vitalized his whole being
with an interest in one study.

"In his talk to the teachers," said Superintendent Spalding, "he showed
a deeper knowledge of the subject than most of the teachers present
possessed."

Those who remember with a shiver of dread the syntax, parsing, sentence
diagramming, paragraph dissecting, machine composition construction of
the grammar grades, should have stepped with me into the class of an
Indianapolis teacher of seventh grade English. The teacher sat in the
back of the room. The class bent forward, attentively listening while a
roughly clad, uncouth boy, slipshod in attitude, stumbled through the
broken periods of his ungrammatical sentences.

"And Esau went out after a venison," he was saying, "and Jacob's mother
cooked up some goat's meat till it smelled like a venison. And then
Jacob, he took the venison--I mean the goat's meat to Isaac, and Isaac
couldn't tell it wasn't Esau because"--so the story continued for two or
three minutes. When it was ended, the boy stood looking gloomily at the
class.

"Well, class?" queried Miss Howes, "has any one any criticism to make?"

Instantly, three-quarters of the class was on its feet.

"Well, Edward."

Edward, a manly fellow, spoke quietly to the boy who had told the story.

"Paul, you don't talk quite loud enough. Then you should raise and lower
your voice more."

Several of the class (having intended to make the same criticism) sat
down with Edward. The teacher turned.

"Yes, Mary."

"Paul, your grammar wasn't very good. You didn't make periods."

One by one, in a spirit of kindly helpfulness, criticisms were made.
When the children had finished, Miss Howes said:

"Paul, you did very well. This is your first time in this class, isn't
it?"

"Yes'm."

"Yes, Paul, you did very well; but, Paul"--and with care and precision
she outlined his mistakes, suggesting in each case ways of avoiding them
in the future.

Throughout the grades in Indianapolis the children have some oral
English work every day. When they reach the seventh and eighth years
this oral work takes on quite pretentious forms. Beginning with Aesop's
Fables, the children tell fairy tales, Bible stories, Greek legends,
Norse legends, animal stories, and any other stories that the teacher
thinks appropriate. Each child may select in the particular group of
stories whatever topic seems most interesting.

Each day has its written English work, too. On Monday, letters