have bequn to query,-what is our elaborate system of supervision doing to vitalize the teaching which our children get? That teachers are apt to fall into routine and to grow unnaturally hard and exacting in their interpretation of prescribed courses of study, is at least intelligible. The monotony of the school-room movements and methods, the oppressive burden of the discipline, the heterogeneous mass of the pupils,-all these are taken into the account by the large-minded critic of educational results and temper his verdict when he has to pass an opinion on the work of the teacher. But do the supervising officers also need the generous forbearance of the critical observer? Do they also fall into the routine without knowing it and contribute the weight of their authority to increase the inertia of the mass? Revelations have during the past year been made in New York City that make it clear that the worst evils of machine methods are there perpetuated and intensified by the influence of the superintendent's office.

The amelioration in our system of instruction that President Eliot shows to be now pressingly needed must be left in the hands of the supervising, theorizing, planning powers, whose authority is adequate to the task, and whose view of the whole complex of interests affected is comprehensive, as only that of highly placed officials can be. Teachers work in their "course of study," and with a view to the coming examination. The very fidelity of the teacher in living up to the letter of the law measures, it may be, his lack of originality and of power to initiate a fresh turn of affairs in the school that might overcome the tendency to torpor and stagnation. Superintendents, with the governing boards at their backs, have it in their power to inaugurate reforms. The teachers, we believe, are much more able and willing to carry into effect such suggestions as President Eliot makes than they are usually credited with being.

The title of the article indicates its drift. The average age at which students enter college is shown to be nineteen years. As this brings graduation at twenty-three, and the end of professional studies. at twenty-six, the need is seen at once of reorganizing something in the course of education so that the young man's beginning in life may be made considerably earlier. That in such circumstances so many young men actually go to college would seem surprising. But President Eliot is confident that were it possible for the average youth to reach college at an earlier age, the number of students would be much increased.

The place in the system at which time may be saved is shown not to be the preparatory school. This has all it can do, beginning with the children as it gets them, to carry them on through the distinctively college-preparatory work. It is in the primary school that the precious years are wasted, and it is here that the programme can be shortened

To make clear his positions, President Eliot compares the course of study of a French Lycée with that of the corresponding years in the Boston Grammar and Latin Schools. This comparison was facili-tated, for those who listened to the paper as read, by a chart presenting in parallel columns the two courses year by year. The conclusions of the writer were thus shown to be just and not forced. "The French course of study," says he, "is decidedly the more substantial; that is to say, it calls for greater exertion on the part. of the pupil than the Boston; it introduces the children earlier to serious subjects; and it is generally more interesting and stimulating to the intelligence." Both the programmes specify the ages at which boys should be at given points of the course. But while in the French school the boys of any class actually are of the theoretical age, in the Boston one they are two years and three months. older than by the programme they should be.

"The Phillips Academy at Exeter, N. H., has a four years' coursewhich is so full that hardly any suggestion can be made for condensing or abbreviating it. But what are the requirements for admission to Exeter? 'Some knowledge of common school arithmetic,. writing, spelling, and of the elements of English grammar.' Theserequirements might reasonably be made of a boy leaving the primary school at eight years of age; yet the average age of admission to Exeter is sixteen and one half."

Even if we add one or two years to the eight, at which age President Eliot would have the boy leave the primary school equipped as above indicated, yet what a condition of arrearage is revealed in the educational development of American youth by this simple comparison !

The suggestions of improvement which the writer makes and elaborates with argument and illustration are comprised under five heads:

1. Better teachers are needed. To this end a better tenure of office is necessary, in order to secure for the function of teaching greater consideration and dignity. A larger proportion of male teachers is also desirable in order that general longer continuance:

in the work may be effected and that the habit of teaching from day to day without that seriousness of purpose that belongs to the hope. of achieving a recognized professional success may be done away with in the largest possible measure.

2. Courses of study must be improved. "A good course of study will not execute itself,-it must be vivified by the good teacher; but an injudicious course is an almost insuperable obstacle to the improvement of a city's schools. As a rule, the American programmes do not seem substantial enough, from the first year in the primary school onward. There is not enough meat in the diet.

They do not bring the child forward fast enough to maintain his interest and induce him to put forth his strength."

3. "Much time can be saved in primary and secondary schools by diminishing the number of reviews, and by never aiming at that kind of accuracy of attainment which reviews followed by examinations are intended to force. It is one of the worst defects of examinations that they set an artificial value upon accuracy of attainment. Good examination results do not always prove that the training of the children examined has been of the best kind."

4. Striking statistics are given showing that children are often kept back and that thus the average age of classes is often made much higher than the programme for the grade in question calls for. "The great body of children ought to pass regularly from one grade to another, without delay, at the ages set down on the programme; and any method of examination which interferes with this regular progress does more harm than good."

5. It is suggested that the shortening of the school year has gone far enough, and that some steps should be taken in the other direction. As it appears in the Atlantic, President Eliot's article occupies eight pages. It contains no fine writing, and has no literary flavor which some writing on the homely concerns of popular education will insist on trying to attain. It is simple and plain, direct and strong. Each paragraph of it gives food for thought. It challenges all leaders and governors of educational systems to do something or to confess their reasons for doing nothing. We hope that this paper, with perhaps some additional matter from the same pen on related topics, if this alone shall seem too brief for the purpose, will be issued separately, in order that it may have the largest possible circulation among educators, whose general consensus of opinion must finally determine the feasibility of the reforms which it urges.

THE TWENTY-SIXTH UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION.

The meeting of the Convocation at Albany this summer was by all odds the best we have ever attended. For the first time within the memory of man the weather was not too hot, and more people came at the beginning and stayed till the end than we have ever known before. The details of the meeting were on the whole well managed, though it is difficult to see, when the Executive Committee announces a time limit, why this limit should be rigidly enforced in the case of some while others taking part in the same discussion should be allowed to run on indefinitely. We noticed two men interrupted in the middle of a sentence at the end of ten minutes, while twenty-eight minutes were accorded to another man the same morning, and for anything that appeared he could have had twentyeight minutes more if he had wanted. There certainly should be a time limit and it certainly ought to be enforced without fear or favor. Taken as a whole the written papers were not above the usual standard, but the discussions were the best we have ever heard. Moreover, the whole spirit of the Convocation was live, practical and aggressive. The attendance was good, and the social element by no means lacking. The Chancellor's reception was enjoyable and well-attended in spite of the rain. To our thinking the address of Professor E. B. Andrews, of Cornell University, on "The Federal Convention of 1787," was the best single feature of the Convocation. One of the most practical as well as entertaining features was the presentation of "Defects in Our Present Educational Processes " by Messrs. Forbes, Hill, Milne, Ford, Bardeen and Adams. Each of these gentlemen had accepted the invitation given some weeks beforehand and had prepared himself to say something practical and definite. The result was a series of short talks, with all the charm of extempore speaking and with careful preparation.

Prof. Forbes spoke of the three functions of the teacher, that of awakening the mind to activity, selecting subject matter adapted to qualify and discipline the faculties, and guiding and criticising the progress of the pupil. Too much of the teacher's effort is expended on the last of these. The second of them is at the present time a battle ground. The question of educational value, the

selection of proper matter to develop and discipline the mind, is receiving a full share of attention. The great defect of education at the present time is the neglect of the first function, the most important of all. There is no theoretical disagreement among teachers as to the object to be obtained, but our practice hardly conforms to our theory, and the result is failure to produce intellectual power and independence. The strictures so often made upon the value of our teaching have little basis outside of this defect. Our educational processes are too dogmatical and too mechanical. A man may absord a large amount of learning and yet have little intellectual power. The teacher gives the pupil not only the facts but also the interpretation, thus distinctly preventing the pupil from working the interpretation out in his own mind. The remedy for all this is to go back to the method of Socrates, the greatest of all teachers. Socrates taught no philosophic doctrines, he laid down no dogmas. He differed from the teachers of the present day in asserting that "he knew that he knew nothing." We have two things to do. We are to have facts brought out in the class room, but we are not dogmatically to lay down the relations which we suppose to exist between these facts.

Principal A. C. Hill, of Cook Academy, thought that there were two kinds of defects in educational work, defects in reference to means, and defects in reference to ends in education. Much discussion has been given to defects in the means, but it does not matter about these if the ends are only reached. Mr. Hill specially emphasized the failure to develop the emotional nature. There seems to be an idea that all enthusiasm must be squeezed out of the pupil. It is a tendency of much of the college education of to-day so to repress the emotional element that when the student goes out into life he has no enthusiasm for anything. A certain teacher at the close of a discussion in the class room bravely announced to his pupils, that there were just as many arguments on one side of every question as there were on the other. So the student goes out into life with no enthusiasm in any direction because there is always something to be said on the other side. Darwin furnished an illustrious example of this defect when he said that his interest in nature and in her sublime and beautiful phases had died away. There was atrophy in that part of his nature. We have intellect and will, and these are educated, but we neglect the emotions. This power of emotion makes great the work of life. Another great defect in our