St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-12-31

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thoroughly in sympathy with the cooking
business. The girls at his school had vol
UNFAIRLY taken possession of the workshop,
and were doing better work than the boys.
He thought the glad day would come when
the women could put up stove.
COL. PARKER's ADDRESS.
The time of the evening session, which
was held in the hall of the high school, was
wholly extended to Col. F. w. Parker of
the Cook county Ql.) normal
school, who gave an intensely
interesting address on Learning
by Doing. Col. Parker speaks without
briefs, and has magnetic earnestness and
happy expression, which, coupled with
his progressive ideas, make him most in
teresting speaker. After piano solo he
was introduced by the president as one
who Sc name was known in every school
district of the land His address was quite
long, and was plea for earnest work to-
ward true ends and protest against the
one great error in school work-that of
making expression the end and not the
means. Among other things he said:
1t has been said that thinking must pre-
cede the doing, but thinking is doing.
Doing is the manifestation of thought
through the body. There are several chan
nels of xpresson-speech, bearing, ges-
ture, music, sculpture and painting. An
unexpressed thought is not a perfect
thought. 1t demands expression and the
expression affects the thought. Express
sion, too, demands thought.
81 have in my mind the thought. the con-
ception of the cube. express that thought
Il lie, hx,fo or1h r.
reacts on my mind and I have then two
conceptions the original one have in my
mind and the one have expressed. They
meet in my mind and comparison follows.
l cannot express thought that is not IN
my mind. Children are asked to express
thoughts that are in the teachers mind.
Children should be kept up to their best eff
forts Then an emotion of pleasure comes
in and this is the highest reward of great
effort. Expression has its particular func-
ton and symmetrical education includes
the perfection of all the different modes.
MANUAL TRAINING
developes one mode of expression and there
is no better way to develop close obsorva-
ton and precise judgment. The same time
devoted to arithmetic in a shop would
teach it a thousand times better
than it is now taught. Graphic expression
should be begun with brush and colors and
not with pencil and straight and curved
lines. Where words fail, music comes. and
from the time when the first note nfringes
on the infants soul, his edutation in music
begins. A persons words may fail or
deceive, but his bearing tells what he is.
Nearly every failure in teaching
comes from making expression the end. By
so doing the childs thoughts are centered
in the expression and not in the thought.
AS an illustration of the effects of this the
speaker said that arithmetic was to-day
in the school what alchemy was before
chemistry mystery. Where child
really expresses thought. he has it. We
try an impossibility when we try to make a
child express a thought, he cannot or does
not understand, but then we can make him
''say the words and we are satisfied.
We have tendency to teach the mega
tive instead of the positive, that is we
teach the wrong to impress the right. Such
is the teaching of false syntaX aud lists of
unspelled words and wrong express
sions. The child would not know
most of them if they were not
taught in school. The strongest thing in
child is fancy and rightly trained and fed it
means pure nature, wrongly it means pol
luton. Going over and over reader, little
of which is understood, until the child
wearies of it and hates it, is not leading the
fancy to purer springs. Let us have bright
pure juvenile literature in the school. Peo-
pie wondered why children became bad,
but to him it was proof of divinity that
child could spend his early years in schools
as they are generally taught and have any
thing good left in him. But the personal in
fuence of the teacher for good often tended to
counterbalance the evil in methods. The
idea of useless effort and making express
sion the required end was applied to the
present methods of teaching spelling and
grammar, upon which the speaker dwelt
at length in an interesting and entertaining
way. He also gave a little attention to ex-
aminations as usually conducted. He be-
ieved in eXaminatio rs
AND MADE THEM DAILY.
weekly. monthly and yearly, but they were
to discover power, growth and character.
mo teacher should stay in the school room
who does not see the infinite perspective of
the true, the beautiful and good beyond"
He closed by asserting the exalted nature
of the teachers mission and the true and
sure rewards, that followed his earnest
labors.
To-day is the last day Of the conven-
ton and the exercises will be held in the
high school hall. The program will be:
Morning Session, 9 o'clock-The Teach
ing of Geography, Sanford Niles. editor of
School Education, Rochester, MINI.
The Certification of Teachers. G. W.
Belden, county superintendent of schools,
Austin. Mower county.
In Memoriam-in honor of the late G..
W. Smith, county superintendent of
schools for Hennepin county. j. Z. Nc
Cleary, state institute conductor, Mankato
normal school.
Afternoon Session.-The High School
Problem, c. B. Gilbert, principal of the st.
Paul high school.
The Minnesota Teachers Reading and
Scientific Circle. report from the board of
control. 81, q.
Reports of committees and election of Of
ficers.
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.
A Good Word For Sparks.