THE Ernst Haeckel Museum in Jena has been opened. The German press has recently been filled with accounts of "Haeckel's Lear Tragedy." His successor, Dr. Plate, it is said, made his life miserable by forcing him out of his laboratories in which it was agreed he should be given unrestricted opportunity to continue his researches as professor emeritus. A lawsuit ensued during which many ugly things were said, including the statement that Haeckel" stole and embezzled ideas."

THE University of Montpellier, which was founded in the thirteenth century, is preparing for the celebration of its approaching seven hundredth anniversary.

In order to bring Burma into line with the progress achieved in other parts of the Indian empire, the government of that province has decided to establish a university at Rangoon. The administration will be in the hands of the council with an executive committee comprising representatives of such bodies as the Burma Chamber of Commerce and the Rangoon Trades Association. Matters connected with teaching will be in charge of a senate composed of professors and lecturers.

THE Italian government has returned the Zoological Institute at Naples to the Germans, and Dr. Dohrn will again act as the director. The nationalist press of Italy carried on a vigorous if not violent campaign against the suggestion that Germany be allowed to reclaim the institute but, it is said, Benedetto Croce, minister of education, had his way here as he has had in a number of similar cases pertaining to pre-war German holdings in Italy.

Ar the annual exchange of rectors at the University of Vienna, which was attended last year by 11,442 students and gave an even 1,200 doctor's degrees, the outgoing rector, Professor Schwind, said that the members of the faculty who examined and passed 1,200 candidates in a single year were confronted by a dilemma which cut deep into their consciences. They were obliged either to refuse to grant degrees to a number of young men who had just returned from a defeated army and had worked under peculiarly dis

tressing circumstances, or mark them mature and turn them loose on the sick, the wronged and the untaught, That the coming generation will have to suffer from the lowering of standards in the present is one of the most fatal consequences of the war.

THE trouble of several centuries standing between the German and Czech students and authorities at the University of Prague, having apparently come to a climax, bids fair to be settled by removing the German section of the university to some point where the Germans predominate in numbers and language. Aussig, Teplitz and Reichenberg are the three towns most favorably considered.

ACCORDING to the Berliner Tageblatt, a communist university has been opened in Moscow. The lectures, attended exclusively by the laboring classes, began on December 1. A Russian Folk University has also been opened in Wologda. It is said that the Soviet government is planning to open a "great number of technical schools for the various types of people."

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE MORE "DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION"

IN SCHOOL AND SOCIETY for January 1, 1921, Professor E. S. Reynolds presents an interesting analysis of the possibilities of democracy in educational institutions (presumably higher schools or colleges).

It seems to the present writer that the proposed democracy is a bit one-sided. It asserts strongly the alleged rights of faculty members, but says little about the rights of three other more or less distinctive and certainly interested parties-the students, their parents or guardians, and the public. It seems to assume that a benevolent despotism of teachers can do no harm and will automatically find and discharge its obligations.

To bring into a degree of relief that may seem absurd, let us restate the six principles outlined in the article, but adding certain words in parentheses; then let us reread the principles using the parenthetical words to replace the words just preceding them. Would

not the resulting scheme be still more democratic?

Democracy in education implies among other things the following:

1. That those (students or their guardians) engaged in daily class room work shall have a large part in the determination of the policies and practises of the institutions.

2. That all such (students or their guardians) shall have freedom in the classroom to teach (learn) their subjects as they believe they should be taught (learned), under such supervision as shall be determined in a democratic fashion after a fair and full discussion among teachers (students or their guardians).

3. That all (students or guardians) shall be free from any special censure for acts and utterances outside the classroom aside from that to which any other citizen is subject.

4. That no financial control or fear or loss of positions (credit or standing) shall hold teachers (students or guardians) in subjection.

5. That for each institution there should be democratic representation of faculty (students or guardians) on the board, when it is considering matters relating to the institution.

The most important safeguard is that each education unit shall have a constitution which shall clearly state the degree of protection and of responsibility of the teachers (students or their guardians) and the method of organization of the group.

Another sentence in the paper may be similarly extended:

To protect the individual, as well as the corporate, rights of the faculty (students or their guardians) the principles of democratic control should be adopted and guaranteed.

These seemingly captious suggestions have a serious import. Freedom of learning beyond the standards set by our compulsory school attendance laws is surely as important as freedom of teaching. We must agree that 66 an autocratic system is such whether its leaders are benign or baneful in their methods of administration . . ." also that "it might be held that, comparing Germany with the United States prior to 1914, the government of Germany was more efficient and provided for the people's comfort better than our own,

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yet the final result was not such as to justify the conclusion that that nation was fundamentally better than ours. Immediate results are not to be the final test of a system. Democracy can be made ultimately more efficient than autocracy and will be so when we consciously set to work to determine the best methods."

But if we are to apprehend that the public through its state machinery of control of education becomes undemocratic, will it be any the less so when it utilizes a possible bureaucracy of experts practically on life tenure? We can still think the bureaucracy will be more efficient by standards of present, as contrasted with permanent, efficiency; but can it be democratic from the standpoint of those neglected factors, the students and those most immediately concerned with their needs and welfare-the parents or guardians?

The central difficulty here, it seems to the writer, is in distinguishing between democracy as it affects one party in a multiple-factored process, or all parties. Modern industry has represented one kind of autocracy of control of investors and entrepreneurs. Industrial democracy" is now the goal of an additional group of producers-the wage-earnersin each of several fields. But society stands aghast at the possibilities of a completely integrated group of producers-interest takers, profit takers, technician salary takers, and wage-takers in any field-coal, wheat, housing, or printed books-presenting a united front to the consuming public and saying in effect "the public be

Educators deem themselves fully competent to determine what the public needs, even though they fail greatly to deliver what the public wants. public wants. Medical men and railwaymen and bankers and telephone men think the same. But when a service becomes in effect a monopoly, democratic control by utilizers becomes very important. Elective systems in schools and college represented an attempt to make education more democratic. In many agricultural colleges of the United States the faculties have long been excessively bureaucratic from the standpoint of many farmers.

Like the Russian government, they represented an autocracy "tempered by assassination." What will the farmers think when their right to an occasional assassination-through politics, a messy method of democracy, certainly -is prevented by tenure?

The writer wants more democracy in education if that is compatible with methods that will insure even moderate efficiency on the one hand and at least a moderate check on bureaucracy on the other. Educators would hardly be guilty, consciously, of bureaucratic control; but it must not be forgotten that many of the world's most undemocratic bureaucracies— priestly, soldierly, financial, and land controlling—have been such unconsciously and with the best of intentions.

M.

INTELLIGENCE TESTS AND COLLEGE CREDITS TO THE EDITOR OF SCHOOL AND SOCIETY: The article on "The arts college and the city" in SCHOOL AND SOCIETY for December 25 was interesting and timely, and I have found not a few things therein to approve. I was much struck, however, by an apparent inconsistency on page 632. The author first explains that at Toledo University "any student twentyfive years old who can present ten entrance credits, either from a high school or through examination may substitute for the other five an intelligence test and may then pursue studies as an applicant for a degree," and immediately adds that "the chief object of a city college is not to become a degree-factory, but to serve the intellectual needs of the citizens." Would not the policy first announced of waiving one third of the conditions for entrance inevitably tend to convert any institution into a "degree-factory"? I wonder whether an intelligence test is to be accepted as a substitute for one third of the graduation requirements, also. Surely no one would object if a university situated in a city lets down its bars, so far as practicable, to mature students who are unable to meet all the technical requirements and yet can pursue certain studies with advantage. Most colleges now admit special students of this type, but to give degrees to such students with

out requiring them to complete the conditions both of entrance and of graduation in full does not " serve the intellectual needs of the citizens," but ministers merely to their vanity and encourages them in the delusion that they have done what they have not done. ROY C. FLICKINGER

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

QUOTATIONS

CAPITALIST EDUCATION AND LABOR SCHOOLS

MANY of those who read Mr. H. G. Wells's

"Russia in the Shadow" were struck by his picture of the schools in the land where the proletariat are displacing liberty as the light and hope of the world. Mr. Wells's summation of his observations is that the "educa- . tional work of the Bolsheviki impresses me as being astonishingly good . . . the schools I saw would have been good middle schools in England." For the moment the intellectual instruction will not be discussed. Character rather than learning is the need of these times, and we have Mr. Wells's word for it that the Bolshevist schools are lamentably deficient in forming character. He quotes official Bolshevist figures "very startling, very shocking," about the usual condition of the youth of St. Petersburg, especially in the relations of the sexes. He attributes it to the displacement of old, experienced teachers, and to making every moral standard a subject of debate. debate. The present point is not that Bolshevism is immoral, but that the Bolshevist schools substitute their school teachers for parents, and that the "break up of the family" is in full progress in Russia, as even the friend of the Bolsheviki testify. To many this will seem more calamitous than the assaults of the Bolsheviki on capitalism. It is appalling to think of Russia's considerable proportion of the world being educated into flagrant immorality, to say nothing of error upon contentious economic topics.

Only a little time passed before Mr. Grasty drew a picture of many schools in England where wage earners are striving for a new social system with the surplus wealth for the

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common good. We are told that there are no communists in England, and that a considerable proportion of British wage earners are unfriendly to Bolshevism. It is agreeable to believe it, but it is disturbing to read Mr. Grasty's quotations from the Wage Slaves' Marching Song, and from the Proletarian Ten Commandments, as taught in the Proletarian School Movement to unite the working class into one vast union "to take and hold the means of life." The purpose of the movement is to teach that "the economic structure of society determines the legal and political structure, and the social, ethical, religious and intellectual life-process in general." Some British schools fall into the same class with those Mr. Wells described only a few days before.

Only a little time ago our Christian Socialist Sunday Schools were the subject of condescending ridicule. It is now time to consider that our leading social reformers are setting up schools of their own in intellectual and economic sympathy with similar schools in Russia and England, and that such a leader of educational thought as Nicholas Murray Butler regrets the new paganism evidenced in the decline of what may be called capitalist education to distinguish it from what is anticapitalist if not Bolshevist. Our ruling passion, says Dr. Butler, is "not to know or understand, but to get ahead, to overturn something, to apply in ways that will bring material advantage some bit of information." To the decadence of modern educational standards Dr. Butler attributes the mob spirit and the leadership of the demagogue.

The great voices of the spirit are all stilled just now, while the mad passion for gain and power endeavors to gratify itself through the odd device of destroying what has already been gained or accomplished.

Very many teachers are propagandists first and teachers afterward, says Dr. Butler, describing what must be called capitalist schools. At about the same time Municipal Civil Service Commissioner Killelea was saying publicly, without contradiction, that real Bolshevism is taught in some public and

private schools in this city by Soviet professors. Current news informs us that labor leaders are setting up labor schools, and that the favored teachers are those who have been dismissed because their ideas of progress and reform are not suited to the education which Dr. Butler says is declining if not decadent. Government agents find thirty of these schools in a single coal district. The labor committee tells a visitor, "We'll listen to no college man unless he has shown independence enought to be blacklisted by the trustees." One of these teachers was reported by The Times as publicly urging in this city that American workers should "try the new way" -Russia's way.

This is a challenge of propaganda against propaganda which can not be declined. The saying that half the world does not know how the other half lives may be amended to read that half the world does not know what the other half thinks. The Bolsheviki did not win because of their championship of truth, but because of the supineness and ignorance of those whom they assumed to teach, and were not resisted. If we know Americans, they will rally rather to the standard of Dr. Butler than of Scott Nearing, of the Federation of Labor rather than of the I. W. W., of capitalists like Judge Gary rather than Debs or Foster. But the issue is joined. On either side the word should be that who is not for us is against us.-The New York Times.

THE NEW YORK CITY COLLEGES ABANDONMENT by the city of the College of the City of New York and Hunter College as municipal institutions was proposed on January 6, at a meeting at the Real Estate Board representing all the realty interests of the city. By turning the City College back to its trustees, to be run as a private institution, it was estimated the city could effect an annual saving of $1,000,000, and by returning Hunter College a saving of $500,000 a year. Insubmitting the report, Edward P. Doyle, manager of the bureau of information and research of the Real Estate Board, said there

was no particular reason why the city should bear the burden of the maintenance of the two colleges. He thought these institutions should be conducted as private institutions be cause it was not incumbent upon the city to provide a college education for a small group of young men and young women unless it was prepared to extend similar educational accommodations to all its youth. Furthermore, Mr. Doyle said, the majority of the young people who were pursuing their studies, particularly at City College, were fully able to pay for their education and should not expect the city to provide for them.

There has been general protest against the proposal of the Real Estate Board. On January 9, Mr. F. H. La Guardia, president of the Board of Aldermen, wrote to Dr. Sidney E. Mezes, president of the College of the City of New York, as follows:

I read your statement in the morning papers of Saturday regarding the suggested discontinuance as city institutions of the College of the City of New York and Hunter College. I want you to know that I heartily concur in what you say. I do not believe that there is the slightest possibility of the city abandoning the two foremost institutions of higher education in the city. I am certain that the people of the city of New York are proud of both institutions, and there is not a possibility of the suggestion taking hold.

It is quite true that we must reorganize our city government and curtail expenses. Drastic changes will be necessary. Having reached the top notch of our taxing powers, and facing a deficit, it is clear that the time has arrived for economizing in every possible way.

The only danger that I see facing the College of the City of New York and Hunter College is that in this campaign of economy there may be a concerted effort on the part of politicians and officeholders to train their guns on the two institutions of learning in order to save their own jobs and continue the carnival of waste that they have enjoyed for so many years. This is simply strategical, and I am confident that we can easily ward off such an attack.

I am so sorry that the business men who gave the matter of the city government their attention permitted themselves to be led to the belief that a real saving might be made on these two institu

tions. If they are sincere in bringing about the needed city reorganization and desirous of helping in saving 35 per cent. of the money now spent, and will cooperate with the rest of us who are seeking to do the same thing, it can be accomplished without disturbing in the slightest the College of the City of New York and Hunter College.

It is obvious that the matter did not receive careful attention, for surely if it had the statement that City College and Hunter College catered mostly to the children of the rich would not have been made. As a matter of fact, I am certain that an investigation of the financial conditions of your students and the young ladies of Hunter will show that they do not enjoy the wealth attributed to them. If some of the children of the wealthy do attend, I know of no better way of liberalizing an education than in the institutions of learning such as we have in New York, where all are given an equal opportunity in taking the advantage of an education which the city offers. Had we not these institutions and students were compelled to pay high tuition fees the cry would be that our children in the public schools are taught by the fortunate few who could avail themselves of a higher education. The two institutions, I understand, furnish the bulk of the teachers for the public schools of New York City.

The greatest American institution is our opportunity of a higher education to all who seek to avail themselves of it. To abolish at this time the institutions of higher learning in New York would be a step backward. I am certain that the legislature will not consider the suggestion, and I want you to know that I am ready to join in a fight to prevent it. I want the faculty to know that the city appreciates their loyalty and the many years of splendid service, and that the great majority of the people of this city feel that they are not to be penalized for not being practical politicians.

SOCIETIES AND MEETINGS

THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION OF MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHERS OF THE MIDDLE STATES AND MARYLAND

THE following officers were elected: President: Annie Dunster (William Penn High School, Philadelphia).

First Vice-president: Frederick S. Henry (Tome School, Port Deposit, Md.).