prompted by unworthy ideals or basing our work upon principles that are of our own making? According as we hold one or another view of the underlying principles of education and of the real province of the school do we translate the school studies into terms of value, and attribute to them relative worths. To some the school stands for culture, and the curriculum should be so ordered as to promote this culture side of the child's life. Some think rather in terms of discipline, and insist that school studies should make for this end. Others again would place information as the chief element to be considered. Shall the value of school studies, however, be found to exist within the studies themselves, or be determined by the nature of such studies? If society sets the standard, how can there be several possible values? With several standards set up, there is, as Dr. Dewey says, "no conception of any single unifying principle the extent and way in which a study brings the pupil to consciousness of his social environment, and confers upon him the ability to interpret his own powers from the standpoint of their possibilities in social use, is the ultimate and unified standard.” . It is, of course, unsafe to say that mathematics and the languages make for discipline chiefly, that the study of English brings culture, that history lends itself to the informational side of development. The fact is that, under the best conditions. mathematics is cultural and informational as well as disciplinary in value; the English group of studies may be made to cover as wide a field as mathematics and Latin, while history may bring as complete a development as any school subject. To say that one study makes for culture and another for discipline simply means that the standard for culture or for discipline comes from the individual, not from society. Culture, in the terms of our discussion, means possibilities for development, open-mindedness. honesty, the sense of service awakened, not merely varnish and veneer. Information implies knowledge to be sure, but knowledge that not only can be used, but that is carried over and made a part of the lives of others to the end that all are advantaged thereby. Discipline suggests, not only the analytic mind and the trained muscle, but the sympathetic soul and teachable spirit as well. Method, too, is a determining element in the value of studies, for the compositive worth of any given subject-matter to the individual or to society is determined, in no small degree, by the manner of presentation. While it is true that subject-matter and method are not distinct, but exist as the two sides of experience, the psychological and the social, it remains to be said, however, that, for the practical purposes of the teacher and the school, it is eminently necessary that they be clearly distinguished, the one from the other. It has long been insisted by some, and assumed by others, that in a course of training, for example, the method was of chief concern; that if the teacher in embryo could secure a knowledge of method, and understanding of how to do the given thing, that a knowledge of subjectmatter itself, of the definite facts connected with the particular line of work, could be somehow grasped at a later time. The fallacy of this view is apparent to all who consent for a moment seriously to consider the issues involved. How utterly inconsistent to endeavor to formulate a method, or to act intelligently under one, until a knowledge is had of that upon which method is based. Many of our normal schools have this lesson yet to learn and educational schools the country over, both elementary and secondary in character, would do well to select the subjectmatter of the curriculum with more care than has been manifest in the past. Indeed, the necessity for a knowledge of subjectmatter before training or method work is attempted is one of the strongest possible arguments in favor of normal and professional schools admitting as students only those who have had a thorough, previous academic training. Once subject-matter has been selected in any school, the work should be made more intensive than we now find it-more intensive from the standpoint of thought-values, and also from the side of execution. All this does not in any manner whatsoever contradict what has been said previously regarding thought and expression being paramount. It simply means that a knowledge at first hand of things that have a valid place in society, not only for the future but in the present, is to be the first essential. It means, as Doctor Dewey tells us, that "The present has its claims. It is in education, if anywhere, that the claims of the present should be controlling," and this in accord with the words of President Butler: "Education is the adjustment of the individual to the spiritual possessions of the race." It means what Browning means when he says: Let things be-not seem, I counsel rather, do and nowise dream! And self-control, leadership, responsibility. It is the duty of the school to undertake the task of inculcating in its pupils these elements so essential to success? Must the time be placed and the thought of education be centered upon these factors, when it might be troubling itself with the real facts of knowledge? The question is put only to have one answer returned. What of the city where the members of the police number as great as the teachers engaged in the schools, of the houses of correction, of the institutions of reform, the prisons, the courts of justice, and to a lesser extent the hospitals, asylums, and homes for the unfortunate and distressed? Lack of self-control, inability properly to interpret the demands of society or to perform the duties, having learned them, unstableness in character, to the end that the right is lost sight of and the stronger powers of leadership in others prevail. Could the school teach effectively the lesson of self-control, she need have little fear of results when the product of her system is thrown among the currents of the world. And here the tact and ability of the teacher shows itself. It is the teacher who, at his best, stands between the child and the various experiences which await him. The teacher, from his larger store of knowledge, directs the child toward, and introduces him to, these forms of experience which are especially adapted to bring out and develop the element of control, pointing the way that the pupil may, in the shortest possible time and with the least expenditure of misdirected energy, adjust himself to his environment. Rigid traditionalism, extreme rulings, and deeply-furrowed acceptances of the past do not lend themselves to initiative, to open-mindedness, to leadership, to self-control. What would have been the achievements of a Michael Angelo or a Raphael, a Wagner or a Beethoven, a Goethe or an Emerson, a Franklin or a Newton, a Gladstone or a Garrison, had these minds not felt free to reach forth in any direction, free to accept all the inspiration that came to them from the past, free to ignore all the narrowing influences so apparent in the life and work of most of us, free to express themselves naturally and clearly and without restraint? Alfred Russell Wallace, in his lectures and essays on Natural Theology and Ethics, gives us as clear a statement of the ideal of an education that will educate as could well be formulated. He says: Mental health and wealth do not depend upon a mere accumulation of single facts, but on solid ideas of what life is and ought to be, and what the world around us really means; it does not lie in confinement to a fragmentary life, limited in its range of view, and moving forever in the same monotonous routine, but in a large and free scope of experience; nor does it lie in the degree of variety and intensity to which we can bring our sensations and aspirations, but in acquiring the proper estimate of values, in calming the turmoil of temper and gaining at once sweetness and light, that gentle reasonableness which, though not less free to receive impressions than in the beginning of life, is at the same time matured by experience to a wiser judgment of their comparative worth. The true ideal of a fully developed personality does not consist merely in a keen intellectual acumen, nor in an intense but inactive susceptibility to the moods of happy feeling, nor in a perpetual unresting activity; it involves a balance of all these elements, and this experience, these forces that play backward and forward, in school and out, touching the pupil in his every occupation; shall we not consider those that have the direct bearing upon his present and that can be appreciated by him, rather than attempt to introduce him to vague and indefinite elements? As I stood, some weeks since, beside the rude dwellings of a simple people in a western desert and watched the natives as they worked at rug weaving or in fashioning the basket, I recalled the question put to one of these people by an eastern woman: "Isn't it too bad," said she, "that you live so far away?" And the native woman returned a wondering glance as she replied, "I don't live far away, I live right here." While the work of the school must be such as to fit those who form the school community to adjust themselves to the society in which they individually may find themselves, it must not forget that the child can interpret only in the light of present experiences. |