THE

HE state of Wisconsin is just now involved in a desperate political conflict, in which the very existence of its admirable common school system is imperilled. The two extreme parties, representing the unreasoning educational antagonisms of the old world, are intrenched and ready to wage war to the death. The ultra secular party that would separate public education from everything called religion or morality, or "tainted" therewith, seems to have captured the Supreme Court, which has just decided that the Bible is an unfit book for any use in the common school. While this decision gratifies the great crowd of unbelievers in religion, it will certainly alienate the larger body of American-born people, who believe the Bible is the hand-book of public and private morality, and will not permanently support a school system managed in the interest of philosophic or popular atheism. On the other hand, the Catholic and Lutheran Priesthood are carrying on a crusade against a law that compels every school to have a department in which the common branches are taught in the English language. So the lines are drawn between the republican American idea of universal education in the English language, with character training on the basis of the practical religion of the New Testament, and the continental European notion of an eternal war between the high ecclesiastic and his equally intolerant opponent, the ultra secularist. If the people of Wisconsin submit to either of these demands, they will certainly lose the best thing, in their state, their excellent system of common school instruction.

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HEN Mr. Matthew Arnold defined Education as "the art of knowing ones self and knowing the world," he illustrated the "magnificent deficiency" of that high expertism which is invading many of our great seats of learning, and may in time, unless checked, destroy any system of public education. Education means, - knowing, doing, and being; -and the two latter elements represent fundamental necessities in all training of childhood and youth. Knowledge bereft of character and executive force is powerless for good; indeed, impossible without the love and practice of truth, which is the soul of morality and religion. The conceit that one class of faculties can be taken out from a boy, like the lungs or stomach from a manikin, and polished up by itself, is simply one of the superstitions in which the narrow expert rivals the most bigoted churchman. The boy goes altogether, and neglect of moral or executive training in school, leaves him, even if a prodigy in learning, a savage in manhood or an imbecile in practical life. It is for this reason that the opinions of our college professors on political and social affairs, even on educational questions, frequently carry so little weight with the great body of intelligent.

American people. Such men, however competent to teach in their own departments, are often untrained, inexperienced, and often crotchety specimens of prolonged college juvenility. In such cases the expert has left the man so far in the rear that all attempts at "catching up" only display incompetency for real leadership in public affairs.

THE

HE American Institute of Instruction, the oldest general teachers' organization in America, holds its annual meeting for the present year, July 7-10, at Saratoga Springs, N. Y. Many indications. point to a large and earnest gathering from New England. Engagements for addresses have been made with President G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, on "A Plea for Studying European Systems of Education"; Mr. John Tetlow, Principal of Girls' High and Latin Schools, Boston, on "School Instruction in Morals and Manners"; Superintendent G. C. Fisher of Weymouth, on "Woman in Education"; Professor William North Rice of Wesleyan University, on "The Place of Natural Science in the Educational Course "; Superintendent Edwin P. Seaver of Boston, on "The Preparation of Teachers"; President E. B. Andrews of Brown University, on " Patriotism and the Schools"; and President B. P. Raymond of Wesleyan University. Brief addresses will also be given by President Seth Low of Columbia College, Hon. Henry Barnard of Connecticut, and Hon. T. B. Stockwell of Rhode Island. Correspondence with other speakers of eminence is not yet concluded. There will be reduced hotel rates and railroad fares, and membership in the Institute, on which these courtesies depend, is open to all, being easily secured at the meeting. The sessions are held mornings and evenings, in the largest audience room in the place. The afternoons are devoted to rest and recreation. A bulletin giving complete details will be issued on or before June 1, and will be sent to all whose names are forwarded to George A. Littlefield, Providence, R. I.

ONE of of the fies, more

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NE of the signs of the times to which an experienced observer of Southern affairs testifies, is that the more intelligent negroes are now insisting on their own race name: Negro," instead of "colored people." Real progress begins in a man or a race when its common name and actual history and condition are faced with a determination to make them respectable. When the recent "freedman" of the South is fully determined to adopt his own name, written with a big "N,” and live up to all which that implies, the country will be safe. Another "straw was the interesting spectacle in a Texas town, of the planting of two handsome trees on Arbor day, on opposite sides of a schoolhouse avenue; in memory of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln. A third most dramatic spectacle was the recent ceremony of the raising of the American flag over the white boys' High schoolhouse in New

Orleans, with torrents of patriotic eloquence; as contrasted with the hanging of a New Orleans man by General Butler, for hauling down the same emblem of national supremacy.

The world moves, and the politicians, including the priests, may well put on their seven-league boots to keep step to the music of the Union.

A

MONG the new questions that have arisen as society changes have gone forward, is, what to do with the city boy in summer. Week after week has been added to the vacation season until it has absorbed a quarter of the year. And the proportionate number of city children has been increased as our population flocks to the large towns. One quarter of our population are now city dwellers.

And what becomes of the boys? Not the sons of those who can take their families to the mountains or the sea, where new scenes and engagements can occupy them, but the boys who must spend their summers where they spend their winters?

At the same time another line of influences has led to a hardly foreseen result that deeply touches their welfare. The abuses of child labor have led our legislatures to forbid the employment of children in mills and factories until a later and later age, so that the preventives of idleness by opportunities of remunerative employment are taken away in many cases.

What shall the boys do? We who may chance also to spend our summers in the city sometimes know what they do. The streets take no vacation. The saloons take none. It is not to be wondered at that the child-labor-laws have often met the opposition of intelligent parents. They have learned that excessive labor is not the only, and perhaps not the greatest danger to be incurred.

At the same time an earnest discussion has arisen respecting the education required to fit the children to do their work in this machinedriving age. In the country the matter takes care of itself. The boys can step at once into the employment in which it is to be hoped many of them will spend their lives. But not so in the city: no manufacturer, even if the law allowed him, would care to be troubled with brief vacation apprenticeships, and the merchants have their least business at this season.

On the other hand, many educators see no feasible way in which safely to mingle industrial education with our school curriculum.

Now why cannot one question be made to solve the other? Why not provide for the city boys by giving them industrial training in summer schools? In the new enthusiasm for easy summer study, let not the boys be overlooked.

Here is our vast school property lying idle for a large portion of the year, and our children suffering from the still worse idleness of a too prolonged vacation.

There are a plenty of intelligent printers and other mechanics who can be had at this slack time of the year to give the required instruction. A half-day session of our schools to teach the boys the use of tools and how to handle machinery would be no less a delight than a profit to them. It would give them something to do, and more to think of and imitate at home. It would not in the least detract from the benefit of rest from mental studies, but it would save them from the demoralization of abandonment to the street.

The terror of exposure to the saloon would be somewhat lifted from the hearts of fathers and mothers, and by the time the boys were through their mental training they would also be fitted to do, what more and more the average citizen has to do, take their places at the bench and the lathe.

Before all our city boys can become accountants and live by simply wielding the pen, they must be vastly fewer than they are, or ever are likely to be.

Steam has revolutionized society, and now electricity is taking its turn to do as much and more; and we cannot be too quick in adapting to the new conditions the minds and the hands of those who are to be the next generation of workers.

HE National Educational Association and Council of Education

Conventions at St. Paul,

July 4 to 11, 1890. Hon. James H. Canfield of Lawrence, Kansas, is President of the Association. It is expected that there will be twenty thousand teachers present from all points of the Union and Canada. The railroads have agreed to sell tickets to St. Paul and return for one lowest first-class single rate for round trip, plus $2, membership fee. Open to all persons. The most complete arrangements are being made to give the teachers a splendid welcome to the Northwest, and to make the meeting a great success. There will be ample hotel accommodations at reasonable rates. Local excursions are being planned to the Lake region, Yellowstone Park, Canadian National Park, and all important points of interest in the Northwest and on the Pacific Coast, which will furnish teachers with the finest summer holiday trips that they ever enjoyed.

Among the prominent speakers to be present are Bishop Quintard of Tennessee; Miss Frances E. Willard; Judge Gundy of Louisiana; U. S. Senator Blair of New Hamshire; Dr. W. T. Harris, U. S. Commissioner of Education; Doctor Hancock of Ohio; and Rev. A. E. Winship of Boston.

For copy of Official Bulletin, and all particulars about rates, routes, entertainment and programs, ask your Railway Ticket Agent, or address the General Passenger Agent of the line you expect to go over, or address S. SHERIN, Secretary of St. Paul Executive Committee, Hotel Ryan, St. Paul, Minn.

FOREIGN NOTES.

GREAT BRITAIN.

HONORS TO DOCTOR JOULE. A movement has been started in Manchester to honor the memory of Doctor Joule by a monument. At a public meeting held for the furtherance of this purpose, Sir Henry Roscoe reminded the audience that thirty-two years ago in his inaugu ral address on assuming the chair of chemistry in Owens College, he had drawn attention to Joule's great work. On that occasion after explaining as well as he could to unscientific people the meaning of the mechanical equivalent of heat and the conservation of energy, he predicted that Manchester's renown in the future would rest, not upon its importance in the cotton trade, but rather because there " John Dalton worked out the atomic theory of chemistry, and James Prescott Joule placed upon a sure experimental basis the grand principle of the conservation of energy."

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Mr. Roscoe also recalled the fact, that in 1843 the British Association had a narrow escape from rejecting Joule's first paper on the mechanical equivalent of heat.

LABORATORIES FOR WOMEN. - Bedford College, York Place, London, is rejoicing in the completion of its laboratories, the only ones in the metropolis exclusively for women. They are very light, wellplanned, and well equipped, and comprise physical, chemical, and biological laboratories.

INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION IN WALES. The dearth of provision for secondary education in Wales has long been a subject of concern. Recently a government grant was secured in aid of this department, and the aspect of the matter is changed.

The population of North Wales is about 500,000, and that of South Wales about 1,300,000. For this population there were grammar schools accommodating 3,000 boys, and proprietary and private schools with room for 2,000 more. Under the new act accommodation must be provided for an attendance of 20,000 boys and girls. A rough estimate gives the following funds now available for the development of