accomplish the results that it should accomplish, without a curriculum extending thru a longer period of years.

I know of nothing in American life and character, nor in American habits, nor in the mental peculiarities of the American, that justifies us in ignoring the long experience of other peoples in this matter. It has been well said that "the virtue of secondary teaching lies, in large measure, in its duration, in its slow influence upon the intellect. The best teachers need the help of time, if they wish, not to furnish the memory with hastily acquired and badly digested knowledge, but to act upon intellectual habits and accomplish the education of the mind, which is truly the essential aim of secondary education."

Let us then give the high school a chance to do its work, and when this shall have been accomplished, let us hope that, by omitting nonessentials and using a little saving common-sense, we may be able to shorten our whole school curriculum by one or two years.

DISCUSSION

SUPERINTENDENT EDWIN G. COOLEY, Chicago, Ill.—I believe I am in sympathy with most of what Principal Coy has said, tho I do not regard the separation of the highschool work from the elementary at the end of the sixth year as desirable.

I believe that in many ways, considering the conditions that exist in the Chicago high schools, the best is one of these schools having pupils from the kindergarten thru the twelfth grade. In that school we have manual training in the grades - manual training that can be carried farther than the grades. It seems to me that, while there is an advantage in employing something like the departmental method with the seventh and eighth grades, it is not necessary. We are giving teachers additional salary where they are able to specialize. I believe that the gap at the end of the eighth grade comes because we change too abruptly. I am not an advocate of the departmental method below the eleventh grade in the high school. I think that the lower grade in the high school needs teachers who can teach the pupils as well as the subjects.

It seems to me that the most crying need is some improvement in the curriculum and a change in the spirit of the work. We should have one or two years of manual training and commercial courses worthy of that name, and work that commends itself to the parents as dealing with real life.

It will be necessary to prescribe, of course, that a boy who takes physics must know mathematics, but we must allow choice. I do not think it is to the point to sneer at the choices by boys and girls; if they pick out "snaps," something is wrong with the teacher. I will not say it is a crime; but I will say it is a blunder, at least, to assume that schools go to pieces under the elective system. When evils from this system are shown, I will consider the objections.

Another point made by the writer of the paper is that the high school has a better atmosphere and a better corps of instructors than the elementary schools. More poor work is done in Chicago in the first and second years of the high school than in the seventh and eighth grades. More teachers are trying to bring university methods into the high school than there are making such mistakes in the grades below. I do not believe that algebra taught in the elementary schools will be more poorly taught than in the high schools.

I think I can say in conclusion simply this: While not pretending to have discussed

the subject thoroly, I agree as to the introduction of some of these studies lower down, some departmental work lower down; but not that the separation at the end of the sixth grade is fundamentally desirable.

SUPERINTENDENT F. LOUIS SOLDAN, St. Louis, Mo.-I am in accord with much of the paper and much of what has been said by the speaker preceding me. If I think of the readjustment of the high school at all, I think of it not as changed by changing the course of the district schools. Instead of holding up to the district-school teacher the ideal of the high-school teacher, I wish to hold up to the high-school teacher, as well worth imitating, the work done by the common-school teacher in the last ten of the fifteen years. The common-school teacher has gone beyond the mere knowledge of the subject he is to teach; he has gone to the thoughtful consideration of how these subjects should be taught to have the fullest educational influence over the children under his control, adjusted according to the wise and well-established principles of educational sciences. The very first step in the readjustment of the high school is to show at least one book by high-school teachers that embodies the high-school method. It is strange that the books for the common school teachers are without equivalents in the high schools. Let them follow the example of the common-school teachers in mastering the subjects and also in mastering the pedagogics of the subjects.

The pupils enter the high school as children. Their work in the first year, and often in the second year, is done after the ways of children, but by the time they leave the high schools they are adults in many respects. That important transition from childhood to adolescence has not been considered, so far as I know, by any high-school teacher. The course of study should be adjusted according to the principles of wise pedagogics.

I do not know whether your experience is the same as mine. The common complaint of a teacher is: "If only those children came to me well prepared!" That is the general educational feeling. When the college professor finds that condition resulting from the infinite capacity of the young mind to resist new knowledge, he speaks of the high school as a failure. The high-school teacher speaks of the poor work of the district schools, and the only teacher that does not make the same complaint is the kindergarten teacher. There is enough to readjust without adding below or cutting off at the top.

PROFESSOR CHARLES DEGARMO, of Cornell University. Since I have been engaged in the business of training teachers all my professional life, I cannot be thought by anyone to disparage such training.

Tho it may be conceded that high-school teaching is often poor, yet I deprecate the inference that often follows remarks up on this subject, to the effect that the possession of knowledge is a presupposition of inefficiency in teaching. Such an inference, I am sure, is wrong.

It was stated by the previous speaker that we have not yet produced a book on the pedagogics of high-school teaching. Tho we have no single volume covering this field, I wish to mention a few books on the teaching of secondary subjects that are worthy of our consideration: (1) The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics, embracing arithmetic, algebra, and plane and solid geometry, by David Eugene Smith, of Teachers College, Columbia University, an expert in knowledge of the subject and a past-master of its teaching. (2) German Higher Schools, by Dean James E. Russell, of the same institution. This volume gives the American teacher a wide survey of secondary work in all its departments, as it may be seen in Germany. (3) The Teaching of Latin and Greek, by Professors Bennett and Bristol, of Cornell University-a book which gives a complete survey of the teaching of Latin from the beginning to the end of the high-school course. (4) The Teaching of English, by Percival Chubb, of the Ethical Culture School, New York city. This book ranges over both elementary and secondary work in English. (5) The Teaching of Physics and Chemistry, by Smith and Hall - a complete survey of the teaching of these two subjects in the high school. (6) Educational Aims and Educational

a book which discusses in broad

Methods, by Paul H. Hanus, of Harvard Universityand generous spirit the whole high school problem. (7) The Meaning of Education, by President Butler, of Columbia University, a large proportion of which pertains to secondary education. (8) The Making of our Middle Schools, by Professor E. E. Brown, of the University of California. This book, tho historical in the main, gives many intimations as to how high-school teaching should be done. Besides these eight volumes, which are certainly worthy of consideration, there are many other books and a large number of reports which deal with the various aspects of secondary education. It can, therefore, not justly be charged that the high-school interest has been neglected in educational literature.

Concerning the main question before us, I wish to express my accordance with the main conclusions of Principal Coy's paper. We have been considering this subject for two years at Cornell, and have come to the firm conclusion that the roots of the highschool studies must go farther down into the grades, unless we are prepared greatly to overburden the youth from fourteen to eighteen in preparation for the work of the colleges and universities. The subject, however, is beset with administrative and other difficulties. In Europe secondary education is simplified in that it not only extends over longer periods than in this country, but because secondary education is offered in the main only to children of educated parents. These schools are segregated from those for the common people, but in this country we must preserve our educational ladder. We must make it possible for the children of all classes to pass easily and readily from elementary to secondary, and from secondary to higher, education. This means that we cannot have a caste system for our secondary schools.

In most cases I think the best and most natural solution of the problem is to offer elective courses in beginning languages and in the elements of algebra and geometry in the grammar schools. Plenty of teachers can be found who are able, not only to teach the subject, but to teach the pupil.

I did not rise, however, to settle this question, but rather to express my conviction of its importance.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN RURAL SCHOOLS

ALFRED BAYLISS, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.

I visited a country school the other day, which I should like to describe as a basis for this discussion.

The house is comparatively new, and enjoys the unusual distinction in Illinois- of being heated by a furnace. There is a narrow closet, extending the whole width of the building, from which leads the stairway to the basement. There is also an outer stairway to a door opening into the basement. I took the liberty to work my way into the schoolroom thru this back door and up the inside stairs, thus making an opportunity to explore that basement and take an inventory of the contents of the long closet before intruding upon the school.

The excavation for the basement is under about one-third of the floor space, and was intended to be just large enough for the furnace and coal supply. But by some happy inadvertence it had been made larger than absolutely necessary for those conveniences, and so there is room in the

There is a well-made

corner nearest the window for a little workshop. (by the teacher) carpenter's bench-strong, but not elegant; with a good vise and a fair kit of tools, including a jack-plane, two chisels, a trisquare, joiners' gauge, brace and two bits, a drawing-knife, saw, two jig saws, two hammers, three bench knives, a small lathe, and a glue pot. There were some pieces of unfinished work and quite a little stock of lumber. Such an outfit I had never before seen in connection with a oneroom country school.

As I stood in the closet upstairs, I could hear a small boy say: "Lesson two X's, V, one I-twenty-six. Forms of land and water. A penin-su-la, is a body of land; " etc., etc. As I entered the schoolroom, the first thing I saw was the omnipresent time-table of recitations-fifteen in the morning and seventeen in the afternoon. There was a twentyminute period for the "A" arithmetic, and fifteen minutes each for three other subjects; all the other "hours" were five or ten minutes long. The school, therefore, is "normal" in some respects. Those four long recitation periods are accounted for by the fact that six of the pupils are in the eighth grade. The thirty-three pupils enrolled vary in age from six to eighteen years. A baker's dozen of them are over twelve years old. There were fifteen boys and four girls present the day I was there.

One notes at a glance that the ceiling is papered, that the matting in the aisles is neat, and the rug near the teacher's table rather pretty. But the casual visitor might go away uncertain about the walls; they are so covered with the handiwork of the children-colored maps, drawings, amateur photographs, and the like. These things detract so much from the effect of the three or four fine pictures that the children are planning to remove some of their own work to the halls, and give Rosa Bonheur, Millet, and Herring a better chance. Cases of that kind of growth are not uncommon in Illinois.

This school had attracted attention by the great variety and excellence of its exhibits at the Illinois State Fair. To illustrate, I quote a paragraph from a newspaper:

The Cottage Hill school in Sangamon county, Mr. E. C. Pruitt, teacher, is probably the most remarkable country school in Illinois in the matter of making agricultural collections. It takes first premium in products of school garden, flowers from school garden, collection of seeds gathered by the pupils, geological collection, school collection of woods, school collection of insects, and maps of Illinois and grand division maps; and second (no first being granted) in amateur photography of school grounds and scenes. Cottage Hill school also has a library of 150 or 200 books. Sixty-five kinds of wood are shown; the large table of potted plants taken from the school garden is very beautiful and a credit to any gardener; the products of the school garden include potatoes, tomatoes, corn of different kinds, beans of different kinds, onions, turnips, several grasses and other products. The seed collection is very elaborate, and the hundreds of kinds are neatly displayed in glass bottles and elongated globes especially adapted to the purpose. The other collections mentioned are much beyond the ordinary. A reporter talked with some parents

who send children to this school. They reported that the boys and girls are greatly interested in these collections and the garden-making, and that they talk about it a great deal at home. There is much enthusiasm in the school, and many things are learned about the features mentioned.

One of the boys told me they had earned two hundred and ninety dollars in this way. I said: "What have you done with all that money?" His reply was an expressive gesture, which said, as plainly as words: "Look around and make your own list." I told the children that their library would be richer by one or two more books, if they would tell me in writing what became of that money. There was a ready assent, and the next Monday morning after my visit I received thirteen letters bearing on the subject. Considered as a piece of literary art, the one I now read is neither the best nor the worst, but from the informational side it is among the best :

DEAR SIR:

COTTAGE HILL SCHOOL

Jan. 15, 1903.

You said you would like to know what we done with the $290 we took away from the State Fair of Illinois for premiums I will menction some of the things I can think of there is our library consisting of a 185 books, Two book cases, a 12-inch globe Dictionary stand, Music chart, case for seeds, and globes for seed, Lumber for stage curtain, an carpet, Six lampes with reflecters, Clock, Two fine pictures One of Christ, the other of Britany sheep, framed eight Diplomɔes, and several of our premium maps and many other pictures to numerous to mention, Artificial palm, three tables and eight Chairs, Six drawing boards, gave $17.50 to pupils, flowers and flower seed, papered the school room, 100 seed bottles, lathe work bench and set of tools, stand cover Song books, and many articcals we neaded to make all of these things Well I guess I will close now as I can think of nothing else. Yours truly

I do not file this statement as an exhibit of the "Illinois plan." The case is not a type. It may not be an illustration of a rational solution of the problem of "industrial education in rural schools." I shall not be surprised to hear it characterized as a case of misdirected energy, exhibiting nothing of educational value, or even as a lawless obstruction of the real business of the school. It is, nevertheless, an existing case, and, moreover, one of which there will soon be many counterparts, if the energy of country teachers and supervisors is turned, as seems not unlikely, in the direction indicated by it. For the country school, as never before, is taking its cue from the town. The country teachers have a feeling, if they do not know, that the town teachers have the advantage of them, and are doing some things better than the town teachers can do them. They are ready to make any sort of experiment - do anything their supervisors suggest. They are impetuously eager to "prove all things." They will hold fast to that which is good, too, if, by reason of light and guidance they chance to find it.

In this instance there is, apparently, a lack of co-ordination and logi