28 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
of elementary education. What branches of science and what branches 
of industrial instruction should be introduced into the elementary schools, 
and how far may the old course of study in language, numbers, geography, 
and history be made to recede to give room for the new branches ? The 
department congresses of industrial and manual instruction, together with 
the congresses on art instruction and music, emphasize this question in 
slementary education, and repeat in many new phases the demand for 
broadening the course of study in elementary schools. 
The National Geographical Society has been invited to occupy the pro- 
gramme of Thursday in the elementary department, and valuable discus- 
sions are provided to bring out the needs and defects of the present 
methods of instruction, together with the desired remedies. 
But the discussions of the third day in the elementary congress relate 
:0 the most important of all topics : that of citizenship and morals. 
Those familiar with the work of the directors of popular education 
abroad, especially in England, France, and Germany, know the stress that 
is 1aid on morals and citizenship, and the interest that is shown in ques- 
tions of religious education as an essential item on the programmes of the 
schools. There are two parties of earnest men and women, the one hold- 
ing that the separation of church and state should be carried so far as to 
make the schools entirely secular, and the other holding that instruction 
in religion should be placed on the programme side bv side with instruc- 
ion in language and science. 
Somewhat related to this question of ethical and civic instruction are 
most of the questions taken up in the kindergarten congress. The kin- 
dergarten attempts to provide a course of instruction that is half school 
and half family nurture, in order that the rigid discipline in obedience to 
law and order which characterized, and, I may say, still characterizes, the 
old-time primary school, may not have the effect of chilling the enthusiasm 
of the young child and arresting his development along lines of growth 
‘hat tend to a completer individuality and a higher type of manhood and 
womanhood. In the discussions of the week there is a large space given 
to the very important differences between the epochs of childhood, say 
from four to six years, and the epoch of youth, say from seven to fourteen 
gears. The transition of the mind from the so-called symbolic stage of 
childhood to the stage in which the child can readily learn the conven- 
tional methods of representing language and numbers is the topic which 
needs most illumination in the study of methods of the primary school. 
The kindergarten, moreover, as containing the beginnings of all that is to 
e unfolded in the later schools, takes up again the question of the edu- 
cative value of hand occupations, so often discussed in other departments 
and found to be so attractive a topic in the educational conferences of all 
nations. 
The congress on the professional training of teachers has as its most 
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