and easy descriptive work both oral and written; (2) business arithmetic, with special emphasis on topics suggested by local conditions; (3) business writing that will insure the mastery of a good business hand; (4) commercial geography, with special emphasis on place geography in general and on local vocational geography in particular; (5) civics, elementary in character and for the sole purpose of developing a high type of citizenship; (6) typewriting for its vocational value, and also to develop accuracy, concentration, neatness, etc.; (7) first lessons in business, to inculcate business habits, to teach simple record keeping, to acquaint the pupils with simple business practice; and at the end of the course to link up the elementary commercial course with the highschool commercial course in such a way that every pupil in the former will want to continue in the latter. Physical training, physiology and hygiene, industrial work for boys and household arts for girls will all receive the usual attention in this course.

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.1

By PAUL MONROE.

There are two hindrances to the development of adequate provision for commercial education in the secondary schools of the United States: (1) The general prejudice in favor of the traditional literary education; (2) the feeling against any differentiation in our school organization which involves special treatment of different groups of pupils. The first feature implies emphasis on preparation for the leisure activities of life; the second renders difficult the consideration of technical preparation of any sort.

It is this differentiation of the school system into a variety of kinds of schools that is the chief characteristic of the system of Continental Europe, and to a less extent of South America. In place of this we have in the United States a prolonged elementary course and a briefer secondary course which is but slightly differentiated and is of the same length for all.

These two characteristic features are now undergoing changes which may ultimately be quite radical. These changes, so far as they have progressed, will explain the present status of commercial education.

Commercial, like industrial, education is education stated in terms of production, rather than in the ordinary cultural terms of consumption. In the United States natural resources and opportunity have been so great that it has been unnecessary until recently to organize education in terms of production. Now, with our approach to the marginal standards of the older countries and with the great influx of unskilled labor, a new attitude is necessary.

For fifty or seventy-five years we have had numbers of private commercial schools which afforded routine training for routine business procedure. At present there are probably 2,000 such schools giving training to 200,000 students. For some twenty-five years we have supplemented this means of preparation with business courses in our public high schools. Nearly 2,000 public schools now offer some such courses and reach about as many students as do the private schools. The public school has the broader curriculum, but the private school has the advantage of closer contact with business.

The problem for the immediate future is such an organization of secondary education as will place within the reach of every youth in the country the op

Author's abstract.

portunity for a commercial or an industrial education which shall not only prepare him for the business of life but at the same time be a genuine education. The problem is a wholly different one from that of the private business school. The new curriculum must include a greater variety of subjects. It must consider business from the social and the national as well as the individual point of view. Many problems in the organization and control of these schools have arisen and few have been finally solved. Satisfactory solutions await a longer experience.

A further need is for the awakening of the public to the necessity and the problems of commercial and industrial education. There can be no permanent progress until the people as a whole realize that economic advance, as well as political and social stability, depends upon an adequate preparation through education for dealing with industrial and business processes. Modern democracy demands as a guarantee of its well-being an increased attention to these types of practical or vocational education.

The following is a résumé of a paper on the same subject by David Snedden, former commissioner of education of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

By DAVID SNEDDEN.

At least 350,000 pupils are studying in commercial departments or courses in the schools of the United States. These figures express quite definitely the demand for commercial education in the United States. They do not clearly measure the extent to which occupations of a commercial character finally require or absorb all these young people; but they bear eloquent testimony to the fact that parents see in these occupations desirable opportunities for their sons and daughters. Let us analyze, first, the character of the thousands of pupils taking commercial courses and, secondly, the general character of the instruction offered.

For upward of half a century private and public commercial schools and departments in high schools have offered the most accessible and inexpensive opportunities available for an education of secondary grade that seemed to have a definite vocational outcome.

Hence, a vast army of young people, attracted and sometimes fascinated by the alleged large possibilities of success in business careers, have sought the instruction and training offered through commercial courses. Often these youths have been under economic necessity to seek employment early; often, too, they have either lost or else never developed interest in or capacity for the general studies of high school and college. Classes in commercial studies generally show a large percentage of students of mediocre ability and also a considerable percentage pathetically eager to get the equipment necessary to early entrance on wage earning employment. Into these classes have been forced or have drifted pupils not bright enough for the college preparatory work of the high school. What have these pupils received? At all times the larger part of the education could be divided into two kinds—(a) a variety of definite forms of training in skill and (b) a variety of forms of instruction in organized bodies of knowledge of a commercial character.

Judged by any adequate standards, commercial education in the United States during the last half century has, in spite of its seeming successes, been in large measure characterized by poor organization, ill-defined, confused, and unscientific aims, and ignorance, sometimes willful, of the general quality of its output. It has thrived on the credulity of a public deprived of opportunities for thorough and intelligent vocational education and tempted by the allurements of modern business enterprise.

The present is obviously a period of rapid transition in secondary commercial education. Partly under the influence of the general movement for vocational education during recent years, the aims and methods of commercial education are in process of becoming more clearly defined. An increasing number of educators recognize that any form of commercial education which rests largely upon abstract processes, as so often found in high schools now, must in the long run prove wasteful and ineffective. More attention is being paid to training in skill in the various divisions of commercial occupations that are being defined. Systematic comparison of various methods of teaching is being made, with a view to ascertaining which offers greatest economy and effectiveness.

It will be found that there are many commercial occupations which are not yet definitely analyzed, but for which, when analyzed and defined, systematic training can be given. The beginnings of this movement we find now in the interest developing in the direction of training for salesmanship, for office administration, for field salesmanship, for advertising, and the like.

Very probably commercial education in the future will make extensive use of so-called "part-time training," by means of which, after a brief introductory period, the novice will spend part of his time in the lower stages of the commercial occupations and the remaining part in schools, seeking systematically to correlate the practical experience gained in the commercial pursuit with the technical knowledge and training which the school is able to impart.

ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS TO COLLEGES OF COMMERCE.1
By DAVID KINLEY.

The principles which control and which, on the whole, should be observed in framing a curriculum preparatory to a college commercial course are these: The subjects of study should afford adequate mental training; they should have proper relation to the civilization, form of government, and opinion of the community; they should stimulate the interest of the students; they should, to a proper extent, have a vocational relation to the subsequent course of study; the subjects should be susceptible of good teaching, and a supply of capable teachers must be at hand.

Not every subject that should be in the curriculum meets all the above tests in the same degree, but every subject should meet one or more of them as fully as possible, and, to a certain extent, should meet all of the others. The general subjects which do so are the languages, mathematics, science, history, economics, and civics. The vocational subjects which meet these tests most fully are bookkeeping, business law, and commercial geography. For a college course in commerce, stenography and typewriting are not educationally necessary, 1 Author's abstract.

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although useful, for the reason that those who take college or university courses in commerce are preparing themselves not for clerical, but for managerial. positions. The educational value of commercial arithmetic is so doubtful and its scope so unsettled as to make its inclusion doubtful.

Practice in the United States conforms pretty closely to the above theories. Taking the Universities of Illinois, Wisconsin, California, and Pennsylvania as fairly representative of the institutions which have undergraduate collegiate courses in commerce, we find that their entrance requirements agree substantially with one another, and also in placing the emphasis as above indicated. All accept approximately from one to four units, or years' work, of high-school grade for admission to their courses. The other units, or most of the highschool work, are in general subjects.

The prospect is that the college commercial course will become more intensely vocational and technical. We must look, therefore, for an increase in the amount of vocational study in the high schools preparatory thereto. Probably the next subjects to be recognized in the high-school course for this purpose will be business organization and practice, salesmanship, and advertising. But while the next few years will see more highly specialized high-school courses preparatory to college and technical courses, there is little probability that these subjects will ever become the main part of the program of the high-school boy. He will still be obliged to have his mother tongue, his history, his science, and, for reasons aside from its obvious utility, his foreign language.

Dean Kinley's paper was discussed by W. F. Gephart, professor of economics, Washington University. The author's abstract of this paper follows:

The demand for formal training for business is due, first, to the wonderful economic development of the United States, with its accompanying complexities in modern business organization and conduct; second, to the rapid development of interest in foreign markets; third, to the splendid results achieved in devising formal training for technical and professional ends.

The particular subjects admitted for entrance credit should not be decided by an attempt to evaluate an assumed worth of a particular subject of study in secondary schools. Any institution which desires to organize a college of commerce should recognize that there are certain well-defined differences in business activity. The chief courses of separate training are for foreign business, domestic business, with its important subdivisions, for technical business positions, such as accountants, and for teachers of business subjects. Thus, with a difference in ends to be achieved, the value of a subject of study in the secondary schools will be determined. The entrance requirements will have a very limited number of required subjects and a large number of electives, depending upon what line of business the applicant expects to enter. Modern language will be required of those who expect to enter the foreign-trade business. A larger amount of subjects called vocational, such as bookkeeping, may be accepted from those who expect to enter accountancy.

Since in many lines of business the facts have not been, and can not for some time be, correlated and scientifically treated in a deductive manner, subjects in the high school which have a large measure of mental discipline should be emphasized.

SIXTH SESSION.

The sixth session of the subsection on commercial education was held Monday morning, January 3, at 9.30 o'clock, in the Pan American Union Building. Mr. Albert A. Snowden presided. The teaching of certain fundamental and special subjects of the collegiate business training curriculum was discussed in brief papers by specialists in those subjects. Abstracts prepared by the writers of these papers follow.

LANGUAGES.

By GLEN LEVIN SWIGGETT.

The teaching of modern languages is perhaps the most unsatisfactory of all subjects in the course of commercial education. This is due to a lack of texts prepared with this kind of instruction in view and to the prevailing method of classroom instruction in these subjects. Foreign-language study in the schools and colleges of the United States has been largely for the purpose of discipline in the earlier school years and culture in the later. This attitude persists in the face of the well-recognized and insistent demand on the part of business men and high Government officials that the modern commercial languages be so taught that students engaging in foreign service, consular and commercial, be given the ability to speak one or more of these languages.

It is difficult to give this ability to students in our schools and colleges as constituted and controlled. Faculty direction of courses of study, the attitude of the teachers of modern languages, and the method of class assignment of students are strong factors still within the school that act in opposition to the growing demand for a more satisfactory and practical plan and method of teaching modern languages. The latter can only be achieved through a larger spirit of cooperation within the faculty, the growth of an interdepartmental esprit de corps, prompted by a larger sense of public service, the emphasis upon a speaking knowledge of the language in the appointment of teachers, and through a larger freedom within the departments of modern languages that will permit either the dropping of students from these courses, after it is plainly shown that they have neither interest nor ability to pursue a course carried on by the conversational method, or their reassignment to special courses carried on by the traditional method.

The number of texts that place value upon the practical teaching of modern languages is steadily increasing. Teachers' courses in these languages are placing an increasing emphasis upon the ability to speak as a necessary requirement in the study of a modern language. Methods have greatly improved. There is still lacking, however, suitable texts prepared to give through content the essential knowledge of foreign countries and prepared by a method that is both interesting and progressive through a period of study of several years. This lack of suitable texts, together with the inability on the part of the teacher to condition a student's opportunity to pursue a modern language by the latter's native ability to take it, are a serious menace and present insurmountable obstacles for the present, except in a few favored institutions, in the teaching of modern languages for commercial purposes.

The study of Latin should precede, if possible, that of the modern languages. To do this the two elementary years of Latin should be placed in the grammarschool period. Sound pedagogy and precedent argue for this. The study of