[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

SOME COLLEGE IDEALS.

BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM A. WEBB, CENTRAL COLLEGE, FAYETTE, MO.

Of all the educational problems that have been pressing for solution upon the conscience of the American nation during the past two decades, none, perhaps, has received more careful consideration than the one which embraces the position, function, and ultimate destiny of the American college. During this period the college has been sorely beset. In spite of the fact that its whole history is fraught with self-sacrificing devotion to high and holy ideals, and that its achievements represent the largest and richest contribution of any of our educational institutions to the higher life of the nation, it has more than once been called before the bar of public opinion and compelled to show cause why its work might not be given to other educational institutions and itself consigned to the category of outworn and useless organisms.

1. THE NEED OF A DEFINITION.

The lack of some working definition or other device for determining the metes and bounds of the real college has been one of the most fruitful sources of demoralization in the past. Not having a generally accepted or easily applied standard of measurement, the general public has made little effort to draw sharp lines of distinction between the high schools and the colleges, and has been entirely too willing to accept all colleges at their own valuation. This condition is possibly due to the fact that during the period of organization of our colleges there existed neither a strong central authority nor an intelligent public opinion sufficiently vigorous to make itself felt in determining the rank and character of the individual colleges. In the absence of any authoritative supervision of private institutions of learning, each college was permitted to establish itself on standards of scholarship subject in too many cases only to the whims and caprices of its immediate founders. But during the past two decades several forces have been at work bringing about a better state of affairs. In place of the

isolation of former years, the better grade of colleges working in harmony with the high schools on the one hand and the universities on the other have been uniting into organizations whose purposes included raising entrance requirements, elevating standards of schoarship, and further advancing the general cause of education by disseminating correct views and sane ideas about the equipment, fields of labor, and ends and aims of the several institutions of learning devoted to the cause of higher education.

II. SOME HELPFUL AGENCIES.

(a) Associations of preparatory schools and colleges. (b) The classification by the religious denominations of the educational institutions under their auspices.

(c) The Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching; especially its definition of a standard college.

III. THE STANDARDIZATION OF THE COLLEGE.

A general recognition of the dignity, worth, and standing of the college will necessarily bring about a new adjustment of a large number of so-called colleges. Many of these institutions will find that they can serve the cause of education to better advantage by frankly becoming first class high schools or academies, or perhaps junior colleges; and others fortified by a definite statement of conditions will be enabled by means of successful appeals to their constituency to enlarge their equipment and to raise their requirements for admission and graduation to the measure of efficiency demanded by an enlightened public opinion. And so in the long process of time the American college, with its roots running back into the soil of English culture, with more than a century of honorable history behind it, is fast coming to its own. When once the public recognizes that the college as an institution of higher learning maintains a four years' course of study, superimposed upon a four years' high school course; that it is conducted by a competent corps of trained and experienced teachers, under conditions that furnish them adequate equipment for doing faithfully and well what they profess to do; that its entrance requirements are strictly enforced, and that

its standards of scholarship are universally recognized, then will all questions of its supercedure or partition be forever disposed of, and it will take its place as the very queen of our educational institutions. The standardization of the American college, therefore, makes for both its integrity and permanency, and however much it may have deserved the criticism to which it has been subjected during the process of the transition from the old-fashioned type of the past to the modern college of today, there is little to indicate that it has lost the respect and affection of intelligent people as the most successful instrument yet devised for the purpose of conducting the youth of the land into cultured and useful citizenship.

IV. ITS PRESENT FUNCTION.

As in the past, the college must continue to cherish in the minds of our choicest youth those ideals of intellectual and spiritual life which are the chief glory of a nation. In spite of the insistent demands of a practical age, the college in the future, as in the past, will continue to stress those subjects which are cultural rather than those that are usually denominated professional or vocational. This does not mean that the college course is to be unnecessarily limited or restricted; on the contrary the modern college will gladly welcome subjects of instruction drawn from any field of human knowledge provided always that competent instructors and adequate equipment are at hand to furnish the instruction, and provided furthermore that these subjects are calculated to expand the vision, discipline the intellect, and broaden the spiritual sympathies of its students.

V.-PLACE OF PERSONALITY.

This then is the end and aim of the college course-to instill great and noble ideals into the youth of the land in order that they may make them prevail in the every day affairs of human life. And just here is where the college has a fine advantage over its most dangerous competitor, the undergraduate departments of the big universities. It is universally admitted that culture, especially that culture which reaches its finest flower in the Christian ideal of service, can be best inculcated by per

sonal contact with great and noble teachers. Of all our institutions of higher learning, the college is the most dependent upon the personality of its instructors for accomplishing the work for which it is set. If its purpose is to maintain from age to age the "continuity of culture" in order that it may render large and efficient service to mankind, it is essential that the work of the college be placed as far as possible in the hands of men whose scholarship indeed is above reproach, but whose highest distinction lies in their capacity for inspiring the youth of their classes with their own superb devotion to the truths of science, to the glories of the humanities, and to the ideals of Christian citizenship. "Rich personality and human sympathy and insight plus scholarship," says President Butler, "is the formula for a great college teacher."

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

SOME RECENT SCHOOL POLICIES IN VIRGINIA.

CHAS. G. MAPHIS, PRESIDENT STATE BOARD OF EXAMINERS, CHARLOTTSVILLE, VA.

By recent school policies I do not mean to convey the idea that all the policies I mention are new and different from those found anywhere else. They are comparatively new to Virginia, so far as usage goes, and some of them differ somewhat from the laws and regulations of any other State.

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

Probably the most important is the change in the method of electing the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. In 1902 a new Constitution went into effect in Virginia, under the wise provisions of which the changes I shall note were made possible.

Under the old Constitution the Superintendent of Public Instruction was elected by the Legislature, and was almost always chosen from the membership of that body, and almost as frequently without any special reference to his fitness and training for the position.

In 1905 the first Superintendent under the new Constitution was nominated in a State primary and elected by a vote of the people. He is a well-trained, able, energetic and enthusiastic school man, and the remarkable results obtained by his administration of the office fully demonstrate the wisdom of the change. He was re-elected this year without opposition in his own party.

STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

What the heart is to the circulatory system a good, strong State Board of Education is to a school system-a source of life and power, vigor and strength, health and activity.

Under the old system the State Board of Education consisted of the Governor, Attorney-General, and Superintendent of Public Instruction, the first two, elected by the people, and the other selected, as above mentioned, by the Legislature.

The Board, of course, was political in character. Its powers were great. It elected all the Superintendents, selected all the text books, made regulations for the government of the schools, etc.

The new Constitution provides for, and we now have, an educational State Board of Education, which consists of the three officers named above, all elected by the people, one member from each of three State educational institutions, to be nominated by the Board of Visitors of the institution and elected by the Legislature, and one city and one County School Superintendent, to be selected by the six members of the Board provided for as indicated. These two members do not have a voice in the selection of other Superintendents.

The Board as at present constituted has very large powers. It selects Superintendents, adopts text books, makes regulations which have the effect of statute law when published, appoints School Examiners and Inspectors, etc. Much authority is centralized in this Board, but, so far, it has used it wisely and the schools have prospered under its direction.

STATE BOARD OF EXAMINERS.

The State Board of Education, realizing the value of expert supervision, in 1905 took the first and very advanced step in that direction by appointing a State Board of Examiners and