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NY TOWN CAN DO IT.-Randall Condon, of the Cincinnati Schools, asks whether we have noticed the remarkable attention superintendents are paying to art. Indeed we have. A western school manager told us that John Tigert, the national commissioner, took him to see the sights of Washington and spent the whole morning in the Freer Gallery talking Troyons, Whistlers, Monets, and Daubignys. Chicago school people have taken art very seriously since 1894. They have been earnestly helped by a remarkable organization, mostly women, styling itself the Chicago Public-School Art Society. Yesterday I heard one of the pilots of that movement, Mrs. Theodore Tieken, address a responsive assemblage of teachers upon art as a function of common-school education. It seemed to me so much more than local in its application that I took full notes of the address for the benefit of other school systems.

The Chicago Women's Club was the parent. A number of its members, thirty two years ago, got together a collection of pictures to send from school to school. Today they have permanent headquarters with a card catalogue of the thousands of pictures in the schools. Local societies, clubs, and the Board of Education officially recognize the Society. The teachers are the The teachers are the best coöperators in that they teach the underlying principles of art using the Society's pictures in the school rooms. A classroom in each new school building is set aside at the request of this society for an art room and is equipped especially to exhibit paintings, prints, and pictures.

Mrs. Tieken believes it a fine thing for the women to gather money and give fine pictures to the schools, but she feels that a more general participation-schools giving entertainments and raising money from their own districts for this same purpose, -is essential for the real democratic spirit of the public schools. Read what she says:

"With the movie houses always filled and little jewelry stores dotting most of our neighborhoods, one can but think that prosperity is prevalent, and that each community should meet its own needs. The school house and all that is in it should stand as a memorial to the community. The college, with its wide influence, can never be as potent a factor in the making of character, as the public schools. We forget that a boy or girl gets his 'stride,' as educators are wont to call it, by the time he is seventeen years old, and that is before he leaves the public schools. We also forget that few colleges have any course at all on the appreciation of painting and sculpture. Still fewer give an opportunity for constructive work in these fields, or for contact with what is being done by contemporary leaders. Our art leaders tell us that even in our best universities, art has lagged far behind most other subjects. So it remains for the public schools to have intensive courses in the study of pictures, with the object of tracing development in painting. It remains for the public schools to create such a beautiful environment that by the time the boy is seventeen years old, he will have acquired what no amount of art lectures can ever give him, i. e., good taste.

"The study of art in the Chicago Public Schools is not a dry and wearisome grind, but a fascinating game. The method employed by the art teachers in their constructive work supplies the criteria by which the study of paintings may be judged. I cannot help thinking of the hours we used to spend learning anecdotes about the artist's life and time, the date of his birth and death, and, worst of all, the little that was left for intelligent judgment. My visit to the schools convinced me that the art department in school is one of Chicago's greatest assets.

"Let me emphasize the fact that you are giving the children, from kindergarten up, the underlying principles of great art, and that we all are agreed that they must have concrete examples of great art, in order to reach a full development."

Uniforms for School Folks.-In the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW last September there appeared a picture of a young woman wearing a smock. "Uniforms for Teachers," said the legend, "New York City's pet public School Voluntarily Adopts a Uniform for the Teaching Staff." An article in the same number, "Looking the Part," cited the opinions of good judges in favor of this smartness and closed by saying: "If our morale and competency can be improved by an attractive pattern of a working suit no doubt this New York custom will be adopted elsewhere."

The REVIEW is in receipt of a letter from the school whose natty costume was depicted: "What a wave of popularity you have started for our school costume! An army of reporters, interviewers, and camera men marched upon us. The idea has spread like wildfire. The smock-makers all over the city are swamped with orders. Can't you get us a royalty?"

The newspapers truly had an enjoyable time over the idea. The New York Herald Tribune said: "The suggestion seems to have met the approval of everybody. Interviews with many parents and the teachers themselves show that the proposed

wearing of uniforms meets with general favor. Schoolboard officials are already wearing smocks. Out of this has grown the suggestion, also meeting general approval, of attiring the pupils in inexpensive school uniforms to eliminate distinction in clothes. between the rich and the poor."

The Chicago Journal said editorially: "If we have uniforms for police, firemen, elevator starters, postmen, messengers, visiting nurses, why not for teachers? Our mayor is said to regard the idea as ridiculous, but perhaps he has not given it thought. Standardized millinery, shoes, lipsticks, hosiery, height, heft, opinion, might make for advancement in schools. Teachers ought to be all of a size, kind, and color."

The Christian Science Monitor describes the coming of the smock as a spring garden bursting forth: "Each day a new support for the uniform is gained from the ranks of the women. It slips on easily, covers the whole costume and is clean and practical. It is the solution for the dress problem of the business woman. If she is going out to dinner after business hours she need not hurry home. She can so dress when she leaves in the morning. A smock in the office will appropriately garb her for the day. The bright colors enliven the office scenery.”

Mrs. William Brown Meloney, Editor, The Delineator, writes: "I am tremendously interested in the thing the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW has set going. I have a few ideas of my own on the subject. A teacher's characteristic dress is not a badge of servitude but a mark of merit. The judge dons a robe before he sits in the name of the law. The teacher's gown would be worn only when she is on duty or on official occasions out of school."

Margaret Wilson, Detroit, writes: "It's a commendable idea. Let's adopt a distinctive dress and be proud of it, as are the nurses, the girl scouts, and the gentle and devoted women in holy orders. The days of being ashamed of our profession are passing. This outward sign of it will increase our respect for it."

"Put 'em on the men," writes Mary

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N EDUCATIONAL REVIEW ought to review something. The most of our readers being public school teachers it follows that our service like that of every other public utility ought to be very much concerned with the needs of its customers. The expressions of those patrons who call at the place of the school business are not infrequently so tinged with personal bias as to make compliance perplexing indeed. But every day, somewhere in some more or less littered sanctum, a man whose duty it is to think broadly and public-mindedly is writing what he calls his thoughts on public education. Some of his ideas must be put on the market in such haste that they are halfbaked. Some honest soul looks at more than one side of his proposition before he tells the world what it should do. All of these tribunes of the people reach more. citizens than do any of us schoolmasters. Every word of every editorial, unless all our physics and psychology studies are wrong, makes some sort of dent in the public cortex. Therefore it behooves a Review Educational to dish up every month an olla podrida of the layman's talk. You need it. It helps you to get a balanced ration: vitamin, protein, fat, and roughage.

Time to Begin Thinking of the Summer Schools

Here are some facts worth while presenting to teachers and school boards. The editor of the Chicago Journal speaks:

At a recent meeting of directors of college and university summer schools, some impressive statistics were presented. In these thirty-three institutions sessions have been conducted at least since 1918. In that closing year of the war there were about 37,000 students enrolled. Since then the increase in students has been uninter

rupted, but with two bigger jumps-in 1919, a return to normal, and in 1921, when a more stable post-war recovery was taking place. Yet these last four years have witnessed a 20 per cent. growth over 1921, the enrollments of last summer reaching 88,000.

Side by side with this gain in the numbers profiting by summer study is the additional fact that the average length of session is also on the increase. For a long while the University of Chicago was alone in offering a full quarter's work in the vacation period. Now more than half of these schools hold ten, eleven, or twelve week

sessions.

There is a third feature of these statistics which is not the least impressive, and that is what they omit. They were not compiled to represent the country as a whole, being prepared only for the members of a special group. Kansas, for example, is represented by the state university.

But in Kansas there were three sessions at state teachers' colleges, all of which were larger than the university session. Put the enrollments of these training schools from coast to coast into the table, and the total must have reached or passed 200,000,

That is a large number of people-most of them teachers to be investing the summer months for the good of education in the United

States.

Stop Libeling the Young Folks

The fairminded editor of the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune joins Mary McSkimmon in defense of the younger generation:

Some things that have been said glibly and by many people of late will have to be retracted or made good in proof. It has been attested by an authority well qualified in experience and observation to speak advisedly that the children of the growing generation are not the worst ever. Yet often of late they have been so depicted. This authority goes even farther and testifies to the contrary, namely, that the children of this generation are the best ever.

"Never since the first American school was opened in the early part of the Seventeenth Century have school children been as good as they are to-day."

The speaker is Miss Mary McSkimmon, President of the National Education Society. She added that they are better behaved and better disciplined than children ever have been. For this she has the answer:

"And the reason for this is the interest which children of to-day take in everything they do." What a world of suggestion is therein contained!

In this matter of child conduct, as in some other matters referred to in Holy Writ, the sins of the progenitors, it is reasonable to believe, are overoften visited upon the progeny generation. Instead of showing the right way in which the little ones and their larger brothers and sisters may direct their enterprises, work off their energy, and satisfy their instincts of investigation and industry, we show them indifference and ignorance and a woeful lack of sympathetic guardianship and guidance.

Miss McSkimmon challenges our conviction of our offspring on evidence that but convicts ourselves. There is much for us children of past generations, and this one passing, to reflect upon in this defense of innocency. For our thought it may be reduced to few words: Children are not bad; they are merely busy.

More Justice for Boys and Girls Another approval of the views of Our Mary is by the always optimistic editor of the Kansas City Times:

At a time when there is so much talk about the waywardness of the modern boy and girl it is refreshing to get a view of the other side of the picture and to learn that present day youth is not wholly bad and may even be better than the youth of former generations. The president of the National Education Association, Miss Mary 3 McSkimmon, who ought to know something about the subject, told the teachers of Missouri in their annual meeting last week that problems of school discipline are not as serious as in former years and that fewer children are being charged with delinquency than in previous years.

One thing was especially interesting about the view this educational authority presented. It was that the conduct and general welfare of the youth depended primarily upon proper training. It is the school child, it was said, that is notably

absent from the juvenile and other courts. It is not the exceptional case, such as that of Loeb and Leopold, that should be considered, but rather the cases of the 24 million boys and girls in America "who are happy, well pleased with their place in the scheme of things and doing right in school." Where the school recognizes its duty, as it usually does, and where there is the proper coöperation from the home, there is more likely to be success than failure in the building of manhood and womanhood and a good type of citizenship.

Praising One's Own Town

A visitor from Philadelphia followed by two schoolmasters from England told the editor of the Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph some of the excellent things observed in the local schools. Whereupon, like a patriotic public servant he presented the home teachers with this verbal bouquet:

Pittsburghers, proud of our industries and commerce, often overlook the fact that as an educational center this city takes rank with the leaders. In our public school system there has perhaps been a greater advance in the past fifteen years than in any city in the United States. The music department of the schools is known wherever there are public schools. The art department has established a reputation for itself that has contributed to Pittsburgh's fame. In vocational training it has, of course, been fitting that Pittsburgh schools should lead the country. Nature study has advanced until it is a part of the school curriculum from the kindergarten to the last year of the high school.

As to methods of instruction, the platoon system is more largely used here than in any other city. With forty-nine platoon schools in the city we are in advance of every other school community, according to figures from the educational branch of the Federal Department of the Interior. Visual education has been adapted to practically all the studies taught. Extra-curricular activities are thoroughly supervised and encouraged. And all this progress has been made without in any way slighting the old fundamental. The system has been progressive, but it has also conserved the good until it was sure there was something better to substitute. Even when new methods or studies have been installed they have come gradually and have not been forced either on the teaching force or the community.