News and Notes

For the first time a woman has gained a Prix de Rome. Lucienne Heuvelmans has received the first of two second grand prizes for sculp

ture.

Prof. Simon Newcomb, the world famous scientist, has bequeathed by his will, filed for probate, July 16, all his foreign decorations, medals, prizes from scientific bodies, and certificates from universities and colleges to the National Museum at Washington, D. C.

Two hundred cities now have established play grounds. Sixty school grounds were opened in Philadelphia this summer as public play grounds. The city of Boston has made an appropriation of $165,000 for the purpose of extending its play grounds.

A number of educators, including members of the University of Pennsylvania, have established a settlement at Arden, Delaware, in which women and children have equal political and economic status with men. All civic questions are decided by town meetings. The ground is leased and rentals are placed in a general fund for payment of taxes and the improvement of the settlement. The financial promoter of the community is Joseph Fels, the millionaire soap manufacturer and single tax advocate.

An illustrated pamphlet in the Chinese language has been issued by the Chinese Reform News Publishing company of New York city. The circular contains fifty-six pages, descriptive of the University of Pennsylvania and its courses of study, written entirely in the Chinese language and beautifully illustrated. It is intended for the use of Chinese students, both in this country and abroad, who intend entering an American university.

Mr. John D. Rockefeller has made a further gift of $10,000,000 to the General Education Board. Its endowment is over $53,000,000. The Board has been authorized by Mr. Rockefeller to distribute the principal as well as the income for educational purposes, should this at any future time appear to be advisable.

Mr. Orville Wright and Mr. Wilbur Wright were presented on June 19 with the gold medal authorized by Congress, a medal on behalf of the State of Ohio, and a medal on behalf of the city of Dayton.

President Taft has issued a proclamation setting aside the Oregon Caves, in the Siskiyou National Forest in the state of Oregon as a National monument. The area of the reservation is about four hundred and eighty acres.

Edinburg University has decided to send its scholarship men to the Iowa State University to pursue graduate work in animal husbandry. Two of these men are now on their way from Scotland.

Professor D. O. Barto, who gives the public teachers' course in agriculture at the University of Illinois, has had an unusual demand for graduates to fill positions, in high schools as teachers of agriculture. This demand has not been confined to Illinois, but comes from Idaho, Texas, North Dakota, Minnesota, Virginia and Tennessee, and in spite of the fact that none of the graduates had experience in teaching, excellent salaries were offered and the entire class of eighteen could easily have been placed in remunerative positions.

Dr. David Felmley, President of the Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, has been elected (May 17,1909) a member of the Simplified Spelling Board.

Mrs. H. Inouye of Tokio, Japan, who visited the Chicago Normal the opening week of school, is in this country studying American ways and methods of education. She is a graduate of the University for Women, at Tokio and is President of the Alumni Association. She spent last year at Teachers' College, Columbia University, studying in the department of household arts and her work this summer at the University of Chicago was in sociology and economics. Before her return to Japan next spring, she is planning to visit the leading womens' colleges in the east, also educational centers in England and Germany.

V. W. F.

Editorial

Since the appearance of the last number of the EDUCATIONAL BIMONTHLY, Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, the editor, has been elected Superintendent of Schools of the City of Chicago. With her consequent retirement from the principalship of the Chicago Normal School, which she has held since 1905, Mrs. Young relinquishes the editorial management of this magazine.

Mrs. Young founded the EDUCATIONAL BI-MONTHLY the second year of her term of office as principal of the Chicago Normal School and has been its editor up to the present. The first number bears the date of October, 1906. In a signed editorial appearing in this first number, Mrs. Young stated clearly that the aim of the new magazine was to further educational discussion looking toward the unification of the various forces in the schools of Chicago. In her own words, "it is not new methods that the Chicago Normal School seeks to make conspicuous, but the elements that cohere and harmonize in that which has been wrought out in the struggle of a great cosmopolitan school life trying to find its life, trying to get control of itself." The three volumes that have appeared under her editorship bear witness to her continued effort to make this aim effective. It was her successful direction of the magazine to this end that secured the continued and hearty support of the Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools.

It is a matter of gratification to all acquainted with the Chicago School system that Mrs. Young has been elected to a position where her great educational experience, her grasp of educational problems both theoretical and practical, and her proved executive ability may be utilized in securing the result which she herself three years ago named as the one to be aimed at by THE EDUCATIONAL BI-MONTHLY and the Chicago Normal School. There is a sort of eternal fitness in her selection that carries one quite beyond mere personal considerations. Her long and distinguished services in behalf of the Chicago schools prepared her for the responsible and exacting duties of her new office. Her election sets a new precedent in the management of our great city school systems. A woman has been chosen to the highest educational position within the gift of Chicago because she was competent to perform the duties of the office.

The new editor will aim to continue the policy outlined and carried out by Mrs. Young. He dares to hope that he may have some measure of her success.

W. B. O.

The Educational Bi-Monthly

DECEMBER 1, 1909

The Relation of Science to the Student
and His Needs

CHER

HERE can be no greater issue engaging the attention of a nation than the education of its youth.

We are inclined to measure national prosperity by its material assets, by the bushels of grain it produces, the number of hogs it can market, the amount of balance it can show in its banks; but that nation is richest which can produce men and women able to tell what succession of crops to adopt that the land may yield bountifully and yet not be impoverished, who can tell the cause of the poor quality. of the grain, the cause of the blight on fruit, or the way to control the disease that destroys the hogs after they have been prepared for the market. These men or women, rather than its bushels of grain, its head of cattle, or hogs, or its bank reserves, should be the pride of a nation.

It is science that instructs the student in what he actually knows in contradistinction to what he merely remembers and imagines he knows, that enables him to work out experimentally the theories and assertions contained in his books, that enables him to develop his own independence and constructive thinking instead of taking them on trust. It is thus evident that scientific study and scholastic excellence are objects worthy of national endeavor and attainment, since they produce men and women who enrich and enoble the body politic as well as their own lives.

The great object of education is to bring the individual into right relation in as many points as possible with his environment and to place him in full possession of the varied powers and capacities of his nature. This being true, the student should be so developed as to be master of his subject. As Goethe has said, "Wherever thou art, be all there."