The educational record of the province of Quebec, 1 décembre 1902, Décembre

[" THE EDUCATIONAL RECORD OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC.No.12.DECEMBER, 1902.Vor.XXII.A O Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, + + + + + I erown thee king of intimate delights ; Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb\u2019d Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted ev\u2019ning, know.COWPER.Articles : Original and Selected.CO-EDUCATION.However, there is another side to it than that which appeals so strongly to us pedagogues.The future of civili- gation depends more on the proper mating of the rising gencration than on any discoveries they may make in the arts and sciences, and if our young people sometimes devote more time and attention to the study of each other than to the study of their text-books, let us recognize the fact that they are nearer right in their judgment of what is important than some prominent educators of the past and present.It is of more importance to a person to be able to solve the problem of the selection of future hushand or wife than to solve any problem in mathematics we put before him, and there is no hetter training for this yet devised than the informal mingling in the school-room.To get to know each ae Cee mess ent 4) CUS wir SE Der ea 2 meta TT ; POIL + Ra oww\u2019 ate 320 THE EDUCATIONAL RECORD.other thoroughly, to prevent false hopes and illusions, it is necessary for young people to meet when the mask of society isthrown off.If a young man has sat beside a young woman for a term he knows at least whether she cheats or loses her temper, and that is more than he would find out from meet- Ing her at a hundred balls, receptions and teas.The theory that women require in part a different sort of education from men is a good one, but it is in co-education- al colleges, not in colleges for women alone, that the most progress has been made in putting this into practice, and specific courses in great variety are provided in those occupations which are at present regarded as woman's work.The importance of this and the methods for attaining it are, however, as yet, largely unrealized, and the future must see a great advance in this field everywhere.We must, nevertheless, avoid even in this the common error of dealing with people by classes, and we must adapt our instruction to individuals, not to sexes.If a boy shows a talent for culinary art or for dress-making he must not be debarred from training in these arts, for he may get a larger salary and possibly even contribute more to human \u2018happiness as an Oscar or a Worth than as an engineer or a lawyer.If a girl showsa taste for mechanics let her have the necessary opportunity to develop her genius.The world needs great inventors so much that we must not miss any chance, however slight, of getting one.In a co-educational college where freedom of election is allowed the two sexes largely segregate into different lines of work according to their tastes and capacities, but to force them into some particular form of education because of sex is dangerous.\u2014 Prof.E.E.Slosson, University of Wyoming.CO-EDUCATION.What is it that we have schools for?I think it is to teach children to live, and not to give them a little education.It is the idea of the community that must set our standard for teaching.If We would make the pupils future citizens we must make them present citizens.If you take the girls and young women out of the community life of the school you take away half of life\u2014yes, you take away the better half of life.The day may come MEN AND KINDERGARTENS.\u2014STRIFE.\u2014BIRDLESS BONNETS.321 1 know when, but I do know, that before that day I shall be - of women.1 have been at an affair in Germany where the i men gathered in one part of the room to talk philosophy and the women in another to talk like silly geese.I.prefer the American woman.\u2014Col.Parker.MEN AND KINDERGARTENS.Within the past few years a number of small signs have shown that kindergartens are slowly waking to consciousness of the fact that since kindergartens are conducted exclusively by women, and usually either by spinsters or young girls ({e., women who have never known the have defects incident to defect in the intellectual and moral outlook of those who conduct them.The young woman who rarely talks seriously with men, and the aging spinster who gets few opportunities to talk with men at all, are prone to relapse out of human living and thinking into sex living and thinking.Thissimple fact explains what have been scathingly called the \u2018elaborate fooleries of the kindergarten.\u201d Every kindergartner should be alive to this danger and should avoid it by conference with men, by participation in educational meetings where the masculine representation is large, by reading books written by \u2014 Susan E.Blowin the Kindergarten Review.STRIFE.The law of worthy life is fundamentally the law of strife.and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.\u2014 Theodore Roosevelt.BIRDLESS BONNETS.How refreshing is the sight of the birdless bonnet ! The face beneath, no matter how plain it may be, seems to possess a gentle charm.She might have had birds, this richest and most educating experiences of life), they must el \\ if i when this idea of education will go into effect.I do not UE Yt rs nee \u2014,;- ui dead and gone.ug I have seen something of this foreign idea of the education 1 E men, and by inviting from men criticism of her own work.; It is only through labour; painful eflort, by grim energy.| ela 322 THE EDUCATIONAL RECORD, woman, for they are cheap enough and plentiful enough; but she has them not, therefore she must wear within things infinitely precious, namely: good sense, good taste, good feeling.Does any woman imagine these withered corpses (cured with arsenic), which she loves to carry about, are beautiful ?Not so; the birds lost their beauty with their lives.\u2014Celia Thaxler.SELF-HELP.Miss Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, who became instructor at Vassar College, wrote in her journal : When I came to Vassar I regretted that Mr.Vassar did not give full scholarships.By degrees I learned to think his plan of giving half-scholarships better, and to-day I am ready to say, \u2018Give no scholarships at all\u2019 \u201c1 find a helping hand lifts a girl as crutches do; she learns to like the help which is not self-help.© © Better give a girl who is poor a common-school education, a little lift, and tell her to work out her own career.If she have a distaste for the homely routine of life, leave her the opportunity to try any other carcer; but let her understand that she stands or falls by herself.\u201d PRACTICAL EDUCATION.A correspondent of the London Daily Mail proposes to establish a school where girls may be taught matters which are not generally found in a school curriculum.He would teach how to alight from an electric car, how to open a window and put up a shade in a railway car, how to fill a fountain pen, how to tie a knot that is not a * granny\u201d knot, the kind of shoes to wear so as not to endanger health or cause discomfort.He says: \u201cWe shall teach the art of folding clothes, hoth women\u2019s and men\u2019s.(How many women can fold a dress coat ?) We shall teach the proper method of doing up umbrellas and trimming lamps, and opening packing-cases and tin cans, and driving .nails and pulling corks and lighting fires.\u201cThis last, by the way, is an accomplishment that should be taught in every school in the country, but of course is not.The comfort of millions of persons depends on itevery day. CURRENT EVENTS, 32% :« We shall also instruct our pupils in the care and feeding of dogs and other animals, and show, for instance, why it is wrong to give dogs chicken bones.The theory of sanitation also we shall teach, of which most women know nothing J at all ; and we shall give practical demonstrations of the F effect of grease on the linings of pipes and the reasons for keeping it as far as possible out of sinks.\u201c We shall teach economy, false and true.We shall = R heve lectures on the prices of all household things, and on oi the quantity required for -o many or so few persons, and we shall show that in most cases the best is the cheapest.And every girl in \u2018our school shall have a pocket.Purse- carrying in the hand will be forbidden.\u201d in Current Events.\u2014HALLAM Tennyson, K.C M.G., son of the late poet- laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and second baron of his \u201d name, temporary Governor-General of Australia, has been formally appointed to that office.The appointment, at His Lordship\u2019s wish.is for one year only.He succeeds Lord Hopetoun, whose resignation was officially announced on May 14 last.: \u2014TBE Rev.Dr.Daniel M.Gordon, professor of theology in the Presbyterian University during the past eizht years, and formerly pastor of St.Andrew\u2019s Church, Halifax, and .before that of Knox Church, Winnipeg, has accepted the EK principalship of Quern\u2019s University.Dr.Gordon was born iE at Pictou, Nova Scotia, on January 30.1845, and was edu- ; cated at the Pictou Academy and the Universities of Glas- LE gow and Berlin.4 \u2014 MR.George A.Henty, the well known author of boys\u2019 : no historical novels, died on board his yacht at Weymouth, |.November 16th, 1902.j \u2014 WIRELESS telegraphyv has been applied to moving trains.The despatcher from the apparatus was placed at St.Dominique railway station, near Montreal.The receiving apparatus was on a train moving sixty miles an hour Communication was kept up with \u201cthe station while the train was going sixteen miles, eight to the s.ation and eight beyond. 324 THE.EDUCATIONAL RECORD.; \u2014Taz pendulum with which Foucault showed the revolution of the earth has been used recently in the Pantheon at Paris by two l\u2019rench scientists, Flammarion and Berbet, to repeat the famous experiment.\u2014 ACCORDING to an exact census of China, taken by the treasury department, the population is 426,447,325.- \u2014THE United States Commissioner of Education, Dr.Harris, reports that there are 15,710,394 children in attendance at the public schools of the States, this being about 90: per cent.of the children attending school.The report shows that there has been an increased attendance at public schools over last year of 266,932 pupils.We can get some idea of this vast school population if we consider that it is about three times the entire population of the Dominion of Canada \u2014THE DISCHARGE OF RIVER WATER INTO THE OCEAN.\u2014 An expert on such subjects gives, In Harper\u2019s Young People, the following table of the hourly quantity of water discharged into the sea by the following important rivers :\u2014 .Million cubic Million eubic Rivers.feet per hour.Rivers.feet per hour, The St.Lawrence River does not seem to have been under consideration in making the experiment.\u2014\u2014OFFICIAL arrangements for the dedication of the Great Assouan dam on the river Nile are complete, and the ceremony of laying the last stone and opening sluices will be performed by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught early in December.The Assouan dam.built across the Nile, is the greatest of the kind ever attempted.As a triumph of engineering it stands perhaps at the head of human achievements.It has cost a little more than $25.000,000.It is nearly a mile and a half long, thirty-eight fe-t high, and is pierced by a hundred and eighty-five sluice gates, which open and shut by machinery and regulate the flow of water into the river.The supplementary dam at Assiout, a few miles up the CURRENT EVENTS.375 river, is intended as a reinforcement of the great dam to as- \u2018ist it by breaking the force of spring floods and restraining them in a local reservoir capable of storing more than 1,000,- 000.000 cubic feet of water.By means of these dams the snrplus waters will be stored 1 in \u2018the rainy season and released in the time of drought.\u2018 This system of irrigation will make capable of ¢ ultivation vast areas of what is considered the richest soil in the world, and the effect of the harvests thus obtained on the food markets is worth considering.\u2014MovunT Etna has become lower at the rate of nearly two feet a year on the south side, and on the north side nearly four feet a year since 1868.It is supposed to be due to the action of the wind.\u2014THE resolutions of the Seventy-First Convention of German Scientists and Physicians, held at Munich, September 1899, show that Germanyis awakening to the fact that education may be overdone.The note of alarm was sounded by German physicians, because of the rapid in- erease of neurasthenia and nervousness in the population.These are the resolutions of that important body :\u2014 Resolved, \u201c1.For the higher education as well as for the lower, the natural sciences offer as good a foundation as do the language-history branches The reform of all nine-class higher schools is now to be sought.2.In order to relieve the injurious pressure that still exists in many places and in high degree, and also to avoid the hygienic dangers to the pupils, the following measures should be adopted : (a) Diminishing and uniting [enriching] the curriculum in so far as its purpose will permit.(b) Decreasing the amount of work to be written out at home, and of the amount to be memorized ; and also the checking of the present powerful tendency to language study - (c) Abolition of the afternoon lessons.- (d) Placing the maximum number of lessons per week at 24 Instead of, as al present, at 30.(e) Introduction ofa 10 to 15-minute rest or recess in the open air after each lesson.heim t 4, CET a a ca 5 iH 2 7 Ris A I hi: Es J B:! i 328 THE EDUCATIONAL RECORD._ {f) -Abolition of all transfer and promotion examination, especially the so-called Abschluss-prufung in the granting of the certificate for the one-year's military service [instead of two].(2) Lightening the graduation (from the Gymnasium) examination by doing away with the oral examination in all cases where the year's record and the written examination are satisfactory ; and (h) Gymnastic exercises never to come between lessons.3.In order to relieve the just as extensive over-burden- ing of the teachers: (a) The normal number of lessons for each teacher, according to the age of the pupils, should be placed at 16 to 18.(6) The normal and maximal number of pupils in one class is to be arranged in the following manner, with the understanding that in an excess of the normal number the class may be divided, and in an excess of the maximal number it must be divided: Lower classes, 30-40; middle classes, 25-30 ; higher classes, 20-25.(c) It should be forbidden that the graduation examination be at the same time made a test of the capabilities of the teacher or of the institution.(dy The university-trained teachers of the higher schools should receive the salary, the rank.and the title and general position that are given to judicial and government officials of like rank.4.It also appears desirable: \u201c (a) That the school year begin at the end of the long vacation.(b) That the vacation be so arranged that the warm months (July\u2014September) consist of a long, uninterrupted vacation (about two months).(c) That the Vorschue/klassen (vacation classes) in the higher schools be entirely abolished.; (d) That the study of hygiene by both teachers and pupils be introduced.(¢) lu oruer to insure that this instruction is rightly given, and also for the hygienic care ot buildings aud pupils, that school physicians be installed in the higher schools.(f) That university-educated teachers be given more than hitherto leading positions in the general government of the schools, agin CURRENT EVENTS.327 sance CIEL LA .\u2014~Miss Jessie Fleet, one of several Montreal teachers iE who went to South Africa to instruct Boers and their chil- VE dren at the concentration camps, in an interesting letter to i the Montreal Herald speaks of life in camp, Irom a teacher\u2019s point of view.She writes :\u2014 ° Brandfort Camp, O.R.C., Hu i September 20, 1902.© \"EE School re-opened in camp almost at once on our return from conference at Johannesburg.The attendance at first 1 was rather poor, but has gradually increased.until now the ; number on the roll stands at over six hundred and the daily :R attendance at about four hundred and fifty i Quite a number of changes have been made in the vari- i ous staffs of the different camps and town schools.These iE are owing in part to untrained Africander teachers leaving .to attend the normal classes opened in several cities and a towns for teachers-in-training.Three or four of our own fe staff left for this purpose, and two or three are still studying in Bioemfontein.Another reason for making changes isthe gradual breaking up of the camps, owing to families mov- mg away to their farms.Great trekking waggons drawn by ten or twelve or even more oxen or mules, are seen daily making their way out of camp loaded with whatever worldly eftrcts these people still possess.Rations are supplied to last two months to families going out to their farms, and if at the end of that time they have not succeeded in making a start and have run out of food, are allowed to return to the camp to live.~ Quite a number of prisoners from Ceylon and St.Helena have returned home.About one hundred came in this week from the latter place.Their stay abroad has done many of them much good, especially in the case of those from Ceylon and India.Many an affecting scene is enacted when these people return.To give an instance.When the last party from St.Helena returned, several girls ran to meet their father as he came across the veldt to cainp.On meeting him they broke dow completely.asthe mother had died 3 É during hisabsence.The father of one of the two girls who work for us, also came in with this batch of men.She had not seen him for three years.TT * + ai EF ese - Tl > lies oom a gpa * ¥* À 398 THE EDUCATIONAL RECORD.- One of the teachers on our camp staff, a Scotch lady, \u2018has been appointed matron of the orphanage to be established in Brandfort.These orphanages are for all children who, owing to the war, have been deprived of their parents and have no one to look after them.They are to be properly cared for in homes to be established for them, and to be \u20acdu- cated in the school of the town.The Education Department has charge of this work.\u2018Speaking of the Dutch children as a whole and comparing them with Canadian children, they do not fall far behind in regard to intelligence and general mental ability.Itisa little difficult to get them to sing quickly and with spirit.There is a tendency to drag as though singing a psalm.I was told that it is a peculiarity of the people, and I suppose cannot be expected to right itself at once.Sewing, knitting and fancy work classes have heen established in the camp school.One of our Canadians, a New Brunswick lady, has charge of the sewing class.The children are exceedingly fond of these classes and show great aptitude for their work.A sewing class has also been established in the town school.~ A short time ago flower seeds were given to the people in camp for little gardens around their tents and cottages.* * * * * We are having spring here just now, and Brandfort is looking exceedingly pretty with its pink and white blossoms.The wild flowers of the veldt are out, and the grass, which.was very parched and dry in appearance, when we came here in June, is now getting quite green.The trees alsc are beginning to put on new foliage.\u201d \u2014THE Boers who were dissatisfied with British rule at the close of the war and went into German territory, are moving back again.\u2014THe Victoria Falls on the Zambesi River are being utilised by the British Sonth African Company, which is erecting electric machinery to furnish power for the operation of rich copper deposits near at hand, and for mining coal 150 miles away.\u2014-A Russian has invenied a new international language CURRENT EVENTS.| | known as Esperanto.It is said that eighty thousand {i 1 people speak it, chiefly the Latin nations, and that news- Li pr | papers are published and printed in Esperanto, in Canada, and in most of the countries of Europe including Eng- IE land.| | | AUSTRALIA'S QUEER LAW.Australia is popularly supposed to be the country which has most nearly solved the puzzling industrial problems of 1] the time, yet some queer laws have been passed under the dictation of the Socialistic-Labor party.One of these is 3 the immigration law.Several years ago a cry was started ER for \u201cA White Australia\u201d After a while this law was passed.It says that no person shall be allowed to land in Australia who, when asked by an officer, fails to write out i at dictation and sign, in the presence of the officer, a pas- + sage of fifty words in a European language.BE This means that the customs officer can require any person on any incoming ship to write from dictation fifty words in any European language the officer may choose to select.A very intelligent Frenchwan might not be able: to write : fifty words in Dutch, or a Turk to do the same in Spanish.The law goes further.It says that any person who has entered the country in violation of the law shall be liable to six months\u2019 imprisonment or a fine of £50, or both.The only exceptions are Australians who have been away from the country, ambassadors, soldiers, sailors of the royal navy, and crews of trading vessels in Australian ports.Australian citizens who go abroad are advised to have their photographs taken in no less than four positions so that they may be identified on their return.+ Curious as this law is, its mode of enforcement is still more curious.At present it 1s enforced only against i Hindus, who are British subjects, and Japanese, who are VX not.One party leader said lately: \u201c We don\u2019t object to | any white people.Germans and Frenchmen make good colonists, and the orders to the customs officers are not to : enforce the act against any hut Asiatics.But if we choose ! we could exclude everybody.We could trip a Cambridge HE B.À.on that act.\u201d\u2019\u2014Our Times.: Ta Lm RE xs 330 THE EDUCATIONAL RECORD.Practical Hints and Examination Papers.REMINDERS TO TEACHERS.Children should not be sent from a school-room at tropie- \u2018al temperature to a basement of arctic coldness.Beware of pneumonia ! Do not threaten, do not worry, do not scold, do not fret.\u201cLive on the top floor of your being instead of in the basement.\u201d\u2014 Drummond.\u2018 Every morning, until it becomes a fixed habit, the teacher should \u201cdeliberately assume the right attitude towards every child in his class.There should be no carrying of one day\u2019s little differences over to the following day.Teach the child by example as well as by precept that the dawn of each new day is the signal for fresh resolutions, anhampered by the deadening weight of unfor- given offences.Under all conditions be cool and collected.Await opportunities; that is speak and act when you can -do so most effectively.The long winter evenings are coming.Reap a rich harvest by diligent reading.\u2014DR.Goldwin Smith.in an address to teachers, gave some admirable suggestions for a reading course.We are indebted to the Cunadu Educational Monthly for a report of this address: \u201c While you are teaching others, do not forget your own culture.After hot su.imer days in the school-room, you will be more inclined for fresh air than for books.But there are winter evenings and Sundays; there is the close of life.Besides the public or travelling libraries.have - little libraries of your own, with your favorite authors, to be taken down when the fancy strikes you.Editions of the classics are now very cheap.It is far better to be thoroughly familiar with one great writer than to know a little of twenty less great.For serious literature, in forming such a little library.there are Bacon's lissays, marvelous condensations of wisdom in language the most majestic.There are Lamb's Essays of Elia, ever charming.There are Macaulay's Essays, unrivalled for brilliancy of PRACTICAL HINTS AND EXAMINATION PAPERS.331 \u2018style, though a little too cock-sure.Melbourne said he- wished he were as cock-sure of anything as Tom Macaulay was cock-sure of everything.In English history, I cannot help calling attention to Knight's Popular History, though being in eignt volumes with wood cuts.itis rather an expensive book.It gives a fair and lively narrative of events with a full account of the manners, literature, and general life of the people, all in a genial and liberal spirit without taint of party.In biography, Boswell\u2019s Johnson is supreme.In poetry, Chaucer soars singing joyously as a skylark in the literary dawn; but perhaps from the archaism of his language he is to most people rather a subject of study than a source of pleasure pure and simple.Never be tired of reading Shakespeare.The more you read him the more you will find in him.The first six books of \u2018Paradise Lost\u201d are about the most sublime of human compositions.If you want perfect rest turn to Cowper's \u2018Task.\u2019 All Scotchmen worship Burns, and we will join them if they will let us take the poetry without: adding the man.Then comes the stirring age of the Revolution and with it a galaxy of poets of the deeper kind, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Keats.At last we have Tennyson, supreme in art and the mirror of our own age, with its science, its speculations and its doubts.Of the recent wo.ks of fiction I do not kuow much nor eare to know much more.For political and theological novels I have no taste; let us have our politics and theology straight.Miss Austen, I fear, is out of date, for you though not for me, who can remember that state of society.It is a pity.for she is a little female Shakespeare with the very rare gift of endowing her characters with life.Nobody has ever written such tales as Scott, and in reading anything of his.you enjoy intercourse with a truly noble gentleman.Thackeray is not really cynical, while he: teaches youdeep lessons in human nature.In Dickens I delight.He not only makes us laugh, but does us good.There can be no better religious exercise than reading his \u2018Christmas Carol\u201d George Eliot, of course, is admirable, though rather philosophic and austere.Bat choose freely for yourselves.Make your little library of your own.favorites; only make your own little library.Now, young ladies and gentlemen, you are at the open- 332 THE EDUCATIONAL RECORD.ing of life, while I am at its close.You are peering, anxiously, as once I was, into the misty veil which, at starting, hides from each of us his or her destiny.Behind that veil may there for each of you be happiness, There surely is, if you do your duty.\u201d \u2014WE have imagined that there is a royal road to the: making of good teachers.There is not.Good teachers.cannot be extemporized or made in a hurry.They cannot: be made by the mere teaching of psychology, pedagogy, or normal school methods.Something infinitely more important is needed.Content is always more important than form.What is the worth of method if you have nothing to teach 2 A good teacher must know thoroughly what he has to teach.If it is English, he should know English: literature, should know and love the great masters, should have made at least one epoch or department his own, so that he might write intelligently regarding its relations to the whole.So with every other subjact that he may be.