Superintendent Aaron Gove moved that a committee of three be appointed by the chair to report a year hence a constitution and by-laws for the department under the limitations of the constitution and by-laws of the National Educational Association. Carried.

Superintendent R. G. Boone, Cincinnati, being recognized by the chair, presented an invitation to the department to meet at Cincinnati in 1902. Superintendent G. R. Glenn, of Georgia, seconded for Cincinnati.

Superintendent E. G. Cooley, Chicago, invited the department to meet in Chicago

in 1902.

State Superintendent W. W. Welch, of Montana, invited the department to meet in Helena, Mont.

Superintendent Gove expressed regret at manifestations of a disposition to return to the old order of things and to adopt an itinerant policy. He favored continuing the meeting at Chicago. Superintendent Blodgett, Syracuse, spoke in favor of the itinerant plan. Superintendent O'Connor, of Nebraska, favored Chicago.

John McDonald, of Kansas, invited the department to meet in Wichita, Kan.
State Superintendent Skinner, of New York, favored Chicago.

Pearse, Omaha, spoke for Chicago.

Superintendent

The department then proceeded to vote for the location of the meeting for 1902. Cincinnati received 109 votes; Chicago, 126 votes; Helena, 6 votes; Wichita, I vote. Chicago, having received the highest number of votes, was declared to be the choice of the department for the meeting in 1902.

President Harvey then introduced President Green of the National Educational Association, who addressed the department briefly regarding the meeting of the National Educational Association at Detroit in July, 1901.

The department then adjourned to meet at 2 P. M.

AFTERNOON SESSION

The department convened at 2 P. M., President Harvey in the chair.

Superintendent R. G. Boone of the Cincinnati schools read a paper upon "A Standard Course of Study for Elementary Schools in Cities."

The discussion was led by President A. S. Draper of the University of Illinois, and participated in further by Superintendent F. Louis Soldan, St. Louis.

Professor L. B. R. Briggs, of Harvard University, gave a paper upon "Some Aspects of Public-School Training."

The paper was discussed by Dr. William T. Harris, Washington; Dr. C. A. McMurry, State Normal School, De Kalb, Ill.; Superintendent William N. Hailmann, Dayton, O.; President R. H. Halsey, State Normal School, Oshkosh, Wis.; and Superintendent R. G.

Boone.

The meeting then adjourned to convene again at 8:15 P. M.

EVENING SESSION

The department was called to order at 8:15 P. M. by President Harvey.

Professor John Dewey, Chicago, gave the address of the evening, on "The Situation as Regards the Course of Study."

President Harvey announced the following committees, appointed in pursuance of resolutions passed by the department during the convention:

COMMITTEE ON SELECTION AND PUBLICATION OF MATERIAL RELATING TO CITY

SCHOOL SUPERVISION

kosh, Wis.

Superintendent J. M. Greenwood, Kansas City, Mo. President R. H. Halsey, State Normal School, Osh-
Superintendent W. J. M. Cox, Moline, Ill.
Dr. Emerson E. White, Columbus, O.
Superintendent E. H. Mark, Louisville, Ky.

Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia Univer-
sity, New York city.

State Superintendent N. C. Schaeffer, Harrisburg, Pa.

COMMITTEE TO FRAME CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE

Superintendent Aaron Gove, Denver, Colo.

Superintendent R. G. Boone, Cincinnati, O.
Superintendent William H. Maxwell, New York city.

The convention then adjourned sine die.

FRANK B. COOPER, Secretary.

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

THE GOSPEL OF WORK

EDWIN G. COOLEY, SUPERINTENDENT OF CITY SCHOOLS, CHICAGO, ILL. We are living in a civilization with a penchant for action; "hustle" is the watchword of the hour. A strenuous, or at least a clamorous, life is the only one worthy of the commendation of the American that is, the American of the latitude and longitude of Chicago. Americans, individually and collectively, seem to be looking about for more worlds to conquer.

Men of our day organize into numerous civic and other missionary associations, ready to undertake the redress of every public grievance, at least so far as this redress can be brought about on the platform and around the dinner table. Our ladies, thru their numerous clubs, are adding to the homely affairs of the household the task of the mental, moral, and physical regeneration of society. As a nation, we seem ready to undertake the larger responsibilities of world-regulation. In addition. to the task of absorbing the thousands of aliens who are seeking our hospitable shores, we are taking up the work of a national colporteur in foreign lands and in strange climes. Expansion and optimism are our ideals, as a nation and as individuals.

Along with this restless, active life has arisen a contempt for the passive virtues, and for people who profess, or who advocate, them. We seem to be ready to accept the doctrine that the earth and its fruits bel ong to those only who can use them, and who will and can use them according to modern ideas of the fitness of things. The red Indian who uses the earth as a hunting ground cannot expect to keep the land away from him who will raise corn and hogs on it. The Filipino who uses trusted with the stew

rosewood for railroad ties ought not to be ardship of earth's wonderful resources. The Boer who persists in cattle-raising in a country that abounds in gold and diamond mines should not expect to be permitted to stand in the way of modern progress and civilization. We apply the parable of the talents to such cases with a vengeance, transforming it into the doctrine that "might makes right."

Our lawmaking bodies show an inordinate faith in the power of authority in the form of legislative action. Every winter sees its additional mountain of legislation; and yet every reformer cries out for more, forgetting the most important factors of his problem-the officials who execute the laws, and the characteristics of the people who live under

them. Legislation is urged as tho life were passed in a vacuum and resistance were unknown.

Our schools have not escaped this modern tendency. We have been expanding with the rest. We have felt impelled to attempt the complete regeneration of society in four short years, regardless of thousands of years of opposing inheritances. We have been ready to undertake any new project that seemed to be of an educative nature, without considering its relations to other branches of work, or to the amount of unconsumed energy available. Happy and famous is the man or woman who has been able to set the schools a new task, for multitudes have arisen to call him a reformer.

The thorogoing belief in the efficiency of work and of the obligation of all mankind to work owes much to the evangelism of such men as Carlyle and Ruskin. Carlyle preached the gospel of work to a generation that looked for leadership and inspiration to men who had little or nothing to do. His Sartor Resartus, his Heroes, and his Past and Present are full of this gospel. He cries :

The world and all that is in it are the result of work. The great men in history, as well as the great races, have been those who earnestly worked. The old gospel was, "Know thyself;" the new is, "Know thy work and do it." All work is noble; a life of ease is not for any man. One monster there is in the world, the idle man. What is his religion? That nature is a phantasm, where cunning beggary or thievery may sometimes find good victual; that God is a lie; that man and his works are a lie.

Ruskin was almost equally earnest in his advocacy of work; and to precept added action. Many of us have read, with some amusement, of his road-building experiment with the Oxford students. But the young men who took part in this experiment never forgot the obligation he laid upon them, to labor- each within his particular province-with all his soul, with all his strength, and with all his mind.

The world has been greatly influenced by these teachings of Carlyle and Ruskin. In the lives of many of our famous men are to be found acknowledgments like that of Thomas Huxley, published in his recent Life and Letters. In recalling some of the powerful influences which have affected his life, Huxley speaks of the writings of Carlyle, and especially of Sartor Resartus. The idea that "work alone is noble; the doctrine that whatever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, faithfulness of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of strength a man had in him lies written in the work he does," has been an inspiration to the youth of the nineteenth century. The renewed interest in Carlyle and his work, shown by the placing of one of his essays on the college reading list, is a happy omen of continued interest in his ideas.

The teacher, like all earnest men, believes in his mission, and has an almost unbounded faith in the efficiency of school work. He, like Carlyle,

may underestimate the strength of the inherited impulses and instincts he deals with. He has usually been willing to add mountains of work to his own and his pupils' burdens. Any "ology" whatever can find advocates for a place in the curriculum; and too many of them have already succeeded in crowding themselves upon the school. Only a Carlylean temperament could have induced the teacher to attempt the mountains of work prescribed in some of our school programs. It is not strange that he sometimes adds to this another Carlylean characteristic, that of grumbling a little. In his application of the doctrines of Carlyle he has failed to discriminate, to realize that what we want today is not more subjects to work at, but a change in our method of teaching that will be in accordance with Carlyle's doctrine - a change that will offer opportunities for real work.

In the following statement of Carlyle is, I believe, the kernel of modern educational doctrine. He says:

The knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that. Properly, thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast by working; the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge, a thing to be argued in the schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic-vortices till we may try to fix it. Doubt of whatever kind can be ended by action alone. Man perfects himself by working. Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us.

In this utilizing of the motor influences, in this return to Froebel's idea of self-activity, we are getting into line with the influences that are moving modern society. We are beginning to believe in the doctrine of Dr. John Dewey, "that the school has no other educational resources than those which exist outside of the schools; that, so far as the principle is concerned, it is simply a continuation of the same methods which are operative in the informal education." The knowledge we get in connection with some activity, some piece of work we are earnestly striving to do, we can cleave to that. All other knowledge is likely to be held in out-of-the-way compartments of the mind, where practical application to the problem of life can never come. We are utilizing these motor influences in many ways in our modern school. The kindergarten, constructive work, and nature study; our manual training, and most of the methods of teaching other subjects, are endeavors to turn motor impulses. to use. As Dr. Dewey says:

We are coming to believe that the possibility of having knowledge become something more than the accumulation of facts and laws, of becoming actually operative in character and conduct, is dependent on the extent to which that information is evolved out of some need in the child's own experience and to which it receives application to that experience.

In other words, character-making is the result of doing something, is the result of the formation of habits. Indeed, we are almost ready for Carlyle's extreme statement: "All work is religion, and whatsoever religion is not work may go dwell among the Brahmins. Laborare est orare.