1. To fit university students for the higher positions in the public-school service. 2. To promote the study of educational science. 3. To teach the history of education and of educational systems and doctrines. 4. To secure to teachers the rights, prerogatives, and advantages of a profession. 5. To give a more perfect unity to the State educational system by bringing the secondary schools into closer relation with the university. Very clearly the scope of the work had expanded beyond its original limits; it was now proposed to raise education to the level of a university subject. It may be added that this early ideal has ever been kept in view, and that the present head of the department sees no reason for either changing or materially modifying it.

Referring in his next report to the important step that had been taken in establishing the new chair, President Angell said he was not aware that there was a chair exclusively for this work in any other American college. He added a further justification of the chair, and closed with assuring the conductors of the State Normal School that no invasion of their province was intended. "The line between their work and ours," he said, "is very distinct." The university wished to aid the students who were intending teachers to prepare for their work; while the normal school would be helped rather than hindered if the university should succeed in strengthening in the minds of its graduates and of the public the conviction that there is indeed a philosophy, a science, of education, which it was aiming to teach to such of its students as desired to receive the instruction.

The Board of Regents made a happy choice in selecting its first professor of education. William H. Payne, who was called to the new chair, was recommended for the position both by his studies of his subject and his practical experience as a teacher and superintendent of schools. He pursued a course that steadily but surely won the confidence of the teachers, educators, and enlightened citizens of the State. He began with a modest program of but two courses for the year; one practical and one historical, philosophical, and critical, each embracing two lectures a week. The work expanded as time

went on until, at Professor Payne's withdrawal from the university in February, 1888, he offered seven different courses, equal to twenty-one hours of instruction for a single semester. Not only by his instruction and administration of the department, but also by his writings, he firmly established the chair in the respect and confidence of the university constituency and of prominent educators thruout the country. Of his writings mention may be made of "Education as a university study" and the "Study of education at the University of Michigan," both to be found in his well-known volume, entitled Contributions to the science of education.

At present ten different courses are offered in the department, the full equivalent of twenty-four hours for a semester. No better evidence of the spirit in which the new subject was received by the students at Ann Arbor could be desired than the history of the steady and permanent expansion of the field of study and instruction. However, the statistics of elections confirm this view. In 1879-80 the number of such elections was 97, made by 72 different students; in 1885-86 there were 180 elections made by 117 students. Tradition relates that there was at first some indifference or skepticism in the faculty relative to the new professorship; one veteran, for example, asked what literature there was for the professor of education to teach; but this state of mind quickly gave place to general appreciation and conviction, and the writer is not aware that any of the old feeling now exists.

In his report for the year 1879, the Commissioner of Education posted the books to date, but not with entire accuracy, as follows:

While efforts are thus in progress for multiplying the number of training schools for teachers, and improving those in operation, many colleges and universities are making special provision for instruction in the theory and art of teaching. Chairs of pedagogics have been established in the Universities of Missouri, Michigan, and Iowa; didactics is taught by lectures in the University of Wisconsin, and plans are making for courses of lectures in pedagogics in Harvard University.8

Harper's Weekly signalized the establishment of the new chair at Ann Arbor in a brief article entitled "Teaching how to teach." A few sentences may be quoted:

p. lxxx.

The University of Michigan is one of the most progressive as well as efficient of our great schools of learning, and adapts itself with singular facility to the conditions of its situation in a rapidly developing country. It was, we believe, the first of our larger universities to adopt the elective system of study, and its spirit has been always hospitable and generous. The most striking fact in its recent annals is the establishment of a chair of the history, theory, and art of education. The value of such a chair is seen at once from the fact that the public schools of Michigan generally fall under the control of graduates of the University. . . This action will promote the highest interests of education, not only by tempting future teachers to the training of the University, but by apprising the public that teaching is itself an art, and that the knowledge how to teach may make all the difference between school money well or uselessly spent in a community. Both the education and the charitable systems of Michigan have an enviable reputation, and the good example set by its University will be doubtless heeded and followed elsewhere."

We cannot now follow this interesting line of educational development farther. Down to 1886 Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, the universities of Wisconsin and Kansas, and De Pauw University had established chairs of education. Since that time a much greater number of universities and colleges have followed the example. There can be little doubt that ere long every institution of higher learning that claims to be in the line of educational progress will be found giving instruction in the science, art, and history of education, or feel called upon to assign a special reason why it does not do so. Those best qualified to form a judgment in the matter place a high valuation upon what the universities and colleges have done already, and at the same time look to them with greatly increased confidence for the future.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,

ANN ARBOR, MICH.

July 26, 1879.

B. A. HINSDALE

II

THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNALS OF FRANCE 1

1

Thirty years ago French educational journalism did not exist, so to speak. Hardly more than two or three journals were devoted to questions of education or instruction. But since 1870, after the Republic, in carrying on the work of the French Revolution, had inspired every department of education with splendid energy, since the creation by thousands of new schools, there has been a change indeed. Our hundred thousand teachers, men and women, and our professors of every rank more and more feel the necessity of being informed regarding educational events and the ways and means for better work with their classes. The educational press has in fact this double duty: to record what has been accomplished, and to serve as a guide in the work of the schoolroom. It has, indeed, still another function, that, namely, of timely discussion and of advocating desirable reforms; and there is always reform, amelioration, progress to be desired.

In all of these directions, the utility of the educational press has been increasingly evinced and recognized. Its development, naturally, has corresponded with the growth of public education itself. Its readers now are very numerous. Besides, the unceasing efforts toward better organization have set for its solution a vast number of problems undreamed of during the former period of long inertia. Finally, liberty of discussion being now allowed, many who formerly were silent because forbidden to publish their views, freely take the pen and express their opinions. As a result our educational journals are now counted by the hundred, the major part of them being devoted to popular education, for in this domain their work is especially fruitful, both because of the great number of readers whom they address and because of the relative novelty

'Translated from the author's manuscript by Frederic L. Luqueer, Ph. D., Principal of Public School No. 22, Brooklyn, N. Y.

of the subjects they treat. Each year sees new papers appear, not all of which live; but some easily take their place in the front rank of their contemporaries and sometimes even surpass them. The educational journalists of France are at this moment a veritable power. One proof of this is the formation of their "general associations," and the preparations for an international congress of the educational press, to be held during the universal exposition of 1900.2

This then is a favorable moment for briefly sketching the state of our school periodicals, by grouping them in classes, without any exhaustive enumeration, and by laying special stress upon those which, because of their importance, merit recommendation even to readers of other lands.

Almost all the journals of which I have to speak are independent publications, due to private initiative. The educational press is as untrammeled as the political press. And at times our educational journalists assail the administrative authorities and attack the governmental acts with a freedom of criticism that would not perhaps be tolerated in New York or Chicago! But the administration lives and lets live; and, besides, it has its own organs constituting in some sort an official press.

There is, first, the Bulletin administratif of the minister of public instruction,3 a compilation of all the official acts relative to the three orders of schools, primary, secondary, and higher. An educational character is given to this state publication by its containing all the circulars and all the ministerial instructions issued as guides to the teachers in their work as professors and educators.

Then there are the departmental Bulletins de l'instruction primaire, organs of the inspectors of the Academy and of the departmental councils. These bulletins-there is one for every department—are in periodical form of monthly issue, and are

L'Association générale des membres de la presse de l'enseignement was founded January 27, 1897. It published in 1899 its first report; its president is M. Beurdeley, mayor of the 8th arrondissement of Paris.

3 Bulletin administratif du ministère de l'instruction publique, a weekly publication (Imprimerie nationale, 5 fr. a year).