I think that most of us agree that it is not practicable in our public schools to prepare the pupils for a trade for making a living, or for a professional career, however valuable these may be. Nor is it best, in my opinion, to utilize manual training merely as a means to further other school subjects.

I believe, with the previous speaker, that manual training should have an organic connection with other school work, but it is still more important that it have a vital connection with child life and child interest. It may be practicable to have manual training taught by the class teacher in the regular schoolroom below the sixth grammar grade, but in this lies the danger that, in dealing with large classes in this organic work, we sometimes fail to reach the need of each individual; and drill and mass instruction is not wholly educational. I believe that well-directed plays and games which have vigorous motion and interesting motive would be better than many of the occupations that have been practiced.

I think we could not do better than to carry out Froebel's beautiful idea in many of the grades above the kindergarten. In his Education of Man, with which we are all familiar, he says: "Every child, boy, and youth, whatever his condition and position in life, should devote daily at least one or two hours to some serious activity in the produc tion of some definite external piece of work. Lessons through and by work, through and from life, are by far the most impressive and intelligible, and most continuously and intensely progressive, both in themselves and in their effect on the learner." The first practical point, then, would be that the teacher should make a study of the child before he takes up the means whereby he should be educated.

There is a danger that the teacher may be so engaged in the study of the material processes that the child is forgotten; in other words, the children are likely to be fitted to the school, rather than the school to the children.

It is true that correlation of studies has been much discussed of late years, and I believe that it is a good thing; but I also believe that manual training of the right kind has by itself an educational possibility not always recognized by our educational leaders, I believe that manual training will lose much of its educational effectiveness if we try to make it a means directly to intensify the instruction in some of the other school subjects; for whatever interests and strengthens the whole child will enable him to grasp more strongly any subject.

If we are able to prove that manual training can help to produce a healthier, happier, more capable, and more social individual, we must have it; if this is not true, we should not have it.

It has been proved over and over again, in places where manual training has been adequately tried, that it touches the whole human being, physically, mentally, and morally. In other words, it gives a simultaneous development to hand, head, and heart. Over thirty years' experience of educational handiwork in the public schools of Sweden will testify to the correctness of this statement.

In order to obtain these higher educational results to reach effectively this threefold nature of the child thru manual training it is evident that the teacher of the subject must be a person of high qualifications, a master of his subject, and also one who fully understands child nature.

While I do not yet see the educational advantage of correlating manual training with some other studies- - at least as far as wood-working goes-I do most earnestly believe that it would be very profitable for the teachers of the different subjects to meet in conference as often as possible, particularly those of manual training, gymnastics, drawing, and art. They would have much to gain from this interchange of thought that would strengthen each and all of them in accomplishing that for which they are all striving — the development of the whole child.

If time allowed and the opportunity were possible for illustrations, I should try to show by what means handwork of the right sort would teach our children to think to

more profit, and to act more individually, and yet in perfect harmony with the constant upward growth and development of the human life around them.

In regard to the so-called "Russian system of manual training," which has been predominating in this country and has been described as being "a series of exercises based upon tools, materials, and the elements of construction," I would say that "sloyd" recognizes and uses all these in its means, but it goes a step farther and also recognizes the importance of the fact that effort and action must be stimulated by human interest. This idea is now also, fully recognized in Russia, for during the past year I have corresponded with some of the leading educators in Russia on this subject, one of them being Director Zirul of the Royal Normal Teachers' Seminary in St. Petersburg, and I have obtained from that school two large volumes of working-drawings for manual training in both wood and metal, showing that every exercise now used in the schools of Russia is applied on finished articles of use and beauty. This idea of the importance of a stimulating, worthy motive in all our school subjects is nothing new, and I think needs no discussion before an audience like this. In order to gain a correct idea of the evolution of manual-training methods in this respect, seven years ago I collected photographs of objects used in some of the leading manual-training schools in this country, and three years later I obtained another collection from the same schools. By comparing these collections I found that during the period intervening fully 75 per cent. of the exercises had been put into completed objects. This will show more truly than any reports that the progress toward a stimulating motive has been steadily increasing.

A word as to the meaning of "sloyd" and its adaptation to American schools: We prefer to use the anglicized Swedish word " sloyd," because this single word means more than the double term "manual training "—it means educational handwork, or the simultaneous training of all the faculties of the child. Like the word "kindergarten," it has the disadvantage of being foreign, but I hope it will soon become perfectly familiar. The Century Dictionary gives a good definition of the word "sloyd," but the following may give a clearer idea of its meaning: 'Sloyd' is tool work so arranged and employed as to stimulate and promote vigorous, intelligent self-activity for a purpose which the worker recognizes as good."

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The Sloyd Training School of Boston, which I have the honor of representing, was started in 1888. It is a free school for teachers, supported by Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw. Only men and women having special qualifications as teachers are considered as applicants, and of these a limited number are admitted each year. short school year of eight months, from October 1 to June 1. have been graduated from the school, and most of these are sloyd in different parts of this country. In the Boston public schools alone thirty of our graduates are employed.

The course covers one Over two hundred teachers now engaged in teaching

The particular aim of sloyd is to seek to provide the harmonious development of the pupil during the formative age, i. e., from eight to fifteen years of age. Sloyd has often been misrepresented by well-meaning people, who do not know the principles which govern our work. Let me briefly state the general principles upon which sloyd is based : 1. The teachers must be professional teachers, and not artisans merely.

2. The teaching must be systematic, progressive, and, with the exception of class demonstrations, as far as possible individual.

3. Such manual-training work should be selected as will give the best physical development thru free, vigorous movements.

4. The visible or material results should in every respect represent the individual worker's own effort. This should-mean no division of labor, and practically the exclusion of machinery as labor-saving contrivances.

5. The exercises should be applied on objects the use of which can be thoroly appreciated by the worker: each object should be simple, of good form and proportion — hence artistic.

6. The course should include, not only objects which can be made accurately thru the use of ordinary testing tools but frequent work which develops appreciation of curves and exercises the sense of form thru both sight and touch.

7. Special importance must be attached to neatness, accuracy, and finish, and to the development of independence.

COEDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

ALBION W. SMALL, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

I understand that my invitation to discuss this subject was virtually a request to explain the recent action of the University of Chicago in modifying certain administrative details. In accepting the invitation, however, I speak solely from my own individual standpoint. I am not authorized to represent either the university or any official policy of the university. I happen to have voted with the majority in our recent action, and the members of that majority, of course, in a certain general way, think alike about the matter. At the same time, as in all such cases, the action adopted represents compromise and concession even between the members of the majority. The view of no single person appears precisely. I speak of the case, therefore, as it looks to me individually, without attempting to calculate how nearly I may voice the views of anyone else.

It would be immodest to thrust forward a local incident as deserving the attention of a body like this, if it really were nothing more than a local incident. It has value, not because in itself it decides anything of general validity, but because it is a single experiment under conditions which may or may not exist elsewhere, and it is worth what it is worth as a contribution to the theory and practice of education, merely so far as similar circumstances exist. Accordingly, I must say very distinctly that my paper relates to one situation only, and to the practical conclusions which have been reached by the people dealing with that situation. With a single fundamental exception, to be spoken of in a moment, the conclusions are not regarded as necessarily applicable in detail anywhere else. We have had no revelation of a new educational gospel. We have made no claim that our newly adopted working policy has any bearing upon high schools. Whether it has or not I shall omit to inquire, as that part of the subject belongs properly to the gentleman who follows me. I am presenting merely a single case and the conclusions which it has forced upon the persons most responsible.

In the first place, it is safe to assume that impressions which members of this body may have gathered from the press about our experiment are thoroly out of true. Nothing that has been published, with the exception of extracts from the president's latest quarterly statement, gives an approximately correct idea of the action itself or of the considerations

that led to it. The reason for this is easily stated. No question ever roused intenser interest in the university faculty than the one that I am discussing. This interest early spread beyond university circles. The daily papers got inklings of it, and of course tried to get more. Versions of what was going on were furnished by unauthorized reporters, and the papers published them with liberal garnishings of their own. The majority of our faculty did not believe the case belonged in the newspapers while it was in process of decision. Not by formal agreement, but by natural reaction against a public agitation which we felt to be unfortunate, we found ourselves uniformly refusing to argue our case in print. The opposition had a monopoly of the newspaper field. Before the discussion had gone far, fanciful accounts of what the proposition must involve, and what its friends must really be aiming at, had been set adrift in the newspaper current. They have been floating in the stream of reportorial gossip and editorial comment ever since. Statements have been published denying the correctness of the rumors, but the positive arguments of the majority have been presented to the public only in versions prepared from the opposite point of view. They have consequently been in a large degree fictitious. Like all other mythologies, this folklore is much more entertaining than the truth. It will doubtless be a long time before the commonplace reality supplants the fictions that preoccupied the public mind. My task, however, is principally a dull recital of the literal facts. It is hoped that the truth may not fail utterly to command the attention which wild rumor provoked.

The first proposition which requires emphasis is that the new administrative measure at the University of Chicago was devised and supported and carried by men who believe in coeducation. They do not merely accept it as a necessary evil. Most of them have always believed in coeducation. All of them expect that they always will believe in it. It is a curious fact that, while the minority was composed chiefly of persons who regarded themselves as the only real friends and defenders of coeducation, the men who are outspoken opponents of coeducation voted with that minority. They said: "The proposal will not abolish coeducation, so we do not believe in it." There would have been no majority for the measure if it had abolished, or tended to abolish, coeducation, or if it contained any concealed opposition to coeducation. The men who actively promoted the change did so on the ground that it is a constructive measure, destined in our particular case to make coeducation stronger than ever before. We believe that our attitude on the matter will contribute, at least indirectly, to improvements in the administration of coeducation every

where.

My second main proposition is that coeducation is not like the form of a geometrical figure, yesterday, today, and forever the same. Our opponents at once pounce upon this formula and make it the key to their plan of

campaign. They reply: "This is a quibble, a subterfuge, a word-juggle. It shows that you do not mean what you say when you profess friendship for coeducation. There is only one proper meaning for coeducation, viz., instruction first, last, and all the time to men and women sitting side by side in the same room." To people occupying the traditional .position the detail thus magnified is the citadel of women's intellectual rights. Weaken this stronghold, they argue, and you surrender all the educational opportunity for women that the struggles of the last century have secured.

To this I reply that we absolutely refuse to recognize anybody's right to identify the principle of coeducation with the purely accidental detail. of promiscuity in classification. If coeducation amounted to nothing more than this, belief in it would be formalism of the most mechanical and superstitious sort.

The fallacy of this merely dialectic method of deciding the merits of the case may be shown by an analogy. Making coeducation consist essentially in the form or quantity of association between male and female students is parallel with the notion that marriage is one unchanging and unchangeable form of association between a man and a woman. Not to notice ruder forms of marriage, and considering monogamy alone, we have, as a matter of fact, all the variations in the form of the monogamous union, from marriage under early Roman law, in which divorce was at the absolute discretion of the husband, to marriage under the canon law, which recognized no divorce whatever. We have marriage according to the Code Napoleon, which denies to the wife who has earned money and deposited it in a savings bank the right to draw it without her do-nothing husband's permission; and marriage according to the Kaiser, in which Kinder, Küche, and Kirche measure the tether of woman's liberty. At the other extreme we have marriage according to our western American republics, which consists of a union between an acquiescent man, as silent partner, and, as party of the second part, a woman whose voice is never silent in the streets, so long as there is a public reform to be agitated or a political election to be contested. Accordingly, a very large part of what Mrs. Browning calls "the social spasm and crisis of the ages" is the problem, not of stereotyping the conjugal union in an inflexible form, but of realizing that spirit of association between husband and wife which will make each most valuable to the other, and both most useful to society.

Coeducation

A similar problem is at the heart of the case before us. is something profounder than mere adherence to a local tradition of mechanical arrangement among pupils getting their schooling. Coedu cation is a stage and a phase in the apprenticeship of men and women for their appropriate life-functions. What are the conditions most conducive to the passing of this stage into the most highly adapted and