firmary buildings is proceeding rapidly. The architects, Day and Klauder, of Philadelphia, have designed the building along the usual Princeton gothic lines. THE Ohio State University Medical Science Building has been sold for $60,000 to the White Cross Hospital Association, Columbus. All university equipment will be moved to the medical building now being constructed on the campus. THE Hebrew Union College School for Teachers in New York has opened with an enrollment of more than one hundred students who are taking night courses. The subjects taught are the Bible, Jewish history, ethics, customs, literature, ceremonials and Hebrew. Dr. Abram N. Franblau, of the Department of Education of the College of the City of New York, is principal of the school. THE name of Montana Wesleyan College has been changed to the Inter-Mountain Union College. PRACTICALLY every country in the world and all the states of the Union are represented in the graduate and undergraduate schools of Columbia University, according to figures made public last week. Exclusive of university extension and the summer session, 8,764 students are enrolled from New York and other States of the North Atlantic division. The South Atlantic division furnishes 475, the South Central division 371, the North Central division 1,131 and the Western division 349. Fifty-eight students come from the insular and non-contiguous territories. There are 511 from foreign countries, China leading with 192. Sixty-eight are from Canada, 52 from Japan and ten from South Africa. DR. JOHN H. FINLEY, as chairman of the National Education Advisory Committee of the Near East Relief, is writing to principals and superintendents throughout the country, enlisting their interest in the observance of International Golden Rule Sunday on December 2. On that day people in ten nations will use the Near East orphanage menu in place of their usual Sunday dinner and will give the difference in cost toward the purchase of food for the children of the Near East. A COMPREHENSIVE survey of the normal schools in the State of Massachusetts will be made by William C. Bagley, professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, in connection with the investigation of higher education in Massachusetts by the special commission appointed by Governor Cox. Professor Bagley will compile data on the need of trained teachers, both in elementary and secondary schools in the State, and the degree to which the normal schools are supplying this need. Assisted by several of his associates at Columbia, Professor Bagley will visit all the normal schools of the state for personal inspection. The survey will include an inquiry into the accessibility of normal schools to students; what proportion can attend these schools while living at home, and an occupational analysis of the homes from which normal school pupils are drawn. The adequacy of buildings and equipment will also be determined. Special attention will be given to the curriculum of the schools to ascertain the number who prepare for elementary or secondary schools, art schools or other special branches. BEGINNING with the second term in February, pupils in the high schools of New York City who are rated among the lowest 20 per cent. in ability will not be allowed to take mathematics or a foreign language, according to a decision of a conference of teachers with Superintendents Feldsley and Meleny. Instead backward pupils will study biology or general science or both, or one of these subjects in conjunction with typewriting or shop work. "We want to stop giving the lower 20 per cent. of the pupils what they can not learn and give them what they can learn," District Superintendent John L. Tildsley is quoted as saying by the Evening Mail. DISCUSSION THE NUMBER OF UNTRAINED IN Collier's Weekly for October 27th, there appeared the following editorial: Little Willie is now trotting off to school again. You watch him go with a pang of pride in your heart and the wish that he be taught things which make for character and good citizenship. Some one must teach him, so ponder the fact that of the 700,000 teachers in the United States 300,000, according to Dr. L. D. Coffman, president of the University of Minnesota, have never had even regular public school training above the seventh grade. While the teachers are fitting our children to live, the teachers must also live. As long as salaries are so low that men and women can not afford adequate training for the great profession of general education, then we are not going to have the sort of teaching that is in your mind as you watch Willie trot or to school. The statement which is attributed to me in the above editorial is a statement which I never made. I am sure that Collier's Weekly has no desire to misrepresent me and that it secured its information from some newspaper clipping of a lecture which I may have delivered on the teacher training situation in the United States. What I have said a number of times is that there are about 30,000 teachers in the United States who have had no training beyond the grades. This is far different, of course, than saying that 300,000 have never gone beyond the seventh grade. L. D. COFFMAN THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA THE SMALL COLLEGE AND THE SAB- A COLLEGE professor and his wife, passing from the east to the middle west, motored up from Pittsburgh a few days ago to spend twenty-four hours in my home. They came, they told me, just to thank me for making possible the wonderful year they had spent in Boston, New York and Washington in study and sight-seeing. It was their first real period of rest in a generation spent in a small college town, where my friend has for that period been professor of mathematics. About a year ago I had a letter from Oxford, England. It was from a professor who was just closing a year of study in that inspiring environment. He wrote that after his most profitable experience he thought that he should send me a statement of his appreciation because I had made possible all that the year had Imeant to him. For two decades he had been teaching in the same small college, and to it he was about to return. During the war I one day received a letter from Columbia University. It was from a man who for more than a generation had been teaching in that little college in the Middle West. He told me of the courses he had been taking and of the inspiration the experience had been to him. He regretted that he had not been able to spend the year in Athens as he had planned, but the war had made it impossible. He, too, wrote to thank me for making possible the year of rejuvenation, the first real vacation of his lifetime. No, I'm not a multi-millionaire with a passion for giving vacations to deserving college professors; I'm only a college professor myself on a modest salary and one who has never enjoyed a sabbatical year. How, then, had I made possible the opportunity for rest and recreation and study for these men and for others in their faculty? Once in an official capacity I spoke to the trustees of that small denominational college. They were interested in my suggestion. They gave it careful consideration and finally adopted it. What I said was in substance this: We have here a group of men who have been serving this institution faithfully for many years. They have had small salaries. They have been unable to study even during the summer except as they have done it at home. Their vacations have never been such as every one of you men feels he must have. We do not have the endowment to give even one of them a year's leave of absence on full salary, or even on part salary, unless we devise some special plan to make it I wish to suggest that hereafter we possible. permit one man to be away each year. To do it we'll omit for that year all the elective courses he offers. That will deprive no student of those courses, for we can plan for students to take them the year before he goes or the year after he returns. His required courses we may be able to add to the load of other members of the faculty, with their consent (I had talked the matter over with the faculty and had shown them its possibilities, and I knew how they would receive such a suggestion), in which case the whole salary can go to the man who is absent; or we'll bring in a Such young man to carry the required courses. a man we can secure to do all the required courses for not over one third or one half of the salary of the man who is away, and the part of his salary not so used will be paid to him during his absence. This within a few years will give each of the older men a year for travel and study. After that I believe the plan should be continued with the hope of giving each full professor a regular sabbatical year. The plan was adopted. It works. Maybe it husband and babies, to the much-talked-of “in will work in your college. THOMAS C. BLAISDELL STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, SLIPPERY ROCK, PENNSYLVANIA EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE Editor of School and Society: Being a typical old maid and a normal individual otherwise, I read with interest the article on education for parenthood, in the discussion section of the September 1 issue of this journal. I find no means-nor, indeed, disposition -to dispute the statistics given. However, I feel an imperative urge to advance a counteropinion as to the remedy for the situation. I feel entirely sure that introducing another course, especially one calculated to make for increased efficiency, will of itself only serve to make matters worse, if that is possible. Too much schooling, or at any rate too much (at least pseudo-) thinking, is exactly what is responsible for the decreased number of marriages, the more advanced age at which marriage occurs, and the smaller families. It is the irresponsible, incapable and attractive girl that marries, rather than the thoughtful, resourceful and companionable one. A somewhat plain but thoroughly fine, popular and well-poised young woman of about twenty-five years, remarked to me yesterday as she enrolled for a graduate course the remark being the inspiration of this effusion: "I'll have to get some more letters to my name somehow, either Mrs. in front of it or Ph.D. after it." Having the latter after mine, I urged the former upon her, dilating upon the greatly lessened likelihood of her attaining it if she showed any capacity or inclination the other way. But she was firm; she said, truthfully, that she could cook, sew, entertain graciously, play hockey and tennis, and teach a Sunday-school class, but she couldn't and wouldn't "run after any man. And most men are afraid of us unless we're morons." Although I'm not a Methodist I fervently said, "Amen," and bade her Godspeed. Let me suggest, then, as a parallel course to the one on parenthood-which really has some arguments in its favor-one that shall reveal to the 26 per cent. of Harvard graduates, and other youth of the same timid sex, the fact that there are many intelligent and lovable young women who would prefer a modest home with a dependence," with its spending-money, clothes and travel. This isn't theory; it is fact. I have discovered dozens of them when talking in the frank, congenial way young folks do. Why, even I, at this moment, should much prefer getting the baby ready for bed, to correcting papers-and having tried each on sundry occasions for protracted periods, I know whereof I speak. Yes, by all means let's put on for the over-cautious a course in, let us say, matrimonial courage, and have a little required laboratory work. Yours for the good of the cause, A. FRIGHT, PH.D. P. S.-It's only fair to admit that really I don't at all wonder that the men fear us at first. QUOTATIONS BUILDING SCHOOLS FOR NEGROES NEARLY two thousand schools for negro children, distributed throughout the entire South, is the record of eleven years of work of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Beginning with a small contribution from Mr. Rosenwald, given to the late Booker Washington on the express understanding that the negroes should themselves raise an equivalent or a larger sum, the work has spread so as to affect thousands of negroes in many different states. The provision that the negroes must help themselves has been adhered to during the entire period of the work. Of the total of $7,000,000 spent up to date, the Rosenwald Fund has given $1,400,000 and the negroes $1,800,000. The balance has come from the public school authorities and from individual white men who saw the value of the movement. For the year 1924 the fund has appropriated $552000 to aid in the construction of 500 new schools. The significance of this work can not be overstressed. It has given a great impetus to the education of the colored race in the South, more particularly in those counties where it had been neglected. The buildings to which the Rosenwald Fund contributed become the property of the school authorities. They are of the latest modern type, and are located with a view to the needs of particular communities. Better schools have made it easier to get better teachers. In this manner it has been possible to raise the general standard of education. Inasmuch as no community is helped unless the school term runs at least five months, it has been possible to overcome the evil of short-term schools, against which such leaders as Booker Washington and Dr. Moton protested. One of the complaints of the negroes who in recent years have left the South in such large numbers has been the lack of satisfactory school facilities in that region. By stimulating counties to build, the Rosenwald Fund has taken an important step in overcoming this difficulty. Furthermore, it has roused the state and county educational authorities to the importance of better education for whites as well as negroes, with a resulting increase in the general standard of education. The story is told that when Booker Washington and Julius Rosenwald first met to discuss this problem in 1912, the former pointed to the statistics in his own State of Alabama, which showed that in one year, when the State had appropriated $2,865,000 for education, the negroes, although they numbered about half of the population of the State, received an allotment of only $360,000. Only 20 per cent. of the negro school population were enrolled as compared with 60 per cent. of the white school population. Furthermore, the negro schools averaged less than four months' tuition a year, whereas the white schools averaged more than seven months. Small wonder that in these circumstances both men felt that something had to be done. The work which they then began stands out as one of the most important contributions to negro education in recent years.-The New York Times. BOOKS AND LITERATURE ENGLISH BOOKS ON EDUCATION The Children of England. A Contribution to Social History and to Education. By J. J. FINDLAY. London, Methuen & Co., 1923. 242 pp. PROFESSOR FINDLAY's work is an important contribution not only to the history of English education but to the methods of enquiry and attack in the field of educational history. Departing from the more usual surveys of the development of educational theory and practice or of the story of educational legislation and organization Professor Findlay has gone behind the scenes and has most effectively traced the opportunities for education in the broadest sense afforded by the general social and economic conditions and the changing attitudes towards formal education and the causes thereof. As Professor Findlay himself describes his aim, "in the current language of psychology, what we are seeking is an estimate of values, of changes in appreciation of what is worth while to the child and to his comrades." He brings out emphatically one point, which is too often ignored by those who ascribe to England indifference to education, that "all through these centuries (of English history) our people have cherished their young and handed on the traditions of the elders until now the children are taken in hand and placed in the charge of men and women who are expressly chosen for the offices of education." By tracing the history from the informal to the formal provision of education Professor Findlay has brought into the foreground the problems that this evolution has brought with it: the relation of the school to the parents, the status of teachers in the organized school system, the place of the child in mass education, and the relation of the curriculum to those values that were formerly conserved with the child was exposed to the manifold influences of informal and unorganized education. The work, though brief, omits nothing in its broad sweep through the centuries. A study of a similar kind on the history of American education is much needed, for, with the exception of Dr. Reisner's comprehensive survey of one of the many aspects treated by Professor Findlay, nothing of a similar character has been attempted. Professor Findlay's sociological interpretation of education deserves the careful study of all students of the subject. The Way Out, Essays on the Meaning and Purpose of Adult Education. Edited by HoN. OLIVER STANLEY. Oxford University Press, 1923. 115 pp. THIS collection of essays presents a penetrating analysis of the importance of adult education in relation to the problems and responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy. All that is said in the first part of the book, which deals with the ideals of adult education, is equally relevant for the conditions both in the United States and in England. Indeed, as Mr. A. E. Zimmern points out in his essay on The Evolution of a Citizen, the war has left England and this country saddled with a large number of new problems but with a pre-war equipment for their solution, a position less favorable than that of the new democracies that are making a new start in a new direction. In his essay on Knowledge as Civic Discipline, Professor H. J. Laski pleads that "the creative use of leisure is of central importance to the modern state if democratic government is to be made effective. For man must be made something more than a creature adapted to his industrial routine. He must be given self-respect, and self-respect comes only from a wide understanding of the world about him." The same note is struck by Viscount Haldane in his statement of the aim of adult education. "What we aim at is the creation and diffusion through the people of the sense of new intellectual and spiritual values. . . . The new conception of education must be that of education as an end in itself, a power liberating the fetters of ignorance. It must aim at opening up to those who can receive it new worlds, worlds in which the society will be that of the geratest writers and artists that the history of the world has produced. The idea of leisure must change." All the essays indicate a breadth and an expansion of the conception of adult education, which is no longer regarded as something to be made available to the working classes but as an opportunity to be open to all as citizens whose task is to govern themselves. The second part of the book deals with the facts bearing on the present organization and status of adult education in England and concludes with a useful bibliographical note on the subject. The whole book is of interest not only to those who are mainly concerned with adult education but to all who wish to understand what some of the leaders of English thought today understand by the terms culture and citizenship. Child Training Through Occupation. LUCY BONE and MARIE E. LANE. With an Introduction by Alice Woods. 1923. Methuen & Co., London. 140 pages. THIS book represents an attempt to adapt modern principles of freedom and spontaneity in education, which are sound, to the practice of the English infant schools, which is in many respects unsound. The main theses of the book are centered in the following quotations: Free discipline stands for control on the child's part along with willingness of heart and service, and the result is harmony and beauty (p. 4). In the infants' school the babies' class is the place in which the child should begin to learn selfdiscipline. Teaching through individual occupations appears to me to be the best method for giving this power in a rational way, and, therefore, if there were no other strong reasons, I would still urge its use for little children (p. 5). Even a young child dislikes to waste time. With work peculiarly his own he feels he is, on his own account, a responsible being. He moves on at his own pace; but mark this important point, he moves on all the time (p. 6). To this theory few will take exception, but it is difficult to reconcile it with the suggested number scheme for children between five and seven which includes counting to 50 and over, money over one shilling, yard, foot and inch, pound, quart, pint, gill and fractions (2 and 1/4). Formal work of this type is not made more justifiable at this stage by the reiteration that there must be no symbols without concrete material. On the other hand, the chapters on reading, handwork and group work are sounder because they are based on a sounder recognition of child needs, but here, too, there is a tendency to begin writing and spelling a little earlier than in the American schools. The book is well written and simple enough for the young teacher, while all teachers will find in it many suggestions on the making of apparatus and for coordinating the work of younger and older pupils in a school. The limitations of the book are due to the limitations of any public school system in which the adjustment of practice and theory must inevitably result in a compromise. While the central authority in England encourages experimentation and freedom on the part of the teacher, the stage has not yet been reached when a complete break with the old emphasis on formal studies in the early stages is possible. The present book is a good illustration of a statement made by Arnold of Rugby: "Another system may be better in itself; but I am placed in this system and am bound to try what I can make of it." TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY I. L. KANDEL |