ing some of these manuscripts, the division has had the cooperation of the International Kindergarten Union. In cooperation with a committee of this association the division made a preliminary study of the value of the kindergarten for young children as shown by its effect upon their habits of action, their mental attitude toward nature, society, play, and work, and their readiness of expression. A card catalogue of 10,000 kindergarten teachers has been compiled, a series of multigraphed letters to kindergartners has been begun, and three letters of the series have been circulated. The correspondence of this division from both the Washington office and the New York office continues to grow. This correspondence refers mostly to: Programs for State kindergarten meetings; lists of books on particular phases of kindergarten work; statements of reasons why the kindergarten should be a part of the public school system; the relation of the kindergarten to primary schools; length of the kindergarten term; tendencies in theory and practice of the kindergarten; and kindergarten legislation. The chief of the kindergarten division addressed a series of meetings of the National Congress of Mothers and parent-teacher associations in the States of the Middle West and the Pacific coast and made addresses at St. Paul, Bismarck, Butte, Seattle, Portland, Burbank, San Bernardino, and San Francisco. At San Diego she attended a special conference of the board of education and others interested in the kindergarten. This division, chiefly through its New York office, has given much attention to kindergarten legislation. In its efforts to promote legislation it has corresponded with the State superintendents of public instruction and others interested in education in the States whose legislatures were in session within this fiscal year. In several of these States bills were introduced similar to the California law providing for the establishment of kindergartens upon the petition of parents. A law embodying this feature was enacted by the Legislature of Nevada, and the Legislature of North Carolina enacted the first kindergarten law of that State.' A special collaborator of this division in California has visited many cities, attended educational conventions, addressed clubs, conducted personal interviews, and carried on extensive correspondence in behalf of the kindergarten. Largely as a result of her activities, 50 new kindergartens were established in the State before the close of the year. The secretary of the kindergarten division attended the meeting of the National Education Association at St. Paul in July, the meeting of the Department of Superintendence of this association in Cincinnati in February, and has held conferences with cooperating committees of the International Kindergarten Union. She has also held 1 The law is apparently inoperative, however, because of a technicality. conferences with kindergartners at summer schools. Illustrated lectures on the kindergarten have been given at several schools. Four additional sets of lantern slides have been put in circulation; the exhibit of kindergarten handwork has been shown at the University of Virginia and at Topeka, Kans.; speakers have been sent to several educational conventions; 58,300 pamphlets and circulars have been mailed to summer schools and educational meetings. HOME EDUCATION. The year has shown a very large increase in the work of the home education division, and many demands have been made upon it to which it has not been able to respond. The director of the division has attended many important conferences of parents, teachers, and others interested in the improvement of opportunities for education in the home and in the closer and more intelligent cooperation of home and school. Several of these conferences were called by the Commissioner of Education. In the spring of 1915 the director of the division made a tour across the continent conducting conferences and making addresses in many States. As a result of these conferences, many parent-teacher associations and other clubs have been formed for the purpose of promoting a greater interest in home education. In preparing for the Report of the Commissioner of Education a chapter on the condition and progress of home education in the United States, information was obtained from teachers in high schools, normal schools, and colleges, from settlement workers, pastors of churches, and State boards of health. The correspondence has been very large. More than 12,000 pamphlets on the care and early education of children, and kindred subjects have been distributed. Home reading courses have been prepared as follows: 1. Literary Bibles. 2. World's great literature. 3. Parents' reading course. 4. Miscellaneous course for boys. 6. Thirty books of great fiction. 7. American literature. Of these a total of 26,568 copies have been distributed. With the cooperation of the librarian of the children's department of the Boston Public Library, a selected list of 1,000 books for children's reading was prepared and printed. Reading courses No. 1 and No. 2 were first sent out November 6, 1914, and the parents' reading course was sent out December 8, 1914. When the bureau's limited editions of copies of some of these courses and of the list of 1,000 books for children were exhausted, much larger editions were made available by the cooperation of the National Congress of Mothers. The cooperation of the United States Public Health Service and of the American Medical Association has enabled this division to distribute many thousand copies of pamphlets on the care of babies. These have been sent upon request to mothers of young children, as well as to principals and teachers in high schools. Librarians in school and public libraries have given valuable assistance in bringing the reading courses to the attention of children and older people. From its small collection the division has lent copies of books on the care and education of young children to mothers in remote rural communities. There is great need for the extension of the work of this division, especially in rural communities where the people have until now received little benefit from many of the agencies of the Federal Government for helping the people to better living. LIBRARY. During the year the library division catalogued and classified 12,991 volumes, a larger total than in any previous year. This was made possible by using for personal service in the city of Washington a portion of the fund for the distribution of documents, as authorized by the appropriation act for the fiscal year, but this use of these funds caused a considerable reduction in the usual number of volumes acquired by purchase. The number of volumes and pamphlets acquired by gift, exchange, and purchase was 1,155; by transfer from the Library of Congress, 585; 8,000 numbers of serial publications and 8,081 numbers of periodicals were accessioned; 776 volumes were sent to the bindery. Additions were made systematically to the card index of articles on education in current periodicals and serial publications, both domestic and foreign; 200 bibliographies on special topics were compiled, and bibliographies already on file were revised and brought up to date. These bibliographies were copied, multigraphed, or printed as needed. The bureau now has on file for the use of school officers, teachers, and students of education, approximately 1,000 bibliographies on various subjects of education and school administration. Many hundred copies of these are sent out each year to those making special request for them. Ten numbers of the monthly record of current educational publications were prepared, and an index to the series for 1914 was compiled. Loans from the library to institutions and individuals outside of the office amounted to 2,147 volumes; 2,870 letters asking for books or information were answered. The division compiled 16 pages of the Educational Directory. The school library exhibit, prepared by this division last year, was exhibited at 12 national and State meetings of teachers and librarians in Minnesota, Tennessee, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and there were many requests for it at other places. EDITORIAL. The editorial division supervised the publication of the two volumes of the Annual Report for 1914; 48 issues of the bulletin; and 168 miscellaneous publications, chiefly circulars of information of the brief letter type, ranging in size from 1 to 12 pages. Annual Report.-Volume I of the Annual Report consists of 795 pages; Volume II, the statistical volume, consists of 562 pages. For the substance of these volumes reference is made to the table of contents. Volume I is a comprehensive, interpretative review of the progress of education in the United States and other culture nations of the world; Volume II consists almost entirely of statistics of schools in the United States. Bulletin of the Bureau of Education.-Eleven of the bulletins (1914, Nos. 21, 26, 41, 42; 1915, Nos. 2, 3, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16) comprise the Monthly Record of Current Educational Publications and the index thereto. Bulletin 1914, No. 43, is the Educational Directory for 1914-15; 1914, No. 32, is a bibliography of secondary education in relation to higher education; 1914, No. 31, is the report of the work of the Bureau of Education in Alaska. The remaining 34 issues of the bulletin are special reports or studies in various fields of education, as follows: 1914, No. 12. Rural schoolhouses and grounds. No. 13. Present status of drawing and art in the elementary and secondary schools of the United States. No. 20. The rural school and hookworm disease. No. 22. The Danish folk high schools. No. 23. Some trade schools in Europe. No. 24. Danish elementary rural schools. No. 25. Important features in rural-school improvement. No. 27. Agricultural teaching. No. 28. The Montessori method and the kindergarten. No. 29. The kindergarten in benevolent institutions. No. 30. Consolidation of rural schools and transportation of pupils at public expense. No. 33. Music in the public schools. No. 34. Library instruction in universities, colleges, and normal schools. No. 35. The training of teachers in England, Scotland, and Germany. No. 36. Education for the home-Part I. General statement. No. 37. Education for the home-Part II. State legislation. 1914, No. 45. Curricula in mathematics. No. 46. School savings banks. No. 47. City training schools for teachers. No. 48. The educational museum of the St. Louis public schools. No. 49. Efficiency and preparation of rural-school teachers. No. 50. Statistics of State universities and State colleges. 1915, No. 1. Cooking in the vocational school. No. 4. The health of school children. No. 5. Organization of State departments of education. No. 6. A study of colleges and high schools of the North Central Association. No. 7. Accredited secondary schools in the United States. No. 8. Present status of the honor system in colleges and universities. No. 11. A statistical study of the public-school systems of the southern Appalachian Mountains (preliminary edition). No. 12. History of public-school education in Alabama. These bulletins vary in size from 16 to 376 pages; the average size is 76 pages. Twenty-six of the bulletins are studies of a descriptive type, the statistical element being absent or subordinated; three are statistical studies; and in five the descriptive and statistical elements are mingled. Printed documents other than those in the bulletin series included: Annual statement of the Commissioner of Education, 1914; Parents' reading course, No. 3; 1,000 Good books for children; and reprints of the chapters in the Annual Report. Bulletins still in the hands of the printer at the close of the year were as follows: Opportunities for foreign students at colleges and universities in the United States; Legislative and administrative control of school hygiene and sanitation; Civic education in elementary schools; The rural school system of Minnesota; The school system of Ontario; A statistical study of school conditions in the Appalachian Mountains (complete edition); The truant problem and the parental school; The training of elementary school-teachers in mathematics in Europe and the United States; A comparative study of the salaries of teachers and school officers; State vs. local control of elementary education; Adjustment between kindergarten and first grade; Extension of public education; Legal education in Great Britain; Secondary schools in the States of Central and South America and the West Indies; Statistics of libraries, 1913; Statistics of certain agricultural, industrial, and manual training schools; Mathematics in the lower and middle commercial and industrial schools; The schoolhouse as a polling place; Bibliography of education, 1911-12; Kindergarten training schools; and Open-air schools. Circular-letter service.-The circular-letter service of the bureau has continued to develop during the year. The total number of copies of multigraph and neostyle letters delivered to the editorial division. for distribution was 1,104,255, as compared with 700,000 the year before. This included 143,250 copies of statements issued for the |