of examined. It takes more than a temporarily well-stored memory to make an efficient civil servant. Let examinations be kept as a necessary means to exclude the flagrantly incompetent, and to keep the door open for the irregularly trained but competent men, but let every nerve be strained to furnish institutions that train for service, and in the course of training discover and eliminate incompetents. Mistrust of one another was the vice of the Greeks. To some extent it is the vice of Americans. We do not like to say: "So and so is a thoroly well educuted man. He is also an educator of catholic sympathies and long experience. This broad-minded and well-trained man shall be our supervisor of education in this state. We will give him power to choose assistants and expect him to lead us to greater efficiency and greater economy in our public-school system." No, rather we shall either erect a mechanical and cramping system of examinations — with grave danger of tyranny over the educational institutions of the state, or let things slide, as they have been sliding, in the good old happy go lucky way. Once indeed we trusted a man and made him school commissioner of the United States. This National Educational Association, it seems, advocated the creation of the office and the choice of the man. Who will tell how great has been the benefit to American schools directly due to the work of Dr. William T. Harris? We ought to have a Dr. Harris in every state capitol. Why then should not the next move in the progress of American public schools be the institution of state systems of supervision developed out of the present underpaid and underofficered state bureaus? If the proper legislation were had, state educational organizations could greatly influence choice, if, as it should be, the choice were left to the governor with the consent of the legislature. In England Matthew Arnold was for many years a school supervisor. The people of Minnesota have an object lesson in the fine record of their inspectorship of high schools. Under such a system we should at least know the condition of courses and methods thruout our state, and could direct our own endeavors by the experience of others. Might not this lead to that degree of uniformity which is indispensible to the success of any educational system, without cramping initiative and individuality, the two most valuable elements in the work of the true teacher? We teachers constitute not the least patriotic body of American workers. When we know the best we seek the best. Ought not every facility be afforded us, by wise criticism of our methods and information concerning the methods of others, to keep abreast of the grand movement of American educational progress? THE SOCIAL SIDE OF HIGH-SCHOOL LIFE REUBEN POST HALLECK, PRINCIPAL OF THE BOYS' HIGH SCHOOL, LOUISVILLE, KY. Asked as I was yesterday to make an address this morning in place of Superintendent Boone, of Cincinnati, who has been unavoidably detained, I accepted, because I wish to emphasize some points at which I can merely hint in my paper to be read on Friday afternoon before the Child-Study section. The fact that the subject of Superintendent Boone's paper before this body, and of mine before the Child-Study section, are practically the same, is my excuse for addressing you at this short notice. This talk must be considered as amplifying and supplementing that paper. I desire to emphasize this morning the social side of high-school education. There is more in education than books and correlation, necessary as they are. They will develop and bear best fruit only in a social atmosphere. I have often wondered how, in a well-built house, with the windows tightly closed, the barometer immediately registered any change in atmospheric pressure on the outside. I have also wondered how any little jealousy between teachers, any friction whatever in the faculty, immediately made itself felt in the school. We cannot expect to develop a social atmosphere in the school unless we teachers are ourselves social, unless we turn the blind spot in our eye on each others' faults, and the rest of the retina on each others' excellencies. The pupils will instinctively catch and reflect our attitude toward each other and toward them. One of the most important questions to ask about a school is: "Is it pervaded by a feeling of good fellowship for all of teacher for teacher, of teacher for pupil, of pupil for pupil, and of pupil for teacher?" The unsocial school acts like frost on tender vegetation. The social type of school is like the genial spring sun developing the buds. I firmly believe that at the present time there is but one subject in the majority of high schools, if the term "subject" be not a misnomer, which meets fairly and squarely the conditions of outside life. This so-called subject has the strenuous aggressiveness of outside life, but it further calls for a certain type of group activity which is almost necessarily social. I refer to athletics. Here is God's plenty of life. Football is group activity. The eleven is a social unit. One member of the team does not like to have another member smoke, stay up half the night, or do anything to impair the football body politic. Watch them on the field. Out of the struggling mass a boy leaps with the ball and starts for the goal. The crowd cheers, but perhaps it does not realize the act of self-abnegation which allowed the runner to emerge. A member of his team, now at the bottom of the human pile, threw himself in front of his opponent, who was about to grasp the boy with the ball. As a result, that boy is free to make his run for the goal. See! that boy is followed by friend and foe. The foe is on the point of seizing him, when a friend interposes his shoulder, and the runner escapes to cross the goal line. The cheers of the multitude are for him; but without that group activity, without those acts of self-abnegation on the part of the members of his team, that young hero could never have dashed across the goal line. It is the same way in baseball. The batter signals that he will make a sacrifice hit, so that the man on third can come in and score. Although he yearns to knock the cover off the ball, he taps it gently, starts for first base, is thrown out, but the runner comes home from third base. The pre-adolescent does not readily respond to these calls for altruistic group activity. He loves to make a fine individual record, no matter what its effect on the team. High school teachers are fortunate in dealing with a being in whom those germs of altruistic activity are rapidly developing. At this critical time high-school education must not nip them in the bud. Too many adolescents have already suffered from the frost of unsocial education, which has given the altruistic activities no chance for free play. This love for games involving varied and energetic group activity is a more marked characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon than of any other race. Games like football, baseball, and cricket are not popular in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain. The English, and, in a greater degree, the Americans, are fond of such games. It is probable that such a liking will always be a characteristic of the dominant races, for the world can never be both won and permanently retained except on a social, co-operating, altruistic plan. This republic is an example of the voluntary group activity of a number of states. The adolescent's social feelings can be developed by giving him something to do for someone else. Always do things for him and he will grow up selfish and unsocial. Adults are more interested in those people whom they have helped than in those who have done them favors. Lay burdens on adolescents and by so doing you will develop their social and moral growth. They love to bear burdens, partly because your imposing them shows your confidence in their ability to surmount difficulty. Whenever possible, studies should be made to serve a social end. Pupils are too often urged to acquire knowledge because it will enable them to surpass the other fellow. This is an absolutely wrong point of view. They should be taught to know things in order to help the other fellow. It is even true that in the majority of cases we help ourselves best by helping other people. The individual or the corporation that finds out what others want and tries to minister to that want in the most efficient way is traveling the surest road to success. A love for good reading may be more easily taught if the social stimulus is invoked. Have your pupils read books, not entirely for their mere selfish gratification or knowledge, but in order to tell the most instructive or interesting parts to others to the class, to some member of the home circle, friend, or teacher. Such books will be better read. In order to improve the social life of the high school, teachers need to cultivate their imagination. Varied ways of developing the social activities must be devised. Do not expect adolescents to be more easily interested than adults. They love a change as much as adults do. You must introduce into the high school world as much variety as you can. For instance, at my school, which is attended only by boys, we wished a reading room stocked with the best periodicals and books. We had to earn the money. After a conference, we decided to present the opera Pinafore in the largest auditorium in the city, and to have the boys take the girls' parts. Here was group activity made to converge toward a given end. A large part of the school served either as business managers or performers, and all were intensely interested in doing the best they could. An audience of twenty-five hundred came to hear them, and as a result the reading room was magnificently stocked with periodicals and books. A number of different departments were added to the high-school paper, and different boys put in charge of those. If you make your high school more social, you will find that fewer pupils will drop out. The social life is developed in connection with action. If you make these activities interesting, pupils will strain a point to return, for there is something to look forward to in the school world. But neither principals nor teachers need look for high social development in their school unless they are first social themselves—unless they are the fountain head whence flow the social waters. THE THREE ELEMENTS IN THE COST OF EDUCATION PRESIDENT CHARLES D. McIVER, THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE NORMAL [AN ABSTRACT] Each Sectionalism has passed, but individualism cannot be changed. section has its own particular needs and must be allowed to interpret them for itself. Great friction will be prevented and harmony promoted by each section's setting forth its own situation and needs for itself, and not having them proclaimed by others. I speak of the cost of education from a southern standpoint, and the first element in cost is the money cost. This means more in the South than in the North, not only on account of the loss of property due to the war, but also on account of the loss of producers of property. North Carolina furnished one-fifth of the soldiers of the Confederate Army, and left on the battlefield one-third of all she sent. Think what this means to a country! What would it mean to Minnesota if one-third of its men from sixteen to sixty were wiped out of existence? It has taken us forty years to get back to where we were before the war. According to the United States census, there is now on the tax books of our southern states about the same assessment of property that there was in 1860. While the North has been going on in multiplying wealth, we have been recuperating, and are now pecuni. arily where we were forty years ago. I call this the forty years' wilderness of poverty through which we have passed. But we are better off today than we were forty years ago, because we have no slaves, because we are individual producers, and are in sight of commercial independence. The money cost of education is therefore a serious matter for us of the South, though neither there nor elsewhere is it so great or so rare as the second or third elements of cost of real education. The second element of cost is the wear and tear on the life of the teacher. There is no escape from this. Every successful teacher must give himself and believe in the ultimate success of his work. There should be no such word as can't. Can is the only word for the teacher, even if it takes his last drop of energy to succeed. An ambitious example is worth more than precepts on perseverence. He must have faith in the future and hold up before girls and boys the highest ideals of womanhood and manhood. Let the girls have before them the pictures and the lives and work of such women as Dorothy Dix and Frances Willard. The teacher must lead the children, must work and fight and strive. There is no other way. The third element of cost is the drudgery of the pupil. It is the only absolutely essential element, and is rare. There is no escape from the drudgery and grind of the pupil's life. There is no royal road to anything in this world worth getting to. The habit of work is more important than the acquirement of knowledge. Indeed, knowledge may come, but it lingers as wisdom only among the workers. Let us teach children the glorious gospel of toil and service, train them to become masters, and imbue them with such a spirit as will send them into the world, not to see how much they can get out of it, but how much they can give to it. ROUND TABLE CONFERENCES ANCIENT CLASSICS LEADER, LAFAYETTE BLISS, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, WASECA, MINN. The conference of classics held in room A of the East High School, with Superintendent Lafayette Bliss, Waseca, Minn., as leader, was well attended, and a lively discussion was had as to the utility of classical study and its continuance in the high schools of the country. The discussions were wholly impromptu, no previous appointments having been |