in confidence and affection, for he is the one who will, to a great extent, be the means of shaping their future.

A priest went into a large school of fourteen or fifteen hundred children, a priest who had spent his life in sacrifices for that school, and the superioress of that school remarked to the visiting priest that the pastor was "an awful good man, for he always paid their salaries promptly"—that evidently being the best thing she could say in his praise. Such is not what we expect in the parish school. What we want is that confidence centered in the pastor which will have the children go to him naturally in time of trouble, trial and temptation.

I would like to call the attention of our distinguished President to the fact that about 90 per cent. of the children in this Middle West go no further than the eighth grade. Great attention should be paid to the fact that the large proportion of children quit school after the eighth grade. It seems to us it would be a good work for the University to send some authorized agent to visit every parochial school, if he could, or make as many schools as he could in a year, to see how they are conducted. The teachers are deserving of every sort of encouragement possible. We cannot say anything that would be too great praise for the great army of women and men who are doing God's work. Very often priests have not the encouragement that they should have. They need encouragement as well as teachers. It seems to us that it would be a great thing to establish normal schools in every province for lay teachers. At times it is absolutely necessary to have lay teachers. We should endeavor to procure more lay teachers. We need them. Every religious community is pressed to its utmost to supply the demands for schools.

Parents who make great sacrifices for their children ought to be encouraged to visit the school. Give them a hearty welcome. Let teachers and pastor make parents feel that they must be interested in school work, that they should see how their children are getting on. The doors of the school should always be open to parents. At least one-half day a week should be called a visiting day for parents, and every attention should be shown them when they visit.

The Council of Baltimore makes it obligatory that the pastor or his assistant should visit the school every day. This is an obligation, and we fully appreciate the school will not be a success until that is accomplished. In different quarters fads are more or less of a necessity in order to encourage our people to send their children to Catholic schools. In this region the fad of manual training is taking considerable time away from children, but it must be accepted for the time being.

REV. F. A. MOELLER, S. J., St. Ignatius College, Chicago: May I be permitted, in discussing the excellent paper just read, to call the attention of the pastors in their relation to the parochial schools, to the 6000 and more silent parochial school children who, standing outside the gates that are closed to them, wonder why they are not invited to partake of the bless

ings of a Catholic education. Like the hearing children, the deaf-mutes are children of the parish and have a claim on the conscientious care of the pastor. On account of the small number of deaf-mutes in a parish, it may not be possible to set aside one or two classrooms for their education, but, as in the case of orphans, even for more cogent reasons, there could be diocesan schools for the deaf. The education of the Catholic deaf has been so much overlooked in this country that the deaf have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church does not care for them and that the Protestant church does. There are a few priests who, as a work of supererogation, have undertaken to work for the salvation of the deaf, and several self-sacrificing sisterhoods have taken upon themselves the financial burden of educating, without compensation, the deaf children belonging to diocesan parishes. The priests and Sisters engaged in school or missionary work for the deaf find themselves helpless without the cooperation of our zealous Bishops and pastors. Where such cooperation obtains, beginnings have been made of late in providing schools and missionary centers for the deaf and, we may hope, that, as the needs of the deaf become better known, we may see the day when there will be at least one Catholic school for the deaf in every ecclesiastical province, and a priest appointed in each diocese whose duty it will be to look after the welfare of the deaf and make an annual report to the Bishop of his diocese.. It may require some time and effort to discover the Catholic deaf in a parish. From the nature of things, the voice of the silent sheep is heard with difficulty by the shepherds. Moreover, in the present condition of the deaf, many will flatly deny that they are Catholics. It is, consequently, not surprising to find pastors, on being asked to give the names and addresses of the deaf-mutes in their parishes, answer that they know of no Catholic deaf in their parishes, while the priest in charge of a mission for the deaf may have on his books the names of several deaf-mutes of that pastor's parish which he obtained from information received from known Catholic deaf-mutes.

VERY REV. THOMAS E. SHIELDS, PH. D., Washington, D. C.: The views expressed in the paper read will commend themselves to this audience. Instead of occupying your time in pointing out its various excellencies, let me add that an imperative need of the situation is the right kind of leadership. Our schools must be standardized if they are to meet present conditions, but the standard should be fixed by ourselves and not by the school system whose aim is essentially different from ours. The failure to recognize this principle is fraught with great danger to Catholic education. False doctrines on the questions of the soul and the life hereafter and of man's relations to God may be easily detected by the competent teacher and corrected, but there lurks in method a danger far more subtle. When the world is presented to the child in the various secular branches as if there were no God and no need for God-and this, be it remembered, is the program of our public school system-the teaching of catechism half an hour, or an hour, a day will not suffice to make the child grow up

into a religious man. Moreover, when the child is taught in the various secular subjects to use his reason alone without an appeal to authority and without the play of will and of the emotions, the inevitable result is a mind so constituted that an act of faith is a practical impossibility. Convictions he may have, but aith demands the element of will. The child is thus deprived not only of his faith in supernatural truth but of the power demanded by all worthy achievement, for never yet was a great picture painted or any great deed achieved except by the energy that flows from the wellsprings of will and emotion rationalized by the intellect. Catholic methods are demanded if our Catholic schools are to achieve the end for which they have been called into existence.

RT. REV. MGR. JOSEPH SCHREMBS, V. G., Grand Rapids, Mich. : In regard to the splendid paper of the Rt. Rev. President General, I believe that one of the keynotes sounded therein was coordination throughout the whole Catholic system of education. In reference to this, my very dear friend, Fr. O'Brien, thought it would be a splendid idea if the Catholic University would get up examination papers to be sent to various Catholic schools throughout the country, thus securing uniformity of the course. I think I would like to go one step farther. In order to send out examination questions for the passing of the eighth grade, it would be necessary, first of all, to grade the schools to a uniform standard; for of what use are the examination papers if they have not a common basis in all the schools? I am in thorough accord with the idea of the Rev. Dean of Kalamazoo, but would go one step farther and advocate that our Catholic University establish a uniform standard of courses. Let the Catholic University lay down certain fixed principles and limits for the various courses in the parochial schools, thus establishing a uniform standard for the entire country; then it will be possible to send out examination papers which will enforce this standard and secure results.

I believe one of the most important things in the matter of Catholic education is to raise the efficiency of the various grades by bringing them up to a general unit of standard.

Second, in regard to the other recommendation of the Very Rev. Dean to establish normal schools for lay teachers, because Sisters are so pressed that we need lay teachers, I think there is more danger than good in that suggestion. I would rather say, let each pastor foster vocations. If we start up a source of competition to our religious teachers, who are sacrificing themselves for Catholic parochial schools, and are working at a minimum salary; if we establish a system of lay teachers, who will have to be paid a salary that will enable them to live comfortably, which means two or three times over what we are now paying the Sisters, we will very soon destroy radically the spirit of sacrifice which has promoted the Catholic schools to that degree of excellence which they have attained. Foster religious vocations and you will provide for present needs.

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM-ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

VERY REV. JAMES A. BURNS, C. S. C., HOLY CROSS COLLEGE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

At a meeting of the Executive Board of the Association, held on Tuesday, July 5, at 8 p. m., the following paper was read as a basis of a general discussion on the present condition of education in the United States.

The present Commissioner of Education has aptly summed up, in a single phrase, the relative positions of the three constituent units of our educational system. "In the course of its development," he says, "the American secondary school has got wedged in between the elementary school and the college, each of which has developed independently, without any such check or bar." The relative positions of these three schools at the present day are an inheritance from the past. Elementary schools, secondary schools and colleges have existed side by side, each independent of the others, from the earliest Colonial times. As Dr. Brown has pointed out, three stages of secondary school development are distinguishable. During the first, which covered the Colonial Period, the characteristic secondary institution was what was known as the grammar school, modeled after the old Latin grammar school. During the second, extending, broadly speaking, from the Revolution to the Civil War, the characteristic type of secondary school was known as the academy. The third, or modern division, has as its typical secondary institution the high school. It is important to note that the grammar school of Colonial times was not the prototype of our present-day grammar school. The grammar school of Colonial days was a secondary school. It was simply transplanted from England by the colonists, as were likewise the primary school and the college.

The three classes of schools were, as has been said, independent of each other, and they are still so, at least substantially. The elementary school and the high school have indeed been brought under one common system of public control and supervision.

But, although under a common control, their development has gone on, even down to the present day, independently. The curriculum of each has been shaped to meet the needs of its respective pupils, without reference to the matter of their respective curricula being made to fit together. Previous to the rise of the public high schools, there was complete independence in this respect. The public high school movement brought the two schools under a common control, and from this there has resulted naturally more or less of effort towards their academic coordination. But very little in this way has been actually accomplished. The high school has had but a slight influence upon the elementary school, so far as the curriculum of studies is concerned. The elementary school has retained its inherited curriculum, and this curriculum has been amplified in response to the demands put upon the elementary school by the popular movements in education, without much regard to the wishes of the high school. Although the colleges have forced an increasing number of studies upon the high school, the latter has not been able to push its inferior studies back upon the elementary school. The practical failure so far of the work of the Committee of Ten, in its endeavor to have Latin and other secondary subjects introduced into the elementary school, goes to show that the idea that the curriculum of the elementary school should be considered on its own merits, and entirely apart from any question of high school or college curriculum, is still firmly fixed in the minds of the American people.

The curriculum of the elementary school is, therefore, in the main, an inheritance. During Colonial times, it consisted of the Three R's. Towards the end of this period, spelling, which had been given in connection with reading, appears to have become differentiated as a distinct schoolroom study. After the Revolution, other additions to the curriculum came slowly to be made.. Geography, history and grammar were introduced. Down to a period of a few decades ago, these subjects, together with the Three R's, continued to form the staple academic material of the elementary school. It was not until a comparatively recent date that the lighter subjects, those subjects which are so often referred to as "fads"-nature study, physiology, civics, drawing,