resents an interesting movement toward the equalizing of education in Connecticut. Mr. Scott was compelled to decline for reasons which suggest anew the importance of establishing a sustaining fund for our Association. His absence is to be regretted, for the movement to which he is devoting himself is one of great importance, I mean the elevation and improvement of the rural schools of America. In 1895 there were in the United States 574 cities of 8,000 or more inhabitants each. The pupils enrolled in the schools of these cities numbered 3,303,000. Those in the other schools of the nation - the rural schools numbered 10,889,000. The ratio of the two classes is as 33 to 108; yet the city schools own more than half of the common-school property and expend more than 41 per cent. of the total school funds. This means "that the country school-children, as a whole, are taught in inferior school-houses, by inferior teachers, and for much shorter periods of time." How to secure for them a better chance how to "equalize education," as Mr. Scott expresses it—is one of the pressing problems of the hour. In the meeting of the National Council of Education at Milwaukee, last year, an elaborate report on rural schools, filling 200 octavo pages, was presented, abounding in practical suggestions. The general aim set forth in this report was the multiplying and improving of opportunities for the children of the rural districts. One aspect of this subject will come before us in the first paper of the morning by Mrs. Daniel Folkmar, not exclusively, however, or distinctively, in its bearings upon rural schools. I spoke a year ago of the attention given of late to the economy of time in the educational process. I am glad that this matter is to be presented in so definite shape to-day.

Two

I spoke last year and the year before of the educational processes perpetually going on apart from all systematized instruction. No man's education ceases with the close of schooldays; and it is important to recognize this fact, and to appreciate the educational value of certain institutions and movements. years ago the educational value of modern fraternities was considered, and the educational influence of the newspaper was touched upon. A year ago one of our topics was the educational influence of the drama; and to-day, following the same general line of investigation, we are to consider the educational value of the popular lecture. Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, from his rich experience in connection with the schools of New York, will be able

to give us the latest wisdom on this interesting topic. It may be worth while, at this point, to mention that the value of the drama the stage as an educational agency has lately been tried in a very practical way in connection with certain schools in Germany, the school-children being taken regularly to the theatre by their teachers to witness first-class plays. And, apart from the question of the morality of the stage, why is not this experiment as well worth trying and as justifiable as that reported by Mr. Dutton from the Brookline schools,—I mean the introduction into the schoolrooms of fine music and notable works of art?

By a slight change in the constitution at our last annual meeting the department over which I have the honor of presiding was enlarged, so that it became the "Department of Education and Art." What the effect of this change will be depends upon the ultimate direction of a new movement that has developed since last winter within our organization, the nature and scope of which will probably be revealed before the close of our meeting. But, in any case, the relations of art to education are of obvious importance, and it seemed entirely suitable that the enlargement of this department whether it shall prove to be permanent or temporary should be signalized by a paper on the relations existing between art and education. This paper, you perceive, will be presented by Professor Raymond, of Princeton, who has made this field of inquiry especially his own. The subject is one that has already attracted much attention. At the meeting of the National Council of Education, at Milwaukee, this was one of the pressing topics. Professor Raymond will discuss it on its highest levels, but its humbler and more "primary" relations are also worthy of careful consideration.

The other topic for our evening session is one which, in its very statement, affords us a note of hope. Is it true that there has been real advance in college and university education in the United States?—I mean in the proportion of those who seek and secure it. Dr. William T. Harris says there has, and bases his statement upon a large array of facts. The significance of this no man in America is better fitted than Commissioner Harris, whether by official position or by expert knowledge, to set forth. Some one, speaking of the recent war, has said: "This is emphatically a war of trained against untrained men. We shall succeed by virtue of a more thorough education,- an education both in the arts of war and in character." A statement such as

this, taken in connection with the growing interest of the people of America in the higher education, brings before us the great possibilities that await us in the near future.

One other event in our program remains to be mentioned. When Professor William F. Blackman, of the Yale Divinity School, proposed that his paper should be on the question, "Is Society an Organism?" I was well aware that the topic was no more appropriate to my department than to some other, but I also knew that it was no less so. I felt, too, that such fundamental questions as this ought to be considered every year at our meetings; and I am very glad that at the close of this morning's session we are going to have such a theme brought before us by one of the most earnest and successful students to be found in the growing company of those who are devoting their lives to sociology.

At the risk of making this miscellany of "remarks" still more miscellaneous, I refer, in conclusion, to a matter introduced to my attention and to the notice of various members by one of our Council, Mr. E. T. Potter, of Newport, R.I. Mr. Potter is alarmed, and with good reason, at the destruction so rapidly going on all over our country of what he calls "some parts of man's heritage in nature." In a brief paper which he has published on this subject, he speaks of the massacre of the song-birds and the birds of beautiful plumage, of the approaching extinction of giraffes and whales, of the overthrow of the giant trees of California, of the blowing up of the Palisades on the Hudson River, and of the destruction of much that is beautiful and precious in the Yellowstone Park since the withdrawal of the United States troops. The matter is one to which attention should certainly be directed. There is an old name for all this-Vandalism which suggests that the explanation of it is to be found in the fact that we have not yet, as a people, quite emerged from the status of barbarism. What is more likely to lift us completely out of that condition than education,- an education that shall give proper heed to our æsthetic development, and that shall begin with the little child? And, as Mr. Potter says, we must make haste in regard to this, if we are to preserve for posterity the exceptional in nature as we now possess it."

66

2.

THE SHORT DURATION OF SCHOOL ATTENDANCE: ITS CAUSES AND REMEDIES.

BY MRS. DANIEL FOLKMAR, M.PH., PARIS, FRANCE.

*

[Read Tuesday morning, August 30.]

Several solutions of the question, "What is the average schooling of the pupil of the public schools?" have been undertaken. Some writers have based their study on the investigation of the ages of pupils. The results of such investigation are not very conclusive; for, while the child may be enrolled in school for five or six successive years, so long as he is required to be in school only three months during the year, he will not cover many grades. Others have based their investigations on promotion figures. Here, too, the results are not very convincing. Many pupils who are promoted at the end of the year do not return for the next year, and it would be the height of presumption to suppose that all pupils who failed of promotion would be enrolled in the same grades the next year.

As a more satisfactory basis for the solution of the question of the duration of school attendance, Professor Folkmar undertook in 1894 a study of the Chicago public schools, to ascertain at what grade pupils drop out of school, what per cent drop out before reaching the second grade, what per cent fail to reach the grammar grades, what per cent reach the high school, and what per cent graduate from the high school. This is a better basis of investigation; for the results indicate what grades of the public school have been covered by its citizens,-in other words, what acquirements of knowledge, power, and skill the pupil has on leaving school, so far as such acquirements can be inferred from curricula outlining the work of the several grades of the public schools.

The results of Professor Folkmar's investigation, briefly stated, are as follows: of the children that attend the public schools of

* Woodward, C.M., "The Age of Withdrawal from the Public Schools," Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1891-92, p. 595.

Chicago, 32 per cent drop out before reaching the second grade, 51 per cent before reaching the third grade, 66 per cent before reaching the fourth grade, 78 per cent before reaching the grammar grades, 97 per cent before reaching the high school, and only three in a thousand graduate from the high school. While the study of one city does not prove anything outside of that city, it was the opinion of Professor Folkmar that the conditions which he found in Chicago were not peculiar to Chicago, but rather were typical of the great cities of this country, if not of the whole country, including urban and rural districts. Likewise, that these conditions are typical not only of the United States, but of every highly civilized nation. As one step toward the verification or disproval of the above proposition, I undertook in 1896 a similar study of the public schools of Milwaukee.

In the study of the duration of school attendance from data furnished by Chicago and Milwaukee, two methods* of demonstration were employed for each city, the one serving as a check upon the other. They may be designated as the deductive, or enrollment method, and the inductive, or class method. By the first the enrollment by grades for one year or the totals for a group of years are made the basis of deduction or inference as to the per cents that must have dropped out from the lower grades. By the second the enrollment of a single class entering the first grade is followed from grade to grade through the reports of successive years, the per cent that dropped out in each grade is noted, and from a comparison of these facts with corresponding facts in the history of other classes a generalization is reached inductively as to the normal per cents that drop out at each grade. Secondary considerations, such as deaths, increase of population, and promotion figures, were introduced into these studies, "on the one hand to eliminate errors so far as possible, on the other hand to determine the limits of probable error, so that, if per cents could not be determined with absolute accuracy, statements could at least be made as to the maximum and minimum limits within which the truth lay."

The following diagram is a graphic illustration of the results of the deductive method. The solid lines mark off the number that drop out before the next grade in Chicago, and the dotted lines indicate the conditions in Milwaukee. The slight difference

* For details of method and data see "The Duration of School Attendance in Chicago and Milwaukee," by Daniel Folkmar, "Proceedings of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters for 1897," p. 257.