low or a high degree of work and of workers, according to the peculiar conditions in that county and the peculiar means that may be obtained to supply the necessary work. Near great cities and communities where there is a healthy sentiment that will sustain and support and advance education, to obtain the most cultured and best qualified teachers, the effort of the superintendent must be to arouse that public sentiment and bring together those that hold the power and inspire the effort that will result in providing the means by which teachers may be trained and directed. Under our system, as that power was vested in the superintendents, the superintendent was the first to move in the direction of establishing a county normal school and enacting a law that was the means of providing normal schools in any county, if the sentiment of that county was favorable; and under such a law we have the county normal school and we have the means by which we can educate our teachers for their work, and we believe that those who are to control the advance in this country through the children should be those who study the lives of the children and know enough about the unfolding of their mental powers and physical and moral powers to direct them as they come from the homes as little children. Realizing that the growth is to come through those people that are selected to direct and teach; realizing that all depends upon their work, for it is not possible that the power that shall accomplish the best results shall be vested in any one else than in the teacher, you must point out the way by which the teacher may have the knowledge and may grow, and you will be teaching those whom we are seeking to develop and to educate, you are reaching those for whom all systems are organized, and if the system does not have for its direct object the better training and teaching of the children, it had better be abolished and put out of the way. Under such a system of training and of providing for the teachers, we can control the means of examining and the character of the examinations at a point where you can meet the demands of the whole people by furnishing just enough teachers to supply their demands without having a surplus to enter into competition. Under such a system of training one-half of the 900 teachers in Cook County, outside of Chicago, have been trained in our normal schools since its organization in 1867. Last year a class of 80 graduated. They were in demand, and yet outside of that there was a necessity for 120 other teachers in the county to meet the changes that were occurring. The city of Chicago, with 1,400 teachers, constantly draws from the county, but, as we take them from the high schools, this in no way interferes. A system of institutes was prepared, so that before entering upon their work the teachers can be directed for a month or for five weeks specially in their work, and so, knowing the needs of a community, the superintendent may forecast or foreknow and secure the best he can obtain, and then put them under the proper training. The trouble is that all over this land there are thousands who are sent into the schools without any prepara

tion for the work of teaching, without having any knowledge of the system that is used in these country schools, which are the nurseries for the higher schools, and they need that preparation; and the superintendent can, by his power of supervising and of direction, foreknow these needs, and, gathering together the best of the material, give the direction by the employment of the best talent that he has in his community, so that these teachers may be prepared. This is my idea. Under it such work as Colonel Parker has been doing will be greatly extended, until, appropriating the best there is everywhere, we may uplift the whole mass.

Upon the conclusion of Mr. Lane's remarks, at 12.50 p. m., the Department adjourned to pay its respects to the President of the United States.

SIXTH SESSION.

The Department was called to order at 7.30 o'clock p. m., Wednesday, March 16, Hon. N. H. R. Dawson, United States Commissioner of Education, occupying the chair.

The CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen of the convention, the discussion to-night was to have been opened by the Hon. James McAllister, of Philadelphia, but owing to his absence his place will be supplied. I am requested to state that Col. F. W. Parker, of Normal Park, Ill., will open the proceedings.

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Colonel Parker began his remarks by deprecating any comparison of what he might say off-hand with the carefully prepared paper which was expected from Mr. McAllister, and which might appear hereafter. The questions which the minds of superintendents and educationists are trying to solve are intrinsically of far greater importance than those that come before either the State Legislatures or Congress. As these educational questions arise they and the devices and methods which arise from them should be tested by comparing them with ascertained principles in the science of education.

He could not quite agree with the remarks made a year ago by Mr. J. W. Dickinson, of Massachusetts, on the subject of industrial education. Mr. Dickinson considered the subject in its relations to elementary and scientific education, discussing the topic from a scientific standpoint. He came to the conclusion that the use of tools as a part of school-work was only a form of imitation, and as such a very imperfect means of developing the powers of the child. Colonel Parker failed to see wherein it differed in this respect from the teaching of language, oral and written; so that, while accepting Mr. Dickinson's premises, he was unable to come to Mr. Dickinson's conclusions. We must avoid dogmatism; we must not forget that it is our business to develop the latent capacities of each child into healthful and active abilities. The 3536-No. 3—8

original design of each child's mind should be developed and manifested in his character. Now, character is made up of habits, and all education is the formation of habits. Right habits promote healthy growth, and growth in character should result in growing freedom of thought and act. So far as industrial education is applied in our schools to the training of mechanics who are to be treated as though they were parts of the machines that they work with, it is in the highest degree reprehensible, and even terrible. We must not shape education into a means for helping machinery. Its purpose is to cause the child to work out the best of which he is capable. This is the reason why the kindergarten is of such immense importance in primary education. The child in it is taught, not only how to use the gifts and how to make the articles derived therefrom, but the greater, the diviner truth, that what we produce should not be primarily for ourselves but for others. It is this spirit which should inform any industrial training that we give in any part of the public school course.

That man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow may once have been a curse; but work of every kind, when animated by this altruistic spirit, is no longer a curse but a blessing. By introducing manual training into our schools in this spirit Colonel Parker believed that it will develop a future which we cannot now conceive.

Hon. J. W. DICKINSON, Secretary of State board of education, Boston, Mass.: Ladies and Gentlemen: For the most part, if I understand the speaker who has just taken his seat, I agree with him, and am sorry that he did not have more time for the discussion, because I think if he had he would have come upon the topic that is before us for discussion. Last year I had the pleasure of reading before this convention a paper on the province of the public schools, and as this subject is somewhat similar to that, I thought I would make an analysis of my paper, and present that with some views at this time, and as I read it I want to call your attention to that part of it which our good friend who has just taken his seat calls "dogmatic." I did not intend to have my arguments have that quality at all, and I thought, as I discussed the question in a quiet and orderly manner, as I treated, as I thought, all the topics upon the same general principle, that I should at least, if I did not prove my case, be free from the charge of dogmatism. Now, I will not occupy your time very long in reading what I have written here. I want to say at the commencement that I am not opposed to industrial education. I have spent my life in promoting it and preparing the way for it. The question is simply this: Shall we introduce what is called industrial education, not what Colonel Parker has called industrial education, but what is called industrial education, into the public schools of the country? That is the question.*

*Instead of the synopsis used by the speaker on this occasion, the whole paper as read by him at the meeting of the Department in February, 1886, is here given, because it was omitted from Circular No. 2, 1886, which contained the other papers read at that time.-Editor.

THE PROVINCE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.*
*

There is doubtless a wide difference of opinion among educators concerning the ends which the public schools should labor to attain. Some affirm that the public schools have failed to accomplish their purpose unless they have prepared the children for their special places in life, or have trained them in some of the special applications of their active power. Others, believing that in the general education of every child he should be considered an end unto himself rather than an instrument for the production of some end outside himself, would direct him to those exercises which have a tendency to produce a symmetrical development of all his faculties. This, they think, is the legitimate work of direct end to be sought in all disciplinary

the public schools and the study.

In the first case the educator would direct his attention to the communication of knowledge, and to trai ning his pupil in some of the occupations of life. In the second case his mind is fixed on what he can lead his pupil to become. On account of the existence of these two opinions, and of the two plans of instruction that grow out of them, we hear much, on the one hand, of the advantages of practical knowledge, and, on the other, of the value of a symmetrical development of the mind.

It seems necessary, therefore, for those who have anything to do in forming public opinion on educational methods, to determine what the public schools of the country should attempt to accomplish for their pupils. This appears the more necessary when we become aware that a choice of ends to be secured by school life will determine what subjects of study or occupations shall become the occasions of public school exercises.

If it is the function of the public school to prepare the children for some special mode of gaining a living, those exercises may be introduced which will train them to some special employment. This would graft upon our common school work the professional and industrial elements, and the schools would be no longer common schools. The next generation of citizens would be composed of men who might practice and pursue the trades with skill, but all would be done with special reference to supplying the wants of life. That intelligent desire for a higher life of the individual and a higher civilization of the State, which is strong in every rightly trained mind, would be obscured, and men would be moved chiefly by the mechanical and animal principles of action. But no system of public schools can be maintained for private utility alone. All social institutions must be founded on the idea of promoting public utility also, and in the administration of the system the public' good must not be sacrificed for private ends.

* See report of the Massachusetts State board of education, 1885–86, pp. 117–128, inclusive.

It is because there is a human education which should precede the acquisition of special professional or industrial skill, and which has a tendency to elevate the individual above the narrowing effects of any profession or trade or occupation and bring him to his special work with a trained mind, a strong will, and manly spirit, that we may estab. lish public educational institutions, to be supported by a general tax, and may gather all the children into them for a common course of study. This sort of human training is what John Stuart Mill says every generation owes to the next, as that on which its civilization and worth will principally depend. It should be the ultimate end of public instruction to so direct the attention of the learners to themselves as individ. uals and to their relations to one another as social beings and members of the State that they will become true men-intelligent, loyal, and virtuous in all the relations of private and public life.

If this solid foundation can be established men will turn to their trades as branches of intelligence and not as mere trades, and they will pursue them with a conscientious regard not only for their own highest good but also for the highest good of all with whom they hold any re. lations.

Theodore Parker once said to a convention of teachers in his own State that "to the instructed man his trade is a study; the tools of his craft are books; his farm a gospel, eloquent in its sublime silence; his cattle and his corn his teachers; the stars his guides to virtue and to God; and every mute and every living thing by shore or sea a heavensent prophet to refine his mind and his heart.”

The spirit which the individual brings from the public school to his special work is of more importance, as far as either public or private utility is concerned, than that sort of special skill which public schools will ever be able to communicate. For this spirit will determine the use he will make of his skill after it is acquired.

Mill says that if we can succeed in the disciplinary schools in making sensible men they will be sure to make of themselves sensible laborers in the pursuit of whatever occupation they may choose.

After the disciplinary studies have been taken, then the industrial, technical, and professional schools should open their doors and offer to all who desire to enter the advantages of a special education.

We now have in the Commonwealth such schools, the best that human ingenuity and generosity have thus far been able to establish; and the way should be made easy to their instruction for all who desire a tech. nical training. But these institutions have a right to demand that those who apply for admission to their classes shall already know the elementary facts of science, the processes by which the mind passes from particular to general knowledge, and the principles and rules which govern the use and construction of the language we speak. They have also a right to require of those who apply for technical instruction that training of the faculties which enables them to think accu