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Maxwell has had too much intellectual pride to be willing to waste time in wrangling with his critics, or in quarrelling with his enemies. He has contented himself with going steadily forward on the path of progress that he had marked out; only pausing now and then to demolish opposition, either by a striking achievement or by an irrefutable argument, or by a phrase. What New York would have done without his guiding and directing mind in the formative years of the greater city's school system, one can hardly imagine. That his fame is secure, and that the foundations that he has laid can neither be shaken nor removed, is certain. American education is passing thru a curious phase of materialism, sentimentalism and crude philosophizing. It has lost a large part of the vigor and definiteness which characterized it until perhaps twenty years ago. Dr. Maxwell saw all this coming and struggled against it as best he could. The judicious historian of his career will likewise be a prophet of that return to sounder educational theory and better balanced educational practise that must sooner or later reassert itself.

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Document

The Board of Trustees of the University of Kentucky, in December, 1916, adopted a resolution authorizing the Chairman of the Board to appoint a committee of the trustees to investigate the expediency of a proposed consolidation of the University Colleges of Mechanical and Civil Engineering. What is of much greater importance for its general bearing, the committee thus appointed, was instructed in the words of the resolution to investigate and report upon other conditions causing or tending to produce discontent among the alumni and student body and the general public toward the existing administration of the university. In January, 1917, the Governor of the state, who is ex-officio Chairman of the Board, appointed a committee of five members constituted in accordance with the resolutions. At the first meeting of the Committee, it was decided that in order to carry out the purpose of the Board to ascertain actual conditions in the university and to

make intelligent recommendations concerning them of substantial benefit to it, it would be necessary to secure the services of experienced college men to assist the committee in its work. A "survey commission" consisting of three members was consequently appointed and organized. The Bulletin of the University of Kentucky for July, 1917, contains the report of the survey commission to the investigating committee and the comprehensive report of that committee as adopted and presented to the Board of Trustees. The combined report is now printed as a Bulletin of the University of Kentucky under date of July, 1917.

The report of the survey commission is a thoro one, and, as the investigating committee phrases it, it speaks for itself. It considers in detail the government of the university, matters of administrative policy, internal organization, the maintenance of academic standards, the faculty, general questions of efficiency and administration, and the relations of the university and the state. The whole is a notably comprehensive, fairminded and fearless statement of conditions of organization and administration which in many respects it was high time to bring out into the sun for scrutiny. Some of the facts stated are frankly discreditable to the institution and to the state of whose educational system it is the head. The whole university in the light of this report of the survey commission, which is adopted and commended by the investigating committee of the trustees, needs a thoro overhauling, and the people of Kentucky, in the light of the report, should leave no stone unturned to see it speedily done.

The report of the investigating committee is an extraordinary public document. In many respects it is a conspicuous instance of ill-advised statement, blunt to the point of rudeness, and utterly wanting in what in other places is called academic courtesy. Its principal recommendations, so far as the personnel of the university is concerned, are in its own language: President Barker's retirement to take effect upon the first day of September, 1918; President-Emeritus Patterson's removal from the campus immediately, which ultimately was not ratified; the retirement of Dean Rowe

immediately; and the appointment of a general committee consisting of four members of the Board of Trustees and three of the university faculty to nominate, so soon as possible, a new president of the institution. The original casus belli, the proposed consolidation of the two engineering colleges, is met by the recommendation to defer such action until one year after the incoming president shall take active charge of his office and then to appoint the dean of the consolidated colleges upon his nomination. The two deans themselves appear to have really been the center of the disturbance, with the result that in Scriptural fashion the one has been taken and the other left. The exonerated dean, in point of fact, would seem to have good grounds for bringing a suit for defamation of character against the Board for its callous and conscienceless presentation in a public document of material that should never in this flatfooted manner have found its way into print.

The report of the investigating committee as contained in this Bulletin of the University of Kentucky is unique in the history of American education. Let us hope that it will long continue to enjoy this distinction.

The paper on Outside professional engagements by members of professional faculties by the late Dr. Theodore C. Janeway of the Johns Hopkins University, which appeared in the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW for March was, by a misunderstanding, designated as a paper read before the Association of American Universities at its last annual meeting. As a matter of fact, Dr. Janeway's paper was read before the Association of American University Professors. The EDUCATIONAL REVIEW tenders an apology to this Association and its officers for not having been aware of this fact and, therefore, for not having asked their permission to print the paper.

Dr. Janeway's article was printed without the benefit of any revision or modifications of its statements that he might have wished to make had he lived.

EDUCATIONAL REVIEW

MAY, 1918

I

HAVE WE AN EDUCATIONAL DEBT
TO GERMANY?

The German superman has frequently posed as the educator of the world, vaunting his land as the leader in all educational reforms, and the source from which other countries have drawn their educational ideas. The United States has been a particularly fertile field for this type of propaganda. More than any other nation, we "went to school to Germany," and in many of us the idea still persists that nearly all that is good in our educational scheme was "made in Germany." An English writer who studied our schools, wrote in 1875: "It is the habit of American educationalists ungrudgingly and with sincere admiration, to give the palm to Germany. Nor is this a mere complimentary recognition of excellence. It is shown to be genuine by the manner in which they are accepting from Germany not only lessons in the details of educational science, but vital principles."

This point of view has been all too generally accepted; few, if any, voices have been raised to point out the absolute failures in the present German educational system, and the pernicious influence of certain German educational schemes which we have imported. In this day, when America is looking with searching eyes upon German influence in this country, it may be pertinent to inquire the sources of educational influence here, the exact types of schools and educational practises which we borrowed from Germany, and to

ascertain whether those who turned our attention to German education ever warned us against the evils almost inherent in it.

No fair-minded student of American educational development can fail to realize the influence of three great nations upon us. The English influence naturally came first, and is best seen in the establishment of our colleges (the form and many of the regulations of Harvard were borrowed almost directly from Emmanuel College, Cambridge), in the development of the academies, and in elementary education in the vogue of the monitorial school and the establishment of infant or primary schools. The French influence, seen chiefly between the time of the Revolution and the Napoleonic era, shows itself in a few isolated cases. Jefferson was a great student of French educational, as well as political, ideas; his plans for the establishment of the University of Virginia were influenced by his study of French education. When France began to exchange the arts of war for the arts of peace, government, and education, our attention gradually shifted to Germany. This was particularly evident for the decade after 1825; from 1825 to 1875 there was an undoubted tendency on our part to imitate German educational practises.

It should be noted, however, that the Germany in which we were interested at that time was vastly different from the Germany which is now scourging the world. One who reads the reports of visitors to the German schools in those early years, finds the German schools of that day far different from those which more recent visitors have seen. Horace Mann, after six months in Germany, reported that he never saw a teacher use corporal punishment or severe discipline of any kind, that he never saw a teacher who remained seated during a recitation, or who relied upon a textbook in a recitation. Anyone who has recently seen the inside of a German school knows how harsh the discipline is, and remembers the ranting way in which the schoolmaster demands the literal repetition of the exact words of the textbook. In 1840, Prussia was merely an important member of the German Confederacy,

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