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the National Educational Association appointed a Committee of eleven on the Organization of Contemporary Educational Experience. This Committee has developed the following plan of work:

A. To study four phases of contemporary educational experience as related to one another, and to that end to collect and classify data as follows:

I.

2.

3.

Facts concerning the organization and general administration of town and city schools and school systems in a considerable number of cities and towns.

Facts concerning teachers, namely: Their training, improvement, promotions, salaries and pensions.

Facts concerning programs of study, namely: Scope or content, distribution and time allotment of the various studies from the kindergarten through the high school.

4. Facts concerning the classification and promotions of pupils.

B. To disentangle from these facts of experience contemporary principles of administration, and contemporary aims and tendencies; and to suggest the testing or verification of these principles, aims and tendencies by concerted experimentation over wide areas for varying but considerable periods of time.

The Committee hope to secure the desired facts as follows: (1) By appointing Associate Committees, or by securing the appointment of such Associate Committees, through local or state organizations. These Committees to secure the desired information on the basis of questions and outlines prepared by the Committee of Eleven. (2) By appointing or secur

ing the appointment of Associate Committees of Laymen (persons not teachers) to secure desired facts as before. (3) By employing a representative of the Committee of Eleven, who shall pursue his investigations under the direction of the Committee.

V. This Committee will accordingly attempt to achieve the following results:

a-On the basis of well attested facts of experience (which are themselves of great value to superin-tendents, principals and teachers, professors of education in Normal Schools and Colleges, and all other workers in the field of education) to promote the clear formulation of contemporary educational problems. This formulation is the first step toward progressive solutions of these problems-Solutions based on a progressive insight into clearly defined and deliberately planned educational procedure. b-To make a contribution to the method of investigating educational problems. While this method can be developed in detail only as the work proceeds, the Committee expect to show that it consists in (1) ascertaining incontestible facts; (2) the provisional formulation of the principles, aims and tendencies embodied in these facts of experience; and (3) the testing of these principles, aims and tendencies by concerted experimenting on the part of those whose business it is to carry on the work of the schools.

c-Finally, in this way, the Committee hope to promote the development of our incipient Science of Education. They hope to help in bringing about the time when educational practice will be conspicuously based on the ascertained needs of the

individual and of society; and on the equally well ascertained possibilities of achievement under the varying conditions of contemporary life.

THE WOMAN'S CLUB AS A FACTOR IN
EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS.

MRS. MARY I. WOOD, PRESIDENT OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE FEDERATION OF WOMAN'S CLUBS.

An eminent educator recently said: "When the history of this period comes to be written, it will be recognized that from 1870 to 1900 was a period of greater significance than any former two hundred years and out of that whole time of thirty years that which will be recognized as the most significant, the most far-reaching, will be the movement that is represented by woman's clubs."

As one thinks of the great ethical movements with which the modern world seems filled to overflowing, the many churches of all denominations, the great colleges and universities, the vast net-work of the public school system, the fraternal and beneficient organizations, it would not be strange if he were inclined to doubt that the woman's club movement exerted an influence greater than any other. Indeed, if I were asked to point to any considerable work which the club, unaided, had accomplished for education, to show any great institution which owed its existence, either from a financial or educational standpoint, directly to the woman's club, to disclose any radical changes in

methods of teaching which had their rise in the deliberations of the club, it might be difficult for me to do

So.

Up to the present time, the work done by the great organization itself is a work of subtile forces rather than of positive changes. It is not initiative work but strengthening work. Women have not been and probably never will be to any large extent leaders or generals in great undertakings but they have done and will ever do wonderfully good work in improving the ranks and they are unexcelled as under-officers.

The wisest and best clubwoman realizes the different functions of the man and the woman and in her work for a better world she does not usurp the domain of man. She has learned from the history of the world that the woman, in whatever sphere, has ever the same function to perform. She knows that man has been and will be the warrior, the explorer, and the inventor but she knows also that after the battle is begun, after new fields are entered, after new inventions are brought forward, there is still great need of hands to do the detail work. The good in all these lines must be preserved and conserved and she knows that she is the one who can help to do it.

In the early days of the woman's club, the movement was most often characterized, and with some degree of correctness, as the "middle-aged woman's university." The whole trend of the early clubwork was toward the self-culture of its members. The great change which the inventive genius of man has wrought in the domestic life of woman had divided that which, hitherto, had been one great class into three distinct classes.

First, that class of women who, because of the necessity of adding to the wage-earning capacity of the family, have been forced to follow their work as it went out of the home and, to-day stand behind the counters in our stores, at the looms of our factories, at the machines in our workrooms, in our hotels and in our shops, everywhere in this world where woman's work may be found. With rare exceptions, these women are no more able to aid materially the educational progress of the world than were their grandmothers whose entire day was given over to the brewing and baking and fashioning of garments for the large family within the home, since the average woman worker of today uses all her energy, mental and physical, for the furtherance of her employer's interests and the maintenance of life itself. Second, that class which is composed of women to whom furtune is most kind. Because of the increased contents of the coffers of husbands and fathers, they are not forced to add to the wage-earning capacity of the family, but on the other hand may choose to a great extent the way in which both time and money shall be spent. Seeing, then, this opportunity for a broader pursuit of personal pleasure, they have enlarged their homes, multiplied the luxuries of life, and have entered upon a round of social duties which leave no time for the real problems of life. From this class hardly more than from the former do we find those who devote themselves to the betterment of existing conditions.

Third, between these two classes, there stands a great throng of earnest, active women who are neither forced to earn their daily bread nor are they willing to

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