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IN MEMORIAM. WILLIAM HAROLD PAYNE

William Harold Payne, professor of the science and the art of teaching in the University of Michigan, a member of the National Council of Education during the years 1882 to 1891 and again during the years 1895 to 1897, died at Ann Arbor on the eighteenth day of June, 1907. The following memorial was presented to the senate of the University of Michigan by Professor Isaac N. Demmon and adopted by that body on the twenty-fifth of June:

For the second time during the academic year just closed death has invaded our ranks and carried off one of our number. Amid the festivities and felicitations of commencement week we were arrested by the sad intelligence that Professor Payne had answered the final summons that sooner or later must come to each one of us. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, the eighteenth instant, he slipped peacefully away, and at the solemn evening hour of Thursday, the twentieth, his mortal remains were laid to rest in Forest Hill. The man of quiet and unobtrusive mien whom to know was to love, the accomplished thinker, the profound scholar, the skilful administrator, the warm-hearted friend, after a half-century of distinguished service in educational work has closed his career and passed forever from mortal view. We who are left have come together, as our custom is, to do honor to his memory, to make some brief record of his virtues and his achievements, and to express our sense of personal loss.

William Harold Payne was born at Farmington, Ontario County, New York, May 12, 1836, son of Gideon Riley and Mary Brown (Smith) Payne. He was educated in the common schools and later in the Macedon Academy and in the New York Conference Seminary at Charlotteville. His career as a teacher was begun in the country schools, from which he passed to the headship of the public school at Victor, New York. In 1858, at the age of twentytwo, he came to Michigan to take the principalship of the Union School at Three Rivers, where he remained six years. For the next two years he was in charge of the schools at Niles, Michigan. In 1866 he was called to Ypsilanti to take the principalship of the Union Seminary, then the leading preparatory school of the state. Three years later he accepted the superintendency of schools at Adrian, Michigan, where during the next ten years he greatly extended his reputation as an administrator and educational writer. In 1879 he was appointed to the newly established chair of the science and the art of teaching at the University of Michigan. Eight years later, on the death of the chancellor of the University of Nashville (who was also head of the Peabody Normal College), the trustees of the Peabody Education Fund turned to Michi- . gan for a successor; and Professor Payne was induced to leave a place to which he was deeply attached, for the more arduous task of carrying on the great

work begun by his predecessors at Nashville. This position he continued to fill with marked success for the next fourteen years, bringing the institution up to higher standards and extending its beneficent influence into every corner of the South. On the death of Professor Hinsdale, his distinguished successor at Ann Arbor, he was at once invited to return to his former chair. This, after some hesitation, he consented to do; and thus the heavy burdens of administration were again laid aside for the more congenial work of the classroom.

During his long career as a teacher and organizer, he found time to make valuable contributions to the literature of his subject. From 1866 to 1870 he was editor of The Michigan Teacher. In 1871 he published an address on "The Relation between the University and Our High Schools," which had its influence on the question of certification by diploma then under discussion. In 1875 appeared his "Chapters on School Supervision," and in the spring of 1879, “A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the Science and the Art of Teaching." His later works are: Outlines of Educational Doctrine (1882), Contributions to the Science of Education (1886), and The Education of Teachers (1901). Besides these he published translations of Compayré's History of Pedagogy (1886), Lectures on Pedagogy (1888), Elements of Psychology (1890), and Psychology Applied to Teaching (1893); also, of Rousseau's Emile (1892). In 1872 the regents of the University of Michigan conferred upon him the honorary degree of Master of Arts, and in 1888 the degree of Doctor of Laws. In 1897 the Western University of Pennsylvania conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Letters.

His singularly sweet and quiet manners were no doubt due in some measure to his Quaker birth and upbringing. He was always and everywhere a gentle man. This need not imply that he lacked spirit or courage or force of character; for he had all these in abundance. He was a perfect disciplinarian. In the difficult field of school administration he was tried in a great variety of positions and he met every responsibility with full resources and with mastery. By a happy combination of gentleness, kindness, and firmness he had his own way without seeming to command it. Wholly without bigotry, he was a strict moralist both in theory and in practice. He was a man of strong religious. faith, and clung eagerly to the good. He believed in the great disciplinary value of a rightly conducted school, and that the school had important functions besides the mere conveying of information. His modesty and self-poise coupled with clear thinking and deep feeling gave him remarkable power over the young who came under his instruction. No teacher was ever more genuinely loved and respected by his students. Not only from Michigan where the larger part of his life was spent, but likewise from the warm-hearted southern country, comes abundant testimony to this powerful uplifting personal influence for all that is lovely and true.

Soon after his return to the university in 1901 disease laid its heavy hand. upon him and he gradually became incapacitated for work in the classroom. This grieved him greatly, but he did not lose his interest in the university nor

in the work of his special department. His mind was clear and his faith serene, and his face ever brightened with the old cheer in welcoming the visits of his friends. He wished to live, but he was not afraid to die.

While he was not the originator of the idea of making formal instruction in the science and the art of teaching a part of the university curriculum, he was quick to seize upon the suggestion when made and to urge its adoption. By good fortune he became the first occupant of the first chair of education established in America. The movement was everywhere heralded as a "new departure" and its success eagerly watched. By his tact, and intelligence, and strength of character, he won his way amid some open opposition and much silent distrust, to a complete victory; and when he was called South, he turned over a highly prosperous department to his successor. He lived to see his ideas embodied in the courses of study of nearly every higher institution of learning in this country.

The man is gone; but his work remains, his influence abides; and in taking leave of our theme we may recall the striking appositeness of the noble lines of Wordsworth with which he concluded the Duddon series:

Still glides the stream and shall not cease to glide;

The form remains, the function never dies;

While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,

We men, who in our morn of youth defied

The elements, must vanish-be it so!

Enough, if something from our hands have power

To live, and act, and serve the future hour;

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,

We feel that we are greater than we know.

The only enduring monument to any man is the one the man builds himself, the impression he makes on the world. We may safely leave the fame of our departed friend to the thousands of hearts he has touched thruout his long and beneficent career.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION

IN SCHOOLS FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES

SUPPLEMENTARY TO REPORT SUBMITTED AT THE MEETING IN ASBURY PARK, JULY, 1905

SUBMITTED TO THE NATIONAL COUNCIL JULY 8, 1907

INTRODUCTION

L. D. HARVEY, CHAIRMAN, SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND OF THE STOUT TRAINING SCHOOLS, MENOMONIE, WIS.

Mr. Chairman and Members of Council:

As

I have brought here the material which your committee has organized. An explanation of the brief report to be submitted at this time is due to the members of the Council, and probably to the members of the committee. you are aware, in 1905, this committee made a report on the subject of industrial education in schools for rural communities, in which it undertook to set forth the argument for that kind of work, the scope of the work, and a brief statement of what was being done in the different types of schools in which a beginning had been made in industrial education, and the necessity for a new type of secondary school distinctively industrial in character, and adapted to the needs of children in rural communities. These matters were discussed quite fully in that report.

The committee was continued, and asked to make a report in 1906. As a preliminary step to the actual work of investigation, the committee corresponded widely to determine the kind of information most desired by those who were directly interested in the phase of industrial education under consideration. This correspondence disclosed the fact that what was most wanted was a definite and authoritative statement of what was actually being done in different parts of the country in providing facilities for industrial education in rural communities.

A meeting of the committee was held and it was decided to undertake the work of gathering this information. A number of states were assigned to each member of the committee as his particular field for investigation. The general lines of inquiry pursued by each member of the committee were the same. The investigation was undertaken chiefly thru correspondence, tho supplemented by such direct personal knowledge as individual members of the committee might secure incidentally in their regular lines of work.

The committee was seriously hampered by the fact that but $300 was appropriated for its use in making the necessary investigations, which was practically exhausted in paying the expenses of two meetings of the committee. No money was available for securing personal investigations, where such investigations would have been profitable in enlarging or modifying the reports.

obtained thru correspondence. From the large mass of correspondence, reports were received covering, more or less fully, the entire country. These reports showed a great awakening of interest in industrial education in rural communities, especially in the field of agriculture, and indicated that experiments of various kinds were being undertaken in many parts of the country, for the introduction of instruction in industrial subjects in the rural schools, and in schools organized with special reference to furnishing facilities for industrial education. In a number of states instruction in agriculture had been made compulsory in the country schools, by statute. In others, teachers were required to pass an examination in the elements of agriculture in order to obtain a certificate to teach. A considerable number of the state normal schools had begun to offer courses in elementary agriculture for their students, and in some states numbers of high schools were giving it a place in their courses of study.

Our investigations showed conclusively that much discussion of the subject was going on, that experiments were being tried, new schemes of work were being organized, but all in a tentative way. Of what was actually being accomplished in the way of results but little could be learned thru correspondence, and yet the committee decided to submit at the 1906 meeting such a report of the progress of the movement as could be prepared from the data obtained. The report was well in hand when the announcement was made of the abandonment of the San Francisco meeting. Further work on the report was discontinued.

Much of the material gathered last year possessed but little value as the basis for a report to be made this year, as many of the experiments then reported as in progress had proved unsatisfactory and disappointing, while others had led to enlargement and modifications of plans of work.

The committee was without funds to prosecute its work further and what was done was by the personal efforts and at the personal expense of its individual members. We were unable to get what we felt the committee would like to stand by as an authoritative statement of what is actually being done. For that work-and it is an important work-it would require an appropriation that would enable the committee to put into the field, for a time, a competent person, to go where this work is being carried on in different states, and to investigate on the ground, definitely, the precise work that is being done, and from such investigation to state with some authority what is being done, and what results are being accomplished.

The committee, recognizing its inability to prepare such a report as, in its judgment, would most fully meet the demand for information, has, nevertheless, prepared a report covering certain phases of the subject assigned to it. The matter presented in the report has been prepared by Dr. L. H. Bailey, a member of the committee, and by the chairman of the committee, under the general direction and authority of the committee as a whole.

Dr. Bailey has summarized the purposes and values of industrial education for the children in rural communities, thru the work possible in the small rural

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