EDITORIAL.

NE of the notable educational movements of the New Year is set

The design of this organization is to extend the advantages of the higher instruction outside the university and school, by courses of study similar to the Chautauqua methods. An illustrious array of distinguished names gives importance to the association; Presidents Dwight of Yale and Patton of Princeton being the head of the executive committee and board of directors, and Superintendent Calkins of the school extension department. The one lack in the movement seems to be the absence of the name of any woman from the entire list of managers. As ninetenths of the students in this new all-out-doors university will be women, it would seem that these eminent gentlemen are slightly behind the times in their idea of university education. However, the enterprise is a move in the right direction, and, in due time, women will probably receive a courteous invitation to join hands in the direction of an organization that may be made of great use to the country.

ONE

NE of the most reliable tests of the success of an institution of learning is the spirit of inquiry and enthusiasm for good things in the body of its students. There are colleges where the coming of any eminent man is the signal for a mental holiday. And no audience is so inspiring as a room full of students, eager for information, ready to be moved and hospitable to anybody who has a valuable word to impart. There are others where the most distinguished visitor stands before empty benches and is chilled by the half-hearted reception of his best idea. The explanation is often to be found in the method of instruction. There are famous schools whose method is a yearly round of lesson-grinding, which crushes the life and blights the enthusiasm of the most earnest student, and nurses in the average scholar that indifference to culture, and incapacity for enthusiasm which is the most melancholy result of false teaching. The best thing about the best university is the "noble" rage for high things, the alertness for truth, the eagerness to see and hear famous people, which will not let the student sleep till he, too, is in sight of his promised land.

CHIC

HICAGO people are trying to be very wise in executing the Compulsory Education Law. A committee of women from the Women's Club, presided over by Mrs. Tuley, wife of Judge Tuley,

have undertaken to clothe the children who would otherwise be kept from school on account of insufficient or unsuitable apparel. Where the family are in need of the child's earnings, attendance at the night school is accepted. The Board discard the name Truant Officer, and use Attendance Agent, and these officers are instructed to use friendly methods in their work and avoid, as far as possible, any needless compulsion. About one half of these officers are women and are proving themselves very efficient in winning the children and mothers to the schools. Suffering and worthy families are thus discovered that would probably not be found by the charity organizations. The clause requiring the children to attend schools where geography, grammar and United States History are taught in English, is being very liberally interpreted by the Board, or indeed overlooked at present, but may be the cause of trouble with the foreign population of Catholics and Lutherans, but we hope not.

WH

zen.

HAT is called by the politicians "The Race Question," whether including the African, Aboriginal American, Asiatic or lowdown European type of humanity, is simply a question of educational method in lifting "men of low degree" to that broad and more effective use of themselves, which will enable them to play an honorable part in the great drama of American citizenship. We do not suppose any respectable American would favor the civil boycott being applied to any class of people found by experience competent to the duties of a citiAnd the question whether any class of people now on the ground is permanently incompetent for such duties, is not one of theory but of fact, to be determined only by fair test, according to the most approved educational methods. The city of Jackson, Miss., seems to be moving in the right direction, by asking from the legislature a law similar to that of Massachusetts, limiting municipal suffrage to those who can read and write. Now let that city, if it obtains this law, enforce it fairly and put an effective system of public schools on the ground, and it may have the honor of leading the whole country out of the dangerous complication of the vast and fearful illiteracy, not confined to any state or section. The bottom deficiency of public men in our country is that well hit off by Mr. Bryce, in his admirable work on America, when he says the government of the United States is founded on a theory of the total depravity of man, and seems to rely far more on legal checks and balances than on great moral forces for its working. Could even our great statesmen get into their heads and hearts the fundamental truth of all civilization, that education, in its broadest sense, is the grand moving power of human society, and that perma

nent distrust of man is high treason against the American Republic, this and a good many other vexed questions" would find a solution as the years go on.

Now

OW that instruction in Civics is in the air, may it not be in order to suggest that a good point to begin is by teachers, parents and all persons connected with the instruction of children and youth, persistently inculcating the duty of respect for men in public station, until proved unworthy, with at least, decent fair play in the judgment of the character and services of public officials. The standing abomination of our political press, is its vulgar, wicked habit of holding up political opponents to the moral condemnation of everybody, as not only wrong in their political policy, but unworthy of personal respect. No man in Washington, today, in high office, is exempt from this foul smirching of character and conduct, by journals of great influence, widely read, and edited by men who would resent a reflection of the same kind on themselves as a deadly personal insult. Of course, the well-informed dismiss this wretched twaddle for what it is worth, but the mischief comes lower down. Every bright American boy or girl reads the newspapers, and it is almost impossible to mention the name of an eminent statesman in a company of smart youngsters without hearing the epithets so freely bandied about in the newspapers applied even in a more positive way than by their grown instructors. What is to be hoped of a generation coming up to responsible citizenship with this contempt for public men and unbelief in official honesty? If it be said that there is much to justify this feeling, we reply, that the present low tone of public life is largely the result of this habit of indiscriminate abuse and uncharitable judgment. Thousands of our most capable men are kept out of public life by the unwillingness to face this fire of scathing invective, leaving important places to be filled by the political hack with hide impervious to assault. The worst of it is that the journals that assume to represent the higher culture are often the most cynical, intolerant, and reckless in their dealing with character and reputation. Let us begin at the beginning, and teach children respect for authority, with charity, justice, and moderation in dealing with the character, which is the most precious treasure of every man who serves the state.

THE

HE School Committee of Boston has shown good sense and avoided doing an injury to their own schools by refusing to take from their teachers the power to inflict corporal punishment. In many schools the exercise of this power is not needed, but the power to punish for misconduct should not be withdrawn.

COM

DOCTOR WINCHELL AND GEOLOGY.1

NOMMENTING on the conflicting opinions at a late meeting of the Colorado State Teachers' Association, President Paul H. Hanus, himself a student of no mean attainments, but having his educational basis in the modern scientific instruction of the most liberal type, concluded somewhat as follows:

"I am constrained to believe that men of liberal culture, be their early training classical or scientific, unless professionally interested in defending their education, are inclined to underrate the mother of their own discipline, and to overrate those studies that we now find necessary as supplemental to our former acquisitions in developing for ourselves well rounded manhood and culture."

The case seems after this fashion, that with which we are familiar through use and mastery, that in fact which has been absorbed in our very life and is the practical instrument by which we are able to make new conquests, is no longer an object of need in our experience, no longer an acquirement for us to strive, and because no more our goal, it seems to us of little value to others.

On the other hand that which we now find an object of interest to us, a need in fact to our adjustment of experience, seems the one thing practical in our judgment for others, simply because it is the essential for us at this present stage of our development.

In the examination of Dr. Alexander Winchell's Shall We Teach Geology? we come across a remarkable case of this partial reasoning. We venture verily that scientific men will envy Dr. Winchell much more his magnificent diction acquired by his classical training than his accuracy and skill as a scientific investigator in the realm of geological science.

Somehow it is as Dr. Edmund Andrews of Chicago put it in a recent address before the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan: A classical education enables a man to ride through life in a coach in which he can invite the company of his friends, while a modern special education requires that the person mount a bicycle and though he may get along very well himself, go it alone.

1 SHALL WE TEACH GEOLOGY? A discussion of the place of Geology in modern educa. tion. By Alexander Winchell, LL. D., etc. Professor of Geology and Paleontology in the University of Michigan. Chicago: S. C. Griggs and Company, 1889, pp. 217. Price $1.00.

It is not odd, then, that Dr. Winchell, and his like, from wide culture, will continue to entertain the general reader, despite the incongruity of his eloquence to the logical support of his thesis. In this respect the Doctor resembles Max Mueller in his Science of Thought, where every interesting item in philology is stated in proof of his premise, whether it logically supports his thesis or not.

Doctor Winchell is enough of a philosopher to see the whole universe reflected through and from the point of view of geology; but not sufficiently developed in that direction to discover that every special sphere of human investigation carried on in the same spirit and with the same ends in view, yields the identical results that he claims for geology.

This common fault of specialists of thinking that because they may interpret the universe from their own point of departure, ergo, it is the essential point of departure and return, is the very best proof of the inefficiency of mere specialized training to satisfy society and elevate humanity.

The mere registrar of facts forgets that each member reflects the whole, and that the whole and every other part are essential to the life and the comprehension of each individual member, of his own experience. And yet the practical recognition of this organic conception, of the essential unity of experience, is the basis of intelligent citizenship and patriotism.

Doctor Winchell, like Edward Bellamy, has given utterance to so much that is grand and catholic that the critic might easily excuse the eccentricities, were these not the very points out of which the superficial will find support for their political, social, and educational heresies. For this reason it is not always safe for the perpetuity of sound doctrine to let partial statement pass without proper explanation and qualification.

It may not be unprofitable to call attention to a few cases in point: The struggle of geology, for existence, which the author so vividly depicts in the first chapter, is hardly in keeping with the large governmental aid enumerated later on in support of geological surveys. The simple fact is that geology of the class that Doctor Winchell describes, is a late study and can only be pursued with the best results by those of large experience and culture.

To popularize geology with a class that can have no power to read in nature her proper interpretation, is simply to degrade before the public the high esteem in which it is now held. This is acknowledged

by the author in various ways.

For example, the principal of one of the high schools, whom Doctor Winchell quotes, is taken to task for his inability to read properly geological history in his surroundings, though the principal is a very