The Macmillan Company's New Books. THE BIOGRAPHY OF PRINCE BISMARCK. BISMARCK. Two Volumes, with Portraits. Cloth 8vo, $10 net. SOME SECRET PAGES OF HIS HISTORY. Being a Diary kept by Dr. Moritz Busch during twentyfive years' official and private intercourse with the great Chancellor. "A book destined to make a sensation, not only in diplomatic circles, but in the literary field."-The Buffalo Commercial. "The new work contains revelations of an interesting and often startling character."-The Chicago Inter Ocean. RISE AND GROWTH OF AMERICAN POLITICS. A Sketch of Constitutional Development. The result of personal visits to both coast and interior. PAUL: The Man, the Missionary, and the Teacher. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS AND THEIR PEOPLE. THE LOVES OF THE LADY ARABELLA. AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS. By Illustrated from original photographs by Dr. F. S. Bourns. FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS AND THEIR KIN. By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT, author of "Citizen Bird," etc. Edited by Frank M. Chapman. Illustrated by Ernest Seton Thompson. Cloth, crown 8vo. $1.50 net. The only adequate book of its kind. (Studies from the Chronicles of Rome.) In two volumes, fully illustrated, cloth, crown 8vo, $6.00. "I have not for a long while read a book which pleased me more than Mr. Crawford's Roma.' It is cast in a form so original and so available that it must surely take the place of all other books about Rome which are needed to help one to understand its story and its archæology. . . . The book has for me a rare interest.”—Dâ. §. WEIR MITCHELL. PHILADELPHIA: The Place and the People. By AGNES REPPLIER, author of "Points of View," in Miniature," etc. Cloth, Crown 8vo, gilt top. $2.50. With sympathetic drawings by E. C. Peixotto. F. MARION CRAWFORD, author of "Saracinesca," etc. "Essays Limited edition, 150 copies on large paper, price, $10.00. Covering End. THE TWO MAGICS. "A master of characterization."-The Tribune (New York). HOME LIFE IN COLONIAL DAYS. By ALICE MORSE EARLE, author of "Customs and Fashions of Old New England," etc. Cloth, 12mo. $2.00. Illustrated from Photographs, gathered by the Author, of Real Things, Works, and Happenings of the Olden Time. YANKEE SHIPS AND YANKEE SAILORS. By JAMES BARNES. "The tales here told are of the kind that appeal to love of adventure and battle, to patriotism and pride of country. The brave deeds done are parts of the nation's records; it should inspire her young sons to read of them."— Detroit Free Press. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, No. 66 Fifth Avenue, New York. THE DIAL A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information. THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of each month. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, 82.00 a year in advance, postage prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries comprised in the Postal Union, 50 cents a year for extra postage must be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current number. REMITTANCES should be by draft, or by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL. SPECIAL RATES TO CLUBS and for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application; and SAMPLE COPY on receipt of 10 cents. ADVERTISING RATES furnished on application. All communications should be addressed to A COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS. The University of Chicago fills in the educational firmament a place similar to that occupied in the actual heavens by those novæ that flash out from time to time, perplexing the astronomer with the question as to the probable endurance of their brilliancy. No university has ever had more advertising, or kept itself more conspicuously in the public eye. The success in this case has been for the most part legitimate; for the foundations of a solid insti tution of learning have been laid, and the essentials have been well provided for. Nor is there any reason to anticipate for this university the fate that might be suggested by our introduc tory trope, since the large endowments already in hand, and the further endowments almost sure to follow, insure for the institution a place among the fixed stars. But its most serious friends have more than once had occasion to question some of the extensions of its activity, and to feel that even its great store of reserve energy might be taxed too heavily; that by reaching out in too many directions at once, by lending itself to educational experiments in such great variety, by seeking to exert its influence in so many fields of intellectual activity, it might incur the danger to which the higher education in a democratic age and country is peculiarly exposed the danger of cheapening the ideals that should always be associated with the name of University, of stooping too low to conquer a kind of success that is not worth conquering at such a cost, and that may well be left to such popular agencies as "Chautauqua " assemblies and "Cosmopolitan" enterprises. An examination of the "Annual Register" of the University of Chicago reveals the existence of a system of educational machinery so complex as to bewilder the reader, and fill him with a kind of awe at the spectacle of so varied an exhibition of miscellaneous activities. Bésides the work proper to a university, there are such developments as extension lectures, and class study exercises, and correspondence courses, and experimental schools, and affiliated schools, and coöperating schools not affiliated, and what not. All of these things demand much time and energy, and all, however useful they may be absolutely, do not seem to com mend themselves as adjuncts of university work. Directly or indirectly leading up to degrees, as most of these ingenious devices do, one cannot escape the suspicion that they somehow lower the price that should be paid for university honors, and give encouragement to the notion that the higher education is not so serious a matter after all. There is no harm in sugarcoating the pill, but there is harm - and grave harm in making its contents of homeopathic weakness. We doubt very much if the university credit obtained by students in these collateral ways represents anything like the equivalent of the credit to be got by attendance upon regular university courses. Whether the newest experiment of the University will prove an unmixed blessing to education in Chicago, is something that remains to be seen. But the originality of the plan justifies us in giving some account of it, and, pending the declaration of results, for which we must wait patiently for some years, in permitting ourselves a few a priori reflections. A private benefaction, coupled with an appropriation by the University itself, has made it possible to establish in the heart of Chicago a college designed expressly for the education of such teachers in the public schools as may feel the need of carrying on their scholastic work without an interruption of their teaching. The faculty of this College for Teachers is selected from the faculty of the University proper, and includes a number of its ablest men. To meet the special needs of its clientèle of public-school teachers, the hours of instruction are arranged for the whole of Saturday and the afternoons and evenings of the other week-days. The work of this College is planned to fill six months of the year, and leads to the baccalaureate degree of the University. The unit of work is what is technically known as a "major," and consists of four hours a week for three months. Thirty-six of these "majors" are taken as the equivalent of the four years of regular university work. Thus, two hours of work daily, continued for six years, will make the student a graduate of the University, and permit him to write after his name the magical letters that may mean so little or so much, according to the spirit in which his work has been performed. A slight reduction from the regular university fees is made to teachers who avail themselves of these new opportunities. The experiment thus outlined is one of great interest, and the underlying idea of the plan is wholly admirable. In the first place, it empha sizes the fact that education of the academic type is the real preparation for successful teaching, and not the sort of training that is so sadly overdone, and so largely futile, in the so-called "normal" schools. In the second place, it brings instruction of the good type within reach of a host of young women comparatively few of whom have had any real education of the higher sort. There are something like five thousand women engaged as teachers in the public schools of Chicago, most of whom ended their own life as students when they left the high or normal school, and some of whom did not so much as complete a high-school course. Of this number, many, no doubt, have by their own efforts gained a discipline quite as good as that to be got from college work, and to them the cachet of a college degree would now be the most meaningless of honors. But there must remain many others to whom the new opportunity will prove a real boon, and it cannot be doubted that this latest educational departure of the University was well worth the making. On the other hand, there are a few obtrusive considerations that cannot be ignored in the discussion of this subject, and that must serve to temper in some degree the outburst of enthusiasm and sanguine forecast with which the new College was dedicated to the public on the first of this month. There are the fees, for one thing, which must be a serious matter for the teachers whom the work will most benefit. For it is the younger teachers, whose stipends are the smallest, that are chiefly in need of this supplementary education; the older ones, for the most part, have either gained the offered discipline in other ways, or have lost the plasticity of mind which must be brought to the work of academic education to make it worth undertaking. We are inclined to think that it would be proper for the Board of Education to defray the tuition fees of such of the younger teachers as may wish to do this work of selfimprovement, provided always that this might be done without prejudice to the interests of those who feel that they have got, or are getting, in other ways the same sort of educational development. This is a delicate question, for there are many paths to culture and mental discipline, and the one that leads through the college may be more direct, but it is no more certain of its goal, than the others. What we may call the arrogance of the degree is one of the worst forms of intellectual snobbery. The consideration which does the most, however, to make us discount the promise of this experiment, is based upon the fact that neither faculty nor students can be expected to do their best work under such conditions as are alone possible in the new College for Teachers. College work of the best type requires freshness of mind on the part of instructor and instructed: and this is just what it is impossible to secure under the proposed conditions. The teachers will be men who are already doing full work in the University, and their energies cannot fail to flag when it comes to supplementing that work by the peculiarly exigent task of conducting extended class-exercises in the afternoon and evening. To say this is merely to recognize the essential limitations of human strength. Still more must this consideration be taken into account with the students, who will come to their studies jaded with five hours of the most exacting brain labor, labor that makes such a demand upon the mental energies that it leaves a man and much more a woman - completely fagged out, and incapable of the sort of alert attention and reaction to intellectual stimulus that is required for college work of anything but an inferior type. This rule is bound to obtain in the majority of cases, although there will doubtless be some exceptions. Bearing these things in mind, then, it is useless to hope that the work done by teacherstudents in the new College will be the real equivalent of work done under the proper academic conditions. No amount of earnestness and good-will can make the sluggish mind respond as it should to the efforts of the instructor, and even these efforts must be made sluggish by a similar cause. We believe, in short, that the type of education represented by the average university extension entertainment will tend to be approached in the new institution; and this, useful as it may be, is not the sort of thing aimed at, and not the sort of thing that the too sanguine forecast of the University authorities appears to expect. We do not wish to be thought of as throwing any colder water than is necessary upon an enterprise planned with so admirable a purpose; but the fundamental facts of human nature have to be faced, and they seem to have been at least partly ignored in the optimistic deliverances with which the work of the new College has just been inaugurated. The experiment is, nevertheless, of the greatest interest; and if its promise has been somewhat magnified, we still hope for it a considerable measure of success, and shall be happily disappointed if the results exceed our anticipation. CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. This heading may be understood in two ways. It may mean the organization of studies, books, teaching, and discipline found in one of our cities, or the organization of political functions and agents that stand behind these educational powers and make them possible. The one view brings before us the superintendent and his teachers, the other the board of education and its administrative organs. The first view will find no recognition in this article, except that we shall not lose sight of the fact that the system in the educational sense is the end for which the system in the political or institutional sense exists. We might at once say city boards of education, only that we wish to take a broader view of the subject than this language would suggest. It will be admitted that our subject is now prominently before the public. The constant criticism of existing systems that one hears, and the many changes that are made or proposed, point unmistakably to the strong unrest of the public mind. Criticisms and plans may differ, but they all lead up to the same fact. No deep insight is required to enable one to perceive that these critics and reformers do not always, if indeed generally, see their way clearly. They wish to improve the schools, and they see clearly enough that to accomplish this end the business organization must be reformed. So they resort, or propose to resort, to the legislature to get the system changed, assuming that the evil to be remedied will be removed by substituting a new board of education for the old one. But what is the use of taking trouble to get rid of the present board, if things are left in such shape that in a few years, if not indeed at once, the new board will turn out to be as bad as the old one? It cannot be too strongly asserted that the immediate trouble, where there is trouble, is with the men who constitute the board. If the board consists of good men, you are pretty sure in the long run of good administration, regardless of the system. Not that one system is as good as another, or that the organization is unimportant. This rather is the idea: a system is practically good or bad according as it tends to bring the right kind of men into the public service and keep them there. There may be an exception now and then, here or there, but in general this is a safe rule to follow. Accordingly, the first question for the reformer to ask, as he scans a reform scheme, is not whether it is theoretically perfect, or logically consistent throughout, but whether, under the conditions existing, the scheme will probably accomplish the end just stated. Will it bring to the service of the schools competent men? Having emphasized this point sufficiently, we shall next consider the business involved in carrying on a system of schools in an American city. Obviously, there are three functions to be performed, one legislative, one executive, and one judicial. It would be hard to say whether the legislative function or the executive function is the more important of the two; but experience shows conclusively that more evil originates in the organization and relations of these two powers than in all other parts of the educational machinery put together. Let us look into the nature of the mechanism. The germ of the American city school board is found in the Massachusetts town or township board called the Selectmen, which is as old as the Commonwealth. This board originally carried on the town schools just as it carried on the other parts of the town government, subject, of course, to the action of the General Court and the Town Meeting. This board built the schoolhouses, examined and employed the teachers, and, together with the minister of the parish, supervised the schools. In the course of time there appeared in the board a committee on schools, as there appeared committees on other subjects; and this committee, still further on, became detached from the board and assumed a separate place in the government of the town. Sometimes the members were appointed by the Selectmen, and sometimes elected by the Town Meeting. Sometimes the committee was dependent upon the Selectmen for funds, and sometimes directly upon the freemen. But the main fact is this: This committee now carried on the schools, just as the selectmen has been in the habit of doing. It was at once a legislative, executive, and judicial body. Such, in substance, is the local school system to-day in the towns and townships where the town system of school organization prevails. The Massachusetts town school committee, in its essential features, became the city school board, or board of education, and is still generally found in cities without material modification. This committee was well enough in the town, and with little change it answered the purposes of the city while the city remained small; but when the city became large some changes in the organization were found to be absolutely necessary. One change was the employment of a professional superintendent of the city schools, to relieve the board of that responsible duty. This proved to be such a decided advantage that the small cities and the villages soon followed the example. Another change, and this one on the business side, was the employment of a salaried clerk or secretary, who was not a member of the board, to keep the records of the board and to perform other similar business. Sometimes other minor changes have been made, but in general the essential features of the old organization still remain in most of our cities. The board of education is a legislative, executive, and judicial body, all in one. First, subject to the State law, the board legislates on a variety of subjects, as courses of study, rules for governing the schools, revenues and appropriations. Secondly, its field of administration is equally large. It appoints teachers, its own clerk and other employees, chooses books, provides supplies, builds and repairs schoolhouses, and the like. Thirdly, it exercises disciplinary powers over pupils, teachers, and employees; but, generally speaking, this latter function cuts no great figure. The first vice of this scheme is the vesting of the legislative and administrative functions in the same hands. To be sure, in large cities the board has been compelled to divest itself in a considerable degree of the administrative work. This it has done, rather reluctantly, by creating executive departments or offices, as those of finance, instruction, and supplies. Now let it be noted, first, that these departments or offices are the sole creation of the board; and, secondly, that the incumbents are appointed by the board and are wholly dependent upon it. The board can abolish or change departments and remove officers at any time. The same may be said, for the most part, of the superintendent of instruction. Save in a few cities, he has no status in the school law; his office exists at the pleasure of the board, and he is elected by the board. The only advantage that the superintendent enjoys is that he is commonly elected for the term of a year, sometimes for a longer period, and so cannot be turned out of office over-night. This is bad enough, but it is not the worst. Not only has the board immediate oversight of the executive department, but it continues to retain a large body of administrative powers in its own hands. These powers it exercises directly through its committees. How numerous these committees are, a glance into the common board manual will show. Generally, there are at least enough committees to give every member of the board a chairmanship, no matter whether there is anything for the committees to do or not. This system is open to two or three serious objections. One is, that the board of education, by its very nature and organization, is about as fit to do the administrative business of a large system of schools as the State legislature or city council is to do the executive work of the State or the city. A second objection is that the blending of the legisla tive and executive duties opens the door to numer. ous abuses. Practiced observers of such matters know that this is the source of much of the corruption found in school boards. Such observers know how eagerly the memberships, and especially the chairmanships, of certain committees are sought for by a certain class of board members; for example, the committees on construction, repairs, books, and supplies. And finally, the system is not in accord with the American principle and usage, that large legislative and executive powers should not be thus mixed together. What shall be done to mend matters? The first thing to be done is to effect a much greater degree of separation than at present between the legislative and administrative powers of the system. The principal function of the board should be to legislate, while administration should be confided, as far as possible, to independent administrative officers. The board's hands should be taken off from a multitude of things that they are now on. The executive officers should make reports to the board, furnishing it with infor |