have been represented at the college, thirty-four have not been represented, so far as I have been able to ascertain, at other colleges. The list of the places which Brown has added is as follows from the township of Cumberland, Valley Falls, Ashton, Manville, and Berkeley; from Lincoln, Lincoln and Saylesville; from Burrillville, Burrillville and Harrisville; from Johnston, Johnston, Olneyville, and Centerdale; from North Smithfield, Slatersville; from Smithfield, Georgiaville and Greenville; from East Providence, Riverside; from Cranston, Pawtuxet, Arlington, Eden Park, Cranston, Edgewood, and Auburn; from Warwick, Apponaug, Riverpoint, Centerville, Lakewood, Natick, and Pontiac; from Coventry, Summit and Anthony; from West Greenwich, Nooseneck; and from Narragansett, Narragansett Pier. Eighteen towns and villages represented in other colleges have not been represented here. Thus Brown has brought up the names on the muster roll of Rhode Island cities, towns, and villages which have sent their young women to college to seventy-three. The complete muster-roll includes, in addition to the names already given, Providence, Pawtucket, Bristol, Warren, Newport, Little Compton, Woonsocket, Jamestown, Block Island, Wickford, Westerly, Central Falls, Tiverton, East Greenwich, Portsmouth, Manton; from Cumberland, Lonsdale, Diamond Hill, and Cumberland; from Burrillville, Pascoag and Mapleville; from Scituate, Hope; from Coventry, Washington; from Hopkinton, Ashaway and Hope Valley; from Charlestown, Shannock; from South Kingston, Kingston, South Ferry, Peace Dale, Wakefield and Gould; from Narragansett, Point Judith; from Warwick, Warwick; from Cranston, Oak Lawn and Howard; from Barrington, Barrington and Drownville; and from East Providence, East Providence and Rumford.

In Rhode Island interest in the higher education of women has centered in five of her six cities: Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Newport, and Westerly. These are given in the order of interest. The Women's College has changed the comparative attitude of these cities toward women's education. If the college were not in existence the order would be: Providence, Newport, Pawtucket, Westerly, and Woonsocket, the

last two places having sent the same number of girls to colleges outside of the state. Outside of these centers of interest, before 1894, the year when Brown University first awarded to women the Bachelor's degree, only eleven places had sent girls to college and they had sent only fifteen. Since that time twentythree places have sent girls to colleges other than Brown and the number sent is twenty-three. Meanwhile forty-two places have sent one hundred and twenty-four girls to Brown.* The Women's College, it will be seen, is increasing the number of college girls from places outside of the chief centers of interest as well as the number of places themselves.

If, then, I were to make a summary of the greater services of the Women's College for the collegiate education of Rhode Island women, it would be as follows: it can provide an opportunity for college work of the highest grade in the section of the country which offered practically none; it can give a college education, complete or in part, to many Rhode Island women who could not otherwise enjoy one, and in so doing it can give a professional training, complete or in part, to many Rhode Island young women who must otherwise go without; moreover, it can continually increase the interest in the higher education of women among us by the work which it is doing and especially by making its influence more deeply felt where it is already recognized and by extending it till it shall reach every town and village in the state.

* In this list I have not included the towns and villages lying close to Providence, since they may be properly regarded as parts of it as a center of interest.

The Departmental Organization of Secondary

Schools

JULIUS SACHS, PROFESSOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION, TEACHERS' college,

A

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

LMOST simultaneously with the invitation of the President of the Brown University Teachers' Association to make an address on this topic, there came into my hands the advance sheets of Professor De Garmo's recently published Principles of Secondary Education, which many of you have no doubt already examined. It was but natural to scan its successive chapters in the hope that the book would offer some comments that might serve as a starting point in the discussion. For though its title, Principles, indicated that the treatment would be on broad analytic lines, the promise of specific consideration of high school problems and various practical hints as to educative procedure gave warrant for such anticipation. The absence of the slightest reference to our particular problem is significant. It does not in the least betray an oversight, a lack of perspective, but it is rather that this topic, being a matter of practical didactics, is quite outranked in importance by the more fundamental considerations of selection, classification and educational value of the studies. involved. Nor have we reason to infer that even in the projected sequel, dealing with the processes of teaching the several studies, the author would do more than set before us the conflicting tendencies in teaching practice, of which departmental organization is but one. Valuable, therefore, as this compendium will prove on many issues, on this particular question we can gain from it no guidance in our present inquiry. We may possibly secure the proper vantage ground if we bring before ourselves the fact that our position between the elementary school and the college, and the peculiar historical development of the secondary school, are responsible for many of our difficulties. Personally, I entertain the opinion that a question as large as that of the efficiency of our secondary school system is before us.

We of the secondary school are apt to liken our situation to that of the grain crushed between the upper and the nether millstone. In this comparison I feel that we think less of the grain than of the crushing process, the pressure from below and above. If we really feel that this lack of freedom interferes with our best efforts, we must remove by most determined action the unworthy restraints, or else accept the humiliating reality, drudge on in undignified adherence to galling condi-. tions and cease our lamentations.

It devolves, then, upon us so to organize our work, our conception of the secondary school, of its function, its progress and its goal, that its proper sphere is revealed to all men; not cabined and cribbed between elementary school and college, not awaiting the close of an eight or nine years' tutelage, when the elementary school sees fit to surrender its charges, nor following the narrow beaten path which the college designates as its ideal of a secondary school course. The secondary school, and especially the public high school, will continue its unsatisfactory system of temporizing until it has met this issue broadly. It must be clear in its purposes, positive in its methods; it must justify its raison d'etre; not facing in two different directionstoward the college and toward life, but with its eyes intent on one goal, efficiency for life-sound, genuine efficiency, not superficial smartness. It will then be found that capacity for college work is an incident to such efficiency. The colleges will never refuse the evidence of such attainment. If the colleges have thus far laid down the law, if they have been so insistent, so despotic, it is because they have never encountered definiteness of plan, encountered organization from the secondary schools; tyranny argues inferiority in fibre on the part of the weaker. To specify one most fruitful source of our weakness, I should say it is our glorification of the doctrine of continuity, which, as I look upon it, is largely mechanical continuity. We have heard much praise, undiscriminating praise, from foreign observers regarding our system of continuity; and yet, though it may seem heresy, it is a false idol before which we have been prostrating ourselves. There abides neither wisdom nor mystic power in the sequence of eight, four and four years

of our continuous educational scheme. What I would plead for is an ideal continuity, a spiritual continuity of effort, which is perfectly consistent with the overlapping of different portions of the school system below and above. Let us continue, if we must, our eight year elementary school course for those who will not strive further, but let us open the path to high school studies at an earlier day to those qualified to pursue them, and give them the benefit of an ampler, better proportioned course. The activities of the secondary school require definition with respect both to the elementary school and the college, in the interest of economy of time and of efficiency. Let a group of the most influential leaders in secondary school work reach agreement as to aim, scope and method of our work. Let them express and interpret this agreement, so that the tax-paying public will really understand the situation; it will be found responsive to sound arguments; and as for the colleges, they are waiting for such expression, but it must be accompanied by the capacity to realize these aims.

Perhaps we are not yet ready for the formulation of our attitude. We certainly can consider what elements in the organization of the secondary school will promote its individuality. When we speak of the distinctive features of the secondary school, choice and sequence of subject matter occur to us as particularly significant; we classify the various mental experiences that it is the school's duty to foster-the linguistic power, the reasoning faculty, conclusions from careful inductive processes. But far and beyond these features of choice, sequence and emphasis, there is the determining feature of presentation; and it is here that the personality of the teacher enters into consideration, and is the central factor in every question of arrangement, course, study subject. Upon the teaching capacity of the teacher hinges, in the last instance, the value of a subject in the curriculum. That is not an ideal secondary school that offers to its students certain, or even all, of the subjects traditionally connected with its curriculum; it becomes ideal when it can make sure that they are properly, effectively taught. In the individual, as in the aggregate, ambition and capacity are by no means synonymous. What we need are