NORTHEAST CONVENTION DISTRICT SPRING CONFERENCE 1926

The first meeting of the executive committee of the Northeast Convention District of the Pennsylvania State Education Association was held on Saturday, December 5, at Forty Fort in the new high school building, dedicated a few weeks ago. The members of the committee were the guests of Supt. A. A. Killian of Forty Fort during the day.

The members of the committee who were present included President A. A. Killian of Forty Fort; First Vice-President, Supt. W. W. Evans of Bloomsburg; Secretary, Supt. A. P. Diffendafer of Nanticoke; Treasurer, D. J. Mahoney of Wilkes-Barre and J. Herbert Kelley of Harrisburg. The various departments were represented by their presidents as follows: County Superintendents, F. H. Taylor of Montrose; District Superintendents and Supervising Principals, J. H. Koehler of Honesdale; Junior High School, W. A. Herr of Hazleton; Senior High School, A. E. Quackenbush, Towanda; Grade Schools, Miss Nelle Moore of Bloomsburg; Vocational Education and Practical Arts, Ray Cole of Bloomsburg; T. T. Allen, Leon Bly and A. Lester Crapser were unable to be present but sent substitutes.

After a long and careful discussion of the educational needs of this district, and various methods that might be employed in the solution of some of the problems, it was decided to hold the first convention in this district in Wilkes-Barre on Friday and Saturday, March 5 and 6, 1926. The program which is being arranged will include all departments, but especial emphasis will be given to the grade school and the rural school teacher. In connection with the convention there will be demonstration lessons conducted in the regular classrooms by expert teachers; round table conferences at which teachers may ask questions and receive advice from experienced instructors; sectional meetings will be held for each department and the program for the general meetings will include men who stand high in the educational world and who have proved that they have a worth-while message for the teachers.

In this district the Anthracite Arts Association is a very active and important educational organization. This body of enthusiastic teachers has accomplished much good in the past years, and it is felt that if the teachers who are now members of this organization will affiliate with the newer branch of the Pennsylvania State Education Association it will be for the best interests of all the schools. A very urgent invitation has been sent to the Anthracite Arts Association to become a part of the Northeast Convention District, and it is hoped that their convention which was planned for Sunbury may be held in WilkesBarre as a part of the Northeast Convention.

The question of better prepared teachers for the rural schools; a more efficient control of school athletics; a wider dissemination of knowledge of the work being done by the pub

lic schools; a more practical course of study for our schools, are almost certain to receive considerable attention both in the sectional meetings and also in the meetings of the general assembly. We hope to have the full program printed in the February number of the PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL JOURNAL.-A. P. Diffendafer, Secretary.

ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL BOARD SECRETARIES OF PENNSYLVANIA

The 13th Annual Meeting of the Association of School Board Secretaries of Pennsylvania will be held in the Technical High School, Harrisburg, Tuesday, February 9, 1926.

An excellent program is being prepared that will be of interest and benefit to all secretaries who attend.

The Second Annual Dinner of the Secretaries will be held in the Cafeteria of the Edison Junior High School, Tuesday evening at 6:30 o'clock.

PENNSYLVANIA STATE SCHOOL

DIRECTORS' ASSOCIATION

The 31st Annual Convention of the Pennsylvania State School Directors' Association will be held in the Technical High School, Harrisburg, Wednesday and Thursday, February 10 and 11, 1926.

The program which has been arranged to be of benefit to all classes of districts will include Dr. C. C. Ellis of Juniata College; Dr. S. C. Schmucker of West Chester Normal; Mrs. J. O. Miller of the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters; Dr. Francis B. Haas, Superintendent of Public Instruction; Hon. Gifford Pinchot, Governor of the Commonwealth; D. A. Kline, Superintendent of Perry County.

Railroad rates have been secured as in previous years and delegates when purchasing tickets should ask for a certificate.

MAKING HUGE MAP OF UNITED
STATES

The government is now carrying to completion the largest and most comprehensive map of the United States. This map, when completed twenty years from now, will be an accurate topographical representation of every square inch of the vast territory that comprises the United States. It will be composed of 6,000 sections, and if placed together in one big pattern would cover more than an acre of ground. The total cost is estimated at $49,200,000. Work began on the survey for the map in 1879 and has progressed slowly, held back by lack of appropriations. Now, however, Congress has authorized the completion of the work and granted $950,000 for the survey in the first year. Airplanes will take a big part in this tremendous task.

The power to bring back wandering attention lies at the very foundation of character.J. C. Brown.

The fourth annual Teacher Training Conference of the State Normal School Faculties was held at Lock Haven, November 23, 24 and 25, 1925. The general theme was "A wellprepared and growing teacher in every classroom in the public schools of the Commonwealth."

More than five hundred teachers representing the teacher training force of the State Normal Schools met in a three day conference. It was an unusual conference in that it brought together the largest single group of normal teachers ever assembled in this Commonwealth, 91 per cent of the full faculty enrollment. Each normal school was represented by the following number of teachers:

The meeting consisted of general sessions and sectional groups. Luncheons and dinners provided opportunity for impromptu addresses.

The evening of November 23, opened with an address by Dr. Arthur Holmes, who spoke to the general assembly on the subject "Character Training and Its Relation to a TeacherTraining Program." He emphasized the view that personality is one of the most important factors in a teacher's success. The outcome of such an attitude is that human personality is a complex organization. It can be broken in pieces and then put together again. Every person naturally is more or less disintegrated at first. The child is not a unit personality. Time, experience and, above all else, education, are the factors for integrating human personality. The teacher is expected to be a specialist in this work and must organize, unite and unify human beings into organizations that will function as good citizens in society and as markedly successful men and women in life.

Dr. Francs B. Haas, Superintendent of Public Instruction, addressed the general session on "The Mutual Responsibilities of the Teacher and the Child." In the course of his remarks he urged very strongly the importance of both teacher and pupil realizing in full_ the vast financial responsibility involved. Too often this is a side that is taken for granted. Public education is becoming a costly process and due consideration must be given to the obligations attaching therewith.

Miss Jessie Gray, President of the P. S. E. A., spoke in pleasing vein to the general session November 24 on the theme that education is the continuing effort of the race to urge the individual more quickly across the gap between his helpless immaturity and the helpfulness and responsibility which every effort of the race has made possible.

Dr. Charles E. Dickey, member of the State Council of Education, pointed out to the normal school instructors the necessity for the mastery of subject matter on the part of the teacher. He also urged the importance of securing teachers for the rural districts who were in thorough sympathy with rural life.

The sectional meetings were held Tuesday forenoon and afternoon. Each sectional group had previously arranged its own program. Papers on current problems were presented and discussion followed the reading of the papers.

An outstanding feature of the conference was the address given by Dr. C. F. Hoban on Visual Education. Still pictures and moving pictures were used to illustrate the Department's program in this subject. Dr. Hoban opened up a field rich in possibilities for Pennsylvania teachers.

Dr. George E. Walk, Dean of Teachers College, Temple University, in the course of his remarks before the general session stated that an important characteristic of teacher-training of tomorrow will be a new emphasis on the significance of mastery. A current fallacy is to identify the customary lesson-assigning, lesson-getting and lesson-hearing procedure with true achievement. We attach disproportionate attention and importance to "ground covered" and "time given." The "passing grade" criterion of mastery easily leads to habits of evasion in school and to moral delinquency in after life. Teachers need to inculcate in the minds of pupils the appropriate ideals of persistency, loyalty to duty and personal responsibility to self and to society. True interest must be divorced from flabby and "painless" education. Pupils must be led to see that in school as in all walks of life there are no "short circuits" to abiding success. Mastery, to be sure, is only relative. We shall never try, if we are wise, to raise all pupils to the same level of achievement. What we must do, however, is to demand from every pupil the irreducible minimum that represents his own personal best.

Hughes Mearns, author of "Creative Youth," selected as his subject "Liberating the Creative Spirit in Childhood." Mr. Mearns has been experimenting in this field for the past fifteen years. He read from the original poems which he had collected in the course of this experiment and briefly stated that during the past five years he has carried on an experiment along the creative side of youth in the classes of the Lincoln School and Teachers College. With the help of the whole school he was able to set up such an environment, literary and artistic, as brought forth an astonishingly rich product in original prose and verse. Some one hundred pages of this verse were presented, together with an account of the experiment and an analysis of the method used in "Creative Youth."

Dr. Edwin W. Adams, Principal of Phila

delphia Normal School, spoke on the general subject of "Rejection and Selection for the Teacher Service."

This address was followed by an interesting talk by Dr. Ambrose L. Suhrie, who stressed the point that upon the normal schools of the State more than upon any other agency the people must depend for leadership in the program of public education. The paramount problem in public education in Pennsylvania is to secure for every classroom a competent teacher, a leader, a companion, a foreman who can create worthy ideals, right attitudes and permanent life interests. To find young men and women of good health, of fine intellectual capacity, of high moral purposes and to train them for this leadership, this is the reason normal schools have been established.

A most significant feature of the meeting was the appointment by each group of a chairman who should present in person before the Curriculum Revision Committee, Board of Normal School Principals at Harrisburg, before June 1, 1926, a summarized statement of the judgment of the group that will indicate definitely the number of semester hours and the type of work in respective fields, such as social studies, mathematics, languages, etc., which the group believes should be included within a

1. Two-year course in groups I, II, and IV. 2. Four-year course for each of these groups.

3. Course of study for the Junior High School group on a four-year basis. Dr. W. R. Straughn, Principal of Mansfield State Normal School, brought the meeting to a conclusion with a splendid summary of the several sessions.

THE WORLD COURT

How do you stand in regard to the World Court? It is one of the big questions of the year and the subject of senatorial discussion. Every teacher should inform herself on this subject.

The Senate agreed last March, by a vote of 77 to 2, to begin consideration of the World Court on December 17. The House of Representatives passed a resolution last spring, expressing its "earnest desire" for early adherence to the World Court on the HardingHughes-Coolidge terms. Recent informal polls of the Senate indicate that on a record vote the requisite two-thirds of the Senate would vote "Aye." President Coolidge has repeatedly endorsed the adherence of the United States to the World Court and he was reported by the New York Times last summer as saying that he will call for affirmative action on the World Court this winter "in no uncertain terms."

Throughout the country there is evidence of strong popular desire for discussion and settlement of the question in the Senate. Even those opposed to the Court feel that the matter should be fully debated and voted upon. After all, it has been almost three years since President Harding first urged the adherence of the United States to the World Court.

NATIONAL COUNCIL IN SCHOOL HOUSE CONSTRUCTION CON

FERENCE

The executive committee of the National Council on School House Construction held its annual meeting in the Capitol, Harrisburg, November 19 and 20, with the following members present:

S. A. Challaman, State Director of School Buildings and Grounds, Minnesota; C. M. Hirst, Department of Education, Arkansas; Wm. C. Bruce, Editor of the School Board Journal; Charles McDermott, Department of Public Instruction, New Jersey; H. W. Schmidt, Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin; John J. Blair, Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina; Frank H. Wood, Department of Public Instruction, New York; F. R. Scherer, Rochester, New York; HuBert C. Eicher, Department of Education, Pennsylvania.

The National Council, since its organization several years ago, has been making an intensive study of the problems of school buildings, grounds and equipment. It has also conducted some interesting experiments and tests on the different phases of school house construction and equipment, the results of which have been made known to educators throughout the country. Another aim is to bring together the results and findings of studies by school building experts.

Among the questions considered at the Harrisburg meeting were:

1. What fit substitute can be recommended in lieu of maple flooring for schools?

This question developed an interesting discussion. It brought out the facts that maple flooring is becoming more difficult to secure, now comes full of cracks and in such short lengths and is increasing so in price that a fit substitute must be found. It was announced that the Council is experimenting with various kinds of flooring and that some interesting results are anticipated.

PRIZES AND SCHOLARSHIPS
Safety Essay and Safety Lesson Contests

The fifth National Safety Campaign conducted by the Highway Education Board offers opportunity to both elementary school pupils and elementary school teachers. For elementary school pupils prizes are awarded for the three best essays not exceeding 500 words on the subject "My School's Share in Highway Safety:" The first prize is a gold watch and a trip to Washington, the second and third prizes are gold watches.

The three prizes for teachers are offered for the best plans on "Lessons for Children on Highway Safety." The articles should be from 1,000 to 3,000 words long. The first prize for the lesson plan is $500 and a trip to Washington, the second prize is $300 and the third prize, $200.

Both contests close February 24, 1926. For further details address the Highway Education Board, Willard Building, Washington, D. C.

Art Scholarships

The Carnegie Corporation of New York, 522 Fifth Avenue, New York City this year set aside the income on $1,000,000 for the support for one year of a system of scholarships and fellowships in the arts in an endeavor to enable candidates of promise to prepare themselves as college teachers of art.

American Legion National Flag Creed Contest The National Americanism Commission of the American Legion, Indianapolis, Indiana, is conducting a contest for a creed to be known as "The Patriot's Flag Creed" for persons from twelve to nineteen years old. The national prizes are $750, $500 and $250. The state prizes are a silver medal, a bronze medal and a certificate of merit issued by the National Headquarters of the American Legion. The contest closes March 16, 1926. This Flag Creed should be stated in concise, impressive phrases and in a style of sufficient vigor and literary merit to warrant its memorization and use in schools, in citizen assemblies and on all patriotic occasions.

The Patriot's Flag Creed should be written in the first person. It should, first, set forth the ideals and ideas for which the flag stands, the sacrifices and glorious achievements that it represents; and second, proclaim in the form of a pledge the respect which every loyal citizen should accord the flag in his heart and in his actions. The National Flag Code, which can be secured from the National Headquarters of The American Legion, should be used as a basis for any definite allusion to flag etiquette, for it is hoped that the Flag Creed may promote the universal use of the Flag Code throughout the Nation.

The elements of the Flag Creed may be combined in whatever form appeals to the author. It must display originality; it must be inspirational.