sight-seeing to lure us to the convention city? Do you remember the empty benches because so many of us were at the matinées or beaches or outdoor spectacles? All the meetings I saw this time were well attended, often crowded, with people standing. The assemblies at the business sessions were gratifyingly large. The printed reports of committees on retirement, on tenure, on classroom problems, on visual instruction, on credits, on community service, on behavior, on rural needs, on part time, on ethics, the manual for delegates, the short summaries and questions on them, all were highly creditable illustrations of professional business. It would have been a fine thing if we could have subpoenaed a hundred leading newspaper editors to sit through one of these representatives' meetings to learn how the teachers of to-day compare with the schoolma'ams of distorted tradition.

Ballots for Blair.-The newspaper reporters whom I heard making inquiries seemed to be hoping for a hard fight for the presidency, and every schoolman they talked with was wearied by the ancient allegation that Ņ. E. A. elections are battles. We Illinoisians put forward Francis Blair during the early Spring. A group of volunteer ladies and gentlemen invited him to stand. They offered him as a candidate to each of the state delegations. We pinned his picture on ourselves and upon the gentlewoman who is his wife. The chief victim showed no agitation over the matter. Election means a lot of work and some sadness. Doctor Blair brings distinction to the office a serious conception also of the importance of the Association. Perhaps you heard him outline his idea at the Indianapolis meeting. You will recall that he abhors a hardening of the educational arteries. "In the National Association, theories and propositions must be kept warm and alive. Constant discontent, examination, reshaping, must be encouraged. This is not loss of faith in what has gone before; it is in accordance with the law of life. The young men and women of the profession are our salvation. Keep the

Association unfettered, keep it free from rings and cliques. Make it a dynamic force for meeting the expanding needs of the republic." The new president has been a member of the Association since 1895. He was born in Illinois, graduated from Swarthmore College, made Doctor of Laws by Columbia University, has taught in every kind of school, has been head of the Illinois school system for twenty years. He has enenlivened a life of official routine with compositions of singular charm, and broadminded philosophy.

A Former Target and His Smile.-Well, well, whom do you suppose I saw in Philadelphia? Jim Rice. He lives there. Do you remember him? Leonard Ayers says Jim is the father of educational measurements in this country. Maybe he is. Before I ever heard of M. Binet or M. Simon, Jim was raising a cloud of pedagogical dust about his ears by saying that we could never amount to anything unless we had defined objectives and had our approach to them measured. Jim's brother Isaac owned the Forum Magazine. Walter H. Page was the editor of it. He sent Jim into the best schools of the best cities to write accounts of them for the Forum. Jim simply recorded what he saw and heard. When we saw our doings in cold type we were indignant. We were "covering the lesson"; we were going through the course of study; we were promoting on a passing mark of seventy per cent.; our business was to give out and to hear lessons. Jim couldn't find any other process, except preaching, as ignorant of results as ours. "Why doesn't the school manager estimate his worth on the basis of his product?" asked Jim. "That's what every productive business does. The test of a restaurant manager is the food; of the farmer, the crop. Instead of turning a teacher loose with a class and leaving to her unhindered the day-by-day occurrences, the boss must all the time be ascertaining that his plant is producing the goods. That's what a principal is for." The Forum articles made a great stir. Jim was invited to ad

dress educational gatherings. "You will never be a profession until you can prove the worth of what you do," he said. "There is no science of teaching. There won't be until you have scientific measurement of your progress. The proof of teaching lies in the progress of the taught." He proposed simple and definite tests in spelling and in arithmetic. The educators jumped upon him hard. Doctor Maxwell told the N. E. A. that the test of education could come only after the educated had lived his whole life and was dead. "Who can measure mother love?" sneered one of our leading orators. "I can, anybody can," answered Jim. He founded the Association of Educational Research. It was twenty-eight years ago. He was director. I was president. Here I go talking about myself. And Ossian Lang was secretary. We lasted two years. The Forum was sold. Jim went into money-making and was a success at it. There he was, at the Philadelphia meeting, listening with a quiet smile to members of an association which has accepted measurement as an essential, a society which takes Ayers, Thorndike, Strayer, Buckingham, Woody, McCall, Courtis, Whipple, all measurers, as a matter of course-and this is the same society that used to program Jim Rice as a target for impassioned oratory. No wonder he wears a quiet smile.

Gay at Last! You have probably noticed a blossoming of gaiety in our conventions during recent years. I think the West is responsible. Our Illinois delegation burst into bloom at the Tuesday morning meeting. Somebody thrust a big blue plume into my hand and hustled me into the aisle with our State teachers marching down the hall singing, "Oh, me, Oh my, we're feeling jolly spry. Who is it loves the N. E. A.? It's I, I, I, I, I." There were eight good-looking people at the head of our line carrying the red, white, and blue shields of the U. S. A. At the proper moment they snapped these emblems around presenting in big letters: ILLINOIS. We sang, we shouted, we

waved our plumes. The audience admired us. On another day Washington State enlivened us. The big chief with horns and wampum, the pretty girls with bright feathers on their heads, throwing roses at us, the Indian princess beating time with an arrow, their invitation to come to Seattle next year, were jolly and neighborly indeed. New Jersey paraded itself with a big brass band, a pair of board-walk wheeling chairs and a great array of the fruits of the garden. Kansas sang lustily and bestowed abundance of sun flowers upon us. Minnesota asked us to bring the convention to "the land of 1000 lakes." The pretty women with flour sacks over their gowns were delightful.

But California was a revel of color. You could think yourself at the Plaza in Seville. There were doñas in red mantillas with roses in their hair, Carmens and Carmencitas galore, gaily sashed músicos with tímpanos, guitarras, and mandolinos. There were Superintendente Fredrico Hunter, Maestro Gwinn, Secretario Arturo Chamberlino, as caballeros gorgeous in red and yellow and blue. Ah, it was done espléndidamente with showers of confetti spouting into the air and wiggling streamers of color shot down from the high boxes by other sprightly Californians. They did the neighborly act of hoisting Washington's banner, bidding us sally to Seattle next year. Everybody loved the Hawaians. We called them to the stage again and again to hear them sing. They brought six thousand garlands of their good-will tokens and put them upon everybody. They sang "Aloha to Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love, where the wise men met in the hall, at liberty's call, to get freedom for all. Aloha Philadelphia, great is your worth, the town of our dear flag's birth."

Twenty years ago there was little of this gaiety. I remember Harry Schelling, attending a jewelers' convention, who looked into our meeting and asked "What is it? A funeral?" Really why should we, in what is by nature the cheeriest of all the callings, not have some of the fun of the Shriners et al when we meet? Welcome the unbendibus.

Honest. It was a great convention. There is nothing to compare with it in the whole world. It was a concentrated university with a faculty drawn from every state. The permanent officers who planned the session turned experience into foresight and produced a smooth-running piece of huge and complex machinery creditable to everybody. And Mary McSkimmon, complimenting everybody at every meeting complimented none too much.

Coöperative Assistance.-The Bureau of Educational Research of Ohio State University is interested in a carefully controlled study of the relative advantages of grade and departmental teaching. For that reason any information concerning school systems which are about to change either from grade to departmental teaching or from departmental to grade teaching will be appreciated. If school superintendents or principals of schools in which such changes are contemplated will communicate the fact, it will assist materially in setting up the problem effectively. Communications should be addressed to DR. B. R. BUCKINGHAM, Director, Bureau of Educational Research, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

To the Editor:

Since you invite people to tell you what they would like to have treated in the magazine, I venture to ask for an able plea for manual training in every grade from kindergarten through high school. First, because more than half the pupils are destined to earn their living by their hands, and it seems only fair and reasonable that the hands should be trained in school; secondly, that the brain of those who are to be professional and business men, may function better, if the part of it controlling the hands is not allowed to become atrophied from want of And, thirdly, because it makes the

use.

pu

pils so happy! Little concrete talks to boys and girls

ought to be given on this subject. Here is a good one from the Waterton Leaflets: "Would it not be well for such of the sloyd boys as are to become professional men to make themselves benches before leaving the school? That is, as many of them as thoroughly enjoy the making of things. For all who engage in a sedentary occupation need some active physical play, and what is more interesting than bench work! Doctor Holmes, physician, poet and lecturer, who knew and obeyed the laws of health so well that when he had reached his four score years, he was said to be eighty years young rather than old, was a practical carpenter. A boy once asked him to teach him how to succeed as a professional man. His word of advice was this: 'Have an avocation as well as a vocation. Do something every day that is as different as possible from your regular work, that is what we doctors call having an outlet, and I would rather you forget everything I have ever written than to forget what I have told you about having an outlet. Come and see my carpenter's bench,' he added, 'I assure you making a chair is a very different thing from making a poem. Recently I visited the home of another physician of ninety. He, too, is a skilful sloyder, all of the furniture in one room being made by his own hands, although his pet recreation is a fancy farm, watching the green things growing, and grafting the fruit trees. We all know that it was by chopping down trees, that Gladstone prepared himself for his great parliamentary debates, and we read that John Vianney, Curé of Ars, miracle worker and recently canonized, was his own architect and builder when funds failed for a needed addition to one of his charitable homes, and I fancy that he also knew well that the carpentring would prove a great refreshment to his burdened spirit, worn with seventeen hours a day of priestly labor. So you see, boys, you have many bright examples to follow if you choose to continue your bench work after entering upon your professional careers.""

ANNIE N. COGGESHALL.

E

VERY man known to me does from a sense of duty some reading that gives him very little pleasure. The editor of the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW considers this clipping feature the least interesting offering of the magazine. But in the canvass of readers to ascertain their preferences, this summary of laymen's news views on education gets the most votes. This shows what a dutiful army of public servants you schoolmen are.

With all your knowledge of the newer processes which have supplanted the old, it must be exasperating to you to peruse solemn redeclarations of school ideas of 1880. A newspaper editor will read the latest book on economics, international relations, or railroad policy. If there are any of these busy men who have read any work on education, their editorials, except John Finley's in the New York Times, fail to show it.

The Chicago Tribune once offered School Superintendent Ella Flagg Young an editorial position. Wouldn't it help America if more papers would have a professional to advise them? And wouldn't it help the professionals, too? For American education is handicapped by public ignorance of what it has come to. Whereas a teacher at a public meeting reaches a hundred, an editor has a thousand.

No doubt it is realization of this that leads the REVIEW readers to want it to continue the presentation of newspaper comment. We are advancing an educational progress helped and hindered by the public. The public and its representatives, school boards, are influenced by newspapers. You do want, therefore, to know what the newspapers are saying. It is worth while, also, for you to help editors know what the schools are aiming at and doing.

Knocking Down the Straw Man

These two editorials read as if the head man of each paper had noticed that the question of a Federal Department of Education was up before the National Education Association and said to the respective staff writers "knock it." The Philadelphia Record observes:

"Some of the public school people, now in the city as members of the National Education Association, want a Secretary of Education and a unified national education program. We hope that these are only a few of the whole number. Certainly the several States should be entirely competent to direct their own schools, and the schools that they direct would be far more useful to them than schools directed for them from Washington. It would be a pleasant thing, wouldn't it, to have the question of teaching evolution raised in Congress and involve the policies of a President? As to uniformity, that is the pestilential vice of this country. Everything is being standardized and made uniform. There is already far too much clamor for Federal direction of everything in order that one pattern should be repeated all over the country. Nothing could be worse for the political life of this country than the Federal standardization of everything. Even Republicans are protesting now against excessive and continued centralization, the concentration of all legislative and administrative functions in Washington. Let the States have their own school systems and compete with one another."

The hope is vain. Had the Record's representative attended the meeting he would have observed a unanimous endorsement of the proposition; have learned that it does not take and cannot take direction of the schools away from the states; also that

school moves tending to make their original American function: citizenship, to become a reality. Here is what he says in the New York Times:

"The late Edmond Kelly, returning from Cambridge, England, to this country, marveled at the American undergraduate brain and its failure to find an interesting field in politics. Young Mr. Cleveland suggests that our sense of the remoteness of our Government and the designedly ineffective executive branch, with its separation from the legislative so much more marked than the English form-both of these may contribute to our lack of interest in politics.

"The pertinent question arises: What are our educators doing to stimulate this interest? Jefferson made it a cornerstone or grinding principle of the University of Virginia that the students should learn selfgovernment and fit themselves for citizenship in a democracy by practicing it in college. In the George Junior Republic the young people practice self-government and graduate just so many 'live' wires in whatever community they settle.

"Will some public school teacher please justify the emphasis on 'service' to the exclusion of some self-government mechanism in the school through which that service can be made effectual? Do they think this country foreordained to render its service only through voluntary groups, instead of through proper Government agencies?"

The Terrible Turnover

This mild editorial in the Philadelphia Public Ledger during the convention of the National Education Association, a few steps away, calls attention without heat to the amazing handicap of the public schools:

"Short tenure of office by teachers is one of the issues before the National Education Association. A report of the United States Commissioner of Education has shown that the yearly turnover in rural districts has been one in three. In Wisconsin two thirds of the teachers retain their places only a year and a half; New York State shows a

better record, with nearly seven years as the average length of a teacher's professional service. Of course, matrimony makes serious inroads among the recruits who view the teacher's career as the stop-gap between graduation from college and the establishment of a home. But the average length of professional tenure will be considerably raised as the calling attracts more and more men who find it worth while to dedicate their lives to the career. Much more is expected of children than in days of old, and much more is asked of those who instruct them."

School Salaries No Joke

Otto Haisley who superintends the public schools of Ann Arbor thinks you will be edified by this cheerful comment of the editor The Times-News of the Athens of Michigan:

"Vacation days are almost here for some

folks.

"They are not coming, in generous measure, for some of the public school teachers. However, the services of instructors in the summer school are to be recognized in a practical way. Salaries have been raised.

"That is well. Teachers who elect to remain at school during the vacation days are entitled to some such consideration. It is not benevolence, from the standpoints of the school and the parents of the students. Because higher salaries will attract the better teachers, and that is a circumstance not to be ignored in discussing summer education.

"Much has been said, from time to time, about failure of educators to receive adequate compensation. It has become almost a perennial joke. And yet it affords food for serious thought.

"Men and women are accustomed to regard the best kind of an education as something none to good for their children. They expend funds for living expenses, books, the pleasures of college life, including limousines, with scarcely a murmur, and give little thought to the salaries of the men and women who convey the desired knowledge to the minds of youth.