The Vitalized School

Table of

tunnels mountains and navigates the air, this table becomes a stupid thing, a dead thing, and an incubus upon the spirits of her pupils. To such a teacher mathematics is a lifeless thing, without hope or potency, the school is a mere convenience for the earning of a livelihood, the work is the drudgery of bondage, and the children are little less tha

ertains to individual, community, and national well-being. Knowing this, she feels that it is quite worth while for herself and her pupils, both for the present and for the future. She feels that, if she would know life, she must know mathematics, because it is a part of life; that, if she would teach life to her pupils, she must teach them mathematics as an integral part of life; and t

They are her confederates in the fine game of life. The bigness and exuberance of her abundant life enfolds them all, and from the very atmosphere of her presence they absorb life. Their studies, under the influence of her magic, are as much a part of life to them

usly, but they were no less real on that account. Her generous nature was able to withstand the most assiduous efforts of some of her teachers to quench the flames of life that glowed in the pages of books, with the wet blanket of erudition. She was able to relive the thou

inually passing. When she reads Dickens, Tiny Tim is never a mere boy with a crutch, but he is Tiny Tim, and, as such, neither men nor angels can supplant him on the printed page. She knows the touch of him and the voice of him. She laughs with him; she cries with him; she prays with

hares the life of all the mothers whose children are her pupils. In every page she reads she crosses anew the threshold of life and gains a knowledge of its joys, its sorrows, its triumphs, or its defeats. In short, she reads with the spirit and not merely with the mind, and thus catches the spiritual meaning of what she reads. She can feel as well as th

consequent enrichment of her life. She does not smite the rock, but speaks to it, and smiles upon it, and the waters gush forth. She descends into Hades with Dante, and ascends Sinai with Moses, and is refreshed and strengthened by her journeys. She sits enrapt as Shakespeare turns the kaleidoscope of life for her, or stands enthralled by Victor Hugo's picture of th

sh and blood people with all the attributes of people. They are all actuated by motives and move along their appointed ways obedient to the laws of cause and effect. They are not named in the book to be learned and recited, but to be known. She causes her pupils to know them as they would come to know people in her home. Nor do they ever mistake one for the other

ive absolute. They are following the parade, and are not to be turned aside from their large purpose by minor matters. They are made to see and hear Cicero; and Rome becomes a reality, with its Forum, its Senate, and its Mamertine. When Dido sears the soul of the faithless ?neas with her words of scorn, the girls applaud and

ns and

r the vitalization of mathemati

ion of subject matter rel

ng the multiplication table

"read" in the sentence "She can t

literature whom the vitalized teacher ma

ding essential to s

f Shakespeare? How will the reading of such authors

hing characteristics of