the public press to the need of nationalizing education. As a first step toward reform it is urging increased wages for teachers, as well as greatly increased revenues for education in general through the Smith-Towner Bill now before Congress. Just as soon as this legislation is in force we shall have a scramble as to whether the politicians or the teachers shall control the schools. We teachers have but one chance for supremacy and that is to make good while the power is still in our hands. To be specific, by January, 1920, there should not be left in America a single teacher who cannot teach reading.

Methods in teaching reading vary both in approach and in application. The state of Indiana has adopted the Child Classics Readers as basal texts in the primary grades. The best use of these books will be accomplished if the method upon which they are constructed is not only familiar to the teachers in these grades but will be used by them in instruction. Teachers in the upper grades will facilitate their own work if they will employ the same method followed by teachers in the primary grades, that the pupils may build upon what they already have rather than be forced to a conflicting system.

men

The method of the Child Classics Readers is based upon the child's own experience the only school for wise. as well as for fools. In the September "Atlantic," Samuel Crothers. in his delightfully humorous essay, "In the Dame School of Experience," shows how the world has moved forward only through personal attempts, -failures, successes. It is the province as well as the privilege of the school to instruct the child by this same means. The Child Classics Primer is a playprimer in which through successive

childish experiences the pupil acquires a vocabulary of carefully chosen words presented to him in sentences. These words are used as the basis for the phonetic system. For example, on page 22 of the Primer, John and Frank are found under the apple tree. The successful teacher has transformed the schoolroom into an orchard. One-half of the class impersonates John and the other half Frank. The tree with its beautiful red apples stands before them:

Frank. John! John! see the apple tree!

John. How red the apples are!
Frank. I like pretty red apples.
John. Red apples are good.
Frank. Can you get the apples?
John. Can I? See me get into the
tree!

Frank. How quick you are, John!
John. See the apples roll!
Frank. How good the apples are!

The children find the lesson under the teacher's inspiration a delightful exercise. It has sequence-not only training the child in logical thought but training him to expect it in the printed page. Its dramatization demands imagination and initiative. Technically, two of the new words introduced, apple and tree will serve as type-words from which he will derive the sounds ǎ and t. When the lesson is first presented the words apple and tree appear as wholes to the child and as such he learns to recognize them in isolation from perception cards after their introduction in the sentence. Gradually through the skillful teacher he will become sensible to an initial sound and letter and will gradually acquire the abstract symbols a and t. Teachers of all grades can afford to note carefully the sequence from

concrete to abstract followed: playexperience; verbal representation in sentence form; the isolated word unit; the initial letter as a symbol for one element of sound. The fixing of these phonetic elements is dependent entirely upon the doctrine. of interest-the greater the original interest the less the amount of drill. Should a child fail to respond with the correct sound when the letter t is presented to him from the perception card, he should be shown the reverse side on which is printed the word tree. The abstract is thus kept close to the concrete from which it was derived.

In this fashion the child gradually acquires a phonetic vocabulary containing thirty-one words from which he derives one sound for each consonant and one for each long and each short vowel. From these thirty-one elements, he can make endless combinations and thus help himself to new words which he will use in subsequent lessons. For example on page 67 of the Primer we find the following synthetical exercise in which the child can from the sounds he has learned from known words build new words all of which will occur in the subsequent lessons in his Primer.

cap nut рор hop
pin sat dub tin

top bit tap rub

Not only as previously described does this method keep the roots of the abstract in the concrete but it also has the particular virtue of forcing the child to do his own work-make his own material. This is accomplished by giving sound elements only. In teaching painting, one would never in these days think of giving a child a large palette of mixed colors. Instead we

give him the three primary colors with which he delights to make his own combinations. The teaching of phonetics should keep pace. Why should we make for the child such combinations as at, ap, an and the other socalled "families" of sounds when he gains strength by making them for himself? Why waste his time and dull his brain drilling upon pat, sat, rat, fat, bat, cat, gnat, etc., for which he has no immediate use when his time could so much better be employed in actual reading? Phonetics are not an end in themselves. They should immediately function in reading.

In addition to the thirty-one elementary sounds enumerated we have certain diagraphs which are also elements. Sh, th, wh are examples of these. The method of presenting them is precisely the same as that for the single-letter elements from type words. based on play experience. In the Primer and First Reader the child learns altogether about fifty elements. which are sufficient for the development of hundreds of words.

Diacritical marks are quite unneces sary in teaching beginners. The Frenchman who said he could learn to speak English easily were it not for the silent letters, had not been taught their value. Every child should know the simple rules; for example, that y and i and final e make a long as in the type-words play, sail and cake. For a list of such type-words, together with familiar terminations, see the Indiana State Course of Study, pages 266 and 267.

Often a child able to give correctly the individual sounds cannot until specially taught, "slur" them into a syllable. When the Second and Third

Readers appear with words of two syllables or more (and the same method is equally applicable to reading in all grades) the child should be taught to syllabicate and to pick up the syllables as units of sound.

A system of phonetics which deals. only in elements, should without argument be accepted as the most economical and practical, particularly when these elements are derived from words learned in play-experience and immegetting of a story from the book. See diately put into actual practice in the

State Course of Study, page 270. In these days when we preach "Thrift and Economy" we teachers should remember the words of Franklin: "Dost thou value life? Then do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of."

Whatever the method used let us teachers of Indiana resolve that illiteracy shall be wiped out of Indiana. The power lies with us alone.

Note: The concluding article will deal with The Recitation in Reading.

No. 1.

THE JOURNEY FROM U. S. A. TO THE A. E. F.

Introduction.

This is the first of a series of ten articles for the purpose of giving to teachers and pupils information concerning Western Europe and observations about American soldiers in these foreign lands. I have spent several months in the educational work among the American Expeditionary Forces. I have traveled thousands of miles in France, Luxemburg, Belgium and in that part of the Rhineland, Germany, controlled by the American, British and French Armies of Occupation. The articles presented during the year will consist of information gained by personal observation and by extensive association and conversation with soldiers and officers of the American Expeditionary Forces. My work and my interests will tend to make the articles geographical in the main but no effort will be made to limit the discussion to geography. It is hoped that the information presented will enable the reader to appreciate somewhat the situation in which two million American soldiers lived, and fought, and then waited to return to the United States.

This first article is given in the form of a journey lesson from my home to Paris. If the route described and the places named are found on wall maps, in atlases, and on maps in the textbook, the pupils may be led to follow the journey as a profitable lesson in geography. A large map of France and a large map of Paris are desirable for the study of the year. Arrangements have been made to have such maps made available at a moderate price through McKnight and McKnight, Normal, Illinois. If these maps are posted so that pupils may find the principal places of Europe named in the series of articles, these lessons may be made very valuable supplementary geography exercises.

From Home to New York City. On December 19, 1918, I received a telegram telegram from the Young Men's Christian Association, with whom I had been in correspondence for two months, to report at their offices at 347 Madison Avenue, New York, at my earliest opportunity, ready to sail for service in educational work with the American Expeditionary Forces. I left Bloomington, Illinois, at 10 P. M., December 21, and arrived at New York at noon, December 23. Five hours of this time