conditions which are not favorable? Do we still go blindly on into the successive grades, gathering statistics of so-called results, looking everywhere but to the children themselves for the causes of failure-to teachers, to courses of study, to social conditions? Do we know what becomes of the children who enter the first grade-that is, of all of them? Do we know how many go thru all the grades, how far the others go, what becomes of those who drop by the way, and why they drop?

Summarily, is the business of schooling the children of any town or city carried on with the same intelligence—that is, with the same scrutiny of material, the same adaptation of means to ends, the same readiness to modify means, the same forecast of contingencies, the same balancing of accountsas characterizes the successful business enterprises in that same town or city? As a schoolman I find myself compelled to answer "No." In answering "No," I am not pleading guilty to any charge. Nor am I making any charge. I am only trying to look at the situation as it is—or rather as it appears to me, which may be a very different thing.

I notice that someone in New York has been rather savagely attacking Superintendent Maxwell because so little is really known about the condition of education in that city. The attack seems grossly unfair to Dr. Maxwell, and will probably prove to have been unsafe for the other man. The trouble is too nearly universal for anybody to try to blame anybody. Better go back to the New England Primer, and say

In Adam's fall

We sinned all.

Nor am I unmindful of the fact that some attempts have been made in a few places to draw out of the classes the most hopeless cases and to give them special instruction under special conditions. But no attempt has been made, so far as I know, even in the cities where this work has been begun, to discover how general is the nceu of such specializing, and no reliable figures are available which may be used as a basis for action elsewhere. Where this work has been undertaken it has only been after the situation has become intolerable, after so many feeble-minded children have been dragged on so long as to attract attention by their numbers. If someone had known about them earlier, some time and effort might have been saved.

We are like Kipling's soldier:

If only myself could talk to myself
As I knew him a year ago,

I could tell him a lot

That would save him a lot
Of things he ought to know.

Nor am I unmindful of the medical inspection which is carried on systematically in the schools of some cities. But this is primarily in the interests of public health, and only incidentally, if at all, in the interests of public education.

What are the things we ought to know? Or, what knowledge, if it could be obtained, would be of service in helping to organize the business of public schooling in any community?

First, on the physical side: If the condition of all the children who apply for admission to the schools of any city or town at the opening of the school year could be known as to such obvious matters as seeing and hearing, as to the presence and extent of adenoid growths, as to spinal weaknesses, as to nutritive conditions, it would be possible to adjust the conditions and work of the school in such a way that the defective ones would not be in the way of the others, and, what is more important, that they might themselves be treated with consideration and care.

This is the need of every local school system. But before any such investigation can become general, there is needed a body of evidence as to the facts of these defects in young children, as to their prevalence, and as to the effects upon the school welfare of the child.

Any attempt to make an examination of this kind would in many communities encounter inertia or active opposition. There is needed an investigation by a competent body, which would determine the nature and method of examination, which would secure such examinations in sympathetic localities, which would gather up the results of these examinations and of similar ones which have already been made, and from all the facts deduce conclusions which in published form would be available thruout the country, and which might form the basis of local effort to improve local conditions.

That children are not all alike, that they are really sufficiently unlike to warrant special educational treatment, is a fact believed by many, but not yet demonstrated. Should investigation prove the belief not well founded. and demonstrate that the number of physically defective children is so small as not to be worth considering, that conclusion would be worth having.

On the mental side, there appears to be a considerable number of children entering school each year whose development has been retarded, and who are unfit for the school work planned and conducted for normal children of the same age. These children are started with the others along the same path, and subjected to the same régime of school hours, conduct, and teaching methods. Under those conditions they drag, and not infrequently grow relatively, if not absolutely, more stupid. Dr. Johnson said of Sheridan: "Sherry is dull, naturally dull, but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an access of stupidity, Sir, is not in nature." If in any community the number of such children were known, the annual ratio determined which might be expected, provision for appropriate treatment could be made in the general school scheme, and possibly in the school budget. Were there any accurate knowledge in existence as to the number of such children in general, this too would be of service in arousing local attention.

At another point knowledge is needed. At the end of the first school

stage it should be known for the whole school system how many children have failed to develop rapidly enough to warrant their entering upon the next stage. These children should be carefully examined to determine the causes of the failure, whether some of the physical defects which have been named, or slow development of mental power, or poor teaching. In the absence of such accurate knowledge much injustice now prevails. Poor teachers excuse their failures by affirming defects in the children which do not exist. Good teachers are blamed for the failures of children in whom these defects do exist. Judgments are based on guesses, and until some plan is devised by wise men by which knowledge should replace guessing, school work will continue to be crude, unscientific, and unbusinesslike.

In another field light is needed. What becomes of the children who enter school at the beginning of any one school year? Is this known for any community? How many of them complete the elementary-school course? If not, how far do they go? How many disappear from school thru removal or death? How many enter the high school? How far do they go in it? From what point in the school course do children leave to go to work?

The air is full of statements on many of these points. Where could one go who wanted facts for the results of carefully conducted investigations, with such statements of method as would justify confidence in the results?

I have suggested only two or three of the simplest elements of the problem of public schooling. Beyond this are wide fields of experimentation and research into those more subtle physical and mental differences by which the entire educational process is conditioned. The time may come when we can profitably enter into these tempting but dangerous fields.

Just now we need to be told authoritatively that elementary tests have been made in such and such places, upon so many children, with such and such results. We need to be advised as to the best way to make these tests, what part in them specialists should have, whether teachers can conduct them wholly or in part, and what training teachers should receive to enable them to be of service.

We need to know what treatment is recommended for defectives, and how the school conditions should be modified for each class.

With a body of facts and conclusions of this character, local school officials might go before the local public and ask that a beginning be made in local examinations as a businesslike basis for the increasingly expensive business of public schooling.

II. THE PROFESSIONAL CULTURE OF TEACHERS AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN REGULARLY EMPLOYED IN SCHOOL WORK

JAMES M. GREENWOOD, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, KANSAS CITY, MO. This paper is tentative, and it is designed to call attention to the mental attitude of a large class of teachers after they have been regularly employed in school work, and have practically ceased to study educational problems

seriously, or to widen their spheres of knowledge by systematic methods of culture. It is assumed that teachers who cease to strive after higher ideals in self-improvement are moving with an accelerated velocity down an intellectual incline. This furnishes the background for submitting some reflections on the composition of the teaching force of the United States.

In his last report the Commissioner of Education gives the whole number of public-school teachers employed at 449,287. Of this number, 117,035 are men and 332,252 are women. The same table shows that during the last twenty-two years the percentage of male teachers had steadily decreased thruout the country from 42.8 to 26, and that the annual decrement of male teachers in the five great divisions into which our country is geographically subdivided is about 5,000, and the annual increment of female teachers is 15,000. In 467 cities included in the report of the Committee on Salaries, Tenure, and Pensions of Public-School Teachers in the United States (p. 53), it is shown that the number of teachers employed was 84,042, exclusive of supervisors, and that only 8.6 per cent. of the entire number employed in high and elementary schools were men; but deducting 2,921, who are principals, from the total, leaves 5.6 per cent. of male teachers in these high and elementary schools. These partial statistics are introduced for the purpose of calling attention to the character of the teaching force to be influenced by any system that may be devised for their professional improvement. It is my conviction that there is no marked difference between the sexes in regard to any innate or acquired disposition to study thoroly educational problems, or to strike out on new lines of investigation. In a rough sort of a way, I am inclined to the belief that not more than 20 per cent. of either sex now engaged in educational work is willing to do much in the direction of either persistent study or along special lines of professional reading. By this I do not affirm that 80 per cent. of the teachers do not read, but that their reading is of that patchy, scrappy, miscellaneous species that contains neither information nor much literary culture. The disinclination of a majority of teachers to engage seriously in new channels of thought, unless under pressure of a present, powerful stimulus, is well known. Consequently, this negative factor has to be reckoned with in all calculations connected with an investigation of this kind.

When "teachers' reading circles" were first outlined in several of the states, and courses of study rather formidable were recommended, covering three or four different lines of work, it was very generally believed that a plan had been hit upon that would materially raise the general level of the professional efficiency of the teaching force of the country, and thus widen their spheres of knowledge in many directions. In the practical application of this elaborate scheme, it soon became apparent that those who should have accepted it most enthusiastically rejected it or were indifferent, while the younger and more enthusiastic teachers were incalculably benefited.

There is another class, not so numerous as the first, that had their minds

set in another direction. They are the "degree-hunters" who are specializing. They are high-school and elementary teachers who are looking forward to something better than they now have, and are striving each summer at normal schools, colleges, and universities to improve themselves in certain branches of study in order to receive higher salaries. Work of this kind has great value academically, but, in general, it does not lead very far in the direction of professional study, and consequently contributes little to expert teaching. The knowledge acquired is chiefly technical and narrow, and it leads into closed alleys rather than out into the open. Yet there are some exceptions. My observation, in watching high-school teachers who have taken work along special lines, is that it narrows rather than broadens their vision of educational questions generally. As a class, these teachers give much less thought to scientific methods of study pertaining to the acquisition of knowledge than any other class of teachers. They are drill-masters who continue to fit subjects to boys and girls, rather than fit boys and girls to subjects. Their methods are in an advanced microscopic stage. In hardly any sense can they be classified as students of education, but they are excellent drill sergeants.

If 80 per cent. of teachers cease to read systematically after they have been once thoroly installed as teachers, the question is: How can they be induced to fall into studious habits of reading and investigating educational problems? A temporary stimulus may be imparted by having a graduated course of study, the pressure of which is in some manner connected with an advance in salary. A purely financial stimulus is a low motive for real teaching. But there is a tendency inherent in some minds, while working at a project that is irksome at first, to become interested in the kind of work which was so distasteful at the beginning. This change is produced by a different view-point. However, there should be nothing compulsory connected with any scheme for the professional advancement of teachers, but it should be of such a nature as would enable one to pull himself upward by self-exertion.

A danger to be guarded against, in the use of all factitious stimuli, is the shortness of the time occupied in preparation for advancement. Many never look ahead very far. The near and the present they see. In general, the minimum salary should be large enough to allow those who reach it, and feel inadequate to further exertion, to rest there and vegetate, having their thoughts undisturbed by visions of future examinations; but for those progressive spirits actuated by a great desire to do much better work, and to cultivate their minds to the greatest possible extent, a way should be left wide open thru which to advance in proficiency each year.

By a well-known law in operation among skilled laborers, it is a recognized fact that the best workers always lift up to a certain level those who have not will-power enough to lift themselves. The strong workers help the weak ones to better salaries. A method of dividing teachers into groups for the study of special subjects has been quite successful in some cities. Frequently one enthusiastic teacher in a school of twenty or thirty teachers will inspire from