from it is shown in a better teaching of civics. A few steps more and we shall have a fine course of correlated subjects, the graduate from which will not be fitted merely for clerkship, but will find himself introduced to the whole wide field of business effort in the world of today, and at least ready to make a decent bow to the authorities in it. He will be able to distinguish the controlling influence from the loud-toned wishes to control; the solid from the speculative; true economy from miserly scrimping; capable, masterly handling of large productive powers from schemes for grasping what is already produced. He will have been made thoroly acquainted with a few important materials of commerce, the manner of their production, distribution, and consumption, not only in a historic way, but with an intimate knowledge that will discover the faults as well as the fashions of trade.

With competent teaching he will be led, not only to an understanding of natural economic laws, but also to discern how the human factor enters into and disturbs every department of commerce; how personal interest may, and does at times, interfere with all the laws of political economy. When we have brought our business course to this point, is there not opportunity for the application of psychology? Cannot the idealist and materialism both find common cause for quarrel in this as well as any other course? I do not know that I have been able to make this one line of development in the high school toward the general college clear. It in itself would furnish a subject that is worthy of much time and consideration. And in other courses the development has been just as

evident to those in the work.

I hope to show only good cause for continuing and perfecting the present plans in high-school work, and for strengthening the hands of those laying out these plans, and to head off any radical changes that might be proposed by those outside of the actual high-school work. In short, I do not wish to be asked to stand over the tomb of the high school while attending the christening of the people's college.

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, United States Commissioner of Education. I have listened many times, and always with the greatest pleasure and interest, to Dr. Hall's speeches. I read every line he writes. I do not always agree with him, but I find him always suggestive. I have never read a paper of his with which I find myself so thoroly in agreement as with the general thought of the address just delivered. I will, however, call attention to a few points in the paper from which I must dissent.

The first point concerns the tendency toward the study of less Latin in Germany. I do not agree that this calls for change in America, because we give to the subject much less time than is given in Germany. I believe in the study of Latin. Yet we can have too much of a good thing, and it is not good to study Latin eight years. The movement in Germany means that they will give to this subject but five years, and I think that is almost too much.

In his emphatic way Dr. Hall demands content, not form. We are taught by the highest philosophers of art that the content should make its form. If what he says, and what other earnest people with him say, can free us from namby-pamby composition, I will rejoice. I would not have the study of a masterpiece of literature carried on by parsing it, taking it to pieces, studying the allusions. What he said on that point is a splendid utterance, and what he said about drama is a magnificent utterance. Drama goes over into thought, and then becomes action, and therefore furnishes the greatest lessons in life, whether gained in college or in lower school. I always remember with great pleasure that, in the earlier years of my life, we had in St. Louis a teacher who taught Shakespeare. It was taught there by a man who made some of the best Shakespearean students in the world.

I agree with the portion of the address which refers to the study of physics. I would have the pupils study physics in the high school, but not the kind of physics which requires calculus in order to appreciate it. I read Dr. Hall's debate in Massachusetts on that question, and I agreed with him in his position that, if you demand more accuracy in

the high school, you may go too far in that direction; you may dry up the soul by putting it at things too remote. I would have pupils begin to study the phenomena of physics in the third grade.

I was sorry to note that Dr. Hall omitted any allusion to history. It is one of the great fundamental branches, that should be begun early and carried on thru the high school. Instead of saying, as he does, that we do not want to fasten to the past, I would say: "Fasten our chains to the past in order to bring under tribute the good things of all time." The school is that institution which says: "I will show you how to get the great things from the past." One of the great branches, showing the human race acting as a whole, is history, and nothing else can be a substitute.

The past reaches back even to the lower animals. God did not begin with man, but back with lower animals, plants, and the inorganic world. In this matter of history, therefore, certain things have been contributed to the race that are so far below the horizon of the past that we have no record of them, but we know that the effects have impressed themselves on the human brain; but when it begins to be unfolded in science, when this science yields its fruition, we can tell whether its history roots in the Greeks or in Siberia or in the isles of the sea. The great struggle of the Romans extended thru a thousand years, and they struggled to find out just how the individual acts could reinforce the whole people. After some eleven hundred years, in the time of Justinian, these acts were formulated into the common law, because the Roman was gifted in seeing how the deed fitted into the social whole, just as the Greek religion saw how freedom could fit into the pose of the body.

Now, that is the reason why Latin has made for itself so great a place in the schools of modern times. It will not be pushed aside. I have always regretted that Dr. Hall in his grasp of modern science does not seem to see it in its true perspective with modern history. He should have said that Latin keeps this place because of its importance. The Roman invented a way so that the social whole should not crush the individual. The northern tribes, when they had been Romans two hundred years, recognized the importance of Latin.

Dr. Hall's technical terms are Latin. Sixteen thousand words sum up the Saxon in our vocabulary; seventy-five thousand in common use are from the Latin, storing up the fine distinctions in the minds of the people. If you can study Latin only one week, you will have new thoughts that you can never get rid of; you will have new environment; preaching from the pulpit will mean more. Therefore I do not agree that we must keep Latin for those only who can study it thoroly. I suppose Dr. Hall has in mind some old person who has taught for thirty years and can tell all the exceptions of Latin syntax. The word "recapitulation" is an important word; it is a whole book in itself, in this active period of recapitulation in anthropology. This is the battle-ax with which Dr. Hall wins victories. I always wish to give three cheers for Dr. G. Stanley Hall. May he help us to think and to see once in a while how absurd some of his views are! He puts these things in a way to arouse us; he does not wish us to become his disciples — he wishes to arouse us by saying something absurd.

DR. HALL.—It was somewhat of a surprise to me that when Dr. Harris entered this arena he grasped my hand, as pugilists shake hands before beginning a contest. My surprise was continued when he said that he in the main agreed with me. To kick at nothing gives one a feeling of a wrench. I thought I had attacked some things Dr. Harris has defended for years. I now feel as if I was wrenched.

Dr. Harris and I have inherited every feature of our faces, every muscle, and every organ from the anthropoid apes. Must all therefore study monkeys? Of course, we use Latin phraseology. When Dr. Harris says we all should study Latin a week, I agree.

In regard to the study of Latin in Germany, I think Dr. Harris did not understand what I said. I am aware that Latin and Greek are more firmly intrenched there. The emperor said he wanted no more Gymnasia, no more Latin teachers, but instead a great

many Realschulen. When we come to that, I believe it may be said that a larger proportion of time in the preparatory schools is given to Latin in this country than in Germany, but I have not the statistics. The proportion is decreasing there and is increasing here. Dr. Harris thinks that absurd things must be said to arouse us. Perhaps under the direction and guidance of such a mentor, who has been for so many years such a correct pruner of my sentences, I may have become lax, because I knew Dr. Harris was on hand and all would be set right.

I am, however, inclined to think men reach an age when the new seems absurd. When roots are so wrapped about ancient things that the past begins to loom up and the future to seem smaller, there is danger that we shall worship the past and live for it alone. I prefer the future, because all the best things are in the future, and I believe that the past should be subordinated to it.

I had only one word in my paper about history. I said that the first of these subordinate topics should be history. I agree with what Dr. Harris says on history, and I am glad to close this discussion with the acknowledgment of agreement with him.

COLLEGE GRADUATES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

THOMAS M. BALLIET, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

If a visitor from western continental Europe, after inspecting our American educational system from the primary school to the university, were asked to compare it with that of his own country, he would in all probability express an opinion as to the relative merits of the various grades of schools which would in many respects be the direct opposite of that which is held among ourselves. He would no doubt say that the best American primary schools are not excelled, and are rarely equaled, in any other country in the world. He would note the absence of the dead formalism and mechanical routine which still prevail in his own country to a large extent in schools of similar grade, and he would especially note the sympathetic relations existing between teacher and pupils, the mildness of the methods of discipline, and the superior skill of the teacher in arousing the interest of his pupils and in stimulating thought and mental growth. He would probably say that the best American grammar schools compare on the whole not unfavorably with similar schools in his own country, but that they have certain defects which at first sight are not apparent, but which on closer inspection cannot escape the trained observer. He would probably say that the American high school excels in its superior equipments for the teaching of the sciences and in the flexibility of its courses of study, but that in other respects it does not compare favorably with similar schools in his own country. He would note the inferior training, both academic and professional, of the average American high-school teacher, and he would be impressed with the lack of forcefulness, clearness, and definiteness of much of the teaching. He would be surprised to find that between the secondary school and the

university there comes an institution, called the "college," which is not found in his own country, and which continues the work of the secondary school for two or three years and then attempts university work without the necessary equipment for such work. His verdict would probably be that much of the teaching of the lower classes of our colleges is inferior in quality to the teaching in the upper classes of the secondary schools in his own country, and that none of the attempts at university work in these colleges is equal to the university work with which he is familiar. He would probably say that of the many institutions known by the naine of university in America not more than ten or twelve properly deserve the designation. He would recognize that our universities are only in process of evolution; and he would have to admit that, while they have accomplished comparatively little as yet, the conditions exist for a brilliant development in the near future.

In a word, taking our educational system as it now exists and comparing it part by part with that of his own country, this visitor would probably have to say that, speaking generally, it is relatively strongest at the bottom and grows weaker as you approach the top.

It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the question as to how much truth there may be in such a general verdict; but it may be remarked in passing that, whatever truth it may contain, it is not wholly uncomplimentary to American education, for it implies that this country. has placed the emphasis on the education of the masses, while less democratic countries have placed it on the education of the classes. It may be said, furthermore, that indiscriminate praise of the schools of one's own country is not necessarily patriotism; it may be blind provincialism, largely the result of ignorance of what other nations are doing. behooves us, therefore, to view our educational system in the spirit of impartial and impersonal criticism, to discover its weak features, and to devise means for remedying them.

I take it that the chairman, in assigning the subject of my paper, had in mind certain defects in our elementary schools which the introduction of the college graduate as teacher may possibly remedy. It is the discussion of this very limited subdivision of a large and very interesting question to which this paper must confine itself.

The elementary schools have defects, some of them serious, which are due to causes that cannot be removed by appointing college graduates as teachers. The college graduate in the position of teacher cannot loosen the grip of the politician on our school systems, he cannot increase the appropriations for schools, he cannot build schoolhouses and relieve the overcrowded condition of our schools so as to make it possible to assign to each teacher no more pupils than he can become personally acquainted with within the limits of the school year. Evils which are due to the inferior character of the community, to antiquated organization of the

school board and the school system, or to incompetent or inefficient administration, cannot be remedied by the appointment of the college graduate as teacher.

As already stated, the teaching in our primary schools is, relatively speaking, more satisfactory than the teaching in either the grammar schools or the high schools. This is probably due, first, to the fact that the teachers in primary schools are women, are sympathetic with childhood, and have great native skill in teaching little children. The qualities required in a good primary teacher are fortunately common in women. In the second place, it is due to the fact that the scientific study of children, in which our country leads today, has centered more on early childhood than on youth. We know more about the period up to the age of ten than we do of the period of adolescence and of the period immediately preceding it. In the third place, it is due to the fact that our normal schools, almost without exception, are training teachers better for the primary than for the grammar grades. In the section of the country with which I happen to be most familiar it is easier to secure a half-dozen good primary teachers than to find one superior teacher for the upper grammar grades. There are, however, problems in primary education which are altogether, beyond the average primary teacher who may be exceedingly skillful and effective in her work as a class-room instructor. These are problems which require a much broader training, a wider outlook, not only upon the first of pedagogy, but also upon the various sciences which have so much to contribute to educational thought today. The academic training of the normal schools is generally neither extensive enough nor thoro enough to equip a teacher to meet these problems. There is need of the college-bred woman in our primary schools, especially in the positions of principal and supervisor, where effective training and direction of subordinates is essential.

The teaching in our grammar schools is less satisfactory; indeed, the upper grammar grades are probably the weakest part of our system of elementary schools. Success in teaching in a primary school turns more on good pedagogical training, on sympathy, tact, and an instinctive. insight into child nature, than on wide knowledge of the subjects taught, altho the latter is also essential to the highest type of such teaching; but in the grammar school, especially in the upper classes, thoro scholarship becomes more and more an absolute necessity, and a preparation which might enable a teacher to obtain a fair degree of success in a primary school no longer suffices.

Making allowance for marked exceptions here and there, I think it may be said without unfairness that teaching in the better class of grammar schools is weak because of a lack of broad scholarship on the part of the teacher. This is especially true of the teaching of such subjects as geography and history. The knowledge which the average grammar