Some provision must be made for the student who does not go into a profession, but into business, and it is desirable that some institutions, at least, should keep to a four years' course both for such students and for others who are able and willing to follow it. If we can have a system, however, whereby the length of the school period can be shortened so that a bright boy can come into college at seventeen and then stay until he is twenty-one, when he shall be prepared to start out upon his profession, we shall have reasonably solved the problem. From Harvard University statistics it appears that the boy who enters at seventeen is apt to be more industrious and brighter than the boy of nineteen, and this is the age at which the speaker asserted he should like to see boys enter. We should encourage, moreover, he stated, in this country what Oxford and Cambridge give to their men, namely a general training of an advanced character, and we should not give our universities a purely professional character. The university is not intended merely to produce professional efficiency. It is also intended to keep alive the light of general civilization.

The several papers and the discussion on Economy of Time will be printed in full in the Proceedings of the Conference.

The conference of deans and other officers of graduate schools held two sessions independent of the general meetings of the Association. The subjects discust were various aspects of the admission of students to graduate work in the universities and as candidates for the non-professional higher degrees; of graduate work done in absentia for these degrees; and their administration in professional subjects such as engineering and medicine. The classification of colleges with regard to their bachelor's degrees was particularly considered, and a proposed classification on a somewhat new basis was presented by Dr. S. P. Capen of the United States Bureau of Education. In this connection the Special Committee appointed at the preceding conference submitted a report, subsequently adopted by the

Association, recommending that a list of colleges and universities be prepared and circulated among the members of the Association, based primarily upon the experience and practise of the Association; such list to be used privately by the members for one year as a provisional list, with a view to its revision and subsequent publication in the Proceedings of the Association. The problem of the admission of foreign students to graduate work in the university was also discust, particularly in its bearing upon students from South America.

The conference of deans, which has latterly become an established part of the Conference of the Association, exercises a committee function in the consideration, primarily, of matters of administrative detail in the conduct of the graduate schools of the university, and under the present arrangement it brings in to the Conference of the Association recommendations for action on its conclusions where such action is desired. As a method for expediting business, the arrangement doubtless has its advantages, since it enables the Conference to take immediate action on matters that otherwise would need to be discust by the whole body, which includes the presidents and other delegates who are not "deans and similar officers of graduate schools."

What has actually resulted in this new arrangement, however, is to divide the Conference into two parts and to shift the centre of interest from the main body of the Association to the conference of deans which is numerically stronger. It has followed, as a natural consequence, that matters brought in to the Conference thus cut and dried elicit but little general discussion, which used to be one of the most valuable parts of these meetings, and they are rapidly becoming spiritless and dull where they were formerly interesting and full of life.

The reaction upon the conference of deans, on the other hand, is also not altogether favorable. The tendency here is to narrow the discussions down to the petty details of administrative procedure. The traveler, let us say from Mesopotamia, who should have accidentally found his way

into one of these conferences, after listening to the discussions would almost inevitably imagine that there are no great problems in American education in its higher planes, and that we are only concerned in applying principles already worked out to our satisfaction. It is, of course, natural and proper that deans should be functionally interested in administrative detail, but that, as they also are perfectly conscious, is not all there is to it. furthermore, that many of these discussions in the conference of deans are long rather than broad, and that they almost inevitably end in illustrating the thesis that there are different methods of administrative procedure in the different universities and that the individual institutions intend to persist in the use of them.

It is
It is a fact,

The remedy to apply to check the effects of malnutrition that has already begun to overtake the Conferences of the Association, as the result of the conditions described, is doubtless to discontinue the conference of deans-and partly in its own interest-and to bring again into the Conference of the Association the discussions on broad subjects that were originally an interesting and valuable part of its meetings, and which have been by no means exhausted in the ever widening field of American education.

The officers of the Association for the ensuing year are: president, the University of Minnesota; vice-president, Yale University; secretary, the University of Pennsylvania, continued for the five-year period beginning with 1913; as additional members of the executive committee, Princeton University and the State University of Iowa. No new members were elected to the Association. The next meetis to be held with the University of California, at a date to be fixt either late in June or early in July, 1915.

WILLIAM H. CARPENTER

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

THE RESTRAINT OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS Is there too much restraint or constraint in the public school methods of today? That there is seems to be the

opinion of a goodly number of parents who prefer to use other means of education, and allege as their reason that they wish their children to enjoy freedom and a chance for development. This last word is usually pronounced sotto voce and evidently mentally spelled with a capital letter.

Since Charles Dickens began his protest in the creation of the wholly execrable Mr. Squeers—and it is painful to reflect that it was a characterization rather than a caricature of the school man of that day-such protests against pedagogical inefficiency have been fashionable in all lands. One of the latest books of this kind, written by a woman who has published a good deal of matter on the general subject of child culture, opens the attack upon the school system of her country by saying that to correct its abuses would be like attempting to cut down a primeval forest with a penknife. This strain is continued thruout the book until the reader is led to the supposition that the only rational and reasonable members of society are the children, who are merely putting up with such teachers and parents as they have, until they can procure competent ones. Tho this particular volley was not discharged upon the American school system, it might easily have been. We are the unappreciative recipients of a good deal of the same sort of stuff.

The question which arises is twofold. Is this much talked of freedom from restraint the last word of wisdom in regard to the child? Is the charge made against our public school system in this matter fair?

The first question we are not prepared to discuss from the point of view of the interior circle of the home. We can only draw our conclusions from external evidence and judge by the results we have observed. We have seldom seen the child whose hard lot is deplored by the authoress referred to above. She asserts that his life is being made a burden to him by reason of the medieval methods of compelling obedience and respect for her views, employed by his unenlightened mother. The child we have oftener

seen runs up to its mother on the tennis court and begs to go in bathing.

"No, you have a cold, you should not go into the water."

This refusal is followed by an outburst of tears from the child and a reiterated refusal from the mother. Some one suggests, "Can't you think of something else she would like to do?"

"No. I can't." Then to the child, "Go in bathing if you want to. Do just as you think best. Don't consider mother in the least. Do just as you think best."

It occurred to one bystander that it seemed appropriate for the mother of a five-year-old child to help out its thinking in matters which might mean the life or death of the child. At least, such methods are likely to result in the survival of the fittest.

Another mother with whom we were once acquainted belonged in the vanguard of those who believe in perfect freedom. With her, it was a principle and not lack of sufficient energy or intelligence to teach her child. She never put any restraint upon her little daughter with the result that when the child was two years old the mother spent her days we can not testify as to the nights in distracted pursuit of that very active youngster, who, never being called to account for anything she did, was wholly unaccountable. The mother explained that the child had not yet arrived at the age of reason, which statement we were willing to accept, since we saw no ground for expecting her to have done so, at her tender age.

These two women were typical, each of her kind, as we outsiders observe. The first mother was simply careless, unwilling to be sufficiently disturbed in her own pursuits to enforce, counter to the child's inclination, what her own judgment told her was for the child's good. The second mother, entirely superior to any selfish consideration in the matter, was acting upon a well-established conviction that perfect freedom is essential to a child's normal development. No one would defend the motive of the first, but so far as the child was concerned the practical results in the