in science would be a poor man to work out a measure for the testing of the work in English composition. The man whose interest is in the field of general education would be a poor man to work out a measure for the testing of the number work. Then, too, the tests we have only test one feature of the subject. So we should remain sane regarding the measures of efficiency. We can rest assured that no measure, no matter how delicate, can ever measure the teacher's most important feature of her work-the impress of her spirit upon the spirit of her pupils.

I presume there is no high school in the state where promotion is not made by subjects and this is right. I see no reason why the children in the Departmental School or the Junior High School should not enjoy the same privilege. We have tried it for about four years and so far as we can see it is a great success. No child is asked to repeat work that he has successfully passed, and I think this is just. I should like to see this plan extended to all grades, but so far, I know of no place where it is practiced.

The last legislature of Indiana passed the most revolutionary law that has been passed by any legisla

ture in recent years.

I refer to the new vocational law and we are all glad that this law was passed. So the supervisor's programme must include the adjustments necessary to make the provisions of this splendid law reach down and touch the children of this corporation. He must be clear on what changes must be made in the course of study for the seventh and eighth grades and also in the high school so the essentials of the courses may be maintained and at the same time plenty of time secured for the pre-vocational and vocational sub

jects. His programme must also include adequate equipment and well trained teachers. We are entering upon a programme of education that is so vast and that we all believe holds such very great promise for the future of our citizens that even the most optimistic of us can not see the end from the beginning. But we all feel that it is destined to change the whole school procedure as no law has done in recent years. It has provided for the variety and it is left to the supervisors to form the unity. This is going to be a large problem and the supervisor must read and listen to all the schemes proposed but the important thing is for him to keep his feet on the ground and compel all schemes to pass a rigid examination proposed by his best thinking and calm judgment.

His programme must also include a complete vocational survey of his community. And it must be so complete that it will be a reliable basis for the vocational guidance that guidance that must be available to every young person who desires to enter upon the preparation that leads to some vocation.

His programme must also include high schools, part-time schools and So it is plain continuation schools. that the problem of unifying these various elements will require our very best thinking.

Lastly the school programme should include that the supervisor should be able to carry on his work by means of inspiration. He should be large enough to tone up the entire system, to get the best possible service from every one in the system without the "big stick". A small mar can use the "big stick" but it takes a large man to get the best possible service without the use of it.

Many elements are necessary for a

person to be an inspiration to those with whom he works. One is faithfulness to duty, another one is confidence, another is statesmanship and another is earnestness. In order to have the confidence, the supervisor must settle every question in light of the children. and not in terms of his tenure of office.

He can live withour tenure but one can not advance very rapidly without the confidence of those with whom he works, but they in turn should have his confidence. When the supervisor becomes afraid of any one under him, he should promptly resign for the good of the system.

This purpose is not to train the hand,

not to develop the body, not to teach

ethics, not to do any one of a dozen

other good and proper things that might be mentioned; but the first business of the school is to train the intellect and to impart useful knowledge to produce thoughtful men and women to develop accurate thinking. The one big problem in our schools is the same to-day that it always has been. It is the problem of mental efficiency, mental training and useful information. There is no other big problem.

For this purpose schools were first organized, and for this purpose they are maintained. The public expects the schools to deliver boys and girls with trained mental faculties and with minds fairly well stocked with useful information as a basis for life's work

Our schools are efficient, and they are efficient because they train in accurate thinking and because they impart useful information. When they cease. to do that, they will become almost useless, if not really detrimental, for of all dangerous citizens it is he whose knowledge is false or a minus quanity altogether, and whose mental machinery is out of gear.

We as school people and as citizens are justified in looking askance at any scheme that is likely to detract from good scholarship, and at the same time we should be alert to encourage anything likely to promote good scholarship.

In many respects the spirit of the times is inimical to good studentship. There are those who would have us teach the theorems of Euclid by the moving picture plan. Others would have us kindergarten through the laws and phenomena of natural philosophy, and some few would have the schools tango through (or on) the multiplication table. Everybody is agreed that it is all right to train little hands and little feet to do tasks accurately, but some are afraid to have little minds do accurate thinking.

In a large measure the factors which tend to detract from good scholarship are those over which the schools themselves have very little control, and for which they can not be justly held responsible. There are also some conditions tending to detract from good scholarship which are unavoidable, or merely transitory. Therefore, in mentioning certain factors it is not done to condemn necessarily, but rather to

state the facts as they are. The items to be considered are, in general, more closely related to high school and college work than to grade work. It is generally recognized that in the former the teaching, the organization, and the supervision is not equal to that of the latter.

The items to be considered briefly are as follows: electives and the uncertainty of requirements; premature specializing; a large and unsifted student body; introduction of new courses the subject matter of which is not well determined and the teachers of which are poorly prepared; an excess of books; buildings, equipment, and things; and athletics as an end in themselves.

In discussing electives, the effect upon scholarship is alone considered. Too often electives offer an opportunity for the selection of "snaps" by student loafers whose presence is whose presence is bound to lower the standard of scholarship in those particular subjects offered as electives. Course and not subjects should be electives; and in all courses the fundamentals of all subjects with which the cultivated and culture. minds of all ages have been familiar should be required. The boy who wishes to study argiculture and the girl who wishes to become proficient in the domestic arts should not be encouraged or permitted by our schools. to be deprived of the common culture of the ages. The vocational enthusiast, be rich or poor, would not be willing to have his own particular child so deprived, therefore let us not do unto others as we would not be done by. Let us have our school curricula rich in courses demanding a high standard of scholarship with only enough electives to aid our students to make a full program when otherwise prevented by unavoidable conflicts in time

schedules. Electives and the uncertainty of requirements are questionable evidences of breadth but only too sure evidences of thinness of scholarship, and their presence in our curricula but places in question before the public and student body the value and the importance of any and all subjects, with consequent decrease in application and good old-fashioned "boning" on the part of the student.

Vocational work and a high standard of scholarship are not necessarily incompatible, but in a season of readjusting our plans and courses we are in grave danger of doing much. futile work and of sacrificing the true purpose of the school. It will be poor business for Indiana to bartar the birthright of mental development and intellectual training of her boys and girls for a mess of succotash. The big problem for our schools to solve at the present time is to fulfill the spirit and the letter of our new vocational law and at the same time transmit undiminished to our boys and girls that splendid endowment of scholarship and culture which comes as a free gift of the centuries.

It is necessary to mention only briefly the relation of athletics to scholarship. Conditions in this regard are much better now than they were formerly among athletes themselves. The professional athlete has been eliminated almost entirely. The standard of scholarship which the athlete must maintain in order to compete in interschool events is salutary in purpose and for the individual athlete beneficial.

Until the pathway to graduation from our colleges and universities is made as easy for brains as it is for brawn, I am in favor of a law permitting the state to pay all of the necessary expenses of the exceptionally brainy

or woman who can

pass an entrance examination of as high high a standard as those who enter West Point or Annapolis and that so long as a straight A grade is made their expenses shall continue to be paid. As a nation we are doing this for those we are training to do battle in some future war, and with more consistency our state could well afford to do this for those who shall be our future leaders in science, government, the professions and citizenship in general. Let such students begin a broad and general education as a foundation for special courses in sociology, economics, sanitation, public finances, statecraft and eugenics; all to be done with the understanding that in a special sense so far as practical their services belong to the state in the general field of citizenship.

One of the causes that tend to lower scholarship is the fact that a larger per cent than ever before of our young people are in high schools and colleges. This is a condition that in general should be very gratifying. The general tendency is to adapt the standards of scholarship to the average and with so many of the unfit and undertrained in our secondary schools and colleges the general standards are necessarily lowered. Going to school should be a business and not a fancy or a fashion. Our new vocational law will tend to remedy this deficiency if administered in such a way as to reach and benefit the majority of our students and not simply a peculiar and select few. Society suffers as much from the dude as from the hobo Not in a few places in Indiana should a few boys and a few girls be taught the fundamentals of some art or craft, but in order to save us from the course of the ultra types of society, dudes and hoboes, vocational education should be administered

with a large number of boys and girls in view in a great many places. It should be democratic. The public schools of our country is the last institution that should deliberately set about to establish classes and grades among our citizenship. If poor scholarship is due to a lack of application and adjustment of any item in our courses of study to the practical purposes of life, the true office of vocational education will be to eliminate such items and also add such others as will supply the deficiency. A purposeful student is always a good student. Vocational education should be so administered as to give us a large number of purposeful students, thus raising the standard of scholarship and contributing to mental efficiency.

May the day soon come when Indiana will not honor any high school or college with any mark of distinction unless such honor is based primarily upon the efficiency and scholarship of the products of such institutions, and such efficiency to be ascertained not by making a list of the material possessions of a school, together with the titles and degrees of its teachers, but a comparative test of the knowledge and efficiency of its graduates in the things which the school is supposed to teach.

In closing let me repeat that the fundamental purpose of our public school is to impart useful knowledge and to train the intellect for efficient thinking, and therefore whatever courses we introduce and follow, whatever methods we pursue, whatever standards we set up, whatever schemes we advocate, whatever eliminations we may make, and whatever criticisms we may offer, should be with an eye to this fundamental purpose; for whatever makes for intellectual decadence, spells defeat in all else. For myself I would

labor diligently to give our youth healthy and well developed bodies, not as an end but as a fit dwelling place for a healthy and well functioned brain. I would urge moral training not as the end of education, but because the morally perversed man or woman can

not think straight on any subject. I am an advocate of vocational training because I believe that eventually it will be so administered that it will carry a challenge to the brainiest boy or girl as well as awaken to a new intellectual life the so-called dullard.

It is always important and profitable at the beginning of any new subject to imbue those in your charge with the spirit of the matter under discussion. This may be done in different ways. One simple method that has proved quite successful is by placing a collection of appropriate notes from various authors on the bulletin board. For instance the last bulletin which was presented to the designing class at the beginning of their work contained the following quotations:

1. The great office of decoration is to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make.

2. It is always an indication of poverty of inventional thought to use the mere imitation of natural objects for ornamental designs. The creative faculty ranks higher than the imitative. 3. Never let your taste be the slave of fashion.

6. Ornamental or decorative art rests on adaptation, that is conventionalism of nature's works, but not on adoptation.

7. A mere naturalistic copy of a plant onto an industrial object will not in itself form ornamentation. It will neither be interesting because of its fitness for its purpose nor will it be interesting as an expression of human thought and invention. In order to become an ornament, natural forms must be arranged in some orderly pattern, they must be simplified and . adapted.

8. There is a difference between merely original, and intelligently original and skillfully original.

As design is the result of selecting and arranging, the expression of a disciplined mind guided by certain rules, and not a mere chance-product, the first thing to do is to show the pupil

5. A haphazard arrangement of forms, a medlay of lines is no more. decoration than mere writing is literature. All forms, natural or artificial, to be used in ornament must be decoratively treated in regard to form, color, and composition.

him in an inductive manner with the fundamental principles which are found in good decoration. This is done partly through analyzing and critically examining various patterns, partly through blackboard sketches.

Thus the student is led to see and to know what is meant by conventional