changes, a method was decided on as adapted to the conditions. only one or two indications of results are worth mentioning:

So far,

1. Data obtained show no sex difference in memory power; no evidence, as other experimenters have found, that the girl's memory is more accurate than the boy's.

2. Nothing points to the existence of a "memory period," i. e., a time when the child's memory power is actually stronger than at any later age. Whether at one period the memory is the predominant mindprocess is another question. Growth of memory power is rapid up to thirteen or fourteen, and slow, tho steady, afterward thru the school age, i.e., to twenty-one.

3. Visual memory is weaker than auditory in very early school life, is equal to it at nine years, and by fourteen is almost invariably stronger. Is this the natural course of development among people who are neither exclusively "eye nor ear minded," or is it the effect of school life?

4. Among the pupils, more of the visualizers are above grade than those who depend on the auditory memory. Is this because in modern life the eye is the more useful sense organ, or because school work is so largely planned for visualizers ? The facts which raise these questions are still unsupported by sufficient quantities of data to warrant their dis

cussion.

Another psycho-physical test which promises to be most profitable in its outcome is that for quickness of movement, muscular control; this involving, of course, powers of attention. With a metallic pencil the child taps as fast as possible on a platinum plate one-half inch square. Time allowed is thirty seconds, and the number of taps is automatically recorded. The records of about twelve hundred pupils—too few for conclusions— show the boys slightly quicker than the girls, and in both sexes, from eight to eighteen years, a steady gain with age.

For undertaking such tests as these, immediate and local pedagogical problems have in each case supplied the motive. And, because it means economy of pupils' and experimenters' time, several problems are often attacked at once, as they have been this year, when, for example, methods of teaching spelling and the effect of manual training in the elementary school were both under discussion. It is to be remembered that the department was not organized for psychological research, but to use the means furnished by the psycho-physical laboratories as an aid in the solution of Chicago's school problems.

To return now to the other part of this year's work, work which logically follows and depends upon that of the years 1900 and 1901, i. e., the using of the physical norms in certain specific problems.

Any teacher knows that present conditions in most of the schools compel many children to use desks much too large or too small for them. Adjustable desks are a comparatively recent innovation and are expensive.

By

The result in our schools has been a guesswork combination of large and medium-size or small and medium-size non-adjustable desks. The childstudy department was asked for a recommendation in this matter. referring to average-height charts it responded with a report giving the proportion of adjustable desks necessary for each school grade, and also the best size for regular desks. These instructions are now followed in each new school when built.

The norms have also been used for reference in examining special groups of individuals in the public-school system. Two years ago, for the first time, the high-school graduates, before being allowed to enter the normal school, were required to pass a physical examination. This examination was conducted in part by physicians appointed by the board of education and in part by the child-study department. Measurements of height, weight, strength, and lung capacity were taken. Also sight and hearing were carefully tested, and if found seriously and irremediably defective the applicant was refused admission to the normal school. The same examination is regularly given at the close of the normal course, and must be satisfactorily passed before the young woman is allowed to teach. Physicians and the child-study department look wholly to the welfare of the children in this matter, and no young woman whose physical health is such as necessarily to impair her usefulness as a teacher is recommended.

Another group examined yearly is the boys of the John Worthy School. This is a public school maintained in connection with the Bridewell, Chicago's prison for criminal and delinquent boys. Physically and mentally these boys are found to be much inferior to the ordinary schoolboys of the same age. In height and weight the averages of the John Worthy boys were, for the ages from eleven to seventeen years, from 1 to 23 per cent. lower than the norms for those ages. In strength of grip, endurance, and lung capacity the averages were even lower. Strength of grip, for example, of the sixteen-year-old John Worthy boy was 46 per cent. less than for the ordinary sixteen-year-old high-school boy. Resulting from these examinations there were sent in to the board of education certain recommendations as to the treatment of the pupils in the new parental school, which will have many of these same boys to deal with. Mal-nutrition was a very common condition, and was looked on as a cause of some of the defects. It was therefore advised that particular care be given to provide nourishing food and much manual training. In the future a physician will reside at the parental school who shall be a member of the child-study department, and shall aid the examiners in their oversight of the boys' physical condition.

But by far the most important work made possible by possession of the norms has been that done in the child-study laboratory. This laboratory was established in June, 1900. Some special apparatus and

a room in the board of education quarters was open each Saturday of the school year. To it parents and teachers were invited to bring any children who, they thought, needed a careful psycho-physical examination.

The child who comes to the laboratory is examined in the following way Physically and psycho-physically he is measured, and the results. compared with the data for the normal child of his age. General facts as to his home and school environment, his conduct, previous illnesses, etc., are obtained. This is done by questioning and consulting at some length with his parents and teachers, for usually at least one of the parents and either the child's teacher or principal are present. Lastly, the child is closely observed thruout the time he is in the room, and careful record kept of any growth and developmental defects or abnormalities. To the teacher and parent conditions are then explained, and, as far as may be, advice is given about future treatment of the child in school and home. In all, 360 children have been examined-276 boys and 84 girls the great majority (231) of these from seven to eleven years old. Most of these might be put into one of five groups:

1. Dull, but physically well.

2. Dull and physically defective.

3. Bright and very well developed physically. (These brought in with the false idea that they are overdeveloped and should be held back mentally.)

4. Bright mentally, but weak physically.

5. Very defective in sight or hearing.

Thru the laboratory the child-study department acts in a way as a general adjusting bureau for the schools. It is called upon to answer such questions as these:

For this child with very defective sight, is the best place the ordinary class-room or the department for the blind?

This child does well enough except in drawing, or in singing, or in arithmetic, and there he absolutely fails. Have you any suggestions to make?

Is there any explanation and remedy for this boy's fearful restlessness, making him extremely hard to manage in the schoolroom?

Is this backward, inert child mentally defective, physically incapable, or merely indolent?

Are these ten or twenty pupils backward enough mentally to warrant their segregation in a special room?

All these queries the department answers as best it may. If it recommends a special room, it afterwards keeps watch of the pupils, and often finds improvement enough in a few months to sanction the return of the child to the graded room.

This question of "segregation" reminds us of the true reason for the existence of a laboratory, a motive which it has in common with all state segregating institutions, a motive of which it never loses sight- the good of the large majority, the normal individuals. With their interests chiefly

in view, all reasonable aid is sought for the abnormal, and his segregation if feasible. That it makes for the normal children's welfare to assist or remove the seriously defective no teacher will deny. That the interests of the two classes generally coincide is an indubitable fact most welcome to all concerned. After calling attention to the underlying purpose of this laboratory, and to the fact that 360 children have been there examined and in a great many cases helped, it is needless to reiterate the importance of this part of the work.

In a word, then, the aim of the child-study department has been : 1. A collection of data, physical and psycho-physical, to help in solving pedagogical problems.

2. The use of those data and all other aid possible in the publicschool management of backward and delinquent children.

3. (And this work is only just begun.) The presentation to the teacher of the facts and conclusions to assist in his valuation of the child and his adaptation of the curriculum.

WHAT OUR SCHOOLS OWE TO CHILD STUDY

THEO. B. NOSS, PRINCIPAL OF THE SOUTHWESTERN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, CALIFORNIA, PA.

In the study of the child, as in the study of nature, much has been left to the last two decades to discover. We speak of the present as an extraordinary era of invention and discovery. It may be that the greatest discovery of all is that of the child. People will say, "We have had child study for twenty years. What has it done for our schools?" The answer is: It has done much to give us a new education. More particularly child study has contributed much to give elementary schools (1) an improved curriculum; (2) a better method; and, most of all, (3) a new goal.

The curriculum.—The employments of an up-to-date primary school bear slight resemblance to those of a primary school of thirty or forty years ago. The child then had little to do and much to remember. Even yet it is painful to see that in thousands of elementary schools the traditions of the past enthrall the teacher. The children in less-favored localities still devote their time, not to doing what is interesting and useful, but to memorizing what is for the most part dull and useless. The secret of the best primary work of today is that it is essentially doing something, instead of committing something to memory. It has been truly said that "the strongest potential capacity in the child is capacity for action."

In the kindergarten, where the blight of custom is less felt, and where there is a constant appeal to what is natural and interesting, the principle

of freedom and self-activity dominates. So in the university and the technical schools (which in some measure have caught the spirit of the kindergarten), where there is a constant demand for what is useful and vital, again the method of freedom and self-activity dominates. only between these happy extremes that the practices of the school still show in many places the stupid memory habit and the text-book disease of a past generation. And now, fortunately, we see that many of these schools are moving toward the light. Are we not indebted in a large measure to child study for this new view of education which adapts subject-matter and school employments to the real needs and interests of the pupil?

It is a matter of regret that more progress has not been made, that in so many schools there is still an adherence to old forms from which the soul of truth has departed. Lesson matter was formerly chosen because of the utilities of life; hence the prevailing notion of the paramount value of the three R's. Now we have no patience with such puerilities in education. The utility of the child himself as a personality to bet developed is of such towering importance that nothing else is worthy to be compared with it.

Child study has given new emphasis to the old doctrine that the essential element in education is not knowledge, but training. Nothing can be truer in practical pedagogy than Solomon's dictum: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Education consists chiefly in forming rather than informing the mind; the creating of interests, the formation of habits, rather than the storing of memory with conventional knowledge.

All great success in early training springs from intelligent and sympathetic interest in the child himself. Child study has come when most needed to direct the attention and interest of teachers to the paramount importance of the child himself in the process of education, and to emphasize the importance of beginnings. What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of it. The earliest efforts yield the best and the most fruit. To concentrate upon the early years is to seize the strategic point. Lose this and we lose the battle. The failure and waste of life in thousands of men and women thru neglect of early training is the saddest tragedy of modern life.

The method. In education most depends, not upon what we study, but how, and with whom. The method of the teacher is always important. Here is the pearl of great price in the art of teaching. How is a method of teaching learned? By a study of the subject-matter alone? No, but by a patient, loving study of the child.

Child study has taught us the value of motive in education. President Eliot recently said: "When you appeal to a child with motives he won't use when he is a man, you have not helped him much. "Motive,"