REFORM SCHOOLS.

There were 99 reformatories and other institutions known as State industrial schools for juveniles reporting in 1905 (Chapter XXIX). These schools had 38,006 inmates, 36,580 of these being taught the common school branches for some part of the year, and 30,378 having some industrial training. These schools employed 771 teachers, with 2,013 assistants caring for the inmates.

SCHOOLS FOR THE DEFECTIVE CLASSES.

Chapter XXX includes the statistics or schools for the blind, the deaf, and the feeble minded. There were 40 schools for the blind, employing 505 teachers and having an aggregate enrollment of 4,441 pupils— 2,401 boys and 2,040 girls. There were 136 schools for the deaf, 56 State institutions, 64 public day schools, and 16 private schools, with an aggregate enrollment of 11,952 pupils-6,496 boys and 5,456 girls. There were 25 State schools and 15 private schools for the feeble minded, with a total enrollment of 16,240 pupils-8,683 boys and 7,557 girls. In all the above-named institutions greater prominence is given year by year to manual and industrial training.

RECOMMENDATIONS.

It appears from the foregoing statements that public education in the United States continued during the year 1904-5 to make substantial progress, as in the years immediately preceding. It appears also that a work of the greatest magnitude remains to be done in the maintenance of a rate of educational progress which shall not only equal the rate of national development in general, but shall in many particulars proceed even more rapidly, in order to prepare in advance for future demands which can already be foreseen.

In accordance with the provisions of the act establishing this Office it devolves upon the Commissioner of Education to present annually to Congress a statement not only of facts but of recommendations which will in his judgment subserve the purpose for which the Office was established, namely, that of aiding the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promoting the cause of education throughout the country. The first recommendation which I beg to submit in view of this provision is that greater effort be put forth to improve the school attendance of this country, which is still in an extremely unsatisfactory condition. To this end it is necessary that a variety of means and agencies be organized in effective cooperation. Among such means and agencies may be mentioned, first, compulsory-attendance laws in the States and the faithful execution of such laws, with

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the help, wherever necessary, of truant officers; secondly, special schools for truant and incorrigible, children; thirdly, juvenile courts in the cities; fourthly, laws prohibiting the employment of children as wage earners up to an age when such employment will no longer be physically injurious, and limiting such employment beyond that age to give full opportunity for the acquirement of at least a wellrounded elementary education, and provision by the employment of inspectors and otherwise for rendering such laws fully operative; fifthly, provision for the transportation of school children in country districts, particularly in connection with consolidated schools; sixthly, provision for good roads leading to district and consolidated schools; seventhly, provision for hygienic conditions in schools and the cooperation of boards of public health in promoting and preserving the health of school children; eighthly, such differentiation and enrichment of instruction in the higher elementary and secondary grades, particularly in the direction of thorough commercial and technical courses, as will enable the schools to keep a firmer hold upon that considerable class of pupils, particularly boys, who are now drawn away from school by opportunities for profitable employment.

The second recommendation which I would respectfully present is concerned with the fact, which every year makes more obvious, that our public education has passed into an international stage in its development. The approach of the second International Peace Conference at The Hague has turned public attention to the many-sided modern movement toward a peaceful adjustment of international relations. Governments, in striving to maintain an honorable peace, require the reenforcement of popular sentiment, and it is of the utmost importance that such public sentiment should steadily demand a peace which makes for righteousness, and no other peace than that which will make for righteousness. A public sentiment calling for such peace will be stable only when it rests upon an appreciative understanding of other nations. In this there is a great work for education the world over, that it help the nations understand one another. Whatever the schools may do to this great end will count for real education. Can any form of learning, in fact, be more liberalizing, more expanding, more tonic, than the insight gained through knowledge of other peoples, our contemporaries, who with us are the makers of modern history?

Already a considerable movement is under way looking to the annual commemoration in the schools of the United States of the opening of the first Hague conference, which occurred on the 18th. day of May, 1899. Such a celebration seems eminently desirable, by way of laying due emphasis in the schools upon the vital relations of modern peoples one to another. I would accordingly recommend that, so far as consistent with State and local conditions, the 18th

day of May in each year be designated as a day of special observance in the schools. It is particularly desirable that in the celebration of this anniversary day, and in the instruction of the schools throughout the year, the effort be made to promote an insight into the true aims and aspirations of our own nation and of the other nations with whom we are to work together in the making of a higher world civilization. This view calls for a more thorough teaching of geography and history in the elementary schools, that the first notions formed by the children in those schools, of our relations with other lands and peoples, may be true and temperate; it calls for a better teaching of modern languages and literatures in our secondary schools and colleges; and in the more highly specialized studies of commercial and technical schools it calls for more thorough and accurate instruction in all subjects having to do with the relations of our home land with foreign lands.

This is not a foreign view of American education, but rather an American view; for it is already clear that American institutions can reach their full development only by finding their rightful place in the current of the world's history, and that only by so doing can they become fully American.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

ELMER ELLSWORTH BROWN,

The honorable the SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

Commissioner.

CHAPTER I.

THE REPORTS OF THE MOSELY EDUCATIONAL COM

MISSION."

By W. T. HARRIS.

Mr. Mosely states in the preface to his collection of reports that it was the success of ́engineers from the United States whom he had known in South Africa that turned his attention this way to see "what sort of country it was that was responsible for sending so many level-headed men to the Cape." He mentions Gardner Williams, a California engineer, who arrived in South Africa and took the management of the De Beers Company. "Gardner Williams imported Louis Seymour, and these were followed by many other American engineers, including Perkins, Jennings, and Hammond

"So far as I was able to ascertain, the form of education given in the United States is responsible for much of its success, and I returned home determined, if possible, to get together a party of experts to visit the country and test the soundness of my conclusions."

A splendid set of men were finally enlisted, representing British education more or less completely in its entirety, forming a noteworthy commission organized "to investigate the relations between education and commercial and industrial efficiency;" or, phrased differently, "to find out the educational causes and conditions which have contributed to the rapid industrial development of the United States."

The reports fill a book of 400 pages octavo, and form a mass of acute observations, critical suggestions, appreciative explanations, candid statements of disagreementall in admirable tone.

The advantage to Americans in this book is to be found chiefly in the fact that the contributions it contains are written by people who have a different national point of view from our own. They teach how to see in what we are doing a different result, or series of results, from those we have been in the habit of looking for.

Each essay deserves the most careful attention from the American reader. And the whole book--it deserves to have a special lectureship devoted to it in each one of our normal schools.

No magazine paper of ordinary limits can deal adequately with the matters contained in any one of a dozen of the best individual reports.

I must content myself with quoting passages here and there touching live questions, and at times commenting on the difference between the British and the American points of view. There are the manual-training question, the public high schools, the schools of commerce, natural science, the study of English, immigration, the increase of women teachers, and the great question of coeducation.

On these last two topics Americans will read according to their convictions with some warmth the divergent views which members of the commission put forward. We must all feel that the occasion put forward as the ground for the appointment of the commission is in itself a delicate but overwhelming piece of national flattery-in a good sense of the word "flattery." For it assumes as the most real of facts an achieved greatness of the United States in industry and commerce, and seeks to find its source in a self-conscious and reasonable preparation for it on the part of our people in the education of the rising generation.

a Reprinted by permission from the Educational Review, New York, September, 1904.