which is that whatever a pupil studies shall interest him. Dr. Harris, his critics maintain, would bring all pupils, every one of whom is an unreplaceable original, with desires, powers, and interests all his own, having in themselves mandatory rights, the satisfaction and preservation of which ought to be the devout study and persistent business of every teacher-Dr. Harris would bring them all under the Procrustean forms of a public and undiscriminating tradition, a tradition, too, that commits the fatal oversight of rating formal and implemental studies even higher than studies of contents and substance, and that ignores the plain truth, no longer to be blinked, that human beings are not all cast in the same mold, but are made in every variety of nature, with interests endlessly varying; a tradition, finally, that knows nothing of the central fact that the entire life of humanity turns upon interest, which is at once its spring, its inspiration, and its hope.

But in this doctrine of interest-this absolute justification of the human natural self as a product of birth and heredity-Dr. Harris hears the knell of civilization. The secret of that, surely, whatever it may be, is of somewhat higher import than the satisfaction of merely individual instincts, qualifications, and desires. And just as surely, it can not lie directly in those private desires, can not be made out of endless variation, isolation, difference. Nor can the great thing we mean by character, which assuredly is the true goal of all education, be built out of mere instincts and desires and the perpetual consultation of these, and the persistent cultivation of them. What must become of rational freedom, of all that goes to make real manhood and real womanhood, if the culture of each person is to be studied and guided wholly from the point of view of the natural interests, the private personal desires, of each?

Well, there is the issue between Dr. Harris and his critics-the issue between interest and character. On which side of it are you? I shall undertake no decision of it now, though I admit that my sympathies are mainly with the view of our distinguished Commissioner of Education. Next year I shall hope to bear some part in the discussion of this question that is to come at our meeting in San Jose, and then I shall be glad to go into the core of the subject on its merits. For the present, I must content myself with having thus briefly told you what I suppose the real question is, and with the further statement that, in my opinion, there can never be any satisfactory solution of the many problems connected with elementary education until we find the means of separating the elementary school, in accordance with its true philosophical definition, from the various forms of the secondary school, and of causing secondary education to begin, as it should, at a much earlier date than at present, somewhere near the beginning of the present so-called sixth grade of the grammar school. To this end, we need most of all to attain a philosophical distinction between the elementary school and secondary schools, and to supplant by this our present meaningless and futile distinction, which knows no difference between them but the shallow fact that the one comes first and the other comes second.

Let me close by saying that I would not for a moment be supposed to deny the educational value of interest. Nor would I be thought to imply that Dr. Harris overlooks this; he only sees that there is something still more valuable. Interest is indispensable to successful education; you can not teach the uninterested mind. But it is the very business of the teachor, and the very genius of the true teacher, to kindle interest; to know what is reasonable, what is for the highest good of the pupil, and to be able to rouse his interest in that, even when he has no interest in it by nature.

CHAPTER XIX.

EDUCATIONAL DIRECTORY.!

I.-CHIEF STATE SCHOOL OFFICERS.

Anniston, J. W. Abercrombie.

Bessemer, G. M. Lovejoy.

Birmingham. J. H. Phillips.
Eufaula, F. L. McCoy.

Florence, H. C. Gilbert.

Huntsville, Sydney J. Mayhew.

II. CITY SUPERINTENDENTS.

ALABAMA.

1 Corrected to February, 1897.

Alton, Robert A. Haight.
Aurora: District No. 5 (East Side), C. M. Bard-

District No. 4 (West Side), A. V. Green

Decatur, Enoch A. Gastman.

Dixon, William Jenkins.

Duquoin, David B. Rawlins.

East St. Louis: District No. 1, James F. McCul

District No. 2, Range 10, T. J.
McDonough.

District No. 2, Range 9, I. Harry
Todd.

Evanston: District No. 1, Homer H. Kingsley.
District No. 3 (North Evanston), Ar-
thur J. Snyder.

District No. 2 (South Evanston), Fred.
W. Nichols.

IOWA.

941

EDUCATION REPORT, 1895-96.