the present subsidies, student-teachers' grants, and training college allowances ? Is there any necessity under our present social conditions for making teaching different from all other professions? A SCOT IN ENGLAND.

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There will probably be general agreement with the views expressed in your last issue on The Supply and Training of Teachers," although exception will probably be taken to those on the question of the selection of candidates for the profession. Whilst discounting a deal of current criticism, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that too many young folk are entering the profession with little or no aptitude for teaching. The selection of suitable candidates is of paramount importance. It would be a simple matter to arrange for the suitability of candidates to be assessed at the close of the secondary school career. Each candidate could spend a few weeks in, at least, two selected schools; reports could be submitted by each of the head teachers and these reports, together with one from the head teacher of the secondary school concerned, should afford some guide as to the suitability of the candidate for the profession. Such a process should prevent the entry of such as showed they lacked the necessary personal attributes so essential for successful work in the schools.

It is preferable that all training, university or otherwise, should take place in residential institutions. Whilst agreeing that violent changes are likely to retard rather than advance progress, it must be insisted that all changes be in the direction of securing that every teacher shall pass through a normal university course which shall include professional training, and have for its object the attainment of a professional diploma of degree standard. Such a course would provide one system of training for all teachers, and above all secure the great essential, a liberal education.

The difficulty of securing an adequate supply of male entrants of the right type will be overcome when the emoluments are sufficiently high to enable the teaching to compete with other professions, and the interests of the nation demand that only the best men shall take up the work. All subsidies designed to attract young men into the profession are pernicious, but the ranks must be open to the best brains of all classes: this can be achieved by a far more liberal allowance of scholarships.

A. E. WARREN,

Secretary, National Association of Schoolmasters.

The supply and training of teachers of art has been materially affected by the changes in the system which have taken place comparatively recently. Entrants to the profession are now expected to take a year's intensive training at some approved institution, in the principles of teaching and school management, after having completed an academic course of at least three years' duration. Formerly, as a rule, art teachers started their training as art pupil teachers and acquired their teaching experience and academic qualifications concurrently.

The question is now being raised as to the relative value of these two methods of training, and there are evident signs of dissatisfaction with the crowding of the whole of the training in teaching into a final year and isolating it from the years of personal study.

The majority of our most capable art teachers are the product of the old pupil teacher system. They learnt their teaching craft gradually and acquired most valuable knowledge of the important relation between teaching and learning. The present system of teaching for limited periods, under supervision, for one year, does not appear to compare at all favourably with the continued teaching under supervision over the lengthy period taken to emerge from the pupil teacher stage to that of a full-time assistant, and many art teachers of experience have grave doubts as to whether the present system is producing, or is capable of producing a type of art teacher of equal efficiency.

Every art teacher of experience knows the great advantage of concurrent teaching and study, and the new system has eliminated this without substituting anything of a compensating kind. It is true that in the year's " pedagogy" training candi

dates are supposed to get experience of a wider kind, viz.: in secondary and elementary schools, as well as in schools of art, and that they take a systematic course in psychology, but it has yet to be proved that this theoretical study has any advantage over the old method of early and continuous contact with pupils from the beginning.

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These changes have affected not only the type of teacher coming from schools of art but also those from the Royal College students of Art. Formerly, those who entered the R.C.A. as in training were already qualified and experienced teachers, who continued their teaching experience in the College itself or in London schools. This also, is a thing of the past and although a year's final course in pedagogy is provided it may only be taken by a strictly limited number of candidates.

No doubt the old art pupil teacher system was capable of improvement, but it should not be impossible to devise some scheme which would preserve its advantages in conjunction with those of the new system, whatever they may be.

ALFRED SHUTTLEWORTH.

The leader on "The Supply and Training of Teachers" which appeared in our November issue has evoked a good deal of comment from correspondents representing many different points of view. The degree of unanimity is remarkable testimony to the general soundness of our position. The student-teacher, at any rate as we have known him, appears to be going the way of the old pupil-teacher. Our good friend the laudator temporis acti protests, as he always did, and always will, but the flowing tide is not with him. Our correspondents differ among themselves upon some things, and as they cannot all be right, we will venture upon a few closing replies to the points raised. To Mr. Warren's requirement that every teacher should possess a university degree, should be added Miss Crosby's important qualification, or a diploma of equivalent value," representing, as the secretary of the Froebel Society says, a three years' course. Miss Crosby's plea for the complete separation of academic and professional training is nowhere borne out by the experience of those who train teachers of young children, and her reference to a possible one-year course seems to contain dangerous implications. Mr. Berry's comparison with the case of the budding lawyer would, we think, be found on careful scrutiny only to exemplify the perils of analogical reasoning. If Mr. Davies thinks the Board of Education, even under Conservative rule, incapable of what we called small-scale revolutions, we fear he has not followed closely the Board's recent dealings with the training colleges, involving the sudden destruction of an examination which has existed for eighty years. Mr. Compton's ideas of the retention of the student-teacher plan in special cases, and Mr. Warren's suggested practical test of candidates, both provide us with something to go on with at the moment. Miss Gordon-Wilson's demand for statistics cannot, we fear, be complied with, but the general impression of training-college and other officials is pretty clear, that only a trifling percentage of candidates got" weeded out in the student-teacher year.

THE WRITER OF THE LEADER.

LOCARNO WORLD CONFERENCE ON NEW EDUCATION.-The subject of the Fourth World Conference on New Education, organized by the New Education Fellowship, II Tavistock Square, London, W.C. 1, England, is one that will appeal to every forward-looking teacher and educationist. From August 3 to 15, 1927, members of the Conference will gather at Locarno, in the loveliest surroundings, to discuss The True Meaning

of Freedom in Education." Study groups, led in each case by an expert, will inquire into such specific problems as co-education, the problem child (fear, lying, stealing, &c.), sex education, the psychological freeing of the teacher, individual methods (such as the Winnetka technique, the project, Mackinder, Montessori methods, Dalton and Howard plans, &c.), progressive methods in secondary schools, history teaching from the international standpoint, the pre-school child, the post-school adolescent, new ways in art teaching, intelligence testing, and vocational guidance. An exhibition of children's work and various educational materials will add greatly to the practical value of the Conference. Further details of the Conference can be obtained from the offices of the New Education Fellowship.

HE recent developments at Oxford, culminating in the fresh impetus to the movement for the study of Spanish in the British Isles. Though it has come very little into the public eye, this movement has been proceeding steadily since the foundation of the Chair of Spanish at King's College, London, which marked the Cervantes Tercentenary in 1916. Liverpool University had already at that time a Chair of Spanish, and in the last two years Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, and Oxford have come into line. Most of the other universities also have done their part, some of them very markedly. The next step lies with the schools.

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The object of this article is to bring the case for the wide adoption of Spanish as a subject for general instruction before the notice of persons interested in education, and most of all before teachers and parents of boys and girls in our principal schools. I have no intention of arguing the right of Spanish to a place in the curriculum, point by point, to the bitter end, against an imaginary opponent, though I am perfectly prepared to do so, under suitable conditions, against a real one. Rather my aim is to suggest some lines of thought which, by reason of our national adherence to tradition in education, are often overlooked. There is one great argument, and only one, against the teaching of Spanish in schools, namely, that it has never been done." Many educationists, happily, are proof against such an apology for reasoning, but the majority, perhaps, are not, and to this fact can be traced many objections commonly heard in the schools. The public school headmaster murmurs that his governors are opposed to Spanish, or that parents make no demand for it. In the large municipal school the principal points despairingly to his already complicated time-table. Recently in a secondary school of the modern type the chief language master argued hotly against Spanish, alleging the superiority of a certain other literature to that of Spain, while admitting frankly that he had read not a line of the latter beyond an abridged Don Quixote in English. A discussion subsequently revealed the fact that though the language which he championed was a subject of instruction at his school it was taught simply and solely for utilitarian purposes, hardly a firstrate book being read in it in the course of a year.

The fact is that we have all, even the youngest of us, grown up with the idea that "modern languages" means French or, at a pinch, French and German. The last thing I am anxious to do is to carry on a campaign against German. If anything, German needs strengthening, for it has not fully recovered from its decline at the time of the War. In some areas, Spanish might be substituted for it, chiefly for commercial reasons. But a far better thing, as a rule, would be to introduce Spanish in schools where two modern languages are taught, as a further alternative to German and a classical language.

This is by no means difficult. It has been done again and again with profit during the last ten years. There is no dearth of potential Spanish teachers, as the university pass-lists show, and their number is on the increase. Many a child who finds Greek and German beyond his capacity will make a success of Spanish (or, for that matter, of Italian) for the simple reason that a ladder to its mastery has already been formed by his French, or possibly by his French and Latin.

A second innovation which would be a boon to education is the elimination of French as a first language altogether from certain schools-which these schools are we need not here inquire. Long ago, as a practical schoolmaster and later in work as examiner and inspector, I came to the conclusion that there was too much French taught in schools. Quite as good a case can be made out for Spanish as for French, if the argument that French has always been done

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is omitted. French may be the foreign language of the present, but Spanish is certainly that of the not very distant future. If French, with its applied logical precision, is good discipline, Spanish, with its richness of vocabulary and extreme flexibility of construction, comes only second in language value to it. Spanish literature, almost unknown in England, is quite comparable to that of France, while a knowledge of the Spanish people is far more educative than that of the French, who are so much more like ourselves. And I have said nothing yet of Spanish America. In favour of Spanish, especially as a language for the I child in the class-room," i.e. the average and the rather stupid child, two more important facts can be urged. First, it has on the whole fewer irregularities of grammar and accentuation than French to puzzle the beginner. Second, and most important of all, it is almost a phonetic language, most of its sounds having a distinct symbol, and each of its symbols one or more easily differentiated sounds. Any one who has studied or practised the teaching of French phonetics will realize fully the importance of this advantage.

I do not myself teach Spanish for commercial reasons, nor do I favour the introduction of the language into any school solely because of its possible or certain utility to those who will study it in after life. This aspect of the question is to me a secondary one, though it is of no small importance, and with many people will weigh most heavily. There are sides of the question less generally studied and understood. The wealth of Spanish literature-once again passing over the literature of Spanish America-is entirely unsuspected, even by many literary men, yet hardly surpassed, taken as a whole, in all Europe. I do not know in what continental country you can find genius and fertility combined more effectively than in men like Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, Luis de León, and a round dozen more of that same exalted rank; nor where prose fiction flourished as early as the thirteenth century, as greatly as in Ramón Lull's Blanquerna (still read in Catalonia), continued through the ages to produce works like the Celestina and Lazarillo, and is still strongly in evidence; nor where religious literature is represented by anything so amazing as the three thousand works of the three hundred Spanish ascetics and mystics at the head of whom stand St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross; nor, for that matter, where poetry, fiction, and drama together reach a higher standard than to-day. These are only indications. I am equally sure that the Spanish character, from its very dissimilarity to our own, from its curious blend of the real and the ideal, from its great achievements of the past and promise for the future, has more to teach us to-day than that of any other European race. While I would defend the study of Spanish as a dead languageas many were prepared to defend German in war-timeI esteem it a hundred times more as the tongue of a living and virile nation, and of a group of young republics of the New World, some of which, it can hardly be doubted, will be among the foremost nations of the future.

NEW DIORAMAS AT THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE.-Two new dioramas have just been installed in the galleries of the Imperial Institute, one in the Falkland Islands Court, illustrating_the Whaling Industry in South Georgia, and the other in the East African Court, depicting Wild Animal Life in Tanganyika. In the second model Mounts Kilimanjaro and Kiho are shown in the distance, while in the foreground are seen various animals of the country. To school children visiting the Exhibition, dioramas such as these are not only extremely interesting, but they have a definite educational value, as they leave on the minds of the children a vivid impression of typical scenes in other lands.

CHRISTMAS Cards and CALENDARS.-To those who have not yet bought calendars and engagement diaries for 1927 we would recommend a visit to the Medici Society's Galleries, 7 Grafton Street, London, W., from whom we have received a selection calculated to please all tastes and all ages. The Christmas cards and calendars are beautifully produced and printed, and are original in design and decoration. Among them are reproductions of famous paintings and etchings, nursery rhyme cards, special cards suitable for girl guides, and many other variations. We regret that the cards did not reach us in time for a notice to be inserted in the December issue, but we would advise our readers who have already supplied their wants for the New Year to remember the Medici Society when they are again in need of cards and calendars.

SUMMER SCHOOL OF HISTORY.-It is proposed to hold a series of historical lectures and classes at York in 1927, under the auspices of the University of Leeds, to last from August 3 to 16 next. The principal subject of the lectures will be the History of Northern England, and short courses will be arranged, dealing with its political, ecclesiastical, social, and economic aspects. There will also be a course of evening lectures in which the art and archaeology of the North of England will be treated by speakers who have made a special study of these subjects in their various departments. Tickets for the meeting, including all lectures and classes and the use of the writing and reception rooms, will be issued to applicants at a cost of £3. Application for admission should be made to the Registrar, The University, Leeds, and should reach him not later than May 1.

CONFERENCE OF EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS.-As previously announced, the Conference of Educational Associations will be held at University College, Gower Street, from December 30 to January 7 inclusive. Forty-two affiliated Associations are holding their annual meetings during this week of conferences, and many lectures of general educational interest will be delivered. In addition, the British Broadcasting Company will give a demonstration of educational broadcasting on Friday morning, January 7, lessons being specially broadcast from the B.B.C. studio. All conference members have been invited by Sir William Furse, Director of the Imperial Institute, to visit the Exhibition Galleries of the Institute on Saturday afternoon, January 8, at 2 p.m. Sir William Furse will receive the members and conduct them round the galleries, which offer a unique opportunity for practical lessons to school children in Empire geography and development.

A CLEARING HOUSE FOR SOURCES OF INFORMATION.-As a result of successful conferences which have been held annually for the past three years, the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux has been formed and is now in process of incorporation. The Council cordially invites the support of all organizations and bodies, commercial houses, industrial concerns, &c., which attach adequate importance to the collection, treatment, and dissemination of information relevant to their work. The new body will act as a channel through which any inquiring member may be put into direct touch with the source of information required. With the generous assistance of the Carnegie Trust, A.S.L.I.B. has in preparation a directory of sources of specialized information in the British Isles; a copy of this will be sent free to each member as soon as available. In addition it is hoped to establish, by co-operation between interested parties, unified policies with respect to abstracting, cataloguing, indexing, filing, &c. Membership is open to all interested bodies, and a small subscription of £2 2s. per annum has been fixed. Further details, including a form of application and a list of members, will be furnished by the Secretary, 38 Bloomsbury Square, London, W.C. 1. To ensure its establishment on an adequate scale, not less than 500 members are required by March, 1927.

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THE CHURCH ASSEMBLY AND EDUCATION. After the lapse of close upon two years since the issue of its Second Report, the Education Commission of the Church Assembly presented to that body at its recent autumn session a Third Report, reviewing the present position in the light of the adumbrated Enabling Bill. The Commission gives expression to its conviction that "there is in the country, and especially among educationists, a growing appreciation of the value of Church schools." Accordingly the claim is reiterated that "denominational schools should be regarded as an integral element in the national system of education equally with Council schools."

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"that no enabling

The Commission lays down with emphasis Bill will be satisfactory which does not make statutory provision (1) for adequate religious instruction, subject to a conscience clause, as an integral part of the curriculum in all schools, training colleges, and training departments receiving rate or State aid; and (2) for the supervision of such instruction by religious education (advisory) committees, both local and central." More controversial ground still is touched in the Commission's suggestion that the Bill should be so drafted as to give power to any Local Education Authority, which thinks fit to do so, to build or to contribute to the building of denominational schools." The discussion at the Assembly was-according to the Church Times-not only a little bewildering," but unsatisfactory," inasmuch as the Assembly was given no definite lead." Mr. Henry Hobhouse was certainly not well advised in his naïve suggestion that "We" (that is, Churchmen as such) are in danger of missing a golden opportunity when we have a Government and a Parliament favourable to the Church." In the event, the Report was received" by the Assembly, and on the motion of the Archdeacon of Macclesfield, a resolution was adopted commending the Report to the serious consideration of the Diocesan Conferences, with a view to arousing Church people to the importance of the religious instruction of the young in all schools.

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SCHOOL CHILDREN IN FRANCE.-An informative article by Mr. Stanley Rayfield on School Life in France: Infants and Juniors," appeared in the October issue of Child Life. As the title indicates, Mr. Rayfield is concerned mainly with the elementary school, the École Primaire. The École Primaire is divided into stages, the first of which is the Pouponnière, corresponding to the crèche of English industrial centres. The first definite steps in a system of education appear at the second stage, the École Maternelle, where the children, still in the care of nurses, begin to learn to distinguish everyday objects, to play stories, colour pictures, build models and so on. At the age of seven years, they pass on to the third stage, the École Primaire Elémentaire. Here they are taught reading, the metric system, the history and geography of France, and a little of the outside world, and at thirteen years of age, the official " leavingage," they sit for a proficiency examination for which a Brevet Simple is awarded. In scope, the system is narrower than that of English elementary schools, and corporal punishment is forbidden; girls are taught needlework and cookery at an early age. Children of better-class families often leave the École Primaire Elémentaire at the age of about twelve years, and are sent to a lycée, for the elementary part of which fees have to be paid. The amount of home-work expected of French children is much in excess of that set in English schools, while the oral examination is largely used. Discipline is maintained in the schools by surveillants, who are described bluntly as spies "; the prefect system is not used. Many French mothers work in factories or are otherwise occupied until 7 p.m. daily; to fill in the gap between 4 p.m., school-closing time, and this hour, there's the Patronage. The children are met at the school doors, by the priest or a religieuse, and conducted to a park or hall where they are cared for until the mothers can fetch them; the system provides for the religious instruction forbidden in the schools but, it is said, has been used by the priests for antigovernment propaganda.

ART FOR ARTISTS.-De Gruyter & Co., art publishers, Berlin, send us beautifully produced specimen copies of four of their recent publications: (1) Die Antike, an illustrated monthly, dealing with the art and culture of classical antiquity (price 40 marks yearly); (2) the Repertorium, a profusely illustrated bi-monthly devoted to the history of art (40 marks). The copy before us has articles on the Venetian School of the Eighteenth Century, and on the famous Fifteenth-Century Wood-carving of the Palm Sunday Ass, now in Wettenhausen ; (3) a volume of the Year Book of the German Archaeological Institute, with illustrated articles on Timotheos in Epidauros, and Trajan's Triumphal Arch in Beneventum (no price); and (4) the Literaturzeitung, a weekly review of international culture (48 marks). The specimen sent contains long reviews of six recent books, all by German writers, and a descriptive list of new books from all over the world on a great variety of cultural subjects. Such publications as these, elaborately prepared by experts for experts, undoubtedly have their uses, but they can only be spoken of as educational in the most elastic sense of that elastic word.

University Tutorial Press

LONDON MATRICULATION, 1927 & 1928 English Literature

M. ARNOLD.-SOHRAB AND RUSTUM, THE SCHOLAR GYPSY, THYRSIS (1927). By G. E. HOLLINGWORTH, M.A. 1s. 6d.

MILTON. PARADISE LOST, Book II. 1s. 3d. SHAKESPEARE.-HENRY IV., Pt. I. (1927), HAMLET (1928) (The Matriculation Shakespeare). By G. E. HOLLINGWORTH, M.A. Cloth. 2s. Paper Covers. 1s. 6d.

OXFORD SCHOOL CERTIFICATE and JUNIOR LOCAL EXAMINATIONS, 1927

English Literature

ARNOLD.-SOHRAB AND RUSTUM, THE SCHOLAR GYPSY,
THYRSIS. By G. E. HOLLINGWORTH, M.A. 1s. 6d.
CHAUCER.-NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE. By A. J. WYATT, M.A. 2s.
MILTON.-PARADISE LOST, Books I and II. By A. F. WATT,
M.A. 2s. 3d.

SHAKESPEARE.-HENRY V. By A. J. F. COLLINS, M.A. 3s.
SHAKESPEARE.—JULIUS CAESAR. By A. F. WATT, M.A. 2s. 6d.
SHAKESPEARE.-MACBETH. By S. E. GOGGIN, M.A.
SHAKESPEARE.-MERCHANT OF VENICE. By S. E. GOGGIN,

M.A. 2s.

3s.

SHAKESPEARE.-A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. By A. F. WATT, M.A. 2s. 6d.

SHAKESPEARE.-TWELFTH NIGHT. By H. C. DUFFIN, M.A.

2s. 6d.

SPENSER.-FAERIE QUEENE, Book I. By W. H. HILL, M.A. 3s. 6d.

Latin and Greek

CAESAR.-GALLIC WAR, Book I. By A. H. ALLCROFT, M.A. With Maps. 2s.

CAESAR.-GALLIC WAR, Books II and III. By LL. M. PENN, M.A. 1s. 6d. each book.

CICERO.-PHILIPPIC II. By A. H. ALLCROFT, M.A., and J. H. HAYDON, M.A. 3s. 6d.

CICERO.-PRO LEGE MANILIA. By A. WAUGH YOUNG, M.A., and A. F. WATT, M.A. 3s.

HORACE.-EPISTLES. By F. G. PLAISTOWE, M.A., and A. F. WATT, • M.A. 4s. 6d.

HORACE. ODES, Book I. By A. H. ALLCROFT, M.A., and B. J. HAYES, M.A. 2s.

PLATO.-APOLOGY. By T. R. MILLS, M.A. 3s. 6d.

VERGIL.--AENEID, Book X. By A. H. ALLCROFT, M.A., and B. J. HAYES, M.A. 2s.

CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL CERTIFICATE and JUNIOR LOCAL EXAMINATIONS, 1927

At a recent meeting of the Committee of the BRITISH INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, it was resolved that all teachers in the service of public Education Authorities should be admitted to lectures arranged by the Institute at half fees.

The periodical, Now and Then, issued occasionally by Messrs. JONATHAN CAPE, LTD., generally contains some readable notes on affairs in the book world, as well as notices of their recent publications. The Christmas issue is no exception. It opens with an attack on book-borrowing and lending, and follows up with a note on the price of books; here a combination of publisher and bookseller is suggested in order to keep down the prices.

THE PEOPLE'S LEAGUE OF HEALTH has arranged to give the SIMS WOODHEAD series of constructive educational health lectures in the lecture room of the Medical Society of London, II Chandos Street, Cavendish Square, W. 1. The first lecture will be given on Monday, January 31, 1927, at 6 p.m., and the series will be continued on following Mondays at the same time. Tickets and further information regarding the lectures held may be obtained from Miss Olga Nethersole, R.R.C., Hon. Organizer, The People's League of Health, 12 Stratford Place, W. I.

Special attention is called to the fact that, except in very special cases, a headmaster's certificate will not be accepted as a qualification for registration as probationer, Royal Institute of British Architects, after October 1, 1927, and no one will be registered as a probationer unless that person has passed one of the recognized examinations in the required subjects. A list of the examinations recognized may be obtained free at the R.I.B.A.

We have received a copy of the regulations governing the award of grants in connection with the ROYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE IMPERIAL STUDIEs Series of MONOGRAPHS embodying the results of research relating to the British Empire. The Imperial Studies Series has been designed and endowed by the Council of the Institute to enable the younger people who have found difficulty in making their investigations known to get their early efforts published. A considerable amount of valuable work is now being done in the universities and elsewhere in matters especially relating to the Empire, and it is hoped that the new series will afford an opportunity for removing the reproach that it is barren because most of its results are destined to immediate oblivion.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC announces the following awards: Rutson Memorial Prize (sopranos), Jessie Hewson (Harrogate); Rutson Memorial Prize (tenors), Murray Brown (Slough); Organ Prize, Owen Le P. Franklin (London); Battison Haynes Prize (composition), Margaret P. Parsons (London); Sainton Dolby Prize (singing), P. Browning-Turner (Kalgoorlie); Hubert Kiver Prize (composition), Ivor R. Davies (London); Hime Gift (composition), Robert E. Rayne (Louth); R.A.M. Club Prize (pianoforte), Edna C. Howard (Chesterton) and Eric Brough (London); Philip L. Agnew Prize (pianoforte), F. M. Jackson (Lincoln); Fred Walker Prize (soprano), Freda Rich (London); Westmorland Scholarship (male vocalist), Bruce Anderson (Southport); Potter Exhibition (pianoforte), Margaret H. Grummitt (Anerley).