An innovation not yet 10 years old, especially in the rural communities, is attracting attention on account of its efficiency and economy. The transportation of pupils from home to school has become a salient feature in the conduct of the rural schools of several States. A group of children, not exceeding 30 in number, in previous years have been furnished with a little schoolhouse, in which school, conducted most of the year, were found pupils of all ages from 6 to 21 and one teacher trying to cover all the ground. It is demonstrated now that in place of little one-room schoolhouses, several miles apart, one commodious and complete building can be erected, where classification can be made close and a complete institution established. Omnibuses or carriages contrived for the purpose transfer the children from their homes to school and return daily; all this at less expense than the original cost of the one-room school and to the advantage of more ability, better instruction, and more comfortable schoolhouses. In the suburbs of large cities this custom is obtaining, and to a very great extent in the rural and agricultural districts of our great western farming communities. The salary of the teacher added to the cost of maintenance of the small school exceeds the cost of transportation to a central school. Homes situated 4 miles from the schoolhouse are accommodated at a decreased expense, increased efficiency, and better schooling for the young members of the family. The reports of the State superintendents of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa, among others, contain helpful information on rural transportation.

The public school efficiency of the United States is gaining strength year by year. Its weaknesses have grown from lack of intelligent organization as well as from too many independent corporations. The uncertain tenure of school-teachers and the lack of men teachers are two sources of weakness. The average term of service of a woman school-teacher in the country perhaps does not exceed four years, and yet the women are three-fourths of the teachers in the elementary schools. The average teaching life of a man is much longer, but that has been much hindered and hampered, and is yet, by the frequent and harmful changes in position. A small American city outside of the old States regards the school as the important institution of the village, but very rarely does one schoolmaster remain for any reasonable number of years. This results from one of the strong points of our Government, but which in the matter of schools is a weakness. Schoolmasters' positions are often assigned for other than proper reasons. The number of men teachers is increasing. Never before in the history of the country were so many brilliant young men and middle-aged men in the ranks of the profession as are found to-day. The brightest and best intellects of the country, that hitherto have chosen the law or the ministry or medicine for their life work, are turning their attention to the schoolmaster's life. This has come about measurably on account of increasing confidence in tenure of position. One has the right to expect in the next generation that schoolmasters will be as permanently fixed in Ohio and west of Ohio as they have been for two centuries in some parts of Europe.

Again, educational enterprises have been hampered and will be for some time to come by well-intended but ill-advised legislation. The typical American legislature. made up as it is of representatives from every part of a given State, with grievances confined to a definite neighborhood, too often succeeds in causing a law to be enacted concerning the management and control of schools which, while it remedies an evil in one small neighborhood, creates greater evils throughout the State. In educational as in other legislation it is quite too easy in our country to make laws, and the harm is often greater in the educational than in the commercial, industrial, or professional field.

The Bureau of Education, established and maintained by the National Government in Washington, has for its purpose the collection and publication annually of such statistics and facts as show the condition and progress of education in the

several States and Territories from year to year, and the diffusion of such information respecting the organization and management of schools and school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote the cause of education thoughout the country. It also has charge of the education of children in Alaska and the administration of the endowment fund for the support of colleges for the advancement of agricultural and mechanic arts.

The most powerful and influential body in the educational field is known as the National Educational Association, a volunteer society maintained at the expense of the individual members. The ineetings are held one each year, in different cities, so that in the course of ten years the association is in session in each part of the country. They occur in summer time, when the schools are not in session, thereby permitting the teachers generally to attend. It has grown steadily from its inception in 1857; the last fifteen years have seen the greatest increase. More than 35,000 teachers, men and women, attended the meeting of 1903, which was held in Boston.

Each member of the association pays $2 annually for membership and receives in return not only the advantage of listening to the papers and essays at the meeting, which continues from three to five days, but also a printed copy of the annual report. This report, averaging about 800 pages a volume, forms, in connection with the report of the Bureau of Education, a complete reference library on education. All papers presented at the meetings and most of the discussions are reproduced in the annual report of the National Educational Association. A library equipped with the two reports to which reference has been made is ample for the administrative use of any and all school-teachers.

The association is incorporated under the provisions of the act of general incorporation of the District of Columbia. Its avowed purpose is to elevate the character and advance the views of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of education in the United States.

While the meetings are general in character during part of the week of the meeting, for more direct work there are 18 separate departments, in each of which will be found papers and discussions pertaining to that line of work indicated by the name of the department.

These departments are styled:

1. Superintendence.

2. Normal schools.

3. Elementary education.

4. Higher education.

5. Manual training.

6. Art education.

7. Kindergarten education.

8. Music education.

9. Secondary education.

10. Business education.

11. Child study.

12. Physical education.

13. Natural science education.

14. School administration.

15. Library administration.

16. Special education.

17. Indian education.

18. National council of education.

The association has accumulated a fund amounting to $150,000, which has been made up from the surplus of the dues at $2 per capita that has not been expended

in the publishing of the report and in the maintenance of a permanent secretary's office.

The policy of the association has been to maintain this fund unimpaired, investing it in such a way as to receive annually a goodly amount of interest. The interest is used in original educational investigations by committees appointed from year to year. For instance, some years ago the rural school problem was under earnest consideration in the association, which appointed a committee to investigate and report upon the rural schools and to suggest methods of improvement. This committee of eminent schoolmasters and superintendents, after careful consideration, prepared a report which after publication was the instrument of making a marvelous improvement in the efficiency of the rural schools of the country.

Other means of investigation are annually in the hands of the committees of the association, and the teachers of the country are contributing the money for the expenses of these special organizations.

In 1898 the art department of the association appointed a committee of ten on elementary art education. The report of that committee was made in 1902 and appears in distinct form in the report for that year. Reference to this report of the committee of ten is made to illustrate what is doing by the National Educational Association in original investigation and suggestion.

In addition to the support of kindergartens, elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges, and universities, many of the States expend large amounts upon normal schools. These institutions are maintained and supported by annual appropriations from the respective State legislatures. In some of the Western States one normal school exists, while in many the number is five and even seven, located in various parts of the State.

The purpose of the normal school is to prepare young people for teaching. The short duration of the term of service of the school-teacher in the United States makes frequent and vigorous recruiting necessary.

Many thousand young men and women, especially the latter, after attending a normal school for three years, are provided with the training which will enable them to be more efficient in the schools to which they go. And yet the accommodation for normal school students in this country is very limited compared to the number of teachers required. The education covered in the average normal school corresponds well to that of the secondary school, with the increased task of professional work. Pedagogical departments are also established in connection with many of the colleges and universities.

While the professional teacher as yet receives not enough training in the normal schools, it is expected throughout the land that a person who has a normal school training starts on his teaching career with more ability than any other person.

In the best elementary schools in the United States will be found not only the ordinary branches of the old-time curriculum, but also provision and opportunity for manual work and training. Well-equipped shops for working in wood, somewhat after the pattern of the Swedish sloyd, are established and provided with competent teachers. The woodwork in shops usually commences at about the fourth grade and continues through the eighth.

Mechanical drawing is closely allied to this shop work. Not less than two hours a week is assigned for the work. While both boys and girls are frequently permitted to enter the classes, it is more usual for the boys alone to do the work, while the girls take sewing as an equivalent.

The equipment of the ordinary woodwork shops in the elementary schools costs about $800. The classes pass to the shops once a week, remain with the teacher about two hours, when they return to their regular studies.

It is believed that many young people are encouraged to remain longer in school on account of the attraction which this sort of training has for many boys. But the main purpose is that they become interested in that kind of education which the world has learned to know is quite as efficient in skillful training and more helpful than one confined entirely, as in former times, to purely book drill. Sɔ important and satisfactory has this work become that it is made to extend through the high schools, and few high schools will be complete hereafter without manualtraining attachments. The distinct manual-training school has, in addition to the work of a regular high school, two hours a day in the shops. The shops provide for many months' work in wood-including carving and turning-a few months in forging, and a year or more in the machine shop, where delicate and remarkable, frequently elaborate, pieces of workmanship are turned out by these boys, whose ages seldom exceed 18 years.

For the girls this manual-training high school affords opportunity, in addition to the laboratories, for sewing, and, in some cases, the course is complete to the extent of quite elaborate dress making and fitting and the making of all articles from textile fabrics which pertain to the domestic household.

Cooking is taught quite generally during the last year of the grammar school and in the manual-training schools. All that pertains to the culinary department of the domestic household, the purchase of all material, the study of the animals that are butchered, and the different parts and kinds of cuts. To the cooking is added, in the upper grades, work in chemistry intimately related to it; also competent instruction in hygiene, that the proper foods suited to different physical conditions may be learned.

Vocal music is taught in all American schools; sometimes poorly, frequently excellently well. It is assigned as a duty, and in many places is as compulsory and carefully taught as is arithmetic or language. The purpose of vocal music in these elementary schools is, first, the training of the voice, which is so sadly needed with American men and women; second, the ability to read simple music at sight, thereby enabling the individual to participate in all public exercises at church or elsewhere, and, more than that, teaching them to appreciate vocal music in all its shades of power and influence. It is conceded that no small part of character making depends upon the music with which the individual may have had association. Instrumental music forms no part of musical education in the United States.

Drawing has been emphasized more and more the last thirty years, so that at the present time drawing occupies more time than penmanship in most schools.

Schools at the expense of the public purse were originally maintained in New York and New England, where even to-day will be found many of the earlier schools. One should not expect in the South that maturity and completion of public schools that obtains north of Mason and Dixon's line, because forty years only has been given for that work; however, wherever a visitor may be in the country he will find, in Alabama or in Maine, the same sort and kind of schoolhonses and school work.

The progress made in free schools in the South since the civil war by far exceeds that ever made in an equal number of years. At the exposition at St. Louis will be found a complete, intelligent, and grand presentation of all the schools of all the States of the entire country, and this will enable the visitor to make such comparisons with the schools of other nations as shall, it is trusted, be gratifying and at the same time so instructive as to demonstrate great opportunities for future growth.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH.

PREPARED FOR THE UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION IN THE BUREAU OF THE SOUTHERN EDUCATION BOARD, CHARLES W. DABNEY, DIRECTOR, BY WYCKLIFFE ROSE, PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE.

CONTENTS.

I. Genesis of the conference for education in the South.

1. Immediate occasion of the conference.

2. Cooperating causal forces: The new régime-The new education-Causes of retarded progress-The new generation-Material prosperity-Returning national consciousness-The dream of world leadership.

II. Period of self-discovery.

1. Development of the aims of the conference: Expansion of conception of Christian education-From the education of the negro to the education of all the people— Transfer of interest from the individual to the community-Southern education a national problem.

2. Discovery of the forces which the conference was to call into its service: The forces of the public school system-Cooperation of colleges and universities-The public press-Women's organizations-Forces political and economic.

3. Defining its methods of operation: Genesis of the Southern Education Board-Genesis of the General Education Board-Theory of the Southern Education Board-Work of the Southern Education Board-The bureau of investigation and informationIts purpose-Its methods.

III. Survey of the conference as it is to-day: Its inorganic character-Membership-Its agenciesWhat the conference is doing for education in the South-The conference as a directive power-The summer school movement-The whole movement as a liberalizing and unifying force.

THE CONFERENCE FOR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH, AND THE SOUTHERN AND GENERAL EDUCATION BOARDS.

The Conference for Education in the South" has within the six years of its existence grown into an educational force of such magnitude as to command universal interest. Its first three sessions, held at Capon Springs, W. Va., can hardly be said to have attracted the attention of the public even in the South, But with its meeting in 1901 at Winston-Salem, N. C., it entered upon a career of remarkably rapid expansion, both in the scope of its endeavor and in the circle of its constituency, until now it is in the center and foreground of the whole field of educational activity in the South. It occupies a unique position as an educational

aThis term has been used in this paper to stand not merely for the annual convention and its agencies, but also for this whole movement, finding expression in this meeting in the Southern Education Board, in the General Education Board, and in the many subordinate organizations taking part in the work of improving the schools of the South.