years; work done in the schools in excess of the regular admission requirements counts toward securing the degree, and a considerable number of the students who go thru in three years have done part of their college work before entrance. If the Harvard course is shortened to three years, the result will have been gained largely, if not mainly, by adding to the work of the secondary schools.

This is one of the strongest points in the argument for shortening the college course. If pupils now reach college two years later than formerly, and if at that time they have accomplished two years more of work than before, why should they not shorten the college course by that amount and leave at the same point as their grandfathers? I am not now concerned with answering this question either in the affirmative or in the negative, but I am concerned to show what effect this movement will have upon the question of enlarging the secondary field. Would the result not be inevitably to throw on the school the burden of compensating, in part at least, for the shortened course? That there would be such a tendency is certain, and it is a question whether it could be successfully resisted.

Another element that enters into the case is the advanced age at which young men, on account of the increased college requirements and the steadily growing demands of the professional schools, are compelled to begin their life-work, and the consequent tendency to skip the college altogether. Now the ordinary school course does not afford satisfactory foundation for professional study, and there is beginning to be heard a demand for more extended work in the schools that will supply an adequate preparation. The establishment of a one- or two-year course supplementary to the ordinary secondary-school work would today meet a genuine demand. It is precisely to meet this situation that the proposal is made to shorten the college course, so that here is another point at which these two questions touch.

These are the forces that are today operating to extend upward the secondary field. I have said that the tendency is perhaps not yet fully formulated, but it is real, and the demand is formulated in no uncertain tones. Two days ago, from this platform, President Eliot and President Harper calmly spoke of turning over still more of the college work to the schools. These men are high authorities; they do not speak idly, and their words carry weight; but I wish to take this opportunity, calmly, deliberately, and with all of the emphasis at my command, to utter a distinct and unqualified protest.

I protest against transferring any more work from the college to the school, because it means the turning of our colleges into universities and the sacrifice of one of the strongest factors in our educational scheme. The American college is an institution peculiar to this country, and has no counterpart in other educational systems. It has been developed to suit our needs, and it has proved its right to exist by the results that it has achieved. It is more than a course of study, and it is doing a work that can never be accomplished by any system of schools, however exalted. It will be a sad day for American education if students ever come to pass directly from the schools to university work.

I protest, in the second place, against transferring any more work from the college to the school because the beast is already sinking beneath the burden. We are now doing more college work than is wise or best. The secondary field has been extended outward, and at the same time forced upward, until one of the most serious evils that exist in our educational system today is the overloaded school. President Harper said on Tuesday that we could expect methods of secondary education to be greatly improved in the near future, and that because of the saving of time involved more college work could then be unloaded on the school. President Harper was right. There has been great improvement in secondary instruction in the immediate past, and we may expect more in the immediate future. But I protest against compensating for this gain by piling more work upon us, thus leaving our condition as bad as it is at present.

Personally I believe I have no thought that it can ever be carried out, but I believe -that it would be better if college requirements were distinctly less in quantity than at present. We could do better work, and we could send better students to college, if

the amount exacted of us were less, and we had the opportunity to do the smaller quantity in the best possible manner, without cramming and without undue pressure. Time will not allow me to enlarge on this point, but I believe that the curse of secondary education today is the unreasonable pressure that now exists. Let the secondary field be extended downward, with the resultant saving of time and relief from strain; let the field be extended outward, with the consequent gain in breadth and richness; but let what is thus gained be applied to making more efficient the work that rightly belongs to us, not to making room for more work from above. Thus we shall do a double service: we shall preserve the American college to fill its rightful place between the school and the university; and we shall make it possible for the American school to become an even more efficient educational instrument than it is at present.

ISAAC THOMAS, principal of Edmunds High School, Burlington, Vt.-Whether the tendencies we are discussing are real or speculative, widespread or not, is not now the question. Of course, it would be interesting, and perhaps important, if we could determine how widespread they are, but even that knowledge would not enable us to know their character definitely. They exist in one or the other form or in both, and probably owe their existence to three causes at least: (1) the knowledge that the secondary field is not well occupied at present; (2) a feeling that it is not definitely occupied; (3) a desire— sometimes sincere, sometimes simply ambitious-to give the secondary school a larger place in our educational system. This paper discusses the tendency to the enlargement of the secondary field that owes its existence to the first cause assigned above: the knowledge that the secondary field is not well occupied at present.

However highly we may think of the work now done by the secondary school, we are compelled to admit that the demands made upon it by both the public and the college are not only not well met, but cannot be so met under existing educational conditions. We may complain, with justice too, that the college demands too much; we may say, not unjustly, that the lower schools are not meeting our demands upon them; we may cry out, with good show of reason, against an impatient and unreasonable public demand upon us; yet there the fact of our insufficiency stubbornly stands. What is to be done about it? The remedy commonly and almost universally suggested is an extension of time to the secondary school for its work, an enlargement of the secondary field in time. An extension of time can be made in only two directions-backward into the grammar school or forward into college. Let me consider these two alternatives in their order. To extend the time of secondary work backward would shorten the school life, except as hindered by compulsory laws, of all those who now end that life with the grammar school. Can we afford to do that? Again, the average age of entrance into the high school is now between fourteen and fifteen years, or, roughly speaking, the time of transition from childhood to youth; and so the boy passes naturally, at the end of his childhood, out of the grammar school into the high school, where, because of its larger and freer ways, he finds a place in which he may better begin to realize himself.

If, on the other hand, we push the time limit forward into college, we make a similar disturbance at the other end of the line; for the average age of graduation from high school and of entrance into college and life is now between eighteen and nineteen years -an age at which the boy has come out of his youth and must begin to put on the man. The high school is no longer the place for him, needing, as he does, a place for the larger development of his better-realized self. It seems to me, therefore, that here are two time limits set in nature and good sense for secondary work, beyond which we may not pass far in either direction.

But raising objections to the remedy suggested-extension of time-removes neither the cause nor the manifestation of the cause. I have thus far spoken of what may not be done. In the brief time left I shall speak of what may be done; for I believe that the demands, both of the college and of the public, upon the secondary school can be ade

quately met without any extension of time, without an enlargement of our field in that direction. How? In reply I make two suggestions: First, by insisting that the quantity requirement for the individual pupil be lessened, and the quality, requirement be correspondingly raised. I mean by this, not that the secondary curriculum shall be made less full, shall have anything cut out of it, nor that the pupil shall work less hard than at present, but that he shall not only study fewer subjects, but cover less ground. In a word, that he shall learn how to do and do well all he undertakes; capability and quality first, with as great quantity as possible. Secondly-and I believe the two suggestions must go together for a right solution of our problem-by insisting upon and working for such an arrangement and division of work, from the kindergarten to the college, as will give to each department, in turn, that which is fitted for it and for which it is fitted. This means, of course, that such an arrangement of work does not now exist, and is merely the statement of a fact; it means that the grades are doing many things badly because unfittingly, and leaving undone many things they might do well because fittingly; it means that many things which the grades ought to have done the secondary schools are doing, and doing badly because unfittingly, and that they are also doing foolishly and ambitiously some things they ought not to be doing; it means that, wherever the blame may lie, those who are rightly held responsible for an intelligent and sane arrangement of school work have not yet brought to their task that thought for the public welfare and that harmony of action which the people, whose servants they are, have a right to expect. Their just expectations will be fulfilled only when as much time and thought are given to the practical and local problem as are now given to the abstract and general one, and when we fully realize that we constantly face a condition and not a theory.

DR. JULIUS SACHS, New York city.-The discussion this morning supplements that of Tuesday. The three-year college course definitely affects the high school. Secondary schools do not wish to invade the college field, because they wish to do thoroly and intensively what they have now to do. It is quality rather than quantity that should receive emphasis. Method and methods have not been made sufficiently prominent. We need to strive, as teachers, for intellectual equipment. Here the college can greatly help the work of secondary schools. The colleges can do more in this respect than they do now. They should give special training for teaching.

E. V. ROBINSON, principal of Central High School, St. Paul, Minn.-College requirements do not primarily affect the high school, because the majority of pupils in the high school do not go to college. The present system is a historical development. Ours is the only country in the world that has a fifth wheel in its educational system. Going thru all the departments of our educational course brings a young man to his twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year before he can enter upon his life-work. This is an absurdity, which the people are not likely to allow much longer to exist.

J. H. PILLSBURY, principal of Waban School, Newton, Mass.-Let us extend our work downward. We can teach our geometry much better by beginning it in connection with arithmetic in the higher grades of the grammar school. So of modern languages and of Latin. It may not be profitable to take college work in secondary schools, but we have had no difficulty in our own school.

FRANCIS BURKE BRANDT, Central High School, Philadelphia, Pa.-There are two distinct tendencies in extending the field of secondary work. One is downward and the other upward. The high school stands for the second tendency. This school is asking for two more years. The additional work asked for is not to be done in the same time as now. Of 700,000 students doing secondary work in the United States 500,000 are in public high schools. We must multiply colleges. We have not enough now.

WILLIAM SCHUYLER, High School, St. Louis, Mo.-In our western high schools most of the pupils finish education for life. We have gradually changed the curriculum

to an omnium gatherum. How are we going to do it all? The public will have it. That is why we do it. We of the public high school must look out for what the public

wants.

OLIVER S. WESTCOTT, principal of Robert A. Waller High School, Chicago, Ill.— The people will not vote all the taxes we need to satisfy the fulminations of various speakers.

GEORGE W. ROLLINS, master of Public Latin School, Boston, Mass.-For at least twenty-five years the high school has been dipping down into the grammar school. We take pupils at the close of the sixth grade. We may, by this process, save one year.

WILLIAM H. BLACK, president of Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Mo.-We are in danger of making an unnecessary ado about two things. It is very dangerous for a young man to get out of school before the age of twenty-five. Many people have done their best work after forty. A well-mastered life is the all-important thing. That takes time. Quality is important. The quality of the student makes for ability to do qualitative work in the course. It makes no difference so far as the Republic and its great mission are concerned whether we conform to foreign systems or not.

COEDUCATION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

G. STANLEY HALL, PRESIDENT OF CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS. Men and women differ in their dimension, sense, tissue, organ, in their abilities, in crime, disease; and these differences, which science is now multiplying and emphasizing, increase with advancing civilization. In savagery women and men are more alike in their physical structure and in their occupations, but with real progress the sexes diverge and draw apart, and the diversities always present are multiplied and accentuated. Intersexual differences culminate during the sexual period. Little boys and girls play together, do the same things, in many respects have the same tastes, are unconscious of sex, as too in senescence there is reapproximation. Old men and women become more like each other and are again in a sense sexless.

Divergence is most marked and sudden in the pubescent period — in the early teens. At this time, by almost world-wide consent, boys and girls separate, and lead their lives during this most critical period of inception more or less apart, at least for a few years, until the ferment of mind and body which results in maturity of functions then born and culminating in nubility has done its work. The family and the home abundantly recognize this tendency. At twelve or fourteen brothers and sisters develop a life more independent of each other than before. Their home occupations differ, as do their plays, games, tastes. This is normal and biological. What our school and other institutions should do is to push distinctions to their uttermost, to make boys more manly and girls more womanly. We should respect the law of sexual differences, and not forget that motherhood is a very different thing from fatherhood. Neither.

sex should copy or set patterns to the other, but all parts should be played harmoniously and clearly in the great sex symphony.

I have here nothing to say against coeducation in college, still less in university grades after the maturity which comes at eighteen or twenty has been achieved; but it is high time to ask ourselves whether the theory and practice of identical coeducation, which has lately been carried to a greater extreme in this country than the rest of the world recognizes, has not brought certain grave dangers; whether it does not interfere with the natural differentiations everywhere seen in home and society. I recognize, of course, the great argument of economy. We should save money and effort, could we unite churches of not too diverse creeds; could give better preaching, music, improve the edifice, etc. I am by no means ready to advocate the abolition of coeducation, but my purpose today is to sum up in a rough, brief way our account of profit and loss with it.

On the one hand, I believe that each sex best develops some of its own best qualities in the presence of the other; but the question still remains: How much? when? and in what way? Association secures this end. I think that girls and boys are often interested in different aspects of the same topic, and this may have a tendency to broaden the view-point of each and bring it into sympathy with that of the other; but the question still remains whether one be not too much attracted to the sphere of the other. No doubt some girls become a little less gushy and sentimental, their conduct more thoughtful; their sense of responsibility for one of woman's great functions, which is bestowing praise, is increased. There is much evidence that certain boys' vices are mitigated; they are made more urbane; thoughts of sex are made more healthful. In some respects boys are stimulated to good scholarship by girls, who in many schools and topics excel them. We should ask, however, what nature's way is at this stage of life; whether boys, in order to be well verified later, ought to be so boisterous and even rough as to be at times unfit companions for girls; or whether, on the other hand, girls, to be best matured, ought not to have their sentimental periods of instability, especially when we venture to raise the question, whether for a girl in the early teens, when her health for her whole life depends upon normalizing the lunar month, there is not something unhygienic, unnatural, not to say a little monstrous, in school associations with boys when she must suppress and conceal her instincts, feelings, and instinctive promptings, and these times which suggest withdrawing, stepping aside to let Lord Nature do its beautiful, magnificent work of efflorescence. It is a sacred time of reverent exemption from the hard struggle of existence in the world, mental effort in the school. Medical specialists, many of the best of whom now insist that she thru this should be, as it were, "turned out to grass," or should lie fallow so far as intellectual efforts go, one-fourth the time no doubt, often go too far; but their unanimous voice should not entirely be disregarded.