does Commander Peary, who has spent a large part of his active life in planning feasible ways of attacking the problem, and has endured all that man can endure and live in his repeated efforts to carry those plans out. He now has for his seventh expedition a fine new ship, the Roosevelt, built for the express purpose and with all the special forms of construction which experience has shown valuable in fighting ice. He will take on board of the Roosevelt when he reaches high latitudes a company of Eskimos specially chosen and well known to him, and with them and his crew of about twenty will sail as far north as he can get along the shore of Grant Land. Here his ship will probably be frozen in about the middle of September, perhaps 450 or 500 miles from the Pole, and he will spend the greater part of the Arctic winter in preparing for his final dash north. His point of departure he expects to be somewhere about latitude 83°, and when the twilight of February makes traveling possible he will start thence with a very small company and move rapidly forward (ten miles a day is rapid traveling in that region), until the five hundred miles or so to the North Pole have been traversed or failure and return become inevitable. This plan is as simple as it can be made, and Mr. Peary builds his hopes of success on the strength of his ship and his knowledge of the Eskimos and of sledge work. Thus, he declares that he knows the very men among the Eskimos who will follow him as far as he will go, and he knows equally those who will quail in the face of disaster. The party will have from twenty to twenty-five sledges, drawn each by six or eight dogs; each sledge will carry about five hundred pounds, including the weight of the driver. Mr. Peary says that he will depend for food almost entirely upon pemmican, ship's biscuit, and tea, and that experience has shown these to be far the most effective articles of food and stimulus. It is said that no less than four thousand lives, two hundred ships, and $100,000,000 have been expended in the efforts to reach the North Pole. It

is fair to admit that in the past at least valuable geographical and other scientific

knowledge has been added in this way, directly or indirectly, to the world's store of information. This year there will be four expeditions in the Arctic regions. Two of them are of American origin, one French, and one Norwegian. Mr. Peary's expedition is the only one of these which starts from Greenland, and the general impression among students of Arctic exploration is that he has a better chance of success than his competitors. be remembered that the present record of "highest north" belongs to the Duke of Abruzzi's party, which in 1900, under Captain Cagni, planted the Italian flag at the latitude of 86° 33'-an advance of only a score or so of miles beyond Nansen's attainment.

Professor Perry

It will

A notable free-trade pioneer passes away by the death of Arthur Latham Perry. He had reached the age of seventy-five. Born in Lyme, New Hampshire, he was graduated from Williams College in the class of 1852. Two years later he was elected Professor of History and Political Economy in that College, and held the position during four decades. In 1866 he published "The Elements of Political Economy." The book won instant and steadily widening recognition, and went through a score of editions. Later he published "An Introduction to Political Economy," which also went through many editions; "The Principles of Political Economy," and "Origins in Williamstown," the last named being a work of value to students of New England and especially of Massachusetts history. Professor Perry's ardent championship of free trade early made him a National figure, and in 1868–9 he carried on a series of public debates with Horace Greeley, an equally ardent protectionist. During the seventies and eighties Dr. Perry was a frequent contributor to the press, more particularly to the Springfield "Republican" and to the New York "Evening Post," on his favorite subject of tariff reform. In these contributions, as in the class-room and on the platform, he was always frank, clear, resolute, persistent. Such an advocate of free trade in the very heart of a protected" district

64

could not fail to arouse the irritation of Massachusetts and other manufacturers. But liberty of teaching was firmly upheld by the Williams trustees, despite the appeal of wealthy men, with gifts to the College in the event of the offending professor's displacement. The students comprehended Professor Perry's position, and, whether they agreed with or differed from their teacher's principles, his independence and courage appealed to their sense of justice. Few pedagogues have enjoyed greater personal popularity. This was due, first of all, to Dr. Perry's indestructible humanness and buoyancy-the man in him had never killed the boy. His work in life was not merely that of a teacher; it was also that of a friend to every student. Secondly, Dr. Perry had a peculiarly keen sense of humor; he enlivened his lectures with so many stories, anecdotes, and jokes as to elicit appeciativeness and not always too orderly applause. But the "Peri-Howl" was, after all, the outward sign of an inward grace. It merely expressed, in too tumultuous sound, it may be, a hearty admiration for Professor Perry's character and attainments. His students will ever hold him in loving memory.

Association in New York has been enlarged, through the generosity of friends, by the acquisition of a fine yacht, the Amazon, a ninety-ton schooner, one hundred and eight feet in length, with accommodation for a company of thirty or more. Each young landsman who secures a berth engages to do a day's service each week in the crew, whose nucleus is composed of a few seasoned seamen under an experienced sailing-master, from whom he will get lessons in navigation. Some cruises of one week and others of two are to be made during July and August. These cruises, together with the summer camp for the older members of the association at Oscawana, and that for the younger members of the Harlem Branch at Waccabuc, places some forty miles north of the city, provide for hundreds of young men inex

For some time past there have been signs, particularly in the larger cities of the country, that the progressive educational movement of the past decade was to be sharply challenged. During the year this challenge has been publicly made in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, and it is possible now to estimate its significance.

Education has moved so rapidly in the United States of late that one who has not followed closely the sequence of events is often without the information with which to judge accurately the meaning of a new tendency or trend of opinion. After the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, at which the meaning of the art and industrial element in education was first revealed to American teachers and school officers, there was an earnest searching in all parts of the country for means of enriching and broadening the programme of studies offered by the elementary school. The opinion was at that time widespread that the elementary schools gave too much drill and too little education, that their outlook upon life was restricted and narrow, that their educational material was scanty and insufficient. It was pointed out by critics who had earned the right to be heard that the child was not being really or broadly educated, but was simply being drilled in the use of a narrow range of intellectual tools. The elementary school of that day placed all its emphasis upon the so-called three R's, particularly upon arithmetic, which it treated as fundamental. According as a child had progressed in arithmetic he was classified in the school, and a purely formal subject of which he was to make little use in after life was the center about which

his entire education turned. There was no training of his powers of expression and of creation, no training of his latent appreciation of nature and of art, and no use made of the industries of the country in the search for educational material that would train the child for the real life that he was some day to live. These criticisms and considerations took strong hold of educational public opinion, and as a result the elementary school programme was enriched by the addition of such subjects as music, drawing, manual training, nature study, physical training, and the like.

But only the merest fraction of the teachers then in service were able to give instruction in these new subjects, and therefore it was usual to employ special teachers in connection with them. These special teachers led to the new subjects of instruction being called special subjects, and from that they soon passed into the category of “fads and frills" in the speech of those who did not understand or appreciate them, or who resented the presence in the schools of special teachers, who, it was claimed, interfered with the "

regular" work of the class-room. The stronger school men of the country, in particular the leading superintendents and heads of normal training-schools, ranged themselves on the side of the new, broader, and more practical education.

It was only a question of time when antagonism to the so-called "fads and frills" would take the form of criticism of those individuals who represented them in the public mind, and when personal antagonism to individual school officials would make use of the latent antipathy to the "fads and frills" to urge a return to the old order. This is precisely what has happened during the past year or two, and what, especially in New York and Chicago, has of late resulted in bitter attacks upon Superintendents Maxwell and Cooley and upon the entire administration of the school systems under their direction.

It was not remarkable, perhaps, that these reactionary opinions and expressions of opinion should meet with some sympathy on the part of the press and of the public. Elementary education

was becoming increasingly costly, and the larger cities were finding it more difficult year by year to make adequate provision for all the children of school age. The idea was abroad that if the "fads and frills" could be eliminated the cost of the public school system would be diminished and its efficiency increased by going back to the old drill in the so-called fundamental subjects.

Undoubtedly public school education would have been less costly could this policy have been pursued; but it would at the same time have ceased to be education at all. The three R's are no more fundamental than some other subjects of instruction popularly known as "fads and frills.". Essential as it is for a child' to know the elementary facts concerning computation and to be able to read and write his mother tongue, these are not the whole of education by any means. He might be never so good a computer, never so good a reader, and write never so beautiful a hand, and yet have a soul and mind utterly closed to one-half of the life that surrounded him. He would be sentenced thereby to a partial existence and to a limited usefulness, and one whole set of the capacities and ideals that belong to him as a human being would be denied him.

Moreover, the experience of nearly two decades has shown that a programme of studies which includes the so-called "fads and frills " produces even better results in the so-called three R's than does a programme from which the "fads and frills are excluded. The reason for this is plain. The new subjects of study, by their strong appeal to the pupil's interest and activities, arouse and stimulate his entire nature, and he does better and more successfully everything that he undertakes to do. It may be said with perfect assurance that the elementary schools never gave so effective a training in the three R's as they are giving to-day, when they are doing so much else besides. Any one who has observed closely the work of the schoolchildren of to-day, and who is in position to compare it with the work of the schoolchildren of twenty years ago, will have no hesitation in saying that the children of to-day read better, write better, and

spell better than did the children of twenty years ago. Much that then cumbered the school programme has disappeared forever and its place has been taken by subjects of vital interest and importance.

The interesting and significant fact in regard to this matter is that whenever the discussion of this subject has been transferred from partisan newspapers ard personal antagonists of individual school officers to the great forum of public opinion, the expression of that opinion has been overwhelmingly on the side of the new education. This is the conclusive proof that the homes from which the school-children of to-day are drawn and to which they return realize the great advantages of the new education over the old, and do not propose to have those advantages taken from their children without protest and a struggle. In the city of New York the recent expression of public opinion in favor of the new programme of studies was so overwhelming that the critics were wholly silenced. In Chicago the situation is complicated by other and unfortunate elements; but it is hard to believe that the parents of the schoolchildren of that city will not also support Superintendent Cooley and the school administration of which he is the head when they realize clearly what the leaders of the reactionary movement propose.

It is from this point of view that one of the most important educational events of the past year is the challenging of the new education and the responses to that challenge which have been so promptly and so effectively made. It may be taken for granted now that the new education has come to stay, and that the socalled "fads and frills" are hereafter to be accepted as fundamental subjects of training side by side with the older three R's.

It is not, however, to be assumed that all problems of method and of adjustment have been solved. Much remains to be done whenever a new subject of study is introduced into the educational programme at any point. The older subjects have the advantage of what is known as pedagogic form. There

has been much experience in organizing them for presentation to immature minds. The newer subjects must be submitted to a discipline of examination and experience that will not soon be ended, in order to give them the pedagogic form that they need.

A second subject in regard to which the past year has seen marked progress is that which relates to the economic status of the teacher. The important committee, with Colonel Carroll D. Wright at its head, representing the National Educational Association, appointed at the Boston meeting of that body in 1903, has completed its report. As soon as the vast mass of statistical material therein presented has been studied and digested, it will be possible to present to State and local authorities the exact economic conditions which surround the teaching profession to-day, and to urge with all the force that comes from specific evidence the measures needed for improvement. As partisan politics is more and more excluded from the public school system, the tenure of office of the teachers becomes stable, but the compensation remains most inadequate; with the added difficulty that there is apparently no reward provided for long and faithful service in any but a very few localities. It is this fact that makes the position of the teacher seem so hopeless. A moderate or even a meager wage might cheerfully be accepted at the outset of a career, if there were any reward or prize to which success in that career would surely lead. For the public school teacher there is no such reward or prize, and it is this fact that weighs upon the teaching profession as a burden almost too heavy for it to carry.

In their zeal for immediate results, some teachers have organized themselves into associations which are practically trade-unions, with a view to forcing action favorable to their claims. This is not the right way to go about the matter, nor is it at all likely to be a successful way. It is far better to rely upon such patient and methodical collection of the facts as Colonel Wright's committee has just made, and upon the clear and cogent presentation of these facts to the public

and to those officials charged with executing the will of the public in regard to school administration and maintenance.

The Carnegie Foundation, to be formally organized in November next, is an educational event of the first importance. The fund of ten million dollars which Mr. Carnegie has placed in the hands of trustees in order to provide a fund the income of which may be applied "to provide retiring pensions, without respect. to race, sex, creed, or color, for the teachers of universities, colleges, and technical schools in the United States, the Dominion of Canada, and Newfound land," and "to provide for the care and maintenance of the widows and families of the said teachers," is not unlikely to bring about a peaceful revolution in the conditions which surround teachers in universities, colleges, and technical schools. A few institutions have been able, out of their own funds, to establish a system of retiring pensions for teachers who have reached a certain age but who have served the particular institution for a specified minimum number of years; but, as a rule, the teachers in universities, colleges, and technical schools are in the same position as teachers in the elementary schools so far as provision for old age or accident is concerned. Wisely administered, as no doubt it will be, the Carnegie Foundation will strengthen higher education in innumerable ways, not only by caring for those whose active service is at an end by reason of age and infirmity, but also by the assurance it gives that the man who enters upon university teaching as a profession will not thereby be left to shift for himself if accident or old age comes upon him. This means that new inducements are offered to men of capacity to choose university teaching as their career, and in itself is an educational service of the first magnitude.

In some of the more important colleges action has been taken during the year, the results of which it is still too early to estimate, which may prove to have an important bearing upon the much-discussed questions connected with the length and character of the college curriculum. At Princeton University a

new programme of studies has gone into effect which provides three parallel curriculums, each four years in length, leading to the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Letters, and Bachelor of Science respectively. Next year this innovation will be followed by the establishment of what is in effect the tutorial system of the older English universities. Both experiments at Princeton will be watched with close interest and attention. The Faculty of Columbia University have during the year adopted a new programme of studies for the undergraduate students which is more radical in character than the action taken at Princeton. Columbia by its action definitely surrenders the time element as a main standard for judging the college course, and will hereafter decide upon the fitness of the student for graduation by the quality of his work. It will be not so much how long he studies in college as what he does in college that will determine his fitness for a degree. At the same time, the interdependence of the undergraduate and the professional school courses has been carried several steps forward. As is the case with the changes at Princeton, the Columbia departures will be closely watched and studied.

The inauguration on Jefferson's birthday of a President for the University of Virginia, and that President Dr. Alderman, is perhaps the most important event of the year in the field of higher education. American education has gained enormously because of a form of administration which is quite unknown in Europe, namely, that which confers. great authority and prerogatives upon educational executives—college and university presidents, city superintendents of schools, and the like. These officials constitute in the United States a new profession of their own, and they have beyond question given impulse, energy, and definiteness to the whole American educational scheme. The University of Virginia has withheld the election of the President for many years, owing to the expressed preferences of Jefferson himself, but the time had come when it was a part of true conservatism to take advantage of a form of organization which