THE

EDITORIAL.

HE Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association, held its annual meeting in Boston on Feb. 21, 22 and 23. The attendance was large. The President, Dr. Edward Brooks, Superintendent of the Schools of Philadelphia, was in the chair. A large number of the leading educators of the country were present; men whose names are familiar to all, and many of them either read papers or joined in the frequent and able discussions. The City, Harvard University and Wellesley College extended courtesies. The themes discussed were practical, and the condensed results of wide experience and deep thinking. There was comparatively little eloquence, but much incisive and instructive thought. These gatherings are of great value to the educational world. To meet hundreds of bright men thinking and experimenting along kindred lines; to have one's ideas kindled by the fire and discipline of these debates is of very great value to every man who wishes to keep out of the ruts and make progress.

WE

E are heartily in favor of the movement which is taking practical form in many of our schools, to secure proper instruction in relation to the various branches of our town, city, state and national government. Education for citizenship while an old idea is receiving much new thought and being sought by many new methods. All education helps to make better citizens, but it is coming to be recognized that familiarity with the history and practical workings of our different civic institutions, both in times of war and in times of peace, is not only part of the mental equipment of a well educated person, but also forms the best preparation for the entrance of the scholar into politics, and of the average citizen into his ordinary duties as such. When the study of government in its history and present relations shall be introduced into our schools and put on the same footing with reading, arithmetic and book-keeping, then we shall learn how to make and keep laws as readily as we now learn how to make and keep money. There is still a great deal of ignorance and prejudice to be overcome along this line before "a sweet reasonableness" shall pervade the public mind and men shall learn to vote intelligently and conscientiously on the various public questions which are submitted to them. Vox populi may become a great deal nearer vox dei than it is at present, and the schools have a clear responsibility in accomplishing the transformation. Many of them are taking steps in the right direction.

ΟΝ

N another page, " J. M. C." suggests the possibility of an earlier preparation for college, to be secured by the employment, by well-to-do parents, of the now numerous lady graduates of our colleges and seminaries as private teachers. The plan seems feasible enough if the end is a desirable one. "J. M. C." assumes that it is. We think many of our best educators would deny the truth of the assumption. The object of a college education is by no means to get through a certain number of studies in a certain time and be launched in life as soon as possible. When we come to consider the effect of the studies pursued on the body and mind of the pupil, and to estimate his power of absorption and assimilation; when we take into consideration the facts that not until twenty-five or thirty years of age does the body obtain its full growth and solidity, and that there is a very close parallelism between the mind and the body, we shall rather inquire how we may delay or prolong the pupil's preparation for his life work until his mental powers are strong and mature enough to get the best good from the studies which he pursues. Our own experience and observation goes to show that the maturer students in college get the best results from the course. We are studying how to prevent our own boys from graduating before they are twenty-three or four rather than to secure their graduation at eighteen or twenty. We think we see the dead-line of old age and inactivity receding and the period of mature and efficient vitality lengthening under this policy. It is, however, a debatable question which "J. M. C." has suggested, and we hope to have further testimony on the subject.

UN

NIVERSITY Extension has had a trial and its merits and defects have to some extent become apparent. Is it not time for colleges and even academic high schools to profit by the experiment? It is as much the introduction of a new idea of method as the laying of new stress on the truly American idea that every citizen has equal right to the highest and best in culture as well as in rank and wealth.

The syllabus, perhaps in a much condensed and abridged form, can be used and must be used in all thorough instruction, call it outline, diagram, synopsis, or what not. Systematic written reproductions of lectures and discussions beget exactness, while topic investigation and analysis emphasizes the facts of knowledge and brings them into associational units. It would be unwise not to profit throughout our educational system by this new impulse. Besides, it is yet uncertain whether the college and secondary schools or the university will be profited most in the end. Awakened interest in higher education must necessarily increase college attendance. It also tends to do away

with what for want of a more specific term may be called caste in education, and may be made a stimulus all along the line. Several colleges in Pennsylvania have introduced the University Extension lecture and lecturer into college classes and report favorably, and others have ignored the movement outright, which is the other extreme. It, at present, seems that in this as in most forward strides, the best results are to be looked for in the golden mean.

N the present rush of German educational methods and ideals to the

well enough to call a halt until we are certain that we better comprehend that radical distinction between continental European and American society which underlies and modifies both ideals and methods of operation in every department of American life. The German ideal of government is a central despotism, armed with all the forces of modern life, subtle and elaborate, able still to enforce a semblance of public order to the outermost extremes of society. Such a spectacle as the barbarous outbreaks of lynch law even in the heart of our oldest and most refined southern cities would be impossible ia Germany or England; although every European country, in its basement story, holds imprisoned a population brutal, stolid, ferocious beyond any considerable native class in our country. The American ideal of society undertakes the magnificent experiment of educating all men into a sovereign citizenship whose central directing power is personal self-control. Of course, this implies, in the process, occasional outbreaks of lawlessness, perilous moods of popular delusion; all of which we see and deplore. But, spite of the double demoralization of two centuries of slave society inherited from Europe and the precipitation of millions of the emancipated lower strata of Europe upon our shores, a hundred years of the national life has placed the Republic abreast the great European nationalities, with a grander outcome for humanity than has been achieved by the greatest of them all. So, in every department of American life, we find everywhere the imperfection of growth. Business, Education, Religion, Society here can show no such perfection of outward adjustment as abroad. But nowhere since the dawn of time have so many people learned to steer themselves by the pole star of life as in this very land; always an affliction to the European philosopher and his American pervert.

THE

HE housekeepers have a maxim: "Hang a good thing up for seven years and you will find a use for it." A hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson was convinced that the New England system of township government, really the nearest approach to his own idea of

state rights ever put in practical operation in this republic, was the true democratic way of governing a country by the voice of the people. Through the restraint on city life, by the practice of withholding a city. charter, as in Massachusetts, until the town has a population of more than 10,000, the leading commonwealth in New England has now more than three hundred of these little republics, where the people in open town meeting deal with almost every matter of local public interest. Especially is the common school interest vested in the town with slight dependence on state supervision and large power of local taxation. In this way the vast sum of $8,000,000 annually paid for the common school education of less than 400,000 pupils in Massachusetts, is almost wholly levied by local taxation in every town and city. Jefferson actually proposed the districting of his own state according to the New England township plan. But the plantation system of the South and the settlement of the valleys of the Hudson and Mohawk by the Dutch patroons was an effectual bar to the extension southward and westward of the most effective training school of civics ever put in operation, the town meeting and local administration of the New England town. The northwest, from central New York to the Mississippi valley, was largely settled from New England. But the New York and northwestern" township" is a very different political unit from the old New England "town." In all these states, the county has acquired a power and preponderance unknown "down East," and a county town has become the real centre of civic life for a large extent of country.

In the Southern states, owing to the sparse population of the country, the tendency to exalt the county has been even more marked, in hundreds of these extensive counties the only village of importance being the county town and the affairs of the district administered and governed largely by a court house "ring." During the existence of slave society this condition was inevitable. But, already, the wise prophecy of Jefferson in this as in educational matters seems to be in the way of being realized. The country common school district of the South is the first distinct approach towards a system of local government known in these states. In Kentucky every such district has the power of electing school trustees, taxing itself for support of schools and administering its own educational affairs in several important respects. In similar or less degree the country district school of every southern state is already training the people after the fashion of the New England town, into a habit of local management of important affairs and the administration of the most vital interest of society. Of course, the system is apt to work feebly, at first, and even appears to be a positive hindrance to the growth of public school education. But one

of the best uses of the American common school is to educate the grown people of a community through their combined efforts to establish an effective system of education for the children. In this way alone can the southern people learn the most important truth of republican society, that taxation is not tyranny but, when honestly, vigorously and persistently used, the crowning privilege of a government like ours. In almost every American commonwealth, state aid for education has almost reached its limit and the only hope for the success of the common school is in energetic and persistent local taxation. This important truth is now being taught in thousands of these southern common school districts in the best way, through the appeal to parental interest and affection for that schooling of their children which alone can give to the impoverished masses of these states the great American chance for success in life.

IF

EARLY PREPARATION FOR COLLEGE.

F it is of large importance that our boys,—and girls, too, perhaps enter college at an earlier age than at present, is there not a hopeful means at hand, and still more in prospect, through the lady graduates of our seminaries and colleges? Is it not feasible in our cities and larger towns to establish schools for such children — from eight to twelve — as their parents desire to give a liberal education? Such schools would furnish attractive work for graduates. The following would be necessary to the success of the plan: —

I.

That parents decide on their plans for the education of their children at an earlier date than at present.

2. That they be willing to pay liberally for the superior education of their children in special lines at an early age. These two things secured there is little doubt of success.

But these are not only expedient, are they not?economical means for securing the best education and the earliest graduation. The quality of the early teaching determines largely the quality of the ultimate scholarship and the amount of time saved in reaching a given stage in the course of study, and the time when the chosen life work can be entered upon, as well.

At first there may be but few who are ready to decide early to give their children a liberal education and be willing to pay their proportion of a suitable teacher's salary, and so the individual expense may be large, yet the superior quality of the results is almost certain to secure