the supreme law, and may be destructive as among barbarians, or constructive as we are finding is the secret of that civilization we hope to realize. Peace without struggle is death. And peace devoted to fighting with one's fellows for a livelihood or for wealth, to a struggle that exploits the poor and a sex and childhood, to a struggle of economic uncoordination, such as peace has ever been, invites degeneracy-the degeneracy of poverty, crime, disease, and defectiveness, physical and mental.

The difference between the destructiveness of barbarism and constructiveness of a possible new kind of peace lies in the aims of the two sorts of struggle. To go no farther back than our own democracy, we have progressively enlarged our conception of the kind of individual entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, until the beginning of the twentieth century found us in the midst of struggles for rights of labor against institutions favoring capital; for rights of women to fulfil their duties in human betterment against hampering laws made by men; for rights of children to be well born and well cared for against use of liberty by adults to pursue "happiness," meaning self-gratification, in unsanitary, immoral, ignorant, idle, and other individualistic living. These struggles for rights of labor, of women, of children, are all constructive, are against conditions maintained by the majority under dominating ideals of individualism and its by-product, commercialism. These struggles, still unfinisht, are already large factors in such reductions of rates of mortality, morbidity, and perhaps crime, as the Bureau of the Census has reported; rates that are still, however, higher in some instances than numerous similar rates in certain other countries.

Reversion to war among civilizations nearest like our own, and the enormousness of our own preventable losses of life, health, and happiness during struggles in peace times are proofs that racial interests should supersede individualism as the ideal. Educators must prepare for these constructive rivalries in reduction of degeneracy, crime, disease, defectiveness, and mortality rates; must prepare for international contests devoted to this creative efficiency. Instead of recording battles, conquests, and exterminations of peoples as proud events, instead of exalting generals, admirals, governors, and multimillionaires as great individuals, historians should encourage other ambitions by narrating methods which were successful in replacing evils by excellences in communities and among nations, and the individuals who were leaders in these battles-the Pasteurs and Mendels, the Roger Williamses and Abraham Lincolns, Henry Barnards, and Matthew Vassars, Susan Anthonys, Mary Hunts, Ellen Richardses, and their contemporaries who workt with them—will receive the new hero-worship, inspiring further achievement in universal well-being.

This requires all-round abler men and women than does destructiveness. We are not—or are we ?-weaklings to shirk the challenge of the age. The traitors to the United States are they who actively or passively thwart such preparedness. The optimist believes that some nation will "arrive."

A national ideal, or an international ideal, one which the people deputize their schools to develop, can thrive only when enough of all the people believe in it. Its cultivation means widely extended efforts according to methods adapted to distant parts of our great territory and to our varied population. The first requirement, that a considerable number believe in concrete effort for the higher ideal, racial well-being, has been coming to pass rather rapidly and more or less unconsciously for a half-century. The second need in establishing an ideal is that educators shall use effective methods.

It is because of the fact, too often ignored, that one institution, or one group of students and teachers, or one commonwealth in a great nation does not and cannot know all there is to know in a great new venture-it is because of this human limitation and consequent fallibility that we are distributing our study thruout all educators' courses in the country, inviting their assistance. My own observation has more than once convinst me that the best work is not infrequently done in some obscure little schoolroom, and if we could adopt some of these methods extensively thruout the country, several of

our urgent educational difficulties would be solved. It is, therefore, by the collective assistance of this multitude of councilors dedicated to educational affairs that we are likely to arrive at best methods, as well as extended efficiency in future use of them.

THE COURSE OF STUDY AS A TEST OF EFFICIENCY OF SUPERVISION

A. DUNCAN YOCUM, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND PRACTICE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

This report has been prepared in the hope that it may lead to some general agreement by the Council concerning the fundamental characteristics of an efficient course of study. With this end in view, effort has been made to make the following propositions general enough to apply to any type of course, and yet definite enough to specify what is most essential to the efficiency of each.

The term "course of study" is used as the popular substitute for educational "content." In deference to Dr. Snedden's insistence that clear distinction should be maintained between "course of study" and teachers' manuals and school textbooks, I would have substituted the expression "material of instruction," were it not for my wish to avoid all technical expressions non-essential to the purpose of the report. Schoolmen in general understand "course of study" to include all the educational material that is to be brought to bear upon the pupil. Sometimes it merely enumerates school textbooks; sometimes it is supplemented by definite suggestions in teachers' manuals. It is usually taken, however, to include all that is authoritatively prescribed for the pupils; and it is in that sense that I use the term. Indeed it is only in the sense of authoritative prescription that I can speak of it as the test of supervision. Here again Dr. Snedden very properly insists on distinction between executive and legislative educational authority:

A course of study should be very analogous to the plans and specifications which an architect prepares for the guidance of builders. Supervision follows to see that the plans and specifications are complied with, and this supervision may itself be tested. The plans and specifications, however, are fundamentally the general and specific directions under which people are to work.

This, of course, I accept, but some authority or other must be responsible for the working plans, and the only expert authority that can be held responsible for the course of study is the superintendent or principal at the head of the school system or school unit. Committees of assistants or teachers may detail the course, and boards of education approve it, or select and adopt the textbooks that take its place, or on which it is based. But it is supervisory authority, either in the person of superintendent or principal, or usurpt by the board, that finally details the course and is primarily responsible for it.

1. Distinction must be drawn between a mere paper course of study with its textbooks and its manuals, and its results in actual practice. A course of study is a test of supervision merely in what it includes and omits, in the aims which it specifies, in the detail and definiteness with which it seeks to attain them, in its provision for readjustment, in its relative valuation and emphasis of details, and in the organization which results from definiteness.

2. The evidence offered by a non-detailed course of study is conclusive only in what it omits. If, for example, it fails to provide for drawing, domestic science, or esthetic training, and no cooperative social agencies exist in the community to supplement the work of the school, it is safe to assume that what is not prescribed does not exist as a systematic phase of school ⚫ work. If it exists at all, the course of study is not responsible for it. On the other hand, the presence of certain forms of work in a general and undetailed course of study-the direction that "teachers at this point shall give lessons in morals and manners," or the mere listing of lessons in hygiene -does not insure sufficient instruction or necessarily result in any instruction at all. A course of study which limits itself to apportioning sections of textbooks to successive school terms and years without emphasizing, omitting, or adding particular details, is usually so inclusive that selection. is left to the individual teacher. The ordinary textbook designed to meet the needs of many communities contains more material than is required for anyone. Without detailed prescription, essentials and trifles are usually given equal emphasis in the vain effort to master the text as a whole.

Absence of a detailed course may stimulate individual initiative and result in a high degree of efficiency in particular phases of work, with the form of efficiency largely differing for each teacher. But even if supplemented by individual teachers' plan-books and problem-schemes, it is just as likely to result in such omission of essentials and overemphasis of minor details that investigation must look as carefully for fundamental failure as for exceptional success.

3. A detailed course of study not only insures sufficient data for a test of efficiency, but is in itself a favorable condition to efficiency, if it provides for initiative on the part of individual teachers with a view to continual readjustment. If absence of detail lays supervision open to suspicion, a merely logical detailing, whether in the course or in specified textbooks, neither menaces individual initiative nor insures efficiency. It may include sufficient data to determine quite fully what is taught as well as what is omitted. It may in itself thru its inclusions and omissions become a favorable condition to efficiency, but only so far as it makes possible the far greater pedagogical definiteness, yet to be described, that is gradually resulting from the scientific determination of educational values, and so far as provision for continual revision gives opportunity for additions and modifications. Since the individual initiative on the part of teachers that

effects efficiency thru the course of study must express itself in scientific contributions, or suggestions based upon them, rather than in individual inspirations and enthusiasms, its safeguard lies rather in opportunity for individual expression and provision for readjustment than in indefiniteness and lack of detail. Where the detailed course takes the form of individual teachers' plan-books and problem-schemes, self-satisfaction with individual achievement lacks the counteracting incentives to progress which result from collective criticism of a common course.

4. A just and adequate test must be broad enough to include all prevailing standards, current readjustments, and scientific determinations. The absence of provision for readjustment does not necessarily result in inefficiency, but confines the course of study to particular kinds of efficiencies. Standards not only change, but existing standards differ. A test or a survey that sets up a theoretical ideal, especially the ideal of an individual, and makes it the unit for measuring a course of study or any other phase of supervision where a different ideal prevails, is misleading and unjust. Even a test or survey that is based upon scientific determinations must show how the course of study measures up to its own particular standard as well as to that of educational science. If this is true, the fact that educational thinkers and experts are not agreed upon all standards, in place of making tests and comparisons indeterminate, makes it necessary that they should be analytic and definite enough to measure what is peculiar to each and to compare what is common to all. The distinction between existing standards and scientific determinations will gradually disappear with the development of education as a science. Every type of school, especially the public school, is, after all, quick to adopt what is scientifically demonstrated to be essential to efficiency. Meanwhile, every test will in itself become a means to popularizing scientific standards, if always accompanied by comparison and ranking based on the aims and standards of the institution or system tested. Dr. Snedden is right when he says:

I can readily understand why, when dealing with a selected circle of educators or an experimental school, we should wish to go beyond what is available in the ordinary textbook; but for the rank and file of teachers, I am wondering whether we are not increasing rather than diminishing confusion.

5. A just and adequate test must take into account local conditions, but only in judging the limited amount of subject-matter for which they are determining. The necessity for adaptation to local needs limits itself almost wholly to specific or social phases of education, and there mainly to the industrial. Later discussion will show the possibility of adaptation to local or individual tastes and interests, where different details of subjectmatter within a particular branch of study, or in different branches, can accomplish the same essential aim or have in themselves equal probability of usefulness and survival. Limitation thru poverty of local resources bears less upon the selection and organization of subject-matter

than upon the quality of instruction and the more material provisions for carrying out the course of study, such as textbooks, library, and apparatus. No more serious blunder can be made by an investigator than to judge the quality of any course of study, or even the efficiency of instruction, thru the nature and extent of school equipment.

6. It must sharply distinguish between (1) essential details, the "irreducible minimum" to be memorized by all individuals in common; (2) optional details which, while presented to all in common, will be partially and variously retained by each individual; and (3) impressionistic details which serve to concrete or emotionalize useful things, but which should not be memorized at all. Since this distinction is "beyond what is available in the ordinary textbook," most teachers will vainly attempt to exact all details, if the course of study does not specify those which are to be given emphasis. As yet the distinction between essentials, optionals, and impressives has not been scientifically made. Supervisory authority in different localities will therefore not fix wholly upon the same essentials even where they are requiring the same branches. The fundamental requirement, however, is not that essentials shall be uniform or identical, but that they shall be sharply distinguisht from optional details, and optional details from impressionistic. This distinction is the essential purpose in a scientific determination of the relative worth of details within the various branches.

When courses of study specify an essential minimum for each grade small enough for it to be required of all pupils, the problem of gradation and retardation will be largely solved. Meanwhile, such minimums as are required of backward children, immigrant groups and defectives, represent attempts to select essentials.

In the case of optional material, efficiency demands something more than its specification as nonessential. The course of study should include a sufficient amount and variety of equally useful details to appeal to individual interests, selected with a view to their greater likelihood of retention. in the absence of drill. More than this, the partial and varying retention of different details by each individual, in as high proportion as native retentiveness permits, should be an end in itself rather than evidence of failure to remember all. It is necessary that all educated individuals shall be well informed, but not that they shall possess the same information, outside of minimum essentials. In the case of such details as minor causes and effects and the great mass of exact statistics-height of mountains and population of cities, the names of Columbus' ships, or the bones in the human ear-where usefulness lies, not in the things themselves, but in their concreting or emotionalizing of larger truths, the course of study should direct that they are not to be memorized at all.

7. It must make all practicable provision for individual abilities and interests which does not involve sacrifice of the minimum, essential to individuals in common: (1) Thru variation—that is, thru making the optional