formulas governing the flow of air through mine passages and understand the gases met with in mines, mine surveying, and the machinery used about mines. To do this, they need to know many of the processes in arithmetic, including involution, evolution, ratio and proportion; the use of the signs and symbols employed in formulas, the applications of formulas and their solution, and something of chemistry, geometry, trigonometry, mechanics, and hydromechanics. It is no ordinary educational problem to impart this knowledge to men who never attended school, or did so for only a year or two before they were put to work; who are ignorant of the first processes of arithmetic; whose average age is twenty-seven; who work every day in the mines; who have families to support; who cannot quit work to attend a day school; and who will not attend a night school because they cannot be present at every session, and because they are ashamed to expose their ignorance to others who attend; who, when studying at home, use the kitchen table for a desk and often rock the cradle with one hand, to keep the baby quiet, while holding their lesson paper in the other—it is no ordinary educational problem, we say, to impart this knowledge to such men. The present I. C. S. plan of teaching is the perfected system with which men conditioned and situated as described are qualified in all the subjects of a mining education, and made

mining engineers, mine inspectors, mine superintendents, and mine foremen.1

From the filling of this purpose of teaching of miners, the movement broadened out into teaching of engineering trades and professions. The breadth has constantly widened, and at the present time in not less than thirty-one departments is instruction given. They represent a diverse and manifold field. Among them are advertising, architecture, commerce, drawing, electrical engineering, electrotherapeutics, English branches, French, German, Spanish, law, lettering and sign-painting, locomotive-running, mathematics and mechanics, mechanical engineering, coal mining, metal mining, navigation, pedagogy, plumbing, heating and marine engineering, structural engineering, shop and foundry practice, steam engineering, telephone and telegraph engineering, textiles, window-trimming and mercantile decoration.

Teaching by correspondence makes a special appeal to men and women who are remote from educational centres and influence, to those who are obliged to toil at a regular call

1 Fifteenth Anniversary Report of the International Correspondence Schools, p. 55.

ing day by day, and also to those who are not able in youth to receive the advantage of a formal education. This form of teaching makes a special appeal to students of earnestness. Its advantages lie in both what it does and what it does not accomplish. It serves to start the student in a form of study which otherwise he may not find himself able to undertake; personally he feels that he can proceed further without going to a regular school. The correspondence method is an excellent spur; it stands possibly half way between selfteaching and the teaching of the classroom. Among the difficulties which it encounters is the fact that it tends to cause overestimation on the part of the student of his ability and knowledge. It is subject to not a few of the disadvantages of self-education. It tends to produce the conceit of half-knowledge. Many of its students are easily discouraged and retire early from its pursuit. But despite its disadvantages, it represents a form of education which has already proved of much avail, especially in scientific subjects.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PENSION SYSTEM, OR THE CARNEGIE

FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
TEACHING

MODERN education is, in no small degree, a socializing process: it represents a service to the whole community done for the individual which formerly the individual did for himself. The pension system for teachers, established in many cities, is an impressive illustration of the principle and method. The government of the city is making for the teacher a saving in money which, in the earlier time, the teacher made for himself. But the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is not primarily either a pension system or a form of socialism. The name of the institution well expresses its purpose. It is designed to advance the cause of teaching. The method used for advancing the cause of teaching is the promotion of the welfare of teachers, and the special means used in this promotion is a system of retiring allowances. The primary

and comprehensive emphasis is put upon the phrase, “advancement of teaching." As says the president of the corporation, "In a word, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching must be first an educational agency before it can act wisely in awarding retiring allowances." 1

The purpose and method of the Foundation are well embodied in Mr. Carnegie's original letter, bearing the date of April 16, 1905. He says: "I have reached the conclusion that the least rewarded of all the professions is that of the teacher in our higher educational institutions. New York City generously, and very wisely, provides retiring pensions for teachers in her public schools and also for her policemen. Very few indeed of our colleges are able to do so. The consequences are grievous. Able men hesitate to adopt teaching as a career, and many old professors whose places should be occupied by younger men, cannot be retired." As a result Mr. Carnegie gave $10,000,000 (in five per cent mortgage bonds of the United States Steel Corporation) to provide retiring pensions for the teachers of

1 Second Annual Report of the Carnegie Foundation, p. 65. 2 First Annual Report of the Carnegie Foundation, p. 3.