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in the publishing of the report and in the maintenance of a permanent secretary's office.

The policy of the association has been to maintain this fund unimpaired, investing it in such a way as to receive annually a goodly amount of interest. The interest is used in original educational investigations by committees appointed from year to year. For instance, some years ago the rural school problem was under earnest consideration in the association, which appointed a committee to investigate and report upon the rural schools and to suggest methods of improvement. This committee of eminent schoolmasters and superintendents, after careful consideration, prepared a report which after publication was the instrument of making a marvelous improvement in the efficiency of the rural schools of the country.

Other means of investigation are annually in the hands of the committees of the association, and the teachers of the country are contributing the money for the expenses of these special organizations.

In 1898 the art department of the association appointed a committee of ten on elementary art education. The report of that committee was made in 1902 and appears in distinct form in the report for that year. Reference to this report of the committee of ten is made to illustrate what is doing by the National Educational Association in original investigation and suggestion.

In addition to the support of kindergartens, elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges, and universities, many of the States expend large amounts upon normal schools. These institutions are maintained and supported by annual appropriations from the respective State legislatures. In some of the Western States one normal school exists, while in many the number is five and even seven, located in various parts of the State.

The purpose of the normal school is to prepare young people for teaching. The short duration of the term of service of the school-teacher in the United States makes frequent and vigorous recruiting necessary.

Many thousand young men and women, especially the latter, after attending a normal school for three years, are provided with the training which will enable them to be more efficient in the schools to which they go. And yet the accommodation for normal school students in this country is very limited compared to the number of teachers required. The education covered in the average normal school corresponds well to that of the secondary school, with the increased task of professional work. Pedagogical departments are also established in connection with many of the colleges and universities.

While the professional teacher as yet receives not enough training in the normal schools, it is expected throughout the land that a person who has a normal school training starts on his teaching career with more ability than any other person.

In the best elementary schools in the United States will be found not only the ordinary branches of the old-time curriculum, but also provision and opportunity for manual work and training. Well-equipped shops for working in wood, somewhat after the pattern of the Swedish sloyd, are established and provided with competent teachers. The woodwork in shops usually commences at about the fourth grade and continues through the eighth.

Mechanical drawing is closely allied to this shop work. Not less than two hours a week is assigned for the work. While both boys and girls are frequently permitted to enter the classes, it is more usual for the boys alone to do the work, while the girls take sewing as an equivalent.

The equipment of the ordinary woodwork shops in the elementary schools costs about $800. The classes pass to the shops once a week, remain with the teacher about two hours, when they return to their regular studies.

It is believed that many young people are encouraged to remain longer in school on account of the attraction which this sort of training has for many boys. But the main purpose is that they become interested in that kind of education which the world has learned to know is quite as efficient in skillful training and more helpful than one confined entirely, as in former times, to purely book drill. Sɔ important and satisfactory has this work become that it is made to extend through the high schools, and few high schools will be complete hereafter without manualtraining attachments. The distinct manual-training school has, in addition to the work of a regular high school, two hours a day in the shops. The shops provide for many months' work in wood-including carving and turning-a few months in forging, and a year or more in the machine shop, where delicate and remarkable, frequently elaborate, pieces of workmanship are turned out by these boys, whose ages seldom exceed 18 years.

For the girls this manual-training high school affords opportunity, in addition to the laboratories, for sewing, and, in some cases, the course is complete to the extent of quite elaborate dress making and fitting and the making of all articles from textile fabrics which pertain to the domestic household.

Cooking is taught quite generally during the last year of the grammar school and in the manual-training schools. All that pertains to the culinary department of the domestic household, the purchase of all material, the study of the animals that are butchered, and the different parts and kinds of cuts. To the cooking is added, in the upper grades, work in chemistry intimately related to it; also competent instruction in hygiene, that the proper foods suited to different physical conditions may be learned.

Vocal music is taught in all American schools; sometimes poorly, frequently excellently well. It is assigned as a duty, and in many places is as compulsory and carefully taught as is arithmetic or language. The purpose of vocal music in these elementary schools is, first, the training of the voice, which is so sadly needed with American men and women; second, the ability to read simple music at sight, thereby enabling the individual to participate in all public exercises at church or elsewhere, and, more than that, teaching them to appreciate vocal music in all its shades of power and influence. It is conceded that no small part of character making depends upon the music with which the individual may have had association. Instrumental music forms no part of musical education in the United States.

Drawing has been emphasized more and more the last thirty years, so that at the present time drawing occupies more time than penmanship in most schools.

Schools at the expense of the public purse were originally maintained in New York and New England, where even to-day will be found many of the earlier schools. One should not expect in the South that maturity and completion of public schools that obtains north of Mason and Dixon's line, because forty years only has been given for that work; however, wherever a visitor may be in the country he will find, in Alabama or in Maine, the same sort and kind of schoolhouses and school work.

The progress made in free schools in the South since the civil war by far exceeds that ever made in an equal number of years. At the exposition at St. Louis will be found a complete, intelligent, and grand presentation of all the schools of all the States of the entire country, and this will enable the visitor to make such comparisons with the schools of other nations as shall, it is trusted, be gratifying and at the same time so instructive as to demonstrate great opportunities for future growth.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTII.

PREPARED FOR THE UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION IN THE BUREAU OF THE SOUTHERN EDUCATION BOARD, CHARLES W. DABNEY, DIRECTOR, BY WYCKLIFFE ROSE, PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE.

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2. Cooperating causal forces: The new régime-The new education-Causes of retarded progress-The new generation-Material prosperity-Returning national consciousness-The dream of world leadership.

II. Period of self-discovery.

1. Development of the aims of the conference: Expansion of conception of Christian education-From the education of the negro to the education of all the peopleTransfer of interest from the individual to the community-Southern education a national problem.

2. Discovery of the forces which the conference was to call into its service: The forces of the public school system-Cooperation of colleges and universities-The public press-Women's organizations-Forces political and economic.

3. Defining its methods of operation: Genesis of the Southern Education Board-Genesis of the General Education Board-Theory of the Southern Education Board-Work of the Southern Education Board-The bureau of investigation and informationIts purpose-Its methods.

III. Survey of the conference as it is to-day: Its inorganic character-Membership-Its agenciesWhat the conference is doing for education in the South-The conference as a directive power-The summer school movement-The whole movement as a liberalizing and unifying force.

THE CONFERENCE FOR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH, AND THE SOUTHERN AND GENERAL EDUCATION BOARDS.

The Conference for Education in the South has within the six years of its existence grown into an educational force of such magnitude as to command uni ́versal interest. Its first three sessions, held at Capon Springs, W. Va., can hardly be said to have attracted the attention of the public even in the South, But with its meeting in 1901 at Winston-Salem, N. C., it entered upon a career of remarkably rapid expansion, both in the scope of its endeavor and in the circle of its constituency, until now it is in the center and foreground of the whole field of educational activity in the South. It occupies a unique position as an educational

a This term has been used in this paper to stand not merely for the annual convention and its agencies, but also for this whole movement, finding expression in this meeting in the Southern Education Board, in the General Education Board, and in the many subordinate organizations taking part in the work of improving the schools of the South.

agency and is fraught with potencies which no one who has attended one of its recent meetings would attempt at this time to estimate. Coming as a spontaneous evolution from the rural South and at a time when all the conditions were ripe for cooperative effort, its development has been so rapid, so inevitable; it has brought to light and attracted to itself such unexpected and incalculable forces, that even those most intimately associated with the movement have found themselves borne on by its current to issues which they could not foresee.

"The originators of the conference," says President Ogden, "did not know the extent of the forces with which they were dealing nor the greatness of the power they were calling into being." If the fathers of the conference have found its development a surprise, it could not be expected that the public at large should understand it. Two years ago when it first came into public notice many thoughtful people were disposed to regard it as an innocent and ephemeral fad that would pass away with the fashions of the season. Later, when it had demonstrated its vitality, it came to be a source of grave apprehension. Any power not understood may easily assume sinister aspect. Every meeting of the conference has been the occasion of repeated explanations of its theory; it has already borne abundant fruit as result of its direct action and of the agencies which it has called into being; it has drawn to itself the sympathetic cooperation of the educational leadership of the South, both within and without the teaching profession, and yet the legitimate inquiry comes, What are the aims, what is the nature, what the probable future of the conference? To this inquiry let the conference in its genesis, its development, and its present work return its own answer.

I. GENESIS OF THE CONFERENCE.

The Conference for Education in the South owes its origin to Rev. Edward Abbott, rector of St. James parish, Cambridge, Mass. He speaks of it as “a movement whose momentum and force I realized but little at the time," but as a movement to improve educational conditions in the South he conceived it, called it into being, and directed its early organization. The circumstances leading up to and attending the first conference can not be better given than in Dr. Abbott's own words, which we may quote from a letter dated August 31, 1903, and written in response to an inquiry concerning this matter:

I have been for many years [he says] a member of the Lake Mohonk Indian Conference, assembling annually in the autumn by the invitation of Mr. Albert K. Smiley, at his Lake Mohonk Mountain House above New York, and there enjoying his princely hospitality.

In the summer of 1897 circumstances gave me the occasion for a somewhat extended journey through the eastern Southern States. Mrs. Abbott and I visited Norfolk, Portsmouth, Raleigh, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, and Asheville, and crossed the mountains by way of Lenoir and Blowing Rock and Roan Mountain into Tennessee, and so on and up to Capon Springs, where we were to spend a few weeks of leisure. In the course of this journey we made many visits to schools of various grades, both for blacks and whites; saw something of the conditions of the mountain whites, and found our interest deepened in the educational and religious efforts put forth by many different organizations and institutions for the general benefit of the South. This experience, added to previous interest in the schools at Hampton, Raleigh, Cedarville, Ga., and elsewhere in the South, sensibly increased our thoughtfulness respecting the problems presented by this great field and the manner of their solution. I was especially impressed with the separateness of much of the work, the isolation of many of those engaged in it, and the opportunity and need for acquaintance, cooperation, mutual counsel, and sympathy.

It was in the course of our visit to Capon Springs, at the hotel then conducted by the late Capt. William H. Sale, that I conceived the plan of a Capon Springs conference in behalf of the cause of Christian education at the South, after the plan

of the Lake Mohonk conference of the friends of the Indian. And on the evening before our departure for the North I managed to get hold of Captain Sale and sit down with him in the quiet writing room of the hotel. I then and there told him what was in my mind: of my interest in the southern education problem; of what I had seen of poor whites and ignorant blacks, and of the need of coordinating efforts and workers; and then of Mr. Smiley and his Lake Mohonk house, and of the Indian conference there year after year and of what it had accomplished, and finally proposed to him the plan of using his Capon Springs house for a similar conference of the friends of education at the South. Captain Sale listened with great respect and courtesy to all I had to say, thanked me for the suggestion, said he would take the proposal under advisement, consult with his son-in-law, Mr. Nelson, who was engaged with him in the management of the hotel, and write me later his decision.

In the course of the autumn I duly received a letter from Captain Sale telling me that he was disposed to try the experiment of a Capon Springs conference of those interested in the cause of Christian education at the South, and designating the date the following spring when the conference might be called, but upon one condition-that I would arrange the details for the meeting. He would offer the hospitality of the hotel and extend the invitations, but I was to furnish a list of suitable persons to be invited, draw up a programme of subjects and speakers, and, in general, prepare and carry out the plan in all its details. To this end I was invited to prepare and lay before him a detailed schedule for the conference, his part of which he would undertake gladly to carry out.

This was the starting point. As nearly as I remember, I invited Bishop Dudley, of Kentucky; Doctor Frissell, of Hampton; Rev. A. B. Hunter, of St. Augustine's School, Raleigh: President Dreher, of Roanoke College, Virginia, and Rev. George Benedict, of Cedarville, Ga., all of whom I knew personally, to unite with me as a provisional committee of arrangements, and this invitation was accepted with signs of much interest. Much correspondence ensued. The brunt of the preparations dovolved upon Mr. Hunter and myself, he acting from the first as a very efficient secretary. He and I met early in the new year at the Rittenhouse Hotel, in Philadelphia, and perfected the arrangements and appointments for the first conference. A list of invited guests was drawn up and submitted to Captain Sale, all of whom, with some others, were duly invited, and the programme of topics and speakers was decided upon and the proper invitations sent out to speakers. By midwinter, I think, everything was in train.

And so the first Capon Springs conference for Christian education at the South was held at Capon Springs from the 29th of June to the 3d of July, 1898. Captain Sale's hospitality was most generous and ample. A goodly company of invited guests responded to his cordial invitation. Bishop Dudley presided. Important papers were read and discussions conducted by experts in the field; and a "Message and appeal" was adopted, addressed to all concerned.

Thus was planted the seed out of which has grown the Southern Educational Conference, with its widely representative membership, its command of large resources, and its large and comprehensive grasp of a very serious and critical

situation.

Cooperating causal forces.—Such is the origin of the conference as it first existed at Capon Springs, but the real origin of the conference as we know it to-day must be sought in a larger complex of forces operative in southern life and in our larger civilization. As before indicated, this movement is a natural evolution from existing conditions, and he who would understand it must keep these in mind.

The new régime.-The close of the civil war marks the end of the old régime in the South and the beginning of the new, the most thorough-going social revolution of modern times. It meant the complete upheaval of cherished traditions, the transformation of institutions and habits of life, and even of fundamental points of view, social, political, and economic.

The old hereditary aristocracy supported by slavery gives place to a political and industrial democracy. The war freed not only the black slaves but a large class of white slaves as well-slaves to an iron-clad caste system. This submerged class came with the new régime into a freer life with new aspirations, new courage, and larger opportunities. On the part of all classes the new order called for radical readjustment, for in a democracy of free individuals each must win for

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