various states ought not such an agency be governmental? Should not such a function be exercised, if it is to be exercised at all, by the office of the United States Commissioner of Education? The answer is clear. No privately endowed institution can ever take the place of a national bureau of education. Any privately endowed foundation which conceived of its functions in such terms would be doomed to ignominious failure. Everyone knows, however, why a governmental agency cannot at this time report critically on universities and colleges and systems of public education. The support and control of all of our governmental bureaus, including the Bureau of Education, is political. A few years ago that Bureau prepared a report making comparisons between educational institutions of certain classes. The moment the nature of this report became known the local institutions in many states appealed to their congressmen and senators, and they in turn to the President. The report was supprest. No such bureau can tell fully and frankly the facts about education in the various states in such reports, for example, as the Carnegie Foundation's studies on medical education and agricultural education recently publisht, or those on engineering education, legal education, and the training of teachers which are about to appear-all of them undertaken at the request and carried on with the cooperation of representative organizations. It is indeed anomalous, in a country where the prestige and the problems of education are unparalleled, that education has no seat in the national cabinet, as it has in England, France, and Italy, but is relegated to a severely restricted minor bureau. Yet this remains the situation in spite of all our efforts to better it.

Entirely apart from this, however, privately endowed foundations, whose trustees represent the whole country, will always be able to perform, as no government agency ever can, an important and indispensable public service. It is the essence of democracy that there should be, not only governmental action, but also private cooperation and initiative. We need, not only a government Bureau of Public Information, but also the Associated Press, not only state-supported, but also endowed, universities, not only the Bureau of Education, but also the National Education Association and the educational foundations.

D. THE VIEW OF THE ENTIRE SITUATION FROM

THE OUTSIDE

DON C. SEITZ, EDITOR, 'THE WORLD," NEW YORK, N.Y.

Your chairman gave me a very large contract when he assigned me to discuss the problems of the educational field in general. It seems to me tho that education, like business, has become swampt with undue overheads of cost in time and money-time taken away from children and money taken away from the taxpayers.

To educate thoroly a young person under our present system takes fifteen years, including a college term. A period of eleven years for primary and high-school instruction, in view of what is accomplisht, seems out of all proportion to the necessities of the case. I would remedy this by a radical change in our system of instruction. To open the door of knowledge, it is first needful that children should learn to read. I would therefore teach nothing but reading until every child in the class had acquired an ample vocabulary. I would extend the lessons to all forms of interest as rapidly as the vocabulary acquisition permitted. I should be very catholic in my selections, and if I could not arrest a boy's idle mind in any other way I would feed him on dime novels-anything to get a vocabulary. Having acquired the art of reading and an interest in what is read, I should next instruct the pupil in the methods of communicating knowledge, to wit, writing and spelling. A child would study nothing else until proficient. Every pupil would recite and pass in separate review and be dealt with according to his needs. Having thus acquired the means of understanding and of transmitting it, I would then turn to mathematics and teach nothing but addition, multiplication, and division until the pupil was thoroly proficient. He or she would then be equipt to acquire wider knowledge. Then I would give a thoro course in history and geography and call the task done, except for the exceptional. To this I would open the high schools for their ready entrance, if they wished to go-I would push no one in.

I think that one of the reasons why education meets with so much resistance and is treated with so little respect is because it comes to the pupil in the form of a task. It should be advertised as a recreation, as a means of wider enjoyment in the good things of life. Because people are poor or engaged in humble occupations is no reason why they should be shut out from the light of the world. Why should not a mechanic who runs a lathe in a machine-shop be able to enjoy Shakespeare? Why should a servant or a waitress in a restaurant be debarred from the great romances ? It is just as sane as that poverty should be akin to dirt and that poor cooking should ruin provisions when bought by the poor. It is a popular delusion somehow that the enjoyments of life are only for the well-to-do, and it seems to me that for this delusion the attitude of the educator is largely responsible. We should simplify instruction, enhance its entertaining qualities, and broaden the mind of the average so that it can enjoy every opportunity that is open to the fortunate, and rest the backs of the taxpayers.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ECONOMY OF TIME IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

Your Committee presents its third report of progress in Part I of the Seventeenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Previous reports were presented in the publications of this Society, the same appearing as Part I of the fourteenth and sixteenth yearbooks.

In the three reports attention has been directed mainly to formulating upon the basis of research studies the minimal essentials in the various subjects of the elementary schools. The accompanying table summarizes both the subjects of study which have been discust and the number of pages devoted to each. From the table it will be observed that all the subjects of the elementary curriculum have been considered from the standpoint of minimal essentials, with the exception of music, drawing or art, elementary science or nature-study, and the manual and household arts. An investigation pertaining to the content of elementary science or nature-study has been almost ready for publication for two years; likewise a study of art or drawing is almost ready for publication. Considerable work has also been done toward the determination of the minimal essentials in music, but this study is not so near completion. No investigation of the minimal content in the manual or household arts has been begun, so far as your Committee's work is concerned.

Judging from the quantity of the sales on each of the Yearbooks and by the investigations modeled on those printed in the Yearbooks, which are under way in the departments of education of the normal schools and universities of the country, and by the effects which these reports have produced in modifying courses of study, your Committee regrets that it has been impossible to complete formulations on the subjects which have not thus far been investigated. We believe that as early as possible, either thru this Committee or some other agency, this department should further encourage the scientific study and investigation of the content essential in the elementary curriculum. The subjects thus far investigated should be extended, and studies should be arranged for immediately in those subjects not reported upon thus far.

In closing its report before this department one year ago, the Committee promist that the following lines of work would be pursued with all earnestness during the year which closes with this meeting:

1. Its effort to state the minimum content in the elementary-school subjects will be further extended by including geography, music, elementary science, and drawing, thus

completing, as far as is possible, the work on the reduced content in the elementary-school subjects, interpreting all its recommendations regarding content finally in relation to economy of time.

2. Arrangements have been completed for starting the work of three committees in the field of method. One, in charge of W. C. Bagley, of the University of Illinois, will formulate the "Objectives of Elementary Education on the Basis of the Minimum Content of the Elementary-School Subjects." Coordinately, another committee, in charge of Frank E. Thompson, of the University of Colorado, will formulate the "Purpose of Education in Terms of Activities." Another committee, consisting of Messrs. Bobbitt, Charters, Coffman, Horn, Kilpatrick, Stone, and Wilson, will take up the "Minimal Essentials" in each subject as they have been recommended in the fourteenth and sixteenth yearbooks and as they may be recommended in later publications, and endeavor to organize this content into the successive problems which should be mastered by the pupils from grade to grade in each of the subjects.

3. In the field of organization we propose to start a committee to work at once, under the direction of Dean H. L. Smith, of the University of Indiana, making a survey of the efforts being made above the sixth grade in this country which are resulting in the saving of time between the sixth grade and graduation from high school. This survey will be made in such way as to permit a quantitative report of the results of the survey.

4. As soon as the report of the Commission on Reorganization of Secondary Education is available in printed form, we shall constitute the committee necessary to review the report from the standpoint of the organization of the teaching content of each subject as recommended, in such way as to determine where savings may be made.

5. Arrangements have already been completed whereby a study will be made, under the direction of George D. Strayer, of Columbia University, of the extension of school time, both the day and the year, in relation to economy of time.

The progress in the first and second of these proposals is reported in Part I of the Seventeenth Yearbook. One hundred and fifteen pages are devoted to reporting the investigations. Eighty-nine pages are devoted to minimal essentials and 26 to the purposes of historical instruction in the seventh and eighth grades. In the further investigation of minimal essentials two studies are concerned with the content of arithmetic, one with geography, one with reading, one and a brief summary with English, two with civics, and one with history. The initial study on objectives in elementary education is a symposium on history organized and carried to completion under the leadership of Dr. W. C. Bagley. The symposium occupies 26 pages and is concerned with the purposes of historical instruction in the seventh and eighth grades.

All of the studies of this Yearbook and of the preceding Yearbooks containing our reports are concerned with determining the materials which should be incorporated in the course of study of the subject under investigation by finding out what people who are living and working successfully outside the school find need to be able to do, and by determining accurately just what information and skills they need to employ in doing their work successfully.

In his study of "Some Social Demands of the Course of Study in Arithmetic" Mr. Mitchell gathers data from four sources—a standard cookbook, the pay-rolls of a number of factories, marked-down-sales advertisements,

and a general hardware catalog-by which he proceeds to determine what the character of arithmetic taught in the schools should be to enable persons to solve the problems which would arise from any of the four sources.. He finds a great frequency of small numbers, especially of fractions and mixt numbers. He finds that the dozen as a unit of production and trade should be taught and in connection therewith, that the aliquot parts of 12 should be taught.

In her study on "What Should Be the Minimal Information about Banking" Miss Cammerer sought to learn what bank employes think that the citizens of their community ought to know about banking. She mailed an inquiry to 50 bank employes and received 35 returns. She also submitted the same inquiry to the parents of the children in the University of Iowa Elementary School. There were 55 items in the inquiry, and the study reports the order of importance assigned each item by the total returns from the bank employes and from parents. From the replies received as to what the citizens of a community ought to know about each item a composite statement showing what ought to be taught about each item was prepared. The study closes with a bibliography containing 24 references.

In their study on "The Determination and Measurement of the Minimal Essentials of Elementary-School Geography" Mr. Branom and Mr. Reavis summarized previous studies to determine minimal essentials in geography. Earlier studies have placed the emphasis almost exclusively on place geography. This investigation holds that any list of minimal essentials in geography that does not emphasize relational facts as well as facts of place is inadequate. The investigators attempt to set up certain standards for the selection of the facts which should be learned and for the relations which should be recognized and appreciated. The method of study is clearly set forth thruout. The study closes with a completion test for the measurement of minimal geographical knowledge of elementary-school children.

In his study of the vocabularies of ten second-year readers Mr. Housh determines scientifically the vocabulary of ten second readers in common use in American elementary schools. He endeavors to find a basis for measuring the quality of readers, in so far as the vocabulary of these readers is a factor in determining their worth. The study determines the entire vocabulary of each of the ten readers and their common vocabulary, then compares the vocabulary of the method and the content readers and shows by means of the vocabularies the relations between these two kinds of readers. The readers used as a basis for the study, the method of procedure, and the results obtained are set forth in detail.

In his report on "Composition Standards in the Elementary Schools" Mr. Hosic shows the sort of composition scale which resulted from the selection of compositions of different degrees of excellence by the generaljudgment process rather than by exact, scientific procedure. Compositions of each degree of excellence are printed for each grade. Following this