July 29, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



135 



should be carried on, so that there might 

 be unlimited manual temptation in the path 

 of the scholar, who should be free to at- 

 tempt anything that he liked without fol- 

 lowing a routine course. 



School Management.— It is generally 

 known that the American school system is 

 very ineffectively controlled at the present 

 time and that it is too often dominated by 

 political influences. This is well brought 

 out in a recent article in the Forum for 

 October to December, 1903. In New York, 

 both the elementary and the high schools 

 are controlled by an able city superintend- 

 ent, who has a staff of inspectors under 

 him, and all appointments are made on a 

 civil service, basis ; but a year or two hence, 

 I believe, a Tammany-appointed inspector 

 may be his successor. All the schools work 

 to programs authorized by the superintend- 

 ent, one program being laid down for the 

 elementary, another for the high schools. 

 The latter, however, is based on the elective 

 system, a considerable range in the choice 

 of subjects being allowed. There is no 

 doubt that this system is subject to consid- 

 erable abuse and that 'soft options' are 

 much in request. It is beyond question 

 most desirable that special aptitudes should 

 be developed and that teachers should be in 

 eveiy way mindful of these ; but boys and 

 girls can not always be judges of what is 

 good for them, nor have they the necessary 

 worldly knowledge to settle for themselves. 

 The Americans do not seem to have settled 

 any more than we have what are the neces- 

 sary elements of a rational course of school 

 study. 



As they work to a common program, both 

 the freedom of the high schools and the 

 responsibility of their directors are limited 

 in a way altogether unknown here, perhaps 

 to an unfortunate extent. Given an ideal 

 superintendent with an ideal staff, the sys- 

 tem might work well. But no special effort 

 is made or is likelv to be made to secure 



such an ideal executive; yet it should be 

 aimed at. The combined intelligence of 

 the teachers must be in excess of that of 

 the executive and it should be brought more 

 into operation ; unless the Americans de- 

 sire to stereotype all teaching, they must 

 be prepared to grant almost absolute free- 

 dom to their teachers. This does not pre- 

 clude either the holding up of example or 

 fair criticism. Both here and there the 

 spirit of cooperation needs to be brought 

 effectively into action. Our education de- 

 partment hitherto has had no intelligence 

 department ; it has had no clearly thought- 

 out, definite educational policy; there has 

 been no effective means of keeping the in- 

 spectorate informed on all matters relating 

 to educational method and no recognized 

 means whatever of securing exchange of 

 opinion and discussion either among the 

 inspectors themselves or between them and 

 teachers at large. The work of education 

 has been carried on in holes and corners 

 into which outside influences have pene- 

 trated with difficulty. In both countries 

 we need to organize the work on a scien- 

 tific basis; there should be some conscious 

 effort made to substitute the good for the 

 bad and even for the mediocre. 



Female Teachers. — Most of us who are 

 conversant with school work were struck 

 by the distinctly low average of attainment 

 in the American high schools. To what is 

 this attributable 1 In part probably to the 

 conditions which prevail in American life ; 

 but in large measure also, I venture to 

 think, to the prevalence of mixed schools 

 and the preponderance of women teachers. 



Admitting that it may be possible, even 

 desirable, to bring up the two sexes to- 

 gether in the earlier years of school life, 

 I venture to think that we must sooner or 

 later come to admit that it is wrong to do 

 so during the later years, if the object be 

 to develop a virile man. To put the matter 

 in very simple terms, it seemed to me on 



