where pupils may feel free to drop in most informally. This room should be attractive and embody in its furnishings every evidence of good taste good pictures, flowers, comfortable chairs-all that would tend to create an atmosphere conducive to friendly chats and the interchange of experiences, and dissipate entirely any sense of teacherpupil relationship.

However essential that material side may be, the mental attitude is of paramount importance. There must be genuine and sympathetic understanding of the pupils' point of view as well as an ability to destroy any feeling of reluctance or reserve. There must be no coercion, no preaching, no obvious attempt to elevate; but there must be

encouragement and a definite effort to stimulate an appreciation of the best and an insistence upon the inherent ideals to be cherished and traits to be cultivated.

It might be wise to explain that this is decidedly a cosmopolitan school. The pupils are of various national, religious and social groups. It truly is a school where "all the children of all the people" are represented.

We believe that we at Central High School have substantiated the claim that "culture in behavior" can be emphasized satisfactorily. We feel that in spite of many handicaps we have made considerable progress. We hope that future years will witness a glorious achievement.

T

HE American student is today attracting much attention. The world is beginning to realize that he is an individual with ideas of his own, and a desire to make those ideas play some part in the administration of his own education. He also feels that the students in other colleges and universities have much in common with him, and that he can profit by contact with them, as they are working toward the same end.

This desire for contact and exchange of ideas between students reached its culmination in December, 1925. Representatives of two hundred and fifty colleges and universities had come together at Princeton for the Intercollegiate World Court Conference. The subject for discussion was the advisability of the entrance of the United

States into the World Court, but the work of the conference went much farther than discussion and along a different line. A Student Federation had been started at the beginning of the year, by a group of western students at Berkeley, California. At the Princeton conference it was proposed that this federation be incorporated into a new organization, to be called the National Student Federation of the United States of America. The students present unanimously adopted a temporary constitution, and elected an executive committee to frame a permanent constitution, and work out other details.

After a year of experimenting, the Second Annual Congress of the N.S.F.A. was held at the University of Michigan, in December, 1926. At this time, a permanent constitu

tion was adopted. One hundred seventyfive colleges and universities in forty states thus became full members, and nineteen others, not accredited, became associate members.

Under this constitution the country was divided into six regions, with a representative from each. These regional representatives together with the national officers and two delegates-at-large form the Executive Committee of the Federation. Then, in order to establish more direct contact between students of different colleges during the time intervening between the annual Congresses of the N.S.F.A., a News Bureau was established at Princeton University, "for the purpose of distributing each week to the college newspapers of the country articles pertaining to the work of the Federation, and to educational, athletic, social, or other problems with which the colleges may be concerned from time to time."

It is the standing committees of the N.S. F.A., however, which give indication of its real work. The first two of these, on International Relations, and Travel, show that the interests of the Federation are not strictly limited to the United States, but that the students of this country have an ever broadening horizon. The Committee on International Relations has made direct contact with the Confédération Internationale des Etudiants, an organization made up of the national student unions of nearly all the countries of Europe. In the summer of 1926, four delegates from the N. S. F. A. attended the council meeting of the C. I. E. in Prague. This summer at a conference held in Rome, the Federation became a full member of the C. I. E. The N. S. F. A. has also established relations with the student unions of Latin America, Canada, and the Orient.

It is through the Travel Committee of the N. S. F. A. that the most active coöperation with the C. I. E. is brought about. This summer (1927) a picked delegation of one hundred American students was invited to Europe by the C. I. E. There were also a number of smaller groups, traveling under

the auspices of the International Student Hospitality Association and the Open Road, with the coöperation of the N. S. F. A.

Then too, this summer, the N. S. F. A. made an effort, for the first time, to return the hospitality of the European students by receiving in this country a delegation from the C. I. E. These student tours are unique, and aim to do something never before attempted. On all the tours students travel with the parties, acting as guides and hosts, and the C. I. E. and N. S. F. A. hope that by bringing the students of different parts of the world into actual contact with one another, and showing them a part of life not available to the ordinary tourist, true international understanding may be brought about.

Another committee is devoted to a study of the Foreign Student in America. At the present time its work is concerned mainly with sending questionnaires and conducting a survey of the problems of adjustment of foreign students in America. Such questions as housing, employment and immigration laws are being considered, and the committee should fill a very necessary function.

With all its outside interests, the Federation has not neglected that very important question of the relation of the student to such matters as the curriculum and student government. A committee is given over to the investigation of changes in the curricula of the colleges and the part the students have had in bringing about these changes. The aim of this permanent curriculum committee, in addition to the study of pertinent problems, is to "encourage student thought and interest in the technique of curriculum organization and administration to the end that students will become better prepared to take an intelligent part in determining the policies or curricular, as well as extra-curricular, aspects of college and university activity."

In the Report on the Nature of the Curriculum, presented at the Michigan Congress, the committee declared itself to be of "the very decided opinion that student thought

has value in the educational policy of the college. Several colleges have incorporated in their new curricula some of the suggestions of the undergraduate committees on education. The committee believes that unless college administrations have a sufficient sympathetic appreciation of undergraduate inquisitiveness, the college cannot progress as rapidly as it should."

Another report treated with the Choice and Methods of Teachers. It recommended, among other things that "at each college and university an undergraduate study be made of the advisability of adopting, and if favorable, of the method of adoption of some form of tutorial system as practiced at Oxford University." The committee also desired that such a study be made "of the general quality of instructors as teachers and as scholars," and that statistical reports be obtained from the students "regarding specific instances and general policies wherein the freedom of the teachers is suppressed and that the N. S. F. A. attempt to find out the cause of this evil and offer suggestions for its correction."

The attitude of the N. S. F. A. on student government is as clear cut and direct. The function of such government, according to one of the reports, is "to deal with matters

pertaining specifically to the student body as a whole, to cooperate with the faculty in matters involving both groups. The ideal student government should come from the student body, because of willingness to assume responsibility, and should not be a faculty imposed organization to take over administrative details too heavy for the faculty to carry." It was believed that the place of the faculty in the mechanism of student government should be advisory, and it was also "considered advantageous to have student members on various appropriate faculty committees."

There is very little connected with the college that the N. S. F. A. has not touched upon in one way or another. At the Michigan Conference reports were also made on Athletics, the Honor System, and other outstanding questions.

While the N. S. F. A. is, as yet, a young organization, it has great possibilities. As Dr. Stephen P. Duggan says in the Year Book of the National Student Federation, "One who is deeply interested in the human, spiritual, and universal aspects of education can regard with enthusiasm and hope this evidence on the part of our students of their consciousness of what education truly means and of what education is of most worth."

-ANGUS MCFARLANE.

T

HIS paper would not be written if I did not realize that there is something very much more to the acquisition and possession of a foreign language than simply an accomplishment, or the convenience of access to a new literature, or to new facts as in the scientific field. The results are more many-sided, far-reaching and vital. They are for a much wider clientele or list of participators than the experts, or the specialists or the dilettantes.

The question is, Why should foreign language be a sort of staple in education? We are speaking, of course, of anything like complete range or nature; nevertheless, education for the average mass.

Some wise and probably language-experienced-person has said, "He who has another language has another life."

These words are italicized because they are the key to the situation. They are our text, so to speak-the guiding-light which serves as a test and indicator all the way through. They placed the value and the meaning of a mastered foreign language. They put up the great reason for acquisition, and suggest what it is to master a foreign speech, having a very direct bearing on method.

We know that travel enlarges and educates us. And the reason is this: It gives us new views; it breaks the crust in which we have lived; it makes us rational and fair; it broadens us. It incorporates new and wider elements into our feelings, the measuring-lines by which we test our thinkings. It helps us see the other side.

A new language exceeds typical physical travel. It is travel-getting away from

yourself-in an intenser sense. We need no metaphysics to see this. It is the plain effect of another speech entered into. Unless it is practical this paper is worthless, and the practical educational truth is that one comes under more the influence of the characteristics of other nations by traveling to the heart of their language than by traveling to the heart of their country.

I have to testify that when I have crossed the threshold of, say, Spanish or German to speak it or to think it, I promptly feel myself a new individual. The angle is different, the vista is different, the spirit is different. The borders of one's thinking and living are pushed out. I have transmigrated as it were. The geist of a new language advertises you of a new climate. You are a

new man.

There is no doubt about the enlarging, transmuting effect of a new language. We need not balk at these propositions because they are subtle. Life is subtle; education is subtle; we are dealing with subtle things all the time. Language and its effect upon us are subtle in the highest degree. It is more effective because it is subtle. It molds us when we don't know it.

The thing which we dare not forget in our plans and management is that language, imponderable as it seems, is supremely potent in its influence and what it does for us. It sits very high and very importantly in any wise conclave on educational matters;" for these subtle things with a long pull, such as a language course of any completeness must be, are the things in life which take hold of us and control. They are the large factors in experience which mold us; and they are

the agencies, the tools with which education seeks to work. The wise educator sees his opportunity in an impressive, continuous course in modern foreign language. For the giving of "the other life"-the laying side by side with our experiences other experiences which touch us and will be profitable for us to know, the modern language stands ahead of the ancient. Modern experiences and attitudes elsewhere are more fusible with our lives and more useful than are the phenomena of the lives of ancient peoples. The study of modern languages is for practical purposes and for life rather than for bookish purposes.

And this, too, deserves to be said of general language study. In the series of snapshots of a boiled-down magazine article the "points" which must be strung like beads on a thread-it is all which time and space will allow. The "culture" which comes legitimately and properly from language work is not a superficial and light training. Intimately associated with thought is the language which expresses it. We can't think a thing clearly unless we know how to express it. The needed accurate language acts back upon the thought and helps to produce it. Language is the accoucheur of thought. As a broad but accurately true statement, the close linguist is the close thinker. The man who can definitely tell you a thing is the man who definitely knows it.

We are already atop the question what it is to have another language. Along with it, if we are going to think the matter through, the very sad consideration of our prevailing, conventional-let us use a large word and say “vestigial”—methods of instruction; or, to be quite truthful and frank about it, while not carping or malicious, our current staggers at instruction, our puttering at foreign speech. In other fields, thanks to progress and favorable circumstances, we have merged. In these favored other fields (notably science) we have come out into the clear or steadily clearing light, and by the direct method are giving the student faceto-face knowledge of the subjects of interest;

we get at the things themselves. In our prevailing way of handling, even in high circles, we teach about foreign language. Our work is largely, indeed essentially, descriptive. We handle the foreign language for the most part, and students are taught so to see it, as an extraneous matter. It is not taken over, entered into, possessed. The angle and the emphasis are wrong.

To put the case differently, we spend years, or what is likely a much less total of time on the subject, in a chemical analysis of a language, while what we want is the language itself. Analysis is in place for the savant and the philosopher. It is not the right approach for absorbing a speech; for speech is a thing of imitation, of absorption, of spontaneity. Thus speech becomes and is automatic; otherwise not.

We may well put aside our pride and face the fact in the first place that in our country the study of foreign language is largely fruitless. Who of the "kind readers" of this article, to make a test, is able to name a number of students not negligible who have come out of their courses in foreign speech with any equipment which is tangible and real and useful? To whom is it a liquid asset?

Second, the fact that in this field we are definitely behind the European index and pace. This is not simply due to advantageous local conditions for Europe, as proximity to other languages and people, but also and largely to certain interesting happenings in the development of European education in the matter of direct method for teaching of foreign speech. I shall come back to these historic facts at the close of this paper. In breaking away from Europe, in certain fields we broke away too much. The boon to Europe is by no means any more that she has opportunity than that she has hit upon the right method. She had heavy chains upon her limbs until she took on that method.

For any student of language Nature has a secret of economy and success. We do well to get our ears to the ground and listen to it. For teaching the child its new language, she