AUCTION.

"How many of you know what state raises the most rice?” Three or four hands come up, and the teacher says, "What! only three or four know what state raises the most rice! My! My! I am surprised! Think, think! How many of you know? Hands up!" Under this pressure several other

Hands up!
hands are put up.
Their owners shake them as if they expected
to flip the answer off at the ends of the fingers. These, quite
likely, have noticed that the teacher calls on those who are the
least demonstrative. They do not know the answer to the ques-
tion, but at the teacher's earnest request for more bidders, they
have bid, and are endeavoring to appear anxious, hoping that
the question will be "knocked off" to somebody else. The
teacher now says, "Well, well, this is more like it”—just like
an auctioneer.

When this question is thus disposed of, another, such as, "Who can tell me what we have learned of Atlanta?" is put up for sale. Much valuable time is wasted by such work. It sails under the stirring name of "enthusiasm," however. It pays to be enthusiastic for a definite purpose, and to question in such a way as to gain it.

DEPARTMENT OF PEDAGOGY.

[This Department is conducted by S. S. PARR, Principal De Pauw Normal School.]

66

-:0:

THE FUNDAMENTAL" PURPOSE OF STATE EDUCA-
TION.

PROF. S. S. PARR: Will you please discuss in the next number of the School Journal the following points?

1. What is the fundamental purpose of the state in giving its young people an education?

2. What relation to that purpose do the different parts of the public school system, the common school, the high school, and the state universities sustain? TEACHER.

UR querist seeks to know the fundamental purpose of public

school-education by the State, i. e., the most all-inclusive purpose, or the one of paramount importance. Is it cultivated capacity for money getting in a profession or calling, or is it general intelligence and moral culture, that is, manhood or womanhood-one or both?

The State is concerned before anything else with the quality of its citizens. Without honest and moral citizens, government, laws and public institutions would tumble to the ground in chaos. But a good citizen is identical with the good man, whatever qualities are necessary to the one are necessary to the other. A skillful professional man, skillful mechanic or farmer is a positive detriment to his state, without he is at the same time a good man. Unless he is such, his skill becomes his ready instrument by which he "lives by his wits," and preys upon his fellow-citizens.

If the State were a mere policeman armed with a club to keep good order, school-education would doubtless stop with whatever amount is necessary to secure its (the State's) safety. However much it may go beyond it, it can not stop any short of this purpose. The first aim of all state-schools must be to make good men and women, i. e., good citizens. good citizens. This aim is, however, not peculiar to state-schools. Such is the fundamental, i. e., allinclusive and paramount purpose of all schools, whether stateschools or otherwise.

There is a gimlet-hole and cork-screw conception of schooleducation abroad that would make its fundamental purpose the production of human automota that, upon having their numer. ous strings pulled by an overseer, a boss-workman, or a director of some kind, would file, turn, rasp, polish and finish mechanical products of varions kinds. Or, perhaps, the automaton is in a lawyer's or doctor's office; his strings are then pulled by a patron or client and he runs down in the prescribed manner. None of this is education; it is the system of apprenticeship applied to school-education. No such conception can lie at the bottom of state school-education. These automata are far more likely to be bad citizens than good ones.

its

But, an objector hastens to assure us, the state must turn out young people bread-winners or they will turn themselves into barn-burners, rioters and assassins. This is the grand-motherly idea, prevalent in many heads, that the state by its simple fiat can do anything, cure any evil, and provide against all kinds of personal improvidence, misfortune and want of sense. The idea is its own reply.

To answer our querist directly, the state seeks to first make men and women of its young people; then, whatever more it can without favoritism and undue burdens.

Our space is too limited to canvass the amount and kind of school-education implied in good citizenship. Suffice it to say that this result is accomplished by the thorough mastery of the general-culture subjects of our common, high and college schools.

Second, what relation do our State common, high and college schools sustain to this purpose of good citizenship? It is their foremost duty. The state is not concerned in making cobblers, tinners, blacksmiths and farmers, except in so far as the production of skilled workmen of these several kinds is necessary to good citizenship and the general welfare. Beyond this, the state is as much obligated to furnish its citizens stove-pipe hats, canes and meerschaum pipes as to furnish apprenticeship-training in carpentering, tinsmithing, farming, etc. Our so-called industrial education is an attempted union of the modern public school with the old-fashioned apprentice-system. In so far as it does not interfere with the making of good men and women, it is good; in so far as it does, it is bad, and must and will be modified. We may build shops in one end of every school-house in Indiana and it will not change either the purpose or the quality of school-education. The common-schools will still be concerned in teaching so much of cominon (not severely systematic) knowledge as will enable its user to get more when he needs it and to use what he has. The high-school will still be engaged in teaching that general field of systematic history and language and of science which grows out of the common knowledge taught by the common-schools, but which does not trench on the specialties of these subjects. Our colleges will still be engaged in extending the work of the high-school or in teaching specialties in history, science and language (their purpose is general culture). Our universities, if so in fact as well as in name, will be employed in applying the knowledge gained in common, high and collegeschool, to professions, callings and trades.

If workshops are set up in one end of our common, high and college-schools, it is not because they are any part of them, but

because times, families and trades are so out of joint that the school is burdened with a foreign load that properly belongs to the home and the shop, or to that department of the school we call the university.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

D

S. S. P.

QUESTIONS PREPARED BY STATE BOARD FOR JAN.

[These questions are based on the Reading Circle work of last season.] SCIENCE OF TEACHING.-I. Explain what is meant by acquired perception.

2.

What is the function of oral spelling?

3. What is the main purpose in early language work?

4. How should the structure of the earth's surface be studied? 5. Why should the attendance of the pupil be prompt and regular?

PHYSIOLOGY.-Describe in detail the heart, the arteries, veins and capillaries. Describe the blood and the changes it undergoes in its course through the body. Describe in detail, with diagram, the course of the blood through the heart, lungs, and blood-vessels.

Answer must not exceed three pages.

HISTORY.-Give a full account of the connection which the invention of the cotton gin had with the civil war, in all its phases, political, commercial, and social.

Answer not to exceed three pages. To be marked on character of work rather than on specific points.

PENMANSHIP..-I. Draw a scale to mark the relative height of letters, and write on it the word Mirth.

2. Describe the proper position of the pupil at the desk in writing. 3. In what order would you endeavor to secure the following characteristics of writing: Rapidity, beauty, legibility. Why?

4. Describe the proper rest for the hand and arm in writing.

5. Give some exercises that you think suitable for practice to promote ease and rapidity in movement.

The answers to these questions should be writen with ink, as a specimen of penmanship, and marked 50 or below, according to merit.

ORTHOGRAPHY.-I. What is the difference between a letter and an elementary sound?

2. Define accent.

When is it called primary? When secondary? Give an example of each.

3. What sounds has ch? Write words illustrating each sound. 4. What sounds are called dentals? Labials? Why are they so

called?

5. What is the distinction between a diphthong and a diagram? Illustrate.

6. Spell, accent, and mark diacritically ten words dictated by the superintendent.

50

GEOGRAPHY.—I. Name five of the best harbors of the United States coast. Explain the relation which a good harbor bears to the prosperity of a city.

2. Compare and contrast Louisiana and Minnesota in all important respects in which you can discover resemblances and differences.

3. Trace the path of a vessel from San Francisco to St. Petersburg. 4. Name all oceans, important seas, gulfs and bays that touch Asia. 5. Name all the countries of South America that touch the Pacific Ocean, and bound one of them.

6. Name all the states or countries of Africa that touch the Mediterranean Sea. How do these countries compare with the others of Africa in civilization?

7.

Bound Russia and name its most important exports.

8. Name five important systems of rivers in North America.

9.

cities.

Sketch a map of California, locating mountains, rivers, and chief

IO. State where on the earth each tropic and each polar circle is located, and give the reason for such location in each case.

GRAMMAR.-1. How does the appositive modifier differ from the possessive?

2. Write three nouns that have the same form in both numbers; three that, when used as subject, always require plural verbs.

3.

What does each gender denote?

4. Analyze "I tell you that which ye yourselves do know."

5.

How is the passive voice made?

6. Give the tense of each verb in the following sentences, and tell what time is expressed in each case:

a. He leaves at six o'clock to-morrow

9.

IO.

Why?

What classes of verbs do not have the passive voice? Why?
What is the difference between a verb and an infinitive?

READING.-I. Give three characteristics of good reading and state your method of securing each.

2. What are rhetorical pauses? Illustrate.

3. What things are to be considered if we regard a reading lesson as a study in literature?

4.

each.

Name three American writers of fiction and give one work of

5. Of what advantage is the study of good literature? 6. Read a stanza of poetry, and a paragraph of prose the superintendent.

ARITHMETIC.-I.

common multiple.

2.

selected by 50.

of of what number equals 93? Define least 5, 5Proc. 5, quot. 5.

Divide .0512 by .032+.005.

3. If 27 bricks make a cubic foot, how many bricks will make a wall

46 ft. long, 27 ft. high, and 213 ft. thick?

4. Reduce of a yard to the decimal of a mile.

10.

Ans. 10.