and even bodily attitudes, in order that it may capture and hold the attention of pupils.

The coming and going of people in a class-room after the work has started is always a source of Cultivating confusion. Once the signal has been distractions given for beginning the duties of the hour, no one should be admitted to the class, except on the most urgent business. The practice in some schools of allowing any one to enter a class any time he pleases is wasteful, and destructive of attentive attitudes on the part of pupils. Sometimes principals have the habit of sending messages to teachers while they are conducting classes, with the inevitable result that a general air of distraction is spread throughout the entire school. When a teacher is given a message by the janitor, all pupils set to work to figure out what it contains. It is safe to say that every message a teacher receives during the progress of a class wastes at least five minutes of the pupil's time; and it may spoil the whole hour.

An open door of a class-room may keep an entire class in a constant state of distraction, if there is any activity whatever going on in the hall without. It is inevitable. Groups of adults even are always interested in people who come late to meetings, or who pass by an open door of the room in which they are congregated. It is a law of human nature, as

true of college faculties as of high-school or elementary-school pupils-that people who are in action about us attract our attention. It is a more or less automatic and perhaps instinctive reaction, which makes it all the more difficult to control.

In some schools the doors of the class-rooms are provided with glass panels, so that a principal, superintendent, or visitor may at any moment look in to see what is going on. Usually the doors are in such a position that the inspector can peer into the eyes of the pupils, and the pupils can look at the visitor, which is exactly what they will do as long as he has his face glued to the panel. One sometimes hears it said that pupils will easily get accustomed to this sort of thing; but the experiences of daily life show such a statement to be, as a rule, false. It would be entirely justifiable for a teacher to hang curtains over the glass panels in the doors of his class-room, provided his superiors do not object too strenuously. He could certainly do better work by eliminating all distracting influences of this char

acter.

The method of seating pupils is often a source of distraction in a class-room. Arranging pupils in a semicircle so that one member may see the faces of the others when they are reciting, greatly favors attentive attitudes toward the work in hand. When a

pupil sits at the rear of the room for an entire hour, gazing only at the backs of the heads of his classmates, thus rarely seeing their countenances when they are talking, and being remote also from the teacher, the chances are he will not give his attention long to the duties of the hour. Moreover, when a pupil who is not performing can see the expressions of the one who is, he receives a constant stimulus, which otherwise he would miss, to give heed to what is being said.

Again, when pupils sit next to those of their associates with whom they have lively experiences outside of school, it is probable that these extra-school interests will become supreme in consciousness while they are in the class-room. The mere physical presence of intimate friends stimulates communication along the lines of their typical experiences in the world. This is important at every stage in life, but it is particularly so in the early years. The teacher, then, who expects to secure attention from all her pupils must devise some plan whereby they may be distributed over the room so that cronies will not sit within communicating distance of one another.

It has already been said that a school must be kept in order or teaching will be impossible. At the A feasible and same time, any attempt at rigid effective remedy suppression of communication will

aggravate rather than cure the malady. Is there any way to harmonize these difficulties? Many teachers are solving the problem to-day by a simple and wholesome method. In substance it is this: pupils are required to apply themselves to the tasks of the school for brief periods only; in the primary grades not longer than fifteen, or at the outside twenty minutes at a time without relaxation. During the intervals of three to five minutes, pupils may communicate freely. They may move around as they choose, and in a sense be in complete disorder. In this way the impulse to communicate is gratified for the time being. The experiences of the preceding hour are communized, and the children are relieved of the tension which otherwise would be difficult if not impossible to endure.

A teacher who has not tried the plan of having brief periods of concentrated application, followed by short periods of complete relaxation, has not yet discovered how best to accomplish the tasks of the school, and at the same time to work in harmony with the nature of the child. Literally thousands of

years of experiment in teaching give warrant to the proposition that it is impossible to conduct an ordinary school by keeping young children rigidly restrained for an hour and a half at a time. When the attempt is made to do this, it is apt to result in

conflict between teacher and pupils, to the disadvantage of both. If any reader who has not tried the plan suggested will do so, let him have his pupils first clearly understand that while they are engaged in study they must apply themselves with all their energy, and then there will be opportunity for perfectly free play and social intercourse. We could accomplish more in every way-in the intellectual advancement of pupils, in avoiding conflict between teacher and pupils, in forming good habits of study in the school-room, and in making the school a happier place for children-if we could work along the lines indicated above.

A potent cause of dullness as well as disorder in the school-room

Relaxation periods are of value, not only in reducing the evil of irrelevant communication, but they are chiefly of service in releasing nervous tension, which is always a source of trouble in a school-room. A child who is in a tense condition usually makes a dull and disorderly pupil. When the majority of the pupils in a room become tense, it is a well-nigh hopeless task to do any effective work with them. For one thing, they become restless; they move about aimlessly and impulsively to relieve this tension. One can not "sit still" for any considerable period when his muscles are constrained. Nature urges him to conserve his