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Liberals, especially in the northern counties, believe in the local school board, as constituted by the act of 1870, as the best authority to control education. Other Liberals would make the school board subordinate to the town council, and virtually a committee of it. Everyone agrees that there is need of an authority to supervise elementary education over large rural areas, with powers analogous to those lodged in our state superintendents of public instruction; but there are endless disputes as to what this authority shall be. All these cross-currents of opinion and this tangle of interests combine to block any sweeping or radical change. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the elementary-school teachers, especially in the cities and towns, are gaining in efficiency, and that their interest in educa. tion is broadening year by year. Despite this, however, there is no denying the fact that there is widespread suspicion that the intellectual results of the work of the elementary schools are far from being as satisfactory as was confidently predicted a few years ago. Should this suspicion pass over into a conviction, the developments of the immediate future will be intensely interesting and very instructive to Americans.

The instinct which led General Kitchener to propose the establishment of a Gordon memorial college at Khartoum, which brought to the proposal the prompt support of the public opinion of Great Britain, and which caused Kipling to celebrate it in virile verse, is in the highest degree noteworthy :

For Allah created the English mad the maddest of all mankind!

They do not consider the Meaning of Things; they consult not creed or clan.
Behold they clap the slave on the back, and behold he becometh a man!
They terribly carpet the earth with dead, and before their cannon cool,
They walk unarmed by twos and threes, to call the living to school.

The appearance of three stout volumes, abounding in matter of interest and importance, from the newly established Division of Special Inquiries and Reports in the Education Department, attests the wisdom of creating such a division, and of putting at its head as director so accomplished and efficient a man as Mr. Michael E. Sadler.

In France the reconstitution of the universities, accomplished in 1897, has removed them from the field of discussion, and questions of secondary education have come to the front with astonishing vigor. Publicists and men of affairs and of letters, as well as teachers, are participating in the very lively discussions which are now going on. These discussions center about the baccalaureate as established in 1808, the reform of which has been many times attempted. This degree is conferred by the university faculties as a result of examinations, conducted by them, upon the work done by the candidate in the secondary school. The importance of this diploma is very great; for it opens the way to most of the higher careers in France. What might have been expected has happened. The examinations for the baccalaureate have come to be an end, not a means; they

dominate the whole course of secondary instruction and hang over it like a pall. It is now asked that far-reaching reforms be instituted; that the secondary schools hold examinations of their own for graduation; that a proper certificate be conferred for the satisfactory completion of the secondary-school course; that this certificate admit the holder to the universities, where the baccalaureate shall be conferred by the faculties upon the completion of a specified period of study under their direction. M. Combes, now senator, formerly minister of public instruction, has introduced a carefully drawn measure to effect these changes. The analogy between this condition in France and some educational troubles of our own will not escape the attention of the Council.

Because of the importance of this subject the Chamber of Deputies has instituted a commission of thirty-three members to make an exhaustive inquiry into the whole subject and to submit a report upon it. This inquiry will cover no small part of the field examined in this country by the Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies, appointed by the National Educational Association in 1892, and that on the Relations between the Secondary Schools and Colleges, appointed in 1895, and which is now ready to report. The president of the French commission is M. Ribot. Two former ministers of public instruction, M. Poincaré and M. Léon Bourgeois, have appeared before the commission to support the changes mentioned above as included in the proposed law of M. Combes, and to ask that the non-classical course in the secondary schools be recognized as fitting students to enter upon the study of law or of medicine, and also that a shorter, more practical, and less advanced course of secondary instruction be established side by side with the courses now existing. The mere mention of these suggestions is evidence that there is much in common between the aims and the methods of those who in France and in the United States are striving to broaden secondary education and to extend its influence. It is worth while to call attention to M. Bertrand's L'Enseignement intégral, published during the year, which touches not a few of the topics in dispute, and advances constructive suggestions regard. ing them.

The year in Germany has not been eventful, tho a few happenings deserve passing mention. In the Prussian Parliament the minister of agriculture, von Hammerstein, raised a storm by his sharp attack on the elementary schools, in the course of which he charged that they were doing the agricultural interests of the country an injury by leading pupils away from agriculture toward the trades, business, and the professions. The minister of education, Bosse, replied with vigor, but without satisfy ing his colleague. More will be heard of the matter in the near future, and some important action may be taken in regard to it.

More important, by far, is the growing recognition in Germany of the I Paris: F. Alcan, 1898. 313 pp. Fr. 7.50.

importance of the social aspects of education. Professor Natorp, of Marburg, in his Sozial-Pädagogik, has made a very valuable contribution to the literature of this subject, and one which deserves attention in the United States. The insight which sees in education the inter-working of the individual and the influences which have shaped the social whole, and which therefore seeks light in the study of Culturgeschichte, receives strong support from Natorp, whose book may be safely singled out as the most striking German publication of the year on educational theory. In his Herbart, Pestalozzi und die heutigen Aufgaben der Erziehungslehre, a book made up of lectures delivered at Marburg during the summer of 1898, Natorp has made another contribution of importance. It is in the form of the liveliest possible attack on Herbart's philosophy as the basis for an educational theory, and it has already roused Willmann, Flügel, Just, and Rein to vigorous replies. The controversy is of more than academic importance to American students of education, who have themselves recently passed thru a similar debate.

The drawing together of teachers whose work and interests, superficially viewed, lie far apart is much needed in Germany, and a promising beginning has lately been made in Greifswald, under the leadership of Professor Rehmke, of the university. The establishment of the Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie, edited by Dr. Kemsies, of Berlin, marks the advance in Germany of a movement already well under way in the United States.

It seems, on the whole, apparent that the year has been one, not of change only, but of progress. The conviction of the importance of real education is stronger than ever before, and the efforts to attain it are more widespread and more earnest. That questions of educational organization and administration should be everywhere most prominent just now is significant of the importance of the demand for efficiency and effectiveness, as well as of the readjustment of the entire educational scheme to the present needs and capacities of the public. These matters are as important in their way as topics touching education on the more philosophical side are in theirs. The conception of education as a process based on the history of civilization, and making demands upon the whole power of the community as well as upon the entire capacity of the child, is not now seriously challenged. This conception of education alone stands the test both of experience and of philosophical scrutiny. It is the characteristic insight of the closing years of the nineteenth century. It remains for the twentieth to apply it in all its fullness.

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REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON RELATIONS OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

To the Council of the National Educational Association.

MAY 31, 1899.

GENTLEMEN: We have the honor to submit the following report: It was impossible for your committee to begin active work until December 30, 1898. We have been unable, consequently, to make very full investigations. There have been sent out, however, by the members of the committee, several thousand circulars, letters of inquiry, and requests for aid. The results of this work are incorporated in the report, in part; in part they have appeared in an increased interest shown by educational and other journals, and by associations of teachers and librarians, during the past year, in the relations of schools and libraries.

J. C. DANA,

FRANK A. HUTCHINS,
CHARLES A. MCMURRY,
SHERMAN WILLIAMS,

M. LOUISE JONES,

Committee on Relations of Public Libraries to Public Schools.

PREFATORY NOTE

BY JAMES H. VAN SICKLE, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NORTH SIDE SCHOOLS OF DENVER, AND VICE-PRESIDENT

EDUCATION

OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF

[WRITTEN FOR THIS REPORT AT THE REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE] Since the National Educational Association adopted the policy of using a part of its income to investigate and report upon matters of importance in education, it has greatly increased its influence and its usefulness. The report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Education, the report of the Committee of Fifteen on Correlation of Studies, Training of Teachers, and City School Systems, and the report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools have been widely read and discussed. Educational practice the country over has been

largely influenced thereby; yet the service of these reports has but just begun.

If it is important to the development of the individual that he let his thought go over into action, how true also of an organization like the National Educational Association! Its annual meetings are delightful and inspiring; the volumes of proceedings form a cyclopædia of education of untold value; the papers and discussions, while in the main expressing individual opinion, yet show the general trend of public sentiment as it changes and advances from year to year. But valuable as are the addresses and discussions, the carefully prepared reports of the few special committees thus far authorized by the association have been of far greater service in unifying school work. The more careful investigation made possible by adequate financial support insures conclusions which are likely to be accepted as reliable. In this way more than in any other is the National Educational Association becoming a reforming agent of gigantic power. The new rule requiring the approval of the National. Council of all investigations carrying appropriation, and placing such investigations under the auspices of the Council, insures a careful weighing of values, and is a needed and sufficient check upon unwisse or needles expenditures.

No investigation yet undertaken promises greater returns than the one embodied in this report upon the relation of public libraries to public schools. The past few years have witnessed a remarkable movement, confined to no one part of the United States, looking toward organizing and directing the reading of children; yet the general and departmental programs of the National Educational Association gave no indications previous to 1897 that the association recognized its opportunity to direct the movement. In 1896, in response to a circular letter prepared by Mr. J. C. Dana, then librarian of the Denver Public Library and president of the American Library Association, a petition to the Board of Directors of the National Educational Association was numerously signed, resulting in the creation of a Library Department, with Hon. Melvil Dewey, of New York, as president. Librarians and teachers worked together in the department from the first with a few definite purposes, among which were the following: to find out what had been done by teachers toward the direction and study of the reading of children; to find out what librarians had done to encourage and assist teachers in this work; to bring teachers and librarians into more mutually helpful relations; to determine the best books for various purposes and their adaptability to children. of different ages. The following quotation from the remarks of Mr. Melvil Dewey before the Board of Directors at Buffalo gives very clearly the aim of the department:

By law the children are put under your influence in their earlier years, when, if ever, they can be taught to love good books so well that in all their lives thereafter they will

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