mind to the neglect of the moral nature, and the result is the shrewd man of the world, conscienceless. Neglect the mind and the body, and develop the moral nature, and you have the fanatic. Develop all together harmoniously, and you have the noblest work of God.

True education will not sharpen the wits and neglect the heart, develop the body and neglect the mind. It will always place in one scale erudition, in the other, that which is so much needed nowadays, Godgiven experience.

"Thou shalt and thou shalt not", states the Doctor, "is written in every human heart, pointing out to us that all true education must be founded and rock-bound grounded on the immortal ethics of Sinai, the Ten Commandments." Rectitude and not expediency must be our motto. We need to be intellectual, but we need far more to be chaste, honest and charitable. "Fear God, and keep His commandments," says the Sage, "is the whole man."

As to moral training, which means religious training, in theory little need be said. The keenest intellects from the days of Washington to the present time are fully in accord with our view. Washington said, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail to the exclusion of religious principles."

What we should do, I believe, is not so much to criticise the State schools, but to improve our own. They are doing a great work. Nothing but praise for what they teach, regret for what they cannot teach, religion. It must not be Catholic, Jewish or Protestant. Liberty of conscience is at stake. I am fully convinced that if it were possible, our statesmen would have religion taught our boys and girls every day. They employ chaplains in the legislature, army and prisons. What should be emphasized by us to our own is the great necessity of sending the little ones to us. Point out to them that the Church has been the great educator through centuries, the genuine, not the counterfeit school, of art, music, poetry, eloquence, architecture, etc. In just one word, put into practice what the best minds of this land have held, and intensively hold to-day in theory, daily religious instruction, along with thorough training in the essential secular branches, and with the army of men and women who have consecrated themselves to this noble work, we need have no fear of the future. Our youth will be well prepared for citizenship here, prepared for eternal citizenship. The outlook is promising. Let us pursue our God-given course unobtrusively, yet uncompromisingly.

RETARDATION AND ELIMINATION OF PUPILS IN OUR SCHOOLS

REV. PATRICK J. MC CORMICK, THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, WASHINGTON, D. C.

The zealous worker in the educational field welcomes every genuine test of efficiency which can be applied to our schools and school systems. He knows how inadequate and unsuitable are some of the standards by which success or failure of the elementary schools is often measured. While in a given case, through deference to established criteria of judgment, he may refer to such indications of efficiency as excellent equipment, superior quality of instruction and success of the graduates, he realizes that these points do not give complete assurance of the success of the school. He is inclined to feel that the test implied by their enumeration is more appropriate to a higher and more specialized form of education such as the college or university.

The elementary school with its definite aim to provide instruction in the rudiments of learning should be primarily tested, it would seem, as to how well or ill it fulfills its mission to educate the majority of the children it receives. Apart from such important questions as the quality of the instruction given in the school, the character of its administration and the success of those who have completed the course, this significant item remains to be accounted for, viz., what percentage of the pupils have received the full benefit of the school. Or perhaps the question may be stated more clearly in this way. If all other elements for success are present in a given school or system such as are implied by superior equipment, administration and scholarship, and only a small proportion of the pupils receive the full course, while the majority receive only one-half or two-thirds of it, the school is in that proportion failing in its mission to do its full duty to all.

The study of the processes of retardation and elimination sets about to determine the efficiency of the school in this respect. It purposes to ascertain the number of those whom the elementary school has educated only in part, the reasons why these pupils have failed to enjoy the entire benefits of the course, and to propose means for a more satisfactory fulfilment of the mission of the school to give an elementary education to all the children. That interest in the study is widespread, and that the greatest importance is attached to it is evident from the number of publications and treatises dealing with it, and from the attention commanded by it in the reports of the school superintendents and civil authorities throughout this country. In a bibliography courteously supplied by the National Bureau of Education at Washington for the preparation of this paper, are found, under the heading of "Backward and Retarded Children," references to fifty-two treatises on various phases of the subject, and in another, under "Retardation and Elimination," sixty-one treatises, all of which have been written within the last decade, since 1900. The results of this study have shown that, in this country particularly, the public schools are supplying an education not to all of the children they receive, but to about one-half of them, that while all are compelled by law to attend school and the course prescribed covers a period of eight years, the great majority of pupils attend for five or six years and do not complete the course. According to one student of the problem, Mr. Leonard P. Ayres, author of Laggards in Our Schools, ten per cent. of the children leave when thirteen years of age, forty per cent. when fourteen, fifty per cent. of the remainder when fifteen and fifty per cent. of that remainder when sixteen; or in speaking of them by grades, the general tendency in American school systems is to keep all of the children for the fifth grade, to drop half by the eighth, and to carry one in ten to the high school. It is found that conditions vary greatly in different parts of the country, and that retardation and elimination are not known in certain localities to the same extent as in others. For instance in Quincy, Mass., for every ten beginners in the elementary school eight reached the eighth grade, whereas in Camden, N. J., for every ten beginners only two completed the eighth grade.

The various studies, however, have awakened the educational world to the existence of a most serious problem, and have been fruitful in encouraging further efforts looking towards its solution. As there are many important phases of this twofold subject, any of which could profitably occupy our entire time, we shall here try to see, first, the application of the subject to our schools; second, the most potent factors working towards retardation and elimination, and finally the remedies suggested to overcome them.

Every teacher is familiar with the dull, the backward, the defective, the retarded children, and anxious for suggestions to ameliorate their condition. So are all teachers, principals and pastors conscious of the great number of the eliminated, those who for one reason or other leave school before reaching the last grade. As one factor affects the other very perceptiblythe retarded being among the most ready to leave school-and as both are an index of the efficiency of our schools in giving an elementary education to our children, the causes producing them and the conditions aggravating them ought to be our first concern, that knowing them we may intelligently combat and overcome them. For obvious reasons we shall confine our attention to the elementary schools.

The retarded we accept to include all those children who are behind their proper and normal grades. They may have begun school late, or have failed of promotion; at any rate, they are all over age for their grades, and when they reach the age of fourteen have not completed the entire course. Those who leave before finishing the course are the eliminated, and it would appear from the data we possess for our Catholic school systems, that both classes of children are with us to an alarming extent.

The statistics available for the study of this condition in our schools are very meagre. Comparatively few of the reports of the diocesan superintendents and school boards are made public, and these few are wanting in the most essential details for the study of this problem. We are not criticising the reports, for they are excellent in many and most respects, and are of the greatest utility to the dioceses concerned and the Catholic system generally, and we could scarcely expect that they would incor

porate at this early stage in the study of a new problem the details which are deemed necessary. They do, however, throw light on the situation, and although those at hand for the preparation of this paper were representative of the eastern portion of the country, perhaps they can be said to picture the general condition of our schools.

To take one point alone on which some of the diocesan reports offer information, i. e., the distribution of children in the different grades of a diocesan system. We cannot tell from this either the number retarded, or the number eliminated, but we can derive some idea of the prevalence and extent of the two processes. In one diocese there are over 62,000 children enrolled in the elementary schools; 37,000, or over half of the entire enrollment. are contained in the first grade. The decrease in number is very marked from the fourth to the fifth grade, almost half, and from the sixth to the seventh the falling off in numbers is one-half, as it is also from the seventh to the eighth grade. At the time these numbers were recorded there were ninety-two per cent. more children in the first than in the highest or eighth grade.

In another diocese similar conditions obtain. Sixty-three per cent. of the entire number of children in the schools are in the first three grades, and the largest number for any grade is in the first. Those in the eighth grade are eight per cent. of the number in the first grade. The falling off in numbers is most marked from the sixth to the seventh grade, the latter containing less than half as many as the former. The numbers, however, for the seventh and eighth grades are not so variant; there is a decrease, but not nearly as great as between the two previous grades. These statistics have been compared with those of two other dioceses which show practically the same characteristics in the distribution of children by grades.

Of course it is expected that the greatest number of children will be recorded in grade one. That is the general condition in elementary school systems. We do not intend to infer by making these comparisons of figures that since the number of those in the higher grades is so much smaller than those in the lower, retardation or elimination has occurred in inverse proportion, or caused the thinning out. Owing to the increase