with all our hearts rejoice? To men who have been educated to cherish such ideals rather than to men of purely practical efficiency we must prefer to entrust the solution of the great problems of the to-morrow.

"To me at last has been revealed the truth," cries the modern pedagogical expert. And the skeptic answers, "What is Truth?” The cry is an old one, as Professor Shorey has so well pointed out. And the skeptic has always doubted the genuineness of the revelation. He doubts it still. We need not be unduly alarmed. Even if obliterated for the moment, truth must eventually prevail. But we may rest assured of this at least that eternal truth in education as in other things will be found not in the realms of material things that inevitably pass away, but in the dwelling places of the spirit which alone endures.

An Experimental School

OTIS W. CALDWELL.

¤nem&T seems clear to most students of education that edu

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cation was never so popular as it is now. Never before have there been so many people who believe in it and who try to secure its benefits for their children. School facilities, though never before so extensive, have never been so crowded. Our colleges, normal schools and universities were never able to care for so many students and at the time of the entrance of the United States in the World War, they had more students enrolled than ever before. The present condition of reduced attendance is peculiarly creditable to the secondary and higher educational institutions, since it shows the desire of educated young people to respond to the call for service. Our education has not failed in the sense that it is doing its work less actively or widely than it formerly did. It has never done its work so well nor on so large a scale.

Some Aspects of our Educational Problem. What, then, are the causes of the widespread desire that courses of study and methods of education shall be changed? Why is experimentation in educational procedure a necessary factor in our progress? Why are hundreds of American public secondary schools now conducting educational experiments of one kind or another? The answer is plain: educational ideals always outrun current practice, and progress depends upon constant and critical effort to procure improved results by means of changes in practice.

With all the known and unknown influences which the war has exerted and will exert upon us, it seems clear that the war has merely hastened and accentuated certain educational problems instead of changing their essential nature. Certain large and imperative problems are inherent in the nature of our national ideals and in the nature of the unprecedented change in our citizenship. We have often noted the fact but as yet have not given it ade

quate recognition, that prior to 1880 the peoples who came to this country were chiefly those who, in the education of their children, held professional activities before them as the leading ends of education. Before the middle of the 80's we had added to our population about 7,000,000 Irish, Germans and Scandinavians, and they helped to make clear the already recognized need for adding industrial opportunity in our educational program. Following 1882, almost a million persons per year have come to us from the Mediterranean Sea countries, their chief impelling motive being their desire to earn a better daily wage and to enjoy individual and political freedom in the New Democracy. They have sent their children to the public schools with an ill-defined but real and worthy desire to procure for them the better opportunities which a democracy opened to them.

That the elementary and secondary schools are being used to an unprecedented extent by the children of these different groups is suggested by the numerical growth of the population of secondary schools. In 1870 all public secondary schools in the United States enrolled less than three thousand pupils. In 1890 these schools had 215,000 pupils; in 1910, 915,000 pupils; in 1916-17, 1,485,000 pupils. Also in 1916-17 private secondary schools in the United States had over 200,000 pupils. As an individual illustration of this change in secondary school population the city of St. Louis is typical:

In 1890 St. Louis had 1,447 pupils in secondary schools.

"1,993 " 7,800 "10,123

That is a growth of approximately 600% in 27 years, during which period the whole population of the city of St. Louis grew about 30%.

As a further evidence of the nature as well as of the volume of change in school population may I cite the recently published statistics which appeared in Science in February, 1918, regarding the birth rate in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The birth rate per thousand individual adults between 18 and 45 years of age of native stock (two generations or over) is 14.9; of foreign stock the birth rate is 49.1 per 1,000. The death rate of native stock

of the ages given is slightly in excess of the foreign stock. This means that the proportionate decrease of pupils of several generations of American ancestry is even greater than suggested by the astonishing numerical increase in school populations.

It is evident that our public schools have become the institutions upon which there rests the crucial task of democratizing these large numbers of young people of many types of ancestry. No other educational system in the world ever had such a task or such an opportunity. Public attention is focussed upon the schools more definitely than ever before. The schools must be organized so as to realize new ideals which are needful in a democracy. They do not need to be organized so that the various subjects may remain intact, but so that the pupils may get what they need to fit them for effective service in a democracy.

Progress through Experimentation. No single group of school teachers would have the courage to undertake any very large part of this huge and supremely important task of which I have just spoken. On the other hand, many groups of teachers who try to look well ahead of our present position are anxious to undertake different parts of the task, for it is a task that requires cooperative effort on a broad basis. The Lincoln School embodies an effort to provide a group of earnest students of education with an opportunity of experimentation with types of school work which may possibly yield better returns in modern democratic life. Since it is an experimental school, it does not now have any school policies or practices which it recommends, in the sense that others are now urged to adopt them. When specific policies or practices are objectified so that they win the approval of progressive school teachers, the only worthy basis for their wider adoption will have been provided. There can be no fundamental progress except on the basis of observed facts. No amount of mere argument is of much consequence as compared with intelligently observed evidence by means of which the trained and competent observer may determine for himself whether the particular practice in question is or is not effective. I shall therefore outline the plan of organization and some of the types of activities of The Lincoln School, not for the purpose of securing your present judgment as to their desirability or effectiveness, for neither you nor we who work at the task would

care to announce judgment in the initial stages of experiment. I shall speak of some aspects of the work we are doing, in order to present the nature of the school which you have asked me to discuss. It will not be inferred that I am giving final opinion regarding the activities described. It must also be recognized that such a school must adopt many progressive features from other schools. Of course much that the school includes has been done elsewhere since any serious and faithful experiment must first take account of and use the results of the best work already done. Pupil Composition of The Lincoln School. It is probably true that a densely populated city presents the most difficult location for an experimental school. It might be more engaging to organize the school in a rural location with an attractive natural environment, but such a site would involve evasion of part of the issue, and we should not hesitate to accept a difficult location, for this location includes our greatest educational problems.

If the work done is to be at all typical of what may be possible or desirable elsewhere the pupils in the school should represent the different kinds of homes of the community. The pupils, both boys and girls, should be the children of parents who are engaged in a wide variety of interests merchants, salesmen, craftsmen, artists, workers in the professions, social workers, chauffeurs, laborers, etc.-the rich and poor and the great middle classes.

Fortunately, applications were made for more than enough pupils to provide the small school with which it was thought wise to begin, thus making it possible to secure the desired group distribution. One third of the pupils of The Lincoln School have free tuitions, and this proportion may be increased if it is found desirable to do so. No educational tests were used to determine whether an applicant should be accepted; no tests of any kind were given until after the school had started its work. Standard educational measurements were then given, and will be continued, and records are being kept as a basis of comparison with pupils in other schools.

There are full classes of about 20 pupils each in first, second and third grades, and smaller classes in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, which we call the Junior High School. There is also a small group of pupils in the intervening grades, the fourth, fifth and sixth. Next year, it is expected that added to the 116 pupils