knowledge, and it will insist on the correct habits of action which will assure proper moral conduct, but the fixed habits of study and the correct habits of action constitute the student's fitness for college and not the amount of knowledge and the moral conduct accumulated. Therefore I would lay special stress on the personal element in training, both in the teacher and in the pupil. Give us educated teachers with the spirit of Arnold or of Hopkins and we can dispense with many of our elaborate educational systems, our new methods and new psychologies and guides to teaching everything in our over-crowded curriculum.

Adelina Patti once went to call for her mail at the post office in a city where she was to give a concert. The clerk in the office did not know her and so hesitated to give her the letters she called for, saying: "Madam, I do not know you. You will have to give me some proof of your identity." She protested, but the clerk was not convinced. Then stepping back from the window Adelina Patti sang a few words from one of her familiar songs, while all who heard her paused and listened to that wonderful music. The clerk handed out a large package of letters and said: "Madam, here is your mail. I know now that you are entitled to Adelina Patti's mail." The student who applies to a college for admission should be in a similar position. If the high school diploma and records should be lost and the student's teachers should be beyond his call, he ought still to be able to give evidence of his fitness to enter the college. When challenged by the authorities to show his qualifications for obtaining admission, the student must be able to give on the spot evidence of the power which he has developed in doing the work assigned to be done before entrance. If the work has been passed by the student without the development of this power he is not prepared to enter college, but if he has within himself, as a part of his being, the power to do the work required, he is, beyond all question, prepared to enter college. To establish correct reactions and to develop lasting personal power in the students is what the high schools should do to fit students for college.

A Rational System of Classification and Promotion of Pupils in Elementary Schools

ASSOCIATE SUPERINTENDENT JOHN P. GARBER, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

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OTHING is settled until it is settled right. Nothing is quite so important as that all matters pertaining to the education of the child be settled right, as the helplessness of the child and its dependence upon the wisdom of its elders make the wrong and injury of educational mistakes doubly great. The end of all systems of education is the instruction of the child, and the child is primarily dependent upon the teacher for its systematic, formal instruction. This makes good teaching fundamental, and whatever affects teaching or the teacher unfavorably tends to make the system of education weak and defective. The real school does not consist of buildings, equipment, and organization, important as they are, but is an organic spiritual unity between the teacher and the taught. The extent to which this unity is rendered imperfect or difficult of achievement measures the extent to which the pupil is deprived of his just educational inheritance. The subjective processes of both the teacher and the taught must also find their satisfaction in worthy objects. The extent to which the desires of both are centered upon wrong or unworthy ideals measures the extent to which remedy and eradication shall have to be made before true and worthy ideals can be appreciated.

A good education is the most valuable endowment that can be bestowed upon the child, and a good school the best opportunity that can ever be set before it. What constitutes a good school? The business and industrial world say that it is the school which turns out neat, accurate, intelligent, honest, and energetic pupils, full of individual initiative. The statesman says that it is the school which turns out good citizens; the sociologist, the school that prepares for complete living; and the moralist, the school that fits for the greatest happiness. In the final analysis, all agree that the best work of a school is not

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the imparting of knowledge so much as it is the development of ability, right desires, and the habit of accomplishment; or, in brief, the building up of efficient manhood and womanhood. "Do you find it difficult to get engineers who know enough to assist you in your undertaking?" was asked of a noted civil engineer who was constructing a difficult line of railroad. "No; but of those who do know, I find it difficult to get enough of them who are efficient men to make them of much value to me," was the reply. The school is too apt to over-emphasize the relative value of knowledge and to forget that its essential work is the development of ability and character. Knowledge may be, and often is, forgotten; power remains, and as Stevenson so well said, "A spirit communicated is a perpetual possession."

Three things are important as means for securing good schools-equipment, organization, effort. A well-ordered equipment in the way of building and appliances, and a thorough organization of the work to be done and of the forces to do it, are of great value, but sane and hearty effort is essential. A well-directed modern school could not get along without equipment and organization, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the good old doctrine of effort was winning its triumphs when equipment and organization were in their infancy. Even in the modern school it has not lost its importance, and all other agencies should be so used as to give it more worthy motives and to make it more effective. It may safely be questioned whether this has always been the trend of educational development; especially is this true of grading and promotion in our modern schools. Such expressions as "marking time," "dead-level uniformity," etc., could not have secured their hold upon the public attention unless there is something radically wrong either in our methods of classification and promotion, or in our teaching, or possibly in both.

What is the purpose of classification of pupils? Often it is regarded merely as an economical device for the simultaneous instruction of pupils of a like degree of advancement-a device which economizes in both cost and time, as the instruction given to one can just as well at the same time be given to

many. Its real justification, however, lies in the fact that it provides the most favorable conditions for pupils to work, and its introduction by John Sturm marked a tremendous advance and made our modern systems of education possible. No one who is familiar with the extent to which children learn from one another during a well-conducted recitation can doubt the value of classification. Seeing through the eyes of others, and having the feelings and will of each individual touched by a rightly developed class spirit, greatly magnifies the work of the teacher and makes it possible to have forty teachers in the room instead of one.

It has been pretty definitely settled that grading shall be by years, and that the work indicated in the courses of study for elementary schools shall be divided among eight grades. But the problems of classification for securing the most favorable conditions for accomplishing the work of these eight grades have not yet been satisfactorily solved, and are extremely difficult of solution, owing to changing conditions and the complexity of the problems. How best to provide for pupils of various ages, degrees of attainment and capacity, of diverse conditions of health, will power and opportunity, is not easy. Add to this the great range of ability found even in the same corps of teachers, and a satisfactory arrangement is not readily made. But these are not the only problems of classification. The work to be done has to be selected, graded and assigned to classes; an equitable distribution of pupils among the several teachers of the school must be made; just standards of attainment must be set; and set times for promotion must be adopted. The difficulty of adjustment is increased by the conflicting demands for the highest possible development of individual capacity, as opposed to the general training of all as social beings to play an essential part in the movements of the great mass of society. At one time we are urged to develop a high ethical being at whatever cost of time and money, and again to produce an efficient utilitarian product at the minimum expense of time and money. Fortunately the good sense of patrons and the responsive elasticity of pupils enable the school

in the main to accomplish very worthy results without totally ignoring any of these things.

The question of the best classification of pupils to accomplish the work of the grades has been a vital one during the past twenty years, and as a result many systems have arisen, and have given a degree of satisfaction more or less commensurate with the interest and enthusiasm with which they have been advocated and administered. As in other school work, even a very defective system loyally and intelligently carried out has given good results, better sometimes than a more worthy system indifferently followed. Some of the more common of these methods are the methods of classification by years, by half years, by shorter intervals, such as three classes or more in the year, arranging classes in parallel streams and the concentric method. In connection with any one of these methods the classes may be sub-divided into two or more sections.

Each of these methods of classification has its points of advantage and of disadvantage. The yearly method is easily administered, because it follows the natural gradation of work by years and makes few changes necessary; it furnishes a long period for the teacher to leave the impression of her personality upon her pupils, and gives the minimum loss of time from classes and teachers getting acquainted with each other. It also furnishes the teacher the greatest amount of freedom in regard to the order and amount of work to be accomplished. Serious disadvantages, however, result from rigid adherence to it. These are the discouragement of left-back pupils who have to repeat the entire year's work, the difficulty in maintaining proper sized classes in the higher grammar grades throughout the year, and the fact that it does not furnish sufficiently frequent reclassification of pupils.

The semi-annual interval possesses the advantages of the yearly in a lower degree, but is open to less objection on the score of the adjustment of numbers for the grammar grades and of humiliation, discouragement and loss of ambition on the part of pupils failing of promotion. It also affords double the opportunity for reclassification.

It is claimed for such shorter intervals as the three-term per