the nation, and is, therefore, a more serious crime than an assault committed upon a private citizen.

When it is recalled that as long ago as 1827 an effort was made to place within the Constitution a clause limiting the President's period of office to one term; that fifty years ago an agitation in behalf of the election of United States senators by the people was inaugurated and proposed constitutional amendments were introduced; that thirty years ago it was suggested that inauguration day be changed and that the President be given authority to veto specific items in appropriation bills, we are forced to the conclusion that either these reforms are not considered desirable or that there is an unconquerable aversion to tinkering with the Constitution.

I believe the latter to be the case. It is almost certain that a proposition to limit the President's term to a single period of six years would receive the approval of a majority of American voters, if it could be brought before them at the polls. Authority to veto specific items in the appropriation bills is another reform which would appeal to every thoughtful mind as being both wise and necessary. Some explanation ought also to be added to the Constitution as to the meaning of the words "constitutional disability" in the twelfth article, where the Vice-President is directed to act "in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President." If, for instance, the late President McKinley, instead of succumbing to the assassin's bullet, had lain paralyzed and helpless for months and even years, would his "disability have warranted his abdication? Could he have resigned, and would Congress have had the power to declare his office vacant and install the Vice-President in his stead? These questions, and others still more perplexing, may some time arise, for there is no provision in the Constitution for an Acting President.

"

Here, then, are at least three suggestions which have been so repeatedly made and which are so acceptable to the public mind as to warrant the belief that they could become engrafted upon the Constitution with little or no opposition. Judging from the past, however, it would seem as if their adoption were not to be expected. The Constitution could be amended with safety and profit; and yet the probability is that until some political cataclysm comes or some tremendous moral revolution occurs, all efforts to secure even a minor change in the sacred and time-honored document will prove of no avail.

HENRY LITCHFIELD WEST.

OUR CHAOTIC EDUCATION.

WHY is it that, after about twenty years of unparalleled interest and activity in education in this country, there is still so much vagueness about our aims, so much indecision about adapting means programmes and methods to ends and so much uncertainty about our results, that even to-day we still seem, as of old, "always bound nowhere under full sail"? The discussion of this question leads naturally into the recent history of attempted reforms in school programmes or "courses of study." This history is quickly told. About twenty years ago the elementary school programme, with its narrow content and overwhelming emphasis on the school arts-reading, writing, arithmetic, and English grammar was seen to be inadequate and formal. It provided some acquaintance with the school arts themselves, but afforded little real education. It prepared for an elementary education, but did not furnish it.

Accordingly, more than a dozen years ago we began to increase the scope of elementary school programmes. We sought to improve them by "enrichment." To the school arts, the formal studies, we added “content studies" — literature, history, nature study, an improved geography; to the narrow field of the traditional arithmetic we added elementary algebra and geometry; we laid more stress on the drawing, music, and physical training, already represented in the schools' occupations; and we introduced manual training and occasionally a foreign language. But the result was far from satisfactory. We had become convinced that enrichment was necessary, and had acted on our conviction. But the enrichment had involved us in new difficulties that proved to be formidable obstacles to progress. Our programmes were congested, especially in those portions of the new programmes most affected by enrichment the earliest and the latest pre-high-school grades. The middle ground was and remains, justly I think, though perhaps not always intentionally, the territory where the school arts are supreme.

Then it seemed that the elimination of non-essentials from the old programmes would solve our difficulties. Such elimination, it was

asserted, must precede and accompany enrichment-which was true. It was also announced, with something of flourish and a good deal of insistence, that "correlation" would accomplish the rest. Correlation was interpreted to mean such a grouping of the subject-matter that each study could and should be so pursued as incidentally to cover adequate instruction in others. Examples of such grouping would be history and geography, history and literature, reading and nature study, nature study and arithmetic, English grammar and foreign languages, elementary algebra and geometry and arithmetic, manual training and drawing. This solution of our programme difficulties also insisted on a subordination of the formal studies to the content studies. The school arts were no longer to be pursued as ends in themselves, but primarily as means to ends, as the instruments by which education is deepened and ultimately extended, but not as embodying an education themselves.

So promising and important did the solution of our programme difficulties by means of correlation seem that when, in 1893, the department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association appointed a Committee of Fifteen on Elementary School Studies, it was understood that one of the Committee's most important duties should be to set forth, clearly and in detail, to what extent the problem of our programme difficulties could be solved by correlation. The Sub-committee on Correlation of the Committee of Fifteen did not solve this problem, however, nor did they attempt it, although they did something of as great or greater importance, as I shall point out later on; and to this day we are without the guidance that a thoroughgoing study of the interrelations of the elementary school studies would afford. I mean such a study as would show to what extent parts of any one of them are naturally, necessarily, and adequately covered in the satisfactory pursuit of another or others. This important study is still awaiting the leisure and inclination of broad-minded students willing and able to devote a long period of time to it.

By this time we had, however, attempted "enrichment," "elimination," and "correlation." This had effected a more or less thoroughgoing revision of the programme of elementary studies from beginning to end; and the result was chaos. There is no better term to describe the infinite variety, complexity, and instability that resulted from the successive tinkerings to which the elementary school programmes had been subjected. And chaotic they remain. But it is no longer a discouraging confusion. Before this stage had been reached we had gradually come to see that what we needed was guiding principles. Without

them it was clear that we should only make confusion worse by further changes.

Out of this demand for guiding principles arose the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary School Studies, the duties of which, it soon appeared, must transcend even the principles that underlie programme making. To make our educational endeavor effective, good teaching and wise organization and administration are needed, as well as good programmes of study based on sound educational doctrine. Hence the Committee of Fifteen divided its work into three sections covering, respectively, educational doctrine, the training of teachers, and the organization and administration of school systems.

Before the elementary school programmes had been transformed to any considerable extent, and while they were still substantially what they had been since the beginning of the nineteenth century, strong dissatisfaction had been felt with the narrow training furnished by our secondary schools. Although designed to meet the needs of all who could prolong their school education beyond the elementary school stage, our secondary school programme was determined chiefly by the small fraction of this number who could go beyond the secondary school to the college. Until within the last ten years preparation for a college course leading to the A.B. degree was everywhere either strictly limited to little else than a drill in the elements of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, or such modifications of these requirements as made it more difficult to prepare for college with the alternatives than with the traditional requirements; and, as just stated, these subjects occupied the lion's share of time and attention in secondary education nearly everywhere, whether the pupils were destined for college or not. The narrow and formal character of such a secondary education was gradually perceived to be, like the elementary education that had preceded it, chiefly preparation for education, not education itself. The elementary school deferred the pupil's real education to the secondary school, the secondary school deferred it, once more, to the college.

Consequently, we began to transform the secondary school programme as well as the elementary school programme - by enrichment. The enrichment consisted of natural science, modern languages, English language and literature; history, government, "commercial training," and, of late, economics; manual training, and increased attention to music and drawing. All this was gradual, but none the less real. As it proceeded it became evident that no one pupil could do serious work in the modern subjects and at the same time pursue his classics as of old.

Twenty-five years ago we already had a bifurcation of the programme into classical and non-classical divisions or courses of study," dating from 1821, when the Boston "English High School" was established for those boys who were not going to college; and this bifurcation gradually developed into a division of the programme into several parallel groups or courses of study, each group or course consisting of a combination of studies comprising both, or one, or neither of the classical languages. To obtain the diploma of the school, a pupil must select his group or course of study and adhere to it throughout the usual four years of secondary school work. The prestige of the traditional classical studies was, however, so great that the non-classical divisions were for a time. inferior to the others, and on this account they were avoided by the socially and intellectually ambitious pupils. The inferiority of nonclassical studies has rapidly diminished, however, because of a more just appreciation of the intrinsic value of those studies and a great improvement in the method of teaching them, and particularly because of a growing recognition of them by the colleges for college admission purposes.

We had now transformed our secondary school programme by enrichment and by a multiplication of courses of study; and these changes had led gradually and naturally to the elective system. The result was, however, far from satisfactory: first, because the courses consisting of the modern studies were in dignity and seriousness of pursuit too often inferior to the classical course; and second, because these courses could not be brought up to the standard of excellence of the classical course until the conventional estimate of the efficiency of a school by the community should be based on its general excellence, and not chiefly on its success in preparing pupils for college through the classical course. That is to say, our programme changes had grown out of the demand for a good secondary education for every pupil, whether he went on to college or not; a natural corollary to this demand was that just as good work should be done in non-classical as in classical courses of study. But this demand remained unsatisfied.

Out of this demand arose the report of the Committee of Ten of the National Educational Association. It was to tell us how to combine a good modern with a good classical education; to tell us what a good nonclassical secondary education is; and, finally, to promote uniformity among college admission requirements throughout the country. And this it attempted to do. The attempt was made to give expression to a body of educational authority on the scope of each of the principal studies recognized as appropriate to secondary education; on the time that