MR. ALLYN-A large part of the work of a normal school is academic from necessity. The people must be educated by the people. All the special schools must do a large amount of preparatory work. We are mingling work in each institution, but the energy is not lost.

MR. MOWRY—The paper presents one of the most important questions that will come before the council. We need to set off clearly the work of the different institutions. The progress of society divides institutions for specific purposes. There are not fewer students in our higher schools than formerly. In the old time the student was to be a lawyer, doctor, or minister. But not so to-day. The college makes leaders in every department of activity. Hence this differentiation in our institutions of learning. The colleges of to-day are giving; ifact work than formerly, because of these special schools. It is desirable that all colleges recognize these different vocations in their departments.

MR. TARBELL-The paper leaves out something that a full discussion of the question requires. It says the two institutions for higher education are the college and the university. It is wrong to assume that a man that is to be a farmer will wait until after college before beginning his preparation for his life-work. Nor is it best that he should. These preparatory institutions have no place in the systems provided in the report. It crowds them too high or too low.

MR. ANDREWS-All courses of study are made for those who go through, not for those who do not. The ideal system, which is that of the report, is the one to place before the people. It has been remarked that some pupils go to school; some are sent. The boy of fourteen must be sent; he cannot go. The boy who goes cannot commence before twenty. But the boy who commences at fourteen and graduates at twenty-one is better prepared than he would be if he were to commence at twenty and graduate at twenty-eight. The boys should be sent to school rather than wait until they realize the importance of this preparatory training.

MR. GREENWOOD-This is a rapidly changing period; the normal schools cannot prepare more than a small per cent. of the teachers, owing to our rapid increase of population. The theory of the report cannot be made practical. The college expenses are too great to permit the poor boy to complete a course. The colleges do not provide a course of reading like that suggested by Supt. Peaslee. The student lives in the past, rather than in the present.

MR. BROWN said that the system of schools provided for in the report was the system of a century ago. The needs of the present are those of the past, and more. Our complex civilization demands schools for preparation for those vocations which, in the more simple life of a century ago, was made in the home' These are not provided for in the report. The college and the university, defined by the committee, are the necessary course for those who would become the leaders of thought in any department of activity. But for the preparation of those who are to follow their lead and do the actual work, schools of mixed character, giving both academic and technical instruction, must continue to exist.

MR. HINSDALE-The purpose of the report is to arrange a hierarchy of schools. The scheme of the report does not represent American education,-it is an ideal system. But what about the schools and the children, as they are now. How many normal schools have college graduates among their students? The report is not a generalization of the American system of to-day.

MR. CHAPIN said his first report included the high school as higher education. That might have been more satisfactory to some. The report is not wholly ideal. He has hope of the future. The tendency is to fall into the line of the system

suggested in the report, by slow movement. Students in the West are not sent, but they go; and the results in government, industry, and scholarship are such as would naturally follow from this voluntary attendance. The purpose of the col

lege is to raise and maintain a standard of attainments for the education of the people. Something to work toward, though never actually attained.

MR. ANDREWS followed, illustrating and emphasizing the same thought.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE EDU

CATION OF GIRLS.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

In this report the term technical training may be used in a wider sense than some would allow. It can be made to include a preparation for the professions, as well as for the mechanical or industrial arts. There is an art of teaching; an art as well as a science of medicine; and the practice of every occupation depends on laws of its own. If we assume broad ground in this discussion, it is because the theme justifies much latitude in its treatment.

I. The value to boys of a course of special training is conceded. In addition to a course in college for the purpose of general culture, professional schools have always been considered a necessity. It would take a long time to enumerate the schools of applied science, the scientific annexes of colleges, and the technological schools that have been established in the United States, in the last thirty years. No one questions that a thorough technical training is of the greatest value to young men. But there is not a general agreement that this would be desirable for the other sex. The time was when common opinion held that woman should not be educated at all. Even now the sentiment is not universal in favor of giving her a higher education, and it can hardly be expected that a claim to give her technical education would meet with general favor.

This direction of public opinion, so far as it relates to the education of boys, is only reasonable and natural. The sentence pronounced upon Adam, was that he should earn his bread by the sweat of his face, and he bows reverently to that injunction, when in youth he prepares himself for a life of labor. But this decree of Eden applied with even greater force to woman than to man. With few exceptions, her life is one of ceaseless toil. A poet may sing that "men must work and women must weep," but the stern prose of life teaches us that women must both work and weep. Outside of the millions of women in the United States who are engaged in domestic occupations in their own. homes, in 1880, according to the census, nearly three million women,

or fifteen per cent. of the entire wage-earning population of the country, were employed in some capacity of productive labor. We know how they are employed as teachers, copyists and clerks; as stenographers, type-writers, and telegraph operators; as operatives in cotton and woolen mills and in the innumerable small establishments where deft fingers are required, but small wages are paid for service; in binderies, in laundries, in hotels and factories, there seems no end of the multitude of working women who throng our cities and towns. The number of women is small who have passed their school-days and are without regular employment. It is a very small percentage, whether married or single, who are not wholly self-supporting, and no one needs to look far to find those who have the burdens of others to bear.

And, yet, while woman is so generally a bread-winner, she rarely commands as large a compensation for her services as her brother, even when engaged in the same vocation. This seems due chiefly to two causes. First, in the small number of avenues of employment open to woman, she finds the supply greatly in excess of the demand. And secondly, not having prepared herself for the skilled industries as her brothers have done, she is compelled to take an inferior position and receive inferior pay. The first obstacle in the way of increasing her wages is gradually disappearing. Custom is admitting her to a much larger number of employments than would receive her a generation or even a decade ago. If the time ever comes when her education shall include a careful training for some productive industry, so that she will be competent to fill trusts of responsibility, there is no reason why her position and compensation may not be equal to that of

man.

That this would result in the greater independence of woman, there can be no doubt. That this greater independence would be a benefit to society, some may deny. Possibly, if women found self-support less difficult, fewer would enter into the marriage relation; but anything that would tend to diminish marriages undertaken from so low a motive, could not be looked upon as other than a blessing. But the difficulty of maintaining the struggle for existence brings even worse evils to woman than such marriages, and if to any extent these evils could be removed by giving her an industrial training, such an education would be more than justified.

In discussing the higher education of woman, the question has been raised of its relation to true, womanly character, and it is proper to

inquire whether she would retain the position in the home and in society which she has held so well, if her education, should become so different in character. To this objection to her higher education, this has been said in reply: "Will woman's smiles cease to be attractive when they are brightened by intelligence? Will her conversation lose its power when strengthened by words of wisdom? Will her beauty of form and feature vanish amid geometrical or physical problems? Will her kingdom be circumscribed as her knowledge is enlarged? Will her companionship be less valued as her ability to counsel wisely and control judiciously is increased?"

The same criticism is pertinent to the question of the technical training of woman. To many, the thought of her deliberately preparing herself for a life of competitive toil is altogether repugnant. But in the same direction we may inquire, Would woman be less womanly if her knowledge of the human constitution and the laws of health made her competent to prescribe in the sick room, instead of acting in the subordinate capacity of nurse? Would she lose any of her peculiar power, if she were competent to supervise the work of the school, instead of filling the inferior position of an assistant teacher? Would it detract from her worth as a woman, if her scientific knowledge were so thorough that she could be the assayer or the practical chemist, instead of simply assisting in the office as a copyist or correspondent? If, instead of standing at the printer's case and setting type, she were able to fill the position of foreman in the job room? There is a certain prevalent opinion regarding woman's position in society that is mere sentiment. The mothers and wives in this country. are valued for their qualities as practical women, and we admire them none the less because their hands show marks of toil. In the march of civilization the progress of woman has been toward this position of independence. In savage society she is a slave; in civilized society he often aspires to a position in which she is only a useless ornament; but her social condition will be best, when she becomes the recognized equal of man, neither a slave to do his drudgery, nor an idle toy to amuse his leisure hours.

II. It is proper in this discussion to indicate some of the lines of industry which woman may properly undertake. In some of these, man has hitherto held a kind of monopoly; but there is no reason for woman's exclusion from them, if she is willing to make a thorough preparation.

1. There are certain learned professions which should be largely