teacher has become, thru self-reliant and self-active experience, thoroly efficient, it is readily recognized by all thinking people that the interests of the children are safest when the teacher is least restricted. Such a teacher may always be his own schedule maker, may set his own time limits, may decide for himself which subjects need most emphasis at a given time. For such a teacher there are no requirements except those which his insight, his sense of duty, and his sense of the high privilege which he exercises as a friend and helper to the children impose upon him. It must always be remembered that beginners and inexperienced teachers need guidance, and that the superintendent who withholds guidance, or even restriction upon occasion, has a limited idea of true freedom and the pathway over which it is approached. The schools should receive the benefit of the best thought of every member of the teaching force. He is the best superintendent who knows best how to utilize the forces of those about him. The thought of all is better than the thought of one. The fact that it is possible for the superintendent to learn something from the humblest teacher is altogether to his credit. To be most helpful to others he must have lived long enough to know how to be helped. Superintendent and principal are chiefly useful in holding up ideals and in securing to teachers and pupils conditions favorable for effective work in the direction of those ideals. Unity of aim is essential. Variety in execution is desirable. Responsibility and initiative are essential to a child's proper development; this is no less true of the teacher himself. When supervision is of a character to safeguard these essentials, freedom of the teacher ultimately depends upon the teacher himself.

SUPERINTENDENT JOHN RICHESON, East St. Louis, Ill.- Superintendent Gilbert looks at marks from the machine side. I have felt that marks were the tools of weak teachers. Teachers need to be educated above the need of marks. I do not agree with the comparison of the city and the rural teacher. I do not see what store of knowledge is laid up from which city teachers exclusively can draw. The teacher must have time to assimilate the good things. The city teacher, with the numberless things that attract her attention, does not assimilate so as to do better work for the children. I have the idea forced upon me that the teachers are not prepared as they should be. I think the supervising corps should be something like a faculty of education, and continue the growth which the teacher begar. in the high school or his one year in the normal school Superintendent Gilbert confessed that he had not sufficiently differentiated the principal, nor, I would add, considered him; and yet he says: "The principal is the supervising officer whose business it is first of all to be in personal contact with the teacher, and to do the various things for her help of which I have spoken and am about to speak." Then, I ask, is not the principal "it" in this matter of supervision? In all cities having a hundred or more teachers, to ask this question is to answer it. He is the one important factor in helping the teachers.

A recent writer in a prominent educational journal refers slurringly to a superintendent who runs a post-graduate normal school, and says: "At thirty years of age no person, competent by ability and character to teach, requires that kind of supervision which is commonly called 'helping the teacher.'" I suppose the author means a very low grade of supervision by his phrase "commonly called," but heaven pity the children under a teacher who at thirty, or sixty, years of age does not welcome real help, who does not strive to realize that she is still growing in knowledge of subjects and children, as well as in skill to teach! But teaching these adults, more or less fixed in habits of opinion and thought, is a complicated matter, and requires the very highest teaching skill. The supervisor who is to do this work must himself be a first-class teacher. He ought to be a man of broad and exact knowledge, and a clear thinker. He ought, if possible, to possess in himself all the native virtues which characterize the success of each teacher from the primary grade thru the high school. Hard to find? Yes. But the number of principals needed is not great, and their work can be so valuable, or so disastrous, that there ought to be no question about getting the right man or woman for the place,

In conclusion, if we are to have teachers with the greatest freedom and the highest appreciation of their responsibilities to the children, if we are to have teachers constantly growing in efficiency and power to inspire, we must have principals and superintendents who are educators first and machine directors second. Next after a "teacher's devotion to her work as the most precious possession of a school's system " must come the professional devotion of the supervisors.

A READJUSTMENT OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL CURRICULUM E. W. COY, PRINCIPAL OF THE HUGHES HIGH SCHOOL, CINCINNATI, O. The public high school seems to occupy the storm center in our educational system at the present time. Placed as it is between the upper millstone of the college and the nether millstone of the elementary school, it is in a position to be subjected to a great deal of trituration. Not that there is any opposition to the high school worthy of notice; not that those who are ever ready to advocate change merely for the sake of change are clamoring for something new and strange here as well as everywhere else; but many sober-minded and conservative educators are coming to the conclusion that there is need of modification and readjustment in our system. It is true that we are passing thru a period of educational unrest and upheaval when what is novel and bizarre is very likely to gain favor and win the day for the time being. And it behooves us to go slow in adopting radical changes and not be too ambitious to lead the procession, lest we be numbered among those of whom it is written: "Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first;" yet what reason and sound judgment approve we cannot afford to reject. A rational conservatism does not decline to accept everything that is new; it simply declines to accept anything that has nothing to recommend it except that it is new.

Numerous are the suggestions, some wise and some otherwise, coming from experts and non-experts alike, for the improvement or modification of the course of study of the high school or of the work it is doing, or for the lengthening or shortening of the curriculum. Some would cut down its course from four years to three-upon what theory I know not, unless it be the theory that the less there is of it the better. Others would prolong its course upward, taking in two years of the ordinary college course. This would be piling Ossa upon Pelion. Still others would have the high school declare its independence of the higher institutions and mark out a course of its own, without any regard to what is to come after, teaching a little of everything and not very much of anything in particular; and this they call "fitting for life." Some would have. pretty definite courses with occasional options; others would spread out the whole field of knowledge and invite the child in its innocence to come and choose such viands as it may prefer before it knows the differ

ence between biology and theology or between physics and physic. Finally here and there may be found some fine old ichthyosaurian, come down to us from palæozoic time, who would abolish the high school altogether as an expensive luxury.

All this difference of view, this fertility of suggestion, indicates a desire for a change from present conditions. Is there any reasonable ground for such a demand? I think there is.

This demand, however, does not arise because the work of the high school is not done as well as could reasonably be expected under the circumstances. There has been a change amounting almost to a revolution in secondary-school work since the report of the Committee of Ten. High schools all over the land are today furnished and equipped in a manner unheard of twenty and twenty-five years ago, and the teaching force is yearly improving. I believe that there is no better work done in any of our public or private educational institutions, high or low, than that done along many lines in our best city high schools.

It is not because the training obtained in the high school is unsatisfactory. Nothing is more needed in this country today, and all days, than men and women who can see clear and think straight, and the traditional high-school curriculum is well adapted to accomplish this result.

Again, it is not because there are so many failures and so much dropping out of pupils in the high school. No four-year period in the whole school course can be found during which there are so few failures and so little dropping out as during the four-years' high-school course, altho the opposite has been iterated and re-iterated so persistently that even some good schoolmen, who ought to know better, think that it is true, and so sometimes either directly or by implication help to give currency to the falsehood.

There are two reasons why the curriculum of the high school should be readjusted: (1) the amount of work demanded of the high school; (2) the necessity for an earlier change from the elementary to the secondary school.

The amount of work required of the high school in these later days cannot be satisfactorily done in the time allotted to it. This is true whether we regard the school as a fitting school or as a finishing school. Until comparatively recent years the traditional four years afforded ample time for the boy to fit for college, but college-entrance requirements today and even twenty-five or thirty years ago are two very different matters. And while the requirements of the colleges have increased so enormously, the demands upon the high schools for those who intend to go no farther have been increasing in like manner. This is due in general to the ever widening scope that education is assuming, as well as to the more thoro and extended pursuit of the different lines of study. Then again the specialist in each department of study, to whom we owe so much for

increased interest and improved methods, has not always exhibited a becoming modesty in his demands. He too often sees only his own favorite subject and is disposed to insist that it shall have the right of way, whatever else may suffer. The attempt to construct a course of study that shall include the recommendations of all these specialists is an attempt to perform an impossibility. The Committee of Ten discovered this when they undertook to combine the reports of its nine conferences into a coherent course of study. It found that there were not hours enough in the day nor days enough in the week to supply the various modest demands for time.

Of course, we may abandon the idea that the high school is a connecting link in a system extending from the primary school to the university, related to what may follow as well as to what has gone before, reduce the amount of work required, omitting much that every high-school graduate should have had, and thus run on an independent basis. But this, in my judgment, would be the height of unwisdom. It would satisfy neither the colleges nor the public. Under this arrangement, those who wish to continue their studies-usually the brightest and most promising of the students would be obliged to resort to private tutors or to private schools for their preparation. This in many cases would involve an expense that they could not bear and would prevent their carrying out their purpose. The high-school course should be of such a character that the student, when he has completed it successfully, should find an easy entrance into the higher institution, to continue there his studies along the lines that he has been pursuing.

I know of but one practical remedy for this condition in the high schools, and that is to begin the high school two years earlier than we have been in the habit of doing. This would not only relieve the high school, but would also be a great advantage to the boys and girls who are going thru our schools. If it would only relieve the high school without benefiting the pupil, it would be a sorry expedient. But I feel confident that it would do both.

Now, is there anything sacred about the term of four years for the high-school course, except that kind of sacredness that attaches to everything long established? If it appears better to have a five or six years' course, is there any insuperable objection to a change? Is it reasonable to continue the pupil in the elementary course thru eight years until he has completed such subjects as arithmetic and English grammar, and then pass him into the secondary school to begin the elements of such subjects as algebra, a foreign language, or a science? It seems to me unreasonable, unscientific, and unpedagogical. It does not require an expert nor the son of an expert to understand that the boy or girl of twelve is better prepared to master the elements of algebra than he is to grapple with the abstruse and difficult problems of advanced arithmetic,

and that the same boy or girl can learn the elements of half a dozen foreign languages more easily than he can unravel the mysteries and complexities of the English sentence.

The boy enters the German Gymnasium and Realschule at the age of nine, and continues there till he is eighteen-everybody knows with what results. The French Lycée, under the reorganization, or readjustment, that is just now going into effect, takes the boy at about the same age and keeps him seven years, when he goes out with the baccalaureate degree, and is ready for the professional schools. Why is it that the German boy leaves the Gymnasium at eighteen having completed about two years of our ordinary college course, while the American boy goes out from the high school at eighteen scarcely prepared to enter college? Superior teaching doubtless will account for much; the different home training and the different habits of the foreign boy will account for much; but I believe that still more is due to the continuous, unbroken course of study in the secondary school for a long series of years. We are not urging that our people should imitate slavishly the practice and method of the German and French schools, for there are some things about them that we should do well not to imitate. Besides, the difference in temperament, in environment, in habits and customs, might render it very unwise to follow their example in all particulars. But still we may learn some valuable lessons from the study of their systems and of the results that they accomplish. Surely, if the German or the French boy may with profit enter the secondary school at nine, it can hardly be premature for the American boy to take the same step at twelve.

Let the pupil, then, enter the high school at the end of his sixth year of school and be introduced to the elements of some of these so-called high-school subjects, instead of waiting until the end of his eighth year. Let the more difficult portions of some of these so-called elementary subjects be relegated to the latter part of the high-school course, where they properly belong. By that time he will have flanked many of the difficulties of advanced arithmetic by his knowledge of algebra, and if he has taken a foreign language he will have learned much that will.render smoother his path to a knowledge of the structure and analysis of his vernacular. In addition to this he will have acquired the maturity that is essential to the comprehension of these subjects.

The method of the elementary school differs from the method of the secondary school just as the method of the secondary school differs from the method of the university. This difference in method is founded upon a difference in the state of mental development of the pupil. To use the secondary-school method in the elementary stage is to offer a stone when asked for bread; to continue to use the elementary method in the secondary stage is to feed a boy with gruel when he is crying lustily for a substantial diet. We have continued to use the elementary method too