Febeuabt 12, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



255 



President Noble, Dr. H. S. Pritchett, presi- 

 dent of the Carnegie Foundation for the Ad- 

 vancement of Teaching; Dr. Ebner E. Brown, 

 U. S. commissioner of education; Dr. Ira 

 Kemsen, president of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity and Mr. John E. Semmes, president of 

 the Baltimore school commissioners. 



De. Frank L. McVet has been elected presi- 

 dent of the University of North Dakota. He 

 was formerly professor of economics at the 

 University of Minnesota and is now chairman 

 to the tax commission of the state. 



The trustees of Columbia University have 

 appointed Dr. William G. MacCallum, pro- 

 fessor of pathological physiology in the Johns 

 Hopkins University, to he professor of pathol- 

 ogy in succession to Dr. T. Mitchell Prudden, 

 who will retire from active service on July 1 

 next. At the same time the trustees have 

 made provision for the development and ex- 

 tension of the departments of bacteriology 

 under professor Philip H. Hiss, Jr., and of 

 clinical pathology under Professor Francis C. 

 Wood. Increased attention will be paid by 

 these departments to the needs of advanced 

 students and investigators. 



At the College of the City of New York, 

 Dayton J. Edwards has been appointed tutor 

 in natural history. He is a graduate of the 

 University of Maine, and has lately been an 

 assistant at Columbia University. 



Me. G. H. Cox has been appointed instruc- 

 tor at the University of California in geology 

 and mineralogy. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



EDUCATION AND THE TEADES 



To THE Editoe of SCIENCE: In your issue 

 for November 14 Mr. William Kent asks a 

 question which interests me greatly and 

 which, although I can not answer, I believe I 

 can lay down the lines along which the answer 

 must be made. 



In the first place, I wish to express my un- 

 qualified approval of the letter of Stella V. 

 Kellerman in your issue of November 13, with 



which Mr. Kent expresses agreement, but 

 which causes him to ask the question referred 

 to. Latin, Greek and' the mathematics have 

 been taught for so many centuries that we 

 have learned how to get out of them the 

 highest possible degree of pedagogic value. 

 This merely means that we have learned how, 

 by means of studies of this character, to get 

 hard work out of the student, while at the 

 same time we maintain his interest. I as- 

 sume that the pedagogic value of a study is 

 largely comprehended in the possibility of 

 teaching in the manner above mentioned. A 

 great many people who honestly believe that 

 our system of education should take more ac- 

 count of the daily affairs of life fear that 

 when we replace any of the old studies by new 

 ones which relate to modem industries, the 

 work of the schools will lose its pedagogic 

 value. Speaking in a general way, I believe 

 this will be true, but this is not because the 

 new studies do not have this value in them, 

 but because we have not yet learned how to 

 get it out of them. I believe there are some 

 things which have higher pedagogic value 

 than anjrthing taught in our schools to-day, 

 else why is it that with only 29 per cent, of 

 our population actually living on the farm, 

 with miserably poor school facilities as com- 

 pared with our city population, this 29 per 

 cent, furnishes about 70 per cent, of the lead- 

 ers in every phase of activity in this country ? 

 The point I wish to make is further illus- 

 trated by an instance that occurred in con- 

 nection with the school garden work in Wash- 

 ington city schools. The teacher in charge 

 had found difficulty in getting boys twelve to 

 fifteen years old to lay off the plats properly. 

 Two little boys, six and eight years old, from 

 the hills of Virginia, came into school, never 

 having seen plats laid off, but it was found 

 that even the younger of these, if put in 

 charge of a squad of boys twice his age, would 

 have the work done according to directions. 

 This greatly puzzled the teacher, and she 

 asked me to explain it. I gave as an explana- 

 tion the fact that these two small boys had 

 enjoyed better pedagogical advantages than 

 the others. But the teacher thought this im- 



