grades, discussions of the special problems of rural schools, and so on. Its object is not to load pupils up with formal doctrines, but to develop in them thotfulness about the aims, conditions and processes of school work.

IN the Educational Number of the New York Independent, (August 5th,) Prof. William MacDonald, of Bowdoin College gives the results of an investigation into common school matters in the state of Maine, which is full of interest. Elsewhere we publish a single paragraph relating to superintendents. It is an amazing record of unfitness which makes one wonder that the common school coach can be kept going in the state. But, after all, Maine is not alone in this matter. The truth is that we are just waking up to a realization of the fact that the superintendency is the most important position in our school system, and demands special skill and knowledge. How large a number of the superintendents of Wisconsin are educational experts? and how shall we justify our demand for skilled teachers, if we put over them unskilled superintendents?

ALREADY a situation has developed in this state which, if it is wisely used, admits of an important educational advance. A large number of qualified teachers, graduates of normal schools and colleges, were unable to obtain positions this summer. The supply exceeded the demand. It is, therefore, possible to elevate the standards, which must be accomplished by legislation. In two directions this is exceedingly desirable. We need broader views and more thoro culture in the teaching of grammar grades. A first-grade certificate should be the minimum qualification for such work. Opportunity should be afforded to those now in the work to bring themselves to the required standard-say two years but a first grade certificate should be made the standard for all seeking positions. A third grade certificate ought to hold but for one year, and be renewable but once. would operate to diminish the underbidding of the least qualified class, and to accelerate the movement for certificates of a higher grade which has been slowly making headway for some years. Our normal schools are now numerous and strong enough to justify the maintenance of better standards of teaching in Wisconsin.

AN INSTITUTE EXERCISE.

This

As the railroad map of the state furnishes so much material for state geography and the Blue Book so much material for information

about the state and national governments and as each is now furnished by the state to the schools, would it not be wise to teach the teachers how to use these aids to the best advantage. Two things suggest themselves to us. Institute work can easily be shaped in this line especially in the use of the railroad map - even without the previous notice and preparation by the teachers and the teachers meeting during the year, which have been so useful in many counties and cities. can be used for exercises which require a reference to the Blue Book or the railroad map for this preparation. There is material enough in the Blue Book alone to furnish one profitable exercise at each meeting once a month, for the whole school year. These exercises can easily be made models for similar exercises in the schools. W.

USE THE BLUE BOOK IN SCHOOL.

The law now very wisely provides that a copy of the Blue Book shall be furnished each school to be kept in the school as a book of reference.

On many matters of government the Blue Book is of great value as a reference book and indeed there is no other way in which a large part of the information given in it could be

accessible to most persons.

Besides such matters as the Declaration of

Independence, the constitution of the United States and of the state of Wisconsin, Jefferson's manual and the rules of the legislature, it contains an outline history of Wisconsin and a list of all persons who have been members of the legislature. or officers of the territory or of the United States, of speakers of the house state, a list of presidents and vice-presidents the senate, complete election statistics of the of representatives and presidents pro tem of

states, the state and United States census

statistics, a list of newspapers and of post offices in the state, descriptions and engravings of all the state institutions, full statistics of the United States and of the state governpolitical platforms of all parties, biographies ment with names of persons holding offices, the of members of the legislature, state officers and senators and representatives for Wisconsin, and a large amount of other useful matter.

To classes in civil government the Blue Book is almost indispensable for daily reference. For other pupils it is a good thing to have at hand to refer to. The pictures of public officers and public institutions are attractive. The law reads as follows:

"To the superintendent of public property: who shall distribute the same to the county

and city superintendents of schools, a sufficient number to supply each school district with one copy which shall be the property of the district thus supplied and shall be kept in the schoolhouse to be used as other reference books by pupils and teachers."

It will be seen that the county or city superintendent is the proper person for a teacher to apply to for a copy of the Blue Book for his school. W.

AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT.

Senator J. H. Stout is doing the state good service, but J. H. Stout, president of the Menomonie school board is doing the state better service. The money value of his gifts to the city for a manual training school is of less worth than his intelligent care of the experiment.

He has carefully studied what is being done elsewhere, and is feeling the way toward something better than has yet been reached.

He is not willing to stop with the benefits of a manual training school for the select few who enter the high school. He wishes to reach the great mass who never attend the high school. With this end in view the Menomonie schools are working in more and more of manual training in the grades below the high school.

The intention of Mr. Stout is to experiment with manual training in the lower grades, till a practical working system can be found which shall fill the gap between the practical activities of the kindergarten and those of the manual training department of the high school. Sloyd and drawing partly fill that gap and have been utilized. Preparatory work in manual training has been pushed down four grades in the ward schools, and the influence of kindergarten method has been pushed up about two grades, so that the gap still left is not a great one. The exact stage of this progress is given in the printed course of study of the school. But the important thing is that this is only a stage in the evolution of an educational experiment.

Few persons have such an opportunity in the public schools as Mr. Stout has. The lumber firm of which he is the head pays a large share of the taxes of Menomonie, and are the chief factors in the prosperity of the town, and yet it is not a mere lumbering town, but is the center of a settled farming community, and has a large number of specially intelligent citizens. Mr. Stout has personally given the manual training school to the city, and is now rebuilding it after a

in operation now long enough to have shown its practical value to the plain people who are distrustful of novelties and believe only demonstrated facts. The people of Menomonie generally have come to believe in the manual training school, and sustain now the movement to apply its method to the lower grades.

First the manual training department of the high school, then the kindergarten, then the connection between the two, this is the work at Menomonie of which the last and hardest to establish is now in process. This is pioneer work, and therefore of special interest to us. Whatever is done in that line is done for all other graded schools, as well as for those at Menomonie.

Mr. Stout is an educational Edison with the school of Menomonie as his laboratory, experimenting on new ground till he finds the right thing.

There is no idea of displacing the academic instruction now given. So far the experiment shows that the additional work is clear gain. The pupils in the upper grades have done just as well in book work as before, and have had the advantage of manual training besides. The kindergarten pupils who have had a continuation of kindergarten methods have made exceptionally rapid progress in the lower grades, and have been thus greatly aided in their book work by their kindergarten work.

If manual training has any value as an education to the head as well as the hand, as a training in accuracy, patience and obedience to law, and as a training in observation and reflection, then the large per cent. of children. who never reach the high school ought to have its advantages as well as the small per cent. who graduate.

Just how best to accomplish this is the problem at which the Menomonie schools are working, and in the results of which we are all deeply interested. A successful solution of that problem, if it can be put in operation in other schools without much additional expense will be initiated very soon in other graded schools. W.

THE NEW RAILROAD MAP.

The new railroad map, a copy of which mounted is given to each school, is the best map of the state ever published and can be

made very valuable to the pupils in any school.

It shows the divisions into townships and sections for the first time on a railroad map. In the case of the old French grants at Green Bay, the Oneida reservation and the lands granted to the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians in Calumet county which were not surveyed under this system the map shows it. The other Indian reservations have all been surveyed in townships and sections and are therefore not shown on this map, as they might well have been. The variations made by the two connection lines are shown very well.

The railroads of Wisconsin and of neighboring parts of Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota are shown much better than on any map published by railroad companies. All the crooks and turns are shown clearly, every stations is named. The different lines are designated by different coloring, so that the dark red line of the C. M. & St. P. railway or the blue line of the C. & N. W. railway can be distinguished at a glance, from those of all other lines, even in the tangle of railroads coming into Chicago. The car ferry lines on Lake Michigan, a new feature of railroading in this state, are also shown.

Villages off the railroad are not shown, except in the case of the two county seats, Friendship and Wautoma. But villages not

on some railroads are now so few in Wisconsin that this is not an important omission. Town boundaries are not given, but these are so largely the same as those of townships that it is of less importance. For the benefit of readers new to the state or living in other states, we will say that in Wisconsin the word "township" is uniformly applied in the laws to a division of land six miles square made by the United States survey and that the word "town" is uniformly applied to a political subdivision of a county. The confusion of terms in some other state legislations as well as in common talk, between township and town and between town and village does not exist in the legislation of our state and is not often heard in conversation.

The practice of teaching home geography in the schools, is so general that nearly all teachers in this state can draw on the blackboard maps of their own counties, with the towns, villages and cities all properly located and bounded. A map of the state giving the towns would show the irregular divisions of the early settlements in the lead mining regions in the southwest and the large towns in the unsettled parts of the north. In the

rest of the state the towns usually coincide with the surveyed townships except as rivers or lakes interfere. W.

THE READING OF FICTION.

The old assumption that reading of any sort-immoral writings are, of course, excepted-will necessarily benefit the reader, and that if allowed to follow his tastes he will gradually advance to books of a higher character, has been thoroughly disproved by experience. Librarians have found that readers of vapid and sensational fiction continue to read vapid and sensational fiction all their lives, and for the most part desire nothing better. This result ought to have been anticipated. ticipated. There is nothing elevating in the common-place and inartistic. It does not help to form higher ideals; it does not manifest its own vacuity to the one who finds satisfaction in it. He will not live thro' it as a 'transitional state, but will live in it as the state to which he is adapted.

Hence education in reading, if it aims at anything more than the mere mechanics of the process, must look after the formation of ideals. The pupils must be brought to recognize good literature and to desire after it. Literature is in short the fine art of the school-room, and very commonly its only fine art. Fortunately it is the most many-sided and universal of the fine arts, and so best adapted of any of them for the role it has to play in education. This role may be expressed as the promotion of culture, the chief elements of which are breadth and refinement. Mere knowledge, such as the study of science gives, and mere cleverness, the result of formal training, may exist without the breadth and refinement of nature which it is the mission of art to develop. It follows that literary training must have a peculiar technique of its own adapted to the end which it seeks to attain, and distinct from the technique of knowledge and science. School processes, and especially examinations, are adapted to the technique of the latter, and hence are ill-suited to literary training. There is something absurd about a written examination to test refinement. An exercise in literature which loses itself in technicalities and mere knowledege is an inept wastrel. Refinement comes of appreciation for what is excellent and in proportion to its real excellence.

What we need therefore is development of a sense for the best, an inner and real appreciation of excellence. This is not a matter of rules, nor is it to be acquired by getting up a

set of notes. All training in art and literature is an art-comes of continued and appreciative contact with the best models. The individual who is in process of education must accept the decisions as to merit made for him by the consensus of competent judges. His own standards are individual, immature and imperfect. If he does not appreciate as superior what is approved by those competent in the matter this is but proof of his defect, and ought to be a challenge to self-improvement. Precisely here is where he needs culture,

which is obtained by continued and appreciative contact with approved models. He is to seek after appreciation, to promote it in himself when in presence of the model, by dwelling upon it until the hidden merit comes out. A teacher may help in this, sometimes by telling, more often by promoting analysis and comparisons. If he has insight and true culture the teacher may do much for the pupil, but if he lacks appreciation himself he ought not to teach literature; that would be a case of the blind leading the blind. His great service is to help the pupil to come to a genuine appreciation for the best.

It is unfortunate that in schools the purely formal aspects of art occupy too large a place. The apparatus for this-grammar and rhetoric -has been thoroly developed, and the task of applying the rules is comparatively simple. Even this however, is done so mechanically as to contribute little to the real growth of the pupil's appreciation. There are larger things than grammar and rhetoric, for literature has been well called "an interpretation of life." This interpretation consists in such things as the artistic presentation of character types, the setting forth of the play of circumstances in molding character, the unfolding of the consequences of actions and the might of destiny, the manifestation of the spiritual meaning of material things, revealing the charm of beauty in things common, touching into life the springs of nobler emotions in us, filling us with a sense of the deeper meanings of life, enlarging our sympathies, and so on. It is obvious that fiction-really great fiction-will contribute to most of these ends, and is worthy of acquaintance in proportion as it artistically contributes to them. It ought to be interesting -and great fiction is interesting-but it ought also to be profitable for the comprehension of life and for broadening and refining our nature.

To escape the abuse of fiction now so common we need to develop a sense of its real value, to maintain proper standards of excellence, and to let reason and common sense impose due bounds here as in other fields of activity and enjoyment. • S.

-Geo. H. Reed, formerly of Waukesha, assumes charge of the South Milwaukee schools.

-T. H. Lage goes from Clinton Junction to Pepin and Mr. Reynolds takes the school at Clinton.

-Prin. Taylor Frye, for some time at Viroqua, assumes charge of the high school at New London.

-J. D. Rouse, formerly at Spring Green, is to have charge of the high school at Black Earth this year.

-Mr. Whitford, son of Professor Whitford, of Milton College, is to be principal of the school at Milton this year.

-Monroe has erected an attractive modern schoolhouse of four rooms this summer at an expense of ten thousand dollars.

-Authority has been granted by the normal school regents to the River Falls normal. school to open a kindergarten department.

-C. E. Patzer, of Manitowoc, has been appointed assistant in supervision of practice and professional reviews at the Milwaukee normal.

-C. O. Merica, formerly Professor of History and Economics at Lawrence University, becomes principal of the Ryan high school at Appleton.

-A handsome ward school building of lake Superior red sand stone is in process of erection at Appleton, to cost about thirty-three thousand dollars.

-Miss Kate Sabin, superintendent of the east district of Dane county, has resigned this post to accept a position in Milwaukee-Downer College as teacher of Sciences.

-E. E. DeCou, a graduate of the university and formerly principal at Evansville, has been elected Professor of Mathematics in Bethel College, Russellville, Ky.

-At Black River Falls a new high school building is in process of erection in the same yard as the present building. The latter will be used for elementary schools.

-DeWitt Elwood, formerly principal of the high school at New London, has been elected teacher of mathematics in the Madison high school. He is a graduate of Lawrence university.

-W. H. Luehr, formerly principal at Grand Rapids, assumes charge of the high school on the north side at Manitowoc, the place made vacant by the removal of Mr. Patzer to Milwaukee.

-Prof. Jerome H. Raymond, of the department of sociology in the University of Wisconsin, has been elected president of the University of West Virginia, and has accepted the position.

-The former superintendent of Washington county, Mr. D. T. Keeley, assumes charge of the West Bend high school this fall. He was principal of this school previous to his election to the superintendency.

-Prof. J. L. Humphrey, who has been connected with the Whitewater normal school for fifteen years, resigned his position this summer to engage in business. In his place Mr. John R. Sherrick will have charge of the Latin.

-Prof. W. D. Kuhn, one of the proprietors of Campbell University, Holton, wrote the Kansas addition to Wright's Constitution, the book in civil government recently adopted by the state text-book commission. Western School Journal.

-Lodi is to erect a new high school building next year. The old building is no longer adequate for the needs of the school, and new quarters have been rented for the coming term to tide mattters along until the new building can be constructed.

-In place of Albert Hardy, who has become institute conductor for the Platteville normal school, the Board of Education of La Crosse has elected as city superintendent Principal John P. Bird, for many years in charge of the third district school.

-Prin. F. E. Doty, formerly of Waupaca, has been elected principal of the Sparta schools. He is succeeded at Waupaca by James L. Thatcher, who graduated at the university in 1894, and has been superintendent of schools at Redwood Falls, Minn.

-The graduates from the full course of the normal schools this summer were as follows:

Milwaukee, 107; Oshkosh, 49; Platteville, 53; River Falls, 9; Stevens Point, 16; Superior, 3; Whitewater, 23; a total of 260. Certificates for completion of the elementary course were awarded to 159.

-It is gratifying to find such attention given to music in some of the institutes this summer as Prof. Churchill, of the Platteville normal school, has been offering in Grant, Lafayette and Green counties. It ought to result in the much more general use of singing in the schools of these counties, and much more intelligent instruction in the subject.

-The handsome pamphlet issued by the normal school regents as a souvenir of the N. E. A. meeting at Milwaukee this summer deserves appreciative mention. The text prepared by Pres. Salisbury, of Whitewater, contains a good account of the normal school system in this state, and is abundantly illustrated with pictures of the different schools, their rooms and equipments.

-The state survey, authorized by the last legislature, at the head of which is Dr. E. A. Birge of the university, is progressing as rapidly as possible. One feature of it at least promises to be of much interest to teachersa study of the physical features of southern Wisconsin, by Prof. G. L. Collie of Beloit. It is hoped that his report will be ready for printing within a year.

-At the Stevens Point normal school five new members appear in the list of teachers: J. W. Livingstone, institute conductor; George L. Teeple, a graduate of Cornell, literature and rhetoric; Miss Jennie M. Whitman, a graduate of Vassar, composition and English grammar; Mrs. Mary V. Mustard, a graduate of Indiana State University, assistant in English; and Miss Elizabeth F. Stimson, librarian.

In a note from Pres. Pray, of Stevens Point, we find the following correction of an item in our last issue: "The JOURNAL in its pleasant reference to Stevens Point Normal, last month, spoke of the graduates as 'thirtytwo, including this year's class.' The error arose from the statement in the catalog, of the class of 'January, 1897.' Since that date that is to say in June, 1897, this school issued sixteen diplomas and thirty-five elementary certificates. At present, therefore, the school is represented by twenty-one full graduates and sixty-two holders of certificates."

-The following additional appointments of graduates of the university this summer have come to our knowledge: Burton H. Esterly will teach science in the Monroe high school;