that small child of four that she might have hunted up something herself, and why? Because she was washed, dressed, fed, walked with, and played with by some older attendant. Often children either stay out of kindergarten twice a week or are excused early, that they may attend dancing school in the afternoon. Another child of my acquaintance, when asked what she wanted most for a birthday present, said: “Oh, a whole half-day to do exactly what I please."

Surely Fiske's theory of the value of the lengthened period of infancy has been eagerly grasped by many mothers, and they are mistakenly using these early years to train children for the social life which is to be theirs later. Dancing school, riding lessons, military drills, children's parties, and missionary meetings, while each may be valuable in itself, are all crowded too closely together in the lives of young children. There is a tendency to do too much, and consequently it is done superficially.

Much of this may be counteracted by private kindergartens. Here is provided a natural place where minds and hearts as well as bodies may be trained. The child is given few experiences, and these fundamental ones. He has time and opportunity to enjoy and digest them, because they are touched from many points. He comes into a community of his equals under the law of the whole, and takes his place as one of many, as well as the one to whom many attend. But, perhaps best of all, he is given a task in proportion to his ability, and is encouraged and expected to give, create, and share, as well as receive, control, and demand.

THE INTERNATIONAL KINDERGARTEN UNION

MISS STELLA L. WOOD, CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, INTERNATIONAL KINDERGARTEN UNION, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

The kindergartners first organized at the Saratoga Springs meeting of the National Educational Association in 1892 to prepare for the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Thirty signed at Saratoga as charter members. Thirty-nine more joined before the meeting at Chicago in 1893. There were nine branches and two life members. Later the crowded condition of the National Educational Association programs, owing to its large number of departments, made it seem necessary to appoint a separate time and place of meeting, just as the Department of Superintendence had done.

In 1903 the International Kindergarten Union held its tenth meeting at Pittsburg, Pa., April 14-17. At that time it reported five life members, two honorary life members, ninety-six associate members, eighty-one branches, representing eight thousand members. There are represented in the union twenty-seven different states, besides Canada and South America. At the Pittsburg meeting among the most important things done was the appointment of a committee of fifteen to formulate a restatement of kindergarten principles and belief, and a revision of the constitution to fit the needs of our rapidly growing institution.

The question of meeting on alternate years with the National Educational Association has been discussed, but is not yet decided.

The committee named will report at the next annual meeting, to be held in Rochester, 1904.

DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

FIRST SESSION.-TUESDAY, JULY 7, 1903

The Department of Elementary Education met in the South Congregational Church, and was called to order at 9.30 A. M., by the president, Miss M. Adelaide Holton, of Minneapolis, Minn.

The following program was carried out :

1. "The Lock-Step in the Public Schools," by William J. Shearer, superintendent of schools, Elizabeth, N. J.

Discussion by Richard G. Boone, superintendent of schools, Cincinnati, O.; Isaac Freeman Hall, superintendent of schools, North Adams, Mass.

2. "Nature Study True to Life," by Clifton F. Hodge, Clark University, Worcester, Mass. Discussion by Wilbur S. Jackman, dean of School of Education, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.; Miss Emma G. Olmstead, principal of Training School, Scranton, Pa.

3. "The Child's Favorite Study in the Elementary Curriculum," by Earl Barnes, lecturer for the American Society for Extension of University Teaching, Philadelphia, Pa.

Discussed by J. H. Van Sickle, superintendent of schools, Baltimore, Md.; Miss Ada Van Stone Harris, supervisor of kindergartens and primary schools, Rochester, N. Y.

The church auditorium proved inadequate to accommodate the numbers seeking admission, and an overflow meeting was held in the lecture-room in the basement.

At this meeting Dr. Richard G. Boone presided, and the papers of Mr. Shearer, Mr. Hodge, Mr. Jackman, and Mr. Barnes were repeated to a second large audience.

On motion of Superintendent F. W. Cooley, of Indiana, the president was authorized to appoint a committee of three to nominate officers for the ensuing year. The following were so appointed:

Superintendent F. W. Cooley, of Indiana.

Mrs. Mary R. Davis, of Connecticut.

Superintendent J. H. Van Sickle, of Maryland.

The department adjourned.

SECOND SESSION.-WEDNESDAY, JULY 8

The Department of Elementary Education met in the Old South Church in joint session with the Art and Manual Training Departments; for program, see minutes of the Department of Manual Training.

THIRD SESSION.-THURSDAY, JULY 9

The Department of Elementary Education met in the Old South Church in joint session with the Departments of Indian Education and Manual Training; for program, see minutes of the Department of Manual Training.

At the close of the session the Committee on Nominations reported as follows:

For President- Miss Ada Van Stone Harris, Rochester, N. Y.

For Vice-President-Superintendent Calvin N. Kendall, Indianapolis, Ind.

For Secretary-Miss Emma G. Olmstead, Scranton, Pa.

The report was received and adopted, and the officers nominated were declared elected for the ensuing year.

The department then adjourned.

ADDA P. WERTZ, Secretary.

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

THE LOCK-STEP IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS'

RICHARD G. BOONE, editor oF "EDUCATION," BOSTON, MASS.

1. Some grouping of pupils for class work is essential to the organization of a school. This proposition implies that a school is more than a number of individuals working at learning, in one place. In a school, as in any other society, there is necessary co-operation, and mutual reactions, and forbearance, and conventional prohibitions and privileges, and the give-and-take that goes along with any congregate life. To constitute a school, these individuals must submit, as elsewhere in social groups, to more or less subordination to others, and to mutual reinforcement. This also is a wholesome lesson. Real preparation for adult life requires some such preparatory training. The term "school" implies organization, a recognition of and planning for some common good. In certain affairs the several children are considered as a whole, the individuals organically related in a larger unit. Equally also, the proposition implies that certain work of this school may be conducted as class work; i. e., a smaller or larger number of the individuals may be dealt with as one group. This is done in games, in singing, in floor or openair exercises for physical training, in a common program for school attendance, in hearing or telling the same stories, in the assignment of a definite number of children to each teacher, in directions concerning deportment and moving about the house, and, generally, in more or less. uniform rules concerning behavior.

The conservative teacher may well ask: If children may be safely grouped for all or a part of these requirements, why not for the more narrowly academic lessons? Are children less unlike in these matters than in their understanding of history, the forces and phenomena of nature, the formal lessons of reading, and the relations of number?

I conclude that much of the work of the school, in any grade, may be well done with children taken in groups, and that only so can the school do its legitimate service, and the child receive the training its future demands.

2. But this grouping must be determined, manifestly, by the needs of the pupils, not the conveniences of the teacher. I think it is not unfair to say that most of the arguments for close grading, or for any fixed classification for a considerable period, for holding pupils together because they have once been put together, and requiring of all the same lessons, 1 A paper on "The Lock-Step in Education" by Superintendent William J. Shearer, of Elizabeth, N. J., was sent to the author for necessary abridgment and was not returned in time. [EDITOR.]

take their meaning from the conveniences of the system in administration. It is easier for the teacher to keep track of the children; it simplifies the work of examination and teaching; it makes class work possible; fewer teachers are needed for the same number of pupils; the teacher has fewer lessons to prepare; such mass work shows to better advantage—these are some of the pleas made. It must be apparent that none of these are valid reasons for any classification, certainly not the determining conditions. What the individual child can do with any assignment, and what the effort will do for him, should decide the matter. Lack of funds, lack of teachers, or adverse public sentiment, may make another course expedient; but we should not make the mistake of thinking that these are ideal conditions. In any classification those pupils are placed in the same group who can work together, for more or less of their assignment, to advantage, the connection for any individual pupil, or any number of them, being held so loosely as to allow of change, when change is a benefit to them.

3. This suggests a third statement: that any grouping must obviously be subject to frequent readjustments. If a child has mastered books so as to be able to use them for his own purposes, and expression fairly adequate. to his experience, and has acquired or native alertness suited to his years, there is almost no sequence of lessons or production that may not safely be exchanged for some other series, not only with no harm to the child, but often with actual profit. Teachers—often successful teachers, sometimes very superior teachers-work upon the assumption that the purpose of the school is to fix and communicate set lessons; whereas it would seem rather to be to cultivate, by some exercise or other, preferably of the child's own setting, certain habits of mind, and worthy interests, and personal initiative, indifferent as to the particular lesson learned.

4. "Promotion" is a much misused term. Primarily it means advancement, a going or sending forward. In the school it goes on constantly, as pupils make daily advances in their work and grow in maturity. Growing in power to correspond with the increasing difficulties of arithmetic, or earth-knowledge, or the literary meanings of the reading lessons, or the complexities of nature, is the essence of promotion. The child is promoted whenever he takes up, with others or alone, a new and subsequent phase of the old subject. Promotion is a constant process. It has come to mean, technically, the separation of the strong from the less advanced, and periodically putting the former forward into what is characterized as a new stage of learning. As a matter of fact, there is no more marked difference in either the difficulty or the quality of the work between the fifth and sixth grades in most schools than between certain stages of any important subject within either grade.

We make much of the arbitrary division of elementary instruction into years or half-years, as if there were some virtue in spreading a certain

amount of lesson matter over just so much time, or in holding all the members of a class the same number of days on the same number of exercises. Superficially it does seem to be convenient to chop up the elementary course into eight steps to equal the eight years which tradition has fixed as essential for this work. Without doubt some children will acquire more maturity, and experience, and resourcefulness, and initiative. in six years than others will in eight. Some may require nine years. And it is obviously well-furnished maturity and power to use one's experience that is purposed by the school, not an arbitrarily fixed time. in getting them.

5. So that, if "promotion" be taken in the current sense as meaning the periodical advancement of some and the withholding of others, it should come to a child, not merely when he has completed the assignments to his group, nor when he can probably keep along with the next higher class in their, more difficult exercises, but whenever the effort to do the work of the more advanced group will be more profitable to him personally than that of the lower class.

Ordinarily he will have fairly mastered the requirements of one grade before he would be benefited by being transferred to another. Ordinarily the assurance that he could and would do satisfactory work in a higher class would be a factor in suggesting his promotion; but the answers to these questions, whether affirmative or negative, cannot be taken as final in determining his classification or reclassification. The effect or influence of the work upon the pupil, as incentive, or mental furnishing, or self-reliance, or quality of interest—not his learning of so many lessons, or acquisition of so much knowledge, or attendance at school so many days- must be taken as vital.

This is not a plea for pushing the child on thru the grades. It is not meant as an encouragement of hothouse methods. It is simply intended to urge that children be placed as individuals where their individual needs will best be met; in higher or lower classes, with only incidental reference to whether a given assignment has been finished. Of course, the answer is made that such a procedure would destroy the organization; it would make class work impossible; it would make ragged and unattractive recitations. But the school does not exist for the organization, for the class, for the recitation, but for the individual pupil.

6. The viciousness of the current system of examinations and promotions lies in the fact that they rest upon the measuring of one pupil by another by a more or less arbitrary standard; while, in the process of education, simple justice would seem to require that each be measured by himself - his attainments and maturity at a given time compared with those of a former date.

It will be objected that when the boy leaves school and begins his adult service in business or profession, he will be judged by what he can