will acquire the habit of coming to the school for advice and guidance in their selections, instead of depending on the word of an individual whose chief interest is in selling courses.

Credit for Work

Each course offered by the leading correspondence schools is divided into a number of different units, this number varying with the course. In order to receive a diploma in, shall we say, electrical engineering, the student must complete approximately one hundred units. He receives a certificate for each unit completed, but his certificates must equal the number of the units in the course before he is granted the diploma in electrical engineering.

It is customary in correspondence work for the student to sign up for a full course, and he is morally, if not legally, bound to pay for all the units included in it. However, some of the units in the courses, such as chemistry, algebra, or geometry are offered in the regular high school curriculum, consequently, since there is a teacher available, a special arrangement with the American Correspondence School has been made whereby these units of the work are not taken by correspondence but are pursued in the regular classes and credit is allowed for them on the American School records. This is quite unusual in correspondence school practice and the director of this correspondence school is to be commended for setting aside long-established practice in order to promote this coöperative effort.

This arrangement enables the student to elect any course offered by the correspondence school and to make use of the regular high school classes, as far as they are available, in meeting the requirements for a diploma. In addition to this advantage. a student may work toward the completion of his regular high school work and at the same time have certain parts of his credit apply also toward a diploma from the correspondence school.

Cost of Work

It has been pointed out that the correspondence courses are divided into units. The School Board has an arrangement with the American Correspondence School whereby the students are not required to sign the usual contract for a complete. course. This arrangement enables the board of education to enroll students for any course offered, but does not commit them to buying all of the units in that course. By this means the student makes use of the classes offered in the high school wherever possible and takes up such other units. as he is interested in by correspondence. As each unit is delivered, two bills are received by the director of the work-one

bill for text material and other necessary supplies, and the other for instruction (i.e., correcting of papers, etc.), the total cost for texts and the instruction being approximately $1.25 per unit. The director collects in advance from the student for his share of the expense, and the accumulated bills for instruction are submitted to the board of education at their regular meeting each month.

Those in charge of the work are of the opinion that this charge amounts to less than the per capita cost of instruction for regular school work, and that even if the cost were greater the excess would be justified by the resulting extension of the curriculum.

Method of Selecting Couses

No extra effort is made to induce students to avail themselves of the courses offered. The opportunities are merely presented to them and the subjects elected are elected on the same basis as those to be pursued under a regular teacher.

When a student expresses a wish to elect one of the courses offered by correspondence the director calls him into his office for a conference. On the basis of the information gained during this conference the director fills in the following questionnaire:

Do you intend to finish high school?

correspondence. This work is done under the direct supervision of the director and is quite distinct from any responsibility he has toward his classes in the regular subjects offered in the high school. As

What other institution will you attend?

to the director who mails it to the correspondence school for criticism and cor

Why will you stop then?

Have you a good reason for not finishing?

State it if you care to

What classes are you now taking?

Which of these do you like best?

of the work is quite thorough and the extensive notations on the papers observed indicated that such criticisms as were made were quite constructive in character. Compulsory Part Time Pupils

The laws of Michigan, like those of many

What subjects, that you would like to study, are not offered in this high school?

If other subjects, of the kind you like, were offered, could you finish high school?

for at least eight hours a week up to an age when most boys and girls are entering business or industry.

It is the desire of those in charge of the part-time schools that each pupil be given the specific instruction that will be of value to him in his immediate or prospective

After making himself familiar with the student's desires and ambitions the director interviews the child's parents for the purpose of discovering if they are sympathetic toward what the boy or girl wants to do. If he finds them unalterably opposed to the idea he may find it desirable to steer the pupil in another direction. On the other hand, if he can enlist their coöperation and support the work is likely to proceed more smoothly. In either case good is likely to come from the better mutual understanding resulting from such a conference.

After the student is enrolled he is required to put in at least 1 hours each day on that part of his course he is carrying on through

which will adequately meet the needs of each individual is almost impossible under the conditions usually prevailing in our public schools. Therefore, the Correspondence Study Plan has been of special value to the part-time pupils as it has provided them with what they needed at the time they needed it, and at a pace which adapted itself to their individual abilities.

Coöperative Trade Training

Efforts are now under way to bring about coöperative training, in various trades and occupations with local commercial and

industrial establishments.

Results Obtained

The plan has not been in operation long enough to enable those in charge of it to present definite evidence of material success. However, the results already obtained indicate that correspondence can be fitted into the work of the public school with a great advantage to the pupils and to the

school. The pupil gets just the specialized individual training that fits him for his future work. He has textbooks and teachers that suit his needs.

The school retains the direction of his work and supplements his vocational training with the most essential high school subjects. He keeps his connection with the school group and enjoys all the advantages of that association. One of the great criticisms of correspondence courses is that it lacks the spur of supervised study. This criticism does not apply in Benton Harbor as the student secures the best of both home study

and class methods.

In conclusion it should be said that Superintendent Mitchell deserves much credit for his vision in seeing the possibility of the idea, and for his persistence in carrying it through to the point where he has a correspondence department functioning as an integral part of his excellent high school organization.

The Board of Education is to be complimented also for supporting Mr. Mitchell during the critical experimental period and they are to be congratulated for making it possible for the boys and girls in Benton Harbor to actually enjoy equal educational opportunity whether they go into agriculture, commerce, industry, or college. Advantages of the Plan

It is believed that the plan discussed will appeal to school administrators everywhere. It should be of particular interest to those in smaller communities where the limitations of a small budget make it impossible to do more in the high school than what is needed to meet the requirements of our higher institutions. The following summary of the advantages may be of value to those interested should they be called upon to

discuss the question before their boards of education:

1. Any high school can introduce the system regardless of size.

2. It broadens the scope of the high school curriculum.

3. The range of vocational training that the school can provide is almost unlimited.

4. The pupils get exactly the subjects in which they are interested.

5. The cost to the school system is lower than the ordinary high school subjects.

6. Neither the board of education nor This

the pupil is bound by any contract. eliminates any complications if a pupil does not need the full course, or if, for any reason, he decides to drop it.

7. It is flexible. The pupils electing any course may vary in number from one to fifty or more.

8. The individual conferences between the director and the pupils provide an excellent opportunity for educational and vocational guidance.

9. The plan is especially valuable in providing the type of instruction needed for part-time pupils.

10. The work is done under the direct supervision of the high school teachers, thus eliminating the most objectionable feature of correspondence work.

II. The work does not take the place of nor does it conflict with the regular high school work.

A

TTENTION has been called by Groszmann to the fact that as individuals within a race vary widely in respect to the civilization levels which they have attained, so do also whole races; that as within a race comparatively few individuals reach the highest rounds of its civilization, so do comparatively few races of mankind scale the dizziest heights of human culture.

This observation confirmed by so many students of evolution and anthropology is of inestimable value to modern philosophers of education. At once the question of the feasibility of equal education for all members of a race or for all races, for that matter, appears therein predetermined. Since individuals as well as races find themselves to-day at unequal stages in cultural evolution, it of necessity follows that the institution of equal education for all individuals or races is bound to result either in a serious retardation of cultural progress for those which have already attained a higher level of civilization or else in the too rapid advancement of those of a lower cultural level. The pragmatic way out of such a dilemma is apparently a system of unequal education. Thus for the vanguard of civilization there must be provided an education commensurate with its cultural status; for the rearguard an education likewise commensurate with its status.

With the higher type of education which consists of an expounding of the last words. in science and philosophy we are not here

concerned. We are sufficiently acquainted with its general nature. It is, however, the lower type of education which immediately concerns us and which deserves a careful examination.

To the early stages of civilization one must turn for helpful suggestions relative to the nature and function of an education appropriate for culturally lower individuals or races. The early stages of cultural evolution compared with the later were exceedingly long. It took roughly a million years and more for pre-historic man to lay the two great cornerstones of modern civilization.

In the first place primitive man had to pass through a long and arduous struggle with nature about him in order to wrest from her a scanty existence for himself. With his crude mental equipment imperceptibly evolved through natural selection, he eventually produced a culture, rough-hewn though it be, but one nevertheless which was destined to form the basis of all later material advancement. Hunting, fishing, the coarse manufacture of weapons and clothing, the building of huts and the burying of the dead were by degrees superseded by the somewhat more refined arts of weaving, drawing, trading, building of houses with sticks, stones and mud, plumbing, wood- and metal-work, agriculture, domestication of animals, undertaking, the making of more ornate footwear, clothing, and pottery.

In the second place primitive man had to pass also through a long and arduous

struggle with his own inner nature. Surging within him were animal passions from the bondage of which he had yet to be emancipated. His will had to be steeled against the onslaught of self-seeking motives. The The moral law had literally to be branded on his heart. It took millenia to effect the laying of this spiritual cornerstone of civilization. It took ages to weld egotism into social feeling. It took even many more ages of philosophizing on the part of the greatest moral geniuses of humanity to complete the erection of the spiritual kingdom within man. And still there reverberates within him something of the inexorable strength of his original nature.

The lesson to be drawn from reviewing the early stages of civilization is significant for the educational philosopher only in proportion as it helps him solve the problem of the special type of education which is meet for culturally younger individuals or

races.

A practical demand for the solution of this problem has loomed large in America where reside side by side two races of men differing widely in respect to cultural attainments. On one hand there are the whites, banner-bearers of Western civilization; on the other the blacks who are three hundred years from savagery and sixty from bondage. The problem of education with respect to these two races involves in a very practical way, first of all, the question as to the feasibility of equal education for the two races. Certain elements in the situation serve to make of this problem a ticklish matter. A democratic notion is prevalent to the effect that equal consideration is due all men. Then there is the ambitious claim on the part of the upper minority of Negroes for equality of opportunity for the race. Finally there stands against the unequal education of the two races its arch-enemy, custom.

For the sixty years which have intervened since the emancipation of the Negro, whatever formal education granted him has not materially differed from that for whites. The wisdom of this practice went

un

challenged until Booker T. Washington came forward with his wholesome reform. In his opinion no magic wand could bring at once a people from a semi-barbarous state to the top of the cultural ladder. It was just that which equal education in vain pretended to accomplish. According to Washington, that education of the Negro fails of its fundamental purpose which neglects the fact that the Negro as a people is on a lower cultural level than the white race. For that reason he strenuously maintained to his death that special education be provided his race, that such an education have for its purpose the gradual elevation of the race through the fundamental stages. of cultural evolution, that such an education embrace the early arts such as sewing, cooking, agriculture, carpentry, plumbing, masonry, and so forth.

Mr. Washington was particularly interested in an education for Negroes which would lay the economic cornerstone of their civilization. The necessity for schooling the Negro in those fundamentals which had made for the material advancement of the whites ever spurred him on to the great work which in the far South stands an immortal witness to the educational genius of its founder. To-day, as a result of his provident wisdom, not only has Negro education generally undergone a wholesome reformation but also has the Negro in the South fast taken his place as an economic force.

More recently, however, the practice of equal education of the two races has been dealt another severe blow. This time the attack is launched from quite another angle. G. Victor Cools writing in a recent issue of the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW calls attention to the fact that Negro education so-called has failed lamentably in omitting character-building from its program. This, he believes, is due also to the fallacious assumption that the education which is meet for whites is likewise meet for blacks notwithstanding the fact that the two races differ so widely as to cultural levels. Owing to the uncritical adoption by Negroes of the