e of the circle rather than at the center. We
have been striving to reform our educational training, hoping for a
reflex that would be sufficient to modify the entire school regime. We
have added domestic science, hoping thereby to reconstruct the school by
inoculation. We have looked to agriculture and other vocational studies
as the magnetic influences of our dreams. Something has been
accomplished, to be sure, but we are still far distant from the goal.
The best that writers can do in their books or educational conferences
can do in their meetings, is to report progress.

=The obstacle of conservatism.=--One of the greatest obstacles we have
to surmount in this whole matter of vitalizing school work is the
habitual conservatism of the school people themselves. The methods of
teaching that obtained in the school when we were pupils have grooved
themselves into habits of thinking that smile defiance at the theories
that we have more recently acquired. When we venture out from the shore
we want to feel a rope in our hands. The superintendent speaks fervently
to patrons or teachers on the subject of modern methods in teaching,
then retires to his office and takes intimate and friendly counsel with
tradition. In sailing the educational seas he must needs keep in sight
the buoys of tradition. This matter of conservatism is cited merely to
show that our progress, in the very nature of the case, will be slow.

=Schools of education.=--Another obstacle in the way of progress toward
the vitalized school is the attitude and teaching of many who are
connected with colleges of education and normal schools. We have a right
to look to them for leadership, but we find, instead, that their
practices lag far in the rear of their theories. They teach according to
such devitalized methods and in such an unvitalized way as to discredit
the subjects they teach. It is only from such of their students as are
proof against their style of teaching that we may hope for aid. One such
teacher in a college of education in a course of eight weeks on the
subject of School Administration had his students copy figures from
statistical reports for several days in succession and for four and five
hours each day. The students confessed that their only objective was the
gaining of credits, and had no intimation that the work they were doing
was to function anywhere.

=The machine teacher.=--Such work is deadening and disheartening. It has
in it no insp