The words, "the century of the child," though often used as a thoughtless, sentimental phrase, still have their justification. When one considers the activity reigning in all departments of instruction and education, the zeal which public and private agents, experts and laymen, are bringing to bear upon these matters, one almost wonders whether there are not too many heads bothering about them. To be sure, if one regards the moral distress which afflicts a part of the German youth, in the large

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... cities especially but unfortunately also in much smaller communities, the lack of discipline and the frivolity, which in spite of all efforts are not yet checked, one can only welcome as a good symptom even excess of zeal. The most encouraging thing in any case is that in the last decade (partly under English and American influence) we have again become more conscious of the high task of not merely instructing but of educating young people. If we were to undertake to mention even briefly all the pedagogical movements of the last decade our space would fail. To make a selection is also embarrassing: shall we consider rather the lower or the higher schools; shall we devote more attention to normal children or to abnormal, to intellectual or to moral deficiencies; shall we give precedence to the official pedagogy over the ideas of the reforming outsiders; shall we concern ourselves principally with the social-pedagogical movements which affect the masses, or rather consider the services of quiet, learned investigators, who, apparently isolated from the questions of the day, seek to approach the child-soul by observation and experiment? It is perhaps advisable first to make a survey at the basis of the school pyramid and to record the main points of what has 523