the world for an arena, especially South America, with its millions of Indians and half-castes, some of them in all probability with qualities desirable to conserve in the racial inheritance, as had older peoples that have been exterminated under individualism and nationalism. The resources of South American forests, waters, and soils have hardly been sampled. Conditions promise a repetition of our colonial and early national history, whose crimes are not yet outgrown. To help on this commercial world war, public education plans commercial, trade, and industrial classes, encouraged by federal and local assistance, and strongly seconded by business interests. But thrift, commerce, and wealth that injure the living, and thru them the next generation, experience proves are undesirable. Unless some higher ideal directs them, we can expect nothing better than we have had. We may well expect worse our powers for good and evil are greater. On the other hand, demand is definite that we have a new kind of peace in which the race-not merely some of its living individuals-shall thrive. It comes from various honest and trustworthy sources, not always exprest in the same terms, nor professing the same immediate object, but when analyzed all converging to one ideal-a better next generation. Experts in research and specialists in experimentation, commissions and surveys, studies and reports, magazines and newspapers, forums and mass meetings, are presenting statements of wrongs, accounts of remedies under way, under consideration, asking consideration, or proved ineffective. The more we learn of our mistakes, the farther back in the lives of children many are traced. Their susceptible organization stores influences more lastingly and deeply, whether bacilli of tuberculosis or effects of cruelty, selfishness, ignorance. During these highly sensitive years, as during prenatal life, the child's development is wholly in the hands of parents, its heredity also. Education omits preparation for this most critical business of life-making a human before school age. A hundred years ago teachers and nurses, like parents today, had only pickt-up knowledge. Half a century ago, preparation of the first two was under way. Today preparation for the responsibilities of parents is beginning, largely thru insistence of women backt by statistics from the census. We think economically. We need to think biologically. To an audience of biologists this statement would have certain definite meaning. It would mean such actual educational experiences that there remains in consciousness or subconsciousness a composite of details convincing the individual that life is a racial trust, that the quality of the next generation is the supreme test of human worth. But society is cultivating humans without preparation in elementary science of life, and with ambitions for economic competitions and successes. It is a law of mind that we do not appreciate until we understand. We shall always abuse life until we understand at least its essential laws. That during every decade in the United States four million children die under five years of age, more than half of whom we could save if we would, should seem more humiliating than European carnage thru half a decade of passion. The deepest impression our holocaust makes is when we put it in dollars, of which more is understood than of the depreciation of the race by loss of family strains and of the waste of motherhood and fatherhood. Not all children who die are inferior. We have no reason for thinking that even the majority are. Not only the need and the demand, but the opportunity for teaching racial responsibilities is greater than ever before. The recent extension of public-school teaching to those not in the regular grades, both children and adults, and increasing extra-mural instruction by colleges and universities are partly stimulated by demands of parents for help in their duties. This and the admirable work by the Department of Agriculture afford the opportunity. To assist each age in its special activities will pay in the end if, and only if, the ideal of a better next generation dominates the present economic ideals of those urging vocational and extension instruction. Eight hours of labor daily, forty to sixty weekly, or less, leaves more than three times as many hours without the protection of our greatest blessing-work. It is in unoccupied intervals that most of the crimes against the race are committed. Spending wisely is harder than earning. Society does not profit when its educational product earns twenty-five dollars a week and, for example, chooses a mate whose father was a moron. The National Council of Education has a great opportunity to serve, and a great duty to use this opportunity. With vision of the future, understanding past failings and present resources, the Council can help establish another peace whose ideal of a better next generation shall prevail over existing follies. Deliberately to adopt the policy of teaching concrete facts, making real to individuals that each holds an actual trust from an infinite past to an infinite future-it can be imprest even in kindergartenswould be the greatest help to morals that exists. Probably the commonest trouble with young people, and with older also, is that they see no reason for being, no mission, no real responsibility; believing that what they do is of no consequence to anyone but themselves. This can be disproved more convincingly than most false assertions by those who know how to do it correctly. The Council should aid by all means in its power the making of teachers who know how. It should have a committee to study ways and means of doing this. If we may indulge in fancy, with this ideal the ancient East and the new West are coming together-the East with its ancestor worship, a not wholly unworthy inspiration, measured by the graces of its civilization; the United States said to have a child-worship, much of it vague sentiment, much sensational and harmful. When society thru education fulfils its duty to give each age according to its needs truths correctly relating ancestors and descendants with the living, the meeting of East and West promises an era more nearly complete and therefore more enduringly satisfying. DISCUSSION ADELAIDE STEELE BAYLOR, State Supervisor of Household Arts, Indianapolis, Ind.— In the little state of Indiana, with a population of something over two and a half millions, are 524 charitable and corrective institutions with 20,000 inmates, or one for about every 140 inhabitants. Recently the governor of that state in a public address advised the people that these institutions were filled to overflowing, and declared in no uncertain terms that instead of appropriating more money for new buildings steps should be taken to lessen the constantly increasing number of those who were daily becoming a burden to the state. In the still smaller state of New Jersey, with a population of about two millions, there is spent a little less than $1,000,000 annually for dependent and neglected children alone, or about fifty cents per capita of the population. The sum is so enormous that the last report from New Jersey suggests: "It might be well to ascertain, if possible, some of the causes which make so great a dependency of children in this state. If some of the causes could be ascertained, then measures should be taken to remove the cause." Such conditions and such vast expenditures of money for dependents, defectives, and delinquents are widespread, and succeeding generations view the constantly increasing burden as one of the unavoidable accompaniments of progress, and mechanically make out their expense budgets with a certain amount for charity. And such statistics do not represent by any means the sum total of subnormals and their support. They do not touch upon the children in our schools who are under the direction of special experts, and are demanding the time, attention, and money that could well be expended for a more profitable education for the normal child. They do not include the thousands of dollars expended by individuals in charity not reported to managing boards. They do not include the families and children not yet discovered and classified that are a menace to the present and succeeding generations. The physical, mental, and moral stability of every citizen is the very essence of race preservation, and the weightiest problem for the public-school officials and teachers to solve today is that of discovering some method for enlightening the people, men and women, and for instructing the children, boys and girls, in the practical application of rational principles for the betterment of the present and future generations. The outcry against the vast expenditures in New Jersey is an economic one. We need to make it a humane one as well, one that pleads for a newer and broader sense of responsibility, reaching beyond the individual self, family, community, state, nation and present generation to our successors, to the race itself without reference to time limits. SECRETARY'S MINUTES NEW YORK MEETING OFFICERS President-ROBERT J. ALEY, president, University of Maine.. .Orono, Me. Vice-President-AUGUSTUS S. DOWNING, first assistant commissioner of Education, Albany, N.Y. .Chicago, Ill. FIRST SESSION-SATURDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 1, 1916 The meeting was called to order in the Ballroom of the Hotel Astor at 2:30 P.M. with President Aley in the chair. The president appointed J. Y. Joyner secretary. "Educational and Psychological Aspects of Racial Well-Being" was presented by Robert M. Yerkes, assistant professor of comparative psychology, Harvard University, and psychologist to the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, Mass. Discussion: Carrol G. Pearse, Milwaukee, Wis.; Frank A. Fitzpatrick, Boston, Mass.; Ella Flagg Young, Chicago, Ill.; and Helen C. Putnam, M.D., Providence, R.I. "The Course of Study as a Test of Efficiency of Supervision" was presented by A. Duncan Yocum, professor of educational research and practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. Following this paper J. W. Carr, chairman, Committee on Superintendent Problems, presented the following resolutions which were adopted: 1. That the report as submitted by Dr. Yocum be printed, and that the members of the Council in general and those of the Committee on Superintendent Problems in particular, suggest in writing to him the modifications, omissions, and additions to the report which they deem necessary. 2. That he be requested to rewrite the report, enlarging on the topics treated in such manner as may be necessary to set forth the subject in proper form, and that the same be considered by the Committee on Superintendent Problems. 3. That the subject come before this Council at a later date, if the committee deems it advisable to ask the Council to take official action in reference to the matter. "Rural Education" was presented by James Y. Joyner, state superintendent of public instruction, Raleigh, N.C. J. Y. JOYNER, Secretary SECOND SESSION-SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 1, 1916 The meeting was called to order in the Ballroom of the Hotel Astor by President Aley at 8:00 P.M. The following program was presented: "The Greater Thrift"-S. W. Straus, president, American Society of Thrift, Chicago, Ill. "Normal School Preparation for Thrift Teaching"-William B. Owen, principal, Chicago Normal College, Chicago, Ill. "Teaching Thrift thru the 'Common Branches""-J. D. Shoop, superintendent of schools, Chicago, Ill. "Thrift and the Teacher”—Arthur H. Chamberlain, secretary, California Council of Education, Chairman Thrift Committee, Los Angeles, Cal. WILLIAM B. OWEN, Secretary THIRD SESSION-MONDAY FORENOON, JULY 3, 1916 The meeting was called to order at 10:00 A.M., Vice-President Augustus S. Downing in the chair. J. Stanley Brown of Joliet, Ill., was appointed secretary. In the absence of the chairman of the Committee on Health Problems in Education, Charles H. Keyes, president, Skidmore School of Arts, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., presented the report of the committee. This report was discust by Walter B. Cannon, M.D., Harvard University Medical School, Boston, Mass., on behalf of the American Medical Association. It was moved, supported, and unanimously carried that the Council of Education recommend the appropriation of $1000 for the use of the committee during the coming year. A round table on pensions was conducted by Joseph Swain, president, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa., chairman, Committee on Teachers' Salaries, Tenure, and Pensions. The discussion was participated in by Clyde Furst, New York, N.Y.; Kate D. Blake, New York, N.Y.; O. S. Westcott, Chicago, Ill.; C. H. Keyes, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; J. Y. Joyner, Raleigh, N.C.; and W. M. Davidson, Pittsburgh, Pa. J. Y. Joyner presented the following resolutions which were unanimously adopted: 1. That the National Council of Education appoint a committee of ten to investigate the status of rural education in the United States, to make full report thereon to this body and to the National Education Association embodying therein recommendations for the improvement thereof, and to cooperate with the United States Bureau of Education and the United States Department of Agriculture and the Federal and State governments for the study and promotion thereof. 2. That this Council recommend to the Executive Committee such appropriation as may be necessary for the expense of such investigation and report. The Committee on Nominations presented the following report: WILLIAM B. Owen, Chicago, Ill., President... ADELAIDE STEELE BAYLOR, Indianapolis, Ind., Secretary: DAVID B. JOHNSON, Rock Hill, S. C., Executive Committee. JACOB A. SHAWAN, Columbus, Ohio, Committee on Membership. .Term expires 1919 .Term expires 1917 .Term expires 1919 WALTER R. SIDERS, Pocatello, Idaho, Committee on Membership. ....Term expires 1917 MEMBERS TERMS TO EXPIRE IN 1922 L. R. Alderman, Portland, Ore., to succeed D. H. Christiansen, Salt Lake City, Utah. Payson Smith, Boston, Mass., to succeed himself. James H. Van Sickle, Springfield, Mass., to succeed himself. Grace Shepherd, Boise, Idaho, to succeed James A. Barr, Berkeley, Cal. J. Y. Joyner, Raleigh, N.C., to succeed himself. Robert J. Aley, Orono, Me., to succeed himself. Charles E. Chadsey, Detroit, Mich., to succeed himself. Davis Snedden, New York, N.Y., to succeed himself. J. Stanley Brown, Joliet, Ill., to succeed himself. TERMS TO EXPIRE IN 1917 Fletcher B. Dresslar, Nashville, Tenn., to fill vacancy. The secretary was authorized to cast the unanimous ballot for the above-named officers and members. On motion duly made and carried it was recommended that hereafter the first meeting of the Council be held on Monday instead of on Saturday, of the week preceding the general sessions of the Association. It was also recommended that future Council meetings be held in a room seating not to exceed two hundred people. J. STANLEY BROWN, Secretary |