the common school is here, to give the primary education that belongs to our American citizenship.

Discussions will help us fit in with ourselves. Work will have to be done; not by the process of joining the ears and the tail and making a college that way, it will come by the growth of years, and will help those of us who belong to the poor colleges out in the country fields to understand each other and ourselves and to do our work better.

Prin. Roland S. Keyser I want to say a word on this subject from the standpoint of the public school. About 80 per cent of the secondary schools under visitation of the regents belong to our public school system. For more than a generation college men have been crying for schools whose special purpose was to fit pupils for college, but they have not succeeded in getting them. The public, high and union schools meet the wants of the time and will only be changed as the conditions which produce them change. When education was the privilege of the few, the universities controlled the work which was done in the schools below them, but they can not do this when education has become a requirement for the many. The great educational forces of our time lie behind the public schools. The work of the public secondary school must be largely of a kind which will be of value to pupils who are soon to enter upon the active duties of life. It is idle for college men to say that pupils should early be taught certain things when the great pressure of influence on the public schools is for them to teach certain other things. It is true that a young man can go to college at the same age with a larger amount of Latin, Greek, French or German if these subjects are commenced sufficiently early, but it is safe to say that no amount of pressure of college requirements, or influence of college authorities will avail to make these languages subjects of study in the great majority of our common schools. On no principles of general educational economy should the college do work which must be done in the secondary schools. As the requirements for admission to college have been gradually raised, the additions have almost all been in the department of languages, which is where the secondary schools have the greatest difficulty in meeting it. Their scientific courses seem to be so called because they fit so unscientifically into our scheme of education.

The colleges seem to have cheapened the profession of engineering by advertising that almost no secondary education at all is necessary

for those students. The work of the secondary school is a work which must be done for all pupils, and so long as possible it is important that the work of the secondary schools be kept together.

The colleges have also injured the work of the secondary schools and injured themselves by not agreeing on entirely uniform requirements for admission. There is hardly a college in this state that does not contain among its requirements for admission certain subjects not required by other colleges. A young man goes to his instructor at the end of his academic course and says "I am going to college and find that I must study up this subject. What is the very least I can do to meet the requirements?" The college which puts in its requirements for admission subjects not required by other colleges, advertises for pupils poorly prepared in those subjects and must take its choice between pupils poorly prepared and none at all. If the classical course is to be popular, our pupils must be prepared for it in our union and high schools. In order properly to suit the conditions of these schools not more than three years can be given to the preparatory work in languages. About a year ago the regents took the bull by the horns as regards this course and laid out a new college. entrance course, lessening the amount of Latin and adding several other subjects, better to suit the conditions of the schools. I have yet to learn that this course has been adopted in its entirety by a single college in the state. We have the anomaly of the University of the State of New York laying out a course for admission to the colleges and the colleges practically rejecting it.

In order to coordinate properly the work of the college and the secondary school, the college must cease to do work which legitimately belongs to the secondary school. A pupil who is preparing for the non-classical course needs the discipline and care of the school just as much as the pupil who is preparing for the classical course. As matters are at present, a large number of well prepared students in our secondary schools are entirely lost to college. When a young man has completed a course in a union or high school and wakes up to the fact that a higher education would be a good thing for him, he can find no course for which his preparation fits him. It seems to me that if the colleges want to profit by the work which the secondary schools are doing now, they should have more regard for the limitation of the work which we now have to do.

Sec'y Dewey The gentleman says that he does not know of a college that accepts the new college entrance diploma. Does he know

of any that refuse to accept it? Of course it is desirable for the colleges to print in their catalogues this fact of acceptance, and I purpose asking them to do so; but I know that the majority of New York colleges are well satisfied to accept the new diploma. I hope we may announce at the next Convocation that every college in the state has adopted that as its standard.

Prin. G: M. Smith With our exalted notions of liberty we demand an individual freedom in all that we do that sometimes has consequences more lasting than beneficial. Particularly is this true of education. We talk of system; we haven't any. Everybody is running his own particular hobby at his own sweet will. The college professor manages his department as he pleases. No matter what others may think or do, he is a law unto himself. The principal of the academy has caught the same disease. He has settled a lot of vexed questions for good and all, and, however the rest of the world may wag, his particular part of it must wag his own particular way; while as for the normal school man, he assisted at the birth of pedagogy and has acted as nurse ever since. To such an extent does individualism prevail that it seems hopeless even to hope for reforınation. Study the courses offered by the colleges of this country. So great a variety is presented that degrees become meaningless, and an "American degree" is a source of contempt in educational circles of other lands. B. A. is an unknown quantity, and B. S. is translated by the irreverent with more truth than poetry "Big Sell."

The fit, too, for these various courses is a variable that changes without any law. For some courses it can be easily accomplished by an average pupil in six to 12 months after leaving the grammar school; in others four weary years must elapse to reach the goal. The pupil in the academy who wants to go to college and receive a degree is sure of having his wants gratified, whether he takes Greek or base ball. He can't miss it. There is some sort of a course open to him.

Not only does this particularism appear in college courses but everywhere. Two institutions may make the same claims on paper, and be very far apart in reality. An incident that came to my own knowledge well illustrates this. A boy takes two examinations in the same subjects within 10 days: no. 1-a mortifying failure; no. 2-a great success. Two different persons made out the papers; neither was properly made.

Right here is the weakest point of our work. From primary school to university there is no common authoritative rule as to what

the work of any grade shall be. Senior work in one institution is first year work in another, and even in the lower grades the same confusion exists. Towns lying side by side have grades very unlike, and the idiosyncrasies of the superintendent come out in glaring lights.

The teacher in the secondary school who seeks to meet the claims of all the institutions to which his pupils may choose to go, is at his wits' ends. The learned philosopher of yesterday who wanted every man once in his lifetime to cut loose from all moorings, has only to send him into a secondary school to fit for college. Metaphysical doubts will then become an alluring harbor into which he may drift with pleasure, after tossing between the Scylla and Charybdis of uncertainty as to what are the real requirements of American colleges. The little union school or academy with two teachers has no hesitation in planning a course of study which requires the services of six. The struggling college just able to do fair academic work entices young men within its walls by a lavish bestowal of meaningless and worthless degrees. The kind of coordination most needed will be found in the establishment of standards of work by which every institution can be measured and its rank established. Then call a spade a spade, call every institution actually doing collegiate work a college, and none of inferior rank. Make the univerties confine themselves to university work, and do not let any school attempt work beyond a fair estimate of the ability of its faculty and the extent of its outfit, and the question of coordination will be settled by each school taking its own place.

This whole question has arisen by schools of all grades "biting off more than they can chew." Reduce the size of the mouthful and proper mastication and digestion will easily follow.

Prin. George D. Hale, Rochester, N. Y.-I differ somewhat with the last speaker. In my work I make a special attempt to individualize. I try to teach the pupils one by one and take whatever material is presented, and if it is unfit to use I cast it aside at once, and if it can be made useful I take it and use it. No two can be taught exactly alike, and it is not always best to teach the same boy two successive days in the same way.

All we ask of the colleges and universities is to tell us what they want done. If they want men prepared for certain points, tell us so. They should not admit them poorly prepared. One great trouble is that a pupil runs away from a preparatory school and goes to a col

lege. It admits him, the boy knows he was not prepared; the college knows he was not prepared. If the colleges did not admit poorly prepared students they certainly would not have them there. It is not fair to blame the preparatory schools for the defects of individuals due to heredity or some other cause. The preparatory school can not do everything. It can not make a man who is a natural mathematician and does not like languages fond of languages. What I try to do is to develop the man in those things where he is strongest and also where he is the weakest. I never try to spoil a first class mathematician by endeavoring to make him first class in Greek. I never try to spoil a first class linguist by endeavoring to make him a first class mathematician.

we want.

These lines which we try to define are some of them imaginary lines. It is well enough to have imaginary lines in geography to measure the degrees of latitude and longitude, but some of these imaginary lines in education are of no use. Galileo could manufacture his own telescope. Franklin did not need the appliances of the big colleges to make the kite with which to draw the electric fluid from heaven. Edison began without these appliances. It is men There is a president of the United States on the streets of Albany to-day barefooted, for all we know. We want to do honest work. Let the colleges clear the way, let them go ahead and tell us where they want us to go and we will follow. In some places the very endowment which the colleges have is a hindrance to the preparatory schools. It is not the fault of Cornell university, it is the fault of the law which exists. If a student prepares for West Point and he is to be admitted by competitive examination, they do not ask where he was prepared. If a man is examined for West Point and passes the best examination, he gets the prize. In our town the state gives 12 scholarships to be competed for by the students of the public schools. A student of a private school can not have them. He may be the best of all but he is debarred because he is a student of a private school.

Prin. Harlan P. Amen, Riverview Military academy - In the discussion of the very subject which occupies us to-day and in urging the reforms which have since placed Germany in the foremost position in all matters educational Wm. von Humbolt said: "The thing is not, to let the schools and universities go on in a drowsy and indolent routine; the thing is, to raise the culture of the nation ever higher and higher by their means."