that any system of shorter-interval gradation would affect such pupils more favorably than good teaching would do. For, until interest in their work is aroused, and their eyes, and those of their parents, are opened to the supreme value of the school, their presence in it cannot be greatly prolonged.

The idea of close grading is not a new one and twenty years ago was regarded as entirely the proper thing to do, but since then there has been such a development of interest in the individual in education that teaching and promotion by battalions has lost most of its prestige. The danger is that we shall now go too far in the other direction; for in education, as in other things, there is a happy medium which finally becomes the more permanent thing. Nor is the idea of providing for the rapid advancement of bright pupils new. Dr. Eliot even regarded formal promotions twice a year as a short-interval grading scheme for this purpose, for when he wrote the chapter in his Educational Reform bearing on a typical Massachusetts grammar school he said: "Of late years many experiments have been made on semiannual promotions and other means of hurrying forward the brighter children. The aim of these experiments is laudable; but the statistics suggest a doubt whether semiannual promotions really promote, and whether they do not disturb to an inexpedient degree the orderly progress of the school work."

In general, the work of any school must be laid out by years, although there should be incidental promotions and any necessary readjustments on account of numbers during the year. This planning of the school work by years suggests a breadth and freedom to the teacher which keeps her work varied and inspiring, and her interest in it keen and enthusiastic. It also encourages her to arouse the mental faculties and scholarly aspirations of her pupils, and to develop their various mental and moral powers beyond the point of mere knowledge. Any device which supplants this freedom by a closely planned daily scheme of routine work is deadening in its influence, and if teachers generally come to feel as one who, working under a short-interval scheme, recently said, “I feel as if I am always getting pupils ready for promotion," teaching will become a most monotonous and dreary task.

Editorial

NE of the splendid achievements of modern education is the work

These poor unfortunates we have always with us" in the great centers of population. Numerous schools and classes have been formed for them, and trained experts are perseveringly studying their problems. Much has been accomplished, and many individuals have been rescued from the doom of helplessness and dependence and made useful, self-supporting citizens. From the standpoint of humanity and mercy there is no nobler work than this. From the economic and merely selfish standpoint it is a work which the state cannot afford to neglect.

Looking out from the commanding windows of the School of Pedagogy of New York University one sees the evidences of a great population numbering within the short distance of a few miles many millions of souls. Many of these are foreigners. Life is at high pressure. Statistics of poverty, disease and defective endowment in the children of these masses would appall the average reader. With the far-sightedness typified by its outlook and impersonated by its dean and other teachers, the School of Pedagogy has established a course of lectures. on the Education of Defectives, given during the present school year. The lectures are practical rather than technical, and already the class registered to take them numbers fifty persons, all of whom are experienced teachers of the feeble-minded. The following is a partial list of the lecturers: Elias G. Brown, M.D., Department of Physical Education, New York City Schools; Martin W. Barr, M.D., Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children, Elwyn, Pa.; Walter E. Fernald, M.D., Superintendent of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, Waverly, Mass.; Mr. E. R. Johnstone, Superintendent of the New Jersey Training School for Feeble-Minded Boys and Girls, Vineland, N. J.; Luther H. Gulick, M.D., Director of Physical Education in the Public Schools of New York; James P. Haney, M.D., Director of Education in the Manual Arts in Manhattan and the Bronx; Mr. Alexander Johnson, Lecturer in New York School of Philanthropy, formerly Superintendent of School for Feeble-Minded Youth, at Ft. Wayne, Ind.; Thomas M. Balliet, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Pedagogy, New York University.

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MINENT specialists in education have recently gathered in Boston in a "Social Education Congress " to consider the need of systematic vocational training of our youth, and, in a larger sense, the

service which the home and the church, as well as the school, should render in preparation for citizenship. It was the first of a proposed series of similar meetings, and is full of promise. There was a singular unanimity of opinion that systematic and technical business training is the only thing that can suffice in the present age. In the university, it was claimed, such vocational training would attract thousands more of young men. To compete with Germany, Frank A. Vanderlip, of the National City Bank of New York, pointed out that we must adopt substantially Germany's system of industrial training, in her "continuation schools."

Frederick P. Fish, President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, feels that we have gone too far in compelling children to attend school between the ages of seven and fourteen; that by so doing we have deprived many of the opportunity to prepare themselves for mechanical pursuits. It is a debatable question. At all events we hazard the opinion that the efficiency of grammar schools may be increased by an optional course of one or two years for business opportunities. Such courses might well prepare fully seventyfive per cent of our school children to become self-supporting, active and useful members of the community.

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EADING business men of Boston and well-known educators presented their views on a proposed loan trust for students before the Brookline Education Society on December 4. Are such local or neighborhood funds-in competent hands and well administereddesirable? Are they liable to endanger the self-respect of the beneficiary? Will students regard such loans as a debt of honor, and as soon as possible repay them, so that other poor students may in turn enjoy the use of the money? Are there ambitious and promising graduates of high schools, but without means, who cannot get assistance from some public-spirited citizen to go forward to college, so that their best services would be lost to the community but for some quasi-public loan fund? Or are evening schools, correspondence schools, Y. M. C. A. courses, public libraries, and public lecture courses satisfactory substitutes for a systematic course of advanced training? The opinions elicited on these and like questions were too various to recapitulate them here. If the administration of such a loan fund would breed petty jealousies, or weaken the sense of self-reliance on the part of the recipient, or become a factor in politics, it would prove a distinct evil. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly for the interest of the community that deserving, ambitious boys and girls should be enabled to educate themselves in the most satisfactory man

Anyone interested in the literature of the subject of loan funds for students is referred to the custodians of the Rogers Scholarship Fund of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and of the Harvard College Loan Fund, established in 1838.

APROPOS of the valuable articles contributed by Bigiou Sisson and

W. D. Sheldon to EDUCATION on ethical and religious teaching, "Nature's Message to Moral Educators," as presented by Rev. W. J. Long to the Social Education Congress, calls for mention: "Morality," he said, " is no strange, new thing, but a most natural thing, since it comes up to us from the lower animal world. Moral education is a process which nature herself has developed. The great principles underlying all morality--the morality of every race and of every ethical system-are statements of human brotherhood, and every act we recognize as morally right and good is essentially an act of co-operation, and not an act of competition or of conflict."

The president of Clark University declared that he was led by his experience to substitute for the traditional sanctions for good conduct certain pre-Christian appeals-especially that to honor. On the contrary, from the Roman Catholic point of view, declared Archbishop Coadjutor William H. O'Connell: "Neither the consideration of health, nor honor, nor the welfare of others, nor the elevation of self, singly or altogether, will ever be found sufficient at all times and in all men for right moral action. No one of them, nor all of them, can be urged, therefore, as universal motives. They will work at times, and they will produce effects momentarily, and upon a certain high character of humanity they will be effective for long intervals. Many of them will not reach at all that class of humanity which most needs elevation. At best, therefore, they are partial, temporary and insecure. There is one great universal power which never fails-the thought of God."

Professor Sheldon's "Practical Suggestions Toward a Program of Ethical Teaching in Our Schools," in EDUCATION for December and January, call for careful attention; for a great German philosopher well says, "The main point in democracy is moral disposition."

IN

N the naming of streets educational factors enter in. For the beautiful avenue to be constructed from the Fenway in Boston to the new Harvard Medical School buildings, the comparative desirability of various names has been publicly discussed. Should the city again honor the memory of Benjamin Franklin? or the several doctors, Warren, of more recent date? or that distinguished surgeon, Dr. Com

fort Starr (1589-1659) and his son of the same name, who was one of the seven incorporators of Harvard College? All three are distinctively American names, suggesting work of the highest merit in science, medicine or surgery. All three, moreover, conform to the genius of our language. In preference, President Eliot would call it "Avenue Louis Pasteur," an eminent French scientist, and a devout Roman Catholic-in part as further acknowledgment of our national debt of gratitude to France for her services in our Revolutionary War. Many and earnest have been the protests against "the name of a French vivisectionist who," the American Humane Education Society declares, "has cut up and experimented upon thousands of living animals, and inflicted probably more suffering upon animals than any man in Europe." In this regard should American youth be taught to imitate the example of Louis Pasteur? If so, why not " Vivisection Avenue”?

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E have space in this number to comment only briefly on the unfortunate complications that have arisen over the action of the San Francisco School Board in relation to the admission of Japanese to the regular public schools of that city. This matter has become a serious one, involving possible national and international difficulties of a grave nature. We shall comment upon the situation more at length next month; but we wish now simply to caution our readers to think, write and speak deliberately upon a question which is so confessedly complicated and in which it is so difficult for each side to take the other side's point of view. The question has an academic side which almost inevitably strikes forcefully those who reason about it abstractly and at a distance from the section most intimately affected. It has on the other hand, for the people who must send their sons and daughters to those schools, a practical bearing which means much more to them than any mere logical conclusions from abstract premises can ever mean. We have great confidence in the San Francisco School Board and in the people of California, and we believe that this question will be peacefully settled. Meanwhile, hot words can only do mischief in a condition of things which strains seriously the admirable virtues of charity and forbearance.