will not be surprised at the discovery of a first difference from the manners and customs of his family or neighborhood. He will not be astonished at the habits of doing and thinking which he sees among foreigners, but will explain them in the light which he has obtained from the comparative study of manners and customs and modes of doing things. He will be able to criticise his own manners and customs and methods of doing, and will see how to reform them in such a manner as to bring about a better conformity with what is rational.

It is in connection with this process of self-estrangement that a series of phenomena arises which take on the character of reaction against the ordinances of the institutions of culture-the phenomenal of student life. It is marked in the entire history of the race that the culture world, the world of self-estrangement, as organized in the school, the church, the state, and especially in the family, always assumes the attitude of authority and demands implicit obedience on the part of the child or the individual citizen. This obedience-more in ancient times than now has been insisted upon to such an extent as to threaten to produce the effacement of the individual. It was thought that the individual must be effaced before he could become a participator in the intellect and will of the social whole.

It sounds paradoxical to say that the pupil must be effaced before he can be reinforced. All the improvements and reforms in pedagogy from the beginning have made it a point of effort to correct this defect and prevent the complete effacement of the pupil; for the more one can save of the strength of the pupil in will and intellect, the better, provided it is turned in the direction of conformity to the will and intellect of the social whole. Insight, as we have before stated, emancipates the person from authority. When insight is obtained, there is no longer any blind. authority, for the person does his deed freely and intentionally thru insight into its rationality. He does not do it to oblige some other person merely, but because he sees that it is in itself reasonable.

Isolation of the school thus seems to mean something deeper than the mere lack of continuity with the home life, or even with the life of civil society in which the home life moves. It means the emancipation of the youth from the immediate sway of what is near and the bringing of his mind into an appreciation of what is far off in time and space, but which nevertheless has been powerful in making the present world what it is.

It is a process of correcting the judgment of the individual as to what his true self is, and as to what is of permanent value in human endeavor.

DISCUSSION

MRS. ELLA F. YOUNG, University of Chicago.-It is very difficult for me to oppose anything said by Dr. Harris; I owe so much to him. His generous encouragement in the past has been to me a source of continued inspiration. Doubtless many of you have

enjoyed similar experiences in your acquaintance with him. He has, however, asked me to discuss his paper, and he knows that there is a difference of opinion between us on this subject.

The word "isolation," as used in the paper just read, has not its customary significance. In the translation of Rosenkranz's Philosophy of Education, edited by Dr. Harris, the term "self-estrangement" is not used as synonymous with "isolation." I am not going to raise any opposition to “self-estrangement and its removal as presented in that book. But when the essayist treats the two, “estrangement” and “isolation,” as identical, he is plunging us into a war of words, because we are using the word "isolation" from different standpoints, or with different meanings. Self-estrangement is simply a stage in development of mind. The next stage in the process of culture, however, is the overcoming of the estrangement.

Isolation is a different thing. The child, the teacher, is put or puts himself into a place to do a prescribed thing, in the doing of which he is not co-operative; that is, a certain result is demanded of the isolated worker who does not have determining power in originating the method of the work. To indicate just what product a teacher or a learner is to aim to secure is to dictate the method of the individual. There is no greater bit of nonsense afloat than that which says: "I leave the teacher free. It is results only for which I ask." That means the teacher may work as she prefers in trying to duplicate the result which my mind has constructed. Carry this into the school, and there ensues that pedagogical cramp which the essayist described as resulting from the continual bracing of the teacher against the child's tendency to break away from the aim of the school work. Now, here you have the effect of isolation of the determination of the end for which the child works, from his own mental activity.

Great stress was laid by the speaker on the desirability of differentiating the method of the school from that of the home. I can't see the necessity for such a differentiation. In that very change lies the answer to that oft-repeated question: Why does a child learn so much by himself in the first six years of his life and so little, comparatively, in the school in the second six years? If the method of the first period, the working on material to obtain the answer which the child has raised, were adopted in the school, teachers would not suffer from pedagogical cramp. If this method should obtain thruout the school, neither the children nor the teachers would be isolated, as too frequently they are, from that self-activity which Dr. Harris in his writings urges as the essential of life, and yet which, in the mere hearing of the paper, I miss.

AARON GOVE, Denver, Colo.-Some of us who are present, superintendents of larger and smaller cities, I am sure will be gratified if the discussion can take a more practical form. We are fond of the poets and philosophers, but some of us, who are neither poets nor philosophers, are placed in the practical part of the work and confronted with obstacles, the removal of which is necessary. I am one of a large number of superintendents who have been made to realize within the last few years that the preparation of grammarschool pupils for the high school has not been as well done as formerly. Principals of the high schools complain that pupils come to them fairly well versed in general knowledge, but lacking in accuracy in the essentials demanded for intelligent work in the first year of the high school. This, we believe, has come about by the mellow training which they have received in the grammar school as contrasted with the more severe discipline of previous years. If this be true, generally, a halt must be called either in the number of subjects involved in the preparatory course or in the character of the training. It is helpful for the young person to know whether the horse lies down first in front or behind; whether the maple grows faster than the poplar; why mules and not horses are shipped to South Africa for military purposes; but it is far more important, and quite necessary, that the same young person shall be able to compute an arithmetical problem accurately, and be so well skilled in the elementary branches as to enable him to pursue intelligently the studies of the high-school course.

MRS. YOUNG.-I broke off suddenly, a few moments ago, in discussing this paper, because my remarks were taking on a practical nature, and it was evident that the essayist wished a discussion of only the theoretical phase of the question. The two phases are so intimate that it is almost impossible for me to treat one and neglect the other.

As regards the work in the secondary schools at the present time, I believe it to be far in advance of that of twenty years back. While it is true that the schools of the most modern type are weak in developing in the pupils the idea of rounding out their knowledge of that which they seek, yet there is the gain that the boys and girls are approaching science and history from their own past; are not looking at those subjects as if they dealt with something far above and away from the world in which the learners live.

The home, the past, of the pupils must be recognized in the school, otherwise pedagogical cramp and isolation will continue to play havoc in our work.

CHARLES B. GILBERT, Rochester, N. Y.-There is here clearly stated a vital issue. Between the two views is a great gulf fixed. The question is wholly of initiative. Is the work of the school to be predetermined in accordance with principles wholly apart from the child, or is it to be continually determined in accordance with the demands of his growing spirit? Is education-in other words, growth—a force acting from within out thru the child's self-activity, or is it something to be put on like a coat, and that regardless of fit? Are the child's previous growth and attainment to be ignored, or are his apperceiving masses to be made use of in determining the subject-matter and method of his education? I for one desire to be put on record as believing that education is growth and not a plaster.

Dr. Harris, in his paper, if I correctly heard it, spoke of the necessary effacement of the child before he can come into his heritage. How does that differ from the old belief in the necessity of breaking the will or the theological dogma of total depravity — both dreadful?

The child's entrance into the heritage of civilization and history is not cataclysmic; it is the gradual and gentle movement characteristic of growth. The difference between the two is as wide as the world.

JOHN W. COOK, president State Normal School, De Kalb, Ill.- I understand it to be the wish of the president of the department that the discussion of this remarkable paper should assume the character of a round table. I trust that its distinguished author will correct me if I indicate by what I shall attempt to say that I do not understand its purport.

The term "isolation" is new to me in this connection. I assume that it is substantially synonymous with our old friend "estrangement," which Dr. Rosenkranz has made familiar to students of the philosophy of education. I assume, further, that Dr. Harris, as is his usual custom, is seeking a fundamental category upon which our thinking may ground itself in dealing with the problem of education.

I am not surprised at the antagonisms which his discussion of his theme has aroused. Such words as "constraint," "self-restraint," "self-repression," "effacement of individuality," and others of their kind are the especial horror of a certain school of - not educational thinkers exactly, for that term does not describe their most characteristic quality— educational leaders who are looking at the problem from the side of method rather than from the standpoint of the philosopher who is seeking the fundamental principle. These men and women live in the schoolroom. They are in the constant companionship of childhood. They have witnessed the blight and mildew that are the inevitable consequence of the wretched methods that have characterized the schools of the past. We all know how Rousseau cried out against the enormities of the word-worshipers, and how the tender soul of Pestalozzi was stirred by the senseless formalism of his time. I sympathize deeply with the solicitude of these ladies and gentlemen lest the children should be deprived of their birthright of joy and freedom by the discipline of the school. But it surely will be clear to these good soldiers in the great cause of educational liberty, if they

will dismiss their fears for a moment, that this is not a discussion of method, but of what is true of the educative process. With this fact in mind, I am unable to see how issue can be maintained with any proposition that Dr. Harris has uttered.

Pray, what is it to become educated, if it is not to find one's self at home in regions that were before foreign, and consequently unknown? Is the child to live forever with the inanities of the nursery? What is the binominal theorem to the darlings of the kindergarten, in their little world a mile square? Yet the time will come when superb formula will be as simple as a nurse's tale. How? By successive invasions of strange realms, strange as a Greek letter to a three-year-old Polynesian, until they have lost their strangeness because they have revealed to the explorer their kinship to his larger self. And when the soul is no longer confronted by an alien world and challenged to press itself against its mysteries, that soul has reached the vanishing point of education.

And is this to be achieved without constraint or self-repression or submission to the authority of the next year's self? Is there to be no "effacement" of a small individuality in the interests of a large individuality? “Individuality” is a ticklish word to deal with in a “free” country. Was Huxley wrong when he asserted that “the only freedom that I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am willing to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me." Is inhibition really to be banished from the educational terminology in the interests of the spontaneity of the child? Of course, when we are sane and not engaged in controversial discourse, we are not going to urge such absurdities, for when inhibition goes we know that a large slice of attention will go along with it. No, gentlemen; I much mistake if every dissenter on this floor today will not be in substantial agreement with the main contention of Dr. Harris when the opportunity for a careful study of what seems to me to be his most delightful and revealing contribution to this aspect of educational thought shall be afforded by the publication of his address.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF THE YEAR

ELMER E. BROWN, PROFESSOR OF THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, CAL.

One year ago the annual report on educational progress was presented to this Council by Professor Hinsdale, of the University of Michigan. I cannot enter upon the similar task to which I have been assigned without first calling up the memory of that great teacher, who in the interim has been called from this earthly life.

sure.

Burke Aaron Hinsdale was one of the most useful and distinguished members of this Council, of which he was president in 1897. His scholarship was notably broad and accurate; his judgment was sane and In the meetings of the National Council and Association we have had many opportunities of seeing how illuminating and conclusive he could be in public debate. His logic was seasoned with genial humor; there was about him a very human apprehension of actualities; he was never a doctrinaire. Some of his strongest work was done in the field of history, and particularly in the history of American education. The last time I saw him he told me, with an almost boyish appearance of diffidence, that he had ventured to think of writing a general history of

education in the United States.

We have great reason to regret that this

project could not have been carried out.

As a member of some of his earliest classes in the University of Michigan, I desire to bear personal testimony to the helpful suggestiveness of his instruction, particularly in his seminary work in educational history. Doubtless many of those here present could tell of intellectual uplift and stimulus received in his class-room. And many more might speak of his personal kindliness. His massive frame was well matched by his broad sympathy and large-heartedness, and his interest in the homely necessary things of life.

"O mayster dere and fadir reverent —

Alas that thou thine excellent prudence
In thy bed mortel mighteste not bequethe!"

It is well that in considering our educational progress we should not forget those who have fallen by the way. Henry Barnard is gone-full of years and of honor; Thomas Davidson, that knightly spirit, preeminent in learning, has been taken, in the very strength of his years; only yesterday came the news that the venerable and honored Joseph Le Conte has passed away in the Yosemite Valley which he so greatly loved; and others, worthy of such goodly company, have passed with them. These men have deserved remembrance of their country and of their brethren. Our forward step is surer that they have lived and

wrought with us.

Now, in making a survey of the year's educational progress, we must try to avoid bewilderment among particulars. We are too near to the facts considered to get any true historical perspective; but already we can see that they are bound up with the general progress of our civilization.

Aside from all things educational, this has been a year of mighty movements. Much has been said about "expansion." In more ways than one, expansion has been the striking characteristic of the past twelvemonth.

Five years ago Mr. McKinley was elected president for the first time, after a campaign which had turned largely on economic questions. Bimetallism had been thrust forward as the best available embodiment of a rising social unrest. But the new presidential term was only well begun when a question of foreign policy overshadowed all things else. The war with Spain was fought, and its success brought forward great international problems, such as our people had not faced before. The congress at The Hague set us thinking of the world-peace and our part in maintaining it for the future; but we now found ourselves thinking. what it meant to be a world-power, and what we should do as a worldpower in the immediate present. The terrible business in China set us thinking fast and hard. We were already a world-power in the thick of the world's affairs. Mr. McKinley was elected for the second time, and the campaign which he won this time was fought mainly on questions