bursting of buds and the songs of birds." Many of us can say to this a hearty Amen.

Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes frankly declared before the National Education Association at Boston that he did not think a satisfactory substitute had been found for the classical and mathematical training.

Stars

Who has not felt the enchantment of the night-time,
When gleaming, silvery stars, like jewels rare,
Spread through the vaulted sky a wondrous lace-work,
And freely with the whole wide world, their beauty share.

Thus have they shone through centuries all unnumbered;
Ne'er wearing out like mortals here below;

Giving this message clear and ever constant

That light, within itself, can no destruction know.

In the dense darkness of our mortal living,

Are there not stars that cheer us on our way?
Bright, shining rays of unselfed loving-kindness,
Bring to the burdened thought much joy each day.

Gloriously eternal the light of love and goodness,
Ever expressed to meet each human need,
Pierces the gloom of sorrow, fear and worry,

Gives forth the radiance of kindly thought and deed.

Stars of the earth and stars of heavenly splendor,
Shine on undimmed throughout encircling years!
Filling the world with beauty and with gladness,
Banishing night's blackness and life's bitter tears.

EDITH M. SHANK.

Orientation by Reals Before Using Symbols

W

BLANCHE E. ATKINS, ST. CLOUD, MINNESOTA.

HEN Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were going across the United States from Hannibal, Missouri, in their air-ship you will recall how, after a few hours, one remarked, "We must be over Indiana by now." But the other, looking over the side, said, "No, we can't be because it is green down there and Indiana is pink."

Maps, not earth pictures, constitute the bulk of geographical images given to most people in school. Indiana is pink, the Himalayas are a horizontal two-inch curve near the center of a vari-colored page, and the Pacific Ocean, even, is blue paper with some tiny spots on it.

Paper money, though only a symbol, is easier to carry than silver or gold and so better, provided it has real money back of it. Names of places, maps and globes are geographical paper money and valuable to the same extent. That they be honest symbols, the real for which each stands must first exist in the pupil's mind. An examination of the mental images of children and student teachers leads one to realize that these symbols are not, usually, of more value than are the German paper marks of 1924. The reasons are the same. The German leaders have been in a hurry and have perhaps not known how to create real values. Paper money was easy to produce and so the people have been given merely those symbols. Geography teachers, too, have found it quicker and easier to use maps than to create mental images of realities. The results are disastrous in both cases.

Thanks to the movies, the words "New York City" to most western people now bring a picture of its skyline or crowded traffic. "France" since the war is something real. It may be

the word calls up only the useless silk handkerchief that brother sent home, and the vague emotional hold-over from the excitement of war days. But, to children and those entering the teaching profession today, there is a real back of the words "New York" and "France."

A hundred years ago the teaching of symbols in reading was in about the stage that map work in geography is now. The children looked at the crooked black marks, the print, and made the appropriate noises. The ten-year-old "read" orally: "But why may not Columbia's soil

Rear men as great as Britain's isle;

Exceed what Greece and Rome have done,

Or any land beneath the sun?"

But it certainly was not true, though his voice said it was, that

"These thoughts inspire my youthful mind

To be the greatest of mankind;

Great, not like Cæsar, stain'd with blood,

But only great as I am good."

This boy merely looked at the printed symbols and gave the oral ones. It is just the same, today, when a child names the countries of Asia from a map or points to two portions of the globe and says, "These portions receive the oblique rays. of the sun." That he has no real back of his words in the latter case is shown by the pitifully large number in any school who, when asked to locate the sun at noon here at home, will point straight up. They have been given symbols for which their minds do not contain the reals.

In the days gone by the child looked up from the printed symbols in his reader and asked the master, "What is i-ns-p-i-r-e?" And the teacher gave him another symbol, the oral word, and, forthwith, he "knew" inspire! The master felt he had taught "inspire." But he had not, for the experience of inspiration had not been given the child.

We all admit as a psychological axiom that no symbol can create, in the mind, its real. It can only call up that real, provided it has previously existed in consciousness and there been tied to its symbol.

Yet we deny this axiom daily in geography classes. The world as a whole is "taught" by showing a globe; the child's first association with "torrid zone" is with the shaded circle on the geography page; and he is told to "turn to Asia and locate Arabia." Teachers are in too much of a hurry. To get the image of the real into pupils' minds takes time and thought while the symbol is right there in the geography book, easy to

use.

Usually, too, the teachers themselves, through little fault of their own, have only the symbols in their own minds. To them "Cape Horn" is the end of a yellow point near the bottom of the page and "Wyoming" is the word in capitals across a colored square. Sometimes they and the pupils do have a mental picture of the stormy coast and of the cattle ranges but the symbol was given them as their first association with the name, and the connection between those two is what has been drilled upon, so it is all that is used when Cape Horn or Wyoming is mentioned.

The lower grade and early intermediate studies of types of geographic conditions and of human life do give pupils a fair experience with the smaller reals of geography. Those who have joyously worked out problems and projects in these studies have clear images of these smaller units. The trouble here is lack of connection between the real and its symbol.

Before any maps are permitted, pupils should do as they do in early reading lessons. The teacher there, having first assured herself the pupils image a real hen and know how wheat looks, gets the printed symbol firmly associated with that real. One common device is to lead the pupils many times and in many ways to "match" the printed word with the picture. Geography teachers and pupils can get from

advertisements, old geographies and magazines, hundreds of scenes. The geographical locations can be on slips for matching and also on the back of the pictures as a key to help pupils with those not yet known. Children enjoy gathering, fixing, matching, classifying and having games and contests with these. Such work with pictures also clarifies and deepens their mental images. If much of such work preceded any use of maps, time would be saved in the end. If the name "Indiana" had been associated in the minds of Tom and Huck with pictures much like their own Missouri farms and villages its later appearance on a pink oblong would not have been disastrous to their concept. Yet most courses of study recommend that even as low as third grade places studied be "located on the globe." They should be located on something, but it is on the round earth under their feet, not on its symbol. I shall say more of that later.

If, by home geography and type studies, the smaller geographical concepts have been made clear, and then have been connected with their names before maps and globes are used, some of the trouble at present so evident in results will have been obviated. But it is the presentation of the large units and the necessary location of the smaller ones on the larger that have compelled even the fine teachers to so often resort to mere symbols. Usually the teacher thinks that the size of the earth, zone or state, precludes its being presented as it really is, and so the symbol is substituted.

This is further justified by the fact that the geographical symbol, unlike printed words, is like its real in shape. But one might just as well try to give an Eskimo the concept "rose" by showing him a black and white outline drawing of one, or teach an orphan "mother" by showing him a lady doll. The outline drawing, like the map, will help to get the one unimportant quality of shape, provided it is used after the more important qualities are impressed. By being given first and kept persistently before the mind, the symbol does not help to