
7 = PO ee ee ee nT ee a SEE 
— ton 
June 23, 1923] 
& 
NATURE 
865 

of the soil solution. The value of the award, which 
is to enable a student of proved intellectual attain- 
ree to enjoy a year’s travel for research, is again to 
e 1000l, 
Tue British Research Association for the Woollen 
and Worsted Industries is to award shortly a number 
of research fellowships and advanced scholarships. 
The fellowships, which are tenable in the first place 
for one year, are of the annual value of 200/. The 
advanced scholarships, also of one year’s tenure, 
carry a maintenance grant, and are designed to 
afford opportunity for specialisation. They are 
tenable either in Great Britain or abroad. Applica- 
tions for fellowships must reach the secretary of the 
Association at Torridon, Headingley, Leeds, before 
July 21, and should contain particulars of the 
candidate’s training and experience. 
AN article by Mr. H. A. L. Fisher in the Empire 
Review for June surveys the progress of education 
in the Empire since r1or1, the date of the last Imperial 
Educational Conference. It has been marked in the 
Dominions by a development of university and college 
influence even more remarkable than the similar 
development in Great Britain, and by a quite notice- 
able family resemblance between the expedients 
adopted in the various parts of the Empire for dealing 
with school and college problems. As examples of 
this resemblance he cites the Ontario Continuation 
Schools enactment modelled on the British Act of 1918, 
theraising of the school age in Alberta to 15, Tasmania’s 
new separate infant department, and Queensland’s ex- 
tended scheme of medical inspection. There has been 
likewise a very general augmentation of teachers’ 
Salaries, but this has failed conspicuously to meet 
the needs of the situation in sparsely populated tracts 
of country. The Director of Education in Manitoba 
writes of inexperienced girls placed in charge of 
district schools because capable men willing to accept 
such posts can no longer be found. Australia 
organises either correspondence classes or itinerant 
teaching. New Zealand employs group supervising 
teachers. In Canada, as in the United States, there 
has been an important movement in the direction of 
concentrating children of rural areas in central schools. 
Mr. Fisher concludes his article with a prophecy that 
during the next decade the four most important tasks 
will be the development of adolescent education in 
Great Britain, the strengthening of the Arts Faculties 
in Canadian universities in such a way as to save 
these institutions from degenerating into mere groups 
of professional schools with predominantly material- 
istic motives, the raising of the matriculation age in 
India, and “‘ such reforms (including in the first place 
the geographical concentration of the higher teaching 
in the Arts and in Pure Science) as may enable London 
University to take its rightful place as one of the 
great High Schools of the Empire.” 
In a paper on methods of college teaching read to 
the Association of Land Grant Colleges of America, 
an interesting sketch was given by Dr. W. W. Charters 
of experiments carried out by him as professor of 
education in the Carnegie Institute of Technology. 
When he joined the Institute some three years ago he 
found that while many of the experienced teachers in 
the four divisions—Engineering, Industries, Fine Arts, 
and Women’s College — had worked out excellent 
methods of teaching by themselves, many of the 
memnget members of the staff, who had had no 
specific and formal training in methods, needed 
idance which it became his duty to provide. Find- 
g nothing for the purpose in books on teaching 
methods, the authors of which concern themselves 
NO. 2799, VOL. 111] 
almost exclusively with elementary and secondary 
‘education, he organised a weekly seminar and made 
the instructors who enrolled for it draw up lists of 
their duties and difficulties. He thus obtained a list © 
of 14 real practical difficulties. He next made a 
list of 30 of the best teachers in the faculty, and 
the members of his seminar class were let loose on 
the chosen 30 to wrest from them the secret of how to 
handle the 14 difficulties. The professors surrendered 
at discretion, and the storm troops returned stimulated 
by the encounters and laden with intellectual spoil, 
which they proceeded to hammer out into a pamphlet 
which has been in use ever since. In the following 
year in the course of a similar campaign, undertaken 
with the object of elucidating the difficulties of getting 
students to think, it was found that inductive sciences 
such as chemistry and physics afforded less opportunity 
than others for practice in reasoning. This was 
attributed to the technique of investigation being 
so refined and the equipment so elaborate that 
ples have to be for the most part merely verified 
y students without being re-discovered. In the 
third year difficulties in shop and laboratory teaching 
were dealt with. Great stress is laid by Dr. Charters 
on the value of the weekly seminar for inexperienced 
teachers, to be followed when practicable by criticism 
of actual performances. 
THE report for 1921-22 of the Commissioner of 
Education of the United States, who, by the way, 
is an old Rhodes scholar and graduate of Oxford, 
shows that if the Federal Government's appropriation 
for his Bureau—the Education Office of the Depart- 
ment of the Interior—is, as he says, “‘ infinitesimal,” 
it is nevertheless made to go a long way. Education 
in the States enjoys the ministrations of 48 Boards 
of Education or their equivalents, each of the 
sovereign States determining for itself the amount and 
character of the instruction provided for the children 
of its citizens: ‘‘ This is as it should be, for the genius 
of the American people will probably never accept 
the idea of a centralized national system of public 
schools.’’ In the circumstances invaluable service can 
be rendered by an unbiased, disinterested agency 
which “‘ makes available to all the States the experi- 
ences of the most progressive and the achievements of 
the most highly endowed.”’ Of the services rendered 
by the Bureau the conduct of surveys of State school 
systems and of universities and colleges, whether 
individually or by groups, is, the Commissioner says, 
probably the most far-reaching in effect. This work 
has grown very rapidly during the past two years. 
Among the developments recorded are: the new 
radio broadcasting service, which, as a means of 
reaching the general public, particularly parents and 
taxpayers, has proved cheaper than printing, reaches 
its audience quicker, reaches the mass of people who 
will not read printed articles, is more effective because 
.it establishes more intimate contact, and, above all, 
educates public opinion continuously; promoting 
co-ordination of schools of commerce with schools of 
engineering with the view of improving methods of 
marketing at home and abroad ; stimulating special 
training for foreign service, both Government and 
commercial; organising home-reading circles on the 
lines of the National Home Reading Union in Great 
Britain and associations of parents and teachers. Ot 
‘interchange of students between countries the Com- 
‘missioner says, ‘‘ It is a desirable practice making for 
‘permanent peace and international comity, and is 
encouraged by every progressive nation. There are at 
least 10,000 foreign students in our institutions of 
higher learning and probably as many more in 
secondary schools.”’ 
