mechanical processes of mensuration, because these things were known hobbies of the question maker. I have known the instruction of an entire corps of intermediate or grammar-school teachers to be largely concentrated on three or four test studies, to the great neglect of other branches of equal, if not greater, importance. Principals have neglected the lower classes in their schools and given their time and energies for weeks to the special drilling of their first class-the one to be subjected to the comparative test-and pupils have thus been fearfully overtasked.

The difficulties and errors thus pointed out suggest their remedies. We have only time for three or four specifications. The examination tests should be as wide as the approved course of instruction, covering every study and every important exercise. Since this can not be done when the examinations are conducted exclusively in writing, the written tests should be supplemented by oral ones, relating not only to the branches of study, but also to the discipline of the schools, their moral influence and life, the manners inculcated, and the general culture imparted. It is true that this will require time, but are not these things as important as the narrow and technical knowledge usually covered by the written tests?

Again, the questions should be so framed as to test the pupil's knowledge of the subjects taught-his comprehension of the leading facts and principles, rather than his familiarity with the details and verbiage of the text-book. They should place training before cramming and culture before technics. It is true that classes thus examined will not reach as high a per cent as they would were the tests confined strictly to the text-books-were every question to fall within the prescribed course of instruction. But the object of a test examination is not to assist pupils in reaching a high per cent, but to determine what they actually know and to indicate what they ought to know. When classes reach an average of £0 to 100 per cent in a test examination, the fact is of itself evidence that the tests were either grooved to a narrow course of instruction, or that the special drilling of the more backward pupils was attended with a great sacrifice of time and opportunity on the part of the other pupils.

vous.

Another remedy suggested is that the results of test examinations should not be used to compare schools and teachers. A careful observation of this practice for years has convinced me that such comparisons are generally unjust and mischieThere is often a marked difference in the intelligence of the different districts in a city, in the number of pupils under instruction, and in other conditions for which the board of education and the public make no allowance. Moreover, these published tables of examination per cents often put a premium on special cramming and false teaching, and sometimes on downright dishonesty. The teacher who ignores higher motives and bends all his energies to secure a high per cent is rewarded, while the teacher who scorns to degrade his high calling to the preparation of "wares for the market" is condemned. When the schools brought into comparison with each other are in the same building and under the same principal, these evils are more readily avoided.

A final suggestion is that the pupil's standing should be the result not of one but of several examinations. The holding of monthly examinations, a practice now quite common in Ohio and the West generally, I believe, is much better than the former practices of annual and term examinations. The reasons are too obvious to require their statement. I will only add that these monthly examinations are often a severe tax on both teachers and pupils. It is simply an outrage to require children to write from four to six hours a day under the severe strain of a test examination. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should so extend the sphere of its humane efforts as to include some of our public schools on examination days.

III. Another problem in graded school management touches the freedom of the teacher, and may thus be stated: How to subject a corps of teachers to efficient supervision and not reduce them to operatives.

The adoption of a definite course of study with subdivisions corresponding to the number of classes, all following each other in natural order, necessitates the mastery of each of the successive portions as a preparation for the next higher. When the pupils in the lower grades or classes are sufficiently numerous to occupy several schoolrooms under different teachers, the progress and attainments of the several sections of each grade or class must be sufficiently uniform to enable them to come together in the upper grades or classes. This necessitates a degree of uniformity of instruction, and it is just here that the mechanism of the graded system touches its very life, as the experience of too many of the larger cities plainly shows. To secure this uniformity of instruction the course is mapped out in minute details, and the time to be devoted to each part, the order in which the steps are to be taken, and even the methods of teaching, are definitely and authoritatively prescribed. As a result the teacher is not free to teach according to his "conscience and power," but his high office is degraded to the grinding of prescribed grists, in prescribed quantities, and with prescribed fineness-to the turning of the crank of a revolving mechanism.

The supervising principal of a public school in a large city once said to the speaker: "It is idle to ask my teachers to read professional works. They follow the prescribed course of study and look to me for their methods. Their ambition is to do their work precisely as I direct, and they do this without inquiring whether my methods are correct or incorrect. It is enough that I prescribe them." It is possible that this may be an extreme case, but it illustrates the tendency of the system when administered as a mechanism. It seems unnecessary to say that this prescribed uniformity in both the matter and method of instruction is subversive of all true teaching. Carpets may be woven, garments made, and stone carved by pattern, but the unfolding and informing of a human soul is not the work of operatives, following appointed forms and methods. The human soul is not touched by the revolving cogs of mechanical methods. True teaching requires the artist's hand and the artist's spirit. Fruitful methods may be evoked; they can never be imposed. They must bear the impress of the teacher's image, and pulsate with the life which he breathes into them. The vital element in every method of instruction is what the teacher puts into it, and hence the prime fact in every school is the teacher. It is not enough that graded schools go through with the forms of a philosophic course of instruction. The knowledge to be taught may be wisely selected and arranged, the successive steps may follow each other in natural order, and the entire mechanism may be so perfect that the revolving cogs touch each other with beautiful precision; and yet, if the whole be not vitalized by true teaching, the system is a failure as a means of education. The one essential condition of success is the informing, vitalizing spirit of free, earnest teachers; and the more philosophical the system of instruction attempted, the more essential is this condition. A routine of mere book lessons may be conducted by a blind plodder who can turn the crank and tighten the screws, but a system of instruction, having for its grand end the right unfolding and training of the mind and heart, requires the insight, the invention, the skill, the inspiration of the true teacher. We are slow in learning that philosophic methods of teaching are practicable only to those who have some insight into their principles. The oral teaching in our schools is often as deadening as the old text-book drills. Some of the object-lesson teachers ont-Herod Herod in mechanical teaching, and if I were obliged to choose between the text-book grinder and the crank turner of prescribed object lessons, I should unhesitatingly take the former, with the assurance that he would have something to grind.

But how can this difficulty be avoided in a graded system of instruction? How can requisite uniformity be secured and, at the same time, the teacher have necessary professional freedom? I do not assume to be able fully to answer these questions.

My first suggestion is that a sharp discrimination must be made between results and methods. The essential thing in a graded system is that there be necessary uniformity in results at stated periods, and this can be attained without denying the teacher freedom in his methods. This teacher will succeed best by one method and that teacher by another, and each should be left free to use his best power. Another suggestion may be important. A course of study may prescribe a minimum amount of work for each school term or year, or as a condition of promotion, but the stated order and time of the subdivisions should be merely suggestive. Uniformity should be required only so far as it may be important or necessary. The essential result in a graded system is that the several classes of the same grade come to the examination for promotion with like attainments. It is not important that the several teachers accomplish the same result day by day or week by week. Nothing is more ridiculous than the attempt to parcel out primary instruction and tie it up in daily or weekly prescriptions, like a doctor's doses. This week the class is to take certain facts in geography; to count by twos to fifty (to sixty would be a fearful sin!); to draw the vertical lines of a cube; to learn to respect the aged, etc. This also suggests the folly of restricting teachers to the work laid down in the course. One teacher can accomplish more than another in the same time, and, if forbidden to widen his instruction, to turn into new fields, the surplus time will be wasted in useless repetition. A scheme of study can only prescribe the minimum, the essential course. Parallel with this and diverging from it are lines of important knowledge, which the teachers should be free to explore. Moreover, it is in these very diversions from the beaten path that the most valuable instruction is often imparted. The teacher carries into them an unusual zeal and interest, and his pupils are thus quickened with a new inspiration. It is taken for granted in this suggestion that the schools are supplied with well qualified teachers, and this presupposes that they have received necessary professional preparation. We are beginning to recognize the fact that the essential condition of the highest success of American schools is the thorough normal training of our teachers.

But the great remedy for the particular evil under consideration is intelligent, flexible supervision. Supervision is of doubtful worth when it exhausts itself on the mere mechanism of a school system. It must, of course, secure uniformity and system, but these may be attained without grooving the teachers' instruction or sacrificing their professional freedom and progress. An experienced superintendent once remarked that his chief business was to keep his teachers out of the ruts. To this end the superintendent must be qualified to instruct, inspire, and lead teachers in the work of professional improvement, and his supervision must be flexible enough to allow free investigation and experiment. It is true that a corps of teachers, imbued with such an earnest spirit of inquiry and progress, will run in no one's groove, but what is thus lost in uniformity will be more than made up in vital teaching.

ance.

IV. A fourth problem in graded-school management is the proper adaptation of the system to the needs of those pupils who can give only a part of their time to school duties. "The schools," says a leading paper, "allow no divided allegiIf the boy goes to school, he must go steadily, and give it the heart of the working day. No provision is made for children who must devote a part of each day to labor. Hence young children are taken out of school to assist in household duties, to sell papers or do errands, or to render other assistance, really demanding but a portion of their time. Many pupils are withdrawn from school at a

very early age to learn trades. They are too young to work more than the half of each day, and would make even more rapid progress in manual labor if they could spend the other half in school. But the doors of the public schools are closed against them. They must choose between the shop and the school, and the necessity of earning a living as early as possible scarcely permits, in many instances, a choice.

The failure of the public schools to accommodate this class of pupils, the very class which, above all others, needs their advantages, has been too generally accepted as unavoidable. Whenever the necessities of the family have demanded any portion of the regular school hours, children have quietly dropped out of their classes and the schools have gone on apparently unconscious of their absence. But the proposition to enact laws compelling parents to send their children to school has raised the inquiry whether the schools are not responsible for some of the absenteeism to be thus corrected. It is urged that the first step is to adapt the schools to the necessities of all classes.

As a means to this end it has been suggested that the public schools should be organized on what is known as the half-time system-a system tried with encouraging results in Europe and also in the primary schools of several cities in this country. It is urged that the uniting of labor and schooling is the true idea, that children who devote their whole time for eight to ten years to schooling are not then likely to enter on manual labor with much enjoyment, and, besides, that labor and schooling, when united, assist each other. The half-time pupils prove, as a rule, as apt scholars as their full-time classmates, and, at the same time, more skilled workers than their unschooled workfellows.

These considerations have certainly great weight, but I am not convinced that the adoption of the half-time system in the upper grades of our schools is necessary to secure the desired end. A great many of the pupils in city schools would not engage in manual labor the half of each day were the half-time system adopted. If in school only half of the day, they would spend the other half in idleness or on the streets, and some in worse places. When no home study is required, the present system allows some six hours a day and every Saturday for labor and recreation. This is found to be time enough for many childrer to do all the work that is provided for them. It is possible that it would be better if all our youth had regular work the half of each day, but the public schools can not change the usages of society in this respect. They must conform to what is, rather than to what should be.

It has also been suggested that half-time schools might be organized for working children, and that the present system be continued for others. This involves not only a classification but a separation of children on the basis of manual labor, and we have already quite enough of this class principle in the organization of our schools. It is believed that the difficulty under consideration can be successfully met without organizing separate schools for working children.

What is needed is to make the course of study and requirements of our schools flexible enough to accommodate this class of pupils. Instead of half-time schools, I would suggest a half-time course of study in all grades above the primary. It is not necessary to require all the pupils in our public schools to take the same number of studies and advance with even step through the course. This procrustean device must be given up, if the public school system is to do its full legitimate work as an agency for the education of the whole people. Instead of excluding pupils who can not meet all the conditions of a complete and thorough course of elementary education, it must provide for such pupils the best education possible under the circumstances. This may involve some loss in uniformity and system, but there will be a gain in usefulness-a result more important than mechanical perfection in classification.

The four great problems which we have thus imperfectly considered, are preeminently graded-school problems, having their origin, so to speak, in the element of gradation. Other educational problems, as the teacher problem, the study problem, the sex problem, etc., relate alike to both graded and ungraded schools. It is hoped that I am not understood to condemn the graded system, for the very aim of this paper is to assist in making the system more efficient and useful. It is also hoped that I am not understood to intimate that the defects pointed out exist in equal degree in all graded schools. I bear cheerful testimony to the fact that the gravity of these problems is appreciated by scores of superintendents in my acquaintance, and encouraging progress has been made in their practical solution.

It may also be remarked, in conclusion, that I have aimed more to state guiding principles than to solve these problems in detail. The one principle I desire specially to impress is, that the solution of each of these four problems is found in the proper subordination of the demands of the graded system as a mechanisın to its great purpose as an agency for the education of the people-for furnishing every child with the best possible education it is capable of receiving in the actual circumstances which surround it; in the proper subordination of uniformity and system, which are but means to the sublime end of unfolding, enriching, and beautifying the human soul-of touching human life in ail conditions with elevating and beneficent power.

II.-EDUCATION IN HAWAII FOR 1896.

By Gen. JOHN EATON.

The Hawaiian reports of education are biennial. A census is taken once in six years. These two reports coming the same year (1896) may well be considered together. They present an exceedingly interesting story of the education of the several races represented in these islands. Of the Archipelago known as the Sandwich Islands, or Hawaii, only eight, Ha-wai-i, Mau-i, O-a-hu, Kau-ai, Mo-lo-kai. La-nai, Ka-hoo-la-we, and Nii-hau, of the principal islands extending over 300 miles at the eastern end of the group are inhabited. These have a total approximate area of 7,000 square miles, or 4,480,000 acres; and a total population, according to the last census, of 109,020, and distributed as to sex and nationality as follows:

The marked disparity between the sexes will be noted. The total number of males, 72,517, in the country is nearly double the total number of females (36,503). It will be observed that next to the total of native Hawaiians, 31,019, is the total of the Japanese population, 24,191. It appears that the Japanese have recently come in with great rapidity, as many as 2,000 arriving in a month. The Chinese (next in number to the Japanese) reached 21,616, making a total from Asia of 46,023, or nearly half (42 per cent) of the total, that is the Asiatics nearly equal in number all other nationalities.