home making, some vocation in mechanic art, or other definite pursuit, and the number of such courses to be offered by individual institutions must necessarily

and industries in its State in relation to their need of such courses and the ability of the college to supply that need, and make its schedule of short courses on that basis. Sometimes a college has encouraged certain industries by its short courses when a more careful study would have shown that such industries had little chance of success in the region of the college.

9. The special units or enterprises in agriculture, home economics, and mechanic arts should be clearly defined after studies and analyses have been made of each to determine what the jobs in each enterprise are and the fundamental knowledge and skill one should have who desires to follow a vocation in any of these fields.

10. The analyses should consist of making a detailed study of the job unit operations of enterprises such as poultry, swine, etc., for agriculture; millinery, meal planning, and preparation, for home economics; and gas metering, plumbing, or tractor operation, for mechanic arts.

11. In making the analyses close contact might be maintained to advantage with those engaged in the practical application of these jobs. For example, it is advisable to confer with the successful poultryman regarding the fundamantal jobs in conducting a poultry enterprise. Likewise the successful home maker, plumber, or carpenter might be interviewed for information regarding their particular enterprises.

Conference and Coordination Between Colleges

12. Colleges in regions having diversified industries conducted under similar conditions would do well to confer with one another with reference to arranging a common program for short courses in accordance with which each college will do what it can do best and encourage students to go where they will find what best meets their particular needs.

13. Short courses which can be most effectively conducted away from the college, either by the college or by other properly coordinated educational agencies, should be encouraged. They are less expensive for students, who can reside at home, and often enable the use of better facilities of a practical character than are available at the college.

14. Short courses should be distinctly vocational in their nature with the major emphasis placed upon the practical and the minor emphasis upon theory.

A. C. TRUE, Chairman.

W

The

HETHER the famous Oregon law which would have the effect of eliminating private and parochial schools shall ever become effective will be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. case will be heard before that tribunal on February 24, 1925. It is in fact two cases, in one of which The Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, an educational corporation, was plaintiff in the lower Federal court, and Walter M. Pierce, Governor of Oregon, Isaac H. Van Winkle, attorney general of the State, and Stanley Myers, district attorney for Multnomah County, were defendants. The other case was Hill Military Academy, a corporation, v. Pierce et al.

On November 7, 1922, the people of Oregon, by a vote of 115,506 for and 103,685 against the measure, approved an initiated bill to amend section 5259 of the Oregon laws, relating to compulsory school attendance. The act as thus approved would in effect require children between the ages of 8 and 16 years to attend public schools only. Exemptions allowed in the act are (a) the mentally or physically unfit, (b) a child who has completed the eighth grade of school work, (c) a child between 8 and 10 years of age who lives more than 11⁄2 miles from school, or one over 10 who lives more than 3 miles unless transportation is furnished, and (d) a child receiving instruction from a parent or private teacher with the written permission of the county superintendent of schools. The usual exemption in compulsory attendance laws which permits children to attend private or parochial schools is not found in this act which, however, by its own terms is not to take effect until September 1, 1926.

Prompt Action to Invalidate New Law

On December 22, 1923, attorneys for the plaintiffs filed in the United States District Court, District of Oregon, a bill in equity, praying the court to declare the act unconstitutional and to grant an interlocutory writ of injunction restraining the defendants from enforcing the act, or threatening or giving out their intention to enforce the same on its becoming operative, or publishing or declaring that the act is valid. In support of this petition

plaintiffs averred that certain of their constitutional rights were infringed by the act and that already they had suffered injury by reason of the withdrawal of children from their schools.

The case was set for hearing on January 15, 1924, and the court on March 31, following, rendered its opinion in which it was ordered that an injunction be granted as prayed in plaintiff's bill. The act was thus declared unconstitutional and rendered inoperative.

The opinion of the lower Federal court covers nine printed pages. The court expressed disapproval of the act in several particulars. Those probably of most interest are in substance as follows:

Reasons for District Court's Action

1. The act in effect prohibits parochial and private schools from teaching grammar grades and thus infringes the right to engage in a useful legitimate business; it also infringes the right of parents to employ such schools to teach their children.

2. There appears no plausible or sound reason why these schools should be eliminated from taking part in the primary education of youth. It would seem that the act in question is neither necessary nor essential for the proper enforcement of the State's school policy.

3. The act in effect deprives of property without due process of law. Depriving the parochial or private school of the right to give instruction in the grammar grades cuts off patronage and thus results in loss or reduction of value of property used for school purposes.

On June 19, 1924, attorneys for defendants filed a petition for appeal in the Sisters Society case, and, the appeal being granted, defendants' prayer for reversal of the lower court's order and decree of injunction reached the Supreme Court of the United States on June 30, 1924. The case will be argued on February 24, 1925, and in due course will be decided finally by the court.

Canada is to join the United States 'n the observance of Music Week, May 3-9, 1925. Seven hundred and eighty-three communities participated in the event in 1924, and it is expected that the number will be considerably larger this year.

T

By JAMES F. ABEL

RANSPORTING pupils to and from school at public expense has raised some common-sense questions that need to be answered. If those questions can not be answered

portation to consolidated schools is simply an intermediary step in the development of pupil transportation and leads up to its use, when necessary or advantageous, by all kinds of schools.

finally and exactly much may be learned from experience, practice, and law in the field of pupil transportation. All the States and the District of Columbia are transporting some school children. Pupil transportation has been the subject of a generous amount of legislation. Only Utah and Florida have no mention of it in their laws but boards in both these

States have power to do anything reasonable and necessary for the benefit of the schools and under that power furnish considerable transportation. Like most other kinds of school law; that dealing with transportation may be divided into two general classes, permissive and mandatory. In point of time and in natural development the former came first and is still by far the more common. One may easily get the wrong impression that consolidated schools are the only kind to which there is much pupil transportation. The two are usually discussed together. Both permissive and mandatory transportation laws apply to (1) schools in general, (2) high schools, (3) consolidated schools, (4) small schools closed for any reason, and (5) children living in remote places or territory unorganized for school purposes. Trans

transporting him to one. Thirteen States now give permission to discontinue small schools or the upper grades and if other schools are not within reasonable distance of the pupils, to furnish transportation. Under similar conditions transportation is mandatory in seven States. The most striking example of this is in Indiana where pupils of any school that has been abandoned in the 20 years prior to 1921 or is thereafter abandoned must be transported if they live more than 111⁄2 miles from the school to which they are assigned. By 1923, 1,709 districts had been abandoned and the pupil transportation carried on in Indiana for that purpose alone was a high per cent of the State's total.

Where does the responsibility of the parent cease and that of the public begin? The question is asked about most school activities. Naturally the answer for pupil transportation is generally expressed or an attempt is made to express it in terms of distance from home to school and the range under present laws is from one-half mile to 4 miles.

In the 25 States where transportation may be furnished when "best for the in

terests of the district," "it may be necessary," "it is practicable," or under some similar indeterminate condition which leaves the matter almost entirely optional, splendid transportation systems are in operation and many children are conveyed to and from school. But in general the largest relative amounts of pupil transportation are carried on and it is developed most highly in those States which have mandatory, definite laws fixing distances from 12 to 21⁄2 miles, allowing for appeals to higher school authorities, and permitting the locality to offer transportation for less than the mandatory distances.

Note the graph below. Assume that the circle represents one with a radius of two miles, the distance most frequently named, from the schoolhouse and that if a child's home is outside this area of about 122 square miles, the public must provide all or part of the cost of his transportation to the school.

There is some degree of error in the graph because the distances are usually

chusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin; consolidated schools of Oklahoma; city or town consolidated schools of Indiana; and children of schools forced to close because of small attendance in Iowa and Kansas. Add one-fourth of a mile to the radius, making the area of parental responsibility 15.9 square miles, and one has the situation for those schools of North Dakota that are not consolidated.

Transportation at public expense is optional, not required, for pupils living at or beyond this 2-mile limit to all schools of Kansas and Louisiana, and consolidated schools of Mississippi.

Reduce the radius to 11⁄2 miles and the graph represents the conditions under which transportation must be furnished by consolidated schools of North Dakota, discontinued schools of Indiana and to children of certain small closed schools of Pennsylvania; and although optional is very generally furnished by all schools of Vermont.

The 1-mile radius with an area of parental responsibility of only 31/7 square

of 6 and 12 of discontinued or consolidated schools of Indiana.

Minnesota and Missouri permit pupil transportation for all children residing more than half a mile from the schoolhouse.

Increase the radius to 21⁄2 miles, the area of parental responsibility to 191⁄2 square miles, and the graph indicates mandatory transportation or payment toward furnishing it in South Dakota for all pupils to consolidated schools and elementary pupils to all schools other than consolidated.

Three States Fix Limit at 3 Miles Transportation for pupils living beyond a 3-mile limit is optional in New Mexico; it is required for all schools of Kansas and union free high schools of Wisconsin.

The 4-mile radius applies in Ohio where the law requires that high-school courses must be offered within that distance to every pupil prepared for secondary work or he must be transported to a high school.

If transportation is furnished busses usually go very near to the home. Most of the best features of pupil conveyance are lost if the children must walk any considerable distance to or wait along the roadside for busses. Routes in Ohio must be planned to reach within one-half mile of the child's home. In order to meet busses pupils in South Dakota may be required to go not over five-eighths of a mile; in New Hampshire, 1 mile; Mississippi, 11⁄2 miles; and Iowa, 2 miles. Merely a Difference of Source of Funds Public transportation has directed attention to the cost of conveying children to and from school. But it must be remembered that those costs have existed as long as there have been schools and in connection with nearly all kinds of schools. They have been borne in one way or another by the parents or the pupils themselves. Transportation is not a new and additional item in the expense of education. It is handled in a different and better way and its cost is more carefully measured and recorded. Twentytwo States reported that 446,226 children were transported in 1921-22 at an expenditure of $14,526,368, or an average of $32.55 per pupil for the year. Costs ranged from $9.36 in Georgia, $14 in North Carolina, and $18.96 in Mississippi to $56.88 in Iowa, $58.44 in Vermont, and $82.18 in Montana. Delaware in 1924 transported 3,132 children at an average cost per child of $32.02 for the year, or 25.45 cents a day. Costs per elementary pupil in Maryland for 1922-23 were $29.80; per high-school pupil, $33.80. The former ranged in 20 counties from $19.74 to $75.37; the latter in 14 counties from $21.10 to $73.15. If a school furnishes safe, comfortable transportation to any considerable number of children, it

will probably need to expend from $30 to $40 per pupil per year. Costs will differ with conditions, of course, but that approximates the average.

Necessity causes wide variations in the part of the school budget which may properly be set apart for transportation. Forty-one States in 1921-22 used $2 for pupil transportation out of every $100 spent to pay the current school expenses of the year. The range was from 43 cents in Missouri, 62 cents in Pennsylvania, and 57 cents in Texas to $5.01 in Iowa, $6.34 in Vermont, and $6.03 in New Hampshire. Some individual schools report using from 30 cents to $51.70, with an average of $14.02, out of each $100 of current expenses. In any event the purpose of the school is to educate children, and public transportation, as well as private, can only be justified if the school to which the child is conveyed aids very measurably in his physical and mental develop

ment.

State Aid in 25 States

In general, the expense of pupil transportation is borne by the local school unit. Twenty-five States give some form of aid to it, usually for the purpose of promoting consolidation, encouraging the closing of small schools, or providing schools where the county or district has not jurisdiction. It is limited largely to consolidated schools in North Carolina, South Carolina, Rhode Island, New York, Virginia, Wyoming, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin aid in transporting to other schools the children of small schools that are compelled to close. Towns of Massachusetts and Connecticut that do not maintain high schools but transport the secondary pupils to other towns are reimbursed in part by the State. In Maine and New Hampshire State funds are used to provideschooling for children in unorganized territory, either by pupil transportation or by establishing schools. Little or no aid to meet the expense of transportation is given to either district or county from the State school funds of 23 States.

Many other questions arise, such as the number of miles children may properly be transported, the length of time they should be on the road, etc. The conditions of each case have much to do with the answer but so many rural educators are now meeting problems of transportation successfully that good standards for most situations will soon be forthcoming.

Classes for automechanics, sheet-metal workers, machinists, bricklayers, plumbers, and draftsmen in the Seattle night schools have been largely attended during the past three years. Only men actually employed in the trade with which the instruction is given are eligible to enroll in such classes.

Cincinnati Meeting of Department of Superintendence

Celebration of Washington's Birthday Beginning of Convention. Excellent Program Promises Scholarly Papers by Leaders in Public-School Education. Fourteen Other Departments Convene, Representing Every Phase of Supervisory Work

Several other departments of the National Education Association whose work is concerned with supervision will be in convention in Cincinnati at the same time. They include: City Teacher Training School Section-president, L. A. treasurer, Pechstein; secretary Frank W. Smith. Council of Kindergarten Supervisors and Training Teachers-president, Ella Ruth Boyce; secretary, Allene Seton. Department of Deans of Women-president, Agnes E. Wells; secretary, Martha Doan. Department of Elementary School Principals

Controversial subjects. A. B. Meredith, State commissioner of education for president, Mrs. Jessie M. Fink; secretary, Connecticut.

Ide G. Sargeant. Department of Rural Education-president, Macy Campbell; secretary, Mabel Carney. Department Education-president,

of Vocational John N. Greer; secretary, J. D. Blackwell. Educational Research Associationpresident, E. J. Ashbaugh; secretary, H. A. Greene. National Association of

High School Inspectors and Supervisors— president, Thomas L. Jones; secretary and treasurer, Jesse B. Davis. National Association of Secondary School Principals-president, L. W. Brooks; secretary treasurer, H. V. Church. National Council of Educationpresident, J. M. Gwinn; secretary, Adelaide Steele Baylor. National Council of State Superintendents and Commissioners-president, Francis G.

Blair; secretary, Minnie Jean Nielson. National Council of Primary Educationpresident, Ella Victoria Dobbs; executive secretary, Alta Adkins. National Society

of College Teachers of Educationpresident, Edward F Buchner; secretary National treasurer, Arthur J. Jones. Society for the Study of Educationchairman, Charles H. Judd; secretary treasurer, Guy M. Whipple.

A

NEW DAY has dawned in the practice of real estate, a day which in its noontide will see no more of the casual real estate dealer who practices nearly every other vocation more than he practices real estate, and who practices real estate in a haphazard untrained manner. The real estate dealer of the new day will be trained in his vocation as the engineer, the dentisteven as the lawyer or the physician is trained in his. The real estate fraternity has already recognized the imminence of this change; it but remains for the public in general to awaken to it and to demand on its part the protection and service to which such a change entitles it.

This enthusiasm for educational training is not confused; its aims are clearly defined and its progress calculated. Its aims, first, at the development of a professional attitude and service on the part of present real estate dealers, and, second, at the building up of courses in real estate in universities and colleges where the young men and women who look forward to the vocation may secure adequate training in the fundamental principles upon which successful practice, is becoming day by day more necessarily founded.

Program of Vocational Study is Essential

To accomplish the first of these purposes, to give those who are now in the calling an opportunity to base their practices upon a level of constantly greater service, a program of vocational courses is necessary. Such a program is intended to serve salesmen and brokers now in the business and adults who are planning to go into it. This is the first group which educational opportunities should reach; they have been first to recognize their need and to demand the

courses.

At first these courses were ill-defined in content and purpose; the whole field of knowledge and training was new, and there were no standards by which such courses could be judged and their merit measured. As a consequence, the National Association of Real Estate Boards,

in conference with educators, both vocational and university, has attempted to lay out a sequence of courses which would give the real estate man, actively engaged

in the business or the adult anticipating entering, a broad comprehension but at the same time a practical survey of approved and tested methods as well as something of the principles upon which those practices are based.

It is recognized that many who have been in the business have already received this training in methods and have discovered the principles through the process of trial and error. But not all have done

So.

Some seek better methods, others want a wider understanding of principles, and still others have blundered and erred because they knew neither methods nor principles. The course of study outlined by the national association is designed to meet the needs of both.

Basis for Determining Character of Courses

The first question that presented itself was this: What subjects should a real estate course contain that by their nature and content are peculiarly for the real estate man? What sort of information and training are inherently most valuable to the dealer in real estate? To answer this question, we must ask another and answer it, namely, what are the activities that characterize and differentiate the real estate dealer? analysis of his activities will give a clearer basis for deciding what sort of knowledge the real estate dealer should seek to acquire.

An

Those activities are generally familiar. They center around three major groups: First, buying and selling real estate for others; second, rendering counsel regarding real estate investments; third, appraising the value of real estate.

In carrying on any and all of these activities, it is clear at once the types of knowledge which the real estate dealer should possess; the nature of his business makes it imperative that he study (1) property values, (2) legal aspects of real estate transfers, (3) the problems incidental to financing real estate transactions, and (4) approved standards in connection with the conduct of the real estate business. These are not all he should study, but they are the groups of knowledge, unfamiliarity with which not only handicaps the real estate dealer, but prejudices the interests of those with whom he deals.

A knowledge of real estate values is the very essence of the real estate dealer's service. He ought to be cognizant of the influences which enhance and those which impair values, so that he can anticipate both. Those who trust him depend upon his judgment in this matter more than in any other; he stands in a position to render service, or to work hardship in direct proportion to his ability or lack of ability to analyze values. It has been said that real estate values are inscrutable, that they rest upon the whim or fancy of a "seller who is willing but not compelled to sell," or a "buyer who is willing but not compelled to buy," and that the only basis of estimating them is "experience," "judgment"; it has even been said that there is no way of knowing what the value of any piece of property will be to-morrow, that it is at the mercy of chance, the football of a capricious and fickle fortune that can neither be anticipated nor measured.

Real Estate Values Have Substantial Basis

But experience proves that this is an error. Indeed, there are examples of capricious movements of real estate values just as there are of any other kind of values. When a monarch dies in Europe, mourning clothes and materials suddenly rise in value, and with the changing styles of every season thousands of dollars are written off in the falling values of women's clothing that are "out of date." But we do not say as a result that there is no basis for the value of clothing. Neither does the occasional trick of chance prove that there is no basis for the study of values in real estate. In fact, experience shows that real estate values follow economic laws that are as immutable as the law of gravitation. One of the functions of the real estate dealer is to acquaint himself with those laws. When an investment is made in real estate, the money involved frequently represents the savings of a lifetime, and it becomes subject to these laws. The real estate dealer who advises and deals in

real estate without acquaintance with real estate values is little less culpable than the surgeon who would attempt to operate without a knowledge of anatomy.

Reasonable Knowledge of Law is Required Of little less importance is a knowledge of the legal aspects of real estate transfers. Great injury can be worked by ignorance at this point. Titles can be clouded or real estate tied up almost indefinitely by the slightest oversight. Moreover, legal difficulties can be multiplied and expensive litigation made almost certain by the drawing of contracts that are impossible of interpretation, by ill-constructed deeds, and by such slight errors as the misspelling of

names.