Will you permit a New Yorker who has long been a Californian to say that some of us on the Pacific coast have looked with a certain wonder on the outbreak in the east during the last year or two of the idea of free election of studies. The reported discussions of this subject sound strangely like echoes of our own battles of eight or 10 years ago. The sun has not yet learned to move from west to east. So I can explain this phenomenon only by supposing that Pres. Jordan, in the free field of a new university, was able to precipitate a movement which Pres. Eliot has got under way more gradually in the established order of these older states.

We have not come to doctrinal agreement in California; but we have found a modus virendi and have settled down to the detailed consideration of the question where between the two extremes, of the fixed course and the course with nothing fixed, the highest educational efficiency is to be found. This is the question for real school men in real schools to consider. One of the first things that appear from this sort of study is the fact that English is an indispensable subject in any curriculum. This is admitted by nearly every one, even when it is not admitted that any other study is indispensable. English has taken the fixed place of Latin in the old curriculum. If other single subjects are not essential, we are coming to think that an outlook into certain other broad fields of study is necessary. The committee of 10 led the way in pointing out this need, and the later committee on college entrance requirements has formulated a general plan under which the need may be met. All students must be introduced to the same civilization, and, since all are human, their several ways of approaching it will not be fundamentally different. What seems still more significant is this: even if it be true that what is best for one student is a little different from what is best for another, the fact remains that each student needs for his own purposes a well organized unitary curriculum. I fear we are tending toward miscellaneous election from a miscellaneous mass of offered courses; but there is a deeper tendency, which will surely become dominant-a tendency toward

organic election from what is offered, no matter how miscellaneous that may be; a different curriculum for each student, if you will, but a real curriculum.

The recent history of studies is significant. It appears from the reports of the commissioner of education that between the years 1894 and 1899 the percentage of pupils in our secondary schools studying Latin, French, German, algebra, geometry, physical geography, physiology, rhetoric, and general history was on the increase, the advance being specially marked in the case of Latin, algebra, geometry, rhetoric, and history. In the same period, the percentage of those studying Greek, trigonometry, astronomy, physics, geology, and psychology, declined. For a part of the studies, a report is presented covering 10 years, from 1889 to 1899. In that time the percentage studying Latin had advanced from 33.62 to 50.29, and the advance in algebra, geometry, and general history, though less marked, was very noteworthy. In these years the actual number of students attending our secondary schoo's had increased from a little less than 298,000 to a little more than 580,000.

It would seem that in spite of this enormous increase in attendance, the schools had been gravitating back toward concentration on a smaller number of studies, and those chiefly the central studies of the old humanistic curriculum, with the omis sion of Greek. While Greek seems to have declined proportionately, the falling off is very slight; and the actual increase in the number of students studying that glorious old language was not far from 12,000. It is likely that physics, which shows the greatest retrogression in the 10 year period, had made greater advance than most of the other subjects in methods of presentation. I think it probable that the percentage of students studying physics by laboratory methods, if it could be determined, would show a substantial increase.

On the whole, then, we may safely conclude that in their actual working our secondary schools, at the same time that they are increasing enormously in attendance, are becoming more conservative in their schemes of instruction, are less given to what

have been called "short information courses," are more humanistic, and on the scientific side are doing more in the direction of an improvement of instruction than in that of the extension of studies.

We may note in passing that in the same period, despite the tremendous increase in attendance at higher institutions, the number of students in our secondary schools who were not preparing for college increased more rapidly than those who were. 18.66% were preparing for college in 1889-90; 14.05% in 1898-99.

2 There are many reasons why the question of teachers is more important than the question of studies. And the convic tion is now well grounded that teachers of secondary schools as well as teachers of primary schools must be specially trained for their work. 20 years ago this was not true. We may be modest in making claims with regard to the professional training toward which the teaching craft of our secondary schools is tending. But many signs show that the tendency is well under way; and, with all of its present inadequacy, the training offered is working gradually toward stability, solidity, and effectiveness.

Yet, after all this is said, the discovery of teachers is as important as the making of teachers. The fact that so much of the real teacher quality is inborn, gives emphasis to this view. In part, this discovery of teachers may be the work of colleges and training schools. In part it is the work of superintendents and principals. But, in a larger sense, it is a result of a favorable organization of the whole set of conditions and associations which surround the teacher's calling. We look for real life, and life at its soundest and best, in these secondary schools. To have it, it is necessary that young men and women who represent our American life at its soundest and best, shall be drawn into teaching positions in these schools; and that those who show special aptitude for such work shall find good inducements to stay in it. Such inducements are, the opportunity to do their work to good advantage; reasonably good salaries; and such social standing as will encourage self-respect on their part and on the part of their families. It is plain that these inducements are to be pro

vided partly by the action of boards of education and partly by the general attitude of the communities back of those boards. The real discoverer is the community, acting under such leadership as it may choose.

But there are other agencies at work. Whatever is done to render education more professional, tends to draw toward it men who have professional tastes. In this point of view, the teaching body is the discoverer. Excellence in the profession tends to attract and discover excellence; and by cherishing most religi ously the standing of our profession we make it more worthy to be cherished.

Again, every advance in the scientific, historical or philosophical treatment of education tends to draw to it persons of intellectual taste and ability. In recent years we have seen men turning to education because of the marked improvement of our pedagogic literature. Then, the knitting together of the interests of our secondary schools and universities works in the same direction. In some parts of the country, the teacher in a high school finds himself, in a way, brought into the life of the universities. The influence of such a relation is not to be disregarded.

Yet the chief responsibility comes back to boards of control and the communities to which the teachers minister. We can, not urge too strongly on them the necessity that they discover superior teachers for their secondary schools, by making the teaching positions in those schools such as superior men can accept and hold without loss of self-respect. Within the last few years, we have repeatedly seen first-class men throwing up high school positions in disgust at the petty politics with which those positions were beset, or in despair of being able to provide for their families with the salaries which those positions offered. Such a state of affairs is deadening.

It is difficult to say conclusively whether the general movement of the time is forward or backward in these particulars; but it is my profound conviction that on the whole we are improving. There are many indications that the standard of pre

paration for secondary school positions is rapidly advancing. Partly as cause and partly as effect of this change, the general standing of secondary school teachers in the community seems to be rising. A rapid increase in the number of college graduates seeking high school positions may prevent salaries from rising proportionately with other forms of public recognition, but I do not think we need fear the ultimate outcome of this condition.

Within the universities, there is observable a growing sentiment in favor of requiring a minimum amount of graduate work of students who are to be recommended as teachers in secondary schools. It has been suggested that this may lead in time to the recognition of the master's degree as the standard teaching degree. For many reasons, this notion seems worthy of serious consideration.

Speaking broadly, the doctrine that the school is real life may be expected to work to the advantage of teachers and teaching. It puts the school into closer touch with the home, and carries into the school the better standards of the community. The growth of wealth and the sharpening of social distinctions may in some measure negative this tendency; but in other ways it will be reinforced by those very conditions. It is not too much to expect that the new century will see a new generation of great school men. If there has been no Thomas Arnold nor Edward Thring in our American schools, we have had many excellent teachers, from Ezekiel Cheever down. Let our best men find encouragement and recognition, both public and fraternal, awaiting them within the teaching profession, as other men have found in other professions; and our teachers of world greatness will in due time appear.

3 Many are looking with favor on private secondary schools because they are believed to be more free than public schools to make useful experiments; because they can devote more attention to the individual peculiarities of their students; and specially because they may be expected to give definite religious instruction. It might be of value to make comparison between public and private schools in these particulars; and I have even