VALON, situated fifteen miles north of Cape May, is the gem of the New Jersey coast; its beach sloping gently seaward for a thousand feet, is unsurpassed for beauty, hardness, evenness, and safety, and is flanked by picturesque sand dunes rising in continuous ridges for miles.

Forests of oak, cedar, pine and holly cover a large part of the island, and the opportunities for botanical and zoological collecting, and for studying geological phenomena are equaled at few other places on the eastern coast.

The abundance of shell heaps and other Indian remains render the region extremely interesting to the archaeologist.

The reaches of meadow to the west of the island, the magnificent surf, the old buildings, the trees festooned with pendent vines and lichens and the weird stretches of sand dunes present unrivaled material for the artist and the student of art.

The dry atmosphere and the quiet restfulness of the place are most favorable to health and study.

The thoroughfares and adjacent sounds offer rare facilities for boating and fishing, and the broad, hard, uninterrupted beach superb opportunities for wheeling and driving.

For bathing purposes the beach is the finest along our Atlantic coast, recalling the Holland coast at Scheveningen.

Good hotel and cottage accommodations, including board and lodging, can be had by members of the Assembly, for six dollars a week.

FEES.

Ticket, admitting to all Courses, $15.00

Ticket for two weeks, or less than entire Course, 10.00

Special arrangements will be made for advanced students.

Those who propose attending the Assembly should fill out the blank at the back of this book and forward the same to the Secretary at as early a date as possible. Rooms will be assigned only upon personal application and for immediate occupation.

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THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION.

ADVISORY BOARD.

ROBERT E. PATTISON,
JOSEPH G. ROSENGARTEN,
JAMES A. MACALISTER,
ISAAC A. SHEPPARD,
EDWARD BROOKS,
SAMUEL G. PENNYPACKER,
DANIEL BAUGH,
SAMUEL B. HUEY,
MRS. MARY MUMFORD,
T. MORRIS PEROT,
MISS VIRGINIA E. GRAEFF,
WILLIAM H. LAMBERT,
GEORGE W. KENDRICK,
MRS. GEORGE W. KENDRICK,
RICHARD WOOD,
ROBERT R. CORSON,
JOSEPH FELS.

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OFFICERS OF ADMINISTRATION.

CHARLES S. DOLLEY,
President, and Director of Courses in Natural Science.

WILLIAM L. SAYRE,
Vice-President, and Director of Courses in Manual Training.

ALBERT H. SMYTH,
Director of Courses in Literature and History.

HENRY C. JOHNSON,
Director of Courses in Ancient and Modern Languages

MILTON BANCROFT,
Director of Courses in Art.

BENJAMIN F. LACY,
Director of Courses in Psychology and Didactics.

DANIEL BAUGH,
Treasurer.

CHARLES ADAMSON,
Secretary,

119 S. Fourth St., Philadelphia, Pa.

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AVALON SUMMER ASSEMBLY.

AVALON, N. J.

HELD UNDER THE AUSPICES OF

THE GENERAL AIM of the Association conducting the Avalon Summer Assembly is the advancement of education, through the organized efforts of teachers and of others who are interested in educational work, and the encouragement and actual introduction of such educational reforms and experiments as are demanded by modern progress in Arts, Science, and Letters.

THE IMMEDIATE AIMS are:

(1) To afford to teachers and others opportunities for self-culture, by conducting VACATION COURSES which shall combine educational facilities with occasions for ENLARGED PROFESSIONAL ACQUAINTANCE and HEALTHFUL RECREATION, and by presenting opportunities for OUT-DOOR ART STUDY and for acquiring facility in the use of libraries, museums, and other aids to scholarship, and means for keeping abreast of modern psychological research and didactics.

(2) To introduce PRACTICAL SCIENCE STUDIES and NATURAL METHODS OF INSTRUCTION in elementary schools, and to develop improved methods of instruction in Arts and Letters.

(3) To furnish instruction in SLOID AND OTHER FORMS OF MANUAL TRAINING and to assist those who desire it in acquiring familiarity with the details of the KINDERGARTEN, as developed from the teachings of Froebel and Pestalozzi.

(4) To assist in the establishment of EDUCATIONAL HEADQUARTERS for the cultivation of greater professional dignity and esprit de corps among teachers, and for bringing about concerted action in educational matters.

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IT is the purpose of the AVALON SUMMER ASSEMBLY to afford teachers and others practical means for training themselves by active scientific methods to a broader understanding of those subjects commonly taught, or which should be taught, in primary, grammar, and secondary schools.

For years, various universities have maintained seaside laboratories, directed by specialists in biological science.

These summer workshops, free and away from the conventionalities of the city or the larger home institutions, inspired by the enthusiastic example of their Directors and following rigorous scientific methods, have furnished to the country a large proportion of its most successful teachers in the sciences.

Artists have long been accustomed to congregate during the summer months at particularly attractive spots, and the stimulus of direct contact with nature, the inspiration of fresh study, and wider acquaintance with fellow-artists result in the steady improvement of our winter art exhibits.

Literature and language have been quite satisfactorily pursued at summer gatherings. But, up to the present time, there has been no special provision for the needs of the teachers in our public and private schools, or for the many who desire not to be taught *WHAT*, but *HOW*—not the subject-matter so much as the habit and method of getting it for themselves. Prof. Hart, of Harvard, has recently indicated very clearly this need of teachers, in his article in the "Educational Review," entitled "University Participation." Without adopting this or any other slogan, the American Association for the Advancement of Education aims to meet this need in as full measure and under as pleasant conditions as may be.

The laboratory and out-door work of the naturalist is to be supplemented by the manual-training workshop, the art-studio, and the literary seminar, and intellectual activity in one department stimulated and guided along broad and harmonious lines, through an appreciation of the directly sympathetic relations of all the departments.

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.

1. The English Seminary will be conducted by Professor Albert H. Smyth. The work of the seminary will be most particularly upon the English drama from the liturgical plays to Shakespeare. Detailed study and investigation will be given to the earliest comedies and tragedies and to the dramatic writings of Greene. Peele, Marlowe, Webster, and Shirley. The history of the drama, its literary and political influences, and the establishment of theatres will be studied, and the history of euphuism reviewed.

Instruction in the Anglo-Saxon speech and literature will be given and, in a series of lectures upon historical English, the origin and continuity of the English language will be indicated and explained. Professor Smyth will also conduct classes in the interpretation of eighteenth and nineteenth century texts.

2. The English major class in historical grammar will meet with Mr. Chester N. Farr. Readings from selected texts will be accompanied by a course of lectures upon the evolution of the English language and the English literary style.

3. Instruction in the history of England as illustrating and interpreting the development of English literary thought and form, will be conducted by Professor Henry Willis who, by means of illustrated lectures and seminary talks, will explain the historic and literary movements by lectures upon administration and comparative politics, and upon the origin and development of the English constitution, and of the fundamental principles of English constitutional law.

4. Readings from English classics and lectures upon English poets will be given by Professor William Hyde Appleton, of Swarthmore College.

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Other lecturers from other colleges will visit the school during the summer, and deliver lectures upon the history of the English language and the interpretation of English poetry.

## ANCIENT AND MODERN LANGUAGES.

Under the direction of Professor Henry Clark Johnson, and with the co-operation of Professor Bernard Maurice, Ellis A. Schnabel and others, courses will be offered in elementary Latin and Greek, French and German.

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## ART DEPARTMENT.

MILTON BANCROFT, DIRECTOR.

CORPS OF INSTRUCTORS.

PROF. WILLIAM A. MASON,
Lecturer on the Pedagogy of Art.

MR. FRANK F. ENGLISH,
Instructor in Water-Color.

MR. ROBERT HENRI,
Instructor in Oil.

LIST OF LECTURERS.

PROF. LESLIE W. MILLER,

DR. CHARLES S. DOLLEY,
Plant and Animal Forms in Art.

DR. CHARLES C. ABBOTT,
Art of the American Aborigines.

PROF. WILLIAM A. MASON,

PROF. BENJAMIN F. LACY,
Educational Value of Art Studies.

PROF. MILTON BANCROFT,
Modern Impressionism.

PROF. ALBERT P. WILLIS.

The work of the Art Department will be conducted along two distinct lines: the one consisting of lectures and of work particularly adapted to the needs of the public school teacher, the other to the requirements of artist or student of art.

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These will, however, be so arranged that the stu-
dents of either can take advantage of the facilities
offered by the other.

The course for teachers will be under the charge of Professor William A. Mason, the Director of Drawing in the Philadelphia Public Schools. He will give a course of fifteen lectures upon "The Teaching of Drawing in Public Schools," which will cover the work done in the Primary, Secondary, and Grammar grades. The students taking this course are expected to supplement the lectures by practice in drawing from models and groups of objects, in the treatment of charcoal, monochrome wash drawing, water-color, and elementary design.

The course for art students will consist principally
of outdoor sketching and study in water-color and oil,
from nature.

Mr. Frank F. English will have charge of the water-
color, and under his criticism and instruction the class
will spend three mornings each week in the field.

Mr. Robert Henri will have the class in oil-color,
and will give his criticisms during three afternoons each
week. The work will be, as in the class in water-color,
entirely from nature.

Arrangements will also be made by which the stu-
dents will be enabled to work in company with the
instructors at various other times.

Lectures upon practical perspective, composition,
and allied subjects, will be given at times to be hereafter
fixed.

Lectures upon special art culture studies will be
given by Leslie W. Miller, Dr. Charles S. Dolley, Dr.
Charles C. Abbott, Professor William A. Mason, Pro-
fessor Benjamin F. Lacy, Professor Albert P. Willis and
others.

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DEPARTMENT OF MANUAL TRAINING.

WM. L. SAYRE, DIRECTOR,
Principal of the Philadelphia Central Manual Training School.

This department comprises two courses :

(a) WOOD SLOID.—A course of wood-working, based upon the Swedish system, re-arranged and modified to meet the needs of American schools.

(b) ADVANCED WOOD WORK—including joinery, turning, parquetry, wood-carving and pattern-making.

*Applied Drawing* will be taught in connection
with the instruction given in these courses.

ASSISTANTS.

MR. ALBERT B. ENTWISLE, a teacher of rare ability, will have charge of the advanced wood work. Mr. Entwisle has been the instructor in wood-working in the Central Manual Training School for the past eight years. He has also conducted classes in the Westchester State Normal School, and at the Summer School in Clarion County.

MR. FREDERICK P. PORTER, a graduate of the Philadelphia Manual Training School, and of the Boston School of Sloid (Gustaf Larsson), will teach wood sloid. Mr. Porter has been teaching with marked success for the past year in the James Forten Elementary Manual Training School.

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## STUDIES IN NATURAL SCIENCE.

It is not proposed to follow any fixed course requiring the study of selected types of plants and animals, but to make the most of the abundant materials afforded by the immediate woods and meadows, sounds and thoroughfares, and, in so far as possible, to study the living organisms in their natural environment. As much as weather will permit, the laboratory will be out of doors-on the beach, wading in the shallow waters, or collecting by the aid of boats in the deeper places.

The more obvious features of plants will be studied where the plants are found growing, and indoor work will be relegated to rainy days or confined to such investigation as requires the aid of the microscope and other special accessories.

No text-books will be employed, but the lines of observation will be mapped out from day to day, and thanks to the hearty co-operation of a number of professional botanists and zoologists, specialist amateurs and advanced students, there will be some one to accompany each field party; ready, by timely explanation and suggestion, to aid the student to rapid and accurate observation. This practical field work will be supplemented by informal lectures and discussion, and by free access to a library of suitable works of reference.

## ZOOLOGY.

Lectures on the various aspects of zoology will be given by Dr. Charles S. Dolley, Prof. John A. Ryder, Prof. Benjamin Sharp, Henry A. Pilsbury, Dr. Henry Townsend, and Andrew M. Spangler. The field and laboratory work will be under the guidance of Dr. Thomas M. Lightfoot, Charles E. Hite, Mary S. Schively, Adeline

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Schively, Mary A. Tyler, and others acquainted with the region.

Mr. Hite will conduct a practical course in the collection and preservation of Natural History objects, and teachers will be assisted in forming collections.

## BOTANY.

The study of botany will be directed by Prof. John C. Gifford, of Swarthmore College, assisted by Laura B. Cross, and Jennie F. Waddington.

Special lectures will be given by C. Henry Kain and Charles F. Boyer, Charles S. Dolley, and others.

## GEOLOGY.

Those particularly interesting features in physical geography which render the peninsula of South Jersey so attractive to the naturalist will receive special attention, both by field work and lectures under the supervision of Dr. Thomas M. Lightfoot, and Mary A. Holmes.

## ARCHÆOLOGY.

Dr. Charles C. Abbott, widely known as a leader in American Archæology, will direct the investigations of the numerous Indian shell heaps in the immediate vicinity of Avalon. Prof. John C. Gifford, who has devoted much attention to the history and past industries of South Jersey, will contribute to this study by his intimate knowledge of the entire region.

## HYGIENE.

Special lectures on School Hygiene and the care of the eyes will be given by Dr. Samuel G. Dixon and Dr. George Friebis, and Dr. George M. Gould.

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## COURSES IN DIDACTICS.

UNDER THE DIRECTION OF BENJ. F. LACY.

The various courses of the Summer Assembly will give much indirect training in pedagogy; but, on the principle of doing "one thing well," the course in didactics has been established, that the philosophy of method may receive a due amount of undivided attention.

In this department the lecture and seminar methods will be combined. An effort will be made to present an outline of the various subjects that will suggest lines of reading and will be of value in guiding and interpreting future study.

The following courses will be offered:

### EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY.

BENJ. F. LACY.

The effort here will be to study the human mind in the light of modern psychological research and to derive educational principles from the resulting conceptions of mental development and processes of thought. Meta-physical discussions will find no place; the subject will be treated from the standpoint of experience.

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## PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION.

DR. EDWARD BROOKS.

Dr. Brooks, Superintendent of the Public Schools of Philadelphia, will endeavor to find time to deliver lectures on various interesting and instructive subjects that may be classified under the head of Philosophy of Education.

## HISTORY OF EDUCATION.

OLIVER P. CORNMAN.

It is proposed to give a few outline sketches with special reference to the development of educational principles. The aim will be to supplement the more abstract propositions of psychology by the concrete testimony of historical facts. The selection of this method will render possible the omission of much detail that is necessarily involved in the biographical treatment, thus bringing into greater clearness the general trend of educational progress.

Besides the above, lectures will be given as the roster permits, on the pedagogics of Natural Science, Literature, History, Geography, Drawing, Manual Training, and School Hygiene, by specialists representing these various departments.

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ON THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE.*

An exceedingly stimulating and suggestive article by Mr. J Churton Collins appeared in the *Nineteenth Century* of November, 1887, proposing in its title the query, "Can English Literature be taught?" During the last five years the question has held a conspicuous place in educational thought. An aggressive minority in England has sought by answering it affirmatively, and passing it in probation, to capture the reverend University of Oxford and to revolutionize in its gray quadrangles the teaching of language and letters. A copious literature has grown up around this question contributed to by the ablest and most authoritative minds of our generation, and reaching an unusually large public through the pages of the great English reviews which are rarely made the arena of pedagogic controversy. Three questions were submitted to the most eminent authorities on Education and on Literature in England:

1. Was it desirable that the Universities should provide systematic instruction in English Literature?

2. Was it desirable that a distinction should be made between Philology and Literature, and that the instruction provided should be instruction in Literature as distinguished from instruction in Philology?

3. Was it desirable that the study of English Literature should be indissolubly associated with the study of ancient Classical Literature?

These questions were answered affirmatively without one dissenting voice. The result of all this agitation was the consent of convocation to the foundation of a

new chair to be called the chair of "English Language and Literature." A Board of Electors was appointed and it was hoped that Mr. Matthew Arnold would be invited to fill the chair. But a philologian was appointed at a salary of nine hundred pounds to teach Middle English, the language of Robert of Gloucester and William of Shoreham.

We have had a very similar experience in this country, and even now in nearly all our higher institutions of learning literature is taught as material for philological study. Literature can by no possibility render its highest service to the cause of education until it has been divorced from Philology.

The seminary of the latter must be distinct from that of the former, for the mental equipment of a critic of literature is distinct from that of a student of language, and cannot be obtained by the same processes. The ability to exhibit the process of the English drama as an evolution or to trace the growth of the Romantic Revival in England gives to the investigator no peculiar right or power to trespass upon philological preserves. Anyone who has mingled much with young students whose enthusiasm for the great things of literature has been kindled cannot have failed to see, and with distress, that many enter our colleges and universities every year only to suffer discomfort while there and to leave with their hopes all unsatisfied. The principles that underlie modern literary criticism are not taught, because the time in an overburdened department will not permit. The thought and style of the most conspicuous and far-shining men-of-letters are subordinated in the class-room to the minute niceties of the language in which they wrote. In nearly every case where a student of strong natural ability is constrained to the simultaneous study

*Abstract of a paper read before the Educational Club of Philadelphia, by Prof. Albert H. Smyth.

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17

of both philology and literature he will either love the
one and hate the other or hold to the one and despise
the other.

Mr. James Russell Lowell in his eloquent address at
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding
of Harvard College, declared that language should be
made a ladder to literature and not literature a ladder to
language.

Our school text-books tell the same story, and our
cheap editions of English classics with notes, and our lit-
tle variorum editions of Shakespeare illustrate the same
error. Much time is devoted to minute grammatical
peculiarities and scarcely ever a suggestive word spoken
upon the ethical and æsthetic values of the work. In
all this pedantry and word-mongering, in this apathetic
hum-drum of grammar exercises we lose sight of the
real business and function of literature which is to find
some effective agency for cherishing within us the ideal.
Burke said, "What is the education of the generality of
the world? Reading a parcel of books? No. Restraint
and discipline. Examples of virtue and justice: these
are what form the education of the world." Profoundly
true as this is that life is the great educator, yet as Mr.
John Morley remarked, "the parcel of books, if they are
well chosen, reconcile us to this discipline. They inter-
pret this virtue and justice. They awaken within us
the diviner mind and rouse us to a consciousness of what
is best in others and ourselves."

There exists a sufficient apparatus for the teaching
of literature in all the school grades. In the lower
schools the object of literary studies should be to kindle
the imagination, to form the taste, and to train the judg-
ment. The work of the Grammar School and High
School teacher is well done if he creates in his students

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a love of books and in some degree imparts to them the
power of distinguishing between good and bad in liter-
ary form. In the public schools there is a large class
who come from bare homes, where books are unknown,
and there is another large class whose imaginations have
been inflamed by the dime dreadful, or the weekly story-
paper. The manliest of romances, the most heroic of
tales of adventure by sea or land are too tame or too
slow for the appetite of one of these. He is callous to
Dana or Melville. He thinks "Westward Hoe" "tire-
somely dull." Under these conditions the primary
teacher is sorely taxed to know how to capture the
vagrant attention. Much effort has been made in the
last few years to bring the best literature, the canonical
books of the world, within the reach of the young. For
example, MACMILLAN'S SCHOOL LIBRARY, in which
the learned Dean Church has told with charming sim-
plicity and absolute fidelity to truth the story of the
Iliad and the Odyssey, and of the Greek Gulliver
(Lucian). Francis Turner Palgrave, Professor of Poetry
at Oxford, in the same Library, has prepared a "Child's
Treasury of English Poetry." Our own Sidney Lanier
brought Froissart and King Arthur home to the boys.
Mrs. Guest prepared the Welsh legends in the Boys
Mabinogion. Then in the history of literature many
successful attempts have been made to interest young
students in the story of literary lives. I may mention
Amanda Harris's "American Authors for Young
Folks;" Henrietta Wright's "Children's Stories in Eng-
lish Literature"; Longman's "Handbook of English
Literature"; and best of all and admirably fine, Donald
Grant Mitchell's "English Lands, Letters, and Kings."
Of the last work, two volumes have been published by
Scribners, the first entitled "From Celt to Tudor," the
second, "From Elizabeth to Anne."

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When we proceed to legislate for the teaching of
English Literature in the higher schools, we have two
things to bear in mind: "the necessity for an adequate
treatment of the subject from an historical point of
view, and the necessity for an adequate treatment of it
from the critical point of view." The student of liter-
ary history must know the English past, must be able
to recognize the ancestral voices that echo in our liter-
ature, and be able to trace to their sources the spiritual
and intellectual elements which mingle in the composi-
tion of our English classics. A foundation for such a
systematic study would be laid by the help of such easily
accessible summaries and studies as ten Brink's "Early
English Literature," Earle's "Anglo-Saxon Liter-
ature," Professor Morley's "English Writers," and
Stopford Brooke's fine survey of the whole field in his
excellent "Primer." In tracing the evolution of Eng-
lish literature in detail, however, we meet with great
difficulties, since there is no good general history in
existence. There are, it is true, such books as Professor
Morley's "First Sketch," and still better, Professor
Morley's "English Writers," now in its ninth volume,
and to be complete in twenty. We have M. Taine's
*Critique* which, though a work of great genius and
brilliancy, is almost a caricature of the method of his
master, Sainte Beuve. The text-books of Craik, and
Shaw, and Arnold, and a host of others, with a few
exceptions, notably, Arnold, are mere lifeless lists.
The consequence is that the student is driven to seek
information about one period in one book, and about
another period in another book. Only from the skilled
teacher learned in all the evolution of the English spirit,
acquainted with all its strange stirrings can the student
learn to recognize the continuity of English literary

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history and clearly understand what marks and consti-
tutes epochs of development.

To pass on from the historical to the critical treat-
ment of literature, to the interpretation of particular
works. It is here that the opponents of literary teach-
ing take their last stand. They point with derision to
the spectacle of a teacher expounding to a class the
merits of "The Lonely Leech Gatherer," or the "Ode
to a Nightingale." They say such study is only finical
trifling, making of silken phrases, dilettanteism. One
Shakespearian editor sneers at all æsthetic criticism as
"sign-post criticism," another scholar finds both fun
and indignation in the "Chatter about Shelley," which
is to supersede the solid studies of the old curriculum.
The fact is that we have lost rhetorical criticism in our
schools. In reading and weighing a classic, we ordi-
narily analyze his language with extreme care, his style
much less carefully, and neglect altogether his senti-
ment, ethics, and thought. The great works of criti-
cism are rarely seen in the college class-room or the
University seminar. The graduate who is to teach
literature in the public schools or private academy has
likely never read the Institutes of Quintilian, or any
other product of ancient criticism, and has never studied
the "Laocoön," or any other master-work of modern
exegesis.

Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull of Baltimore,
recently founded in the Johns Hopkins University a
lectureship of Poetry, and the initial course of lectures
delivered in Baltimore in 1891, and repeated in this city,
upon the "Nature and Elements of Poetry" by Mr.
Edmund Clarence Stedman is a glad presage of a
brighter era in America in the teaching of the essentials
of poetry. A few more such books as Stedman's, a few

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more lectureships like the Percy Turnbull Memorial, and we shall have fewer teachers blundering among vague generalities, and tracing no connection between phenomena and laws. I contend, therefore, with Churton Collins that on the historical side literature may be as seriously, methodically, and profitably taught as History itself, and that on the critical side it must become a potent instrument of discipline, and in its interpretation of life the most important adjunct of ethic and æsthetic education.

ALBERT H. SMYTH.

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PLEASE RETURN SLIP IN ENCLOSED ENVELOPE.

I shall attend the Avalon Summer Assembly, beginning July 5th, 1893, and closing August 10, 1893, and will take the following courses:

<table><tr><td>ENGLISH LITERATURE,</td><td>HISTORY,</td></tr><tr><td>FRENCH,</td><td>GERMAN,</td></tr><tr><td>LATIN,</td><td>GREEK,</td></tr><tr><td>BOTANY,</td><td>ZOOLOGY,</td></tr><tr><td>ART,</td><td>MANUAL TRAINING,</td></tr><tr><td>PSYCHOLOGY,</td><td>DIDACTICS.</td></tr></table>

(Please put a cross against the name of the course or courses that you desire to take.)

Name

Address

Name

Address