tion without losing its relations-the basis of industrial intelligence-nor become so narrow that adaptation to new conditions will be impossible. 4. Better teachers and teaching is always a need.-Strong men and women are necessary, of high technical efficiency, yet possessed of a broad outlook on life, and who rate their specialty in terms of service to the community. They must understand the adolescent youth as well as the exacting conditions of the art and science they are teaching. The tendency in teaching a subject. which deals almost entirely with manipulation for its expression is to assume that thinking is being required when the processes of manipulation are being learned, while frequently only the power of imitation, in the narrow field of the specialty, is being developed. The inductive method requiring the pupil to do his own thinking should be used. There should always be provided ample opportunity for the pupil to test his ideas and knowledge in making new applications of the principles taught. Efficiency is knowledge skilfully applied in overcoming a difficulty of real meaning to the individual. The complete cycle of mental activity, cognition, feeling or emotion, and volitional action in doing something, is thus preserved. 5. As to night classes, a word is sufficient in this paper.-They should be conducted as a continuation school with attention given to the principles of, and the application of, science to the trade taught. The equipment arranged for day classes should be used for such work rather than to remain idle so much of the time. No restrictions other than physical and mental ability to profit by the work given should debar any boy or girl from such a school. The foregoing analysis and suggestions relate only to the high school and do not deal with the larger problem of industrial education outside of this narrow field. It is the belief of the writer that to wait until the problem is settled as to separate schools for trade and others for culture and the professions, would postpone indefinitely a large measure of good now within our reach. We have all over the country splendid equipments in public high schools that are not used one-fourth of the available time. A beginning can be made at once with the pupils now entering high school, and doubtless a much greater per cent. will attend high school and complete its work than formerly, believing that future happiness and success will be more sure of attainment. That such a school will receive recognition by the university will naturally follow when its work is carefully organized and it is recognized that in its disciplinary training manual training is the equal of the study of Latin and Greek. American society is stratified vertically if at all, and the equality of every individual in it is "the equal right of every individual everywhere to progress." No scheme of education, then, must forget these ideals of a democratic society. Success is not so much in the attainment of wealth and position as in the knowledge that one has passed from the poor of yesterday to the better of today, with a broader vision of the future. REMARKS BY PRESIDENT LEAVITT Mr. Johnson has shown us the part which a progressive manual-training high school may play in adapting its more or less traditional work to the vocational needs of the pupils who are fortunate enough to receive instruction therein. The large majority of our boys do not have this opportunity. One of the most significant facts brought to light by the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education was, that the years from fourteen to sixteen are frequently wasted and worse than wasted by large numbers of our boys and girls. The compulsory education law holds the child in school until he is fourteen and it appears that there are few industrial positions, promising a career of progressive usefulness, which are open to him before the age of sixteen. In the meantime, if he leaves school at fourteen, he frequently drifts from one position to another where unskilled and poorly paid labor is employed, forming habits of idleness and irresponsibility which debar him from, rather than fit him for, the more desirable positions referred to as open to boys of sixteen. It has often been urged that the compulsory school age should be advanced to fifteen years, but it seems doubtful if this question can be properly considered independently of the topic we are discussing today, "Vocational Training." We should note that the state seizes the best formative years of a boy's life— from five to fourteen-and dooms him to a fixed kind of education whether it has much or little direct bearing on his future needs in his particular environment. At the end of that time it permits him to continue his schooling or to go to work. Boys at that age have a strong desire to be, or to act like, men. Possibly they wish to learn; certainly they have a strong desire to earn. They want to "get into the game," and when called upon to decide between school and work, is it any wonder that so many choose the latter? Suppose the boy listens to our good advice and continues in school for two years longer. Will the added training fit him for a better start upon his lifework? We must remember that many boys by this time would hardly have reached the high school. The questions for us to ask ourselves seriously as educational advisors of youth are, first, have we a school to which we can send the boy who desires to go to work at fourteen, with the assurance that two additional years of education will materially enhance his chance for industrial success? second, if we have no such school, what is our duty? A consideration of the next topic should help us in answering these questions. II. CAN THE SCHOOL LIFE OF PUPILS BE PROLONGED BY AN JESSE D. BURKS, PRINCIPAL, TEACHERS TRAINING SCHOOL, ALBANY, N. Y. One of the most notable contributions made by the nineteenth to the twentieth century is the illuminating thought of John Fiske that the human species has reached its supreme position in the evolutionary scale very largely thru the gradual lengthening of the period of infancy. Nicholas Murray Butler has seized upon this thought as the starting point for a sound theory of education and has pointed out with great clearness the logical identity of the period of infancy and the period of systematic education. From this point of view, the whole or the greater part of the period of infancy should properly be devoted to activities calculated to develop social intelligence, social sympathy, and social power, to the end that each individual, as completely as possible, may adjust himself to his own system of social relations. In certain directions, this theory has resulted in a remarkable prolongation of the period of formal education. A person, for example, who pursues the entire course of training in elementary, secondary, and collegiate schools and subsequently, a professional course in medicine, law, theology, or pedagogy, spends twenty years or more in his course of study and reaches the age of twentyfive years or over before he is ready to begin his professional career. Such a striking extension of the period of education, however, concerns directly only a small fraction of our population, as will readily be recalled when we consider the facts in a single typical community. in the sixth year Hardly one-third In the city of Albany, the capital of the wealthiest and most populous state of the Union, there are approximately 1,600 pupils in each of the first four years of school. In the fifth year there are 1,300 pupils; 1,100; in the seventh year 700; and in the eighth year 500. of the children enrolled in the fourth school year, it will be seen, reach the final year of the elementary school. In the high school of this city, the rate of decrease in number of pupils is even more rapid, the number in the four successive classes being 400, 300, 200, and 150. These figures represent a condition that is general thruout this country. The ratio of decrease in numbers from grade to grade no doubt varies considerably, but the essential fact is almost uniformly the same. The great mass of our boys and girls are not remaining even to the end of the elementary schools, and large numbers of them are leaving as early as the fifth or sixth school year. In our educational organization and policy, we have evidently failed to grasp the full significance of a prolonged period of infancy as a factor in the development of the individual and of the race. It is possible that by artificial restriction we are shortening the normal period of plasticity, and are thus impairing the capacity of the rising generation to make the needed adjustments to a rapidly changing and exacting environment. There never was a time when there was more urgent need for every member of society to exercise intelligence and energy in adjusting himself to the economic, political, and ethical conditions of life. There can be no more serious educational problem than an inquiry into the methods by which a more complete adjustment may be assured the great majority of our boys and girls. The present consideration of this problem will be limited to three of its many aspects: first, what are the chief reasons why so large a proportion of pupils now leave school before the end of the elementary course; second, in what ways may more adequate provision be made for the varied needs of children in the last years of the elementary-school period; and third, what effect would such provision probably have in prolonging the school life of pupils and in accomplishing more nearly the true purposes of our educational system. Among the reasons to which the rapid dropping out of pupils has been attributed are age, lack of mental capacity, and dissatisfaction with the restraints of school life, on the part of pupils; lack of intelligence and interest on the part of parents; deficiency of insight, sympathy, and tact on the part of teachers; the economic necessity for children to assist in the earning of a family livelihood; and the ill adaptation of the courses of study to the special needs of the children. Very likely all of these influences are operative in greater or less degree. The relative weights of these several influences in determining the dropping-out of pupils is a matter to be settled by a consideration of the facts rather than by a mere expression of opinion. The facts, however, are difficult to ascertain, for the motives that influence individual boys and girls to leave school are by no means always clearly defined even in their own minds. A child who is unhappy or backward in his schoolwork is easily pursuaded that the lack of adjustment is due to the prejudice or incapacity of his teachers or that the welfare of his family requires that he find employment and provide for his own support.. It not uncommonly happens that a child whose abilities in certain directions. are of high order finds it difficult or impossible to make satisfactory progress in one or more of the school subjects. It is easy for teachers, parents, and the pupil himself to attribute such failure to the stupidity of the pupil rather than to the fact that the school makes no adequate provision for the special combination of abilities that this child possesses. There is undoubtedly a widespread feeling among parents and children that the last years of the elementary school do not pay; that the opportunities of these years are of no direct value to children destined for industrial and domestic pursuits. At the close of the fifth or sixth year of school, pupils have attained moderate proficiency in reading, writing, and simple calculation, and have some knowledge of geography and the history of their own country. The last years of the elementary course are devoted largely to an amplified study of these same subjects. To a child who can see no immediate application of these studies in solving the urgent problems of his own life, what serious loss can there be, then, in leaving school as soon as the law permits, or sooner if the law can be evaded? Are not these two or three years of greater economic value when given to industrial pursuits than when wasted in the tiresome repetition of the traditional school "studies"? It is easy enough for the schoolmaster to enter a general denial of the charges implied in this very practical estimate of the relative value of training in the schools and of training in the world's work. He may characterize the estimate as basely utilitarian or he may point to the fact that those pupils who do complete the elementary course are found to have earning-power superior to those who do not. The answer to this reply is that, whatever may be the facts, there is nevertheless the widespread opinion that the training offered in the last years of the elementary school has little practical value, and this opinion is one of the strongest influences in shortening the school life of pupils. The recent report of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Training, tho not conclusive on this point, furnishes strong indications that this attitude toward the practical value of school training has a much more direct effect upon the dropping-out of pupils from school than has economic pressure or the blindness of parents to the higher interests of their children. About half of the parents of children who had withdrawn from school before the age of sixteen, stated definitely that, if there had been courses for industrial training offered in the public schools, they would have kept their children in school instead of allowing them to enter the low-grade and unskilled industries which alone are open to them. More than 75 per cent. of the parents of these children, according to the report, were financially able to keep their children in school if it had seemed desirable to do so. It is evident, then, that the low estimate placed upon the value of the last years of elementary-school training is a powerful factor in determining the length of the school life of children. Let us now ask whether this estimate has proper foundation or is based upon essential error. Here again the report of the Massachussetts Commission presents evidence of great value. It is shown that the years from fourteen to sixteen, whether spent in the school or at work, are wasted years so far as concerns the permanent earning-capacity of the great mass of boys and girls who enter industrial and domestic as distinguished from commercial and professional pursuits. Those children who enter unskilled industries at the age of fourteen are put at work that requires extremely little intelligence and therefore possesses practically no educational value. Owing to this arrest of development, these children soon pass beyond the point where the opportunity is open or the impulse is active for them to enter skilled pursuits. They become more and more fixed in their low-grade pursuits. The wages of two to four dollars per week received at the outset are scarcely enough to meet the actual cost of living of a boy or girl, much less to enable him to begin the habit of systematic saving. Within a few years these children reach the maximum of their earning-capacity at about nine dollars per week. This is at so low a level that they are condemned to lives of uncertainty and of poverty if not of degradation. Those children who remain in school until they are sixteen years old eventually reach a higher wage-earning level, it is true; but the uniform testimony of employers is that they are almost wholly lacking in "industrial intelligence" and that accordingly they enter upon industrial occupations in no condition even to begin to learn the special processes involved in their respective vocations. The advantage, measured by wage-earning capacity, which these children eventually prove to possess over those children who leave school at the age of fourteen, is very likely due, in part at least, to the tendency of individuals of superior intelligence and ambition to remain in school until the com |