Or, again, suppose that our contemporary independent experiments with the elective system were correctly reported on and the results so far attained duly appraised by competent investigators. Would it not be possible to find twenty-five important schools that, for the sake of the educational interests at stake, would be willing to sink minor individual differences in the administration of the elective system, and consent to act together? Or, if we couldn't get twenty five, could we get ten schools to undertake this co-operative enterprise for at least five years?

I do not believe that such co operation is impossible. Why should it be? Experiments similar to those suggested are everywhere in progress; co-operation in large enterprises of all kinds is possible. Why should it be impossible only in education? Under such circumstances we could then face the profession and the public with facts, instead of opinions. The enormous difference between the weight of these two very different things in educational affairs still remains to be experienced.

When we consider the obstacles to progress in the organization and administration of school systems, we find them similar to the obstacles already considered in the fields of educational theory and practice, altho not identical with them. We have two important documents embodying collective expression of opinion on wise and efficient organization and administration, but we lack any collective presentation of recorded experience. We have one important document on organization and administration in the report of the Committee of Fifteen, and another in the report of the Chicago school commission. What we need is a clear statement of the improvements effected in various cities thruout the country during the last six or eight years; of the old difficulties that remain unsolved, and of the new difficulties encountered in attempting to carry out the revised administrative policy. The collected experience of Toledo, St. Louis, Cleveland, Indianapolis, New Haven, New York, and the proposed plans for reorganization in Chicago, Boston, Detroit, and other cities, afford material for such a presentation of a wise administrative policy, and the beneficent results that flow from it, or to be expected from it, as we have not had and could not have until now. Shall we not take steps to procure it?

The chief obstacles in the way of better organization and administration of our city school systems are the failure of the public to recognize the educational expert as such, and the corresponding unwillingness to trust him when found. The chief reasons why this recognition of technical knowledge and skill in the field of education is too often difficult to secure, and the wisdom of following the professional leadership is not realized, are: (1) the unfortunate lack of a genuine professional knowledge and a well-considered administrative policy on the part of many superintendents, even when they have had much practical experience; and (2) the want of courage and initiative on the part of many well-equipped

and otherwise efficient superintendents. Such men fail to enlighten their respective constituencies on what a wise organization and administration means, and also fail to insist, even to the point of self-sacrifice, that such an organization and administration shall prevail. In other words, the teaching profession cannot expect recognition for professional knowledge and skill until its members take pains to possess it, and unless they possess also the energy and the courage of their convictions. Lawyers, physicians, and engineers were not accorded professional standing, could not achieve the confidence of the public they wished to serve, until they could prove by their practice, based on adequate training, that they deserved it; and so it is in our profession. All teachers, but especially superintendents, must show their fitness to lead, not merely by an apparently successful routine practice of their profession, but by a professional career that is based on a professional consciousness born of adequate training a training that lends significance to every phase of practice and furnishes a safeguard against the presumptuous or ignorant assumption of technical duties by either meddlesome and spoils-hunting or well-meaning but misguided laymen in educational affairs. With a professional consciousness born of a professional equipment, lay interference in organization and administration will not be tolerated. Courage to insist on what ought to be done will be as natural and easy for the superintendent and principal as for lawyers, physicians, and engineers to insist on the wisest measures in their several fields. And, so far as self-sacrifice is concerned, are we not justified in saying, at least to the younger superintendents: Do not court opposition; try to cultivate public opinion in behalf of wise measures; be patient and long-suffering, but in the end you can afford to lose your place, if it comes to that, because you insist on what is right. The man who loses his place because he insists courteously, intelligently, patiently-in a word, wisely-will not need to wait. long for employment? We are fortunately not without illustrations of the truth of this proposition, and of the practical wisdom of the recommendation based on it.

I have time for only a few words on the obstacles to progress in the third division of the educational field mentioned in the beginning of this paper, namely, the training of teachers for elementary and secondary schools.

The greatest obstacles to real progress in the training of elementary teachers are want of scholarship on the part of both students and teachers in normal schools, and the want of insistence on good professional training by school officers and employers of teachers.

We have had at least two authoritative recent documents emanating from the National Educational Association which set forth the aims, equipment, and methods that should prevail in normal schools for the training of elementary-school teachers. And there seems to be substantial

agreement on the advisability and feasibility of the practical realization of what these documents recommend. We have a normal-school doctrine that seems to be fairly acceptable, but have we a normal-school practice in harmony therewith, or an adequate normal-school practice anyway? It is not uncommon to hear the normal schools and their product disparaged. What ground, if any, is there for such disparagement? Has anybody collected the testimony of superintendents and other competent persons concerning the relative efficiency of teachers trained in our normal schools and of teachers not so trained? What agency, either by states or otherwise, has set itself the task of ascertaining the actual working efficiency of our normal schools? If we had a thorogoing report on that subject, say from a dozen normal schools chosen from the country at large- such a report could be made without mentioning in the report the name of a single school-what an incentive it would afford to efficiency! How clearly it might show just what the obstacles are that thwart or obstruct the progress of their work, or sometimes defeat it altogether! On the basis of such a report, public opinion within and without the teaching profession would soon demand the best professional training attainable, and unwavering recognition of it when obtained.

What I have just said about the failure to demand adequate scholarship of elementary-school teachers cannot be asserted to the same extent in the case of secondary-school teachers. But, much more than in the case of elementary school teachers do we find the lack of a demand for adequate professional, i. e., technical, training in addition to scholarship. Nothing is a more obstructive influence in secondary education than the want of proper professional training of the teachers. Of course, they will not seek such training until it is demanded, not in a half-hearted and after-all-it-doesn't-matter-much sort of a way, but in an unmistakable, insistent fashion. If you as superintendents have no confidence in what you think we who are training secondary school teachers are doing, take steps to find out what we are doing, tell us our shortcomings, and point out what you believe ought to be added to what we are now doing. As soon as your demand for the right kind of professional training for secondary-school teachers is strong, persistent, and widespread, such training will be forthcoming. At present a college student who has taken pains to add technical training for his profession to his academic attainments finds himself just as likely to be passed by in the competition for places as one who has not. Under such circumstances the best possible provision for technical training can reach only a comparatively small number of college graduates who become teachers.

I cannot close without expressing the hope that this association will ere long take steps to organize our contemporary educational doctrine and our practical experience in some such way as has been suggested

in this paper. May I not commend to you the words of the Chinese delegate to the peace conference at The Hague! That conference, you remember, took place shortly after Admiral Dewey had destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila. The Chinese delegate to the peace conference listened to the eloquence of his colleagues for some time, and then remarked : "Too much talkee, talkee; too little do-ee, do-ee."

DISCUSSION

WILLIAM K. FOWLER, state superintendent, Lincoln, Neb.- I have not recently delved into the reports of the Committee of Ten, of Fifteen, and of College-Entrance Requirements, tho I wish to claim the credit of reading them several years ago. Nor have I read any other reports or documents or publications preparatory to this discussion. I do not desire to be classed with those mentioned by Professor Hanus as working absolutely independent of all others, however, for I have conferred with school people and laymen on these and similar matters, and I desire to present for consideration and discussion topics that I hear mentioned daily as I go out among the people of my own state; out into the cities and villages and rural communities of the commonwealth. Once upon a time a farmer was impressed with the argument that only by averaging might the best results be accomplished. He heard that one extreme in either direction was very generally condemned, and he was told that for the best results, practical and progressive, the two extremes must be used, thereby securing a fair average. With that idea fairly impressed upon his mind, he hitched to his plow, side by side, an ox from New England and a finely bred, high-stepping, 2: 10 trotting horse from Kentucky.

The great heterogeneous mass of the people is thus driving the public schools. Is it any wonder that our "gee! whoa! haw! git ap!" is no more effective, or that our furrows are none the less crooked? Our ox takes the furrow and keeps it, in the rut, while our trotting horse prances about, making but little impression on the unbroken sod. Sometimes we find the combination illustrated in the contrast between the rural schools that have remained unchanged thru three generations and the finely supervised or overtrained city school system; sometimes we find the two existing in the same place under different administrations at one time traveling the hard, stony, well-worn and wellknown path of the past, and at another endeavoring to make new paths and new by-ways on virgin sod, on unbroken prairie, seeking out untried and untrod paths and pastures.

Some demand of us that we dispense with the services of our high-stepping, overstrung trotting horses, and return to the yoke — of oxen, of course. They charge that we teach less thoroly than formerly, that we attempt too many subjects, and give but a smattering of each. We may seem to be tending somewhat in that direction, but we are driven to it. The pressure is from without, not from within the schools. The medical men demand that a regular system of physical training be used; the Grand Army of the Republic wants military science and drill; the Turnverein asks for gymnastics; the clergymen insist that morality be inculcated by line and precept; the Woman's Christian Temperance Union has succeeded in introducing formal teaching of the effects of alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, and stimulants; the women's clubs beg for domestic science; the sewing guilds for needle-work; the trades for manual training; the business world for stenography and typewriting; the editors for current events; the artists for picture study; the musical world for music; and the farmer for the elements of agriculture.

One of the gravest problems presented to our rural school-teachers and their county superintendents is the desire of many school boards and patrons to introduce into the

rural schools high-school subjects. School people generally understand that these subjects cannot be taught there without great detriment to the work and instruction of the little folks. I have found many rural districts where it is demanded of the teachers that they instruct classes in algebra, civics, and physical geography, in addition to thirty or more classes in reading, arithmetic, spelling, geography, etc.

The demands of our modern civilization are great. Two or three generations ago it was not necessary for the youth to study the sciences - there was but little known of them to study. Today the well-educated youth must be familiar with modern machinery, with common business practices, with affairs of state, and with the latest scientific discoveries. With the telegraph and cable connecting all the cities of the world, with the telephone soon to connect all its farmhouses, with the steamships and steam cars and electric cars connecting all its cities, great and small, with million-dollar bridges spanning all its great rivers, and with its vast commercial enterprises, there is no end or limit to the practical knowledge that may be gathered.

There is poor and indifferent work as well as excellent work done in the schoolrooms of Nebraska, and this is true in every state in the union, in every country of the world, and it always has been true. There is always good, bad, and indifferent work in every other walk and avocation of life, in every other profession and every trade, and with less excuse for such a condition; for in the other professions and in most of the trades there is more regular, systematic, and careful training for the work than we find for our important work of training the youth of the land. And low salaries accompany unskilled labor. In the 8,000 schoolrooms in Nebraska this year, and every year, we find nearly 2,500 teachers who have had no experience whatever, and not one-sixth of the number have had any special training for their work. Obstacles! Nebraska employs annually over 9,000 teachers, in less than 8,000 schoolrooms. Many teach only three months! They meet with obstacles. And so do the pupils - obstacles to progress. Our 9,000 teachers include only 2,000 male teachers, whereas eleven years ago the state employed 2,800 male teachers. The average chool year in the state is six and three-fourths months, and the average salary is $38 a month, something like $255 a year. There are scores of principals in the state receiving $585, $630, or $675 a year, less than the labor of many unskilled workmen. The average life of the school-teacher in Nebraska, as a teacher, is less than four years. Yes, we have our obstacles; and yet we can boast of our very low percentage of illiteracy in Nebraska. How is it with you, neighbor?

Some of the obstacles in the way of educational progress have been placed there by ourselves, some by the public generally, and still others thru co-operation. I desire to enumerate a few briefly, leaving the removal of them to be discussed by others.

Within our ranks we have established and permit to exist the following obstacles to educational progress:

A lack of unification in our educational forces. This includes a lack of harmony between universities, colleges, normal schools, business colleges, etc., in many essential particulars.

A low professional interest among teachers. To increase the interest we must improve the teacher, and the public should demand a higher standard of requirements.

Too many preparatory schools for higher schools, at least in comparison with the number of preparatory schools for happy, useful lives. Perhaps the number of the latter can be increased without decreasing the former.

The attempt to create or manufacture instead of train and develop; to turn out money-making machines instead of well-developed, manly, and womanly characters. In this connection also we may include the scattering fire caused by too many aims.

Too many persons in the work who are without educational opinions, and too many others in the work who are educationally opinionated.

Too much emphasis placed on forms and methods.

Mixture of standards and transition of ideals- the yawning Scylla and Charybdis of the pedagoggenerating much pressure and nervous strain. This strain is so tense that the tendency is that the teacher loses the best of himself, his .poise, his courage, and his full joy of life. To hide his loss, he becomes a recluse, which militates decidedly against a unified ideal among teachers. This is in itself an impediment to progress. If, however humbly and truly, the teachers are the servants of the public, they must at length