Kindergartens are common in Germany, but are ordinarily if not invariably carried on by private enterprise.

"Continuation schools" are provided for the children of the working classes who want to do more work than is provided in the primary schools. They provide courses for two and three years and their work runs into trade instruction.

The regulations touching primary schoolhouses in Prussia illustrate the national estimate of the importance of educational details. Of course there are many buildings which were erected before the modern regulations were deemed necessary, and such regulations are not always enforced in Prussia, but they are quite suggestive enough. The building is to be erected in a sunny and dry open space, away from the most used streets. In the cities the interior of the block is preferred. Quiet is imperative. Good water is sought. Playgrounds are demanded. If the building has more than one story the youngest children have the ground floor. In building anew, provision must be made for enlargement. Every detail of construction is specifically treated. Use of new buildings is prohibited until thoroughly dry; in stone and brick buildings six months is allowed. The size of rooms is regulated; even the shape of rooms is regarded. So, too, is the size, form, and location of doors and windows. Heating and ventilation are specifically treated. The width and length of halls and the width and height of stairs are specified. The form and situation of desks; the height, width, and depth of the platform upon which the teacher's desk stands, and the need of hooks and pegs for hats and coats are all set forth.

Of course a national system which regards all these small matters touching the school accommodations, with reference to the health, eyesight, and convenience of teacher and pupils, can not neglect the details of the courses pursued or the sufficiency of the instruction; and it does not.

Secondary schools are found everywhere. Their work is varied but leans toward the classical, the culturing, the professional, and their line of cleavage is quite clearly a social one. Provision is made for the secondary education of girls as well as of boys.

Then follows a large variety of advanced special schools, such as schools for defectives, academies of forestry, polytechnics, schools of agriculture, of mining, of architecture, of art, and of music. There are more than 250 normal schools for training teachers.

Above all the rest there are 21 universities, some of them with just reputations which have attracted students from all parts of the

educational world. In 1900 there were 2800 teachers and 34,000 I students in these universities.

The fundamental and distinguishing characteristics of this mighty system of education may perhaps be enumerated as follows: (a) the full and regular attendance of children of school age; (b) the habit of uniform obedience to the state's authority; (c) official exactness concerning the quantity of work to be done in each grade of schools; (d) uniformity in the work of each grade, with 42 to 45 weeks of work in a year; (e) the fact that each grade of school leads to something beyond, to work as much as to higher schools; (f) that the "something beyond" is suited to whatever manner of life the child is likely to lead; (g) the adequate preparation of the teachers, the exclusion of immature or unprepared teachers, the certain tenure of teachers, and the consequent dignity of the teacher and his work; (h) the inspection of private teaching and the assumption of entire responsibility for the education of the country by the government; (i) the apparently open opportunity for all, accompanied by a marked contentment with one's situation and a readiness to do what is reasonably within the reach of one's station in life; (j) a very considerable evenness of educational instrumentalities and opportunities in all parts of the Empire; (k) very many heights of scholarship which are not outranked by any in the world; (1) deep and common civic responsibility for the character of the schools.

In the work of German schools the ordinary work in American schools is included, but special emphasis is laid upon physical exercise and militarism, upon drawing and manual skill, upon needlework and other domestic arts, and upon music. Everything is done to nourish love for the Fatherland. The portrait of the Emperor is required to be displayed in every schoolroom. The national songs are sung often and well. The accomplishments of the nation are well told. Everything is done for contentment, for scientific scholarship, for industrial productivity, for military efficiency, for the happiness, oneness, strength, and greatness of the German Empire.

Mention of the important fact that religion is a vital part of the primary school curriculum of Germany must not be omitted. Whether the child goes to a public school or a private school, or is instructed in the family, the state demands that he be instructed religiously. If the school be one of Protestants, Roman Catholics, or Jews, the master must see that the religious instruction conforms to the religious preferences, and whoever gives any

instruction, including the religious, must have the authority of the government behind him. If the schools are mixed religiously, the instruction must accord with the beliefs of the greater number; perhaps in some cases the dogma and doctrine are somewhat mixed, too; more likely the religion is not so theological as some would make it. The clergymen are in a sense representatives of the state. The greater number receive a considerable part of their salaries directly from the state. They have been educated in the different grades of the schools, including the divinity schools of the universities, and are easily adaptable to the needs of German religious education.

In view of the purely nonsectarian character of American public schools and of the frequent discussion of religious training in this country, it is interesting to notice how the German law treats the matter. The following are among its provisions: The character of the religious instruction is determined by the father. Where the father and mother are of different denominations an agreement made before marriage to train the children in the religion of the mother has no legal effect. On the death of the father the instruction must continue in his faith and no deathbed conversions to a different faith are recognized. On the death of the father the court must attend to the matter. Children born out of wedlock must receive religious instruction in the faith of the mother. After fourteen years old children may decide for themselves as to the denomination they will affiliate with. Before fourteen no denomination is allowed to receive a child or permit a confession of faith other than that to which the child belongs by law.

The reader needs no assurance that a people doing so much for schools of every grade from the kindergarten to the university has accumulated many and great aids to information and culture outside of the schools. We know it would be so and that it is so. The libraries, museums, art galleries, architecture, palaces, mausoleums, and monuments of the Germans fittingly augment and round out their system of education, but obviously we can not enter upon even a partial description of them here.

Comparisons with the United States. The extended treatment which has been given to various phases of the American educational system in this department makes any general presentation of our own system unnecessary in this place. But I can not forbear observing that it is clear enough that there are some advantages and some disadvantages with us when we come to compare ours with other systems. Such comparison may be hazardous, but I shall

venture to express the thought that in regard for details and in a commonly exercised and accepted power to regulate them; in the appreciation of the necessity of universal and regular attendance of all children within fixed ages; in training for specific industries and common employments and in promoting contentment; in realization of the bearing of the work of the advanced schools upon the lower ones; in providing for the philosophical and exact preparation of teachers; in dignifying the teacher's position; in fixing educational values and in avoiding erroneous estimates of scholarship and culture in the affairs of the people, and particularly in determining the policies of the government of the nation, there are foreign systems of education which have claims superior to the corresponding claims which may be made on behalf of the American system.

On the other hand, it seems to me that in the adaptability of schools to agricultural, and particularly to pioneer, conditions; in such general inclusion of high schools, and now of state universities in the public educational system; in the steady correlation and solidification which is going on between all grades and kinds of institutions; in the continuous road from the lowest to the highest, and the encouragement which is given every ambitious child of the people to follow it; in balancing state and local control and in developing so much and such efficient local supervision; in the cheerful generosity by which the public schools are supported, and the monumental munificence with which private schools are established and maintained; in the fulness of religious toleration and the cordiality with which all classes from all peoples are working together for learning; in the elasticity and flexibility of the whole system, the freedom of its opportunity, the aggressiveness of its spirit, the granduer of its outlook, and the measure of its accomplishments and of its confident expectancy; in the ripeness of its scholarship at many points and the tendency to diffuse and absorb scholarship at all points; in the growing regard for the implements and results of scholarship and the unlimited determination to have whatever will aid learning; and particularly in the popular administration of the system, the universal sense of proprietorship, and the retroactive influence of this upon the buoyant intellectual and moral sense of the nation, we have educational advantages which are enjoyed by hardly any other people.

WHAT THE WOMEN'S CLUBS MAY DO FOR THE SCHOOLS

ADDRESS AT THE STATE FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS, TROY, N. Y., OCTOBER 30, 1907

I shall use no part of my brief time in the commonplace pleasantries which easily come to the surface when a man speaks of or to the Women's Clubs. I look upon you as the representatives of substantial women, who have organized for intellectual self-improvement, and are anxious to be useful to the towns in which you live and to the State of which you are justly proud. Your committee has asked me to tell you what an educational officer of the State thinks you can do for the schools. Most of you have attended the schools; many of you have children who have been, or are, or are to be, in the schools; and all of you know how vital the schools are to the town and to the State. Not doubting, therefore, the sincerity or the intelligence of your request, and well knowing how very potent your well directed efforts may be, I respond to your invitation with very great pleasure and shall endeavor to aid you with all plainness of speech.

In the first place, do not lose sight of the fact that all public undertakings in which both sexes are concerned will be better managed through the cooperation of both men and women. Their qualities supplement each other. If school boards were to be made up exclusively of women they would be no better than when composed exclusively of men, and probably, in general, not as good; for women are not, upon the average, as well adapted to public administration as men, and experience shows that after the novelty of the first admission of women to such boards wears off, the women who are less adapted to such places seek and secure places upon them. I have no objections to women in school boards, and there are many women whom I should much prefer to many of the men who are in such places, but it would be a false pretense, of which I should be ashamed, if I should tell you that you could help the schools by contesting elections and insisting upon sharing the responsibilities and the publicity often incident to membership in administrative boards. If you will use your influence to secure the election or appointment of decent and capable men on school boards, and if you will insist that boards, however composed, shall honestly

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