols of knowledge, but knowledge itself exists in minds alone. Hence, whatever his matter, the teacher looks always to training of mind and building of character, and to the information he imparts chiefly in its bearing on this end of all education. From his point of view, a yearn ing for knowledge, faith in its worth, in the ability and delight it gives, is more important than knowledge itself. A taste for study, a passion for mental exercise, compels to self-education; whereas one who knows many things, but is indifferent and indolent, forgets what he knows.

Information is, of course, indispensable, and the methods by which it may be best imparted must be known and employed by the teacher; but the end is a cultivated mind, opening to the light as flowers to the morning rays, athirst for knowledge as the growing corn for rain and sunshine. In a rightly educated mind intellectual culture is inseparable from moral culture. They spring from the same root and are nourished by like elements. They are but different determinations of the one original feeling, which, so far as man may know, is the ultimate essence of life. Moral character is the only foundation on which the temple of life can stand symmetrical and secure; and hence there is a general agreement among serious thinkers that the primary aim and end of education is to form character.

As moral culture is the most indispensable, it is the most completely within the power of those who know how to educate. It is possible to make saints of sinners, heroes of cowards, truth-lovers of liars; to give magnanimity to the envious and nobility to the mean and miserly; but it is possible only when we touch man's deepest nature and awaken within him a consciousness of God's presence in his soul; for it is only when he feels that he lives in the Eternal Father that he is made capable of boundless devotion, that his will lays hold on permanent principles and is determined by them to freedom and right.

When men lose the firm grasp of the eternal verities, character tends to disappear, for at such a time it becomes difficult to believe that any high or spiritual thing is true or worth while. Faith in the goodness of life is undermined, and the multitude are left to drift at the mercy of passions and whims, having lost the power to believe in the soul or to love aught with all their hearts. At such a time there is more urgent need that those who have influence and authority should consecrate themselves to the strengthening of the foundations of life; that the young especially may be made to feel that virtue is power and courage, wisdom and joy, sympathy and blessedness; that they may learn reverence and obedience, respect for others, without which self-respect is not possible; that they may come to understand that all genuine progress is progress of spirit; that in all relations, human and divine, piety is the indispensable thing,

useful alike for the life which now is and for that which is to be. Such a fortune as ours has not been given to any other people. Our life sprang from the love of religion and liberty, and, if it is to endure, it must be preserved by the principles from which it sprang; and, if these principles are to remain with us as the vital force of all our hoping and striving, they must be implanted from generation to generation in the minds and hearts of the young.

WHAT IS A FAD?

SUPERINTENDENT F. LOUIS SOLDAN, CITY SCHOOLS, ST. LOUIS, MO. There has been a widespread discussion in regard to what has been called "fads in education." The charge is made that public schools undertake to teach too much of what is not necessary, and thereby neglect the essentials. While all agree that fads should have no place in public education, there is the widest possible difference in regard to the question, "What is a fad?" A school fad might be defined as a persistent departure from educational common-sense. Single errors constitute no fad. A fad is a defect which is systematized. It is error masking as achievement or progress.

Some well-meaning and intelligent critics of the public schools charge that education has run mad by including many superfluities into its course. The so-called "newer studies"— namely, drawing, music, nature study, and art—have to bear the brunt of these attacks. The writer of this paper sent a letter of inquiry to many people. The answers have been used to some extent in this paper. The president of an association of parents and patrons of public schools writes: "In my opinion, the first school superintendent who rises to the occasion and has these 'fads ' discontinued in the public schools will win for himself fame beyond any other measure he can advocate." He explains that he refers to drawing and singing.

These studies are not fads in any sense of the word. It is tacitly assumed in such criticisms that it is the sole function of education to prepare for some special business of life. Since only a few children will become artists or musicians, for the great majority who are not to become artists or musicians it is supposed that training in drawing and music is thrown away. This would be an insuperable objection, if these studies did not impart training of human importance and general educational application. Education does not prepare for any special business or vocation, but for life. The cultivation of eye and hand and taste is of importance in all callings. The educational universality of these studies. is their defense. In this age even an elementary education should

include some of the elements of science, or the child remains in brutal ignorance of the world in which he lives. Music, in the sense of classsinging, is an element of public instruction that is underestimated by the thoughtless only. Drawing has some features of universal educational value in every school, and in industrial centers it ranks among the important studies. Manual training and lessons in cooking have both social and general educational value; their aim never has been to train carpenters or cooks. While these studies find strong advocates among the thoughtful in the community, and among the teachers, it is proper to remember that they may suffer by being unduly magnified in a course of instruction. They occupy a position essentially different from that of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and geography. They have neither found such universal adoption, nor have they been given as great a share of time, nor have they rooted as deeply in the approval of public conscience, as the older studies. Moreover, they have not become fully ingrafted or correlated with the rest of the schoolroom work. As a rule, their conduct lies in the hands of supervisors who make this specialty their whole work. In such case their adjustment to the claim of the other educational work is apt, at times, to be neglected, and an undue amount of time and attention may be exacted from teachers and pupils. These studies are of the highest educational value; they may become fads if they step beyond the limit of their general educational usefulness.

FADS OF ECCENTRICITY

This class of fads may be made clearer by an illustration: A few years ago some person suggested that the daily rotation of the various studies in the program was objectionable, and that, instead of an hour in arithmetic, followed by an hour in geography, and perhaps an hour in history, a different division of time was preferable. Consequently, he undertook to teach all the arithmetic of the school term by taking five weeks' solid work in arithmetic at the rate of five hours a day. Even this idea had some followers.

The words "fad," "frill," "fringe," which are used frequently as synonyms, apply to this class with particular force. The idea underlying them seems to be that of fashionable ornament in contrast with plain dress. The idea of fad often carries with it the suggestion of personal vanity, a manifest desire to attract attention by appearance rather than by merit. There is a "sport" with new things which takes possession of its votaries and makes them lie in wait for things novel and strange.

It is characteristic of this kind of fads, as well as of others, that they are launched into the world with liberal promises of the important results which they will accomplish. The fad's reason for existence lies in the promised achievement of the future rather than in the experience of the past or the needs of the present.

FADS OF THEORY

The existence of fads in modern education is by no means discouraging. Zeal and enthusiasm are in evidence in all of them. Not a few of them arise from the very wealth of educational thought, and from an abundance of ingenious theory. Fads are at times evidences of great interest in new educational theories which, while not always expressed in terms clear and conclusive, are, for that very reason, for some, fascinating and attractive. One should imagine that the hopeless entanglement which stares us in the face in the discussion of new and old education, of the new studies and the three R's, of prescribed courses of study or individual plans, should be in itself enough to make the teacher withdraw from the path leading into quagmire, and keep to the broader road of conservative teaching. But mysticism never lacks disciples.

Much error has arisen from a mistaken idea of the function of the school, which I take to be the development of power thru instruction in the conventional studies. Public opinion would probably classify as a fad the attempt to "develop power" to the exclusion of reading, writing, and arithmetic. School education is an unfolding process. But it is more than the unfolding of what is in the child. Knowledge from without, and experience and life from without, must be carried into the child-soul.

The child is not the self-contained aim and orbit of education. Education comprises a larger world. It is not correct to say that the child is educated for himself; he is educated for manhood. He is trained, not for what he is, but for what he shall be. There are in him childish ways which must be cast off and rejected in the process of education. Childish life and thoughts are scaffoldings which are discarded as he advances. Education has to bear constantly in mind the idea that the requirements and duties of adult life, the ideals of true manhood and womanhood, form the aims of child education. On the other hand, the ways and means, and the processes, of education are fixed by the natural conditions of child-life. The aim lies in the future; the means are determined by present conditions. Childhood is naturally the happiest time of life, but the incidental aim that education, should make the child happy would be but a poor substitute for the greater aim, namely, the happiness and strength of the adult. The educator should not, cannot, without educational hazard, step down and lose his own identity in his otherwise proper endeavor to adjust himself to the child's life and ways. He must stand erect and kindly lead the child to walk with him toward his future. He adjusts himself to the child so far only as it is necessary to introduce him to the serious purposes of education. School education should be childlike in its simplicity and clearness; to make it childish in tone or subject-matter would be a fad.

Whenever school education separates itself from instruction, and