HIXEN C. PUTNAM, M. D. 267 



Several heads of schools said with compunction that they 

 were doing very little, not what they wished they could do. 

 With some there was an attitude of comic despair, as if the 

 possibilities and difficulties were beyond solution with so many 

 other demands from commissioners and examining boards. A 

 few were emphatic over what they believed their special merits; 

 but it was not always possible to agree with them. As it proves 

 good for public school teachers, it would be very profitable here, 

 too, if the custom of studying other schools systematicly were 

 more common, with detailed written reports of the practice and 

 teaching of hygiene. One group of seniors was doing this for 

 the first time. The advantages are mutual stimulus to the 

 school studied (it seems that "there's the rub") as well as edu- 

 cation of the visitors and their school. 



Usually no attempts were made to see presidents, as instruc- 

 tors, classes, notebooks and premises gave more detailed and 

 authoritative information "at first hand." One instructor to 

 whom was said, "You are doing better work than your report 

 states," replied, "I have been here only a few years. They don't 

 know what I am doing." Several instructors whose attention 

 was called to the discrepancies between the work done and the 

 published statements explained that they had been prepared 

 some years before when it was expected to carry out that pro- 

 gram. Others protested that no one in the time allowed could 

 do "all that." One principal, after an hour about "book animals" 

 of other climes, said that they had recently decided to cut down 

 the time given to science (including physiology and hygiene) 

 and next year give it to English instead for "that sort of thing 

 doesn't seem to amount to anything." This was not the only 

 class where it seemed fortunate that the time allowance was no 

 more, for it was wasted. 



Statements about the time given to "physiology and hygiene' 7 

 in normal schools are even less indicative of the work done than 

 they are in public schools. A little instruction may be given by 

 the principal, or by instructors in pedagogy, biologic science 

 (botany, zoology, biology, physiology, nature study, school 

 gardening) ; gymnastics. Regular classes are assigned some- 

 times to the teacher who happens to have least to do: it may 

 be the art teacher this year, the teacher of manual training 

 next, the teacher of history another, or the teacher of physical 

 training who with pupils wears the confined dress and high heels 

 of "the crowd." Some of these lack even the elementary vocab- 

 ulary needed, and have among their pupils those who have 

 brought from high schools better information; "instruction" 

 consists in reading questions from a book and comparing the 

 replies elicited with the text the "parrot work" we find in chil- 



