Children should be led to discuss and write about Sanitary 181 An Illustration of a Written Description, by an Eighth-Grade 184 Manual Training will furnish Many Interesting Subjects for 188 The Live Teacher will use in Language Work Information obtained at Public Health Exhibits 196 How to set a Table for a Banquet - Correlation of Language and Domestic Science 198 Drawing made by an Eighth-Grade Girl to illustrate her own Aurora. (After Guido Reni) 206 208 The Children may make Crude, Humorous Drawings to illus trate their Narrations and Descriptions Return to the Farm. (After Troyon) . County School Fairs furnish Live Topics for Narration and An Opportunity to correlate Language and Agriculture 210 219 222 The Country offers Beautiful Subjects for Description The "Hows" of Farm Activities are Good Subjects for 232 A Hike to the Woods to study Wild Flowers for Observation 235 The Library is an Important Asset in Rural-School Language LANGUAGE WORK IN INTRODUCTION Within the past fifteen or twenty years, leaders in educational affairs have become convinced that training in the use of the mother tongue has not produced the desired results. In generations gone by, the idea that one learns enough of his own language by absorption and imitation seems to have prevailed. To be sure, the grammar of the English language was studied, but this work consisted largely in mastering certain principles, with little definite direction as to their application in everyday speech. This old system has received justly merited censure, and another, fashioned on saner ideas, has taken its place. Any system of instruction is measured by its fruits, and, according to this standard, the language work of the past has not been eminently successful, for the boys and girls of the past have not developed sufficient ability to speak and write the mother tongue correctly and elegantly. The result has been a healthy reaction against old ideas and methods, and a new type of language work, which will undoubtedly produce better results, is now being universally adopted. IMPORTANCE OF THE WORK Language work is, without question, one of the most important subjects in the public schools. There is no study that so thoroughly permeates the work of all other subjects and that is so essential to their successful conduct. Ex-president Eliot, of Harvard University, puts in its proper place the ability to speak correctly when he says that any educational system should develop four powers: namely, (1) to observe accurately, (2) to register impressions correctly and clearly, (3) to draw correct inferences from this raw material, and (4) to express these inferences or thoughts in clear, forceful language. From one viewpoint every recitation is a language recitation. Language is the means by which the child receives from the printed page and from the teacher his impetus in thinking, and by this means he expresses the ideas which come to him as a result of both these incentive forces. The teacher, therefore, who does not take cognizance of the language used in all the various recitations and try to bring it to a high standard of excellence will find the work of her regular language exercises barren of lasting results. She must remember that the recitation periods of the day afford a constant field for applying in actual use the lessons learned in the regular language exercises. If, for example, she emphasizes the correct use of certain verbs or pronouns in the composition lesson, and then allows the pupils to disregard this knowledge in the language used in the history or physiology lesson the next period, it would be better not to teach the language facts at all, for such selfcontradiction makes the language work little less than a huge joke. Again, the importance of language work must be admitted when we realize how closely it is identified with the thinking process. Much of the ineffective work of the past has been due to a failure on the part of teachers to understand this fact. "No expression without impression" is a maxim which the teacher of language should learn early in her work. Max Müller said: "Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud." Plato said that thought and speech are one and the same process. It is true that thoughts which are never expressed in words, in the form of either mental pictures or audible sounds, often flit across the panorama of the mind, but such thoughts are almost as ineffective in |