menace to its welfare than may result from assuming that it can safely doom great numbers of its youth to unskilled, unenlightened labor."

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THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS.-A higher purpose than preparation for the mere imparting of knowledge was held up as an ideal for the normal schools by President W. S. Dearmont, of the Missouri State Normal School. Given men at their head and in their faculties of real power and high ideals as leaders," he said, "the normal schools must recognize the public welfare as the chief end of all training. They must recognize that they are not as a first consideration training teachers to teach special subjects, but they are training teachers to train in turn the future men and women of this country for citizenship, for social efficiency, for moral and religious responsibility. The teachers trained in the normal schools must in their several spheres of activity be real leaders. They must distinctly recognize as the chief end of their teaching the training of their pupils for the public welfare."

Emphasis was laid upon the importance of having sympathetic clear-sighted critic teachers in teacher-training schools, the kind of critics who naturally appreciate the difficulties of the learner and are able to place their fingers upon the causes of weakness or failure. Much of the beginner's difficulty arises from not being sure of what to do or of the ability to do, from a lack of the resources that are well known to the experienced teacher, and from an intense desire to succeed. It is well, one speaker said, to lay responsibility on the learner only gradually,—probably, as a rule, only after she indicates she would like to try. The need of having the departments of superintendence exercise supervision over the critic teachers of their normal schools was also emphasized.

MORAL EDUCATION.-Professor William C. Bagley, of the University of Illinois, said that prison statistics clearly show that it is far better from a moral stand-point to belong to any church than to belong to no church. “By investigation of the penitentiaries of several States, including Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Indiana, it was found that the churches which laid special stress on religious education in the Sunday-school or in the parochial school

stood in the better half (in these statistics), while the churches giving little heed to such educational training showed up the most unfavorably."

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H. C. Anderson, of Milwaukee, made a strong plea for the proper training of the impulses of the child. 'If rightly viewed," he said, "the native impulses of children form our principal educational stock in trade. Education may be considered as nothing more nor less than the direction of impulses toward ends that are valuable. The training of children's impulses leads to the formation of useful habits and the gaining of right ideals of conduct. If this is true of the normal child, it applies with equal if not with greater force to the education of children physically or mentally defective. Interests follow the lead of impulses, and there is a wide difference between educating a child in accordance with his nature and in attempting to educate him in opposition to it."

A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.-The establishment of a great National University at Washington to give opportunity for advanced research work, similar to that afforded by several of the more important European universities, was strongly advocated at one of the general sessions of the N. E. A., by several of our most prominent university presidents. It was explained by the speakers that bills looking to the founding of a national university have been introduced in both branches of Congress. It was declared such an institution would not compete with other colleges and universities, it being designed not to award degrees but to afford opportunity for advanced research work for college graduates who might receive credit for such work and corresponding honorary degrees from their own universities.

"Education is primarily a national function," said Doctor James. "It is in this sense that it is of fundamental importance to the nation as a whole. If there is no other way to secure it except through the coöperation of the federal government, then we should have this coöperation. To paraphrase Lincoln, this government cannot remain permanently free if it is based on a population half literate and half illiterate. All the people must become educated to the necessary point, or, in a sense, all will become uneducated, that is, the value of the educated half will be

largely lost. When education is as regularly the subject of national debate as the tariff, banking, and currency, we shall take another long step forward. However great

State and private universities may become, they can never incorporate in visible form the national ideal of university education. No benefactor can do for a nation what it must do itself. The national library and museums are lying largely fallow waiting for the country to take fullest advantage of them. The country would thus be helped immeasurably, and even the world itself through which our ideals could be made to permeate. The institution is coming. It would be an important element in making this land the leader of the world in art, in science, in education, in civilization."

"It is proposed," said another speaker, "to establish an administrative division, the duties of which shall be to make the facilities of Washington known and to guide the students to them. If desirable this division may be made a part of the bureau of education. If this plan is adopted, it cannot be gainsaid that science in America will receive a great impetus and that the scientific bureaus at Washington will be inspired to escape from their bureaucratic bonds, at least in some measure, and, if so, they will make larger contributions than heretofore to the advancement of learning."

"The university would be governed by a board of directors freed from politics," said President Baker. "It would coöperate with the private and corporate universities and offer opportunity for study of the vital problems of the nation. We need a national university to educate congress. Its influence would react on the whole country, and the political atmosphere would be purer. Our lawmakers, the progressives and the reactionaries, must find a common ground. If they get further apart, we must face a serious problem. A great national university situated at the seat of government would exert a vast educational influence which would mean better laws and higher civilization."

President Thompson said in part: "Agricultural education is now popular with our members of Congress. Their interest has increased wonderfully since they discovered a

few years ago there were votes behind it. A national university would be a move in the line of conservation. The great educational resources of the government are not available for our corporate colleges. The federal government derives vast revenue from the States. It should return part of this revenue in educational work."

SEX-JEALOUSY.-Owing to an article in one of the Chicago papers, which stated that sex-jealousy would play an important part in the election of the president of the N. E. A., the Inter-Ocean of that city published an editorial on the whole sex question, which well deserves thoughtful reading by both sexes. The following is quoted from it: "This is an unfortunate but natural situation. It merely illustrates the well-known fact that the pursuit of the same enterprises by men and women in common tends to create sex antagonism by multiplying the chances for friction. To put it differently, the clearer the line of division between the duties and responsibilities of men and women, the less the chance for friction and sex antagonism, and the greater the chance for concord and harmony in their mutual relations.

"The ideal condition, as regards the relation of men and women, would be realized where the men and the women had entirely different duties and where each sex found in the discharge of its separate duties the satisfaction of all its desire for activity. Then the family would have true harmony and sex antagonism would be unknown in society. But, unfortunately, we are confronted with the fact that such ideal conditions do not prevail. We see on all sides thousands of women forced to earn their own living by industrial pursuits more or less in competition with men. We also see many women, married and unmarried, who do not find satisfaction in the more feminine pursuits. Under such circumstances, we simply have to recognize the fact, unfortunate as it is, that certain conditions more or less tending to produce sex antagonism exist among us. We must also admit that no remedy for these conditions is likely to be proposed in the near future. But, at the same time, we may properly decline to be a party to the creation of new conditions tending still further to

create sex antagonism-conditions which are called for neither by the industrial situation of women nor by any consideration of abstract justice. We may very rightly decline, for instance, in the absence of better reasons than we have at present, to throw into every family in the land such a fruitful cause of sex antagonism as woman's suffrage is certain to be if women ever come to take their politics seriously. No greater misfortune could befall a country than to have the men and women busied with similar ideals, aims, pursuits. The jealousies and divisions that most men leave on their thresholds at present would then sit by their firesides. A thousand causes of friction now unknown would arise. Sex antagonism, now largely dormant, would awaken to new life under such circumstances. Of course, there are no doubt many militant ladies who revel in the idea of sex antagonism, who feel it is their highest duty to arouse it, who think that women will never have their full rights until they are doing everything that men do. Such women know not what they do. For every ounce of political 'rights' they secure they are likely to generate pounds of unhappiness. The fact that the contests in even an organization like the National Educational Association may be fought out along sex lines shows how ready sex antagonism is to spring to the surface whenever the fundamental condition of similarity of pursuits is realized."

Department of Superintendence of the National

Education Association.

The Department of Superintendence and such other affiliated departments of the N. E. A., as The National Council of Education, The Department of Normal Schools, The National Committee on Agricultural Education, The National Society for the Study of Education, and the Society of College Teachers of Education, held their meetings in St. Louis, February 26-29. Statements from the most important papers and discussions presented are here grouped under the general headings of Economy in Education, the Training of Teachers for the Schools, Health