agreement on the advisability and feasibility of the practical realization of what these documents recommend. We have a normal-school doctrine that seems to be fairly acceptable, but have we a normal-school practice in harmony therewith, or an adequate normal-school practice anyway? It is not uncommon to hear the normal schools and their product disparaged. What ground, if any, is there for such disparagement? Has anybody collected the testimony of superintendents and other competent persons concerning the relative efficiency of teachers trained in our normal schools and of teachers not so trained? What agency, either by states or otherwise, has set itself the task of ascertaining the actual working efficiency of our normal schools? If we had a thorogoing report on that subject, say from a dozen normal schools chosen from the country at large-such a report could be made without mentioning in the report the name of a single school-what an incentive it would afford to efficiency! How clearly it might show just what the obstacles are that thwart or obstruct the progress of their work, or sometimes defeat it altogether! On the basis of such a report, public opinion within and without the teaching profession would soon demand the best professional training attainable, and unwavering recognition of it when obtained.

What I have just said about the failure to demand adequate scholarship of elementary-school teachers cannot be asserted to the same extent in the case of secondary school teachers. But, much more than in the case of elementary-school teachers do we find the lack of a demand for adequate professional, i. e., technical, training in addition to scholarship. Nothing is a more obstructive influence in secondary education than the want of proper professional training of the teachers. Of course, they will not seek such training until it is demanded, not in a half-hearted and after-all-it-doesn't-matter-much sort of a way, but in an unmistakable, insistent fashion. If you as superintendents have no confidence in what you think we who are training secondary-school teachers are doing, take steps to find out what we are doing, tell us our shortcomings, and point out what you believe ought to be added to what we are now doing. As soon as your demand for the right kind of professional training for secondary-school teachers is strong, persistent, and widespread, such training will be forthcoming. At present a college student who has taken pains to add technical training for his profession to his academic attainments finds himself just as likely to be passed by in the competition for places as one who has not. Under such circumstances the best possible provision for technical training can reach only a comparatively small number of college graduates who become teachers.

I cannot close without expressing the hope that this association will ere long take steps to organize our contemporary educational doctrine and our practical experience in some such way as has been suggested

in this paper. May I not commend to you the words of the Chinese delegate to the peace conference at The Hague! That conference, you remember, took place shortly after Admiral Dewey had destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila. The Chinese delegate to the peace conference listened to the eloquence of his colleagues for some time, and then remarked: "Too much talkee, talkee; too little do-ee, do-ee."

DISCUSSION

WILLIAM K. FOWLER, state superintendent, Lincoln, Nebraska.- I have not recently delved into the reports of the Committee of Ten, of Fifteen, and of CollegeEntrance Requirements, tho I wish to claim the credit of reading them several years ago. Nor have I read any other reports or documents or publications preparatory to this discussion. I do not desire to be classed with those mentioned by Professor Hanus as working absolutely independent of all others, however, for I have conferred with school people and laymen on these and similar matters, and I desire to present for consideration and discussion topics that I hear mentioned daily as I go out among the people of my own state; out into the cities and villages and rural communities of the commonwealth, Once upon a time a farmer was impressed with the argument that only by averaging might the best results be accomplished. He heard that one extreme in either direction was very generally condemned, and he was told that for the best results, practical and progressive. the two extremes must be used, thereby securing a fair average. With that idea fairly impressed upon his mind, he hitched to his plow, side by side, an ox from New England and a finely bred, high-stepping, 2: 10 trotting horse from Kentucky.

The great heterogeneous mass of the people is thus driving the public schools. Is it any wonder that our "gee! whoa! haw! git ap!" is no more effective, or that our furrows are none the less crooked? Our ox takes the furrow and keeps it, in the rut, while our trotting horse prances about, making but little impression on the unbroken sod. Sometimes we find the combination illustrated in the contrast between the rural schools that have remained unchanged thru three generations and the finely supervised or overtrained city school system; sometimes we find the two existing in the same place under different administrations- - at one time traveling the hard, stony, well-worn and wellknown path of the past, and at another endeavoring to make new paths and new by-ways on virgin sod, on unbroken prairie, seeking out untried and untrod paths and ⚫ pastures.

Some demand of us that we dispense with the services of our high-stepping, overstrung trotting horses, and return to the yoke of oxen, of course. They charge that we teach less thoroly than formerly, that we attempt too many subjects, and give but a smattering of each. We may seem to be tending somewhat in that direction, but we are driven to it. The pressure is from without, not from within the schools. The medical men demand that a regular system of physical training be used; the Grand Army of the Republic wants military science and drill; the Turnverein asks for gymnastics; the clergymen insist that morality be inculcated by line and precept; the Woman's Christian Temperance Union has succeeded in introducing formal teaching of the effects of alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, and stimulants; the women's clubs beg for domestic science; the sewing guilds for needle-work; the trades for manual training; the business world for stenography and typewriting; the editors for current events; the artists for picture study; the musical world for music; and the farmer for the elements of agriculture.

One of the gravest problems presented to our rural school-teachers and their county superintendents is the desire of many school boards and patrons to introduce into the

rural schools high-school subjects. School people generally understand that these subjects cannot be taught there without great detriment to the work and instruction of the little folks. I have found many rural districts where it is demanded of the teachers that they instruct classes in algebra, civics, and physical geography, in addition to thirty or more classes in reading, arithmetic, spelling, geography, etc.

The demands of our modern civilization are great.

Two or three generations ago it was not necessary for the youth to study the sciences - there was but little known of them to study. Today the well-educated youth must be familiar with modern machinery, with common business practices, with affairs of state, and with the latest scientific discoveries. With the telegraph and cable connecting all the cities of the world, with the telephone soon to connect all its farmhouses, with the steamships and steam cars and electric cars connecting all its cities, great and small, with million-dollar bridges spanning all its great rivers, and with its vast commercial enterprises, there is no end or limit to the practical knowledge that may be gathered.

There is poor and indifferent work as well as excellent work done in the schoolrooms of Nebraska, and this is true in every state in the union, in every country of the world, and it always has been true. There is always good, bad, and indifferent work in every other walk and avocation of life, in every other profession and every trade, and with less excuse for such a condition; for in the other professions and in most of the trades there is more regular, systematic, and careful training for the work than we find for our important work of training the youth of the land. And low salaries accompany unskilled labor. In the 8,000 schoolrooms in Nebraska this year, and every year, we find nearly 2,500 teachers who have had no experience whatever, and not one-sixth of the number have had any special training for their work. Obstacles! Nebraska employs annually over 9,000 teachers, in less than 8,000 schoolrooms. Many teach only three months! They meet with obstacles. And so do the pupils — obstacles to progress. Our 9,000 teachers include only 2,000 male teachers, whereas eleven years ago the state employed 2,800 male teachers. The average school year in the state is six and three-fourths months, and the average salary is $38 a month, something like $255 a year. There are scores of principals in the state receiving $585, $630, or $675 a year, less than the labor of many unskilled workmen. The average life of the school-teacher in Nebraska, as a teacher, is less than four years. Yes, we have our obstacles; and yet we can boast of our very low percentage of illiteracy in Nebraska. How is it with you, neighbor?

Some of the obstacles in the way of educational progress have been placed there by ourselves, some by the public generally, and still others thru co-operation. I desire to enumerate a few briefly, leaving the removal of them to be discussed by others.

Within our ranks we have established and permit to exist the following obstacles to educational progress:

A lack of unification in our educational forces. This includes a lack of harmony between universities, colleges, normal schools, business colleges, etc., in many essential particulars.

A low professional interest among teachers. To increase the interest we must improve the teacher, and the public should demand a higher standard of requirements.

Too many preparatory schools for higher schools, at least in comparison with the number of preparatory schools for happy, useful lives. Perhaps the number of the latter can be increased without decreasing the former.

The attempt to create or manufacture instead of train and develop; to turn out money-making machines instead of well-developed, manly, and womanly characters. In this connection also we may include the scattering fire caused by too many aims.

Too many persons in the work who are without educational opinions, and too many others in the work who are educationally opinionated.

Too much emphasis placed on forms and methods.

Mixture of standards and transition of ideals-the yawning Scylla and Charybdis of the pedagog — generating much pressure and nervous strain. This strain is so tense that the tendency is that the teacher loses the best of himself, his poise, his courage, and his full joy of life. To hide his loss, he becomes a recluse, which militates decidedly against a unified ideal among teachers. This is in itself an impediment to progress. If, however humbly and truly, the teachers are the servants of the public, they must at length

become a sort of composite Moses, to lead the public out of the educational wilderness into that glad Canaan which awaits.

The general public has kindly assisted us in rolling in the following obstacles and hedging them 'round about our public-school system :

Misunderstanding the nature of education, the purpose of education, and the results that should be expected; establishing false and pernicious ideals.

There is a widely different point of view between the public and the teaching world. Neither the general nor the teaching public, as a whole, has a clear idea of what it wants or what should be expected. A clearer comprehension of what education s, or should be, must precede any marked advancement in securing the same. There are too many aims in education on either side, and fusion here has simply aided and emphasized confusion.

The lack of unselfish feeling, partnership, and co-operation between parents and teachers is a great obstacle to educational progress, which in this case had better be expressed as the child's progress and wellbeing. With this should be included the oft-recurring conflict between parental and state authority as to what a child's minimum education should be, what he must study, and the governmental or disciplinary authority relatively of parent and teacher.

Another obstacle is the neglect of physical education that would develop bodily conditions, that would support a vigorous mentality.

Overcrowded courses of study, with scattering fire instead of concentration, prevents substantial

progress.

Last, but not by any means least, among the obstacles to educational progress for which we are all responsible, whether within or without the ranks of the teaching profession, is the unprofessional standing of teachers and their low salaries. I feel that the one who accepts a low salary-an amount far below what his services really are worth is equally guilty for evil results with the one who offers the same.

Now I am going to make a series of bald, perhaps gray, statements of obstacles to educational progress, the removal of which is chiefly in the hands of the public. We must ask them to remove them. Many of them are beyond our power and jurisdiction:

Decentralization. Outside the great cities the school officers outnumber the teachers five to two. The seven thousand schools of Nebraska are managed and controlled by twenty-two thousand school district officers. This is lack of concentration with a vengeance. There is too much divided responsibility. We, superintendents, are willing to assume more. There are too many small schools and smaller classes.

Irregular attendance is a great obstacle.

In many parts of the country there is a lack of sufficient funds properly to conduct the schools. Some states place a limit on the legal amount of school taxation and bonded indebtedness of school districts, and upon nothing else; probably upon the theory that the people in their great interest in the welfare of their children may expend too much upon their education and general welfare, while there is no fear whatever that too large an amount will be expended upon the care of the streets and the improvement of roads, upon a sufficient amount of drinking water and plenty of gas! We ask for a higher appreciation by the public of the importance of school work, and a.willingness to contribute more freely to the support of the legitimate work of the public schools.

The public demands specialization before fundamentals are mastered. They demand the teaching of too many subjects. The demand for one specialty is made by one profession, for another subject by another profession or a trade, and so on, and the public does not realize the sum total of our unhappiness in this respect. One of these demands is for short, abbreviated, hotbed business courses, and too many high schools are offering a course that gives little or no training, and affords in six months' time no more information than a young man might acquire in a bank or lumber yard in two weeks.

There is too strong a demand from without to get the children thru school in too brief a time; too much commercialism; too much love of the almighty dollar. A popular notion prevails that an education is an extraneous equipment which may be bartered for a livelihood.

The present social conditions and the demand for society or social life for mere school children interfere greatly with solid, substantial, progressive school work.

One of the greatest obstacles to educational progress, at least in certain portions of the country, is the great lack of professionally trained teachers, and the lack of facilities for training them.

There is a lack of strong men and able women in the ranks, caused by lack of appreciation, of adequate pay, of stable conditions. There must be better pay, and a surer, longer tenure of office to draw and retain men especially of ability and character.

The powers that be must cease to foist upon the schools their dependent and unqualified relatives. The great mass of the people, the great middle class, the practical, progressive people with a good, commonschool education and common-sense ideas and ideals, must awake to the real needs of the schools and show less apathy to school work.

I believe that the addition of school gardens, gymnasiums, and manual-training schools would remove many obstacles to educational progress.

My own experience emphasizes the lack of efficient supervision for rural schools, a cure for which would be the centralization and consolidation under township organization. A county superintendent has written me: "Our rural schools have everything the city schools lack, and they lack everything the city schools have." Would that we could make a happy combination of the two!

I wish to indorse and second the request of Professor Hanus for a committee of the National Educational Association, or of this department, on the reformulation of educational doctrine, systematic experimentation, and unification of educational forces, with emphasis upon the last.

THE VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS AS DETERMINING A TEACHER'S FITNESS FOR WORK

EDWIN G. COOLEY, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CHICAGO, Ill. This is a day of examinations. Examinations as a means of selection of public servants are becoming more and more popular. The movement for the reform of the city, state, and national civil service by examinations seems irresistible. We have used them as a means of selecting teachers for many years, and the introduction of this topic as a subject of discussion at the superintendents' meeting seems rather startling, just when people are beginning to accept an examination as a panacea for all sorts of public ills. The subject, however, is a timely one, just because we seem likely to go too far in the advocacy of examinations.

If a man or woman is wanted to do a piece of work, the ideal way to select such a person is to have some disinterested third person, who is well acquainted with the nature of the work to be done, select, after careful observation and examination, the one best fitted to do it. This practice, however, in a large system would inevitably degenerate into a condition of things where the men who made this selection would know very little about the nature of the work to be done, and would care less. They would be, however, intensely interested in the persons who ask for the job; in other words, it would be likely to degenerate into a system of "pull," a sort of bargain and sale affair in which the various positions would be given to people on account of the quid pro quo they or their friends were able to offer. Sooner or later this interest in the person and indifference as to the way the work is done becomes evident to all and leads people to realize the necessity for introducing some machinery that will reduce the personal element involved. Written examinations have been the machinery most commonly employed. As Latham says, "an examination serves to make smoother the personal relations among people employed in a given system of work by shifting the duty of selection from individual shoulders and putting it on a relentless piece of mechanism."

The same principles are called into play when we introduce the mechanism of examinations that are called into play when any bit of machinery is employed to do the work formerly done bare-handed, so to