York have established rural schools on a more or less similiar plan.

There are, however, three things that it is well to keep in mind in all such endeavors. The first is that no amount of need or demand for the more practical training should be permitted entirely to eclipse the value and satisfaction that there are in the refinements and broader outlook on life afforded by the culture side of an education. The second is the importance of making a careful survey of the region to be served by such a school, with a view of making the practical side of the education suit as nearly as possible its greatest needs. And the third is the supreme importance of securing well-trained, efficient instructors for these schools. As each of these schools becomes a natural centre of influence and inspiration, as well as of instruction, the more competent the corps of its instructors the greater the return for the investment in the school by the taxpayers of the county and the State. In Wisconsin the State gives $4000 a year to each of such schools, and the county tax provides the remainder.

THE WAKE COUNTY PLAN.-A special bulletin issued by the Federal Bureau of Education shows that the movement begun in Wake County, North Carolina, to teach farming to public-school pupils by employing them on farms near the school-houses is spreading. Some eleven tracts, cultivated in the county by this method, yielded a net revenue of $1200 besides giving instruction in practical farming by modern methods to the pupils and their parents. This result should appeal to many communities in which land is plentiful and taxes are not easily raised.

By the Wake County method each farm is devoted to one crop which is raised under the supervision of the best farmer in the neighborhood. The work has a valuable social aspect, for it brings together young persons and adults under less formal and more enjoyable conditions than exist in the school-rooms. It combines theory with practice and can easily be made to supplement text-book instruction on subjects related to country life. A system of such farms and instruction, perhaps under State direction, could be made to do much toward extending scientific agriculture.

PART III

CHAPTER V

DEVELOPMENTS DIRECTLY AFFECTING THE HIGHER INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING.

Tests of College Efficiency.

In an address delivered before the Harvard Teachers' Association, the Secretary of the Carnegie Foundation, Mr. Clyde Furst, reviewed some of the educational standards and tests that the Foundation had considered it advisable to apply in their detailed study of the institutions eligible to share in the benefits of their pension fund. This detailed study revealed the importance of and the great variations in such things as: (1) corporate organization—the test of corporate efficiency leading them to question boards of trustees with as few as 5 members or with as many as 80, both these extremes actually existing among the number of institutions studied; (2) the proportion of the total income spent for instruction, with a particularly great variation in the average salaries paid to the various teachers in the instructing staff in different institutions; (3) the adequacy of the reporting and recording systems in use, there being no standard forms for such vital things as finance and attendance so that comparisons of cost are difficult; (4) college entrance requirements and their enforcementthis being a very definite test of college efficiency, emphasis being laid by the Foundation on the use of an entrance unit which should represent a definite amount of work in the secondary school; (5) the character and the success of the examinations at entrance and in course, with emphasis on examinations as a test of ability rather than of mere accomplishment; (6) the character and use made of the records kept of the students and their work—judgment

66

marks concerning such things as health, vitality, temperament, initiative, progress, promise, sincerity and genuineness, judgment and prudence, methods of work, causes of success or failure, prospects, expression especially in English, refinement, cultivation, social qualities, and executive ability; (7) the standards and tests of efficiency of the teaching, with the various incentives to student scholarship; (8) how fully the curriculum meets the best purposes of a college, or whether it merely follows tradition and imitation; (9) the preparation given for post-graduate or advanced work; (10) the excellence of the preparation given for entrance upon professional or business life; (11) the test furnished by the success of alumni in actual life; and (12) the evidences of efficiency of management (see Current Ed. Activities, p. 208).

Mr. Furst also referred to the investigations made by the Oberlin College committee in 1909 and to their valuable report on tests of college efficiency. But he said, "Our present need is not for more tests, but for a fuller and more frequent application of them. The prospective reward is suggested by Oberlin's record of the results of three years: 'A revised curriculum, a higher standard for graduation, improved methods of choosing studies and of registration, provision for closer supervision of student scholarship, and certain advances in the development and adjustment of administrative machinery-a broadening of knowledge and a keener appreciation of college problems by the whole membership of the faculty."""Too many of our institutions of learning," he said, "still represent individual, local, and group ideals and prejudices. Individual and local ambitions retard educational progress by the indefinite multiplication of unnecessary institutions. The State scrutiny that is given to all institutions in New York, and the coöperation of institutions that has been shown in the movement for extension teaching in Massachusetts, mark the better way." This communal test still awaits a broader social knowledge and a more active social conscience. Such broader knowledge and sympathy are beginning to prevail in many places, and the promise is as bright as the need is large for a national extension of a truly social view of education."

66

College Morals.

So much has recently been said about immorality and irreligion among our college students that what Doctor Emil C. Wilm, of Harvard, says on the subject in the Educational Review for March is particularly timely. In this article Doctor Wilm calls attention to such facts as that: (a) The college student, because he is entirely freed from home restraints, is in an entirely different moral position from that of the pupil in the primary and secondary school; (b) too often whatever religious associations the student may have had before going to college are apt to be interfered with or even entirely severed in the new environment of the college; (c) the larger colleges are apt to be located in cities or towns of sufficient size to offer serious distracting and tempting influences; (d) the student's moral and religious life are sometimes endangered by the studies pursued, or rather by the instructors not entering into the intellectual difficulties and individual questionings in the mind of their pupils; (e) the great numbers and the floating character of the college population make for a certain anonymousness and isolation that are not conducive to moral development; (f) the popularity of college education and the great increase of wealth among the people are both working toward bringing into the college a less earnest type of pupil, and they also tend toward clannishness and extravagance in a way formerly unknown.

Doctor Wilm does not see as much danger in the alleged "idleness" of college students as he does in the dissipation of energy fostered by the great number of athletic, social, and other distracting influences now so prevalent in college society. The presence of these distracting and dangerous influences tends toward certain moral evils that can briefly be summarized as: (1) A weakening of moral principle through intellectual confusion; (2) positive immorality, like drunkenness, gambling, licentiousness; (3) enfeeblement of the will, due to a comparatively aimless life and the scattering of safeguarding intellectual and moral agencies:

To remedy these tendencies and to minimize these dangers certain things should be done:

First, the gulf existing between students and the teaching staff in our larger institutions must in some way be bridged. President David Starr Jordan says, " In the American university it is all-important that the teachers should know the students, individually and collectively, their hopes, their aspirations, and their achievements." The various plans being introduced to meet these needs, such as reducing the size of classes, the employment of additional instructors, the preceptorial plan, etc., will not accomplish this result unless the people chosen to cover the need are men of scholarship, moral strength, and genuine teaching power. On this point President Hyde has said, "The instant an institution increases the proportion of poorly paid, inexperienced instructors to well paid, experienced professors, it has to face the law of diminished efficiency." With an efficient teaching force that evidences its friendly interest in the students and their individual affairs, with regular hours when it is known that students will be welcomed by the various teachers, with a wise grouping of the students in their work and with ample provision for the care of each group and interest, and with strong instruction on points of honor and conduct, students and faculty can be brought into the desired intimate association.

Second, measures must be taken to "stamp out, by legal measures and otherwise, such breeding-places of immorality as gambling-dens, saloons, houses of ill-fame, and other disreputable places to which students may have access." The college located in a small town obviously has an advantage in this respect over the one in a large city. But in either case this is an extremely important matter that does not receive the attention it deserves.

Third, too much reliance must not be placed upon "the student honor system." "The extravagant confidence in the student honor system in many quarters appears to be due to the tacit assumption that you can increase the total amount of honor present in the student body by systematizing it." Doctor Wilm maintains that, without specific