master and Hoosier Schoolboy, and many others. Such poems, too, as Tennyson's The Princess, and Wordsworth's The Prelude, may fairly be included in this category. But the greatest of all founts of inspiration to the teacher is Goethe-he "to whom every moment of life brought its contribution of experimental, individual knowledge; by whom no touch of the world of form, color, and passion was disregarded"; and it is in Wilhelm Meister, particularly in the Travels, that this inspiration is to be found. As Wilhelm approaches, after a year's absence, the country of education where he had left his son, a multitude of horses rush by him at full gallop. "The monstrous hurly-burly whirls past the wanderer; a fair boy among the keepers looks at him with surprise, pulls in, leaps down, and embraces his father." Wilhelm then learns that his son's teacher had found the boy fond of animals and had set him to that occupation for which he had been destined by nature. And so we come back to the old, old story. From Plato to Rabelais, from Rabelais to Rousseau, from Rousseau to Herbert Spencer, one leading thought runs through the literature of education-follow nature, guide it, and regulate it; do not stifle it. In all ages, teachers have for the most part adopted a different plan. They have followed preconceived theories instead of following nature; they have built a Procrustean bed and stretched their pupils upon it; they have tried to pour in knowledge instead of developing the God-given faculties of the child to see, to think, to feel, to do. What is the history of education but one long gloomy record of how practice has failed to keep pace with theory? To the literature of education we must look for our ideal and for the inspiration that will lead to its realization.

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

WILLIAM H. MAXWELL.

III.

TEACHERS' SALARIES AND PENSIONS.

The status of public school teachers in this country illustrates in many respects the peculiar inconsistencies of American character and policies. We regard our institutions as the sum of human perfection until it is clearly proved to us that they are not, and we receive the evidence with the air of having made a flattering discovery. Within the memory of a generation we seriously believed that our schools were the unrivaled models of the world; the knowledge that this is a mistake has not disconcerted us. This complacency is not wholly without reason. So far as principles go, our own school system is indeed matchless; it contains potentially all that idealists have dreamed or philosophers formulated, but its practical elaboration is as yet far below their grand conceptions. The perfection of details which is necessarily a work of time under all circumstances, goes on the more slowly with us on account of our local independence and our very general absorption in personal affairs. The sort of negative policy which characterizes our dealings with public school teachers does not, however, grow entirely out of our national complacency or our universal devotion to business. We are all Jeffersonians to the extent that we have a hatred and a horror of caste, and we fancy a connection between this abhorred thing and a State teaching service. Even teachers have shared this feeling, and although anxious to see their work placed on a secure and dignified basis, have not wished that it should be differentiated by peculiar public marks from other professions. While, however, the open avowal of a vital connection between the teaching service. and the State is evaded, in that very connection lies the real explanation of everything that has thus far been done to maintain the service. The support of normal schools by public funds, the public examination of teachers, State diplomas,

State supervision, and so on, are all declarations that something far more abiding and uniform than the law of supply and demand regulates, and must regulate, the work of the schools. If this were not a profound and well recognized truth, every other trade and profession would be clamoring against what is already done for teachers as class legislation.

The drift of events during the last ten years, especially the passion for organized effort which has developed on every hand, has done much to allay undue sensitiveness as to caste and distinctions, and meanwhile the evils arising from the partial recognition of the public responsibility for an efficient teaching service have had their effect. We have at least passed the laissez faire stage, and are now quite ready to consider what the State should do, that it has not done, to render the service which it almost monopolizes decently remunerative and permanent. Practically, at this time, the State has the monopoly of elementary instruction among us, and if it does not do the work well it injures itself and defrauds everybody. We may be positively sure that no work is well done in this world, least of all in this American world, which pays only a miserable pittance and offers no chance for securing a competence. How far this charge can be made against the work of public instruction in this country it is difficult to say, the scale of salaries here being more variable than anywhere else, with the possible exception of England. In Massachusetts, for example, the average is high, viz.: for men $108.85 per month and for women $45.93, with an average school year of 8.55 months. This gives an average annual salary for men of $930.66 and for women of $392.70. In North Carolina, on the contrary, the average salary for men is only $24.57 a month and for women $21.95, with an average school year of 3.17 months. This gives an average annual income for public school service of $77.88 for men and $69.58 for women. In the one State, the service has the essential characteristics of a recognized, well-defined profession; in the other it is largely a make-shift for eking out an uncertain income. Between these extremes there is almost every possi

ble gradation. Obviously the policies that are practicable in one State are out of the question in another.

It must be admitted, however, that few States afford an average salary sufficient to insure living expenses and a fair margin for the future. Until this level is reached the service lacks a most important element, whether security or efficiency be considered. It is the recognition of this weak point that is giving strength to the movement in certain States for securing teachers' pensions. This movement follows the precedent of all foreign nations in which public instruction is treated as a State service. It is perhaps not wise to reason too closely from such precedents to our own country, the conditions of labor, the standards of living, and the purchasing power of money being so dissimilar; nevertheless, we can hardly fail to find profitable suggestion in the consideration of the status of salaries and of pensions in other countries.

In France, the public men, who have strained every nerve to give éclat and efficiency to their educational system, realize that it is fundamentally a problem of salaries and of honors. They have regulated the matter with an eye to effect, just as the military service is regulated. There is a system of promotions; there are positions in the administrative corps and in the superior and local councils of education to which teachers may aspire, and the salaries as fixed by the law of July 19, 1889, although smaller than Buisson and Ferry and other leaders would have had them, are an advance upon the former rates. Principal teachers are divided into three groups, viz., elementary, superior primary, and normal. Each group is divided into five classes, with annual salaries paid by the State as follows:

An additional sum of $40 is allowed principals in charge of a school of three or four classes, and of $80 for a school of more than four classes. Assistant teachers in primary schools are paid $160. Assistant teachers in superior primary schools, from $220 to $420. In addition to his salary, every teacher must be provided with a residence or with a money equivalent for the same. The law imposes this provision upon the communes, adjusting the rates of indemnity upon the basis of population. These, beginning at $20 for communes having less than 3000 inhabitants, form an ascending series of eight grades, increasing uniformly by $20. For a population above 100,000 the indemnity reaches $160. A special rate of $400 is allowed in Paris.

Individual communes may and often do pay an increase over both the minimum salary and the statutory house-indemnity. These rates give a higher average than American salaries. This is, however, a misleading comparison, because in the case of France we are dealing with a single uniform system, and in that of the United States with forty-four or more distinct and widely varying systems. Moreover, the French salary is paid for the full control of the teacher's time, whose working year is eleven months and who is prohibited from all other occupations. The average school year in the United States, on the contrary, is only 6.7 months, which means of course for many States a much shorter session. The remainder of the time the teacher can do what he pleases. This may be an evil in the system, but it is a fact having an important bearing upon the salary question.

By a law passed seventeen years before the establishment of the present Republic, the French civil pension list was extended to include teachers. The pension is available for teachers sixty years of age who have given thirty years' service. Under some circumstances, it is available at fifty-five years of age after twenty-five years of service. Special provisions are made for those incapacitated from service by accident, severe illness, and similar causes. The State retains five per cent. of the salary each month, and also one-twelfth of the