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EDUCATION FOR THE HOME.

Education for home-making and household arts, ranging from cooking and sewing in the elementary school to graduate courses in the universities, has made measurable progress during the year. Definitely organized courses in household arts were reported in 1914 by 252 colleges, 159 public normal schools, 2,440 high schools, and 3,082 cities, towns, and villages. The 66,914 students in the 1,345 high schools reporting in 1913 increased to 79,240 students in the 1,655 public high schools reporting the number of students in household arts courses in 1914, and it is estimated that the approximately 7,500 college and university students taking home-economics courses in 1912 had increased to 12,000. Only a small part of any of this work is at present on a real vocational basis, but the trend of the year has been toward emphasis on the practical in all types of home-economics work.

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE.

In the cities where investigations preparatory to the introduction of vocational training have been made attention has quite generally been paid to the problem of vocational guidance, and vocation bureaus have usually accompanied or followed the establishment of vocational courses. Philadelphia's new official is director of vocational education and guidance. Significant of the progress of the movement is the taking over by the public schools in whole or in part of the function of vocational counseling. The present emphasis appears to be upon the fact that vocational guidance in public education is not a simple problem of analysis and placement, but involves consideration throughout the child's school life of the problem of future employment. According to a preliminary investigation recently made by the Bureau of Education about a hundred public high schools, representing some 40 cities, had definitely organized, conscious plans of vocational guidance in 1914, through vocation bureaus, consultation committees, vocation analysts, trial vocational courses, systematic visits to industrial plants, or regular courses in vocations. The National Vocational Guidance Association, growing out of the national conferences on vocational guidance which had been held since 1910, was formally organized during the year.

HEALTH SUPERVISION.

Medical inspection is reported by 704 cities of over 5,000 population, out of 1,063 replying to a questionnaire. Of these 704 cities, 402 have school nurses, numbering in all 911. In 140 cities the board of education provides the nurses; in 50 cities it is the board of health that provides them; and in 212 cities other agencies-usually private philanthropies-make possible the nurse service in connection with

medical or health inspection. Noteworthy is the spread of the health supervision movement to the smaller cities. Of the 1,300 cities between 2,500 and 30,000 population, 516 report medical inspection in some form, and 86 have school nurses; more than half of these, however, are in the few States where medical inspection is mandatory by State law.

School clinics to the number of 141 were reported in 1914 by city school superintendents; 109 of these are dental clinics. Psychological clinics are reported from 64 cities.

Investigations made during the year have driven home the fact that rural school children are more in need of health supervision than city children, and recent attention has been devoted more particularly to the rural problem.

EDUCATION FOR SPECIAL CLASSES OF CHILDREN.

The magnitude of the problem of the handicapped child and the extent to which the States have taken over the burden of his education are indicated in the statistics for special schools collected by the Bureau of Education. The 62 public schools for the blind report 665 teachers, 4,971 pupils, and an aggregate expenditure of $2,563,173 for the year 1914. Of the 151 schools for the deaf listed by the bureau, 68 are State schools, 65 public day schools, and 18 are private schools. There are 13,859 pupils taught by 1,689 teachers. The expenditure of the 68 State schools for the deaf in 1914 was $3,777,162.

State schools for feeble-minded children numbered 38; these are confined to 28 States, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania each having three or more separate schools. There are also 25 private schools for feeble-minded children. State schools reported 381 instructors and 2,328 assistants, with 27,692 inmates, of whom 14,880 were actually under instruction. Expenditures for schools for the feeble-minded amounted to nearly $6,000,000. Public day schools for subnormal children were reported from 54 cities. Thirty-six cities in 24 States made provision for exceptional children for the first time in 1913; and 162 cities in 34 States extended the provision already made. Special training for teachers of exceptional children is now provided in a score or more of institutions of college. and university grade.

There are 112 institutions listed by the Bureau of Education as State "industrial" schools. These are schools for delinquents of both sexes, ranging from reform schools of the prison type to modern well-equipped industrial schools for the teaching of useful trades. There are 1,052 teachers, 3,085 assistants who are not teachers, and 54,798 inmates in these institutions, of whom four-fifths are boys. Of the 21,665 boys and girls committed to institutions during the

year, 2,635 could neither read nor write; of the 22,068 discharged during the year, 1,962 could neither read nor write.

LIBRARIES.

There were 2,849 libraries of more than 5,000 volumes in the United States in 1913, an increase of 551 over 1908, the last previous year for which data were collected. The number of volumes reported from all libraries in 1913 was 75,112,935, as compared with 55,350,163 in 1908. Of the 2,849 libraries containing 5,000 volumes or over, 1,844 are classified as "public and society libraries," and 1,005 are school and college libraries. Public and society libraries have an aggregate of over fifty million volumes, with seven million borrowers' cards in force; 1,446 of these libraries were entirely free to the public.

Libraries reporting from 1,000 to 5,000 volumes in 1913 numbered 5,453, of which 2,188 were public and society libraries, and 3,265 school libraries. These libraries contained 11,689,942 volumes. Another group of still smaller libraries, comprising those that reported from 300 to 1,000 volumes, increased the total by 2,961,007 volumes. In all there are now some 18,000 libraries on the lists of the Bureau of Education.

The distribution of library facilities is still uneven, however. More than half of the 1,844 public and society libraries reported for the entire United States were in the North Atlantic States, and they contained 24,627,921 volumes out of the total of 50,000,000; while of the 3,000,000 volumes added to library collections in 1913 almost one-half were for the same section.

Library activity in 1913-14 was marked by considerable extension of the branch system, particularly in the granting of library privileges on the part of cities to neighboring suburban communities; by further development of the county library plan in many States; and in general by a visible growth in the spirit of service that is characteristic of many of the formal educational institutions of to-day. The period of the library as a mere storehouse of books seems to be safely past; it has yielded to a period of direct community service.

OTHER EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES.

The same spirit that has made the library open wide its doors to all the people has caused the museums and art galleries of the country to unlock their treasures and seek in many instances to occupy a very direct relation to the organized educational agencies of the community. Grading off from institutions like these are many other agencies and organizations of whose work little statistical record is kept from year to year at the Bureau of Education or elsewhere, but whose direct educational influence must in the aggregate be enormous.

There are the 300 educational associations, many of them, like the National Education Association and its branches, doing direct work in the professional education of teachers and school superintendents; others, like the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, carrying on a propaganda for education among the general public; and still others, like the Public Education Associations of New York and Philadelphia, investigating city conditions and stimulating an interest in education among the people of the local community. Organizations like the Russell Sage Foundation, the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, the Carnegie Foundation, and the General Education Board, have brought into the work of education the welcome influence of an impersonal, scientific judgment. No record of the year in education would be complete that did not pay tribute to the work these organizations and others of the kind are doing.

Colleges, universities, and normal schools are going far beyond their own walls in carrying education to the local communities. Nearly half the colleges in the United States did extension work last year. The Federal Government itself is realizing, as never before, the desirability of a wide distribution of the scientific information it has collected at large expense of time and money, and many of the bulletins and circulars issued by the Government are now affecting directly the everyday procedure of education. The Boys' and Girls' Club work in the Department of Agriculture and the circular letter service of the Bureau of Education illustrate two different types of the information service of the Federal Government, both of recent development. In the two years ending June 30, 1914, the Bureau of Education issued 112 numbers of its Bulletin, representing about a million separate copies, and covering nearly every phase of educational endeavor for the direct benefit of school officials.

A host of other organizations making no claim to a place in the formal school system are nevertheless doing active work of a directly educational nature. The Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Camp Fire Girls, women's clubs, parent-teacher associations, musical societies, art centers; these are doing a work whose educational importance is only beginning to be apprehended. The influence of the fraternal organizations is directly educative. The whole vast field of religious instruction in churches and Sunday schools represents an educational problem that is seldom viewed as such because of the larger spiritual issues that are felt to be involved, and because of the traditional separation of church and state in America. Chautauquas, farmers' institutes, lecture courses, the Grange, Young Men's Christian Association and Young Women's Christian Association, social settlements, summer camps, the periodical and newspaper press-these are as truly educational agencies as the schools.

EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE OF THE YEAR.

Much of the significant contribution to educational literature during the year is to be found in the formal reports of investigations and surveys. The Canadian report on industrial education, referred to elsewhere in this chapter, the findings of the Hanus inquiry in New York City, and the Carnegie Foundation report on education in Vermont are typical of this comparatively new type of educational literature. Some of the city surveys are notable educational documents. In somewhat the same category of general survey material might be placed "The General Education Board, 1902-1914," a carefully written account of the board's activities to date; the two-volume report of the Federal Commission on Aid for Vocational Education, the second volume of which epitomizes current American opinion on the subject; and the report of the English board of education on "School and Employment in the United States.”

In the domain of more formal educational writing should be mentioned Graves, "A History of Education in Modern Times"; Thorndike's three volumes on Educational Psychology; and several influential books growing out of the New York inquiry-Hanus's "School Efficiency"; McMurry's "Elementary School Standards"; Ballou's "High School Organization"; and Moore's "Indispensable Requirements in City School Administration." The many books in the vocational field include Albert H. Leake's "Industrial Education," Snedden's "Problems of Educational Readjustment," and E. G. Cooley's much discussed volume on "Industrial Education in Europe." Prof. John Dewey's recent writing, which has exerted considerable influence in the discussion of vocational training, has appeared mainly in brief periodical articles. Monroe's monumental Cyclopedia of Education was brought to completion during the year. Two books on higher education that appeared are Sharpless, "The American College" and Thwing, "The American College, What it is and What it may Become."

The rural school discussion has given us many books of method during the year, especially rural school arithmetics, farm life readers, and textbooks on agriculture; general books on rural life designed for teachers; and two or three books dealing in a significant way with the attempt to relate the rural school to country life: Eggleston and Bruere's "Work of the Rural School"; Cubberley, "Rural Life and Education"; Betts and Hall, "Better Rural Schools"; and Harold W. Foght's illuminating interpretation of rural Denmark. Important evaluations of the rural school movements have been given by A. C. Monahan in his "Consolidation of Rural Schools," and "County Unit Organization for the Administration of Rural Schools."

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