You are doubtless familiar with the earnest enlistment of the able and honored Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont in a revival of the national-university question, in 1890, by securing the appointment of a special Senate "committee to establish the University of the United States," with the introduction of a bill, and with its reference to said committee.

You may also know that, after his retirement from the Senate because of serious illhealth, the said committee was made a standing committee;" that a unanimous report was submitted by Senator Edmunds' successor in the chairmanship of said committee, Chairman Proctor, of Vermont, in 1893, tho too late to secure action; and another report, also unanimous, by his successor, Chairman Hunton, of Virginia, in 1894, who succeeded in getting the bill ably discussed on the affirmative side, tho not in getting it to a vote, because of interference by the appropriation bills and the arrival of the time when, under the rules, a single vote was sufficient to prevent further action during that Congress. You may further know of the affirmative report afterward submitted by Chairman Kyle, of South Dakota, in 1896, with the inclusion of over three hundred letters in support of the measure from some of the ablest and most distinguished men of the United States; and that the bill so reported was prepared during three protracted sessions of the executive council of the National University Committee, the chief justice of the United States presiding, and every member but one being present.

That this bill, of which President David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford University wrote, "Put it through without the change of a punctuation point," failed was due to the absence of the chairman of the Senate committee during almost the entire last session of the Fifty-fourth Congress (during the session of the South Dakota legislature), and to the natural reluctance of Senators John Sherman, Frye, and other members of the committee to take his place while daily expecting his return, especially since, meanwhile, a minority report (tho brief, weak, and ill-supported) had been offered.

The record of national-university efforts in the Senate puts it beyond question that, while the Senate itself has dealt most liberally and handsomely with the university question, there have been delays unpardonable on the part of two chairmen of the Senate committee, especially the last one-delays, too, in the latter case, which many friends of our measure insist have a mysterious connection with those of the Committee of Fifteen, but which I shall myself not here attempt to explain otherwise than to note that the actual work of said Committee of Fifteen may have devolved upon a very small number of its members.

As for the report of the Committee on a National University now under discussion, I regret to speak of it, for there are attached to it the signatures of distinguished men whom I have long highly respected, some of them members of the national-university committee. But, on the other hand, it is my necessity to speak of the results of their years of labor in terms of the severest condemnation, both on account of the unreasonable delays involved and because of the astonishing recommendation with which the report concludes a recommendation which, carefully and dispassionately viewed, seems to be nothing less than an attempt to foist upon the National Educational Association and the country a weak and unworthy substitute for the noble national university to which the association stood so entirely committed in other years, and by which I firmly believe it will ever stand.

Did time permit, I would point out, right here, how this "memorial" concern is practically made up of faults and deficiencies -- that it is substantially confined to some sort of popular utilization of the scientific resources of the government at Washington, and that even in attempting this they have offered a scheme that must prove a failure.

I would show likewise how, as a private institution, it must necessarily fail of all those great educational, national, and even international ends which Washington, Jefferson, and the most illustrious of other of our presidents, as well as a multitude of

statesmen, scholars, scientists, and practical educators have had in view for a hundred years.

And, finally, I would remind you of the affront this "memorial" scheme offers to the Father of his Country. It was not a narrow, one-sided institute, originated by one or more of the worst enemies of the great idea he so cherished, and for whose final realization he made the best contribution he could in his last will and testament; it was not any such "institution" as we have outlined before us, worked up and now in control of national-university deserters, faint-hearted friends, and declared opponents of any university likely to become greater than their own, no matter what its claims on national and universal grounds; it was nothing of this sort that the immortal Washington was so profoundly interested in as they who devised and organized it very well know. And in his great name, we who have believed with him and have zealously worked for the needed realization of his noble aims, utterly repudiate, whatever claims its founders may make to consideration on national and patriotic grounds, this "Memorial Institution."

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Using the "two minutes more " the chair has kindly granted me, let me declare my conviction that the “Memorial Institution" will prove a faux pas, and that the nationaluniversity movement will go forward. To friends of the national university who from the first have done little to help, trusting that other of its friends would carry it thru, with the help of Providence, and who have mistakenly assumed that the years of delay in the Senate were a symptom of a decline in interest - to such it may seem strange; but, as for myself, these methods of the enemy, whom it seems we were destined to meet, have but increased my determination. With many years and many thousands of dollars of my own so freely given to the university cause already, I am newly nerved and consecrated. I need hardly say to those who have known my past life—and yet, because of base intimations in one or two quarters, it may be my duty to say that a victory fully won could by no possibility have anything of personal advantage for me other than a consciousness of duty done - an elevating sense of labors performed and sacrifices made not in vain. For, if already established by act of Congress and to be organized tomorrow, the national university would include no official station that I could be induced to accept, if offered me, either then or at any time thereafter. As a determined promoter of the movement begun by Washington, I have been no less purely patriotic than he. For its realization I shall continue to labor, and am ready to lay down my life. With the distinguished President Gilman, of 1895, "I firmly believe that a national university will be established in Washington;" and with the eminent William R. Harper, president of the University of Chicago, "I have always believed in such an institution, and will continue to believe in it. There is everything to be gained and nothing to be lost."

THE IDEAL SCHOOL AS BASED ON CHILD STUDY

G. STANLEY HALL, PRESIDENT OF CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS. I shall try in this paper to break away from all current practices, traditions, methods, and philosophies, for a brief moment, and ask what education would be if based solely upon a fresh and comprehensive view of the nature and needs of childhood. Hitherto the data for such a construction of the ideal school have been insufficient, and soon they will be too manifold for any one mind to make the attempt; so the moment is opportune. What follows is based almost solely, point by point, upon the study of the stages of child development, and might, perhaps, without presumption be called a first attempt to formulate a

In my

practical program of this great movement. limited space I can do little more than barely state the conclusions that affect the practical work of teachers.

The school I shall describe exists nowhere, but its methods, unless I err, are valid everywhere. Altho many of its features exist already, and could be pieced together in a mosaic from many lands and ages, it is essentially the school invisible, not made with hands. But, as there is nothing so practical as the truly ideal, altho my school today exists nowhere, it might be organized anywhere tomorrow; and I hope that the most and the least conservative will agree that it is the true goal of all endeavor, and will not differ except as to whether it may be realized at once or only at the end of a long period of labor. I confess that something like this has from the first animated all my own feeble educational endeavors, and that without it I should be without hope and without goal in the world of pedagogy.

Beginning with the deep philosophy often imbedded in words, "school," or "schole," means leisure, exemption from work, the perpetuation of the primæval paradise created before the struggle for existence began. It stands for the prolongation of human infancy, and the no whit less important prolongation of adolescence. It is sacred to health, growth, and heredity, a pound of which is worth a ton of instruction. The guardians of the young should strive first of all to keep out of nature's way, and to prevent harm, and should merit the proud title of defenders of the happiness and rights of children. They should feel profoundly that childhood, as it comes fresh from the hand of God, is not corrupt, but illustrates the survival of the most consummate thing in the world; they should be convinced that there is nothing else so worthy of love, reverence, and service as the body and soul of the growing child.

Practically, this means that every invasion of this leisure, the provision of a right measure of which is our first duty to youth, has a certain presumption against it, and must justify itself by conclusive reasons. Before we let the pedagog loose upon childhood, not only must each topic in his curriculum give an account of itself, but his inroads must be justified in the case of each child. We must overcome the fetichism of the alphabet, of the multiplication table, of grammars, of scales, and of bibliolatry, and must reflect that but a few generations ago the ancestors of all of us were illiterate; that the invention of Cadmus seemed the sowing of veritable dragon's teeth in the brain; that Charlemagne and many other great men of the world could not read or write; that scholars have argued that Cornelia, Ophelia, Beatrice, and even the blessed mother of our Lord knew nothing of letters. The knights, the élite leaders of the Middle Ages, deemed writing a mere clerk's trick beneath the attention of all those who scorned to muddle their wits with others' ideas, feeling that their own were good enough for them.

Nay more there are many who ought not to be educated, and who would be better in mind, body, and morals if they knew no school. What shall it profit a child to gain the world of knowledge and lose his own health? Cramming and over-schooling have impaired many a feeble mind, for which, as the proverb says, nothing is so dangerous as ideas too large for it. We are coming to understand the vanity of mere scholarship and erudition, and to know that even ignorance may be a wholesome poultice for weakly souls; while scribes, sophists, scholastics, and pedants suggest how much of the learning of the past is now seen to be vanity, and how incompetent pedagogs have been as guardians of the sacred things of culture. Thus, while I would abate no whit from the praise of learning and education for all who are fit for them, I would bring discrimination down to the very basis of our educational pyramid.

I. The kindergarten age is from two or three to six or seven. Here, before the ideal school can be inaugurated, we need some work of rescue from the symbolists. Now the body needs most attention, and the soul least. The child needs more mother, and less teacher; more of the educated nurse, and less of the metaphysician. We must largely eliminate, and partly reconstruct, the mother-plays, while transforming and vastly enlarging the repertory of the gifts and occupations. We must develop the ideal nursery, playgrounds, and rooms, where light, air, and water are at their best. The influences of the new hygiene have been felt least here, where they are needed most. The neglect of these basal principles suggests that we have still among us those whose practice implies a belief that any old place is good enough to hatch out beautiful souls, provided only Froebelian orthodoxy of doctrine and method is steadfastly maintained. In place of a magic mongering with them, the cubes, spheres, cylinder, and also the top, soap-bubble, doll, dances, marches, circus, and scores of other free plays and games; and in place of two or three fish, insects, animals, plants, several score must be provided, and a museum and catalogue raisonné of toys must be at hand. Eating bread, milk, fruit, with some simple table manners, and using paper napkins, sometimes do wonders for these human larvæ. Feeding brightens the mind and saves the disposition; a full stomach opens the mouth, and good courses of lessons could be derived from the viands themselves.

The kindergarten should fill more of the day, and should strive to kill time. In the Berlin Institute children sleep at noon in a darkened room, with music, crackers, or even bottles, and thus resist man's enemy, fatigue, and restore paradise for themselves. Part of the cult here should be idleness and the intermediate state of reverie. We should have a good excuse to break into these, and at this age children should be carefully shielded from all suspicion of any symbolic sense. Thus in play, and in play only, life is made to seem real. Imitation should have a far

larger scope. Children should hear far more English and better, and in the later years the ear should be trained for French or German. Color should never be taught as such. The children of the rich, generally prematurely individualized or over-individualized, especially when they are only children, must be disciplined and subordinated; while the children of the poor, usually under-individualized, should be indulged. We should lose no syllable of the precious positive philosophy of Froebel, the deepest of all modern educational thinkers; but we must profoundly reconstruct every practical expression that he attempted of his ideas, and must strive to induce at least a few college-trained men and women to turn their attention to the kindergarten, thus making the training schools feel, what they have hitherto known so little of, the real spirit and influence of modern science. Teachers should study every child, not necessarily by any of the current technical methods. They should learn far more than they can teach, and in place of the shallow manikin child of books they should see, know, and love only the real thing. After this metempsychosis, the kindergarten should be, and should become, an integral part of every school system.

II. The age of about seven or eight is a transition period of the greatest interest for science. Then most children have less chewing surface by three or four teeth; there is a year or more of increased danger to the heart; the breath is shorter and fatigue easier; lassitude, nervousness, visual disorders, and cough are somewhat more imminent; and the blood is more often impoverished. The brain has practically finished for life its growth in weight and size; and all work and strain must be reduced. Some important corner in its time of development, not yet fully understood, is turned.

III. At eight or nine there begins a new period, which, for nearly four years, to the dawn of puberty, constitutes a unique stage of life, marked off by many important differences from the period which precedes and that which follows it. During these years there is a decreased rate of growth, so that the body relatively rests; but there is a striking increase of vitality, activity, and power to resist disease. Fatigue, too, is now best resisted, and it is amazing to see how much can be endured. The average child now plays more games, and has more daily activity, in proportion to size and weight, than at any other stage. It would seem, as I have proposed elsewhere with ground for the theory, as tho these four years represented, on the recapitulation theory, a long period in some remote age, well above the simian, but mainly before the historic, period, when our early forebears were well adjusted to their environment. Before

a higher and much more modern story was added to human nature, the young in warm climates, where most human traits were evolved, became independent of their parents, and broke away to subsist for themselves at an early age. In this age, which we will call the juvenile, the individual