"The lessons of science should be experimental. The sight of a planet through the telescope is worth all the course in astronomy; the shock of an electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theory; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano are worth volumes of chemistry."85 This appreciation of experimental rather than theoretic teaching relates Emerson to Rousseau and the progressive educationists of today.

As we survey Emerson's attitude towards education, however, we realize that his value is inspirational rather than didactic and informational. His fundamental bias, the necessity of man's self reliance which is reliance on God, colors his view of education. He believes in education, not in the limited sense of systems and schools acting upon the mass of soicety, nor in intellectual culture per se though he values this highly, but in an education which embraces all experience, all phases of thinking, feeling and acting, which discovers man to himself and reveals his union with God and the universe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

I. SOURCES:

1.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Complete works 12 vols. Centenary edition, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston and New York.

2. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Journals, 10 vols. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York.

3. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Uncollected Writings, Essays, Addresses, Poems, Reviews and Letters. Lamb Publishing Co., New York.

II. SECONDARY SOURCES:

1. Albee, John. Remembrances of Emerson, Robt. G. Cook Publisher, New York.

2. Cyclopedia of Education, Paul Monroe, vol. 2, pages 439, 440, Article on Emerson.

85 New England Reformers, v. 3, p. 58.

3. Gray, David Henry, Emerson, A Statement of New England Transcendentalism, as expressed in the philosophy of its chief exponent. Standford University Press, California.

4. James, William. Memories and Studies, Address at Emerson Centenary. Longman, Greene & Co., New York.

To A Teacher

I cannot tell where now your haunts may be,
My quondam teacher, but when first we met
With morning dew both of our brows were wet.
Then Restlessness had nigh persuaded me,

And laughed: "Shun Quiet, Toil and Drudgery-
Old Learning's retinue; books disregard;

The trail of Truth is lone and steep and hard,
Come, follow Pleasure, happy, buoyant, free!"

"Twas then you met me where life's great roads crossed,
And led me to the bowered home of Thought,
To founts a score of summers have not dried;
And though the years have other helpers brought,
Without whose aid my way had oft been lost,
None meant so much as that May-morning guide.

-ALEXANDER LOUIS FRASER,
Halifax, N. S.

Impressions of the Washington Conference

SECTION Q, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, BY HENRY FLURY, EASTERN HIGH SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, D. C.

N Room Number One, in the newly built Corcoran Hall of the University dedicated to the Father of his country, for three days (Dec. 30-Jan. 1) the entire gamut of educational thought was run, the problems that challenge the wideawake educators were treated and discussed by those who had spent months and years even in the careful, painstaking tabulation of data and deduction of fruitful conclusions therefrom.

These meetings were remarkable in many ways. For one thing the old-time “orator" type was absent. In his place was the scientisteducator. It could be clearly perceived by one who had not attended a national conclave of this sort for a few years past that education has entered a new phase. The long-desired phase-the professional-had been attained. The teacher was no longer an automaton, following time-honored opinions of certain "authorities" and educational celebrities. Instead, the teacher was the student studying the effect of this or that particular treatment on the child and translating those results in definite objective measures.

The Tuesday sessions were devoted to "Special Applications of the Scientific Method to Educational Problems" and "School Administration." A few of the addresses with the names of those delivering them serve to indicate the nature of the topics considered: Statistical Methods-Dr. L. L. Thurston, University of Chicago; Educational Measurements-Dr. M. R. Trabue, University of North Carolina. Psychology of School Subjects-Dr. Frank N. Freeman, University of Chicago; Experimental Study of Instructional Problems-Dr. S. A. Courtis, University of Michigan; Mental Measurement-Dr. W. A. McCall, Columbia University.

On Wednesday the section dealt with "Scientific Research with the Pre-School Child" and "Character Education." On Thursday, probably the most diversified and comprehensive problems were considered under the head of "Experimental Education." Dr. Arthur J. Jones of the University of Pennsylvania presented the result of several years' investigation into the relation of "Age of Graduation from

College and Success in Life." His conclusion was that early graduation was no handicap and "Who's Who" revealed even a slight advantage in pre-eminence of those who had graduated at an early age.

Dr. G. C. Myers of the Cleveland School of Education presented data on "Persistence of Errors in Learning Spelling and Arithmetic." He showed how certain misspelled words were corrected by the teacher only to have the pupil resume them at a later date. The same was true in arithmetic. Time and space do not permit me to go into detail and no doubt I have done injustice to those exceedingly interesting workers, the originality of their modes of attack, their tireless patience, their striving for accuracy, their sincerity, their open-mindedness and anxious desire for criticism even if adverse, by curtailment or even omission of their names and problems.

But those who attended these meetings were well rewarded and will not soon forget these investigators, the pioneers, those who are laboring zealously to make education truly a profession, to make it scientific, to make it human, to make it fit the needs of the child.

In other words, reading between the lines or rather addresses, I could see one moral, one keynote, namely ADAPTATION. "Education must be plastic, must be experimental, must be suited to the needs of the child." The child must be understood not only in the classroom but in his natural environment.

The Thursday evening session, on New Year's night (a fitting celebration) was devoted to "Education as a Science," and three pieces of the "heavy artillery," Dr. S. A. Courtis, Dr. E. L. Thorndikeand Dr. Chas. H. Judd, held the floor in succession. Dr. Courtis made a very interesting comparison between the early stages of the physical sciences and that of education. He predicted that if education developed as had the other sciences in ten years, the present work would become generally known and applied.

Dr. Thorndike's subject was "The Nature of Intellect." Partly on account of the thing considered and due also, I suppose, to the fact that many great thinkers often run to seed because of too much He theory, he failed to get his message across to the audience. seemed to take a delight in weaving a nebulous web that few if any in the audience could unravel. I found no one afterward who had a clear conception of his view-point. The work of Dr. Chas. H. Judd of the University of Chicago presented a marked contrast to that of Dr. Thorndike. His subject, "Experimental Work in School Procedure," was clearly and concisely illustrated with lantern slides showing results in recorded eye-movements of pupils photographed in

reading lines of subject matter in English and Latin. Many more movements were recorded in reading Latin than English. The nature of his records was such that the statistical method requiring thousands of cases to be observed was eliminated. His method could probably be regarded as the "clinical method" and one which no doubt will come more into vogue in the future as money and workers trained in that technic materialize.

As the nation's capital was for the time the focus of scientific consideration, all of the representatives of different sciences meeting in different sections, it was to be noted that education played a large part in many of these.

In the section devoted to Psychology one of the outstanding features was a paper presented by the "Father of the Psychologic Clinic" (so introduced by the chairman), Dr. Lightner Witmer of the University of Pennsylvania, who established the first clinic and published the first clinical magazine of that nature in America, who showed that the clinical method of child study could never be supplanted by a few hasty mental tests. Diagnosis by trained clinicians was stressed in dealing with the superior and inferior child. Instead of the mind of the child being a three dimensional object as we often now consider it, he showed that it was far beyond that in scope and range even perhaps in the case of genius going out to the 780th dimension. He cautioned against too strict a dependence upon I. Q.'s and correlation coefficients and ridiculed those who expressed in two decimal places the I. Q. of a child. "We have not yet become that exact,” he said, "in measuring intelligence."

Life

Gray sky-gray hills,

A path-gray too

As far as eye can see,

And crowding in on every side

A dull monotony.

From out the clouds

A gleam of light-and then

The brilliant, glorious sun again,
And this is Life.

-HARRIET RUNDLE,

San Diego, Calif.