2. The school board will decide for each district, class, or division (a) whether the written work of the pupils is to be done in the vernacular or in the book language; and (b) what kind of primer is to be used.

In regard to textbooks the pupils may use either those printed in the vernacular or those in the book language in accordance with the choice of parents or guardians.

In a district where parallel classes have been organized, parents who wish their children taught in the speech form which is not the predominant one at the school, may make a demand to this effect provided there are enough children to constitute an entire class, and, provided further, that it can be done without materially increasing the expenses of the school. Children for whom a speech form has thus been chosen may not without the consent of the board pass over into classes with a different speech form.

TEACHERS' PENSIONS IN NORWAY.

The pension enactment of the Storting of 1918 places the teachers on a par with government officials. It is provided that the retirement of a teacher may be requested by the school board by the time he is within 3 years of the pension age; if not, he may retain his position 5 years beyond this limit. When he comes within 10 years of the teaching limit of 70, he has the privilege of applying for retirement and pension provided the sum of his years of service and of his age is as much as 80 years. At the age of 60 with 30 years of service to his credit he receives full pension. At 60 with 20 years of service he may be permitted to retire, but he receives then only two-thirds of the full pension.

The total amount of the teachers' salary compensation forms the basis for computing the pension: Fixed salary, bonus, compensation for free home, light, fuel, and whatever else the regulations acknowledge as salary, such as pay as choir leader, secretary of the school board, etc. The pension is computed on the sum total of these salary

units.

Full old-age pension presupposes at least 30 years of service, and comprises 66 per cent of the remuneration if it does not exceed 3,000 crowns. If the salary in the aggregate is larger, the pension is decreased by 0.004 crown for every additional crown up to 7,000. Upon voluntary withdrawal with less than 30 years of service the pension is diminished by one-thirtieth for each year; yet it must make an aggregate of at least 30 per cent of the full pension.

A teacher receives a disability pension when his physical or mental powers are impaired to such an extent that he must leave his position. In such cases the years of service are disregarded and the pension

made equal to that for retirement at the age limit. In other cases of invalidity the pension is diminished in the ratio of the old-age pension, yet not so as to be less than three-fourths of this. Partial inability to earn salary is the cause for a corresponding decrease in the pension. A widow's pension is 30 per cent of the salary or the pension of the deceased teacher, yet never less than 200 crowns and not more than 1,500. It is not paid in cases where a teacher marries after his sixtieth year or after his retirement. It ceases upon remarriage. Orphans under 18 receive each 25 per cent of the widow's pension, yet the total amount received by the children must not be more than 100 per cent of this. If both parents are dead, the pension of the children is doubled." 1

WAR CONDITIONS AND THE SCHOOLS.

During the entire war Norway's industries and commerce suffered more than those of any other neutral country. She sustained enormous losses by the destruction of a great part of her merchant fleet. Traffic from the first was insecure and, as a consequence, marine insurance was high. Raw material was difficult to procure and the finished products of shops and factories difficult to bring to the

consumer.

While the war did not result in commandeering school buildings and the labor of teacher and pupil as in the belligerent countries, it virtually did this in an indirect way. The high cost of everything necessary to sustain life compelled all available forms of labor to become productive.

The pupils of many schools were requested to organize themselves into groups and, together with their teachers, to be ready to respond to calls for help on the farms. The shops and factories frequently experienced a shortage of labor and tried to recruit it from the same

sources.

For these reasons pupils individually and in groups were virtually compelled to leave their class work to take up something more urgent. More or less confusion in the year's work was one of the immediate effects of this. Another was to emphasize a distinction, as never before, between book learning and training leading to productiveness. The time was opportune for an inquiry into the aims and intentions of almost every subject in the course. What was its purpose? Where did it lead to? And what would it help to produce? As a consequence there arose a tendency to give preference to subjects that in these respects measured up to the demands of the times. There appeared also an inclination to stress the more practical phases of subjects already established in the courses. Educators began to

1 Schweizerische Lehrerzeitung.

point out that geometry, for instance, dealing with lines and angles, squares and cubes, could be brought into closer coordination with the art of making things-carpentry, cabinet making, buildingwhere the lines and curves were embodied. Zoology might deal with domestic animals, their ways, and values, as well as with zebras and lions.

The importance of daily work and labor, and the duty of bringing it into the class room and teaching it as a recognized subject was discussed in the teachers' journals and meetings. It was one of the chief points adopted by the Pedagogical Folk Meeting in Christiania on August 25, 1918. But the teachers of Norway went further. They were not content with simply giving labor a place in the curriculum; they demanded conditions that should obliterate social distinctions. between work with the hand and work mainly with the intellectthey insisted on the prestige of labor. With this in view the educators of Norway have formally asked that labor should be brought into schools hitherto considered exclusive, and there given a place of distinction.

On the purely economic side the war affected teachers severely. During normal times a teacher in Norway has a fair salary. The pension of which he is eventually assured permits him to look forward to the future without anxiety and hence to do his work with a full collection of his powers. Yet his remuneration is so carefully adjusted to his actual expense that a sudden increase in the cost of living creates distress.

Hence the war brought hard times to the teacher as well as to others. His salary was not commensurate with the added outlay. The authorities were willing to provide relief, but to adjust salaries by enactments of the Storting proved to be slow. Through their journals and such other means of publicity as they could command, the teachers brought their economic difficulties before the people. At its meeting in Trondhjem the Teachers' Association virtually resolved itself into an organization to campaign for relief. The parliamentary response came, first in the form of war bonuses and high expense bonuses, and, finally, with a plan for a direct general increase of salaries commensurate with the present times.

A communication from the president of the National Teachers' Association of Norway, Mr. A. Kirkhusmo, dated November 20, 1918, shows that while the bill providing an increase in salaries was pending before the Storting, the people throughout the country generally took independent action and very materially increased the salaries in their respective communities.

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Economic pressure, too, caused a shortage of teachers that greatly handicapped the work of instruction in certain parts of Norway. Other lines of employment with more satisfactory pay attracted many teachers. A report came to the department of education at Christiania that in 1917 several hundred positions had remained vacant and that during the same year a still greater number of positions had to be filled by persons without professional training. In some parts of the country the weeks of the term of some schools were arranged so that the teacher could serve two schools.

The moral effect of the war on the pupils was forced upon the attention of the teachers. Familiarity with the accounts from the front, with details of bloodshed and violence, tends to disturb the psychic balance of a pupil in his impressionable years. Reports from the warring nations state that moral confusion sets in among school children to the extent of causing an alarming increase in juvenile offenses. The teachers of Norway are attempting to prevent the damage that threatens the children from exposure to notions of war and violence. They seek to lead the attention of the pupils away from these foreign interests to the interests and the affairs of their native land. In the scenes of Norway, in their fields and fjords, in their commerce and their industries, the teachers have found counterattractions more favorable to the moral and psychic health of the pupils.

The war has emphasized another duty that falls on the teacher. The clergymen of the peace association of Norway have addressed themselves to the General Peace Association requesting the latter to formulate plans to enlist the teachers actively in the cause of peace. It had been assumed at the Peace Conference at Bern, in 1915, that the clergy could accomplish the most in the interest of peace. But later it became obvious that the field was too large, and that considerations of a purely pyschological character added to the difficulty, owing to the popular misconception that the church and the school were two independent institutions. The public comments touching this question of the work for peace has brought the teachers' share in it into a clear light. No other class has an opportunity like the teacher for instilling and confirming humane and cultural sentiments of peace in the hearts of the young.

PRESENT TREND IN EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT AND SCHOOL LEGISLATION.

The present efforts to give the schools a more organic continuity from the primary years to the years of secondary advancement have their origin in the same general causes in all the countries of northern Europe. In reports prepared under the direction of the Ecclesiastical and Education Department of Norway, comprising a consensus of

opinions among the school men of that country, the movements there are traced and set forth in full. The several official publications issued under the auspices of that body, the latest bearing the date of March 2, 1917, indicate the issues that are uppermost. Supplementary accounts in the educational journals of Norway make it possible to follow the movements up to the end of 1918.

The committee entrusted with the preparation of the report maintains that not only educational, but, in a measure, social purposes come into play in adapting the schools of that country to the needs of the people. The unrest noted with the consequent demand for altered adaptations arises from the present democratic insistence that the purely social aim be eliminated and that the child's bent and endowments alone determine the stage where its divergence into a selected educational course may be permitted. With past school traditions in mind the committee maintains that in a community where a child's position in life is determined by its birth it is comparatively easy to plan a school well adapted to impart a fitting measure of information and training; a steadily ascending course of development leading directly toward the goal could then be planned, making it unnecessary for the learner to stray into by-paths or to be distracted by minor aims, but leading him to concentrate all his attention and bend all his energies toward reaching the goal clearly in sight from the beginning.

From the first the courses would, under these conditions, tako different directions in accordance with various aims, soon creating a marked distance between the routes by their constant divergence. For this reason it would be difficult, if not impossible, to pass over from one route to the other, which might become desirable where one should discover during his progress that he had been mistaken in his destination or his endowments, and hence wished his aim changed.

In the latter part of the last century the movement toward unification began, when the preparatory classes of the middle schools were, to a great extent, taken over by the folk school. With the same general aim the law of 1896 provided a further lengthening of the folk school by two years.

After that date interest in reforms toward this end became more general, at least among teachers and patrons of schools. In consequence further changes were discussed in 1909 in connection with the debate on the budget for secondary schools. In this discussion it became clear that the articulation between the folk school and the middle school was unsatisfactory, and that it might be well to consider whether an adjustment in subjects and courses could not be effected requiring pupils to complete the seven classes instead of five of the folk school as entrance condition to the middle school.