82 



The Review of Reviews. 



REAL EDUCATION— AND 

 HOLIDAYS. 



NO 



The Michigan schools, as described in the American 

 Educational Review for June by Kathleen Nicholson, 

 seem to be a very happy illustration of " live " educa- 

 tion. Mr. Luther L. Wright, the leader of State educa- 

 tion, has made great changes on the conventional 

 methods. 



LANGUAGE FIRST. 



To supply children with vocabulary and ideas, he 

 set them memorising the most beautiful selections of 

 prose and poetry in the language, then the very best ' 

 stories were culled from literature, including fiction, 

 fable, folklore, nature biography, and history. The 

 child's interest in things beautiful was developed by 

 the use of pictures carefully selected and discussed by 

 them. Copies of the best pictures and statuary were 

 placed in every school. Nature was drawn upon ; 

 experimental gardens, collections of soil, rock, plants 

 were made by the children, birds, plants, animals. 

 Local industries and scenery were studied. The child 

 was taught to express himself orally. 



WRITING AND GRAMMAR L.\TER. 



When the pupils entered the eighth and ninth 

 grades, then they were ready for written work. Then, 

 too, technical grammar is taught, the pupils being 

 readv for it. The text-book is discarded, not only in 

 language work, but in arithmetic. Number work 

 consists in the visualising of oral problems. No pencil 

 or pen or paper is used until the seventh grade, yet 

 every arithmetical principle has been used and mastered 

 orally before that time. Other forms of sense training 

 are constantly used. The children run about the room 

 noiselessly on the ball of the foot — never walk. In all 

 the work they are trained to use hands, eyes, ears ; and 

 the co-ordination of muscles thus developed results in 

 €ase, grace, poise, and skill. So far the system seems 

 admirable. 



NO NEED or A VACATION. 



But what will impatient school boys and girls think 

 of the next feature ? : — 



One of the most important articles of the creed is the recom- 

 mendation of the twelve months' school system to the attenlion 

 of taxpayers and other educators. Mr. Wright refers to our 

 present system as a traditional survival from the days when our 

 forbears rec]uired the help of the boys and girls in the farm 

 ■during the sumnrcr season. To-day the growing demand for 

 vacation schools proves that no real need exists for the long 

 idle summer v.ication. In our own day, when school is no 

 longer regarded as a preparation for life, but is recognised as 

 being life itself, the long gaps of time seem entirely superfluous, 

 and the misguided, undirected vacation a real lo.ss. .School is 

 no longer a mere grind over texts, but a place replete with 

 incentives to activity. It is the child's social centre, harmonised 

 to meet the developing needs of his own nature, wherein he 

 lives among his peers in his own little world. In these schools 

 the discipline practically takes care of itself. It is his natural 

 environuient in which everything has been arranged on a basis 

 of appeal to his native tendencies. The dawn of every instinct 

 has become the creation of the child's real world, wherein 

 everything is his own tangible, appreciative possession. It is 

 the goal to which he turns instinctively in the morning and to 



which he goes eagerly and earnestly. His attitude towards it, 

 in these schools, is a revelation to the visitor who watches his 

 absorbed interest in every detail of his work, which he ap- 

 proaches almost reverentially and without coercion of any kind. 

 Is there any excuse for turning him out of this environment 

 during three months of the year > Moreover, three months' 

 vacation means that throughout a twelve years' course of grade 

 and high school, the child loses thirty-six months or three full 

 years of the most valuable time of his life. 



"A TYPOGRAPHICAL VICAR OF 

 BRAY." 



In Chambers's Joiiriinl for July Mr. J. B. Williams 

 thus describes Henry Hills, printer to Cromwell. Son 

 of a rope-maker at Maidstone, he became postillion to 

 Harrison, the regicide, and then to John Lilburne, who 

 apprenticed him to a printing firm. The members of 

 the firm having been imprisoned. Hills ran away, joined 

 the rebel army, and fought at Edgehill. In 1648 

 Cromwell asked for a printer for the Remonstrance of 

 the Army. Hills offered, and was made printer to the 

 army. 



ANABAPTIST. 



Then he joined the Anabaptists. Next he persuaded 

 the wife of a tailor to leave her husband and live with 

 him as his mistress. The injured husband sued Hills 

 for damages, and was awarded the sum of £260. Hills, 

 unable to pay, was flung into prison. Then he printed 

 a pamphlet entitled The Prodigal Return' d to his 

 Father's House. He then obtained his release from 

 prison, became printer to the Anabaptist congregation, 

 and misappropriated the Anabaptist funds. 



BIBLE PRINTER TO CROMWELL. 



In 1653 Hills was appointed printer to Cromwell's 

 Council of State. In 1656 the copyright of the Bible 

 was entered to him and to John Field, of Cambridge, 

 in the Stationers' Register. The mistakes in the Bibles 

 of this period are due to these two most incompetent 

 printers. Two are famous : " Know ye not that the 

 7»irighteous shall inherit the kingdom } " and " Thou 

 shalt commit adultery." 



A KIND OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAN. 



On the Restoration he became a kind of Church of 

 England man, or a modest Presbyterian, then an anti- 

 Popish zealot in the year of Titus Oates's plot. When 

 the perjurer Dangerficld wrote his narrative, Hills 

 printed it, and was cast for damages. Hills accordingly 

 became a zealous Catholic, but nevertheless took the 

 Sacrament in the Church of England to qualify for the 

 office of Master of the Stationers' Company. 



A RO.MANIST ! 



When James II. came to the throne he employed 

 Hills to print and publish the two papers of reasons for 

 the acceptance of the Catholic faith which Charles II. 

 wrote. In 168S, when James II. fled from Whitehall, a 

 London mob sacked Hills's printing house and burnt it. 

 Next vear a warrant was issued by William III. for 

 Hills's' arrest for high treason. Hills fled to St. Oincr's, 

 where he died. 



