has learned to sympathize with Sentimental Tommy. She is even told to go

her way and

Slips containing the following explanations and questions are sent to three or five persons named by the candidate as references:

STATE OF MAINE: EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT.

M..

of.

has referred to you as one not related to her by blood or marriage, nor associated with her in business, and as having personal knowledge of her character and worth as a teacher. Will you please fill the annexed blank, using one or more of the following words in giving answers to all subjects of inquiry except the last, namely, "Excellent," "Good," " Fair," "Poor," " Very Poor "?

If your answers are favorable, your name will be placed upon the back of the state certificate for which the person named is applicant; if unfavorable, your name will not be used, and your answers will be held strictly confidential. For the benefit of the candidate this return should be made at once.

W. W. STETSON,

State Superintendent of Public Schools.

ESTIMATE OF CANDIDAte's fitness

(1) Moral character? (2) Success in gaining co-operation of pupils and parents? (3) Tact in directing and controlling pupils? (4) Interest in work? (5) Energy? (6) Enthusiasm? (7) Skill in instructing? (8) Power in stimulating pupils to do their best? (9) Influence over pupils out of school? (10) Efforts for self-improvement? (11) Extent of general reading? (12) Manners as influencing those of pupils ? (13) Capacity for work? (14) For what kind of school would you recommend the candidate?

Signed.......

P. O....

The candidate does not know which three of the five references are interviewed. The replies received are averaged and recorded on the face of the certificate in a column numbered 1, and a record is also made of the preliminary examination on the back of the certificate. This document, when properly filled out, gives a complete pedagogical history of the person holding the same, together with the estimates of three competent judges who know personally of the holder and her work. It also includes a license to teach in primary, grammar, common schools, or public schools, and is valid for one, three, or five years, or for life.

On a day previously announced, the candidates assemble at convenient centers, and written examinations in the several studies are given. These papers are returned to the department and are ranked, and the credits are entered upon the certificate in the column numbered 2.

It will be seen that three items are taken into consideration in licensing a teacher: first, her personal and professional record; second, the testimony furnished by three com petent persons as to her ability and her success in the schoolroom; third, her scholastic attainments as manifest in her written examinations.

The following advantages are claimed for this system of issuing certificates: first, it is just to the candidate; second, it reveals to the applicant, in tangible form, her merits and defects; third, it gives full credit for ability, scholarship, experience, effort, and skill; fourth, it furnishes school officials with a reliable statement of the quality and power of the person applying for a position.

MISS MARGARET A. HALEY, of Chicago. I should like to ask Superintendent Stetson if he can get teachers with all the accomplishments he has mentioned for $38 per month. SUPERINTENDENT STETSON.-Many are giving their time and their best knowledge and culture for a sum so small that they are unwilling to reveal it.

MISS HALEY. Do the graduates of Smith and Wellesley Colleges support themselves on the small sum mentioned?

SUPERINTENDENT STETSON.-These persons are native-born, Simon-pure maniacs, and are waiting for an opportunity to marry men with money enough to support them and supply them with the necessary amount of money to carry on their work.

SUPERINTENDENT F. LOUIS SOLDAN, of St. Louis.- Examination of principals and teachers brings to light other important points aside from determining the academic proficiency in the studies he or she is expected to teach. Examinations aid the superintendent and examining committee in determining traits of character and the moral proficiency of the candidate. These traits of character may not always be determined directly, but indirectly. It is sometimes true that the teacher who receives the highest per cent. on an examination is the weakest teacher, but this is the exception, not the rule. It is not generally true that those teachers who pass the best examinations are among the strongest teachers. Under our rules for examining teachers, we hold an oral examination as well as a written. The oral examination always follows the written. We use the oral examination to find out what a teacher really knows about the subject, and thru this medium, by a careful method of questioning, we are enabled to discover something concerning the teacher's personality and power. For instance, the teacher is asked to read a certain selection and encouraged to talk about it. He is asked what his favorite book is, and he is given a chance to tell what he knows about the book. We find it an easy matter to have the resident teachers of our own cities or state take the examination before election to positions in our schools, but it is often impracticable to ask those who live a long way from St. Louis to come and take the examination in advance. The trip is expensive, and we cannot guarantee them a position in advance of the examination. For these reasons our board of education has adopted the plan of permitting principals and supervising teachers to come into our schools, after looking them up, and occupy positions upon probation. This gives us an opportunity to gain a knowledge of their practical work and special fitness for the work to which they have been assigned. If at the close of the intervals of probation their work is satisfactory, they are allowed to take an examination and certificates are issued to them.

SUPERINTENDENT CHARLES R. SKINNER, of New York.- How does your plan for examining inexperienced teachers differ from that of examining experienced teachers? SUPERINTENDENT SOLDAN.-Inexperienced teachers are not permitted to enter the schools upon probation without an examination, while experienced teachers are.

SUPERINTENDENT L. E. WOLFE, Kansas City, Kan.-Is it really worth a teacher's time and efforts to cram for an examination? I think that examinations should be so set that they will parallel the necessary preparation. Appoint a committee upon examination to prepare a set of questions that will test a teacher's skill on what she will be required to teach. The questions usually prepared in reading are not at all a test of the teacher's ability to teach reading. This same criticism is more or less applicable to many other branches upon which teachers are examined for certificates to teach in our city schools.

SUPERINTENDENT J. F. KEATING, Pueblo, Colo., asked Superintendent Soldan why he required a teacher to take an examination after she gave evidence of her fitness as a teacher.

SUPERINTENDENT SOLDAN.- Real scholastic ability goes beyond the ordinary requirements of a schoolroom. A teacher should be broader than the text book and the mere outline of work she is expected to present to her pupils.

SUPERINTENDENT GREENWOOD, Kansas City, Mo.- I should place the names of teachers and principals resident in the city who have given evidence of careful preparation and skill for the work on the approved list.

SUPERINTENDENT JAMES A. FOSHAY, Los Angeles, Cal., asked Superintendent Soldan for what time he appointed principals without examination.

SUPERINTENDENT SOLDAN.-For the remainder of the year at the close of which an examination will be given him. If he is not prepared on all the subjects in the usual list, substitution of studies of equal value is often permitted.

SUPERINTENDENT C. G. PEARSE, Omaha, Neb.- Examination of teachers should be held to protect those whose duty it is to employ them.

Dr. E. E. WHITE, Cincinnati, O.- We have not yet discovered the best method of examining teachers. So long as we make no discrimination between the beginner and the experienced teacher, so long will the profession be unrecognized and unformed. A qualification in one state is not usually indorsed in another. The profession of teaching ought to recognize permanent qualifications for the work. A certain degree of preparation and certain tests that may be made from time to time should be allowed to take the place of any future examinations. Our custom is to continue to examine teachers too long.

THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ALL LEARNING TO BETTER LIVING

DAVID L. KIEHLE, PROFESSOR OF PEDAGOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

Life is the supreme treasure of humanity. Whatever it contains, whether much or little, it is still the most desirable of all things. "All that a man hath will he give for his life." Even when reduced to mere animal existence, it is still his precious treasure. And the history of the human race may be comprehended in the single aim, to make life more worth living, to enlarge the content of the ideal, and accordingly to appropriate or utilize man's environment to this end.

Education, as the handmaid of civilization, may be comprehensively defined as a preparation for living. It has never been dissociated from this dominant idea of life, and therefore has always, in some sense, been practical. The form which education has assumed at various times has likewise been determined by the form which these two ideals have assumed, namely, (1) who are entitled to a living, interpreted in its highest meaning? and (2) in what does living consist?

In general, we may say that the governing class- those who represent the institution in its governmental and social capacity-have claimed for themselves the right to represent in themselves the highest ideal of living. This they have claimed in its honors and comforts. They have not only excluded all others from the privileges they have enjoyed, but they have made all others contribute to their living by every necessary sacrifice of comfort, of convenience, and even of life itself. Education has therefore always been for the recognized dominant class, who have alone been given the opportunity to prepare for living. We shall find in our study of education that, with the expansion of this idea of the dominant class, the forms of education have changed to include the new classification, and also a change in method to prepare for corresponding life.

Introductory to our discussion of modern education, let us recall a few prominent historical illustrations.

The Athenian state was a pure democracy. The citizens of this citystate numbered some twenty-five thousand, and were the governing element of a community ten times as great, consisting of slaves, peasant farmers, tradesmen, and the like. The high ideal of these free citizens was philosophic leisure. To this end their education provided a most complete and harmonious culture-physical, intellectual, and social-in the palæstra, the gymnasium, the military service, the games, the theater, and the forum. But this most remarkable system was confined to the few citizens of the state, citizens who were relieved of toil, trade, and all occupations of industry, these being left to slaves and foreigners. Their system of education, so complete when considered with reference to their ideal, was correspondingly narrow. Gymnastics for the body, and music for the culture of the soul in æsthetics and philosophy, comprehended the entire range of their education. Commerce, manufacturing, and domestic arts being occupations of slaves, foreigners, and women, the subjects themselves could find no place in the curriculum of freemen.

Passing now to the Middle Ages, when the Christian church was the educator of the world, the clergy were the dominant class. Life for them was religious, and education was especially for them as guides and teachers of the people. In this period philosophy was made the handmaid of theology. The product of Roman civilization in Roman law was made the foundation of canon law, even as temples and basilicas of pagan Rome were transformed into the churches of Christian Rome. Later, as in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as state governments began to form and take somewhat independent direction of affairs, Roman law became the foundation of civil law. Thus it was that the universities of Europe developed a curriculum intensely practical in the interest of the two great and dominant classes, the clergy and the secular aristocracy. This curriculum culminated in philosophy and theology, canon law, and civil law, to which should be added the no less practical one of medicine.

Again, as in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, the democratic spirit began to appear, as the people began to realize that life was for them as well as for their lords, and that a share of the comforts of life was for them also; they began to claim for themselves the advantage of education in gaining a livelihood. They instituted guilds for the protection of labor, and schools for the better instruction of the laboring classes. These schools, so imperfect in their beginnings, grew to be the Burger- and Realschulen of Germany, the manual-training and polytechnic schools of America. Harvard and Yale and Princeton each provided an education of immediate and practical advantage to the clerical and legal professions, following the traditions of the past. If the representatives of labor -and in this I include all secular occupations of trade and the

mechanic arts-pursued these collegiate courses, it would be for the general culture afforded by them, and not because they expected to make any practical application of learning to their several callings.

During the past century our school system, culminating in the university, has been greatly modified and expanded to satisfy the demands of industrial life. In the University of Minnesota we have colleges of law and medicine, of pharmacy, dentistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mining engineering, and mechanic arts, and, last of all, agriculture. So bountiful has this provision become that it seems as if no form of productive labor had been overlooked in the educational facilities of the state.

If, now, you will recall the history from which we have selected our illustrations, you will observe that as the people have gained freedom and recognition as citizens, with the rights of freemen, the system of education has gradually expanded to give practical preparation for the several interests which citizenship represents.

First, you will also observe that there have been two stages of development; the first was that of education for the governing classes, social, secular, and clerical. The second, and that with which we have to do, is that of labor, or productive industry-not to supersede the first, but rather to supplement it and give it a more extended application. Thus far, too, the progress of education, as we have considered it, has been confined to men, because citizenship has been for men. Authoritative direction in affairs of church and state, in matters social and industrial, has been limited to men. Accordingly, education in all its history has been for men.

In the earlier periods women were without either social or political consideration, and were consequently excluded from all privileges of education. It is only in recent times that the rights of woman and her position in state and church have come under serious discussion. As her rights of citizenship were recognized, she was admitted to the public schools, and the era of coeducation began. But the schools to which she was admitted had been planned for the ruling classes. What she was to get was because of what she was, and what she wished to pursue, in common with men. This education began in the elementary grades, where study, like play and work, is quite the same for boys and girls. Later, as women have been admitted to colleges of academic and technical instruction, they have found the courses those that are demanded by men in the professions and the industries.

As women emerged from the seclusion and the limitations of domestic life to assume the responsibilities and to discharge the duties of citizenship, they first asserted their industrial rights-the right to work for pay, to undertake enterprises requiring skill-according to their own preferences and abilities. The industries and the technical schools opened to