JANUARY 11, 1901.] 
The committee agrees that there is a place 
for many kinds of school, and that they, as a 
rule, have their separate purposes and are, in 
fact, not competitors either among themselves 
or with the common school system of the 
country. Manual training schools, in which, 
as Dr. Woodward has said, ‘the whole boy is 
sent to school,’ are commended as adjuncts to 
the existing system, and, as a matter of fact, 
such schools are rapidly becoming incorporated 
into the common school systems of our larger 
cities and industrial towns. Manual training 
and art education are considered desirable as a 
part of all public school education, and provi- 
sion should be made in them for both boys and 
girls, each in a suitable manner. The commit- 
tee considers such a combination to be ‘ the ideal 
public school’ for our country. The State 
agricultural and mechanical colleges constitute, 
in many of our States, another and important 
elass, and are doing work which is adjudged to 
be far more than a compensation for their cost 
tothe people. They are usually true secondary 
industrial schools, but they apparently divert 
many young men from agriculture into mechan- 
ical vocations. Minnesota, however, for ex- 
ample, and some other States, have very suc- 
cessful schools of agriculture.* 
The higher engineering schools are considered 
to be strictly professional schools of a high 
grade, which ‘rank with the best’ in any 
country. Our monotechnic or trade schools are 
still to be founded. They are considered to 
constitute the greatest need of the educational 
system. While the committee asserts that ‘all 
schooling should lead primarily to the elevation 
*In the State of New York, it may be observed, 
while the State college, Cornell University, has a pro. 
portionally large body of mechanical engineering 
students and a relatively small body of agricultural- 
ists, the latter, through its ‘university extension 
work,’ is performing an enormous task. It sent out 
in the year 1899-1900, over 7,000,000 pages of bulle- 
tins to farmers, embodying results of research in agri- 
cultural science and arts ; it taught classes of 20,000 
in ‘Farmers’ classes,’ 25,000 in its ‘Teachers’ 
courses,’ 35,000 in its ‘Junior Naturalists’? Clubs’ 
and 2,500 in ‘ Home Nature Study,’ a total of 83,000 
students outside of the university.—President Schur- 
man’s Report, 1899-1900. 
SCIENCE. 
69 
and development of the individual, and only 
secondarily to a greater material prosperity,’ 
and italicizes the statement, it is considered, 
nevertheless, imperative that such institutions 
be established, if we are to hold our own, in the 
future, in the great competition among the 
nations. It is asserted that such schools need 
not be so conducted as to abrogate the principle 
just stated. The State of Massachusetts is 
already systematically encouraging the organi- 
zation of textile schools, for example. It is 
such schools as these that have made Ger- 
many what she is, industrially. 
Supplementary schools for workers are com- 
mended, such as evening schools, correspond- 
ence schools, etc. Proprietary and public.and 
Y. M. C. A. evening schools, for example, are 
doing an immensely valuable work, and these 
schools cannot be too generally encouraged and 
sustained. Professor Higgins proposed ‘half- 
time’ school is thought well worthy of trial and 
is considered to have great promise. The higher 
schools of commerce and of business, which have 
been organized in some of our colleges already, 
are thought to be a step in the right direc- 
tion. 
The report is assumed to be preliminary and is 
to be later supplemented by special discussions 
of details and of special forms of industrial edu- 
cation. On the whole it would appear that the 
committee feel as did one of the gentlemen tak- 
ing part in the discussion, Mr. Rothwell, said : 
‘“‘sreater results can certainly be secured by 
educating the masses than in educating the 
small number in the higher departments of en-_ 
gineering’’ ; although, as the same speaker re- 
marked: ‘‘ Nothing can be said against that.’’ 
As Mr. Fay, of Rhode Island, put it, in his re- 
port to the State Legislature, 1877, the great 
problem is ‘ that of the adaptation of industrial 
education to our existing systems of mental 
training in the public schools,’ and in this the 
committee is also agreed. The committee and 
the disputants seem to have substantially agreed 
with Col. H.,D. Meier, who asserted that ‘the 
point that the better part of the man should be 
educated is met by an education based upon 
the natural sciences ’—after the manner advised . 
by Huxley, we may presume. 
R. H. THurston. 
