Sometimes we find the boards of education, the schools, the colleges, and universities attempting to develop the museum as a definite part of the educational program. Again, we find the museums organized separately and more especially for the general benefit of the public and serving the schools only incidentally. We realize that there is need of the two types of service. There can be no question of the desirability of the independence and great service to the public of an institution like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, rendering at thesametime invaluable aid to the students and schools of New York City. From the moment we became acquainted with Oxford University and its collections, such as the Ashmolean and even the Bodleian Library, we were convinced that no institution of higher learning could offer the best facilities for research and study in history, in science, in art, in literature, or æsthetic appreciation which did not have such collections as a part of its equipment or which was not so situated as to be able to make

the American when properly prepared will respond to the aesthetic, the cultural, and the educational in the museum as readily as the European. How to get this preparation is our great problem. I am quite familiar with the efforts that have been made to bring the museum and the school into more effective correlation in this country. I know of the various efforts made in the museums to instruct by lectures, by publications, by extension, by traveling museums, etc.

The Bureau of Education has published a bulletin describing the educational museum of the St. Louis public schools. We have familiarized ourselves with the work of the Children's Museum under the auspices of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. We have seen the children from the schools of Chicago studying the pictures of the Art Institute under the supervision of their teachers. These and other things are being done to utilize more fully the museum for educational purposes. We are making progress, but public appreciation of the educational value of the museum has not been fully realized except in a few places. There is a somewhat general neglect of the matter of education through museums. There is no definite policy for general attack upon the problem in this country.

esses.

upon abstractions and memoriter procThere has been too little of the actual contact of the child with the real world while in the school. Hence often the boy or girl must fight his or her way back to the world of life and things after leaving school.

Froebel, Pestalozzi, Comenius, and other great educationists have stressed the need of realities and of sense perception in education. John Locke boldly taught in the "Essay on the Human Understanding" that all our knowledge comes through sensation. Mr. Rathmann, director of the Educational Museum of St. Louis, said in a paper read before this association: "Telling the child or having him read about our earth, about the great changes produced on its surface through the activity of nature and man, about the people, their life and work and their adjustment to their environment-appealing to his imagination only-will not give the child vivid or lasting impressions or arouse in him the desire and develop the power to do his own exploring and discovering. To make the child acquainted with the world in which he lives, we must bring him into personal contact with the world, European teachers say."

1

In a recent article in SCHOOL LIFE, published by the Bureau of Education, Mr. Coleman, secretary of this association, said: "Objects that can be seen and felt are to the child the realities of life. His fabric of sound understanding must be woven from strands of sense perception and largely, too, his emotional life must be shaped by objective experience and unOf folded by the play of the senses. necessity, therefore, objects, which are the roots of sense perception, are of prime importance to the teacher."

instruction. In Europe, the educational system has laid hold upon these principles more fully than we have in America and has worked out a more general and a better correlation of the museum and the school.

The educational world and the public generally have become more fully cognizant of the need of the museum in the educational program. In England, for example, we find some of the greatest museums, such as the Albert and Victoria Museum in South Kensington, visited annually by thousands of tourists, are under the control of the board of education. The superior appreciation of the average European for art, whether fine or industrial, is due more largely we believe to education than to any difference in native ability. The American can and will profit by the same methods and processes as the European. The pitiable spectacle of the bored or unappreciative American in the European museums is a result of defective education and not to original sin or innate depravity. When given the proper preparation and channel of approach, the American soldier in Europe became highly appreciative of art and museums. I remember an incident in Dijon, France, after the armistice. Thousands of American soldiers were located there with little opportunity for self-improvement and many opportunities for wasting time. The Dijon Museum, one of the finest in France, had been closed during the war. An American educator, who happened to be located in Dijon in the service of the Y. M. C. A., got permission to take American soldiers through the museum. With the aid of a splendid lecture, these visits became the most popular thing in the demand of the soldiers situated at Dijon. Twice daily a limited number were taken through the museum and always crowds were turned away.

I had the same kind of experience in taking American soldiers through museums in England and Scotland during the war. At Oxford, where a large number of our men were attached to the British aerodromes in that vicinity, American lads displayed great interest in the varied and rich collections and antiquities of this English seat of learning.

All learning depends upon attention. Attention is either spontaneous or forced. It either arises freely or must be secured by an exertion of the will. The fact that so much book study is of a kind to require effort is what makes the school irksome to many children. The museum, with its abundance of definite and concrete things, its element of wonder, its æsthetic appeal and lure of interesting things has a great advantage as an educational agency because of the spontaneous attention that naturally attaches to it. The modern exhibition, in attractive setting and beautiful architec

"Zwingerpavillon" (Museum), Dresden

ture, has a tremendous educational advantage over the old-fashioned museum, often housed in dingy quarters with crowded and dusty cases. The architecture, the setting of the paintings, the environment, the color scheme, and furnishings of the Frear collection in this city have an educational value quite comparable to the collection of paintings, ceramics, reliefs, and other objects displayed there. Compare the new National Museum with the old Smithsonian for example. The latter was the kind of thing that must have inspired the ofttold story about the little girl who looked

in a museum and said, "Mother, this looks like a dead circus."

The museum may be made alive with interest. I have two small children who prefer the National Museum as a place of visit to anything else in Washington and one of them even prefers it to a circus. Indeed, the capacity for spontaneous interest is the greatest educational advantage that a museum possesses.

The schools of this country are coming more and more to emphasize the need of contact with things. The value of perception and of doing are being realized more than ever before. Field trips, tours of inspection, visits to city health halls, court rooms, departments, factories, museums, and every kind of contact with life are becoming daily more popular. The project method, now So widely in use in our schools, gives ample opportunity for the school to carry out all kinds of constructive enterprises to grow gardens, to improve the school appearance, to promote sanitation and a hundred other things. To collect materials for a school museum is a basis for a most helpful project which can be expanded almost indefinitely in any community. Those interested in museums can be of great help to the teachers and the schools in working out projects. The possibilities are unlimited.

Education is not confined to children. Education lasts as long as life. The value that is derived from the study of art and science, as made possible by the museum, lends itself particularly to growing interest as we become old. If our boys and girls can get this kind of opportunity during the school years, they will never cease to derive pleasure and profit from the studies thus begun.

Newell Dwight Hillis somewhere tells of an incident in the Vatican one day. Michaelangelo, old and blind, was seen lingering by a torso of Phidias, groping over the marble with his feeble hands. The old man muttered, "Great is this marble; greater is the hand that made it; greater still is the God that made the sculptor. I still learn! I still learn!" and the aged artist went on his way inspired and sustained by a vision of more perfect beauty.

"T

WO MEN I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the scepter of this plant. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the force of a man living manlike. O,

E. E. Windes

but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even be

through education in vocational agriculture.

Education for vocation has proven its worth. It is not chance that gives to the agricultural college graduate who is farming a higher yearly income than that received by the high-school graduate. It is not chance in turn that gives the highschool graduate in vocational agriculture who is farming a higher yearly income than that received by the farmer who never attended high school. It is the law of increased output which follows working with sharpened tools.

Americans Excel Farmers of Old World

The picture drawn by Carlyle applies particularly well to the peasant farmer of the Old World to-day. He still labors with crude tools to produce a meager return. He still is uneducated either from a cultural or from a vocational

However, there are ways in which vocational education for the farmer may be improved. Many yet are not reached by an effective type of vocational training, and the training has not yet provided a satisfactory solution of some of his problems which are pressing. Although as a whole the American farmer is an effective producer because agricultural science has dealt largely with the science of production, he yet does not receive his just share of the rewards due him from his labors. He is managing to live. Many are accumulating wealth, a goodly percentage maintain standards of living in keeping with the best of American ideals, but a majority yet do not realize a satisfactory income and succeed financially only through exploiting their wives and children and through adopting undesirably low standards of living.

Former Conditions of Agricultural Education

Specifically, agricultural education in the past has concerned itself with such matters as the right use of machinery, control of pests, tillage practices, conservation of soil fertility, supply of food through commercial fertilizers, improvements of plants and animals, and ecoproblems of distribution of agricultural nomical farm layout, to the exclusion of products through which the farmer.

Hardly entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed. Thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred.' Thus the great preacher of the gospel of work, Carlyle, voices his veneration for the farmer, accords him high place because his hands have been roughened, frame bowed, joints stiffened, gait and bearing made awkward because he has given unstintingly of his physical energy that the race might be fed and clothed and that others might be freed from physical toil to minister to the spiritual life of the

race.

Escape Lies in Education for Vocation Thus also the great master of words paints as vivid a picture as has ever been painted of him who labors with crude tools and unsharpened intelligence to wrest by physical force a meager return from a reluctant nature. It is a word picture of the pioneer American farmer. We see his counterpart to-day. All sane men accord to him the veneration of Carlyle. All sane men also to-day pity his lot and know that it is not necessarily There is an escape. The farmer to-day can serve so as to command veneration and he can at the same time avoid the dull deadening drudgery with crude tools. The escape lies through education for vocation. Specifically the escape lies

So.

United States to-day, however, after approximately sixty years of agricultural education fostered by the National Government and by States through the Federal Department of Agriculture, State Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations and through instruction in public schools are quite different. They produce per worker 2.3 times what the farmer of the United Kingdom produces, 2.5 times what the German farmer produces, 3.2 times what the French farmer produces, and 6.5 times what the Italian farmer produces.

The increased production comes through education in productive processes and particularly through education in the use of labor-saving tools. The American farmer to-day expends less than 20 per cent of the labor in producing the nine principal crops of the country that he ex

pended in producing the same quantity of these crops in 1850. The American farmer to-day is not necessarily the toil calloused, broken laborer that Carlyle pictures. Often he can not be distinguished from the brainworker in bearing or in breadth of scholarship. He labors less hardly with his hands. He produces more abundantly of food and clothing. He contributes to that which is best in; governmental life. He adds to our storehouse of spiritual possessions. It is the miracle of education in vocation.

the commodities he has to sell.

This failure to secure a just return for effort in agriculture is shown by the fact that the 28 per cent of occupational workers which are agricultural secure only 17.4 per cent of the national income, whereas the 32 per cent which belong to the professional and commercial classes secure 40 per cent of the national income.

There is general agreement that the failure of farmers to secure just returns for labor is due primarily to the fact that the farm group is attempting to compete on an individual basis with other organized vocational groups.

Government through Vocational Group Representation

Many of us hesitate to advise vocational group organization. The fact of vocational group organization is responsible for the most serious problems con

fronting the Nation. It seems that we are rapidly approaching government through vocational group representation. of its effect upon a certain group. Group Legislation is sought or opposed because contends with group, and the vigor of contention is in proportion to the strength of the contending groups. Government thus becomes the tool of special interests, and general social and national welfare is forgotten. It is inevitable that government reacting always to pressure for economic advantage from organized groups must breed discontent. The complete collapse

of government is easily possible under such a state.

However, we are confronted with the fact of vocational group organization in the United States, and dangerous as the tendency may be no alternative seems left the farm group. Farmers must be taught the advantages and methods of group organization. It seems the only way to secure the just rewards due. Farmers must be taught the methods of securing legislation. They must be taught to read aright the influence of the legislative program of other groups upon the farm group and the social order as a whole and to react accordingly. They must be taught to use to good advantage the credit machinery with which the Nation has provided them. They must be taught the law, and the agencies for buying and selling, transporting and storing. They must be taught the sources of information and the proper use of information concerning world and domestic demand for the commodities they produce.

It seems well to realize that these phases of education for agricultural pursuits are as definitely vocational as the skill involved in operating a farm tractor.

It is to be hoped also that in teaching the farm group the methods and principles of group organization we can teach at the same time that organization is for cooperation and not for competition; that the aim is to secure advantages derived through pooled effort and pooled resources and not advantages derived through using the agencies set up by the social order in such a way as to levy tribute upon other groups; and that a decided public service may be rendered if the farm group can find a means of impressing the cooperative rather than the competitive function of organization upon other groups.

begin with an effort to acquaint boys with the real possibilities of the vocation, to determine the boys' fitness for the life of a farmer, and to guide those who are fitted for farming into the occupation and to guide those unfitted for farming into other occupations.

on the other that the boy would elect to stay on the farm. Educational materials were so selected also that the farm boy was trained for farm life, but not for any other occupation. Recently men have seen the real significance of such a program. We have begun to realize that just to the extent that such a program is successful, congestion in the farming occupations becomes more acute, competition of farmer with farmer more intense, and Colleges Require Women Students to Swim

returns for effort thereby reduced to the point where little or no profit is derived. Secretary Wallace has recognized the bad effect of such a program and announced

Swimming for women in colleges and universities was studied during the past

year by Miss Kate Staley, of
Sayner, Wis. A questionnaire
was sent to 131 colleges rec-
ognized by the American
Association of University
Women. Sixty-four of these
responded. The following 22
stated that they required
swimming as a part of the
students' work in college:

Agnes Scott College.
Cornell College.

*Cornell University.

Bryn Mawr College.
Florida State College for
Women.

Goucher College.

*Iowa State Agricultural
College.

*Rockford College.
*Syracuse University.

Chicago University.
*Cincinnati University.

University of Iowa.

University of Montana.

University of Nebraska. *University of Wisconsin. Upper Canada College. Vassar College. Washington University. *Wells College.

*Western Reserve.

Wheaton College. *Wooster College.

A final aspect of vocational education for farmers to which I invite attention is the matter of guiding the proper persons into the occupation.

Past effort in rural education has sought to give the boy a bias toward the farm. It has been assumed that the national well-being depended upon keeping a higher percentage of farm boys on the farm through stopping the drift to cities. Educational programs were projected which frankly aimed at painting such a rosy picture of country life on the one hand and such a dark picture of city life

that

"The greatly accelerated movement of farmers, and especially farmers' sons, from the farms to cities and industrial centers is one of the hopeful signs."

There is another side to such an educational program which is serious in its consequences. Such a program is sending large numbers of young men into farming occupations who never should have entered the occupation. Not every one is fitted by temperament, ability, or interests for farming occupations. A program in vocational agriculture should

yards.

Boys and girls who have been cultivating gardens in the southern part of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden are reaping the rewards of scientific agriculture. One point emphasized by their instructors is frequent and shallow cultivation of the soil to conserve moisture and keep down weeds and it has resulted in an abundant yield of high-grade vegetables in spite of dry weather.

I

N the May number of SCHOOL LIFE an outline was given of the main provisions of three important educational measures before the Sixty-eighth Congress. These were the Sterling-Reed bill (sometimes called the "N. E. A. bill"), to create a Department of Education; the Dallinger bill, to establish a Department of Education and Welfare; and another bill bearing Representative Dallinger's name and proposing to extend the purpose and duties of the Bureau of Education. At the time of publication of the outline of these proposed measures, the educational bill which has received the President's indorsement had not been introduced. This was the bill reported in the Senate by Mr. Smoot and in the House by Mr. Mapes, both from the Joint Committee on the Reorganization of the Executive Departments. The report was submitted on June 3 and the bill was one "To provide for the reorganization and more effective coordination of the executive branch of the Government, to create the Department of Education and Relief, and for other purposes."

Outline of Main Provisions

This bill relates to several executive departments and independent establishments and affects them as follows:

Title I-A Department of Education and Relief is established. A brief summary of the provisions of this title is given in later paragraphs.

Title II.-Two additional Assistant Secretaries are provided in the Department of Commerce. The Bureau of Mines and the Patent Office are transferred to this department from the Department of the Interior. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is made a part of the Department of Commerce, which also receives by transfer the Lake Survey Office from the War Department. Control of inland waterway transportation facilities as provided in sections 201 and 500 of the transportation act of 1920 is transferred from the Secretary of War to the Secretary of Commerce. The Bureau of the Census becomes the Bureau of Federal Statistics. A Bureau of Transportation is established.

Title III.-Department of the Interior.— The Assistant Secretaries in this department are hereafter to be known as the Assistant Secretary for Public Domain and the Assistant Secretary for Public Works. The Bureau of Public Roads of the Department of Agriculture and the Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department are transferred to the Department of the Interior. The Board of Road Commissioners for Alaska, now under the War Department, is abolished and its functions transferred to the Secretary of the Interior.

Title IV.-A Bureau of Purchase and Supply is created to contract for, purchase, and distribute supplies for the executive departments and independent establishments and for the municipal government of the District of Columbia.

Title V.-The Office of Public Buildings and Parks in the District of Columbia is established.

Title VI.-The Solicitor of the Treasury, the Solicitor of Internal Revenue, and the several solicitors for the Departments of State, Interior, Commerce, and Labor, all of whom are at present officers of the Department of Justice, are transferred to the respective departments where now assigned, and their several subordinate officers and employees of the Department of Justice are likewise transferred.

Title VII.-The Bureau of the Budget is made independent of any executive department.

Title VIII.-This act is to take effect March 4, 1925, but provisions relating to transfers, abolishment of existing agencies, and like changes are to become operative July 1, 1925.

Department of Education and Relief

Readers of SCHOOL LIFE will probably be most interested in the provisions of Title I of the bill. Briefly stated, these provisions are as follows:

1. It creates a Department of Education and Relief with a Secretary in the President's Cabinet.

2. Provides for three Assistant Secretaries, to be known respectively as the

Assistant Secretary for Education, the Assistant Secretary for Public Health, and the Assistant Secretary for Veteran Relief, each of whom is to perform his duties under the general direction of the Secretary.

3. Makes it the duty of the department to foster and promote public education and health and the interests of persons separated from the military or naval forces of the United States.

4. (a) Transfers the Bureau of Pensions, the Bureau of Education, St. Elizabeths Hospital, Howard University, and Freedmen's Hospital from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Education and Relief.

(b) Transfers the Public Health Service from the Treasury Department.

(c) Abolishes the Federal Board for Vocational Education and transfers its functions to the Assistant Secretary for Education.

(d) Abolishes the office of Commissioner of Education and transfers his functions to the Assistant Secretary for Education.

(e) Provides that the Assistant Secretary for Veteran Relief shall be a member ex officio of the Board of Managers of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers and requires reports of this board to the Secretary of Education and Relief.

(f) Transfers the functions of the Secretary of the Interior in respect to the Columbia Institution for the Deaf to the Secretary of Education and Relief; provides that the Assistant Secretary for Education shall be ex officio a member of the board of directors of said institution.

(g) Transfers the United States Veterans' Bureau to the Department of Education and Relief. Abolishes the office of Director of the Veterans' Bureau and transfers his functions to the Assistant Secretary for Veteran Relief.

5. Official records and papers and furniture and equipment are transferred with the respective bureaus and offices.

6. Secretary to have charge of property of department; office room provided for; employees transferred with their respective offices.