sions of those who come to the Isthmus for a day to advise those in authority how to build a canal, this one looks good, but like most others of its kind, it will not work, and I believe. this is an objection worth considering. One statesman recently suggested the feasibility of but one dam in the construction of the canal. His logic would put but one head in an oil tank. Our well meaning Pennsylvania friend's theory is but little more practicable. He had left entirely out of account the fact that most of the children who come here come from, and will soon return to, schools in the States of the conventional type, and that we are morally bound to make our course of study and our methods articulate with those from which our children come and to which they will return in one, two or three years. Social innovations of whatever kind must be worked out in permanent, not in transient communities. Time and permanency are necessary if a school is to make its impress upon a community. What we may hope to do in Panama is to keep abreast the best systems in the States. No more is practicable.

I am asked by nearly everyone, “What are the country, the people and the schools like?" To take these queries point by point:

The Country.

The Republic of Panama lies east and west. The Canal Zone, which is ten miles wide and fifty miles long, bisects the little republic from north to south. Colon and Panama, the north and south terminals of the canal, are, respectively, nine degrees and nine degrees and thirty minutes north latitude. and are about directly south of Buffalo. The Zone is thus in a tropical

latitude, and its elevation is so slight that the flora and fauna are, without exception, tropical. The proximity of all parts of 'Panama to the sea renders extreme temperatures out of the question. The thermometer registers from 68 to 90 degrees, and the nights are always cool and pleasant, while the days are never so intolerable as the hot summer days in the Northern States. There are two seasons, the dry and the wet. The rainy season, roughly speaking, extends from July to December; the dry, from January to June, inclusive. Some notion may be had of the rainy season from the statement that in last November the precipitation. on the Zone averaged 36 inches, which is slightly in excess of the average precipitation in the United States for one year.

The map shows the contour of the country. The Continental Divide ranges from 600 to 1,100 feet in the zone and the whole country is cut to pieces with high hills and mountains, all rapidly descending to swiftly flowing streams, ́which furnish drainage for the enormous rainfall. The physiographical conditions of Panama have much simplified the problem of sanitation. These favoring conditions and the application of modern methods of sanitation have made of the Canal Zone a comparatively healthy country, free of contagion and pestilence. Barring accidents, the death rate is lower than in most American cities.

The Panama Railroad parallels the canal from Colon to Panama. Over this road there are eight modernly equipped passenger trains daily. Besides these, there are four daily commissary trains, which furnish the different communities with ice, fruits,

meats, etc., etc. Along this road are some thirty communities ranging in numbers from one or two hundred to six or seven thousand, all housed in neat, comfortable dwellings built and maintained at the expense of the Canal Commission.

On my first trip across the Isthmus I was disappointed, though happily so. I expected to see camps set down in the midst of tropical jungles, hidden almost from view by rank tropical vegetation and exposed to reptiles and varmints of various hues, sizes and degrees of ferocity. Stanley Gilbert had told me in song that:

"Beyond the Chagres River,

They say, the story's old,
Are paths that lead to mountains
Of purest virgin gold.

But 'tis my firm conviction,
Whatever tales they tell,
That beyond the Chagres River
All paths lead straight to

Well, it is not so bad as that. What you will see here is a community of some seventy thousand people, onehalf of whom are employes, wholesomely fed and comfortably quartered in houses which, for convenience and comfort, surpass the quarters of the average dweller in the States.

The People.

.

True, the natives are not so fortunately situated as the employes of the Canal Commission; but if these people of "manana" have any desire to be better furnished it is not apparent. What I am saying is that the communities adjacent to the canal are well provided for, and you see nothing of the looked for barbarous life unless you hunt for it in the jungles. You will then find it, but it is tame and insipid. You will find nothing of the virility and aggressiveness of the Indian, nothing of that romantic wildness which

gives zest to the stories of Cooper or the more modern ones of our "Wild and Woolly West." The native of the jungle is satisfied if his bamboo hut will keep out the sun and the rain. The ground is his chair, his chair is his table, and his table is his bed. His clothes are mostly of the original pattern and his food is as little artificial. "Back to nature," do you say? No. There has never been a departure. He and his Rooseveltian family are leading the simple life. Monopoly, intemperance, tariff, strikes, panics, suffrage, socialism and such creatures cannot touch him, for he is untouchable. What a contrast between him and the nervous, energetic, impulsive, ambitious American on the canal! Indeed, we have in the two types an example, in the concrete, of "Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters."

But most of our people are West Indians and Americans. The Americans. are of the very highest type-in fact, much above the average American community in points of intelligence, training and general culture. The Jamaicans are far better trained than the average American negro. Ninety per cent. of them can read and write, while illiteracy is almost unknown among them.

The problem, then, of educating children here is not so complex as some have imagined—infinitely less so than that of educating the children of Chicago. True, there are here many Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos and Europeans, but most of these speak English and most of them are here to stay. The school problem is, in short, one of educating Americans along conventional lines, and a more or less heterogeneous society along lines which shall

equip them for life in the tropics. This leads naturally into the third topic:

The Schools.

The school organization comprehends a superintendent directly responsible to the governor, two assistants and twenty-seven principals responsible to the superintendent, and a white and colored division. The teachers are white and colored, and are paid as follows: Class 4, $50; Class 3, $60; Class 2, $90, and Class 1, $110. Supervisors are paid from $1,600 to $2,000.

The school facilities are excellent, the buildings are well adapted to tropical conditions, the rooms are all of stand-. ard size, equipped with sanitary adjustable steel desks, boards, maps and sanitary toilets. The school at each building is organized on the plan of ward schools in the city systems of the States. Free text books and free medical inspection are provided. Not only is free inspection had, but free treatment at the hospital is provided children who are found defective. Not a single instance is recorded in which a parent has refused to follow the advice of the examining physician.

The small size of many of the communities has made proper grading a difficult problem. As in the States, free transportation was found to be the only remedy. This year the number of white schools has been reduced from eleven to seven as a result of the completion of good roads along the line. of the canal. Children are transported by brake from Corozal and Balboa to Ancon, from Las Cascadas to Empire, from Paraiso to Pedro Miguel, and from Colon Beach to Cristobal. Others are carried by rail. The arrangement makes practicable a well graded system of schools, a thing toward which the

Division of Schools has striven since its first organization.

The progress of the schools the past year was marked chiefly by: (1) Consolidation at Cristobal of the three high schools; (2) the establishment of school gardens; (3) the authorization of kindergartens.

Heretofore there had been three high schools. In October the plan of consolidation was approved by the chairman and the Culebra, Gatun and Cristobal schools were consolidated at Cristobal. The enrollment last year was fifty-four and will reach eighty the present year. Pupils are now being carried by rail to Gatun, where the consolidated high school has been permanently located, a special school coach being provided for this purpose. Children so transported are supervised by a teacher especially appointed for the purpose.

The high school teachers are all college graduates of more than two years' successful experience. Pupils are now being prepared for Chicago, Vassar, Harvard and Wellesley, and we are assured of special recognition by some of the leading educational institutions of the States by the close of the year.

The organization of school gardens was a feature of last year's work. Gardens were established at five places. Of these the Empire garden is the largest and most important. Here thirty enthusiastic boys and girls have been at work with good results to themselves in an educational way and with excellent returns in a material way. They now have a garden of flowers, tomatoes, peas, beans, okra, lettuce, turnips, mustard, yams, pumpkins, cabbage, bananas, papayas and what not. On January 13 the first seeds were.

planted and on April 13 more than $125 worth of stuff had been taken from the plot, which is less than three-quarters of an acre in size. At the close of the school year, June 30, the superintendent's report showed that this garden alone had yielded $350 worth of garden products. These were distributed among the children who had been assigned to garden work.

At first the children manifested little interest in the work, but when an early and bountiful harvest assured a

reward for their labors they took hold with a right good will. The question. now is rather how to control their enthusiasm than how to arouse it. We have already had to limit the hours during which the boys shall be allowed to work in the gardens.

In a later number I may set forth more in detail the nature of the work we are doing down in Panama and of the organization under which the work is being done.

In the ten minutes allotted to me I should like to say a few of the practical things regarding this subject, knowing full well that the theoretical or more general side of the question. has been treated frequently in meetings of this character and does not need repetition here.

By principal, I assume that the committee has in mind a person in charge of a building, since it is in only a few of the larger cities that we have the distinctly supervising principal. I assume, too, that in the majority of our schools the principal does some teaching of regular or special classes.

The first requisite in a principal is natural ability plus preparation for the teaching profession. Not only must he be a scholar, but he must have elements of leadership, susceptible of unlimited development. He must be thoroughly in love with his work, having an abiding faith and interest in both pupils and teachers under his control. He must possess, also, initiative

qualities in a high degree. Privates can obey orders, but generals must plan. Even a machine, a program clock, can ring the bells and much more nearly on time than does an ordinary principal. Automatic devices. now control temperature and ventilation fairly well. We vote by machine. We may yet have a machine to keep school records-accurately. What we want is a man who can see useful things to do and then do them.

Granted that we have been fortunate enough to secure such a man, we must make proper conditions under which he shall work. He must in all cases be relieved of the control of a room. In no case should he have regular or special classes that take up more than onehalf of his time. In a four to eight room school, three grades can be put in one room, with a regular teacher in charge, the principal teaching about one-half time. Our principals with ten to sixteen teachers spend about onefourth to one-third of their time teach

ing regular classes during the first half of the year. When the 8A class goes. to the high school in February, the principal can give all his time to special classes and problems of supervision. In still larger schools the principal should do no regular teaching.

The next requirement is that he should have a thorough knowledge of the course of study. Not only should he know what is in the course but why it is there. In the best courses, I am sure the superintendent has used his principals and teachers in the making thereof. It is thus their own product and the interest is naturally greater therein. The meetings of the principals and superintendent should serve to give to the principal this knowledge and also the well grounded ideas that the superintendent has of school work. It is mainly through the principal that the superintendent's best conceptions of educative processes find their way, through the teacher, into the lives of the pupils. The latter is my conception of supervision.

Tompkins says that the superintendent's best thought must reach the pupils as if the teacher had originated

it. I would add that it should come to the teacher as if it were original with. the principal and not something he is carrying out in a perfunctory way, as dictated by another. In this connection I would say that the principal should, in every way, be encouraged to originate ideas and try them out. If they are radical, he should, of course, consult with the superintendent. I am just as happy when I go into a building and find some distinct and good thing originated by principal or teacher, being successfully done, as I am to

find my own ideas being carefully followed.

Briefly as to our plan of work. In the meetings of principals, we aim to get clear conceptions of the problems on which we are to work. The problem may be one of a special subject, as writing, or it may be a special process as "how to study." During the past year it was mainly, how to deal with and save the backward child. We have largely eliminated failures in the grades. We arrive at conclusions based on the best thought of all. The superintendent is naturally the leader and can guide the conclusion into his own. channel of thought if he so desires but it would be a very extraordinary man who did not find splendid additions. and many modifications in the suggestions of his principals. I have no hesitancy in taking the principals into my confidence, and as a rule they are willing and anxious to carry out the plans decided upon.

When we have decided upon a plan of action, I visit with each principal. An example will show clearer than anything else. We changed very materially our history course in the elementary grades. Teachers were given full details of the change in a bulletin and yet there were some who could not adapt themselves to the new ideas. When they had had plenty of time to get the work organized, I appointed a day with the principal and he arranged a program by which we might visit together all the history work in the fifth sixth, seventh and eighth grades that day-with the exception of classes that came at the same period. No change was made in the programs and the teachers knew nothing of our plans. A half hour before the