HE American Association of University Women, at its national meeting in July, 1923, accepted as part of its educational program the recommendation of the educational secretary, "that the branches study the problem of the pre-school age." This inaugurated a new educational interest which is primarily a project in adult education, a project which aims to bring university and college women into more intelligent understanding of young children and the agencies established for their education.

It would be perhaps more accurate to say a "revived interest", rather than a "new interest" for back in the eighteennineties, when child study was receiving so much attention, we find that this association (then called the Association of Collegiate Alumnae) was doing active work along this line under the direction of Dr. Millicent Shinn. An excerpt from the annual address of the president in 1893 says, "In the fall of 1890, steps were taken providing for the presentation of a plan by which those members who were interested could unite in a systematic study of the development of children, with special reference to securing the best basis for their later intellectual life. The special committee has studied the problem with diligence and care and has had the active cooperation of eminent specialists. The schedules for observations on child-life, which have been prepared, are now ready for use, and it is extremely desirable that as large a number of careful and intelligent observers as possible should join in the study."

It seems particularly significant to me that a group of university and college

women, whose main concern since the formation of the association in 1882 has been the raising of standards of women's colleges and co-educational institutions and in making collegiate education accessible to more women, should also have had a great interest in the scientific study of young children. As late as 1903 Dr. Shinn was publishing syllabi and record sheets for the use of mothers. But in later years the interest of this association seemed to wane just as the importance of child study waned in universities and colleges. At present, child study, or as it is now termed, the psychology of childhood, is again finding a dignified place in college curricula, and child research centers are making use of scientific tools in experimental investigations. The American Association of University Women has renewed its interest and is undertaking an intensive program.

Dr. Helen Thompson Woolley is largely responsible for reviving the interest of this organization in the field of pre-school education. It was she who literally dropped a firebrand among the members of the association by her speech at the Kansas City convention in July, 1922. Several of the women who were present have since said, "It was the first time I had thought about the education of children below school age." This is easily understandable when we remember that most college women confine their interest and educational endeavors to collegiate and secondary levels; that very few are concerned with elementary education; and that she who stoops to the pre-school level is an unusual person indeed. But due to the stimulation of Dr. Woolley and the efforts of Dr. Frances Fenton Bernard, then educational secretary,

the association made a beginning of this study in September, 1923. By spring of 1924 the work showed such possibilities for future development that the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial undertook to finance it for the next two years and three months. This has, of course, given a great impetus to our work.

And now just what are we trying to do? How are we proceeding? What is the significance of such work? What are our plans for the future?

Our aim in undertaking this work is twofold: adult education and research. That which concerns adult education is our primary consideration and includes three types of activity: (1) general information for all members (2) intensive study in small groups (3) establishment of nursery schools.

College women need to be educated to the significance of the pre-school age, first, because they know so little about it and second, because they form an important nucleus through which this information may be disseminated to the public at large. College women are often the leaders in their communities, working upon civic committees, active members of parentteacher associations, approaching state legislatures on social issues. It is essential that such active, interested women should know something concerning the great movement for improving the lives of preschool children. Child health demonstration centers, habit clinics, nursery schools, three of the social agencies which are working to benefit the young child from the standpoint of physical development and health, mental hygiene, and educative material, respectively, should be more than mere names to these women. College women in general should have a basic understanding of the need for definite care and scientific planning for children from

two to six as well as for those older and younger. This general education of members of the American Association of University Women is being furthered by having specialists in psychology and education lecture to them at one or more of the regular monthly meetings each year. The specialists who are called upon are sometimes local people but often are national leaders in the field. Dr. Bird Baldwin has spoken to branches of the American Association of University Women at Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sioux City, Iowa, St. Louis, and Omaha. Dr. Helen Thompson Woolley has been to many branches. Philadelphia is having a series of six lectures by specialists in the pre-school field.

But probably the most significant phase of our work in adult education and that which is receiving greatest emphasis is the organization of pre-school study groups. All over the United States groups of women are getting together to study intensively certain phases of pre-school education. These groups are each composed of about ten women who are interested in this field, usually because they are mothers, but often because they wish to be leaders of mothers' groups later. The work for these study groups is being planned by the educational secretary in the form of suggested topics, outlines and bibliographies. Four topics have been organized: Physical Development and Health of Young Children; Behavior Characteristics of Young Children; Mental Hygiene of Children; and the Nursery School. Since much of the literature on these subjects is printed in pamphlet form, groups of these pamphlets are organized in the educational office and distributed to the study groups. These study groups are organized much as a college seminary class might be, with weekly meetings where each member takes part in a carefully planned discussion based upon definitely

assigned readings. Local specialists may be brought in from time to time to lead the discussion: a pediatrician when children's diseases is the subject, a community nurse for physical care of children, a professor of education or psychology when special phases of the behavior or education of children is the subject, a psychiatrist for behavior problems, and others for help in their special fields. These specialists are only to discuss and explain, for these are study groups, not lecture audiences. Last year there were twenty-three such study groups organized. This year eighty-three have written in for help and suggestions and approximately twenty-five more have begun work on the basis of the article in the October Journal of this association.

The interest which is being fostered in nursery schools by the American Association of University Women is not a social welfare scheme where philanthropic women will be encouraged to start day-nurseries for industrial women who work away from home. This may be a desirable objective but it is not ours. We hope by general lecture and intensive study groups that college women may see the function of the nursery school as an agency through which children from two to six may receive a bet ter education, because of the more adequate equipment available, the specially trained woman in charge and the social advantage of association in a group. Nursery schools form a splendid laboratory in which mothers may study from an objective standpoint their own children. They see just how a trained person handles difficult behavior situations. They begin to realize just how independent and responsible for his own acts a three year old may become under the stimulus of a woman who appreciates each child's power. Mothers begin to realize just how much children may learn when they have the right materials and the best

conditions for learning. Wherever members of the American Association of University Women are becoming interested in nursery schools we are recommending that they plan to use them as real laboratories where mothers may study with and through their children. This is absolutely necessary in order that the principles exemplified in the school may be carried over into the home so that children may build up one set of desirable habits which operate equally well in both places. Some of these college women have already formed so-called cooperative nurseries where a group of mothers take turns in caring for the children. Others have more pretentious undertakings and have engaged trained teachers to be in charge daily. One group is planning to open a nursery school in connection with a state university. These are only beginnings, not completely organized nursery schools, but they indicate an attitude toward the education of young children which is encouraging and which we hope may lead on to something more adequate.

This brings us to the second phase of our project, which is research, and is as yet only a plan to be developed. Since there is relatively so little information of scientific worth concerning children of pre-school age it would seem highly worth while that college women be trained to make objective observations and careful records of the behavior of their children at home. In order to do this, it will be necessary to develop definite record sheets on specific phases of child behavior. Several institutions where studies are being made by graduate students along this line have asked our cooperation. We hope to aid in the preliminary trying out of the record sheets, as well as to contribute to the final study by keeping careful records. It is possible also that these women may try out certain remedial measures in cases of be

havior difficulties and keep a record of the results. Thus we may find that with careful supervision it will be feasible to use the home as a place for trying out certain of the procedures recommended by research

experts.

The American Association of University Women has the machinery for doing a big piece of work, for in these forty-two years the membership has increased from seventeen women to twenty-two thousand. A large national machinery with a headquarter's staff of fifteen in Washington, D. C., operates through two hundred and ninetyseven branches organized in every state in the United States. It is thus possible to reach in a very intimate way these college

and university women who are concerned with the education of young children.

The more one works in education the more one realizes the great effect which home influences have on the habits and attitudes of children. If Arnold Gesell is right that "the child's 'personality makeup,' so far as it is a describably subsisting reality, consists in the countless conditioned reflexes, associative memories, habits and attitudes which it acquires as a result of being reared by personal beings," then indeed may we consider that the education of parents is a desirable, nay an imperative, objective for university women to pursue.

BERNARD, FRANCES FENTON. Report of Educational

Secretary for the Period November, 1923-April 17, 1924. Journal of the American Association of University Women, May, 1924. Pp. 6-8.

MEEK, LOI HAYDEN. Upbuild Homes, Improve

Schools, and Standardize Colleges. School Life, November, 1924. Pp. 56-57.

Department of Pre-School and Elementary Education. Journal of the American Association of University Women, October, 1924. Pp. 22-30.

ABBOT, JULIA WADE. The Kindergarten and the Nursery School Movement. Mother and Child, February, 1923.

Responsibility for the Pre-School Child. School
Life, November, 1923.

A Twenty-four Hour Day for the Pre-School Child. Childhood Education, November, 1924. BALDWIN, BIRD T. and STECHER, LORLE I. The Psychology of the Pre-School Child, Appleton and Company.

Results of Experiments in a Pre-School Psychological Laboratory. Psychological Bulletin, February, 1923.

BRUCE, PORTER B. The Need for Nursery Schools. The Child (London), September, 1924.

CAMPBELL, C. MACPIE. Psychology of the Pre-School Period. Mother and Child, March, 1922.

CLEVELAND, E. 'Twixt Infancy and Alphabet. Survey

Graphic, January 1, 1923. EDWARDS, KATHLEEN. Pre-Kindergarten Education. Kindergarten and First Grade, October, 1922. A Brief History of the Nursery School. American Child Hygiene Association Transactions, 1922. MARTIN, LILLIEN J. and DEGRUCHY, CLARE. Mental Training for the Pre-School Age Child. Harr Wagner Publishing Co.

OWEN, GRACE. Nursery School Education. E. P. Dutton & Company.

THOM, DOUGLAS A. Habit Clinics for Children of PreSchool Age. Children's Bureau Publication No. 135. VANDERWALKER, NINA C. Some Experiments in PreSchool Education. School Life, November, 1922. WATSON, JOHN B. Pre-Kindergarten Age, a Laboratory Study. Kindergarten and First Grade, JanuaryMarch, 1920.

A

LL of those who were interested in the announcement made in the July number of the Quarterly of the new college to be founded at Bennington, Vermont, will be glad to learn of recent developments tending toward its establishment. Mr. Eugene Smith has sent us the following account:

An event of real educational significance took place in Bennington, Vermont, on the last three days of August. The Committee of Twenty-One, which has been planning for the new women's college at Bennington, called together a conference of educators for the purpose of determining on broad lines the educational policy and the curriculum for the proposed college.

Dr. William H. Kilpatrick of Teachers College, New York, who has acted as adviser for the committee since its formation, acted as chairman of the conference. Meetings were held at which were discussed the present-day educational needs of young women, how those needs were being met by existing colleges, and the possibility of organizing a new college free from immediate traditional influence and therefore able more directly and helpfully to supply those needs.

Papers were read by Miss Amy Kelly, who while a member of the Wellesley faculty had made a deep study of curriculummaking, and Mrs. Frances Bernard, who made a strong plea for a college where the interest would be not merely in the intellectual development of the girl, but rather in the development of the entire woman in

all her potentialities. Both papers are full of valuable suggestions for the use of the conference and both were thoroughly discussed by those present. Dr. Kilpatrick proposed a number of points that might well be taken up for reasonably definite discussion and each of them was considered at some length.

A committee, consisting of Prof. Kilpatrick, Prof. Johnson, and Mr. Smith, was appointed to draft and submit a statement of recommendations. These recommendations were as follows:

The group of men and women invited to discuss the proposal that a new college be established at Bennington agree upon the following suggestions:

1 That it be for women only.

2 That there is need for such a new college, first because existing colleges for women are overcrowded; and, second, because a new institution will be freer to bring educational practice into line with more recent progress in educational theory.

3 That this college should be the equal of the best colleges for women as regards its standards for entrance and graduation.

4 The college should appeal exclusively to no particular type but should expect to draw students from all sections and all economic groups; seeking especially such students as expect to live simply and work seriously.

5 That the college should not commit itself to the traditional subjects for entrance preparation, nor to the written subject examination as the principal means of testing fitness for entrance; but should avail itself of the newer methods of testing ability and promise; and that the college should admit the girl of exceptional ability even though that ability is not manifested along all the usually demanded lines.