Vol LXXIV.

School Administrators Live and Dead Chicago has raised to the surface for discussion more school problems than any other place in the country. Whether the gain to the children in the schools is the greater or not thereby will be difficult to determine; perhaps it is not. All depends upon the spirit in which the discussions are carried on. If selfish motives govern the tongues and manipulations of the contestants the results must needs be disastrous. On the other hand, if the common purpose is the improvement of educational opportunities and the greater happiness of the genera tion now being trained for the struggle of life, the outcome must be one that will give joy to the angels in heaven. However, as between a place where educational questions are more or less under fire at all times and the school system which has snuggled down into a settled routine, the former condition is more hopeful than the latter.

It is only natural that many superintendents should be constantly praying for peace and quiet. Routine has many attractions. The superintendent who has settled all questions, past, present, and future, to his own satisfaction, has an easier time of it than one who is forever struggling for fuller visions of truth. He can give his whole strength to keeping his fences in repair and surrounding himself with influential friends who will sustain him against disturbers of his repose. He will try to make positiveness pass for conviction; mandate for superior judgment; silence, with a cynical smile upon its lips, for the wisdom of an expert. He has completed the circle of perfection. There is nothing new under the sun; then let us be content with the former things, and assign to Pluto's abode whosoever and whatsoever interferes with the smooth running of the machinery of the system.

The seeker for light does not manage schools by issuing general orders. He is ever on the lookout for new developments. In the meekness of his consciousness of imperfection he believes he can learn of any one who has achieved something. It never occurs to him that his appointment as principal of a New York city school relieves him of the necessity of keeping in touch with the progress of education outside of the sacred limits. In fact, he has almost a passion for growth. New educational ideas, whether originated in Keokuk, Ishpeming, or on the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Park Avenue, have an irresistible attraction. for him if they only help to throw light upon his work and reveal more fully the possibilities of the school. He does not build upon the sands of present official favor, nor does he trust to a legal breakwater to insure his tenure of office. He seeks first the kingdom of God, seeks it always without wearying, and wins human freedom thereby. He need not be a truckling, cringing slave. He can hold his head high. His work speaks for him.

The day is not far distant when people will know how to determine the efficiency of a teacher. Then the reckoning will come. Blandishments and "pull" will no longer afford protection. Let appearances

No. 7

be what they may, success as teacher and school administrator is attained only by those who keep growing.

The Open Door.

Representative James M. Esler has introduced in the Pennsylvania Legislature a bill authorizing the establishment of night schools for immigrants in labor camps. This ought to meet with hearty support. What a camp school can do has been beautifully illustrated by Miss Sarah Wool Moore, of the Society for Italian Immigrants. Her school in a camp shack near Pittsburg proved a blessing to many. The salvation of this country is more than ever before in history dependent upon the diffusion of education. Wherever there is an expressed desire for instruction tending to economic improvement and more efficient citizenship, there should be ready response. The Italians appear to be especially good material. Usually their early education has been neglected, but they are ambitious for improvement. Their frugal habits give them much unoccupied leisure time, which people of other nationalities are apt to consume in liquor shops.

The Americanization of foreigners so-called is not accomplished by prohibitory methods, and anti-this and that organizations. A positive program alone can assure success. Substitution of something better for that which is undesirable is the true method of progress. Education sensibly conceived and applied is always progress. Let us have schools wherever people can be induced to attend them. Let the common schools be for everybody the open door to economic and social improvement, to sociability, to greater efficiency, and to all that makes for an increase of human happiness.

European School Statistics.

The following statistics show an interesting relation between schools and population in Europe. In Germany there is one school to every 700 inhabitants, and on an average 100 children attend one school. The expense amounts to 38.25 cents a head of population. In France there is a school to every 500 inhabitants, a school is attended by sixty-six children, and every Frenchman contributes 29.5 cents to the expenditure.

In Italy, where there is a school to every 600 inhabitants, a school is visited by fifty-six children, and a pupil costs 16.75 cents. and a pupil costs 16.75 cents. In Spain there is also a school to every 600 inhabitants, and fifty-six children constitute the average attendance. Every child, however, requires an annual expenditure of

In England, conditions are similar, but the cost amounts to 27.25 cents for each child. Austria has a school to every 104 pupils and every 1,300 inhabitants, at a cost of 19.1 cents.

In Russia there is a school to every 2,300 inhabitants, and the school expenditure of a Russian amounts to 5.5 cents.

It Pays to Reform Boys.

In order to find out whether it pays the State to maintain reformatories for the care and training of "bad boys," Bishop Samuel Fallows has made a careful investigation and publishes the results in The World To-day for February.

"I have taken at random," he says, "eighty names from the list of boys paroled to Chicago from the Illinois State Reformatory during the last five years, and found their earnings were nearly $40,000 a year. The highest salary was $100 per month and the lowest $20 and board. Many were earning $80, $70, $65, $60 and $52 monthly. The average wages of the more than six hundred boys who have faithfully kept their parole during that time can be safely estimated at the average above given, $500 a year. And as that number are now still steadily employed, so far as is known, their annual productive value is $300,000.

"Making a very conservative estimate, the sixty-five per cent. only of the more than two thousand boys who have been sent back to Chicago have become good citizens, and taking the average earnings, just given, these one thousand three hundred young men are annually receiving $650,000 for their services.

"I took thirty names of Chicago boys on parole at the present time and found that they were receiving on an average $400 per year. Later on they will average as above, $500.

"Taking the same average of sixty-five per cent. of the six thousand boys already paroled from the institution, and of the earnings just enumerated, we have $2,000,000 as the amount annually paid them. Applying the same low average of reclamations and earnings to the more than thirteen thousand inmates discharged from the Elmira Reformatory, we find the annual sum paid them to be more than $4,000,000. Thus the graduates of two out of the ten adult reformatories in the United States are being paid more than $6,000,000 per year. They are earning an amount equal to the entire annual expenditure of all the reformatories and industrial schools in the United States."

Is it worth while? And if the economic results are so cheering, how much greater must be the gain for the higher life of the world!

The federal Bureau of Education has just issued a valuable bulletin on "State School Systems: Legislation and Judicial Decisions Relating to Public Education, October 1, 1904, to October 1, 1906." It was prepared by Prof. Edward C. Elliott, of the University of Wisconsin. Commissioner Brown writes: "The bulletin is intended to serve a special

purpose. The legislatures of forty States will convene on or soon after the first day of January, 1907. In the most of these States bills will undoubtedly be introduced looking to improvements in the several State systems of education. It frequently happens that the framers and promoters of such bills, and members of the legislature who are called to vote upon them, are desirous of acquainting themselves with precedents set in the recent school legislation of other States, and may in fact derive many valuable suggestions from such legislation. It is hoped that the publication here offered will in large measure meet this need and will accordingly prove directly serviceable in the spread of improvements in our educational systems." The Bureau will soon issue several other noteworthy bulletins, among them one relating to changes in city school systems in the United States within the past two years, by Professor Elliott; one relating to the system of schools for backward and otherwise exceptional children in Germany, by Prof. Fletcher B. Dresslar, of the University of California; one relating to instruction in music in the United States, by Prof. Arthur L. Manchester, of Converse College, Spartanburg, S. C.

Supt. W. E. Chancellor, of the District of Columbia, has been appointed lecturer on school administration of the summer session of Chicago University. He will give two courses for superintendents and for teachers, July 25 to August 31.

A London school physician, who found that but two children out of one thousand used toothbrushes, has recommended that every child be given a toothbrush at the beginning of the year and required to use it each day at school.

Daniel Spafford Giffin, a prominent lawyer of Ogdensburg, N. Y., who had served his town for forty years as Justice of the Peace, died last week. His occasional contributions to THE SCHOOL JOURNAL revealed his deep concern for the education of the young.