who are at present engaged in an attempt at a practical solution of a part of this problem by the method which has been mentioned here. I believe that the true university should consider all the parts of an educational system. We are not interested in an attempt to find the two lost years in the grammar schools or the academies on the part of college men and university men, nor in the attempt to reproach the colleges with the waste of time on the part of the grammar school masters. We believe that there is at present a state of great disorder in our American system and that the fault of it lies at the doors of all of us alike; and we welcome this discussion because it means that the whole area is to be dug over, with a better frontage as the result.

Our pedagogic department in the university we recognize to be very extensive and now experimental psychology has been established to have just as strong and scientific features as any in the field, we believe it should have its libraries. We are beginning to try to show how in the schools under our own control the two lost years can be saved. We are trying to make a program. In Germany and France they have men whose sole duty is to look after the program. But it is a laborious work to get out this program, and I do not expect that we shall have anything to report for many years. We are beginning at the bottom and we hope, if we are sustained and supported in the work, that when we come to the higher grades we shall have a scheme which will illustrate this program, which is so practical elsewhere.

I think that, after a great deal of experimentation, working over the material, doing what text-book makers are doing, and specially by working from the top downward and bringing to bear all the wisdom of the top at the bottom, we have at least as fair a prospect of success in science as in any field. This is an experimental problem in science and has been in operation nearly two years.

Pres. Seth Low-Columbia would be singularly false to her own history and to the name she bears if any one can suppose she is un-American or is seeking to build up in New York city a European system of education. It would be a strange thing if the oldest university in this state, located in the metropolis of the country, should be unconscious of the splendid life-beat of this Union stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific; but it would be no less strange if, with our eyes looking out upon this ocean we should forget that the waters that wash the shores of America also wash populous lands on the further beaches. We should be forgetting that Hamilton grad

uated from our halls if, in the effort to solve the educational problems of our time, we should say that, because the United States of America touches the Atlantic and the Pacific, the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, we need not concern ourselves with what experience has taught men beyond those great sheets of water. Columbia asks you to remember that the American college in its present condition is not the finality to-day more than it has been, yet I share the feeling of my friend from Rondout that when the great result is reached it will be an American system that will be developed on our soil. I think the great difference between Canada and the United States, for example, lies just in this: that the root of Canadian life is fed by tendrils that run under the sea until they reach the mother soil; but the roots of American life are in the soil beneath our feet, and we need not concern ourselves with the fear that our system of education will be other than American.

Columbia is unfortunate at the moment in having at its head one who is a student and not a master of education, and therefore I can hardly speak on this great theme along the line which others have pursued. I thought that the suggestion which Prof. Schurman made was an interesting one, that to a certain extent the different parts of the educational line are aiming at different things and therefore the articulation is imperfect. How true that is, is illustrated by our experience at Columbia. I think we get absolutely no students into our freshman class from public schools outside of New York city.

I made an investigation some time ago and found that there was a gap of a year to a year and a half between those who graduated from our public schools and those who entered Columbia. You know that at the College of the City of New York they have had to resort to a sub-freshman year, and even then the students are not ready for the freshman class of Columbia. We have students, but they are sup plied by the private schools, the fitting schools, that have grown up to meet that particular demand, and so far they illustrate precisely what Prof. Schurman spoke of. The other day we had occasion to review the question of the demands to be made for entrance to Columbia. What did we do? We called together the schoolmasters of New York who conduct these fitting schools and we made up our new conditions in consultation with them. If we are ever to get articulation out of the chaos that has been indicated to-day it is going to be brought about through cooperation. Such a discussion as this to-day is the first step, but it ought not to stop with discussion.

We ought very seriously to consider whether it is not possible to ally our colleges to our public school system more closely. That sort of a question, I think, this University of the State of New York gives us a unique opportunity to study. It can only be studied profitably and to advantage by the regents of the University calling into consultation with them those who represent the different grades of education in the state. I understand that the regents have under consideration some sort of scheme of examinations for degrees. Columbia was not consulted as to whether it was wise. Perhaps other colleges and universities in the state have been more fortunate. If the system is adopted I hope, before it has been put into operation, those whose work is to be affected by it will be consulted, so that we shall have not a new complication added to the chaos which already exists. It seems to me that here in New York we have a unique opportunity to study this question and, if it is solvable, to solve it. Michigan has done it because it began at a later period in the world's history and has taken the higher education as well as the lower under the care and control of the state; but we are dealing with an institution that is very complicated. Yet in New York state we have an official body of regents who can command the cooperation of university, academy, college and school, and yet I think that this Convocation would be almost profitless if confined to talk; but when committees are organized to study the different phases of this question, representing all the different institutions engaged in the work, then we shall have a better system of articulation between the parts. I hope that the regents will take that suggestion into consideration and see whether these questions which are talked about at Convocation may not be made the subject of study and report at future Convocations.

Pres. James M. Taylor - I had not intended to say a word on this question until Pres. Low made the suggestion in regard to cooperation in this state. For five years on this floor on one occasion or another I have urged on college officers precisely this cooperation. I have come sadly to the conclusion that cooperation among the colleges of the state of New York is next to impossible. I have urged it in the committee of the college officers represented among the committees of this Convocation with equally unfavorable results. It seems to me that the matter is a very simple one if this cooperation could be brought about among the college officers of the state. If once they would settle the main lines on which admission to college may

be fixed then it would not seem to me impessi le. It could be easily settled, if a convocation of college offers muld be held in this state which would settle for all the colleges a lite of admission such as the New England commission has been doing for New England. We have not done it, and we have done notlling at all that I can see for the last five years. It seems to me that in this matter of coordination the universities are chiefly at fan!. Where is the chief lack of coordination? It seems to be with the colleges which are growing into universities and which are neither the one thing nor the other. The universities which are half college and half university are pressing continually on the colleges, and at the same time are pressing forward to reach the altitude of a true university. I have sometimes thought if the university could be placed on the basis of a true university apart from the colleges, the college could hold its present place. It seems to me that this call for colleges to offer less than they offer now is nothing less than an attempt to return to a state inferior to the present. Twenty five years ago our education was far below that which we offer to-day. Never should we offer to a young man who can take no more than a general education, less than we are offering to-day. It would be a step backward if any such reduction were offered to the student of to-day.

Sup't W: A. Maxwell, Brooklyn, N. Y.-I had not intended to say a word, but the impression that Pres. Low's remarks have evidently made upon Dr Taylor shows that Pres. Low has been misunderstood. I think it is only due to New York state that the impression should be corrected. As I understood Pres. Low, he stated that there was a year and a half's difference in work between the preparatory year of the College of the City of New York and the freshman year of Columbia. Dr Taylor, as I understood him, supposes that there was a year and a half's difference between the end of the high school in New York and the freshman year at Columbia. There is no high school in New York so called. There is the ColJege of the City of New York, which has, I think, a five or six years course and embodies the usual high school curriculum with at least a portion of the regular college or university course.

The principals of the city of Brooklyn were not, I regret to say, taken into consultation with the authorities of Columbia any more than Columbia college was taken into consultation by the regents of the University; but we have taken Columbia into consultation and have profited by the deliberation. It has been my good fortune

recently to assist in preparing a new course of study for our boys of the high school in Brooklyn. It may be generally known that Brooklyn is, perhaps, one of the most conservative cities in the country. In making our four years' course of study we simply took the requirements of Columbia, of Yale and of Harvard and made the matriculation examinations in those universities the end of our course of study.

We took the requirements for admission to the School of Mines of Columbia and Sheffield Scientific school as the end of our scientific course. What was the result? As soon as this course of study was announced the number of pupils who, on the completion of their work in the grammar school, entered our high school was almost double. This seems to me to convey quite an important

lesson.

Prof. Schurman tells us he came to the conclusion that any proper coordination between the present high schools, colleges and universities is impossible, and that in order to obtain that coordination. which seems to be so desirable, it is necessary to found an entirely new system of high schools or secondary schools. We have also heard a great deal about the American system of education. I have heard a great deal about it to-day, and have tried to gather from the various teachers who have used the term, just what is meant. I failed to do so. Prof. Schurman's idea of a system of schools specially founded, specially organized, specially conducted for the express purpose of preparing for the colleges and universities, is the English idea and the German idea; but the American system, the democratic system, should be the system by which the child when he enters the primary school will look forward to passing through all the course of the public school, through the high school and up directly into the university. That I believe is the American sys

tem.

Sec'y Dewey-I wish to call the attention of Convocation to the misunderstanding regarding the higher degrees proposed by the regents. While some of the university extension students are anxious to have such degrees open for competition as an incentive to systematic and continuous higher work, it should be remembered that the whole scheme of higher degrees was under consideration many years before university extension was talked of in this state. The plan proposed has been worked over by a series of able committees and the colleges have been protected in the best possible way