576 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. \ail., No. 203 



in whose schools discipline was good, though no 

 corporal punishment was allowed. Dr. Dittes 

 insisted that the school must not be made a house 

 of correction. The voting on the resolutions seems 

 to have been attended with much confusion, as 

 the result is disputed. The final figm-es given 

 were, for the adoption of the resolutions contained 

 in the committee's report, 181 ; against their adop- 

 tion, 168. The Austrian papers condemn the 

 teachers for adopting the resolutions ; and the 

 Neue freie presse of Vienna went so far as to say 

 that this public confession by Austrian teachers, 

 that they cannot accomplish their high task with- 

 out the use of the rod, is proof that the main prob- 

 lem to be solved is not how to reform the educa- 

 tion of children, but how to reform the training of 

 teachers. 



In New York City, Mayor Grace has followed 

 up his excellent appointments to the school board 

 by a letter addressed to that body on the subject 

 of industrial education in the schools. Mayor 

 Grace is of opinion that now is an exception- 

 ally favorable time for the establishment and 

 equipment of an industrial school for girls, be- 

 cause the normal college is in what may be 

 termed a ' state of congestion ; ' hundreds of ap- 

 plicants who have demonstrated their fitness by 

 obtaining the pei'centage required on examination, 

 being turned away every year owing to lack of 

 accommodation. Mayor Grace's idea is, that an 

 industrial school can now be established in which 

 young women may be taught such special 

 branches as phonography, telegraphy, book-keep- 

 ing, cooking, sewing, and type- writing. Admis- 

 sion to this school should be from the various 

 grammar-schools throughout the city, and thus 

 the overpressure at the normal college would be 

 relieved. This school could be made to serve as 

 an experiment, and upon its success would prob- 

 ably depend the future introduction of industrial 

 education upon a more extended scale. By way 

 of practical advice, the mayor recommends the 

 board of education to apply to the board of esti- 

 mate for an appropriatioa sufficient to start such 

 a school, and promises his own vote and voice in 

 favor of granting such an application if it is 

 made. 



professors and teachers met at Hanover and or- 

 ganized as the Verband der deutschen neuphilolo- 

 gischen lehrschaft. The same conditions seem to 

 prevail abroad as here, for we read in Modern- 

 language notes that at the Hanover meeting pretty 

 much the same wailings were heard about the 

 defects of pedagogic methods, the preponderance 

 of the classical element in the schools, and the ne- 

 cessity for organization, as went up from the as- 

 sembly by which the American modern-language 

 association was formed. But modei-n-language 

 teachers seem to disagree widely among them- 

 selves as to method, as any one can learn by read- 

 ing discussions on the subject, such as that lately 

 printed in the Academy, the excellent journal pub- 

 lished by the associated academic principals of the 

 state of New York. If they are to carry on a 

 vigorous attack against the methods of classical 

 instruction, they must themselves present a united 

 front, and come to a definite agreement as to how 

 modern languages can be best and most expedi- 

 tiously learned. We very frequently hear com- 

 plaints from university professors that they are 

 grently crippled in teaching their subjects, be- 

 cause the men who come up to them in junior, 

 senior, and graduate years, although they profess 

 to have studied German and French, cannot use 

 French and German authorities and books of ref- 

 erence. This certainly is wrong, and should not 

 be suffered to continue ; and it is our instructors 

 in modern languages to w^hom w^e must look for a 

 change. Our own firm conviction is, that, at the 

 present stage of scientific and literary study, a 

 studeiit entering the junior year of his college or 

 university course should be able to read French 

 and German fluently, and understand them readily 

 when spoken, if he is to gain the fullest benefit 

 from the last two years of his course. And this 

 knowledge will, we believe, be best secured by 

 making the ability to read one of these two lan- 

 guages a condition of admission to the freshman 

 class, and making the study of the other, with the 

 express aim of learning to read it, compulsory 

 during freshman and sophomore years. 



The Germans have been forming a modern- 

 language association similar to that in existence 

 here, and of which the fourth annual session is to 

 be held next week. About one hundred and fifty 



At the Philadelphia meeting of teachers of 

 preparatory schools, of which we print an account 

 elsewhere, President Magill of Swarthmore college 

 made an acute comment on Professor James's 

 paper on the professional training of teachers. He 

 said that chairs of pedagogy in the colleges would 

 not be of much avail if women, who are generally 



