[ March "Wake up, man!!! It's high time you made friends with yourself! You can't be true to yourself while you drift with the 'I-don't-cares'. These negative ideas are burdening your brain until part of it is getting rusty from disuse. You are your own worst enemy in believing you are down in luck and not making an honest effort." "Remember, work is a pleasure when you have in mind the one thought of doing the thing better than it ever was done before." "Don't knock the other fellow before the boss, thinking it will put a feather in your cap, for the boss will not stand for it; if he did, he would not be boss; so instead of a knock, give the other fellow a boost. It will not lower you in the boss's estimation, and it may do the other fellow a world of good. A good word sometimes changes the whole course of a man's life." "If you make yourself a harmoniously developed man, and develop your complex personalities, that doesn't impoverish anyone else that adds to the riches of the world-it adds to the riches of every man that touches you, because every time he touches you he gets some inspiration in a fine way, and you do not impoverish him. That is the proper definition of success. That will stand in any court anywhere-it will stand before the throne of God." "I believe that some genius sitting way back in some corner has thoughts coursing thru his brain that would make Thomas Edison look like a pigmy if he would but give expression to those ideas and get them working." "Other people can't hand over experience and well-paid ability to you as they could a yard of cloth or a basket of potatoes." "Help the other fellow" does not mean to help another fellow do work he is too lazy to do himself. If a lazy fellow hands you any 'dope' like this, just hand him a little 'Spiz' and remind him that the foreman has a remedy for this particular ailment." "There is nothing in the world that weaves men together so much as a desire for education. Compare yourselves to a bunch of college men. Years and years after a man leaves college, he is tickled to death to meet one of the boys of his class. Few of us have had an opportunity to go to college, so we must now make this our opportunity. We have an advantage over a college man in that we are out after the 'World's Goods' while a college man is out after a 'World of Fun'." These men have read and, to a large extent, reported upon, an aggregate of not less than 175 different books bearing upon the general line of our work. Many of these books are on vocational guidance, various biographies, scientific management, psychology, and general science. What has been accomplished with this group of working men is being accomplished in many places, and it may be accomplished with all working men to a degree and on a much wider scale. In California, the police of Berkeley have been doing similar work directed by the University of California. They are studying psychology as applied to crime, to the nature of crimes, to the causes of crime, to insanity, to the treatment of all such mental disorders, to prison reform. Can there be any more hopeful sign than this widened idea of education? I see no reason why the necessary principles of all the sciences may not be given in a working man's university. Indeed, I believe that special courses extending over a period of years could be formulated and given with success to tens of thousands of our best class of working people. UNIVERSITY Of Denver D. E. PHILLIPS VII THE PRESUMPTION OF BRAINS2 [The following article by the late Dr. Albert P. Marble, appeared in the Journal of Education, published at Boston, January 6, 1887. The paper was probably read at a meeting of the Massachusetts State Teachers Association held in November, 1886. Dr. Marble was then at the height of his influence as Superintendent of Schools at Worcester, Mass. EDITOR.] Now when fair morn orient in heaven appeared, Up rose the victor angels, and to arms The matin trumpet sung; in arms they stood Of golden panoply, refulgent host, Soon banded; others from the dawning hills Looked round, and scouts each coast light armed scour Each quarter, to descry the distant foe, Where lodged, or whither fled, or if for fight In motion or in halt; him soon they met Under spread ensigns moving nigh in slow You will recognize this from Milton's Paradise lost. It is the beginning of an extract which appeared in Weld's parsing book, a textbook no larger than a primer, in use more than thirty years ago; and destitute of all the recent improvements in the methods of teaching English. It did not abominate parsing; it even advocated analysis; and it gave a model to show how that complex and "useless" process was conducted. On its first pages was a table to show the modifications of words; and following this was a lot of Rules of Syntax preceded by the classification of sentences, and the various connectives. Besides the extract from Milton, it contained selections from Shakespeare's Henry the Eighth; from Young; from Thompson and others. 1 Presumption, taking for granted. 2 Brains, the gray matter; a whitish soft mass, considered to be the organ of perception, etc.; hence by metonymy, the intellect. I propose now to quote from several of the extracts contained in that parsing-book, to show what kind of language and sentiments children thirty to forty years ago had to deal with; later on I may contrast this with the style of textbooks common in recent years. While listening to these extracts, please have in mind the numerous periodicals and books for boys, written in slang phrases, or at best in boyish and not classic language, which is supposed to be fascinating from its familiarity of style. From Young, on Life, death and immortality: This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, The twilight of our day, the vestibule; From Thompson: Should fate command me to the farthest verge In the void waste as in the city full; And where he vital breathes there must be joy. And another from the same: 'Tis listening fear and dumb amazement all, The noise astounds; till overhead a sheet Enlarging, deepening, mingling; peal on peal, The book had a brief dissertation in Figurative Language. It contained also prose extracts from Burke, Irving, Wirt, Prescott; and from Macaulay's essay on The Puritans, this with the rest: The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixt. They recognised no title to superiority but His favor; and confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. . . . Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. These are only samples of the kind of literature which was placed before young pupils more than thirty years ago. In my collection I have one of those parsing-books; the leaves are worn; the edges are frayed and the corners are rounded by use; but they are not dog-eared. The book is not disfigured, but it is annotated. On one margin is the date, April, 1856; and on another, these words: Sarah, Annie, Louisa, Nellie, Delia, Lydia. Who those girls were I have |