willing to venture the latter. We all know the two types, and their rela

tive merits.

If each of these alternatives thus proves unsatisfactory, is there not some possible combination which may be suggested?

I venture to believe that such a possibility exists, and that it may be found in a classification of collegiate requirements into different groups, susceptible of separate treatment.

If we look at the requirements for admission into any of our larger colleges, we shall find that they naturally fall into three classes: first, those subjects which are required because the student must know them in order to have the power to go on with his subsequent studies; second, those which are required because the college authorities believe them to be desirable means of attaining such power; and, third, those which are required because the men in the secondary schools desire them and ask for the moral support of the colleges in promoting their study. As a notable example of the first class we may take mathematics. In our scientific schools, and to a less degree in all our colleges, some knowledge of mathematics is an absolute necessity for the successful pursuit of studies included in the course. The pupil must know a certain amount of algebra in order to study trigonometry; he must know a certain amount of trigonometry in order to be able to pursue successfully the arts of railroad surveying or of bridge design. The same characteristic holds good of most of our language requirements. Every student whatsoever needs to understand something of the use of the English language, because without such use all his communications of thought, if not his underlying thoughts themselves, are sure to lack precision. Any benefit which is expected from complex ideas by a man or woman who does not know how to express them is likely to prove illusory. And every student who is to pursue foreign literature in his college course must first have a knowledge of the elements of the language in which it is written, because without such knowledge he will waste his own time and that of his fellow-men.

Side by side with these requirements which are indispensable come others of a more auxiliary character. Not content with requiring a knowledge of English expression, the colleges prescribe the reading of certain books in English literature. Not stopping with the test of power to read and parse individual passages in Latin, the colleges prescribe a certain quantity of Latin reading as essential to the purpose in hand. They also require with each year an increasing knowledge of modern languages, not because the student is necessarily going to use both French and German in his college studies, but because no man is regarded by them as fitted for higher education unless he has a certain reading knowledge of both these languages.

There is also a third group of studies required, not as a necessary basis for subsequent work, but as a part of the general scheme of

secondary education in the country, to which it is desirable to give fair recognition. So many men in our schools desire to teach history, and can teach it well, that they wish this subject to be recognized in the college requirements, lest, by a failure to recognize it, its position in the schools should be degraded. What is true of history is true of a great deal of that descriptive science which has so large a part in our school courses at the present day. It is put in the scheme of requirements for admission to college, not because of a direct need of the college student, nor even because of its indirect bearing on meeting such a need; but because of a desire on the part of the colleges to co-operate with those who are engaged in the preparation of their pupils.

It is obvious, however, that the attempt to put all these different classes of subjects on the same basis is quite illogical. The student who rightly and deservedly is found radically deficient in studies of the first class has no business to go on with his course. No pupil who is ignorant of arithmetic can study algebra without injuring himself and his fellowstudents. No pupil who is ignorant of elementary algebra and geometry should be allowed to go on with the scientific school course, no matter what may be his attainments in other lines. In like manner, a knowledge of the essentials of English expression and of certain fundamental points in those other languages which the student is likely to use in his college course is a matter of vital necessity. No amount of acquirements and attainments in literature can logically be allowed to make up for a deficiency at this central point. It is on these subjects that the case for college examinations is strongest. This is the point at which any deficiency of preparation on the part of the candidates will hurt them most. It is also the point where an examination system is most feasible; where cram counts for least and power for most; where the school-teacher with high ideals of education has least reason to complain of the requirement that his pupils should be examined by an independent authority, because no method of education which falls short of meeting this test can possibly be considered good.

In the second group of studies-those which are auxiliary to the attainment of this power-greater latitude can be allowed. I should be in favor at once of putting all examinations on the extent of knowledge in these auxiliary subjects into the hands of a common examining board, in which different groups of educators were represented. Whether it would be wise to go one step farther, and introduce the certificate system in subjects of this group, is a matter which I should hardly like to prejudge at present.

In the third group of studies the certificate system could be allowed from the very outset. It is just here that the arguments for that system are strongest, for in this group the possible variety of methods is greatest, the difficulties of examination most unavoidable, and the reasons strongest

for preferring the teacher's judgment to that of an independent examiner or examining board.

If a phrase is needed to describe the principle on which this whole system of division rests, I should formulate it as follows: Divide our requirements into three groups of subjects: (1) prerequisites for power to go on with collegiate study; (2) attainments auxiliary to such power; (3) attainments chiefly useful in the general scheme of education. Let the tests of power as to what is to follow be in the hands of those who are to have charge of the student in the years which are to follow. Let the tests of attainment on what is behind be in the hands of those who have had charge of the pupil in the years which are behind.

This combination would have the advantage of reducing the number of our college examinations-in itself an extremely desirable thing-of preserving a standard of quality which schools would compete with one another to reach, and of allowing at the same time the utmost possible latitude in the methods employed by different teachers to bring their pupils up to that standard. On the other hand, it would be attended with certain dangers and difficulties. The chief objections which are likely to be thus raised may be stated as follows:

1. The attempt, which has been more than once made, to lay special stress on tests of power rather than on knowledge- for instance, sightreading of Latin and Greek authors, translation of English into Latin, etc. has disappointed the expectation of its advocates.

2. In the inevitable uncertainty attending the results of entrance examinations-due partly to luck, partly to the personal equation of the examiner, and partly to the varying physical condition of the candidates -the substitution of a small number of decisive examinations for the very great number now existing will cause some candidates to be unjustly rejected who, under the present requirements, atone for their deficiencies in some lines by indication of ability in others.

3. The necessary withdrawal from the examination scheme of subjects like history, descriptive botany, or parts of the English papers, will serve to give them an apparently inferior position, and will result in their neglect in those schools which desire to prove their success on the basis of the showing made by their candidates in college examinations. Let us take up these points in order.

The first of these objections is, I believe, historically well founded. It is, however, based on the experience of a time when neither teachers nor examiners knew their business as well as they now do. Latin prose composition, as taught in the schools of a generation ago, was simply a piece of mechanical drill on certain fixed phrases, without any infusion of the spirit of the language. The examiners, themselves trained, for the most part, in these same defective methods, set papers which were not real tests of power, and encouraged cramming of a bad sort. The same thing may

be said of most of the examinations in sight-reading of classical authors. They furnished no measure of that kind of power which is required by the college student in his subsequent use of the Latin or Greek language. Many of these papers depend far more upon the quick command of a vocabulary, at times when the candidate is specially nervous, than upon knowledge of linguistic structure. In the easy Latin or Greek which is generally given, the candidate who can remember the vocabulary can guess at the structure far better than the candidate who knows the structure can extemporize the vocabulary. Nor can this difficulty in the sight paper be wholly avoided by notes which give the meaning of a few words; for those words which help one boy may prove useless to another. The partial failure of sight papers to accomplish their end proves chiefly the defectiveness. of the means, and little or nothing as to the unattainability of the end.

Of course, it may be freely admitted that it would require great ability to carry out the proposed plan by right methods instead of wrong ones. It would perhaps be a number of years before we should know what furnished, on the whole, the best means of testing the student's power. But I feel quite confident that nothing which has hitherto been done indicates that the question could not be fairly well solved within a reasonable time. The argument concerning the dangerous fewness of the papers under the proposed plan deserves careful consideration. Anyone who knows the uncertainty attending the results of examinations in general, and of written examinations in particular, will be reluctant to reduce the variety of chances given to the student to prove in different kinds of papers his probable fitness for any course which he desires to undertake. Yet I believe that the dangers which arise in this way would be more than offset by the safety due to an increased care of reading which the substitution of the few papers for the many would render possible. If we should further extend to teachers of proved ability the opportunity to recommend, at the risk of their own reputation, for provisional admission to our freshman classes, pupils to whom the new system seemed to have done injustice, we should have in our hands a check which would not be greatly liable to abuse, and which would help to protect deserving students from the consequences of ill luck.

The objection regarding discrimination between studies is perhaps the one which will be most strongly urged. Yet I believe this objection to be based on what is in the long run not a fault, but a merit.

It is natural enough that a master in a secondary school who has special ability in teaching science or history should wish for the opportunity to prove what his pupils can do in collegiate examinations. Hel will urge that, if they are not given this opportunity to be examined, they will neglect the subjects in such a way as to do injustice to him and harm to themselves. It may seem hard to tell him that the apparent force of these arguments is based upon an overvaluation of the usefulness of his

work to boys and girls who are going to college. Yet I believe this to be the truth; and if it is truth, it should be told plainly.

I am not underrating the importance of these things in the scheme of secondary education. For the pupils who are going directly from the high school into practical life study of history and natural science is indispensable. Most of these pupils must get their knowledge of these subjects then, if they are to get it at all. For those who are going to pursue these studies afterward, on the other hand, such preliminary acquaintance with history and with science does not take, in any adequate degree, the place of language or of mathematics. History and natural science are studies which mark the culmination of an educational course, and which, if overdeveloped far before the close, have a tendency to weaken rather than to strengthen the student's powers of application. If by including these things in the examination system we give an artificial stimulus to their pursuit by boys or girls who are afterward going to college, I believe that we delay the advent of a reform in our school system which is of vital importance to us all. That reform will consist in the separation of our classes, both in the grammar schools and in the high schools, into groups that are about to finish their school days and groups that are preparing to advance farther.

In almost all our previous groupings we have tried to classify pupils on the lines of their different tastes, real or supposed. There is a great deal to be said in favor of a different system, which should classify them on the basis of the probable duration of the studies. It is a false idea to assume that those things which are taught to the students whose courses near their end are thereby cheapened or made inferior in value; and it is a yet worse mistake if, in the effort to avoid such cheapening, we put them into a place where they do not really belong. Our system of secondary education has reached a point of achievement where it can stand on its own merits. Those in charge of it recognize that they have outgrown the stage where their best usefulness was found in being mere preparatory schools. Let us emancipate ourselves from a set of ideas which are but the remnant of a state of things which we have now outgrown. Thus, and thus only, shall we obtain the best preparation for college, and the fullest development of the value and freedom of our secondary education.

A REPORT ON MANUAL TRAINING IN THE DETROIT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, WITH A DISCUSSION ON THE DISCIPLINARY VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING

J. H. TRYBOM, SUPERVISOR OF MANUAL TRAINING, DETROIT, MICH. Among the many definitions of "education" that we find in current educational writings there is none that expresses one phase of the issue