The General Education Board has announced an appropriation of $500,000 toward a fund of $2,000,000 for the establishment of a Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. President Lowell received official notice of the gift yesterday morning.

The appropriation of the Board is a beginning in an enterprise the University has long had in view. The training of teachers and school officers began at Harvard in 1891, when Professor Paul H. Hanus was called to the University to take charge of "Courses for the Instruction of Teachers." These courses were given at first in the Department of Philosophy and were not counted toward a degree. Academic recognition followed, however, within a year, and through the efforts of Professor Hanus the instructors in Education were established in 1906 as a Division of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The proposal to establish a Graduate School of Education was approved by the Corporation in 1916.

University work in Education has two main purposes--the solution, by study, experiment, and investigation, of the many and varied problems of education; and the training of leaders for the schools. Both these purposes call for a graduate institution, with ample equipment for research, including a laboratory and a school, with an adequate staff of specialists, and with a body of students capable of advanced study based on a college education and experience in teaching and school administration. The training of college students for their first work as teachers must probably remain at least in part an undergraduate business; but the new school will offer a year of graduate work to those college men and women who can undertake it in preparation for their first school posts.

The School will also offer extension and summer courses for teachers who are not graduates of a college. Its most important functions, however, will be research and the training of superintendents, principals and school officers.

Fund to be Named For President Eliot.

The task of raising the rest of the fund for the School of Education remains to be accomplished. For the general work of the University and the salaries of its teachers, a campaign for a large Endowment Fund has already been started.

The proposal to name the fund established by the action of the General Education Board for President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot has the hearty approval of the Harvard Corporation. President Eliot was for years a member of the General Education Board, and his services make it especially appropriate to name the endowment fund for him.