dignity and order. The minutes of the last meeting will be read and signed, and the programme for that particular assembly will be gone through. Perhaps a question is debated, or some school songs sung, or some readings given, or original work done by the children. Perhaps visitors are there, and the children address the visitors, telling them about the school, and asking the visitors to say a few words; but the whole thing is a unique spectacle of self-government, though carried out by so young an audience.

I have endeavoured to cover a very wide field. If I have praised the system greatly, I admit that there are some things to criticise or condemn; but in many respects America, in her splendid system of education, offers an example to the rest of the civilised world.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION IN AMERICA : BY J. HOWARD WHITEHOUSE

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NE of the most important developments in in American education affects materially both the universities and the high schools. This is known there as the co-operative system of education, and was first tried as an experiment in the Colleges of Engineering of the University of Cincinnati ten years ago. The inception of the system is due to Professor Schneider of that university. He made an experimental trial of the system in the school year of 1906-7. It has proved a remarkable success. It has been extended to many other universities and to the high schools in 300 American towns, and it has caused a revolution in certain departments of university and high school instruction.

The term "co-operative education" is used in America to describe a new method of uniting practical training and experience with theoretical instruction. Before it was tried the usual method in colleges and universities was to have school workshops. But it is obvious that these must always be inadequate. If they are to give students the practical training they require, they

must include reproductions of the plants of foundries, railways and industries, and all the vast mechanism of the world of industry. Expense and space would make such an attempt an impossibility. Even if it were possible to conceive of the provision of plant on such a scale for the purpose of practical instruction in a single institution, the fact that it is constantly being changed and improved in the industrial world would soon put it out of date.

So far, therefore, as practical training is confined to the college, it must always be of a strictly limited nature. The founder of the system of co-operative education, faced with this difficulty, resolved, instead of continuing to establish "shops" within the university, to attempt to use the works and plant of the great engineering firms, the railways, and other industrial undertakings, for the purpose of practical instruction, the theoretical side of the work being reserved for the university. The scheme was tried with twenty-eight students. The course mapped out for them extended over a period of six years, alternate weeks being spent at the university and in the shops of the firms co-operating. These firms numbered twelve engineering concerns who had agreed to try the new system for a period of nine months, corresponding to the college year. The students

who were willing to try the new experiment were selected with care. The test they were subjected to under the new plan was a severe one, as it entailed doing an ordinary day's work at manual labour in hot weather on equal terms with ordinary apprentices. Some of them fell out, but it was easy to fill up their places.

The students who were taking the new course did not, of course, all go into the workshops together. During any week when half were in the shops, the other half were at the university, so firms entering into the experiment had an even supply of student-labour. Roughly speaking each student had a partner; when one was in the shop the other was in the university. At the end of a year it was demonstrated that the new plan could be successfully worked; and the problem before the university was how quickly it could adapt itself in order to meet the large number of applications from students who were willing to enter the scheme for training for a great variety of industries of the most skilled character. Not only were there numerous applications from prospective students, but all hesitation on the part of employers disappeared and an ample number were willing to co-operate with the university. Obviously, however, the number of students who could be received was limited by the accommodation in the class rooms