the same difficulty in obtaining children at an early age. In fact very often the age for admission in our schools prevents some who desire to register even earlier. Another factor, which has not been found a potent cause of retardation in some public schools, although alleged as such in others, and in ours, is the number of foreign children. On this point Mr. Ayres informs us as the result of investigation in New York: "It has been conclusively shown that ignorance of the English language is a handicap that is quickly and easily overcome, and has little influence on retardation."

In our enquiries as to the causes of retardation in Catholic schools this was one of the most commonly reported. These children were found hard to grade. Many of them had begun their education in foreign schools and entered ours at the age of ten or twelve. The great error which accounts for the number of retarded in this class, is placing the newcomers in grades lower than those in which they normally belong, merely on account of their ignorance of English. The recommendations and the actual experience of those who have been most successful with them, direct that they be given the benefit of special instruction in English without neglect of their other studies, and not that they be placed with much younger children in the lower grades, where with the beginnings of the study of English they must repeat the rudiments they had elsewhere learned.

The customary systems of promotion are, furthermore, fruitful sources of retardation and elimination. Failure means repetition, and frequent repetition tends to swell the number of the eliminated. Since we know what is the extent of failure in the public schools-one-sixth of all the children, according to some estimates-and see that in ours in different schools and classes it is as much as one-sixth or one-eighth, and are at a loss to know whether it be caused by an overcrowded curriculum, by lack of

attention to the backward, by the method of grading, we ought to be most attentive to the movements in progress for the revision of the courses of study and the system of promotion, so as to adjust the elementary education to the needs of the average and normal child. In the situation at present it is generally admitted that there is too much rigidity, and too strong an effort to make the child suit the system, rather than the system suit the child.

Alarmed at the number of non-promotions in New York City, the Bureau of Municipal Research recently undertook an investigation of the question, and consulted some seventy-six educators of the country as to their views and experience in the matter. As the result of this co-operative study it was concluded: "that the one and only solution of the problem of retardation is individual attention-not individual instruction in the general sense of the term, but a study by the teacher of each child's deficiences and their causes, the elimination of these causes, and perhaps irregular individual promotions, in addition to the stated regular promotions.'

As an evidence of the importance attached to the question of promotions, we may add that forty-six out of the seventy-six superintendents consulted signified their intention to discuss it in their next report. Almost all have departed from the older systems of promotion, and employ various methods to prevent retardation and failure of promotion. "Of the seventy-six educators, sixty-six require that special attention be given to the pupils in danger of failing, fourteen have special 'catch up' classes, and ten have vacation school classes for nonpromoted children." In reference to the efficiency of the vacation school the superintendent of Rutland, Vt., is quoted as saying that ninety per cent of the school children who attend four weeks of vacation school are promoted, and about ninety per cent of those thus promoted make good in the advanced grade the following year. In

this way, it was said, very few pupils in the fifth grade and above really failed in doing one year's work.

It is noteworthy that forty-five of the educators expect the principal to see each pupil before marking him for non-promotion. Thirty-two expect the principal to require written explanation by the teacher as to each child before it may be held back. Thirty report that the written explanation gives the name of each child and the cause or causes of his non-promotion.

We should agree most eagerly with these regulations in regard to the office and duties of the principal in supervising all promotions, maintaining the standards established by his school, and preventing the grave consequences which come from repeated failures. With him would also rest the duty of recording the school history of the child, and averting in each case the possibility of leaving school before the course has been completed. The teacher, we judge, can also show his best influence here. Not waiting until the last year of school life to develop it, he should by his constant association with the child seek to fasten upon him the power of the school and school surroundings, so that he will regret to leave-regret to part with the good things and noble teachers he has learned to respect and to love, and whose sympathy he has understood. Someone has said that the highest qualification of the teacher is sympathy-sympathy with the child's wants and needs, knowing them and administering unto them. On this standard could any teacher hope to be better qualified than the Catholic and especially the religious, whose life is dedicated to the service of others, sympathy with whom is impossible without love, and service incomplete without sacrifice?

And what school should be more attractive than ours, or to take firmer hold on the affections of the child! An integral part of a great teaching institution, its best lessons are associated with the deepest things in child

life and nature, and its rudest tasks are blessed and made holy by the approval of a Master whose infinite love embraces first the innocent and the young. With efficient teachers, and it is our sacred duty to have no other kind, the Catholic school should be the children's paradise, the "Paradisetto," as an ancient Catholic school was called, or the "Casa Jocosa," like a famous Italian school of the Renaissance, where the brightest years of life were not darkened by dull or uninteresting tasks, but made brighter and happier in a wholesome Catholic environment. With its noble traditions for free elementary education which go back to early apostolic times, to the parish school of Edessa, where in the second century the priest Protegenes taught little children the elements of learning and Christian Doctrine, our Catholic school of today ought to be in this, as in any other question affecting the efficiency of the common schools, the first to profit by every worthy effort for advancement.

PATRICK J. MCCORMICK,

THE FIRST SESSION OF THE SUMMER SCHOOL

OF THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY.

If the perfect whole of truth is to be attained in eternity alone, then all life is made up of a series of approximations to truth. To me, the Summer School of the Catholic University was one of these approximations, a marked and brilliant one. Though a Catholic all my life and a religious for twenty-five years, this Summer School of the Catholic University of America was a new revelation to me of the Holy Catholic Church.

Among the Sisters gathered there from north to south and from ocean to ocean of this vast continent and trained in Orders and Congregations owing their existence to founders and foundresses from all over the world, amongst the reverend professors and their co-workers brought from many lands and many alma maters, there yet breathed forth but one spirit, one heart, one soul, a truly divine unity in all-embracing Catholicity.

The Catholic University has had its vicissitudes, not unknown to those afar, and it was with wondering question in their minds that many accepted of this first tentative hospitality to nuns, waiting to learn of it through personal contact. But three days had hardly passed before a general confidence was won, a confidence which united all hearts and continued to deepen on unto the end of those fruitful five weeks. And frequent subject of conversation among the Sisters was the general growing sense of all that the Catholic University now means, of the orthodoxy, mental power, fervor of spirit and generous devotedness amongst the faculties; best of all, of the unity, holiness, Catholicity and apostolicity reigning there.