well as political relations, and should include as well such matters as will show each nation's permanent contribution to the world's heritage in science and art. I would not have this series displace any other now in use and for which there may be a preference, but only ask that opportunity be given for the use of such a series by the pupils in our city schools whom circumstances may compel to go early into industry or trade or by those more favored who may be directed thru vocational guidance to begin so early their preparation for the higher positions in government and business. We begin too late the exercise of the elective principle as it not only fails to be of benefit to nearly ninety per cent of our school population, but there is great loss to industry and trade in the failure of the school to furnish this vast army of immature recruits with the special information helpful to them. The type of reader I have in mind should grade imperceptibly into the required history of the high school prepared in view of riper interests and more mature minds. Political movements in relation to trade can be now rationally presented in the historical account of the rise and fall of nations. I know of no historical text for use in the secondary schools prepared with this object in view. There are several excellent commercial and political geographies and industrial and economic histories but none of these can safely take the place of the history course. However important these books may be in special courses or schools of business, one must guard as yet against their early introduction or substitution for the traditional history course. A text, however, can be prepared which will not only be the natural sequence of the above mentioned series of elementary readers but will combine the distinctive features of history, geography, commerce and government. It, too, can be graded for the four years of secondary school, general or special, permitting the introduction of a number of subjects that relate to modern needs of business and government and are clamoring for introduction into the schools. The book in question should be called commercial history, the basic study in training for foreign service. Such a book, step by step, will give the political, industrial and economic development of nations and will correlate with this development great moving social forces. It will not only treat of the material growth of nations but will recognize as well the ideals and aspirations of these nations in the finer things of the spirit as important and contributing factors in this growth. Such a text will standardize each successive period in the development of this new field of study, domestic and foreign commerce, and permit the widest possible use of materials in the way of maps, charts, samples and statistics, and will encourage cooperation with extramural agencies for supplementary instruction or for continuation purposes. I can see no loss to real culture in the use of such a text. We should only lose the impedimenta of history, useless baggage, which were better dead and buried along with those kings of unpronounceable names that have held our attention indeed too long. One can see at a glance how vastly superior instruction would be in history courses taught in relation to a foreign career, the success of which will depend more and more upon one's ability to practise it in accord with economic principles and Christian practises. The course in history can, not serve its purpose unless vitalized. Essential to this is the teacher of vision, travel experience, and wide range of reading, common sense, and sympathy and understanding of business practises. The teacher of history in our secondary schools will become more and more an expert, more of a specialist, just as the newer demand in the teaching of commercial languages is creating a demand for the language expert in our secondary school faculties. I would suggest, therefore, in conclusion, that our high school history be taught in relation to economic needs of today thru some graded series of texts that will retain the essential facts of history but will include the newer material of industry, trade, and commerce; that it be taught by specialists trained to think in international terms and to be in sympathy with business at least, if lacking actual business experience. If so taught, the subject will assume a position of greater dignity than is accorded it simply as one of the prescribed units for college entrance, and will stand without a peer among related academic subjects that prepare for trade and commerce, which has always been, from the days of simple barter to the complex exchange of today, the most important factor in national life, the force that has quickened the moral consciousness of a nation and has increased culture thru new processes and glimpses into a world outside and beyond itself. It has taught the lesson of cooperation and has been the agent in the many-sided development of agriculture, industry, and manufacturing; and finally, in raising these achievements to the international plane it is preparing the way for the practical application of the Golden Rule among nations and for an enduring peace based on confraternity and solidarity of interest, rather than diplomatic alliances that endure only so long as the selfish interests of the contracting parties are conserved. When the commercial nations consider commerce in this light, the latter will be, de facto, the great factor in civilization, and its history will be the synthesis of all activity and achievements. SPECIALIST IN COMMERCIAL EDUCATION GLEN LEVIN SWIGGETT II MODERN EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENTS I. THE GARY SCHOOL PLAN Perhaps no recent school movement in America has caused more discussion than the Gary system of school organization. In principle it contains nothing new, being merely an extension to elementary school life of the system of class rotation used for centuries in colleges and universities whose students are adults. But, while the principle is not new, its adoption for an elementary school is so novel as to challenge the attention and invite the criticism of every man and woman interested in education. New movements are most easily launched and are tested out with a minimum of prejudice for them or against them in a community having a loosely organized social and civic life. In this respect Gary offered an ideal field for experiment. Eleven years ago there was no Gary. Its site was a bleak, flat, uninteresting waste of sand and scrub oak at the southern extremity of Lake Michigan and thirty miles from Chicago. Here the Illinois Steel Company erected the most extensive blast furnaces, coke ovens, and rolling mills in America except those at Pittsburgh. Very soon this steel company was employing 10,000 men. These men with their families soon built up a city of 30,000 people, which has now increased to not less than 50,000. These 50,000 people represent almost every race and every language in Europe and America. With the exception of the native-born Americans, comprising about half the total, they held no cherished ideals regarding the education of their children. They were prepared to accept what was provided. The school problem was a difficult one. Usually a school system grows. Here one had to be fashioned over night. The crying need was for school buildings, and permanent buildings can not be planned and built in a few months, even if you have the necessary money. But here money was lacking. Each year the taxes to support a boom-time town were levied on values fixt two years before. With a limited revenue and twice as many children as could be provided with seats, the school board was in trouble. The usual remedy for such conditions is to put the younger children on half-time attendance and thus make one classroom and one teacher serve two classes of pupils. Superintendent Wirt conceived and put into operation a wholly different plan. Not only did he make half-time attendance unnecessary; but he actually increased the child's school life from five to six and even to seven or eight hours daily. In doing this he did make one regular classroom accommodate two classes of children, but by providing assembly halls, gymnasiums, laboratories, shops, and playgrounds he made it possible for the child to spend thirty to forty hours a week in some activity managed or endorsed by the school authorities. To explain how this was done is to set forth the Gary School Plan. Its foundation rests upon two educational principles, both of which are almost universally accepted by schoolmen, so far as they apply to young children. The first is that the child ought not to spend more than three hours a day in the formal study of book subjects such as reading, spelling, language, history, literature, geography, and arithmetic. The second is that the periods given to the study of these formal subjects ought to be short and the intervals given to free play, gymnastics, music, drawing, and various forms of hand activities. If then, three hours is long enough for a child to spend in formal study in a schoolroom, it is easily possible to have one teacher in one classroom teach the formal literary or book subjects to two groups of forty children each during the six hours which usually make up her actual working day. By providing a sufficient number of gymnasiums, shops, or manual training rooms, drawing rooms, laboratories, playgrounds, and assembly halls, properly equipt with teachers and overseers, provision is made for each pupil to spend the remaining part of his school day in |