TOPICAL SYLLABI FOR CHILD STUDY. (New Series, 1895-6.) V. MORAL EDUCATION. Will you aid in a concensus study of the subject by writing and sending anything from your own personal experience or observation in others that a careful reading of the following items may suggest? I. Reflect which teacher or teachers from kindergarten to college or professional school, or in Sunday school, you have liked best and been influenced most by, and then try to state wherein the influence was felt. What qualities impressed you most, and how? Account, if you can, for the exceptional influence of that particular teacher. Was it generally felt, or peculiar to you and your set? Was it connected with dress, manner, voice, good looks, religious activity or piety, bearing, learning, etc., and how did each salient quality affect you? II. What playmates, intimate cronies, or friendships have you had that affected your moral nature for good or for bad? Describe concisely each such person, physically and psychically. What temperament and what were the qualities that especially influenced you, and how? What is your own temperament? III. What were your ethical relations with your parents? What kind of personal influence emanated from your father and from your mother? What in their example and in their precepts affected you? Give incidents and details. IV. Have other persons than the above influenced your life much, or have you had special attractions or repulsions to individuals, either older or younger, of the same or opposite sex, or to whom you were inclined to go for counsel and conference in confidential matters? Describe the influence of such association. V. What games have you preferred and what has been their influence n developing manliness or womanliness, sense of justice and fair play, honesty, perseverance, hardihood, physical strength, and what recreations do you prefer and why? What is their effect? VI. What studies, subjects, or lines of reading, or intellectual interest, bave affected you for good or bad, and how? Did mathematics deeply impress you with universal law; astronomy, with sublimity and reverence; chemistry, with the order of the infinitesimal; botany and zoology, with the miraculous nature and persistence of life? Have you experienced special interest in any line of study; and, if so, can you tell what it is about it that attracts you, and how it has affected you for good? Can you describe or account for any aversion you have felt for any special study? VII. What are your favorite books, and why? Name a few in the order of the benefit you have received from the same. Name the pieces, articles, poems, or proverbs, that have come home to you, and why and how. Name, also, any literature you have ever read or heard of, whether in the ancient classics or the modern newspaper that seemed luminous on the general topics of this syllabus. VIII. What punishments or rewards have you ever had that did you good or harm? State the case and its results. IX. Think over cases of special self-denial or self-control or effort you bave put forth to be and do good. Also your special lapses and see if you can account for the determining element in each. Write as intimately and confidentially as you oan of your besetting fault or even vices. What is good and bad for it? X. State a few conscience cases in yourself or others, describing the circumstances that helped or confused them. XI. What has been the effect on yourself or others of direct moral inculcation, whether at home in the form of a plain talk, a good dressing down, or advice not sought, or preaching in and out of the pulpit, and school or college instruction in morals? What book, system, or idea in each has been morally helpful? XII. What has been the effect of direct religious inculcation, and what changes of religious views have affected your moral conduct, your conscience and sense of right? Have liberalizing theological opinions made you better or worse, and how? Send returns to Clark University, Worcester, Mass. G. STANLEY HALL, OR N. P. AVERY. TOPICAL SYLLABI FOR CHILD STUDY. (New Series, School Year 1895-6.) I. PECULIAR AND EXCEPTIONAL CHILD ren. If you desire to receive the syllabi of this school year, to cooperate in collecting data, and to receive the final reports of the work, you are hereby respectfully invited, I. To think over your own childhood and consider if you were a striking illustration of any of the following types, and, if so, describe your case. II. Consider if you have any friends who would come into any of the olasses below, and ask them to describe their own case. III. If you have children of your own, or if you are a teacher, if any of your pupils, past or present, are strikingly exceptional, describe them. IV. If you are a college or normal instructor, explain very fully what is wanted, and ask each pupil to describe one or more such cases in a composition, essay, or a theme in psychology. V. State the salient points concerning any exceptional children you ever read of, whether fact or fiction, referring to the source, if you can. The following are types suggested to select from, but any others will be welcome: 1. Physical: Exceptional beauty or ugliness; largeness or smallness; any bodily deformity; conspicuous scars or traumatic lesions; defects of sense or limb, as dimness of vision or slightly under normal hearing, weakness of spine, legs, or arms, etc.; exceptional strength, agility, clumsiness, or deftness, or gifts of sense; any other marked physical peculiarity. 2. Psychical: A child of exceptional courage or timidity; cleanliness or dirtiness; order or disorder; obedience or disobedience; truth telling or lying; cruelty or sympathy; selfishness or generosity; loquacity or silence; frankness or secretiveness; buoyancy or despondency; daintiness or gluttony; a blasé or otherwise spoiled child; a doubter, investigator, or oritio; a buffoon; a restless, fickle, scatter-brain or a tenacious child; an ugly and ill-tempered child; a careless, easy going or a fastidious ohild; an inquisitive, imaginative, or poetic child; a teaser or hector; a nervous child; a querulent, whining child; a dignified and self-poised child, or one who acts habitually with abandon. It is not a description of one or more of the above traits that is wanted, but an account of one or more individual cases where one trait or group of traits is so marked as to cover the entire character of the child, to be known to all who see much of it, to therefore bear on the child's future career. Note in each case, if you can, whether the trait is hereditary; in which parent, how far back can it be traced, and how marked was it in the ancestry? To this point the greatest importance is attached, and it should receive special attention. Give briefly, specific acts or instances of the manifestation of the trait. State how each case has been treated at home and in school, and how you think it should be. Always describe each case with the greatest conciseness and with the greatest fidelity to fact. Always state age, sex, nationality, complexion, and temperament. Begin every new case on a new page. Write at the head of the first page of each case one or more words designating the type, as a dirty child, a precocious child, etc. Send returns to G. STANLEY HALL, OR E. W. BOHANNON. Clark University, Worcester, Mass. FROM CHILD STUDY MONTHLY. By permission of Wm. O. Krohn, editor of the Child Study Monthly, we reprint the following extracts from an article written by him and published in the December issue of that valuable little journal, trusting it will prove of much practical value to those just becoming interested in this new movement. PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY-HOW TO BEGIN. How am I to begin to study the child? As Dr. Hall says, "If but one teacher in a hundred is interested in Child Study, it is because they do not know how to go at it; how to look; what to look for." That there is somewhat of a gap between the scientist and the teacher in this department of observation is unquestionable. In this and subsequent articles we hope to bring some of the methods of Child Study to the attention of the teacher in a clear, practical manner, that the average teacher may learn to really know the average pupil in the average school. The writer sincerely desires to help teachers, parents, kindergartners and children in their lofty common interests. Only simple, available tests are proposed. No apparatus difficult to obtain is required for making the tests herein outlined and suggested. The observations should be made with the greatest accuracy. Your data will then in all probability be of some scientific value in the endeavor to settle some of the pressing questions now upon us. The material needed for making the tests may be secured through the writer, from the Laboratory of Psychology of the State University of Illinois (address either Champaign or Urbana). Such apparatus will be supplied at actual cost as subsequently noted in this article. Thus service will be rendered to all readers of the Child Study Monthly, not only in Illinois, but in any state or country. If the results of the tests are sent to the writer, they will be carefully edited, conclusions to be drawn will be noted and published in the magazine. A large number of such experiments made upon a large number of children will be of inestimable value, if the results are properly collated, edited, and compared. I. TESTS OF VISION. The vision of 65,000 school children has been tested. The tests recently made under the supervision of the writer upon 21,000 school children in Illinois revealed that defects in vision increase from grade to grade with the increase of school work. Thus the visual defects are greatest, that is, vision is worse, in children in the fourth or fifth reader grade than it is in the first reader grade or kindergarten. You are not a skilled optician, therefore you will be unable to tell just exactly what is the matter with a particular child's defective eyes, but it is possible for the fact of defect to be known. How to Test Vision. Get Snellen's Test Cards. (These will be furnished by the Psycholog ical Laboratory of the University of Illinois, for ten cents, postage paid. Address as suggested above; or you can get them at a higher price of any firm dealing in optical supplies.) The distance at which any of the types should be read easily is shown on the card-some at a distance of ten feet, others at twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy-five feet, eto. In testing, the child should walk toward the card. Test each eye separately, holding the hand or card before the eye not being tested. This is done for the purpose of Snding out which eye is the stronger and least defective. Seldom, if ever, are the two eyes perfect mates. Note whether the right eye is the stronger in right-handed children and the left eye in left-handed children, or not. Make these formal and accurate tests if possible. The results will more than repay the time and trouble expended. Several teachers have found it necessary to rearrange the seating of their pupils after making the eye tests, according to their visual capacities, because, on testing them, it was found that some of the children who could see the best had front seats, while others who had very defective vision occupied the back seats. The trying difficulties of those having defective vision give rise to "Eye Strain," and from this the habitual and chronic nervous" or school headache" develops as a natural consequence. 46 If you cannot make the formal eye tests with the optical cards, as already suggested, then at least write a sentence on the blackboard, ordinary size and style, with a view of discovering which children can read it and at what localities. Can all the pupils read it from the rear of the room? In this connection let me remind you to note the printed type in the text books used by your pupils. Among the main points to be considered are the size, thickness, and shape of the letters. Type should be legible at the distance of twenty-two inches. To this end the letters must be at least 1.6 millimeters high. Smaller type is injurious to the eyes of the child. Many of the school books contain letters that are entirely too small-e. g., atlases and geographies. As to the style of type and the form of the individual letters, we must remember that in reading we always glance along the line at a little distance above the center of the letters. We should remember, then, that the upper part of the letters are of especial importance. These should always be open and plain. Again, the shorter the line, the more easily it can be read. The distance between the several letters as well as the distance between the words is also of prime importance. The page should always be well leaded, making good interlinage. As Dr. Hermann Cohn puts it, "In the future I would have all school authorities, with measuring rule in hand, prohibit the reading of books not conforming to the following measurements: The height of the smallest 'n' must be at least .06 inches, the least width between the lines must be .1 inches, the least thickness of the 'n' must be .01 inches, the shortest distance between the letters must be .03 inches, the greatest length of the text line must be but 4 inches, and the number of letters on a line must not exceed 60." Furthermore, all type |