ing results; that they were not related to real needs of school and home, and were not properly co-ordinated with other phases of the curriculum. Much yet remains to be done to assimilate the environment of the school to the environment of the world.

And yet, while we may feel discontented with the situation, and regret the increased difficulties of our work, there is no reason for discouragement. I have no hesitation in saying that in general intelligence, in all-round efficiency, in power of initiative, the pupils whom I now see are superior to those of a quarter of a century ago. If the obstacles before us are more formidable, if the problems are more complicated than those presented to our predecessors, the teachers of America are better organized and better equipped to overcome the obstacles and to solve the problems. He who has sailed in a modern steamship thru an ocean storm has seen the mighty vessel cleave the billows and scarcely slacken her speed in the teeth of the hurricane. Down in the depths of the ship men are piling coal on the furnaces and releasing a force-the imprisoned sun-power of uncounted ages-that baffles the waves and defies the whirlwind. And so it is with our ship of state. Come what storms of ignorance or wickedness there may, teachers are supplying the fuel of knowledge and releasing the force of intelligence that will hold our nation in the straight course of progress.

And yet, the teachers of America are still far from satisfied with their achievements. They are dissatisfied with the elementary curriculum, because it seems crowded with the new studies that have been added without diminishing the number of the old. They are dissatisfied with the highschool curriculum, because the old-style language, mathematics, and science course, however suitable it may be for admission to college, does not precisely meet the needs of boys and girls who are going directly into life. They are dissatisfied with the specialized high school, because it seems lacking in some of those attributes of culture in which the old-time school was strong. And they are dissatisfied with the college course, because the elective system, which has taken the place of the old prescribed course, does not seem to give a strong, intellectual fiber to the weaker students who, too often, follow the path of least resistance. And they are dissatisfied because there is less intelligence, less efficiency, and less helpfulness in the world than the world. needs. So far from feeling concerned at this widespread discontent, we should rejoice that it exists. There is nothing so blighting to educational enthusiasm as smug satisfaction with what is or what has been; there is nothing so stimulating to educational effort as a realizing sense of present imperfections and of higher possibilities.

As to the curriculum of the higher schools and colleges, the problem is really not what studies shall be inserted and what omitted, but how shall we make it possible for the student to get that culture, efficiency, and power out of his studies which his development requires. This is really a question for psychology to answer. Well may we ask of our universities, with their psy

chological laboratories and their sensitive apparatus for measuring mental reactions: Will psychology ever accomplish what phrenology once promised, but has never performed—the determination of a young student's capabilities and of the line of work he ought to pursue?

As to the elementary curriculum, surely we shall not go far wrong if we apply to each study, and even to each detail of each study, these four questions: 1. Is this study or this exercise well within the comprehension of the child ? 2. Does it help to adjust him to the material and the spiritual environment of the age and of the community in which he lives?

3. Does it combine with the other studies of the curriculum to render him more efficient in conquering nature and in getting along with his fellows, and thus to realize ideals that transcend environment?

4. Does it accomplish these objects better than any other study that might be selected for these purposes?

If these questions are answered in the affirmative, we may reasonably conclude that the study or the exercise in question is an important element in education for efficiency. Examined from the view-point established by these questions, every study will assume an aspect very different from that which it bears when taught without a well-defined object. Take drawing, for example. Drawing may be so taught as not only to lay bare to seeing eyes new worlds of beauty, but to lead to that reverent appreciation of nature, and the reapplication of her lessons to daily industrial art, which is the way, as Ruskin has said, in which the soul can most truly and wholesomely develop essential religion.

Again, take the teaching of agriculture. While our soil seemed inexhaustible in fertility as in extent, the need of such teaching was not felt. Now, however, we are obliged to have recourse to lands that produce only under irrigation. The rural schools have added to our difficulties by teaching their pupils only what seemed most necessary for success when they should move to the city. The farms of New England are, in large measure, deserted or are passing into alien hands. To retain the country boy on the land, and to keep our soil from exhaustion, it is high time that all our rural schools turned their attention, as some of them have done, to scientific agriculture. There is no study of greater importance; there is none more entertaining. If every country boy could become, according to his ability, a Burbank, increasing the yield of the fruit tree, the grain field, and the cotton plantation, producing food and clothing where before there was only waste, what riches would be added to our country, what happiness would be infused into life! To obtain one plant that will metamorphose the field or the garden, ten thousand plants must be grown and destroyed. To find one Burbank, ten thousand boys must be trained; but, unlike the plants, all the boys will have been benefited. The gain to the nation would be incalculable. Scientific agriculture, practically taught, is as necessary for the rural school as is manual training for the city school.

Nor are our people going to rest satisfied with mere manual training. The Mosely commissioners pointed out that the great defect in American education is the absence of trade schools. Trade schools will inevitably come. The sooner the better. They are demanded for individual and social efficiency.

It is not in secondary schools alone, however, that efficiency demands highly differentiated types of schools. It is absurd to place the boy or girl, ten or twelve years of age, just landed from Italy, who cannot read a word in his own language or speak a word of English, in the same class with American boys and girls five or six years old. For a time, at least, the foreigners require to be segregated and to receive special treatment. Again, the studies that appeal to the normal boy only disgust the confirmed truant or the embryo criminal. Yet again, the mentally defective, the crippled, and the physically weak children require special treatment. Unless all indications fail, the demand for education for efficiency will lead in all our large cities to the organization of many widely differentiated types of elementary school.

The problem of the curriculum, important as it is, is less important than the problem of the teacher. The born teacher-that is, the man or woman who has a genius for teaching-will teach well, in spite of any curriculum, however bad. Unfortunately, genius is as rare in the profession of teaching as it is in law, or medicine, or any other profession. The great majority of us, as it needs must be, are very commonplace persons, who are seeking for light and doing the best we can. Hence, the supreme importance of training. And yet there is no part of our work to which so little thought and investigation have been given. Normal schools in this country are still very youngonly a little over half a century old. The first normal schools were high schools with a little pedagogy thrown in. The majority of them remain the same to this day. There is a strong movement, however, toward purely professional schools to which no student who has not had a reasonably liberal education is admitted, and in which he shall devote his entire time to learning how to teach how to observe, understand, and exercise children both mentally and physically. Welcome and necessary as this movement is, if all teachers are to train for efficiency, we are still far from precise scientific notions as to the best methods of training teachers. I commend this subject to the National Council as one of the next investigations it should undertake.

To secure training for efficiency, the conditions of teaching must be such that each teacher shall be able to do his best work. By common consent, one of these conditions is that teachers shall not be subjected to the ignominy of seeking political or other influence, or cringing for the favor of any man, in order to secure appointment or promotion. During the past year two events have occurred which seem to be full of promise for the establishment of this condition. The public-school teachers of Philadelphia have been freed from the bondage toward politicians in which they were held for wellnigh a century; and the one-man power, beneficent as such a system proved under a Draper and a Jones in Cleveland, has been supplanted by an appar

ently more rational system. Independence of thought and freedom of initiative are necessary to the teachers of a nation whose stability and welfare as a republic depend upon the independence, the intelligence, and the free initiative of its citizens. Independence of thought and freedom of initiative may be throttled by bad laws, but under the best laws they will be maintained only by the teachers themselves. By making it unprofessional to seek appointment or promotion thru social, religious, or political influence, the teachers of this country have it in their power to establish one of the most essential conditions of education for efficiency.

Under the conditions that confront us, particularly in the large cities, with the rapid increase and constant migration of our home population, with the influx of vast hordes of people from abroad, alien in language, alien in modes of thought, and alien in tradition, the character of our elementary work is undergoing a profound transformation. We are beginning to see that every school should be a model of good housekeeping and a model of good government thru co-operative management. What more may the schools do? They can provide knowledge and intellectual entertainment for adults as well as for children. They can keep their doors open summer as well as winter, evening as well as morning. They can make all welcome for reading, for instruction, for social intercourse, and for recreation. But I for one believe they may do still more. When I look upon the anæmic faces and undeveloped bodies that mark so many of the children of the tenements; when I read of the terrible ravages of tuberculosis in the same quarters, I cannot but think that the city should provide wholesome food for children at the lowest possible cost in public-school kitchens. To lay the legal burden of learning upon children whose blood is impoverished and whose digestion is impaired by insufficient or unwholesome feeding is not in accord with the boasted altruism of an advanced civilization or with the divine command: "Feed the hungry." Is this not also a subject for investigation by our National Council?

And should it some day come to pass that men will look upon corruption in public and corporate life, such as of late we have seen exposed in New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, with the same loathing with which they regard crime in private life, it will be when the schools are in earnest about teaching our young people the fundamental laws of ethics, that

The ten commandments will not budge,

And stealing still continues stealing.

But economic perils and racial differences are the teacher's opportunity. Here in this country are gathered the sons and the daughters of all nations. Ours is the task, not merely of teaching them our language and respect for our laws, but of imbuing them with the spirit of self-direction, our precious inheritance from the Puritans; the spirit of initiative which comes to us from the pioneers who subdued a continent to the uses of mankind;1 and ' Münsterberg, The Americans, chaps. 1 and 11.

the spirit of co-operation which is symbolized by, and embodied in, the everlasting union of sovereign states to promote the common weal. And as, in my own city, I see the eagerness of foreigners to learn, and the skill and devotion of our teachers, I cannot but think that we are overcoming our almost insurmountable difficulties.

There is, perhaps, no more striking moment in all history than that at which the apostle Paul, standing on Mars Hill and pointing to the blue Ægean, the center of the then known world, proclaimed the new but eternal doctrine: "God hath made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Standing here, as we do, on the border of the Atlantic Ocean, and beholding, on the one side, the dove of peace alighting from the hand of our President on the fields of carnage in the Far East, and, on the other side, the homes of peoples of all nationalities stretching from the Atlantic to the isles of the Pacific, under the protection of the American flag, may we not realize that we, as teachers, have a great part to perform in bringing a vast company to an understanding of the sublime truth that God has made all men one to dwell on the face of the earth; that their mission is not to defraud and to slay, but each to do his best for himself and to help his fellows?

THE FUTURE OF TEACHERS' SALARIES

W. T. HARRIS, UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

In most rural districts that are sparsely settled the taxable wealth is small and the state does not make an opportionment of its annual funds sufficient, when divided pro rata for each person of school age, to provide for a full school year's instruction; instead of nine or ten months, only three or four, or five months possibly, is provided. Consequently the individual teacher has to find his main vocation in some other occupation than teaching-generally that of a farmer. The ungraded rural school cannot afford to employ professional teachers, because it can pay only a fragment of an annual salary.

Villages and cities can depend upon a school population for the year, and an annual session of from eight to ten months, or even longer, is kept up. Professional teachers are employed at living wages; that is to say, the wages paid teachers are in advance of the average rates for laborers who work the same length of time

The first question of interest to the teacher inquiring about salaries is: Are the positions of teachers, in a state, annual positions, or merely temporary occupations lasting only for a small fraction of the year? The annual position means a teacher employed by the year, who takes up teaching as a vocation, and does not have to shift to other occupations to eke out his salary received from his vocation as teacher.

The second important question is: How many well-paying positions are