thinkers, and the wish for better things by the common people, are not sufficiently powerful to bring immediate changes in school methods. Conservatism makes changes slow. It is the safeguard of the college, but it is likewise the cause of much righteous impatience. The college would gain in power by changing methods and aims frequently enough to keep closer to the great educational thinkers.

During the Middle Ages the scarcity and great cost of books made instruction through them impossible. Teachers were compelled to resort to the lecture, dictation and disputation. These methods served the time well and developed some men of great power. We have no record of the many who were wrecked and lost by these methods. The schools with these methods saved for us the learning of the past and kept alive the desire to know. We owe them much; but our debt is not so great nor the demand for payment so urgent that we need to attempt payment by using these methods to-day.

The German authority, Paulson, tells us that the German universities have three well defined methods in use; the lecture, the mixed and the recitation. In the lecture method the student may do collateral reading on the subject under discussion, but his main business is to listen to the oratory of his professor, take notes, and from these prepare for his examination. In the mixed method there is a combination of lecture and recitation. Sometimes the whole hour of meeting between students and professor is devoted to questioning, sometimes to lecturing, and sometimes it is divided between the two. In the third method a definite task is assigned to the student, and the recitation hour is spent in deepening and, fixing the results of the student's study by questions, hints and informal lectures. The methods are all used with success, but the best German critics favor the second and predict that it will eventually supplant the others. For advanced students the German university has the seminar, an almost ideal method. This method gives the closest and most sympathetic contact between professor and student.

In American colleges the three methods of the German universities are used. The recitation method is common, especially with first and second year students. The mixed and lecture

methods are used quite generally with third and fourth year students, and many professors use them with all their students. At present there is a marked tendency away from the recitation, through the mixed to the lecture plan. This is doubtless due to the large and increasing number of German trained American professors.

A short residence among college students will furnish convincing evidence that from their standpoint the lecture plan is a "snap," the mixed method fairly easy, and the recitation a task that calls for hard study. The athlete and the society man generally select lecture courses. Lecture courses may be made as difficult and as valuable as recitation courses. In almost every college there are individual professors using the lecture or mixed method with unqualified success. Perhaps in every college there is some professor using the recitation method and making an unqualified failure of it. All of which merely shows that a man may be bigger than his method or less than any plan that he may adopt.

Thring says, "It is obviously the province of a teacher to know why he teaches, as well as what he teaches and how to teach." The teacher who would do his full duty needs to know the what, the how, the when and the why. The fundamental requirement, without which the others are impossible, is scholarship. The college has always paid high tribute to this necessary pedagogical requirement. The great scholars of the world have in the main been college professors. The other essential requirements have not fared so well in the college world. Scholarship is a necessary condition to good teaching. The college has often insisted that it is also a sufficient condition. There is no better place to prove the fallacy of this than in the faculties of many of the colleges that insist upon its validity. The great scholar may never have taken the time to think his knowledge into form for presentation to the learner. He may never have thought of the learner in relation to the knowledge. If so he can have no proper conception of the appropriate time for its presentation. He may have no reason for the faith that is in him, that is, he may never have thought out the educational value of his subject nor the means by which

this value can be realized. The great scholar may, therefore, be a very poor teacher.

The scholar who cannot teach may still be a desirable member of a college faculty. His ability in the field of research may give fame to his school, and the example of his passion to know may inspire the students with zeal for learning. But however desirable an occasional scholar of this sort may be, the faculty must not be made up of such men. The great scholar may attract the student, but it is the man who combines scholarship and teaching power that holds him and justifies his expenditure of time, money, and nerve force.

As has already been noted, the high school is a great debtor to the college. Until quite recently the course of study has been made in answer to the entrance requirements of the college. The widening of the field of study in the college has multiplied the subjects required for entrance, and made the demands less exacting in some of the older subjects. The response of the high school to these changes has been immediate and quite satisfactory to the college. The high school itself has been surprised at the ease with which it has met new requirements. This surprise has caused high school men to study the whole question from the side of the high school student. A few high school graduates go to college. The great majority enter the school of life. Should the few or the many be the determining factor in the course of study and the methods of the high school? Possibly the entrance requirements are best for all. If so, no change is needed. The investigation and thought given the question by the best school men shows great difference in views. Many high schools are already putting the emphasis upon the courses designed for the majority. The colleges are taking notice, and in many of them great changes in entrance requirements have already been made. It seems clear that ultimately the college must take the student as he comes from the high school. Surely the work from fourteen to eighteen that prepares the student best for adjustment to his life environment ought also prepare him well for the adjustments required in college life.

High school men are now studying the question with the

emphasis upon the life involved. The high school is the finishing school for the many. It is rapidly becoming the people's college. Its rapid growth has made it difficult to secure an adequate teaching force. It has been compelled to recruit its teaching force from raw, inexperienced college graduates. These teachers have scholarship, but they have never given any time to the other teaching requirements. They have no conception of the larger high school problems. Many of them, in time, become strong teachers, but while they are learning to teach they help to fix on the high school many of the worst methods of the college. These conditions may be remedied in the future, but at present they must be reckoned with in discussing the methods of the high school.

In the good high schools of to-day there are two methods of instruction, the recitation and the laboratory. In both methods the teacher supplements the work of the pupil by informal lectures, and occasionally in a formal manner rounds up and organically relates the results of the study upon a particular topic. The poor methods in the high school are due to the old teacher who has not profited by study and experience, and to the youthful teacher, fresh from college, who believes in research, lecture, and academic freedom to the extent of introducing them into his high school classes.

The past decade has witnessed great improvements in high school methods. The introduction of the laboratory has been the means of bringing about many of the most desirable changes. The laboratory, by appealing to the intellect through activity, has interested and saved many boys and girls. Its greatest service, however, has been to make all the work of the school more thoughtful and pedagogic. The management of a laboratory requires foresight, plan, preparation, and a definite conception of the end to be attained. The close organization of the high school makes every part function with every other part. The good things of the laboratory have made better all the other activities of the school. The demands of the laboratory and the lively interest shown by the pupils in their laboratory work have often forced the teacher of a non-laboratory subject to become conscious of a purpose in his work and

to seek proper means for reaching it. The very general introduction of manual training is having a wonderful effect on all the work of the high school. It is a laboratory on a large scale, and is forcing reorganization and thoughtful work into the teaching of every subject.

The increasing importance of education, the realization that the high school is the college of the people, the influx of large numbers of strong men and women teachers, the thoughtful attempt to reach the real aim of education-these things have all contributed to make high school teaching the best done in America to-day.

In all good high school work there is rather close supervision of the student. He has tasks set, and someone sees that he does them. He is given large freedom in the way of doing them, but do them he must. This supervision is both desirable and necessary. Life constantly makes us pay penalties because we have ignored her tasks. The end of supervision is the formation of habit. The individual that forms the habit in school of doing things in a masterful way at the time when they ought to be done will find it easy to earn degrees in the school of life.

The high school has learned much from the college. The college might with profit learn a few lessons from the high school. In the interval from June to September-from high school graduation to college matriculation-no very profound changes have occurred. The college professor faces in his beginning class in September thirty boys and girls, who differ from the thirty boys and girls that faced the high school teacher in June only in selection and strangeness to each other. Most of the college thirty are picked. Before the end of the freshman year many have dropped by the wayside-some have failed, some have become discouraged, and some have lost their moral anchorage. The theory that the college deals with adults and need not bother about oversight is not tenable. Freshmen need, almost the same care that the seniors in the high school demand. Perhaps the freshman's lack of home influence makes him need oversight even more than the high school boy. The change from direction to self-direction is