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other chapter is devoted to the general results of this system, to its criticisms abroad and at home and lastly, comes the suggestions for the appropriation of this system or of certain dominant features of it into Germany with maximal regard for existing conditions there. The so-called Elmira system has never had a better and more discriminating presentation and criticism.

A History of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. For use in public schools. By D. M. DUNCAN (Gage's 20th Century Series). Gage & Company, Ltd., Toronto, 1903. pp. 140.

This little school book is not without striking lessons by way of contrast. Most of us would say that Saskatchewan, Assiniboia, Alberta, Athabasca and Manitoba had no history, and that for the schoolchildren here history must consist in studying the story of England, United States and even Greece and Rome. This little book, however, presents an admirable story of the Indians in the northwestern part of Canada, a good story of the development of the Hudson Bay interests, of the great explorers, the relations of traders and Indians, the fur companies, the trip up to the Arctic, and the Red River Rebellion which ended with the execution of Riel. This takes the pupil into a totally different atmosphere from that we are accustomed to associate with history.

Once-Upon-A-Time Stories, by MELVIN HIX. Longmans, Green & Company, New York, 1907. pp. 105.

Here are eleven interesting little stories printed in very large type and copiously illustrated, well adapted for the use of children: They are The Little Red Hen; How the Bean Got its Black Mark; Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse; The Old Woman and Her Pig; The Mouse that Lost Her Tail; Cut-cut and Peep-peep; The Three Pigs; The Story of Chicken Little; The House that Jack Built; Golden Hair and the Three Bears.

From Trail to Railway through the Appalachians, by ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM. Ginn & Company, Boston, 1907. pp. 188.

The author holds that geography in the schools must return to human interests and this without undervaluing physiography. He therefore takes a trip from Boston through the Berkshires, over the Mohawk, Hudson, Erie Canal, New York Central, over the Pennsylvania Road through the Ohio Valley, round through Cumberland Gap and home again. His book contains many pictures illustrating the progress of transportation and locomotion and presents many interesting scenic views and even historical personages, in all 74. It is an excellent work and unique presentation of method of travel. History of the Pestalozzian Movement in the United States, by WILL S. MONROE. Bardeen, Syracuse, 1907. pp. 244.

Professor Monroe has done a very excellent service in writing this book with its nine papers, bibliography and dedication to Earl Barnes. Its chapters are entitled Spread of Pestalozzianism in Europe; William Maclure, First Disciple of Pestalozzi; Joseph Neef; Coadjutor of Pestalozzi; Neef's Plan and Method of Education; First American Pestalozzian School at Philadelphia; Pestalozzian School in the New Harmony Community; Pestalozzianism in New England; Pestalozzianism at the Oswego School; William T. Harris and the Schools of St. Louis; Pestalozzian Literature in the United States; Bibliography of the Pestalozzian Movement in the United States.

Adjustment of High School Work to the Needs of the Community, by GEORGE E. MYERS. In the Atlantic Educational Journal, Baltimore, April, 1907. pp. 1-9.

This very brief article presents a new and pregnant point of view. It is an account of various attempts made in this country in high schools to fit for life rather than to fit for college. The problem in the some 25 high schools referred to was to adjust to the life and work of the immediate environment of the school so that those who leave at any time shall be better fitted each year to succeed in life. Some of these schools, therefore, lay great stress upon domestic science, even to the prejudice of Latin and Greek, road-building, special kinds of manufacture, of mining, etc.

The Efficient Life, by LUTHER GULICK, M. D. Doubleday, Page & Company, 1907. pp. 197.

This book is dedicated to the president of the United States, who sometimes leads the simple, often the strenuous, but always the efficient life. Its author is the vigorous head of physical training in New York City, a man of very suggestive and incisive mind, who writes in a pregnant, aphoristic style that shows no great reverence for scholarship, but is pervaded with the highest admiration for practical results. It is a kind of Y. M. C. A. style, but not without touches of real genius here and there, aggressive almost to a fault, making conciseness a foible, often saying old things in a way so new that they do not seem to be old, scorning logical cohesion, leaping directly and sometimes through vast spaces from one point to another, a man who has talked and thought much with professors and has the art of telling what he gets from them in a way to hold the attention of Sunday school pupils, a man whose Christianity is very muscular and who, if he were not known to be a good Christian, might often be thought to be an admirable pagan suckled in the creed of Epicurus;-such a man and such a book are not only striking, but to be heartily commended, for the reader will not find a dull line.

Erlebtes und Erstrebtes. Reden und Aufsätze, von OSKAR JÄGER. Beck, München, 1907. pp. 317.

For twenty-five years Dr. Jäger has been a gymnasial director and au honorary professor in the University of Bonn, and he here brings together twenty-six lectures and articles, arranged in chronological order, beginning with the year 1847. These papers treat of various important events in the history of education, especially secondary education in Germany, and by a wise and experienced teacher who has been in a position to be personally affected by them all and therefore to know them all. The book makes interesting reading in itself, but it also is an important contribution to the educational history of Germany in the last two or three decades.

Red Rubber, the story of the rubber trade on the Congo, by E. D. MOREL. Unwin, London, 1906. pp. 213.

This book is inscribed to the British Public and is an attempt to put in brief compass and at a trifling cost the story of the Congo tragedy. It is a pathetic story and a most effective one. The judicious reader will be intensely impressed by the activity of the author, by his ability, but these qualities rather overshadow his equipment in the way of impartiality. It is to us a little singular that the man chosen to write the preface should be the chief of one of the two great English companies lately chartered to exploit the resources of Liberia.

Stickney Readers, "Earth and Sky." No. 2, 2nd 3rd grade Nature Readers. Rev. ed. Ginn & Company, Boston, 1907.

The idea of these readers is very good, but much of their usefulness is lost through defects in the illustrations. Among such defects, viewed in the light of experimental studies of children's pictures, are the following: (a) The pictures are too small, most of them being marginal and thus on small pages with much reading matter. The few full page illustrations are usually in sections and so amount to several pictures. Large pictures would be much better, even if reading matter had to be sacrificed. (b) A general indistinctness of outline is very noticeable. Bolder lines and sharper contrasts are needed. (c) There are no colored pictures. Children of these early school years are predominantly interested in color, which should be in large patches, of distinct outline and sharp contrast. Blending and harmony of color need not be much attended to before adolescence. J. W. HARRIS. The Richmond Second Reader, by CELIA RICHMOND and HARRIET ESTELLE RICHMOND. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1907. pp. 134. To an adult observer this book is beautiful; and from the child's standpoint it is to be commended for the number of pictures of children, and for the size of the pictures. But, the value of art masterpieces for second reader children is to be questioned, as the appreciation of such productions does not normally awaken till a few years later. Half tone reproductions are not so well seen by children as plainer drawings with bolder lines. Children need more of color and this should be in large patches, attention to fine blending and harmony not being essential. J. W. HARRIS.

NOTE.

The Children's Theatre. We have received a number of pamphlets and photographs and programmes of the children's theatre under the auspices of the Educational Alliance, 197 East Broadway, New York. Miss Hertz, who for the past three and a half years has been at the head of this movement, has brought out its educational features in an admirable way, so that those trained to form the casts find this work a potent force, educational, moral and social in their lives. The audiences are so great that children must always be turned away, although the theatre seats 700. Its influence does not extend north of Houston Street. The educational value of this movement can hardly be overestimated. It is a great pity that such theatres should not be multiplied and that this should not be given a more central location, so as to do far more good than it can accomplish in its present environment. Theatre work is coming to be recognized more and more in schools, in some of which, for instance, the Manual Training School in St. Louis, for many years under the control of Dr. Weitbracht, not only. are plays given, but in the manual training department, everything pertaining to them is made and programmes are designed and printed, so that it makes a new unity for manifold interests. The educational possibilities of theatre work remain yet to be exploited by our American schools. That they are very high in their possibilities no one can doubt.

THE

PEDAGOGICAL SEMINARY.

Founded and Edited by G. STANLEY HALL.

VOL. XIV.

SEPTEMBER, 1907.

No. 3.

THE HYGIENE OF DRAWING.

By WM. H. BURNHAM

In the voluminous literature on drawing little is said about the hygienic aspects of the subject. It is important, however, here as elswhere, to get the hygienic point of view. For lack of it in the past, atrocious methods-like the stygmographichave sometimes been used. For lack of it at the present time, many errors prevail, and there is often failure to give suitable opportunity for the development of this form of artistic speech.

Psychiatry has shown that the development of normal habits of expressing thought and feeling is especially important. All the different forms of motor training have to do with the expression of thought. Hence it is by no means a matter of indifference to hygiene what methods are employed.

The sequence in the natural expression of thought can be observed in the spontaneous activities of children. I have noted it in a young boy. Probably in its main feature the case is typical. As soon as he had passed the infant stage of crude gestures and crying and had learned to walk easily and to run about, he had a new means of expressing his thought and interest. When he ran, he represented a horse, dog, calf, or some other animal. A piece of wood, bark, cornstalk, or the like, furnished the point de repère, but the rest was represented by his own activity, notably by running and by imitating the noises of animals. This mode of expressing thought by means of bodily movement continued even after he had other means of expressing his ideas. The next method was by means of language either in description of real or imaginary animals, in stories, or in poetical form. Then still later, came the mode of expressing thought by some form of manual activity, in his

case, paper cutting. All these forms of objectifying thought were then employed, the earlier method by bodily activity still remaining a favorite one, and all apparently being needed by the greater development and complexity of his mental life. The dominant mode was determined largely by the season. In the summer the paper cutting was for the most part given up. Animals were represented by fruits and vegetables; pigs, by cucumbers; horses and cattle, by rolling apples; turkeys and geese, by seed pods, etc. The summer gave full opportunity also to the dramatic instinct. Playing horse was the favorite mode of expressing this. Hours were spent each pleasant day in running with a horse of goldenrod or the like in one hand and a whip in the other.

Thus physical exercise is a means of expressing thought. And the plays of children, first common, spontaneous plays, and later gymnastic plays, dramatic plays and the like, are the natural propedeutic to drawing as a more special method of expressing thought.

The aim of instruction in drawing has been expressed in many different ways. Most writers agree in making one essential aim an introduction to the study of the beautiful, together with the development of the power of visual observation and the acquisition of motor skill. From the point of view of hygiene the essential aim is the development of a normal habit of expressing thought. Hence the demands of hygiene are both negative and positive-on the one hand the avoiding of all detrimental conditions, and on the other hand the training in drawing as a normal form of reaction.

In drawing very much the same hygienic rules are to be considered as in writing; but as drawing is a means of motor expression that may very naturally come before writing, and as it has some peculiar aspects, the hygiene of this subject demands special consideration. Baginsky (1) maintains that drawing is a specially dangerous occupation for young children on account of the strain upon the eyes that is likely to occur and the strong tendency to mal-positions. The obvious points to be considered may be briefly stated.

There should be suitable seats and desks adapted to the heights of the pupils; the position of the body and the hand should be correct; long pencils should be used; the eyes should be kept at a proper distance from the table and the blackboard. Even at the blackboard there is a tendency, as Mr. Tadd (51) has pointed out, for pupils to bring their eyes near to the board and hold them at an angle. Care should be taken to have fine work placed upon the board with many accessory drawings. The drawing should be omitted when the light is insufficient.

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