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of higher schools for girls, and the local corporations, or town or village school unions, were authorized to provide for such schools. In the year 1900 an imperial ordinance again revised the elementary-school code, and abolished entirely the minimum three-year course. In view of obligatory attendance, tuition fees were abolished, and many changes were made in the time and extent of the subjects pursued. In the same year also the medical departments of higher schools were reorganized under the name of "special schools for medicine." In 1903 an imperial ordinance prescribed regulations for special schools in which instruction is given in higher courses of arts and sciences. For the purpose of alleviating the burdens of higher education, a special reserve for educational purposes amounting to 10,000,000 yen was set aside from the Chinese indemnity fund, the annual interest of which was to be distributed according to the proportion of children of school age attending during the previous year. In 1903 the total amount available for this distribution was 1,371,000 yen. Between 1900 and 1905 there has been marked increase in salaries paid teachers, and provisions have been made by the state for providing pensions to retired teachers. This pension is paid out of a special reserve fund established by each ken, and is formed by holding out 1 per cent. of the salaries of regular teachers. The national treasury in addition grants a sum equal to one-half of the moneys paid by cities, towns, or villages.

In April, 1903, a system of state textbooks was introduced, copyrights being reserved by the Department of Education. All textbooks, except those for morals, Japanese history, and geography, and Japanese readers, may be selected by the local governor from among those which are copyrighted by the Department of Education, or adopted by the minister of state for education. The books excepted are prescribed by the government.

A great advance has been made in the last few years in the matter of school equipment, and strict laws have been established as to the relative proportion of school grounds, school buildings, open-air gymnasiums, furnishing of dormitories, distance of school buildings from factories or unhealthy ground, size of classrooms, etc.

The great demand for trained teachers led to the establishment in 1902 of professional teachers' training institutes under the control of the Imperial University, by which teachers for middle and normal schools should be trained in the shortest possible time. The course of study extends over two years, and is divided into five distinct classes. Five of these institutes are in operation, and the first class was graduated in 1904.

A great advance has been made since 1900 in the establishment of higher schools, including both those fitting for collegiate courses and universities, but more particularly the technical schools leading to technical and commercial industries and agriculture. The traditional sentiment of the Japanese people formerly led young men to proceed to the university after finishing their course at the middle school. The tremendous impulse given to indus

trial education after the Japan-China war has led the government to promote the establishment of industrial schools of various groups, and a strong tendency is now discernible among the young men to attend these schools.

In the field of higher education the establishment and growth of the Imperial University of Kyoto is most conspicuous, and at present it consists of a University Hall for original research, and colleges of law, medicine, science, and engineering.

The establishment of the Kyoto Higher Technical School in 1902, as a school of industrial fine arts, was designed to introduce improvements into art industries, and to place Japan in the forefront of artistic nations. An important commission was appointed in 1902, under the title of the National Language Investigation Committee. One of the important functions of this committee is to examine the relative advantages of the Kana and the Roman characters, if phonograms are to be substituted for ideographs. In addition, the committee is delegated to recommend a simplification of the present style of writing and of the Kana orthography.

Another important committee on the history of Japan, working under the auspices of the University of Tokyo, has nearly completed its work, and the materials gathered are now being published under the name of "Japanese Historical Materials" and "Old Japanese Documents." The total number of ancient documents compiled by the committee is more than 100,000.

TENDENCIES

Even so cursory a presentation of foreign educational features as is con tained in this paper must impress the reader with the thought that education. on the continent is becoming intensely practical. Almost every innovation or change of policy, in whatever country, has for its object the more thoro training of the youth for his future trade or occupation. The line of cleavage between the training of the many and the training of the few, or between industrial training and cultural training, is becoming more and more distinct, and what Belgium has long taken as the dictum of its own educational policy may with equal correctness be applied to Europe in general -l'école pour la vie.

The history of education in the United States for the last century has shown it to be eminently practical, and peculiarly responsive to public demand. Its close relation and responsibility to the people preclude its taking any other form. It is not a thing apart from the public and for the benefit of a few, as in the days of Egyptian priesthood, but rather is the instrument of the people in shaping the destiny of the country. Given, then, the trend of the development of this country, and there follows as its corollary the tendency of its education. The twentieth century will be the scene of a struggle for commercial and industrial supremacy. The United States has entered this world-conflict with all its energy, and the successes it has already gained have startled its competitors. The kind of education, therefore, of value to these changed conditions, and best likely to train our citizens for their

future work, will be the kind of education to which our schools will perforce adapt themselves. These modifications fall naturally into three divisions: education for commerce, education for trades and other industries, and education for agriculture. Our educational leaders must solve the problem of how to adapt sufficient training in these lines to meet the demands of the age, and not destroy at the same time the balance which has been maintained in our curriculums with the more clearly cultural subjects, the broad and liberal training in which has been the source of our past strength and present power. This must not be sacrificed in the adjustment which must inevitably come, for to do so would be to remove the corner-stone of the edifice.

SYMPOSIUM: WHAT ARE AT PRESENT THE MOST PROMISING SUBJECTS FOR SUCH INVESTIGATIONS AS THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATION SHOULD

UNDERTAKE?

I. COMPARISON OF MODERN BUSINESS METHODS WITH EDUCATIONAL METHODS

GEORGE H. MARTIN, SECRETARY, STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, BOSTON, MASS.

My attention has recently been attracted by some lines of work carried on in connection with certain industries, and I have been impressed by the contrast between these material industries and that which this Council repre

sents.

The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.

This statement occurs to me at this moment of writing, but I hesitate to make an application.

Last year I saw in the laboratory of Professor Cooper, who is at the head of the department of agriculture in the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, some experiments in progress in local soil analysis and in the hybridizing of certain varieties of cotton, the object being to determine how the different kinds of soil could be most successfully used or treated or combined for use in cotton-raising, and how, new and improved varieties of cotton. could be produced which might successfully be grown in such soils.

Very recently I saw in the Textile School at Lowell, Mass., some experiments, conducted with great care, upon the adaptability of certain varieties of cotton for manufacturing purposes. These experiments consisted in part of delicate tests of the tensile strength of the fibers, tests of their capacity for absorbing dyes of different kinds, and tests of their power to retain their color under various conditions natural and artificial.

These are types of the new scientific basis upon which every modern industry is planting itself. Men have found that the difference between.

success and failure in manufacturing enterprises turns upon the minute knowledge which can be obtained only by trained scientific experts.

The two cases which I have cited illustrate the study of the material to be wrought upon. What is it? And, being what it is, what can be done with it? Along a different line, similar investigation has been going on. This is in what is commonly known as shop management and practice. The object of the investigation here is to determine the working capacity of the employees. It involves the ascertaining of the actual time required by an able-bodied and skilled worker to do each part of a piece of work, and from that a deduction of the exact cost of the whole work, if done by men all of whom were doing their best. It includes a comparison of this time with the time occupied by the average worker in doing the same piece of work, and from this a deduction as to the increase in price which the employer could afford to pay a man for doing his best.

Beyond this, the investigation includes a study of the means in the form of a detailed plan of the successive processes, their order of succession, and the conditions for most rapid procedure; and it critically examines into the functions of the various grades of directing officers, in order to secure the highest efficiency, the object of the whole series of investigations being to ascertain how to attain that seemingly most contradictory combinationhigh wages and low labor cost.

This strange combination of phrases brings to mind that saying of Comenius which has remained from his day until now so enigmatical. His guiding star he declared to be "to discover a rule in accordance with which the teachers may teach less and the learners learn more."

The contrast between modern business methods and the most modern methods in education is so great as to suggest some searching questions. In the comparison, educational processes seem unscientific, crude, and wasteful. Are they really so? If they are, are they necessarily so? If it should be charged that educational work rests on assumptions which not only are. unproved, but which are false, can we deny it? Do the elements in the educational processes defy analysis, or has there been no serious attempt to analyze them?

Let us say at once that the business processes of which I have spoken do not furnish examples, but only principles. There is an analogy, not a parallel.

It is possible for an engineer to measure by means of a stop-watch, as has been done, the time required for a laborer to lift his shovel, to insert it in the earth, to fill it, to lift it, to throw the contents into a barrow, to lift the barrow when full, to wheel it and to dump it; and out of all this mass of data to construct a formula for determining the cost per cubic yard of excavating for a sewer or a cellar or a subway. But the man who expects or demands that such units of results shall be determined and used in measuring work in education is a fool.

No stop-watch can measure the time required for a child to learn four times five, for no one knows when it is learned. He may know when it can be said, but it may be said today and not be learned; and it may be learned tomorrow and not be said. It may be discovered later that it has been learned, but when it was learned no one knows or can know. Mental growth which is the result of education does not lend itself to the method of ordinates. Neither its curve nor that of the acquisition of knowledge which accompanies it can be plotted.

Dismissing, then, the methods of the chemist and the engineer, is there still a field for accurate investigation which may be called scientific?

The experiments of which I spoke at first, both in Tuskegee and in Lowell, were based on the fact that cotton is not all alike. The grower who should say, "Cotton is cotton, and I will raise it;" the manufacturer who should say, "Cotton is cotton, and I will make it into cloth," would go into bankruptcy.

Does not the existing public-school system rest on the assumption that children are children, and proceed to treat them accordingly—that is, substantially all alike ?

Not quite. Children who are totally blind and totally deaf and totally idiotic are classed by themselves as exceptional, and treated accordingly. All the others are simply children, so old.

Another difference is coming to be noted; one which needs no great nicety of observation to detect. It has been observed that children vary in height, and some attempt has been made to meet their individual needs by adjustable furniture. But is there anywhere any recognition of the fact that in a group of five-year-old children there are as great differences as between sea-island, upland, and Egyptian cotton?

Has any attempt been made anywhere to discover those differences, and to take them into account in shaping the educational process? Or is it true that we take into the school system at its lowest level all the children who apply, and, without examination, start them all on the same road, giving them all the same work to do under the same conditions as to teacher, apparatus, and time? Is it also true that, owing to differences which no one has sought to discover, a considerable number of these children fail to keep up with the procession, and go stumbling and limping along during the first year? Is it true that at the end of the first year or half-year a sorting occurs, not based on any differences in the children, but only on differences in the attainments which they have made in learning a few rudimentary facts of knowledge? Are those who have failed turned back to mingle with the new lot of unassorted ones, to traverse the same road again, without any searching investigation to ascertain the cause of the trouble? Does the presence of these children interfere with the rate of progress of others, reduce the efficiency of the teachers directly thru the loss of time, and still more, tho indirectly, thru excessive demands upon their patience and nervous energy? Do the weaker children suffer by being subjected to a régime for which they are not suited, and under

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