=The Scientific Spirit Needed.=--There is great need of teachers who are thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit. In the country especially there is need of teachers who will rouse the boys and girls to the investigation of problems from the facts at hand and all around them. This should be done inductively and in an investigative spirit. Our whole system of education seems somewhat vitiated by the deductive attitude and method of teaching--the assuming of theories handed down by the past, without investigation or verification. This is the kind of teaching which has paralyzed China for untold generations. The easiest thing to do is to accept something which somebody else has formulated and then, without further ado, to be content with it. The truly scientific mind, the investigative mind, is one that starts with facts or phenomena and, after observing a sufficient number of them, formulates a conclusion and tests it. This will result in real thinking--which is the same as "thinging." It is putting _things_ into causal relation and constructing from them, unity out of diversity. To induce this habit of thought, to inspire this spirit of investigation and observation in children is the essence of teaching. To teach is to cause others to _think_, and the man or woman who does this is a successful teacher. =A Course of Study.=--There should be in every rural school a simple and suggestive course of study. This should not be as large as a textbook. The purpose of it is not to indicate at great length and in detail either the matter or the manner of teaching any specific subject. It should be merely an outline of the metes and bounds in the processes and the progress of pupils through the grades. The course of study should be a means, not an end; it should be a servant and not a master. It should not entail upon the school or upon the teacher a vast complicated machinery or an endless routine of red tape. If it does this it defeats its true aim. Here again the country schools have attempted to imitate the city schools. In all cities grading is much more systematized, and is pushed to a greater extent than it is or should be in the country. Owing to the necessities of the situation and also to the convenience of the plan in the cities, the grades, with their appropriate books, amount of work, and plan of procedure, are much more definite than is possible or desirable in the country. To grade the country schools as definitely and as systematically as is done in the city would be to do them an irreparable injury. The country would make a great mistake to imitate the city school systems in its courses of study.