The second part of the report of the Carnegie Foundation is devoted to such subjects as the Educational matter of college enProgress trance requirements, admission to advanced standing, a statement of medical progress, university and college financial reporting, advertising as a factor in education, education and politics, and finally, sham universities. All of these subjects are discussed in the frank and specific manner which has hitherto been used in these reports. In recounting the extraordinary medical progress of the last five years attention is called to the connection which still exists in the United States between reputable colleges and unworthy medical schools. The lessons of the recent Bulletin on Medical Education in Europe are also brought clearly forward. During the last five years the mortality among unworthy medical schools has been most satisfactory. The number of such schools in the United States has been reduced by about one-third and the number of students attending them by number of students attending them by about one-quarter, and this diminution has occurred in exactly the places where it ought to occur-namely, in the elimination of the unfit. The section devoted to education and politics discusses not only the recent remarkable changes in the University of Oklahoma, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Montana, but also deals with two other tendencies in political life which are profoundly affecting education: first, with the rivalry which comes from competing state institutions, and secondly with the practice inaugurated almost wholly within the last ten years in states where there are no state universities, of subsidizing institutions that are under private control. In a number of states this process has gone on until it has enormously increased the number of privately controlled institutions which share in state appropriations. So marked has this tendency become that the question of state appropriation to education without state control is one which ought now to be frankly and squarely met. Under sham universities the report deals with conditions such as hold, for example, in the District of Columbia, endowment or facilities are chartered where commercial enterprises without as educational institutions under the loosest conditions, which enable them to appeal to the credulity of ignorant students throughout this and other countries under high-sounding names and under the shelter of charters granted by the general government. A bill now before Congress aims to correct this situation. The endowment in the hands of the trustees, last September, amounted to approximately $14,000,000, and the income for the year amounted to $676,486, of which $634,497 was expended. From its first pension payment in June, 1906, to the end of the fiscal year Sep tember 30, 1912, the Foundation has distributed $2,077,814 in retiring allowances to professors and $238,590 in widows' pensions-a total of $2,316,404. In all 429 retiring allowances and ninety widows' pensions have been granted, of which ninety-eight have three at the expiration of temporary terminated through death and twentygrants, leaving 315 retiring allowances and eighty-three widows' pensions in force at the end of the year. school to the citizens of Philadelphia, calling upon them to pay frequent visits to the public educational institutions, that they may see for themselves what progress has been achieved toward cheerful, sanitary, inviting surroundings, and teachers, cheerful, sympathetic and "alert to touch the fountains of purpose and keen to guide the will of childhood into the most vital and helpful sources of preparation for life." The report vigorously attacks "the heresy" that "the school has usurped the function of the home and those things which belong strictly and properly in the economy of domestic life have swept over into the economy of the school life of the community." The Home and School Associations, with their central organization, the league, repudiate this idea, the report declares. In line with this stand, Superintendent Brumbaugh has this important declaration to make: "We do not wish the public schools to be day nurseries; we do not wish them to be the moral correctives of society. We believe that certain definite things belong to the home and that the home should never be allowed to dismiss these from its vital obligations. On the other hand, we do want the school to be conversant with these things and to be consulted in the right interpretation thereof and to see to it that that which the school ought not to do, but which is vital to the welfare of childhood, shall be done by the home and the church, to the end that these three great agencies, working together and in complete sympathy and understanding, shall give to us in the last analysis the finest type of citizenship that we can vision.” Possibly one of the most vital matters touched upon by Superintendent Brumbaugh, and certainly that to which he has devoted the greatest space in his report, is the much-discussed "vocational education." As the official opinion of Philadelphia's educational head, the following paragraphs are of peculiarly timely significance: "Once in a great while one hears the comment that the school is too largely devoting its time and energy to the questionable task of teaching all sorts of things in the school, to the distinct loss of definite and specific training in what are usually known as the standard elements of a curriculum. I have no doubt these criticisms arise from well-intentioned people, likewise from people who do not see the present status of public school education and its bearing upon the problems of modern society. The school is no longer an institution for the imparting of a definite sum of restrictive knowledge. It does not pretend to exhaust any one field of intellectual enterprise or endeavor. It does not see itself as the realizer of the type of training which 50 years ago was considered to be adequate to the needs of society. "The school of today visions its functions on a much broader and more humane plane. It is distinctly and emphatically endeavoring to train all of the child for a place worthy of itself in the great economic and social and civic atmosphere in which it must live. Its function is to fit the child to be at home with its environment, and to give to it, not specific facts, but such a training as will enable it easily to acquire the necessary facts to perform well its service to society as a whole. It is an institution that creates an atmosphere in the life of the child, rather than an institution that drills formal facts into the memory and understanding of the child. One cannot, therefore, exclude from the school any element which in a large way conditions the activities of civilization today, and these so-called 'fads' are as vitally a part of the total discipline of an individual for life as are the old inherited disciplines to which sometimes undue allegiance is given. "We need in America not only trained workmen, but we need also contented, happy workmen, and we shall not rise to the plane of leadership in the industrial competitions of the race until we have given to our people not only an understanding of specific industrial problems, but that wider and vastly more significant equipment which enables them to. The questions discussed were: "Moreover, with the undoubted tendency to shorten the vocational hours of our people there arises increased need for an education that will fit people for their avocational hours. It is just as important, in the general summing up of the effectiveness of a citizen, that he should know how to spend his leisure wisely and well as it is that he should know how to work acceptably. Likewise, it is not to be disputed, in my mind, that a child must carry into his mature activities a body that has been trained and conserved and is physically capable of carrying the stress and burden of mature years.' Conference of (1) (3) The organization of the student employ- Professors F. W. Nicholson, of Wes- Association The appointment and employment secretaries of nine eastern colleges and universities held a conference at Columbia University recentcal Education ly, and discussed the ways and means of placing college graduates in teaching and commercial positions and safeguarding the interests of students who have to work their way through college. Although definite action was not taken, it was the consensus of opinion that the exploiting of college men as book agents and canvassers during the summer months should be discouraged as much as possible and that the college employment officers were best fitted to take up this important question. It was agreed that this work, often attractive, seldom turns out to be as profitable as the claims of the contract agents represent it to be, and that many students are fleeced of their money as well as of their time. The second annual convention of the Middle West Physical Education and Hygiene Association Meeting of Physi- was held at the University of Chicago in April. The membership of the association includes representatives of public and private schools, academies, colleges and universities of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and other states. The sessions were devoted to demonstrations of methods of physical education. More than 1,200 children from public and private schools, turner societies, high schools and municipal playgrounds of Chicago were used to illustrate exercise in physical culture for children of all grades. children of all grades. Prominent physical educators outlined their methods of instruction and practice exhibitions were given by picked teams of the Interna- to be almost negligible in a hygienic tional Gymnastic union and by delega- school environment, except in regard to tions from Detroit, Milwaukee, St. the few easily fatigued individuals." Louis, Emporia, Kansas City, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, Iowa State College and Normal School, Chicago Teachers' College, Indianapolis, Gary, South Bend and other places. Children If children are tired out at the end of a school day, is it really because they are fatigued by their Cause of Fatigue school work? Or is Among School it because they are bored, or confined in badly ventilated rooms, or because they have physical defects, or are not properly cared for at home? Professor W. H. Heck, of the University of Virginia, has been conducting experiments, first in New York City and later in Lynchburg, Va., with a view to determining how fatigue influences the work of children in school. A report of the New York experiment has been published as a monograph. The Lynchburg experiment is reported by Professor Heck in the April number of The Psychological Clinic. "An important consideration," says Mr. Heck, "is the greater decrease in effificiency shown by the boys than by the girls, this difference even being noticeable in the greater restlessness of the boys during the tests. Complete tables of the sixteen class averages were made of the results by the boys and the girls, and the general averages, percentages, etc., were calculated. The boys showed an increase in quantity of 0.74 per cent and a decrease in quality of 4.25 per cent; the girls showed an increase in quantity of 1.62 per cent and a decrease in quality of 1.96 per cent. The boys showed an increase in quantity 0.4568 times that by the girls and a decrease in quality 2.168 times that by the girls. The results of the twenty-five-minute tests in Lynchburg greatly strengthen the conclusions from the ten-minute tests in New York, The decrease in efficiency must have been due in part to unhygienic conditions in school, home, and children; but however much of this decrease we attribute to fatigue, the fatigue is still so slight as A movement has been started in Chicago to secure thorough examination of the eyes of Examination of the public school chilEyes of School dren. Mrs. Ella Children Flagg Young superintendent of schools, has projected a plan somewhat similar to the one used at present by the dentists. At a recent conference Mrs. Young urged the officers of the Illinois Association for the Conservation of Vision and Prevention of Blindness to get young oculists who would be willing to give part of their time to the examination of school children. All defects would be charted and sent to the parents. No oculist's name would be used so that there could be no advertising. Where the parents are too poor or too indifferent to see the defects are taken care of the name of the nearest dispensary would be given. Mrs. Young urged that efforts be made to get the board of education to co-operate so that necessary supplies and even free glasses could be provided where necessary. "Some children are as greatly handicapped without glasses as they are without books," she said. Mrs. Young asserted she believed most of the eye defects in the schools came from working in subdued light. Window shades that pull down from the top are responsible, she said. Dr. Parke Lewis, of Buffalo, said the thinking capacity of a child is retarded by visual defects. He urged fewer books for children and larger print. That 80 per cent of the children in country schools drink tea and coffee; that 40 per cent of Health Conditions them suffer from alin Country most constant toothPublic Schools ache; and that 19 to 23 per cent have frequent headache; these are some of the facts brought out by Dr. Ernest B. Hoag, of Minnesota, in a personal visitation of the rural schools. of that State. To find exactly what health conditions in the Minnesota rural schools are, Dr. Hoag asks the simplest kind of questions, with astonishing results. "When I ask those who drink coffee to stand up," says Dr. Hoag, "nearly all the children arise. When I ask how many have a toothbrush, nearly all say they have, but when I ask 'Did you use it this morning?' there is little response." Many of the children assumed that headache, earache, and other ailments were perfectly perfectly natural things, and seemed surprised that anybody should be curious about them. "Why, I always have headache," they would say. Dr. Hoag found that by simple questions about the children's eyesight, the teacher, without any optical tests at all, would discover that 20 per cent of her children suffer from eye strain. From 12 to 14 per cent of the country school children suffer from earache, and 4 per cent have discharging ears. "Adenoids, earache, discharging ears, deafness: that's the order we find over and over again," says Dr. Hoag. "Four or five per cent of the children simply do not hear what is going on and are therefore put down as stupid when they are not." The commonest principles of hygiene are frequently neglected. In one school visited by Dr. Hoag, an old-fashioned unjacketed stove had sent the thermometer to the sizzling height of 90 degrees, while it was 10 below zero out-of-doors, a difference of 100 degrees. The children in the country are generally plentifully fed, Dr. Hoag finds, but they do not eat the right kind of food. People in the country do not breathe pure air, because, with abundance of it all about them, they carefully exclude it from their houses by keeping the windows tightly closed. These are some of the things have caused the country to lose its reputation for good health as compared with the city. In order to remedy conditions, thorough medical inspection is desirable where it can be had, but much can be done by the teacher herself without any elaborate medical methods, according to Dr. Hoag. Teachers in the Minnesota schools are provided with a "health survey" containing simple but fundamental questions about health, by means of which they keep informed as to the condition of the children intrusted to their charge and are able to point the way to healthful living. The development of a health instruction bureau in connection with the extension division of the Establishes Bureau University of Wis of Health Instruction consin was authorized by the regents of the university at their April meeting. According to authority in medicine, hygiene, and vital statistics, including insurance actuaries, the average duration of human life can be prolonged fifteen years, if the present available knowledge is intelligently applied. The new health bureau will undertake to carry out to the people of the state this knowledge. Bulletins will be published on preventable diseases, infant mortality, rural hygiene and similar subjects. Public lectures, instruction by correspondence, health surveys, and public exhibits are among the forms of dissemination of information that will be used by the extension division in the new health bureau. It is only about twenty-five years since Congress passed the Hatch act founding Agricultural Experiment Stations the system of agricultural experiment stations in this country. The annual federal grant to each state is now $30,000, to which the states themselves have in many cases added. Those less familiar with the work often think of it solely as an attempt to further the interests of the practical farmer. The institutions were founded "to promote scientific investigation and experiment respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science;" but the scope of the work now extends far beyond the boundaries of the farm. The lessons of this imposing movement in agricultural research and education are manifold. The American experiment stations have demonstrated the solidarity of the different sciences. Their successes have taught the important lesson that no one can foretell what beneficial results may develop from |