N. E. A.

About 150,000 classroom teachers and school superintendents constitute the membership of the National Education Association. There is an annual meeting in July, when a goodly portion of them swarm into the biggest hall of the city lucky enough to have been named "convention city" the year before. It is a great vacation junket as well as a grave pedagogical palaver, a great time of speechmaking, report-reading, handshaking and theorizing.

In February there is another meeting of the Association, to which the classroom teachers cannot well go, being tied by their apron strings to the children of their communities. But the school superintendents can get off. In February they pack their bags, hold tryst, keep the Association going at its lively pace, and when they get home again make a speech telling the classroom teachers all about it.

Last week the superintendent members of the N. E. A. put their heads together, some 15,000 of them, in Washington, D. C. When they dispersed at the end of the week, these were some of the things they could report when they reached home:

Federal Education. For several years, with Job-like patience and spider-like persistence, the N. E. A. has sought to have a U. S. Secretary of Education installed in the President's cabinet, together with an Assistant Secretary, empowered to take over the present functions (advisory, informative) of the Bureau of Education (Department of the Interior). Usually, repetition of this urgent desire is postponed by the N. E. A. to the resolution-adopting session at the close of the conference.

Last week, goaded to action by newspaper attacks upon this pet plan, the N. E. A. superintendents reiterated their demand for a Department of Education in the very first meeting. They unanimously adopted a resolution directly demanding that Congress pass Senate Bill 291, the Curtis-Reed Bill; and several score of the voters followed Dr. George Drayton Strayer of Columbia University over to where a joint committee of the Senate and the House was holding public hearings on this bill. Dr. Strayer publicly proclaimed that the present Bureau of Education is inadequate and presented the N. E. A. demand.

Heretofore, the N. E. A. support of this bill, now pendent many years, has been received by unbelievers without much comment. But last week there also came to the Congressional public hearing, a lot of harsh words about the proposed new Department. Senator Copeland of New York called it superfluous. President Lowell of Harvard called it bureaucratic and dangerously political. He said: "About education we talk much and know little." President Emeritus Judson of the University of Chicago called it a temptation to political vanity and unscientific. President Penniman of the University of Pennsylvania said it would violate state rights. And President Emeritus Hadley of Yale let fly at it thus: "It [the Bill] provides for an added expenditure of one and a half million dollars of Government money for Consolidated Gas. But the present output of Consolidated Gas at Washington is much more than sufficient for the needs of the people."

School Economy. Dr. Thomas E. Finegan, a onetime school superintendent in Pennsylvania, reported on the work of a commission to which he had been appointed by the N. E. A. in co-operation with Secretary of Commerce Hoover. This commission, which has a very long and complicated name, is studying the financial methods of school systems, the point being that schools are meant to run, like municipal industrial corporations, for the greatest public good at the least public cost. Secretary Hoover himself appeared at another meeting, told his hearers that the country's educational plant is greater than any other plant it operates, warned: "If we were to suppress our educational system for a single generation, we should slip back 4,000 years in human progress."

Health. There was the usual stirring talk on health education, this time by Superintendent William J. O'Shea of New York. One of his statements on the subject was: "In my opinion, health education is one of the fundamental aims of a modern public school system." A long conference brought out health recommendations for school rooms: Keep the temperature always between 66 degrees and 68 degrees F.; establish lighting standards at least equivalent to those in factories, counting rooms; use window ventilation, with deflecting boards, and not mechanical ventilating contraptions.

Curricula. Arguments, reports, opinions, resolutions, boiled down to this program for school curricula, which a committee was instructed to study further: Articulate the high school curriculum more closely with the elementary school; do not let the colleges, to which only a small percentage of students go, dominate the courses given.

Instruction Methods. A resolution was passed urging all schools to install radios, "the most effective means now at hand to bring about desirable changes." A speech: Simplify marking systems so that parents can understand. Another speech: Do not classify children into groups, into "mutt classes," "dumbbells," "morons;" "low I. Q.'s" (Intelligence Quotient). "Incalculable harm may be done by giving children paralyzing inferiority complexes." Another speech: Since the advent of the "junior high school" (seventh to tenth grades), the fourth and fifth grades have been a "dumping ground" for inferior teachers, the best teachers being concentrated in kindergarten work and in the new junior-high department.

National University. Addressing the N. E. A. informally, President Coolidge indicated as his ideal of a "national university" the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government, founded in Washington two years ago by Philanthropist Robert S. Brookings of St. Louis. The 35 students now at this institution studying for Ph.D.'s and proficiency in statecraft, were admitted as having possessed the following qualifications: disinterested attitude, critical acumen, sense of reality, practical ability, knowledge of literature, writing talent, eloquence. George Eastman, Rochester camera maker, has contributed 20 or more fellowships for 1926-27.

Officers. With characteristic hospitality, the Southern delegates boosted and boosted to get their comrades to hold the next meeting in a Southern city. They boosted Southerners for office in the elections, too. But the new officers of the Department of Superintendence of the N. E. A.* turned out to be: Randall J. Condon of Cincinnati, president; Dr. Frank W. Ballou, of Washington, D. C., first vice-president (automatically, being the retiring president); David A. Ward, of Wilmington, Del., second vice-president.

At Johns Hopkins

Last year the trustees of Johns Hopkins University were invited to consider an idea that was most unusual for this day and age of higher education. A vigorous speaker with a long lean jaw and rugged physique, a vigorous, practical man, among whose favorite expressions is "Let's get down to brass tacks," was speaking at the trustees' annual meeting and saying: "The instruction in the first two college years in the United States has probably always been in essence what is now known as secondary rather than advanced instruction. On that account it has no proper place in a university as distinguished from a college. Under present conditions, where this instruction is given to masses of somewhat immature minds in probably the largest school [liberal arts] of the modern American university, the development of the best kind of advanced work is made difficult if not impossible."

The speaker added: "That, of course, is only my personal idea," but the trustees were so impressed that they met again in two months to hear the idea over again; and a fortnight ago when they met once more, they spread upon their minutes the following plan for modifying instruction in the Johns Hopkins college of liberal arts, as approved by the various faculties:

1) No more "freshmen and sophomore" courses as ordinarily given in U. S. colleges.

2) Only advanced work, in fields for which Johns Hopkins is equipped with laboratories, libraries, collections, etc.

3) Admission to these advanced courses only to students specially selected by the faculty, probably from among graduated of "junior colleges" or third-year students from standard colleges.

4) No baccalaureate degrees, but only those of Master and Doctor, for which three and four years' residence respectively would ordinarily be required.

The trustees voted to see this plan put into effect as soon as funds are available.** From its nature, it would cut down the university's income from tuition fees. It would not be widely popular with alumni. It would necessitate some higher salaries. It would probably cost, ultimately, about six millions of added endownment.

But the trustees thought the plan was well worth some effort and expense. Johns Hopkins was young and could stand it; and she had no long undergraduate tradition to contend with. As the plan's author and prime mover explained, it was not so much a new departure as a return to the ideal of Johns Hopkins' founders, who 50 years ago established a university for graduate and research work, without any undergraduate body at all. Johns Hopkins had never dazzled the athletic world, but "had it been the popular practice over the past 50 years to elect All-American teams in the arts and sciences, Johns Hopkins men would frequently have been represented. Rowland, the physicist; Remsen, the chemist; Osier, the physician; Sylvester, the mathematician; Gildersleeve, the Grecian; and some who are still with us, would certainly have been considered."

Plaudits were heard on all sides. The New York Times said: "The whole educational world should, without jealousy, see Johns Hopkins University come into its own again." The New York World: "What they have done is to scrap all the palpitant rah-rah and get back to the scheme of the founders."

The author and executor of the new John Hopkins plan thus had cause for hearty self-congratulation. But it is very doubtful that he indulged in any. As he returned from the trustees' meeting to his desk in the president's office of Johns Hopkins, Dr. Frank Johnson Goodnow was doubtless already formulating plans for raising the millions necessary to make his plan a state of affairs as speedily as possible?that is his way, to think clearly, directly, from one thing to the next.

*President of the N. E. A. proper, elected last July at Indianapolis: Miss Mary McSkimmon, principal of Pierce High School, Brookline, Mass. (TIME. July 13, 1925).

**Johns Hopkins has been raising an endowment for its hospital, medical school and general needs. Last week Daniel Willard, president of the B. & O. railroad, and chairman of the Johns Hopkins Half Century Committee, reported $5,300,000 in hand.