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iimimimam'' '" ^'"^''"^^n education 
 
 3 1924 013 019 967 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013019967 
 
AMERICAN EDUCATION SERIES 
 GEORGE DRAYTON STRAYER, GENERAL EDITOR 
 
AMERICAN EDUCATION SERIES 
 GEORGE DRAYTON STRAYER, GENERAL EDITOR 
 
 THE TREND IN 
 AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 JAMES EARL RUSSELL 
 
 DEAN OF TEACHERS COLLEGE, 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 
 ISEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 
 
 BOSTON ATLANTA 
 
Copyright, igaa, BV 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 
 RUSSELL TREND IN EDUCATION 
 
 MADE IN U. S. A. 
 E. P. I. 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 
 
 One of the most significant phenomena in the develop- 
 ment of our American democracy during the past thirty- 
 years has been th^ ever enlarging scope of our system of 
 education. There has been a conscious attempt on the 
 part of our people to realize the democratic ideal of equality 
 of opportunity. The remarkable progress that has been 
 made is due in no smaU measure to the leadership of a 
 group of men and women who have thought and planned 
 in advance of current practice. 
 
 During the twenty-five years which are just past Dean 
 Russell has been responsible for the development of an 
 educational institution which has trained leaders for our 
 American schools from the kindergarten to the university. 
 He has been in the position of one who has thought and 
 planned in terms of our rapidly developing school system. 
 His leadership would not have been recognized had he 
 sought merely to meet the current demand. The very 
 great respect which members of the profession have come 
 to have for his judgment, and their confidence in his fore- 
 sight are clearly evidenced by the growth and influence 
 of the institution over which he presides. 
 
 In this volume Dean Russell records his thought con- 
 cerning many of the problems which have perplexed us 
 during the past twenty years. The papers cover a wide 
 range of topics, and are presented here with only slight 
 
 5 
 
6 editor's introduction 
 
 revision and for the most part in chronological order. The 
 reader will find, however, a unity among them determined 
 by the author's thought with respect to the development 
 of our American schools. One who is a member of the 
 teaching profession will come from his perusal of the 
 volume with a clearer understanding of the purpose of 
 our public schools and with a renewed acceptance of the 
 call to professional service. 
 
 George D. Strayer 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Trend in American Education . . . g 
 
 II. The Training of Teachers for Secondary 
 
 Schools ... . . 26 
 
 III. The Educational Value of Examinations for 
 
 Admission to College . ... 47 
 
 IV. The Opportunities and Responsibilities of 
 
 Professional Service . 61 
 
 V. The Call to Professional Service ... 77 
 
 VI. The School and Industrial Life . . 90 
 
 VII. Professional Factors in the Training of the 
 
 High-School Teacher . . • 115 
 
 VIII. Specialism in Education . . .140 
 
 IX. Coeducation in High Schools . . . • iS7 
 
 X. The Vital Things in Education . . .168 
 
 XI. Scouting Education 184 
 
 XII. Education for Democracy . . . .201 
 
 XIII. The Organization of Teachers . . . 21S 
 
 XIV. The University and Professional Training 223 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION' 
 
 THE keynote of American life is democracy — social 
 democracy. I say social democracy, because 
 England is politically more democratic than 
 the United States. On the other hand, England inherits 
 conceptions of caste of which we know nothing. The Eng- 
 lish churchman prays to be content with that station in 
 life in which Providence has placed him. On the other side 
 of the water, schools for the poor are free; the rich must pay 
 for their education. The great preparatory schools of Eng- 
 land, as well as the venerable universities, are for gentle- 
 men's sons, and only gentlemen are wanted in the church, 
 at the bar, or in the army and navy. 
 
 Beginning of education in New England. — The found- 
 ers of this republic thought it a self-evident truth that 
 all men are created equal. The settlers of New England 
 left the old world in search of religious freedom — to found 
 a new home in which each might worship God in his own 
 way. They were so intensely in earnest that they were 
 willing to suffer for the faith, and so conscientious that 
 they were willing also to make others suffer for differing 
 with them. 
 
 They were stem men, those ancient fathers of New 
 England, and they had little faith in the natural course 
 
 'A revised reprint from the Educational Review, New York, June, 1906, used by 
 courtesy of the publishers. 
 
 9 
 
lO THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 of human development. Five years after the establish- 
 ment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony they founded the 
 Boston Latin School — " younger " and more vigorous to- 
 day than at any other time in its history. A letter written 
 at the time says: "^fter God had carried us safely to New 
 England, and we had builded our houses, provided neces- 
 saries for our Hvelihood, rear'd convenient places for 
 God's worship, and settled the Civill Govt. : one of the next 
 things we longed for, and looked after, was to advance 
 learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave 
 an ilhterate ministry to the churches, when our present 
 ministers shall lie in the dust." 
 
 Next, in 1640, they founded Harvard College — also 
 "younger" and more vigorous than at any other time 
 in its career. Then, two years later (1642), they urged 
 selectmen to see that parents provided for the education 
 of all children to the extent of teaching them (i) to read, 
 (2) to understand the principles of religion, (3) the capital 
 laws of the colony, and (4) to engage in some suitable 
 employment. 
 
 In 1647 the General Court of Massachusetts passed its 
 epoch-making act providing for public instruction: "It 
 being one chief object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep 
 men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former 
 times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these 
 latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, . . . 
 that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers 
 in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our 
 endeavors, etc., etc. ... It is therefore ordered " 
 . . . that there be (i) one teacher for every fifty 
 householders, to teach reading and writing, and (2) one 
 
THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION II 
 
 grammar school when a town reaches one hundred fam- 
 ilies " to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for 
 the university." 
 
 From such a beginning has come our great school system, 
 potentially the mightiest engine for good in our national 
 life, actually the most expensive single department in our 
 civil government. It should be noted, however, that in 
 those early days " reading and writing " were the means 
 of training the common man; the substance of his educa- 
 tion consisted of religion, civil government, and suitable 
 employment — ■ all of them factors of everyday life in the 
 home, the church, and the community. Until 1692 only 
 church members were freemen and allowed to vote. 
 Down to the nineteenth century there were no public 
 elementary schools, as we know them. The schools that 
 did exist were designed to fit boys for college, and the col- 
 leges were but stepping-stones to leadership in state and 
 church. 
 
 Development of leadership. — So it has been from the 
 beginning of human society. Schools for leaders come 
 first, because no society can long endure that does not 
 have capable leaders — leaders in the field and leaders in 
 the forum. The masses of the people may be trained — 
 and trained successfully, too, — to maintain civil order 
 and social stability by the institution of slavery, or bond- 
 age, or serfdom, or by social customs which impose class 
 distinctions upon all. With leaders trained to lead and a 
 people trained to obey, you have the prime factors in 
 successful national life — successful, at any rate, from the 
 autocratic or paternal standpoint. There is no call for 
 universal education until in the course of human events 
 
12 THE TREND IN AMEKICAN EDUCATION 
 
 men — individual human beings — have rights which can- 
 not be denied them. Schools for the common people arise 
 when it is recognized, for example, that each person has 
 a soul to save, or when the form of government gives to 
 each a vote. 
 
 Era of industrialism. — The trend in American educa- 
 tion for nearly two hundred years was advantageous to 
 those who were to be our leaders. There was first the 
 Latin school, preparatory to coUege, and then the coUegiate 
 course preparatory to the ministry and to law — i. e., 
 leadership in Church and State. Gradually American hfe 
 began to demand trained physicians and engineers. Per- 
 haps, in one sense, there had always been such a need, but 
 consciousness of the need was not roused until the dis- 
 covery of the manufacture and transmission of power 
 through steam some hundred years ago. A new era was 
 ushered in with the nineteenth century. 
 
 1. A goverimient guaranteeing equal rights had been 
 firmly established, and the old causes for contention were 
 thus removed. 
 
 2. Freedom of worship was assured to all. Denomi- 
 national control of education gave way to state control. 
 
 3. Increasing immigration began to make for a cosmo- 
 poUtan population. Life was growing more complex; 
 less dependence could be placed on domestic training. 
 
 4. Advances in science led to a new industrial order. 
 Previous to the year 1800, men could use only such power 
 as they had in their own bodies, in domesticated animals, 
 or in moving air or running water. How impotent such 
 means to the settling of the great West and the upbuilding 
 of a great nation! 
 
THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 13 
 
 Dififerentiation in offerings. — These are some of the 
 influences which converted us, within the limits of a single 
 century, from a provincial and agricultural people into an 
 industrial and commercial nation. The result was that 
 the old education, however successful it may have been 
 in producing great preachers and men of affairs, speedily 
 became inadequate to meet the demands of an industrial 
 and commercial age. A process of differentiation was 
 soon noticeable within the college, and new professional 
 schools sprang into being. Take, for example, the year 
 1850 as a turning point. Before 1850 we had, in all, some 
 10 law schools, 37 medical schools, 2 schools of dentistry, 
 3 engineering schools, 2 schools of agriculture and mechan- 
 ical arts. We have since increased the number to 86 law 
 schools (50 of these having been established between 1876 
 and 1900), 156 medical schools (86 estabhshed between 
 1876 and 1900), 56 schools of dentistry (47 established 
 between 1876 and 1900), while engineering schools and 
 schools of agriculture and mechanic arts are everywhere.^ 
 
 And the end is not yet. We are rapidly building schools 
 for nurses, for artists, for railway superintendents, for 
 architects, for housekeepers and homemakers, for jour- 
 nalists, and even for philanthropists. Then, too, look at 
 the differentiation within the old groups. Medical schools 
 are to-day professional or graduate, medical or surgical, 
 aUopathic or homeopathic, or eclectic. Engineering has 
 subdivided into civil, electrical, mechanical, chemical, 
 sanitary, and so on through the list as given by many of 
 our great technical schools. 
 
 ' Present statistics show 142 law schools, 94 medical schools, and 
 50 schools of dentistry. 
 
14 THE TEEND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Progress of education. — There is, as I have said, no 
 end to this development, and there can be no end to it, so 
 long as human needs increase or differentiate or become 
 more complex. The greater the need of trained leaders 
 the more positive the tendency to supply them. When we 
 cease to grow and expand territorially; when our wants 
 become fewer or our ambitions and susceptibilities become 
 less keen; when we stop pushing onward — then you may 
 confidently predict a period of ease and comfort and satis- 
 faction with existing educational opportunities. But so 
 long as the United States holds its place among the great 
 world powers, so long as our states and cities have ideals 
 to which they have not attained, so long as individuals 
 have ambitions which are not satisfied, so long wiU edu- 
 cational affairs remain unsettled and unsatisfying. The 
 millennium which many school boards and some edu- 
 cators long for — that age in which the public will not 
 ask for better schools and more of them, and when school 
 superintendents and college presidents will cease to vex 
 their teachers with requests to do some new thing — that 
 millennium, I say, will mark the decline and fall of the 
 great American RepubUc. It will be the end of a demo- 
 cratic fiasco in civil government, the bursting of the bubble 
 which has tantalized European autocrats for a century 
 with some semblance of reality, the end of the most stu- 
 pendous failure the world has ever seen. 
 
 No, there can be no rest, no halt, even, in the progress of 
 education. It is not something which can be stopped and 
 started at will; it is not a tangible reality which can be 
 fixed on a plate for microscopic examination at any time. 
 It is a vital process, indissolubly bound up with our social 
 
THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 1 5 
 
 and dvil life. Once you catch it, or check its course, you 
 will find in your hands merely lifeless day, a cadaver, in 
 which the vital spark is extinguished. 
 
 Changes in course of study. — The trend in American 
 education has been not only in the differentiation of pro- 
 fessional schools, but also in the courses of study and sub- 
 jects taught. I have no time to point out the changes 
 that have taken place even within a generation in our 
 American colleges and universities. Up to 1800 the en- 
 trance requirements to our best colleges were Latin, . 
 Greek, and sometimes a little arithmetic " as far as the 
 rule of three " ; and even in Latin and Greek scarcely as 
 much as we now read in three years in a good high school. 
 But between 1800 and 1870 eight new subjects were added 
 to the entrance list, " whereas during the century and a 
 half prior to 1800 the only addition of any consequence 
 was elementary arithmetic." 
 
 I have no need to remind you that the modern college 
 offers far more than any one boy can take or should take. 
 Hence the struggle over classical studies versus scientific 
 studies, the establishment of " modern " courses, the 
 device of multipl5dng bachelor's degrees, the elective sys- 
 tem, and all that train of controversies which have vexed 
 the souls and spoiled the tempers of many, many college 
 professors. 
 
 An indictment of present practices. — A survey of the 
 field discloses much to be thankful for. We have made 
 a fair beginning in our higher education — a beginning, 
 I say, because there is not in this country to-day a college, 
 or university, or professional school adequately equipped 
 for the work it is attempting to do; there is not one of the 
 
l6 THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 great plants, however much it may cost the public for 
 maintenance, that is being conducted efficiently or effect- 
 ively, simply because the public does not yet appreciate 
 the worth of the work it is doing or realize that the greatest 
 economy in operation is impossible when defective machines 
 and ill-paid workmen are put to a task that demands the 
 best in everything — the best of equipment, the best of 
 men, and the best of service. Some day, I hope, the 
 American public will realize that our school system, from 
 kindergarten to university professional school, is an en- 
 gine so expensive that we cannot afford to keep it idle a 
 part of the time, or run it except with its maximimi load; 
 an engine so expensive, too, that we cannot afford to 
 intrust it to the hands of inexperienced or half-trained 
 engineers. No business man would for a moment tolerate 
 the waste and inefficiency in his affairs that we all know 
 exists in education to-day. 
 
 I wish to push the indictment one step farther. Our 
 educational system is not only wasteful and inefficient 
 because it is operated at " low pressure," but it is mifair 
 in that it does not do what the founders of this republic 
 meant that it should do. It does not give equality of 
 opportunity to all. This may seem surprising, particu- 
 larly as we have been boasting for a century of our Ameri- 
 can liberty, fraternity, and equality. It is the boast, too, 
 of most Americans that our great public-school system — 
 the greatest thing on earth — provides alike for every boy 
 and girl taking advantage of it. This is half true — and 
 dangerous, as all half-truths are. The fact is, the Ameri- 
 can system of education grants equality of opportunity 
 only to those who can go on to the coUege and the imi- 
 
THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 17 
 
 versity. It takes little account of the boy — and less still 
 of the girl — who cannot or does not wish for a higher 
 education. Those who " drop out " at the age of twelve 
 or fourteen, compelled to earn a livelihood, have missed 
 their opportunity. But why? Do we in America have 
 need only of professional men and " men of affairs? " 
 Are those who pay the taxes and do the rougher work of 
 life to be denied opportunity for self-improvement? Are 
 only those who can afiford to stay in school to reap the 
 advantages of education? In a word, what are we doing 
 to help the average man better to do his life work and 
 better to realize the wealth of his inheritance as an Ameri- 
 can citizen? These questions raise the problem of voca- 
 tional training for those who must begin early to earn 
 their living. It is, in my judgment, the greatest problem 
 of the future, and one which we may not longer disregard 
 if we are to maintain our standing as a nation. 
 
 A start in life. — Although we have consciously done 
 next to nothing to give the average man a fair start in his 
 life work, unconsciously we have been putting forth efforts 
 to meet his needs. A century ago the elementary school 
 was the first step in the way to college. So it is to-day, 
 but with this important difference: the curriculum of the 
 old-time school was religion and the three R's. The time 
 came when religion had to be put aside. That left the 
 three R's — an impossible curriculum, notwithstanding 
 the praises of some good people who do not think for 
 themselves, but have an unquenchable desire to think 
 for other people. You cannot read without reading some- 
 thing; and you cannot reckon without problems in some- 
 thing. The colonial schoolmaster, like the modern paro- 
 
 TREND IN ED. — 2 
 
1 8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 chial schoolmaster, made religion the substance of his in- 
 struction. The modem advocates of the simple curric- 
 ulum of the three R's must choose between the " three 
 R's " directed to something and nothing at aU. 
 
 The fact is, the moment religion was put aside some- 
 thing else had to come in. We put in English hterature, 
 history, civics, science, and music — in a word, the course 
 was enriched. Yet the common sense of our American 
 public insisted on further enrichment for the sake of those 
 who needed a more practical training. Hence the intro- 
 duction of drawing, manual training, cooking, and sew- 
 ing — fads and frills, if you please, but nevertheless an 
 honest (if unintentional) effort to accord to the great mass 
 of our children vocational advantages similar to those en- 
 joyed by the few who could go on to higher grades of 
 vocational training. It is precisely the same sort of de- 
 velopment (from the simple to the more complex; from 
 the general to the specific; from the purely disciphnary 
 to the practical and vocational) that we have observed in 
 the field of higher education. 
 
 But the end is not yet. The movement is only begun. 
 The trend is unmistakably toward stiU further differentia- 
 tion and still more complete adaptation to the needs of 
 every-day life. The distinctive peculiarity of American 
 education from the beginning almost to the present day 
 is its selective character. Like the Scottish schoolmaster, 
 we have rejoiced more over the one " lad of pairts " who 
 somehow gets ahead, despite our instruction, perhaps, 
 than over the ninety and nine who need our help. We 
 boast of an educational ladder that reaches from the gutter 
 to the university, and we see nothing amiss in making our 
 
THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 1 9 
 
 elementary schools preparatory to the high school, and 
 the high school preparatory to the college and university. 
 In other words, that which few need all must take. 
 
 Support of education in Europe. — My conviction is that, 
 instead of being satisfied with our school system in this 
 country, we should be thoroughly ashamed of it — ashamed 
 not of our good schools and the good work that is being 
 done, but ashamed that we as a people are being con- 
 tented with so restricted a system of public education and 
 so narrow a curriculum. We accept the politician's dic- 
 tum that we are too poor to spend more than we do on 
 education, when the fact is we are too poor to spend so 
 little. More, much more than we now spend on education 
 would be money in our pockets if. only we knew how to 
 spend it aright. 
 
 France, although heavily burdened for years, main- 
 tained in addition to her great system of elementary, sec- 
 ondary, and higher schools (including universities, profes- 
 sional schools, and schools of science) the following insti- 
 tutions for teaching the industrial arts: 
 
 I National Institute of Arts and Trades. 
 
 X Central School of Arts and Manufactures. 
 
 8 High Schools of Commerce. 
 
 I Advanced School of Commerce. 
 
 I Commercial Institute. 
 
 4 National Schools of Arts and Trades. 
 
 1 National School for Training Superintendents and Foremen. 
 
 2 National Schools of Watchmaking. 
 4 National Professional Schools. 
 
 26 Commercial and Industrial Schools for Boys. 
 6 Commercial and Industrial Schools for Girls. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing the municipal bodies of 
 
20 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 towns of any importance have opened professional schools 
 for the elementary teaching of trades, industries, or arts 
 (design, weaving, lacemaking, dressmaking, dyeing, elec- 
 tricity, bookkeeping, and stenography). There were also 
 numerous private schools and societies for the improve- 
 ment of the artisan, which were well attended. 
 
 What France has done has also been done — and done 
 better in some respects — by Belgium, Holland, Denmark, 
 Sweden, Switzerland, and England. 
 
 American policies in education. — There are two sufl&- 
 cient reasons for our not following Europe's lead: (i) we 
 don't want to, and (2) we don't need to. We don't need 
 to because life in this country is still easy. It isn't half 
 settled yet. Some day we shall have five hiuidred mil- 
 lions here. I suppose we have land enough, and land good 
 enough if tilled properly, to support a population ten times 
 as great as that we now have. But even fifty years from 
 now, at our present rate of increase, we shall begin to ap- 
 preciate what competition means. What will it mean when 
 necessity compels us to use at its best every square foot of 
 land we own? Then the man who will not work surely may 
 not eat. And if he would preserve American traditions of 
 decency and competence, he must work harder and more 
 effectively than the man of to-day has to work. 
 
 It must be obvious to any fair-minded student of our 
 educational system that we are doing next to nothing 
 either to ward off threatened dangers or to prepare for 
 those which are bound to come in future. Instead of 
 doing the practical thing we, a so-called " practical " 
 people, are content to produce " cuteness." The business 
 world expects every man to do his duty — but it is very 
 
THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 21 
 
 obvious that his iirst duty is to hustle and to get results. 
 I once heard a colored preacher in the South illustrate 
 the spirit of the age in this wise: " Once we measured time 
 by grandfather's clock, which said, ' Ever — forever, 
 never — forever '; nowadays we use a Waterbury, which 
 says, ' Git thar — git thar.' " Our aim is to " git thar " 
 — in our college sports, in professional life, in business; 
 everywhere we count on winning, honestly, if possible; 
 dishonestly, if necessary, and if the chances of getting 
 found out are not too great. 
 
 Contrary to the findings of some critics, I believe that 
 our schools are partly responsible for confirming us in our 
 besetting sins — not by what they teach, but in the pre- 
 vailing methods of teaching. The fact is, we do look for 
 results and are not over-particular how these results are ob- 
 tained or whether they are just right or not. We are too 
 easily satisfied with a plausible rendering of a foreign text; 
 we are prone to measure proficiency by the amount of work 
 done or the time spent in doing it, rather than by excel- 
 lence of accomphshment or accuracy of method. We en- 
 courage guessing, and the prize too often goes to him who 
 shows greatest skill in concealing his ignorance. In a word, 
 we are too easily satisfied with appearances and attach 
 too little weight to the moral effects of doing honest work. 
 
 There is another reason, as I have said, why we do not 
 choose to follow European methods of education: We don't 
 want to. We don't want to because we are not bound by 
 social traditions. Our society is a social democracy. 
 Our schools are designed to grant equal opportunity to 
 all. In most other countries, England included, the 
 school system is deliberately intended to keep some down 
 
22 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 while helping others up. So long as our mode of gov- 
 ernment endures we cannot shut the door of opportunity 
 in the face of any citizen. It is the greatest experiment 
 the world has ever seen, and while there are many who 
 would gladly see it fail, it is our bounden duty to make it 
 succeed. It would be presumptuous to say, after only 
 one century of trial, that success is already assured. This 
 is only the beginning. We are Just coming to realize some 
 of our blessings, as we see more dearly for the first time 
 some of our dangers. 
 
 Education for the coming generation. — How can a 
 nation endure that deliberately seeks to rouse ambitions 
 and aspirations in the oncoming generations which in the 
 nature of events cannot possibly be fulfilled? If the chief 
 object of government be to promote civil order and social 
 stability, how can we justify our practice in schooling the 
 masses in precisely the same manner as we do those who 
 are to be our leaders? Is hmnan nature so constituted 
 that those who fail wiU readily acquiesce in the success of 
 their rivals, especially if that success be the result of 
 " cuteness," rather than honest effort? Is it any wonder 
 that we are beset with labor troubles? We are, indeed, 
 optimists if we see no cause for alarm in our present social 
 conditions; and we are worse than fools if we content our- 
 selves with a superficial treatment of the iUs that afflict 
 us. Legislation may do much to help us out of trouble, 
 but it is only education of the right sort that can perma- 
 nentiy keep us from ruin. There never has been a time 
 when we were more in need of sound education, and in the 
 struggle for existence that is yet to come we shall need a 
 better education than we conceive of to-day. 
 
THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 2.3 
 
 An educational creed. — There is one educational prin- 
 ciple that is pecuUarly American. It is that every man, 
 because he is a man and an American citizen, should be 
 liberally educated so far as circumstances will permit. 
 A man, according to our Magna Charta, is entitled to Hfe, 
 Kberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The first business 
 of the schools is to make life worth hving, liberty worth 
 striving for, and the pursuit of happiness something for 
 which no man need be ashamed. We need, in my opinion, 
 one more article in our educational creed. It is this: In 
 making a man, make him good for something. It is a 
 practice easily recognizable in the history of our universi- 
 ties and professional schools. 
 
 Our future procedure. — The next step is to see that 
 the common man is equally well provided for. A begin- 
 ning has been made in the enrichment of the course of 
 study in our elementary and high schools, thus giving a 
 choice of studies and better preparation for life if the 
 pupil knows how to choose wisely; in the introduction of 
 the natural sciences, manual training, and the domestic 
 arts, thus giving some acquaintance with the industrial 
 processes underlying our civilization if the subjects be 
 well taught; and finally, in the differentiation of the school 
 courses and school work whenever the future vocations 
 of the pupils are definitely known, as in the negro schools 
 of the South, the county agricultural schools of Wiscon- 
 sin, and the trade schools of some of our eastern cities. 
 
 But aU this is only a beginning. At best but little can 
 be done before the age of fourteen, but that littie can be 
 of the right kind. In teaching arithmetic we can as well 
 present problems of every-day significance as those which 
 
24 THE TRENB IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 are never met with ouc of school; in reading we can read 
 that which is worth remembering; in history we can dwell 
 upon some events which are not political; in science we 
 can prepare for farming as well as for college; in manual 
 training and the domestic arts we can do in the small 
 what the race has done in the large in its eflforts to pro- 
 vide food, clothing, and shelter, and to perfect means of 
 communication and transportation. If nothing else is 
 gained from the elementary school than a wholesome re- 
 spect for man's industry, a good basis is afforded for 
 participation in man's occupations. 
 
 The insurance of democracy. — The serious preparation 
 for practical Hfe begins for the great majority of persons 
 at the age of thirteen or fourteen, on leaving the elemen- 
 tary school. The most dangerous period in the life of a 
 boy or girl lies just ahead — say up to the age of nineteen 
 or twenty. This is the time when the average boy must 
 learn to be self-supporting, and when the girl must fit her- 
 self for domestic duties. It is the time, too, when tech- 
 nical training counts for most. I contend that every 
 American boy and girl is entitled to practical help in thif 
 time of greatest need — and at public expense, too, if the 
 state maintains high schools, universities, and profes- 
 sional schools for those who aspire to leadership in pro- 
 fessional life. My reasons for this contention are these: 
 
 1. Anything that wiU contribute to the greater efficiency 
 of the workman is a contribution not only to his own well- 
 being but to the wealth of the nation. 
 
 2. Anything that will lead the workman to take more 
 pride in b's work tends to make him a better citizen and 
 a more conservative member of society. 
 
THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 25 
 
 If it be possible to make each man, no matter what his 
 social standing may be, an honest leader in his own field, 
 a workman who is not ashamed of his handiwork, then we 
 need fear no criticism of our colleagues across the sea, nor 
 need we as an industrial people fear the competition in 
 the world's markets. More than that, we need never lose 
 faith in the righteousness of American ideals or dread the 
 consequences of our social democracy. K there be those 
 who say the task is impossible, I answer in the words of 
 Greneral Armstrong, when some one doubted the possi- 
 bility of negro education, " What are Christians for but 
 to do the impossible? " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS ' 
 
 THE striking characteristic of American education 
 is the fact that each school — better said, per- 
 haps, each school board — is the measure of all 
 things educational. And nowhere is this sophistic doc- 
 trine more apparent than in the secondary realm. What 
 constitutes a secondary school, even the scope and pur- 
 pose of secondary education itself, are debatable ques- 
 tions. This condition of affairs is largely due to the 
 radically different tendencies in the development of our 
 educational system. Part of it has come down from 
 above in response to the intellectual and spiritual needs 
 of colonial life; part of it has grown up from below to meet 
 the demands of an ambitious people determined to win 
 their way in the world. These two forces — one of them 
 essentially aristocratic, the other essentially democratic — 
 meet in the secondary school. The conflict that results 
 naturally makes extra hazardous any attempt to apply 
 general principles derived exclusively from experience 
 either in elementary or in higher education. Dictatorial 
 college faculties too frequently join hands with ignorant 
 demagogues in promoting evil in place of good. The 
 secondary school is not merely the first four grades of the 
 college course, nor yet is it the last four classes of the 
 elementary school; it is at once both of these and neither. 
 
 ^A revised reprint from National Education Association Proceedings, 1901, used by 
 courtesy of the publishers. 
 
 26 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 27 
 
 The training of the adolescent mind presents problems 
 unknown in the primary school; with the psychological 
 new birth another mode of education becomes imperative. 
 And on the other hand it is obvious that the requirements 
 for admission to college do not exhaust the demands of 
 life. The college and university can never enjoy a mo- 
 nopoly of higher education. The peculiar function of the 
 secondary school is the selection and training of leaders 
 for intelligent service in academic, professional, and in- 
 dustrial life. In no educational work can there be greater 
 need of teachers fully aHve to the responsibihties resting 
 upon them; nowhere can there be greater need of teachers 
 fitted by nature and training to discharge their duties 
 aright. 
 
 The college graduate as a secondary-school teacher. — 
 It is only in these latter days that any question has arisen 
 concerning the necessary quahfications of teachers for 
 secondary schools. So long as the only secondary school 
 of consequence was the academy or college preparatory 
 school, so long the only teacher worth considering was 
 the college graduate. He who would successfully fit boys 
 for college must himself know by experience what the col- 
 leges demand. Moreover, in those days, what the col- 
 leges demanded was chiefly Latin and Greek, and it would 
 have been idle for any man to have set himseK up as a 
 teacher of the classical languages who had not enjoyed 
 the classical training. But with the growth of the cur- 
 riculum, and especially since the rise of the high school 
 has introduced variety not only in the subjects of instruc- 
 tion but in the purpose of secondary education as well, 
 the former source of supply of teachers has proved inade- 
 
28 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 quate. It may as well be acknowledged, first as last, that 
 the college graduate of the last generation could claun no 
 considerable superiority over his non-collegiate competi- 
 tor in respect either to special knowledge or to skill in 
 teaching many subjects of the secondary course. In fact, 
 only in the classical languages has he stood imrivaled. 
 In the modern languages, English, history, mathematics, 
 and the natural sciences he has often foimd his equal. 
 Frequently the knowledge of the specialist, or the pro- 
 fessional skiil of the normal-school graduate, has been 
 preferred to the so-called "general culture" of the collegian 
 who has sauntered through the mazes of an " elective 
 course " with no suspicion of soimd scholarship attaching 
 to him. Unquestionably the lack of special knowledge and 
 of educational interests in the average college graduate 
 has had great weight in promoting the popular tendency 
 to discredit a liberal education as an essential pre-requisite 
 to work in the secondary schools. We may deprecate 
 the situation as we will, it is a fact, nevertheless, that 
 the college-trained teacher has but slight advantage in 
 gaining admission to the secondEiry school. 
 
 Teaching and its tangible reward. — One other fact 
 worth consideration: It is becoming year by year more 
 difficult for college graduates to find employment in the 
 schools at a living wage. Granted that the number of 
 positions annually falling vacant is relatively stationary, 
 and that the number of applicants is relatively increasing, 
 but one result can be expected. The law of supply and 
 demand forces salaries down. And in the majority of 
 secondary schools in this country to-day no pecuniary in- 
 ducement is offered the intending teacher to take a college 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 29 
 
 course. On the contrary there is every reason — uncer- 
 tain tenure of office, political favoritism, and the like — 
 why the average teacher should invest the least possible 
 amount of pajong capital. Indeed, so lightly is the 
 higher education regarded that it is a question whether 
 the average teacher who must depend on the average 
 salary can afford to spend the time and money necessary 
 in acquiring the coUege degree. If this be true, or any- 
 where near the truth, then secondary education in America 
 is in desperate straits. 
 
 A need for craftsmanship. — The educational welfare 
 of the country obviously demands that public opinion 
 recognize a higher standard of professional merit. Public 
 opinion, however, is a shrewd judge of merit of any kind. 
 With respect to teachers as in other matters, Lincoln's 
 aphorism is true: " You can fool some of the people aU of 
 the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you 
 cannot fool all of the people all of the time." The college 
 graduate has been carefully weighed these many years 
 past, and too frequently he has been found wanting. The 
 specialist and the normal-school graduate have also been 
 tested and the popular verdict is that they, too, are poor 
 craftsmen. But with nothing better in sight and with no 
 recognized standard of professional fitness, the school 
 board and the wage they offer have come to be the con- 
 trolling power. Moreover, it is evident, I think, that 
 this condition of affairs cannot be materially changed so 
 long as the chief factors in the problem remain the same. 
 Our only hope lies in the introduction of a new factor more 
 powerful than any now existing — the professionally 
 trained teacher spedally fitted for secondary 'work. 
 
30 THE TRENB EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 T raining secondary-school specialists. — It may be 
 argued that inasmuch as the cost of a college education 
 even now tends to exclude the best material from the 
 majority of schools, no further expense can reasonably be 
 expected by way of special preparation. While I ac- 
 knowledge the strength of the argument and fuUy realize 
 that professional standards must ultimately conform to 
 economic laws I must stiU insist that a distinctly good 
 thing appeals powerfully to the common sense of the 
 American people. And if the American people see that 
 a thing is worth having they know how to pay for it with- 
 out grumbling. The better class of secondary schools, 
 the coimtry over, pays fair salaries and insists on getting 
 the ablest teachers. The very fact that competition for 
 these positions is so disagreeably keen is the surest guar- 
 antee of a better system of training teachers for secondary 
 schools. An annually increasing number of college grad- 
 uates learn from experience that the best preparation 
 they can make is none too good for the places they desire 
 to fill. They cannot afford to compete, other things 
 being equal, with those whose preparation has been less 
 expensive than theirs; the only hope of the ambitious col- 
 legian is to put himself distinctly above his competitors 
 in his chosen field. He must do as the business man does 
 under analogous circumstances: increase his capital and 
 make ready for a bigger business. This is the oppor- 
 tunity of the departments of pedagogy and of the teach- 
 ers' colleges. It is precisely this condition of affairs which 
 makes possible for the first time in America a serious con- 
 sideration of ideal methods of training teachers for 
 secondary schools. 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 3 1 
 
 Essentials for teachers. — But what is the ideal prep- 
 aration for such teachers? First let me premise that the 
 only method for us is to build on what we have, meet the 
 demands of the times, while aiming at something better. 
 Present conditions seem to me to indicate four quahties 
 preeminentiy desired in the teacher: (i) general knowledge, 
 (2) professional knowledge, (3) special knowledge, and 
 (4) skill in teaching. The inability of the average teacher 
 to present these four qualities in due proportion is the 
 principal cause of the prevailing chaos in secondary 
 education. 
 
 An intellectual perspective. — First, general knowledge. 
 Four years ago the Sub-Committee of Fifteen reported that 
 " The degree of scholarship required for secondary teachers 
 is by common consent fixed at a collegiate education. No 
 one — with rare exceptions — should be employed to teach 
 in a high school who has not this fundamental prepara- 
 tion." Such a qualification seems reasonable enough. 
 The liberal culture impHed in four years of training in 
 advance of the grades to be taught is surely not too 
 much to require from every apphcant for secondary teach- 
 ing. The fact that the secondary teacher is to some 
 degree a specialist, that he knows his subject and exercises 
 considerable ingenuity in satisfying the requirements 
 of coUege entrance or some examining board, is no indica- 
 tion that he has a world-view of sufl&dent breadth to justify 
 him in attempting the training of youth or that he has an 
 understanding of related studies sufficient to enable him 
 to teach his own subject in a scientific manner. The 
 inspiring influence that comes from well-developed manhood 
 or womanhood taught to view the subject matter of 
 
32 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 secondary education in a comparative manner, trained 
 to see the relationships ever)rwhere existing in the various 
 spheres of knowledge — yes, the unity pervading all 
 knowledge — is an influence that the secondary school 
 can ill afford to neglect. 
 
 A knowledge of educational needs and problems. — 
 Second, professional knowledge. It is equally important 
 that the secondaiy teacher be able to view his own subject 
 and the entire course of instruction in its relations to the 
 child and to society, of which the child is a part. A 
 teacher may be able to teach his subject never so well, 
 may even have the reputation of being a distinguished 
 educator, yet his Ufe long be a teacher of Latin, or physics, 
 or history, rather than a teacher of children. The true 
 educator must know the nature of mind; he must under- 
 stand the process of learning, the formation of ideals, 
 the development of wiU, and the growth of character. 
 The secondary teacher needs particularly to know the 
 psychology of the adolescent period — that stormy period 
 in which the individual first becomes self-conscious and 
 struggles to express his own personality. But more than 
 man as an individual the teacher needs to know the nature 
 of man as a social being. No knowledge, I believe, is of 
 more worth to the secondary teacher than the knowledge 
 of what standards of culture have prevailed in the past 
 or now exist among various peoples, their ideals of life, 
 and their methods of training the young to assume the 
 duties of Ufe. Such study of the history of education is 
 more than a study of scholastic institutions, of didactic 
 precepts, or of the theories of educationists; it is Kultur- 
 Geschichte with special reference to educational needs 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 33 
 
 and educational problems. It gives that unifying view 
 of our professional work without which it is idle to talk 
 of a science or a system of education; it prepares the way 
 for the only philosophy of education which is worth teach- 
 ing. Under professional knowledge I should also include 
 such information as can be gained from a study of school 
 economy, school hygiene, and the organization, super- 
 vision, and management of schools and school systems 
 at home and abroad. Some of this technical knowledge 
 is indispensable for all teachers; all that can be gained is 
 not too much for those who will become leaders in the field. 
 But the least professional knowledge that should be deemed 
 acceptable is an appreciation of the physical conditions 
 essential to success in school work and a thorough under- 
 standing of psychology and its applications in teaching, 
 of the history of education from the cultural standpoint, 
 and of the philosophic principles that determine all 
 education. 
 
 Specialized training. — The strongest argument that 
 can be urged against the average college graduate is that 
 he has nothing to teach. The argument applies with 
 even greater force to the normal-school graduate, however 
 well he may be equipped on the professional side. Neither 
 liberal culture nor technical skill can at aU replace that 
 solid substratum of genuine scholarship on which aU true 
 secondary education rests. A teacher with nothing to 
 teach is an anomaly that needs no explanation. And I 
 count that knowledge next to nothing which must be 
 bolstered up by midnight study to hide its defects from a 
 high-school class. No one who knows the scope, purpose, 
 and methods of collegiate instruction, no one familiar 
 
 TREND IN ED. 3 
 
34 "THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 with Ihe work of the normal school, will posit for a moment 
 that such training necessarily gives any remarkable degree 
 of special knowledge. I say this without any disrespect 
 either to the college or the normal school; it is not the first 
 and foremost duty of either of these institutions to turn 
 out critical scholars or spedaUsts in some small field. 
 But special scholarship, I maintain, is an absolute necessity 
 in the quaUfications for secondary teaching. Without it 
 the teacher becomes a slave to manuals and textbooks; 
 his work degenerates into formal routine with no life, no 
 spirit, no educative power, because he knows no better 
 way; the victims of his ignorance rise up to call him 
 anything but blessed, and take their revenge as citizens 
 in ignoring altogether professional knowledge in the 
 conduct of public-school affairs — because they, too, 
 know no better way. Now as never before, do we need to 
 emphasize the possession of special scholarship as an 
 essential prerequisite to secondary teaching. It would 
 seem that no argument were necessary to convince a Yankee 
 that there is virtue in perfect tools, but somehow the idea 
 is abroad that the perfect tool is the perfect textbook. 
 Now is an opportune time to convince the American people 
 that it is "the man behind the gun," rather than the gun 
 itself, which counts. 
 
 A technic of teaching. — It is safe to say that no 
 quality is more earnestly desired in the teacher, or more 
 persistently sought for, than the technical ability to teach. 
 The first question asked of an applicant is not " Has he 
 had a liberal education? " or " What is his professional 
 knowledge?" or "Has he anything to teach?" but this: 
 " Can he teach? " The popular mind fails to recognize the 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 35 
 
 interdependence of these qualities, and failing ia this it 
 bases judgment of a teacher's ability on the relatively 
 non-essential. Ability to maintain order in the classroom, 
 to get work out of his pupils, to satisfy casual supervisors 
 and examiners, to keep fine records and to mystify parents — 
 this too frequently passes for abiUty to teach. Hom 
 seldom, indeed, is a teacher tested by his ability to get 
 something into his pupils, by his ability to impart his 
 knowledge in a way that shall broaden their horizons, 
 extend their interests, strengthen their characters, and 
 rouse within them the desire to lead a pure, noble, unselfish 
 life. School-keeping is not necessarily school-teaching. 
 The technical ability to teach includes both. The art of 
 teaching is mimicry, a dangerous gift, unless it be founded 
 on the science of teaching which takes account of the end 
 and means of education and the nature of the material 
 to be taught. School-keeping may be practically the same 
 for all classes of pupils, but true teaching must always vary 
 with surroimding conditions and the ends to be attained. 
 Graduates of colleges and normal schools alike must fail 
 in technical skUl if they teach as they have been taught. 
 The work of the secondary school is unique. It requires 
 an arrangement and presentation of the subject matter 
 of instruction in a way unknown in elementary education 
 and xmheeded in most college teaching; it requires tact, 
 judgment, and disciplinary powers peculiar to the manage- 
 ment of youth. Herein is the need of that technical skiU 
 which is not, as has been well said, " a part of the natural 
 equipment of every educated person." 
 
 Too poor to afford poor teaching. — The question before 
 us is: How can these qualifications best be secured? There 
 
36 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 may be, however, a preliminary question which some will 
 desire to have answered: What is the relative importance 
 of these qualifications, if all cannot be secured? In at- 
 tempting an answer, I am well aware of the difi&culties 
 presented by actual conditions in various parts of the 
 country, even by conditions which occasionally arise in 
 almost any school, and more particularly by situations 
 presented in the individual characteristics of teachers. 
 There are schools in all parts of the country (one might 
 almost say, all schools in some parts of the coimtry) which 
 think that they caimot afford good teachers. To such 
 schools I can only say that they are too poor to be able 
 to afford poor teachers. It is our business here to assert 
 that the best teacher is always the cheapest; and if our 
 influence has any weight, it should be used energetically 
 wherever it is proposed to employ a poor teacher merely 
 because the poor teacher will work on a lower salary. 
 
 Nattiral endowment of the teacher. — The personality 
 of the teacher, however, is another matter. There are 
 persons who might conceivably possess all of the quali- 
 fications which I have called essential, and yet be unfit 
 to train animals, to say nothing of teaching children. 
 In fact, these qualifications which I have enumerated 
 are really conditioned by certain universal human at- 
 tributes which are prerequisite to the truest success in any 
 vocation in life. The person who does not first of all 
 have high moral worth, intellectual honesty, fertility of 
 imaginacion, industry, sympathy, tact, and common 
 sense can never become a good teacher, and a notable 
 deficiency in any of these attributes will assuredly prevent 
 a person from becoming a great teacher, regardless of 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 37 
 
 professional training — the best that can be given. No 
 one knows better than we do how absolutely essential is 
 the right personality in the teacher. This knowledge, 
 however, should not make us unappreciative of profes- 
 sional training. The rather should we see in profes- 
 sional training the means whereby native impulses are 
 made available and directed systematically toward the 
 highest ends of education. It can do no harm for us to 
 exalt the native quaUties in a teacher's equipment, but 
 it can do no good to overestimate them. School officers 
 too often exhibit a lack of intellectual honesty or common 
 sense when they make professional qualifications of sec- 
 ondary importance in the selection of teachers. From 
 that position it is only one step to personal and partisan 
 favoritism; for no school principal or superintendent can 
 make a strong case against political interference in school 
 affairs, if he himself does not consider professional training 
 an essential article in his educational creed. I yield to 
 none in my appreciation of what is called " personality " 
 in the teacher, but I maintain that the " personal " and the 
 " professional " are coordinate, and that both are essential. 
 To make the " personal " subordinate to the " professional " 
 may be a sin; but to subordinate the " professional " to the 
 " personal " is a crime. 
 
 Selecting a professional equipment. — What, then, of 
 the four quaUfications which I have enumerated as essen- 
 tial in the professional training of a secondary teacher? 
 Is any one of greater relative importance than any other 
 one? First, it may be said that a college course nowadays 
 gives no assurance of general knowledge. There is con- 
 siderable justice, I fear, in that claim. Our colleges are 
 
38 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 all pretty thoroughly inoculated with the germs of the 
 elective systems, and some of them have already developed 
 into serious cases. In fact, it has become so epidemic 
 that it seems useless longer to maintain a quarantine 
 against the contagion. However, this movement may not 
 be a plague except to those who do not know how to take 
 advantage of it. It is true that never before has such 
 wealth of opportunity been presented in higher education. 
 The Hst of courses offered in our largest universities is 
 certainly bewildering to one who is in doubt either of his 
 own abilities or of his future needs. So long as I do not 
 know myself, or what I shall become, how can I choose 
 intelligently from the tender made by a modem university? 
 Individual responsibility. — And, from another stand- 
 point, it may be asked: How can a college faculty intel- 
 ligently prescribe a curriculum for an unknown person 
 bound for an end that is also unknown? It is the com- 
 plexity of modern life that affords the fullest justification 
 of the elective system in higher education. But there is 
 no justification for free election when a definite profession 
 is in view, nor should there be any serious doubt of what 
 subjects are of most worth in the training of a lawyer, a 
 physician, or a teacher. And, in the case of the teacher, 
 most subj'ects of the college course enter into his profes- 
 sional equipment. They are in part the means and in- 
 struments which he must later employ in professional 
 service. Hence I do not hesitate to say that the collegiate 
 education of the secondary teacher should be general in 
 character and liberal in its nature and influence. More- 
 over, it is not the duty of the college or university to make 
 courses of study suited to the needs of teaching or of any 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 39 
 
 particular profession; it is our business as teachers to know 
 what is best for those who will come after us, and it is our 
 duty as a profession to insist upon public recognition 
 of our claims. In other words, it is absurd for us to 
 criticize the college for not giving us what we want and in 
 the way we want it; our part is to know what we want and 
 to see to it that we get it. 
 
 Normal-school limitations. — There is an assumption in 
 what I have said that a college course is an integral part 
 of the professional training of a secondary teacher. After 
 due allowance has been made for aU the defects of col- 
 legiate education, it must still be acknowledged that there 
 is no other institution which can more satisfactorily 
 give the general knowledge so essential in a teacher's 
 equipment. In my opinion, it is scarcely worth while to 
 discuss this point. Nevertheless, the practice of some 
 normal schools warrants the belief that a different con- 
 clusion is possible. I fail to see on what grounds such 
 practice can be defended. A normal school that sets 
 itself up to train teachers for secondary schools either 
 greatly magnifies its ofl&ce or dehberately stultifies the 
 profession which it represents. Of course, I do not refer 
 to those institutions which maintain academic courses 
 equal in scope and quality to college courses, and which 
 provide for four years of instruction in advance of the 
 secondary school. A college degree is no criterion of 
 excellence, nor is it necessary that the institution be known 
 as a coUege. What is wanted is an education broad 
 enough and liberal enough to qualify the teacher to select 
 and train leaders for the coming generation. Such an 
 education surely cannot be given by an institution that 
 
40 THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 limits its field to the needs of a single profession, whether 
 that profession be dentistry, medicine, engineering, or 
 elementary teaching. Not all of a college education 
 comes from the classroom; an important part of it comes 
 from the associations of persons with widely differing 
 interests and ambitions. A professional school is narrow- 
 ing in its influence. A normal school, therefore, if true 
 to its own high calling, cannot be expected to afford a 
 liberal education or to meet the requirements in general 
 knowledge which the secondary teacher should have. 
 
 In the second place, no ordinary normal school can 
 sufl&dently equip the secondary teacher in special scholar- 
 ship. And the secondary teacher who is not a specialist 
 is an elementary teacher who has mistaken his calling. 
 I am well aware that there are schools which expect 
 teachers to teach anything and everything, but unless 
 such schools can secure teachers who are masters of any- 
 thing and everything, it is a misnomer to call them sec- 
 ondary schools. The age of pupils is no guide to the grade 
 of a school. If it were, the evening schools where adults 
 learn their A B C's would be called " evening univer- 
 sities." It win be a glorious day in American education 
 when we have teachers thoroughly capable of teaching 
 any subject in the secondary-school curriculum, but until 
 we can be certain that such universal specialization is an 
 assured fact, we would serve our profession better to insist 
 on sound scholarship in one or two subjects. As things 
 are now in most states, it is a disgrace to the teaching 
 profession that we teachers make no efforts to distinguish 
 between the competent and the incompetent. We even 
 look complacently upon the efforts of politicians and law- 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS POR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 4I 
 
 makers to fix the metes and bounds of our own profession. 
 While it may not be proper for us to adopt trades-union 
 methods, it is certainly most becoming in us to uphold 
 the dignity of our profession by advocating at all times 
 those standards which we know to be right — right not 
 only for us as teachers, but right also for those whom we 
 instruct. And I know I am right when I say that the 
 secondary teacher should be master of every subject which 
 he is called upon to teach. Moreover, I am convinced that 
 the patrons of our secondary schools will believe us when we 
 say it honestly; and when they are convinced, the means 
 for securing such teachers will promptly be provided. 
 
 Finally, we have to consider the aim of the whole matter 
 in what I have called the technical qualifications of the 
 teacher. The public is coming to recognize, what some 
 of us have long known, that trained teachers are superior 
 to novices. That graduates of normal schools are in 
 demand for secondary-school positions does credit to pub- 
 lic opinion; that they should be encouraged to accept 
 such ) positions without having made adequate coUegiate 
 preparation is not creditable to the normal schools. The 
 fact is that both coUegiate and normal training are essen- 
 tial. The problem is how to secure both. 
 
 Meeting the emergency. — I can see only two ways 
 that are practicable. One way is to provide in the normal 
 schools a distinct course to train coUege graduates for 
 secondary schools; the alternative is to establish, in con- 
 nection with universities, professional schools for teachers. 
 Either plan is difficult of execution. CoUege graduates 
 do not assimilate readily with normal-school students; 
 and even if special courses were provided, it would 
 
42 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 require a change in policy and an elevation in standards 
 which few normal schools could or should be expected 
 to meet. On the other hand, it ought to be perfectly 
 clear that a chair of pedagogy — even when it is called 
 " education " or " the science and art of teaching " — is no 
 adequate substitute for a professional school for teachers. 
 Sixty years ago there were such professorships in law, 
 but to-day we have law schools. How long must we wait 
 for "schools of education"? The universities must pro- 
 vide not only courses in the history and philosophy of 
 education, in psychology, and its applications in teaching, 
 in school economy, and the like, but they must also provide 
 for extensive and thoroughgoing practical work. A 
 professional school for teachers is no more complete or 
 adequate without schools of observation and practice 
 than is a medical school complete and adequate without 
 hospital and chnical laboratory. 
 
 So far as secondary-school work is concerned, therefore, 
 either the normal school must raise its standards and pre- 
 pare to enter a new field, or the universities must deal 
 with teachers as honestly and liberally as they do with 
 lawyers and physicians. Personally, I think the uni- 
 versities are the better fitted to take over this work, and it 
 seems to me that they are making very satisfactory prog- 
 ress. But there is chance for great improvement, and this 
 body should let it be known that it appredates the gifts 
 received, but never ceases prajdng for still greater 
 blessings. 
 
 An insurance of professional advancement. — A survey 
 of the field of secondary education discloses that these 
 four essential qualifications of the secondary tcnclcr are 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 43 
 
 everywhere recognized in practice. The diiBculty is that 
 few teachers unite them in due proportion. The thoroughly 
 trained teacher, trained by study and tested by experience, 
 has no difficulty in finding employment or holding his 
 place once he finds it. Those who have positions to fill 
 are eagerly scanning the professional horizon and are 
 thankful for some refreshing sign, even though it is no 
 larger than a man's hand. The function of the teachers' 
 college and the university department of pedagogy is to 
 establish a better code of professional signs and to insure 
 more perfect realization of professional promise. 
 
 The task of teachers' colleges. — I am not of those 
 who believe that legislation is the only remedy, or the best 
 remedy, for existing evils — social or educational. In 
 face of the prevailing economic conditions and with the 
 present supply of secondary teachers, it is useless to urge 
 the enactment of laws requiring a higher standard of 
 academic or professional qualifications. Change the eco- 
 nomic conditions, or improve the quality of professional 
 preparation, and, I believe, legislation will foUow as a mat- 
 ter of course or be found altogether unnecessary. Nor can 
 the economic conditions affecting secondary teachers be 
 materially changed until the pubHc comes to recognize 
 that we have laborers worthy of a better hire. In a word, 
 the burden of improving the condition of the secondary 
 teacher in America rests primarily upon the colleges and 
 universities of America. And this is the task which the 
 departments of education and the teachers' colleges must 
 assume. 
 
 How is it being done? First of all it must be remarked 
 that by far the larger number of colleges giving courses 
 
44 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 in education seem to consider the work in its non-profes- 
 sional aspect. The science and art of education are re- 
 garded as subjects for research and investigation, or as 
 means of liberal culture, akin to history and poUtical 
 science. Such work has its place, but unsupported, it 
 plays no very important r6le in training teachers for sec- 
 ondary schools. 
 
 I find that the institutions giving professional courses 
 in education for intending teachers in secondary schools 
 are in general agreement as to what should be done, 
 although few of them are able to realize their ideals. The 
 diploma, or teacher's certificate, which is granted on the 
 completion of a prescribed course, in the best colleges 
 requires as a rule the bachelor's degree and a certain amount 
 of work in the history and philosophy of education and in 
 educational psychology and practice in teaching. 
 
 An educational code. — The best legislation which can 
 be given us is that which wiU require secondary teachers 
 to earn certificates in the subjects which they teach and 
 which will prohibit their teaching subjects in which they 
 are not certificated. 
 
 The lowest requirements which we can consistentiy 
 make for such a diploma or certificate are as follows: 
 
 (i) The candidate must be a college graduate, at least 
 when he receives the diploma, if not when entering upon the 
 course, or have the equivalent of a college education. 
 
 (2) He must satisfactorily complete courses in (a) 
 the history of education, (b) the philosophy of education, 
 (c) psychology and its applications in teaching, and (d) 
 school economy, especially school hygiene — an allotment, 
 say, of eight hours a week throughout one year. 
 
TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 45 
 
 (3) As evidence of the special knowledge required in 
 each subject in which a diploma is sought the candidate 
 should be able to show the equivalent of at least three 
 years' coUegiate study of that subject — three to five 
 hours a week. But whatever be the requirement in 
 credit-hours, provision should be made for securing a 
 sufficient degree of special scholarship as a prerequisite 
 to what I consider the gateway to actual teaching, viz.: 
 a course in the special methods of teaching each subject 
 elected. Such a course may very properly be conducted 
 wholly or in part by the university department which is 
 responsible for the academic training in subject matter. 
 
 (4) The candidate must be given opportunity to observe 
 good teaching, study its methods under guidance, and 
 finally give instruction under normal conditions long enough 
 to demonstrate his ability to teach. 
 
 This plan wiU enable a thoroughly good college student 
 who chooses his electives wisely to secure a teacher's 
 diploma in one or two subjects, e. g., Latin and Greek, 
 physics and chemistry, at the same time that he gets his 
 bachelor's degree. For the college graduate it provides 
 a one-year professional course which will enable him, 
 granted that he has the requisite academic preparation, 
 to secure a diploma in two or three related subjects. 
 
 A need for united eflfort. — I am happy to say that the 
 scheme just outlined is no Utopian dream; it is being 
 realized wholly or in part in several of our imiversities. 
 That it is entirely practicable I am able to affirm from my 
 own experience in Columbia University. We have en- 
 countered many difficulties, to be sure, and I suspect my 
 colleagues in other institutions have troubles of their own, 
 
46 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 but I am confident that if the plan which I have outlined 
 is one that should succeed, it can be worked out success- 
 fully in many places. It is a work, however, that demands 
 our imited efforts. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS FOR 
 ADMISSION TO COLLEGE 
 
 EXAMINATIONS are presumably means to an end, 
 not an end in themselves. Their value will be 
 determined by the service they render in the at- 
 tainment of the desired ends. In school work the interested 
 parties are the pupil who is entitled to make the most 
 of himself, the teacher whose professional reputation 
 is at stake, and the school or educational system which 
 is supported directly or indirectly by the public for the 
 pubHc good. 
 
 There can be no doubt of the educational value of 
 examinations to those who conduct the examinations. 
 Our daily experience shows conclusively enough that 
 success in life depends largely upon the critical acumen 
 which precedes and influences judgment. Perhaps this 
 is one reason (it is hardly becoming in me to make the 
 suggestion) why colleges cling so tenaciously to the privilege 
 of examining candidates for admission. 
 
 Ability to pass examinations an asset. — But seriously, 
 it is good for a boy occasionally to have to pass formal 
 examinations. He may some day want to be a civil 
 servant — a policeman, a street sweeper, or a teacher 
 (this is not intended to be an anticlimax) — and then he 
 
 A revised reprint from the School Review, 1903, used by courtesy of the pub- 
 lishers. 
 
 47 
 
48 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 will be required to come to terms with a list of questions 
 and an examining board. Moreover, he will have frequent 
 use in Ufe for the ability to conceal his own ignorance. 
 And when we consider, in the words of Richard Baxter, 
 " how very little it is that we know in comparison to that 
 we are ignorant of," it will be seen that the ability to veneer 
 this vast body of ignorance with a respectable coating 
 of usable information is an accomplishment not lightly 
 to be regarded. It might also be mentioned in this appre- 
 ciation of the educational value of examinations {for those 
 who are examined) that there is nothing more likely to 
 take the conceit out of a fellow than a try at a paper set 
 by persons whom he doesn't know in a subject which he 
 thinks he does know. A modern philosopher has remarked : 
 "A reasonable amount of fleas is good for a dog; they 
 keep him f'm broodin' on bein' a dog." 
 
 Testing instructional efficiency. — The topic, as I imder- 
 stand it, excludes the consideration of examinations given 
 in the course of instruction for the purpose of making 
 that instruction more efficient. Such tests as written 
 recitations, quizzes, term and final examinations, and the 
 like are of the greatest value to the teacher who is really 
 concerned in educating his pupils. These examinations 
 are indispensable; they need no argument to justify the 
 position they hold in our scheme of instruction. But 
 examinations conducted by outside authorities are in 
 another category. They, too, may have a place and be 
 valuable, but the justification must come from some other 
 source. 
 
 Valuation of extra-mural tests. — From the stand- 
 point of the pupil, examinations conducted by persons 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 49 
 
 outside the school are far and away more harmful than 
 helpful. I grant that they do tend to keep lazy boys 
 up to the scratch, to show the conceited how httle they 
 know, to train the nervous and scatter-brained to hold 
 themselves in and do something on time: in short, they 
 do help a boy to pull himself together and concentrate 
 himself on a task which requires all strength and ingenuity. 
 But what is it all worth in comparison with the attendant 
 evils? The tendency to substitute for high ideals in 
 scholarship a mere caricature of learning, to put forward 
 a mechanical process as the summum bonum of the school 
 course, to replace clear thinking by guesswork, to regard 
 the examiner as a person to be satisfied at any cost — 
 honestly, if possible; dishonestly, if necessary. Any 
 scheme that puts a premium on success at a particular 
 time or under peculiar conditions, strains the moral fiber. 
 It is certainly good for moral fiber to withstand a strain; 
 but, when for the sake of reward or fear of failure the 
 strain becomes unendurable, the result is altogether bad. 
 The recent experience of an eastern preparatory school 
 is by no means exceptional, save in the extent of the 
 fault and the publicity given to it. The relation between 
 candidate and examiner does not promote high moral 
 standards, witness the need of proctors and the unwil- 
 lingness of boys, even college students, to assume the moral 
 responsibility of taking examinations without watchers. 
 The overseers of a New England college have recently 
 published the following criticism of prevailing student 
 customs: 
 
 It is well understood that the student body in most colleges 
 has always sanctioned a highly artificial code of morals which 
 
 TREND IN ED. — 4 
 
50 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 thoughtful men would repudiate at once in the domain of busi- 
 ness or of society. This peculiar code, which tolerates cheating 
 in examinations, justifies the destruction of private property in 
 the celebration of athletic victories, encourages boorish manners 
 and various forms of reprehensible conduct and causes strained 
 relations between professors and students, was perhaps a natural 
 outgrowth of the inflexible curriculum and the paternal form of 
 college government which prevailed until comparatively recent 
 years. 
 
 The situation is a relic of that educational barbarism 
 which assumed no honesty in the scholar, and no sympathy 
 in the master. 
 
 On this point, therefore, let there be no misunder- 
 standing. To the boy who is examined by outside author- 
 ities for the sake of personal gain, there can be no benefit 
 worth mentioning which cannot be secured equally well 
 in some less reprehensible way; but, on the contrary, 
 the process tends to lower our intellectual and moral 
 standards, a fact which, through long familiarity, we have 
 come to minimize or to disregard entirely. 
 
 The need for outside examinations. — But, as I have 
 said, there is a place for examinations, and in that place 
 they have a distinct value. Outside examinations are 
 imperative whenever the secondary schools are unable 
 or unwilling to assume the responsibility of meeting the 
 requirements for admission to colleges and universities. 
 If good work is to be done in our colleges and professional 
 schools, a suitable foundation must be laid in the field 
 of secondary education. If the secondary schools will 
 not, or cannot, assure the strength of that foundation, 
 then it is imperative that the higher institutions impose 
 their own tests. Weak schools, of course, may be left out 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 5 1 
 
 of consideration. But why, it may be asked, should any 
 secondary school refuse to certify to the strength of its 
 candidates, if it is capable of doing so? Several reasons 
 at once suggest themselves: lack of knowledge of what the 
 higher education really demands, modesty in proclaiming 
 one's own belief, unwillingness to be tacitly responsible for 
 work over which one has no control, inability to withstand 
 the importunity of ambitious parents, adherence to col- 
 legiate customs, and so on through a long catalogue. We 
 have all heard them many times, and in many forms, vary- 
 ing from the modest excuse to the utterly imbecile apology. 
 
 Shifting responsibilities. — So trivial do some of the 
 reasons seem, and so out of harmony with the character 
 of the men who put them forth, that I have concluded 
 to look deeper for the true cause of the apparent unwil- 
 lingness of certain secondary-school masters to stand 
 sponsor for their scholars. When the principal of a large 
 high school teUs me that he has more important work to 
 do than to satisfy the crotchets of some college professor, 
 I can see an obvious reason for his position, but when the 
 master of a school avowedly preparatory to college, and 
 well assured of its patronage, tells me that he prefers 
 outside judgment as to which of his pupils shall go to col- 
 lege, I am at a loss to understand his meaning without 
 appeal to first principles. 
 
 English educational ideals. — The great public schools 
 of England — Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and the rest — 
 have long been ideal fitting schools. Their ideal is, I 
 need hardly say, out-and-out English; it is not French; 
 it is not German; it is not American, but it is a type which 
 finds S3anpathy and support everjrwhere. 
 
52 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 An Englishman, high in the councils of the government, 
 has said: 
 
 " We have never made an idol of intellectual instruction im- 
 parted in day schools. In other words, our great educators have 
 upheld the belief (though we are far from having lived up to all 
 that the belief implies) that a school ought to be something higher 
 than a knowledge factory; that what a man is matters a great 
 deal more than what he knows: That wise actions involve many 
 vital elements besides intellectual attainments; and that educa- 
 tion, in the true sense of the word, is an atmosphere and a dis- 
 cipline affecting heart and mind and body, and neglecting none 
 of the three." » 
 
 Again he says: 
 
 " We are in the habit of liking our national life to be so 
 arranged as to allow as much freedom as possible for every 
 gifted individual to express himself according to his inborn 
 faculty. This means that we prefer imtidy freedom to an immacu- 
 lately neat system of restraints. We resent the idea of pressing 
 boys or girls to learn a great deal at school. We believe in the 
 value of a good deal of well-employed idleness during early years." ' 
 
 In other words, the master has much more to do in school 
 than to give instruction, and for the boy there is a larger 
 and more important life than the life of the classroom. 
 Kipling portrays that life most admirably in The Brushwood 
 Boy in his description of Georgie Cottar's school life. We 
 find the boy at first taking part in athletics; growing 
 strong because of the out-door exercise, and at the same 
 time winning confidence in himself from his contact with 
 his fellows. Later, he became head of the school and head 
 of the house where he lived. It was then his duty to keep 
 order among seventy boys, and to preserve the " tone " 
 of the school. To Georgie, school was the place where 
 
 ' Dr. Sadler, Special Reports, Vol. IX, p. 9. ^ Ibid, p. 501. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL VALITE OF EXAMINATIONS 53 
 
 important things happened and where real situations 
 arose which had to be met wisely; to him the school world 
 was. the real world. And the principal of the school, the 
 Head, was always back of him, guiding him by sugges- 
 tion rather than by direct advice; bringing him to realize 
 that boys and men are very similar, and that the abiUty 
 to manage the one, will, when developed, become the 
 ability to direct the other. 
 
 During the last six months in school he was made 
 familiar with the types of answers most pleasing to his 
 examiners, so that he might be passed on to another 
 school which would more directly fit him for taking up 
 a work in the world. But the important thing was that 
 all the while, his character was gradually being formed 
 by contact with the other boys and by the influence of 
 his masters. " He did not know that he bore with him 
 from school and college a character worth much fine 
 gold, but was pleased to find his mess so kindly." 
 
 This little sketch of Kipling's is, I believe, the best 
 portrait of the English public school in existence. He 
 puts duty, common sense, character, in the foregound, as 
 the great ends to be desired in education. 
 
 The master as a righteous judge. — Such an ideal of 
 education as this demands, indeed, exceptional men as 
 teachers. They are men who cannot be harnessed to a 
 system or hampered by restraints. The master is the 
 school, and because masters differ, the schools will not con- 
 form to an accepted norm. A few succeed; others overreach 
 themselves and are lamentable failures. Under such a sys- 
 tem intellectual attainment ranks as one aim among many, 
 and it is conceivable that it may not always be the most 
 
54 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 important one. Strength of character, honesty, integrity, 
 physical prowess, the ability to lead one's fellows, cannot 
 be relegated to second rank in any system of education. 
 Moreover, the intimacy between master and scholar in a 
 good home school — an intimacy which, in the course of 
 years, ripens into an affection that is akin to parental love — 
 make it extremely difl&cult for the teacher to judge the 
 boy from one standpoint only. He knows him too weU; 
 his faults and his virtues are spread before him in an open 
 book. To single out one attainment on which to predict 
 the future is to neglect others which will surely tell as time 
 goes on. How can the master, under such conditions, 
 be a righteous judge? So it happens that in such a system 
 of education, examinations conducted by higher author- 
 ities come easily and naturally to be the culmination of 
 the school course. 
 
 Limitations of boarding schools. — Say what we will 
 about the English school system, we Americans do believe 
 in the best ideals of EngHsh education. There is some- 
 thing in " Tom Brown's School Days " which thrills us as 
 schoolmasters even more than when we were schoolboys. 
 We are ready to say, and we generally mean it, that what 
 a man is is of far more consequence than what he knows. 
 We believe that the making of man is the chief end of school 
 work, and we are not unwilling to borrow methods from 
 those who seem to be successful in making a certain type 
 of Englishman. 
 
 But notwithstanding our admiration for some things 
 in English education, we cannot accept all that the system 
 implies: class distinctions; "boarding schools for those 
 who are to be leaders in Church and State, day schools of 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 55 
 
 an inferior sort for the masses; " separation of the sexes 
 whenever possible; interference of a state church; low 
 ideals of scholarship. Some of those we regard not so 
 much a fault of EngHsh education as of EngHsh Ufe, but 
 bad teaching is certainly the work of poor teachers. 
 
 A comparison of tjrpes. — It has been remarked that in 
 judging a teacher, the German asks, " What does he know? " 
 the American, "What can he do?" the EngHshman, "Is 
 he a good fellow? " Dr. Sadler, whose oflSce in England 
 corresponds to that of the commissioner of education 
 in this country, says on this point: 
 
 No schoolmasters in the world lavish more time and thought 
 and strength on the care of their pupUs than the English secondary 
 schoolmasters. On what may be called the pastoral side of their 
 office, they are beyond rivalry. . . . But because the English 
 secondary schoolmaster so often lives among his pupils from 
 morning to night, he has far less time and strength to spare for 
 professional studies than has his continental counterpart. He is 
 much more the friend of his pupils, and much fresher in his sym- 
 pathies with the interests of young people. But he is far less of a 
 student; as a rule, is much less learned; and is often a hardened 
 amateur in his methods of teaching. . . . Clumsy, antiquated 
 methods of instruction are far too common in our secondary 
 schools.^ 
 
 It is for an intellectual tradition, as persistent and 
 congenial as the ethical tradition which characterizes 
 the best English education, that Dr. Sadler pleads: 
 
 The development of individual intelligence is largely a question 
 of methods of teaching, but also of choice of studies. Educational 
 efficiency of the best kind depends on having small classes; highly 
 trained teachers; skillful methods of teaching; not too many sub- 
 
 ' Dr. Sadler, Special Reports, Vol. IX, pp. lo, ii. 
 
56 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 jects; the right order of subjects; the right choice of subjects; and 
 the avoidance of hurry; of excessive competition, and of intellectual 
 overstrain. . . . The keen study of methods by teachers is 
 one of the best signs of educational progress. But the aim shotdd 
 be, not to enable the pupil to win a prize or a scholarship by a cer- 
 tain time, or to pass in some competitive examinarion (though I 
 am far from meaning to imply that all competition is bad or that 
 aU examinations could be dispensed with) but to start him in the 
 right way of learning things for himself, to arouse his interest in 
 important subjects, and to give him a sure foundation of accurate 
 and well-directed knowledge Large numbers of our secondary 
 schools are worried by a superfluity of examinations. It would 
 be far better to have some well-defined intellectual aim for each 
 school, and to allow the teachers to work steadily and quietly 
 toward that aim.' 
 
 I have quoted thus at length from a high Enghsh au- 
 thority to show how conscious some Englishmen are of 
 the great defects in Enghsh education. His verdict is, 
 in a word, (i) low ideals of scholarship and (2) bad teach- 
 ing. Both lead naturally and inevitably to the curse of 
 examinations systematized and conducted by authority 
 of the state or university. 
 
 The American ideal. — We Americans are, as Mr. 
 Kiphng puts it, " mixed peoples with all the vices of men 
 and boys combined." But along with the vices go virtues, 
 which our schoolmasters steadily keep to the front. We 
 beKeve in the doctrine of equal opportunity for all men, 
 and for every boy and girl who can use it we believe it an 
 educational ladder reaching from the kindergarten to the 
 university. That ideal at least is not Enghsh. We 
 beHeve in helping each pupil to make the most of his op- 
 portunities and to become that which he wishes to be, 
 
 ' Dr. Sadler, Special Reports, Vol. IX, pp. 163, 164. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 57 
 
 providing his aim is not too obviously harmful to his 
 fellows. We set up no barriers, social or otherwise, to 
 hamper his progress, and we never regard his career as 
 ended until he is safely under ground. There is no " cul- 
 mination" in American life short of death itself. Our 
 school system, therefore, if it is to fit for American life, 
 can have no bounds. We have no right to speak of the 
 " culmination " of a school course, unless we mean thereby, 
 in college parlance, a "commencement." And least of 
 all should we think of examinations as the culmination 
 of anything educational. 
 
 Development of an educational organic unity. — Let us 
 reason together about this thing — this relic of educational 
 barbarism. It comes to us with the English stamp not 
 yet effaced; it bespeaks a tradition of poor scholarship 
 and bad teaching. It is enforced by institutions which 
 are complacent enough to suppose that scholarships can be 
 erected on a secondary education, the sole guarantee of 
 which is an examination for college entrance, or in lieu 
 thereof, as was once remarked in a meeting of this asso- 
 ciation, " the good looks of the candidate." Is it not 
 more reasonable to suppose that when we succeed in 
 evolving an American system of education — really 
 American, I mean, not a mere cross or hybrid — it wiU be a 
 unity, a system necessarily made up of constituent parts, 
 but so nicely adjusted that part will work with part in 
 organic unison? When that time comes I venture to pre- 
 dict we shall hear nothing of examination for admission 
 to any grade or to any school, but much wiU be said of 
 examinations for instruction and promotion. The ele- 
 mentary school will pass on its pupils into the secondary 
 
58 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 school, and the secondary school will admit them to 
 college, if that be their proper aim. Or, more properly 
 speaking, scholars who are let out of one grade or school 
 will admit themselves to the grade or school next higher. 
 Already we hear it said that graduates of any good four- 
 year high-school course should find a college course open 
 to them. I accept the statement, and should be glad 
 to add to it these words — " without examination by 
 college authorities." 
 
 A necessary evil. — But before these words can be 
 added, the American pubHc must see to it that the high- 
 school course is really good, and that the teachers, in 
 point of character, scholarship, and professional ability, 
 are reaUy worthy of the positions they occupy, and of the 
 hire which they ought to have. In the meantime, it is 
 our duty to be righteously discontented with our present 
 schemes of state inspection, regents' examinations, coUege 
 entrance boards, and the like, knowing them aU to be dis- 
 pensations of Providence, calculated to keep us humble, 
 and fit us for a more blessed state. The millennium is 
 not yet in sight, but the advance made in recent years 
 in the matter of uniform entrance requirements, and 
 especially in the estabhshment of the College Entrance 
 Examination Board, is most gratifying. While we are 
 waiting, let us be honest enough to confess that all these 
 examination schemes are devices, as some say, to impress 
 upon a doubting world the great importance of certain 
 indispensable institutions of higher learning, or the ac- 
 knowledgment, as others declare, of the shortcomings of 
 American secondary schoolmasters. 
 
 A problem for solution. — To sum up: Examinations 
 
THE EDXTCATIONAL VALUE OF EXAMINATIONS 59 
 
 must have a place in every scheme of instruction. Instruc- 
 tion can proceed only when the extent and quality of the 
 learner's knowledge is definitely understood. Every reci- 
 tation, every review, is such an examination; further 
 examinations of a formal sort are often desirable for the 
 sake both of the teacher and of the pupil. But such ex- 
 aminations are given by teachers within the school or school 
 system and primarily for the purpose of instruction. 
 Examinations by those outside the school, especially 
 when given for the purpose of determining a pupil's 
 abiUty to undertake an entirely new course of instruction, 
 have no educational value for the pupil which carmot be 
 secured equally well in some less reprehensible way. Such 
 examinations, however, are practically necessary when 
 intellectual attainment is not the only aim of school 
 instruction, and both necessary and inevitable when that 
 instruction is inefficient. Outside examinations are im- 
 perative whenever the secondary schools are unable or 
 unwilhng to assume the responsibihty of meeting the 
 requirements for admission to colleges and universities. 
 Until a norm of secondary instruction is established and 
 generally recognized, college entrance examinations can- 
 not be dispensed with. The sole object of this paper is 
 to show that such examinations have no especial educa- 
 tional value for those who are examined; they do have a 
 distinct value in our school system and must be retained 
 until some better plan is found for keeping weak schools 
 up to grade and for the elimination of bad teaching. The 
 scheme of college entrance examinations is altogether a 
 matter of temporary expediency. It tests merely the 
 candidate's store of learning and to some extent his ability 
 
6o THE TREND ESI AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 to use that learning; it does not measure his intellectual 
 desires, his moral strength or his aesthetic taste. Mean- 
 while it is our duty to find some way of assuring the intel- 
 lectual ability which students must have on admission to 
 college and at the same time of encouraging the preparatory 
 schools to emphasize in their course of training the manly 
 virtues and the liberal culture which all men need in life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE OPPORTUNITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF 
 PROFESSIONAL SERVICE ^ 
 
 A QUERY and a criticism. — " How is it that the 
 United States can afford to pay a half dollar 
 in wages when we pay a shilHng, and yet compete 
 with us in the markets of the world? " This is a qtiestion 
 that was addressed to industrial England by an English 
 business man whose knowledge of industrial conditions 
 in three continents qualifies him as an expert. When Mr. 
 Mosely put that question he thought the answers could be 
 found in American education. Accordingly, he invited 
 a score or more of the leading teachers, ablest scholars, 
 and keenest investigators of Great Britain to help him 
 study American schools and methods of teaching. 
 
 What was the result? In the report of the Mosely 
 Commission we can see ourselves as others see us — some 
 others, at any rate — critics who tell us some unpleasant 
 truths. These EngKsh experts, to a man, declare that it 
 is not because of our schools that we succeed; some of 
 them insist that if we keep up the pace it will be in spite 
 of our schools and schooling. What is it, then, that gives 
 us such advantage of our old-world neighbors? One 
 answer is as follows : 
 
 "America's industry is what it is primarily because 
 of the boundless energy, the restless enterprise, and the 
 
 'The Commencement Address delivered at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, 1906. 
 
 61 
 
62 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 capacity for strenuous work with which her people are 
 endowed; and because these powers are stimulated to 
 action by the marvelous opportunities for wealth pro- 
 duction which the country offers. These conditions have 
 determined the character of all American institutions — 
 the schools included. The schools have not made the 
 people what they are, but the people, being what they 
 are, have made the schools." 
 
 Moreover, it is pointed out that our present schools 
 are too young to have had any perceptible influence on 
 our industrial activity or social life. Our leaders of to-day 
 were trained under the old regime or have come to us 
 from abroad, some with good schooling, others with 
 little of any kind. Our workmen, the best of them, are 
 self-trained or imported ready-made. The only native 
 quality that we apparently have or exercise is, as Professor 
 Armstrong says, " cuteness." And in this respect school- 
 ing is of httle account. He says: 
 
 "In point of fact, American cuteness would seem to 
 be conditioned by environment rather than by school 
 education. The country was settled by adventurous, 
 high-minded men; the adventurous and restless spirits 
 of Europe have been attracted there for generations past; 
 the conditions have always been such as to develop enter- 
 prise and to stimulate individuality and inventiveness: 
 so that, during the whole period in which the continent 
 has been gradually acquired and settled on, there has 
 been a constant and invigorating struggle going on against 
 nature in one form or another, the Indian probably having 
 played no mean part in the education of the race. Such 
 being the case, it is important to remember that some at 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 63 
 
 least of these influences are now withdrawn and that de- 
 velopment may, in consequence, be along different lines 
 in future, especially as the enervating influence of machinery 
 is also coming into play more and more." 
 
 The causes of success. — In the introduction to this 
 report Mr. Mosely discounts some of the findings of his 
 experts. He points out that South Africa is a land of 
 great opportunity, that it possesses enormous resources, 
 that it has been settled by as brave a people as can- be 
 found an5rwhere, and that in all essential respects it is 
 not unlike the United States or any other new country. 
 Despite all this, he maintains. South Africa has not be- 
 gotten great industrial leaders and that but for the trained 
 American engineer South Africa would still be undeveloped 
 and unproductive. He finds the secret of American 
 success, therefore, in the American system of education. 
 
 Here are three reasons given by keen men bent on 
 finding the causes of American industrial success: (i) A 
 golden opportunity in a new country marvelously rich 
 in natural resources, (2) the disposition of the typical 
 American to take chances, to play the game to the end 
 whatever the odds; and (3) professional training directed 
 to practical ends. 
 
 No one can deny that these three causes have been 
 potent factors in all our past. But what of the future? 
 Is the opportunity what it once was? Will American 
 shrewdness still find free scope? Shall we still have need 
 of professional training? 
 
 The period of rapid development. — Seventy-five years 
 ago we had a population of 17,000,000, the great 
 West virgin soil, our forests scarcely touched, our mines 
 
64 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 almost wholly undeveloped, our foreign trade of no ac- 
 count, few steamships, and less than 3,000 miles of rail- 
 road. No equal period in all history can at all compare 
 with the two generations just passed in the creation of 
 wealth and the exploitation of natural resources. It has 
 been an age of unparalleled advance in man's ability to 
 control and direct the forces of nature, the age of steam 
 and electricity. "The United States has to-day within 
 its borders," says an eminent economist (President James), 
 " an effective power in the engines at work, far surpassing 
 the total possible power of the entire population of the 
 world a century ago. In many lines of work one man, 
 with the aid of a small machine, may do as much as fifty 
 or a hundred men could have done at the beginning of the 
 century. While in other departments, owing to the de- 
 velopment of the application of steam and electricity, one 
 man may do what all the population of the world combined 
 could not have accomplished a hundred years ago." 
 
 The spirit of pioneering. — The achievements of the 
 last century, particularly those of the last score of years, 
 are of such stupendous magnitude and so revolutionary 
 in character as to fix a gulf between the Hfe of to-day and 
 that which our ancestors led when they began the conquest 
 of this new world. The man who braved the dangers of 
 the deep, for weeks together, in a sailing vessel, tossed 
 about on an uncharted ocean and landed upon an in- 
 hospitable shore, had faith and fortitude and courage 
 unknown to those of us to-day who think of a sea voyage 
 as a pleasant relaxation from every-day toil. The prayer 
 for the person going to sea is no longer suffused with the 
 emotions which once characterized that formal appeal 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 65 
 
 to the "Eternal God who alone spreadest out the heavens 
 and stillest the raging of the sea to guard the loved one 
 from all danger, from sickness, from the violence of enemies 
 and from every evil to which he may be exposed and to 
 conduct him in safety to the haven where he would be." 
 
 The pioneer who set out alone to explore unknown 
 wilds, or with wife and children turned his face to the 
 setting sun to found a new home beyond the mountains, 
 or on the plains, or across the great desert, was made of 
 sterner stuff than his descendant who complains of the 
 luxuries of the palace car and chafes under the restraint 
 of a few minutes delay in making schedule time across the 
 continent. The man whose success calls for individual 
 initiative, whose subsistence is gained by the work of his 
 own hands, whose life depends upon a quick eye and a 
 sure aim, such a man is somehow radically different from 
 the men of to-day. He belongs to a by-gone age, to the 
 days of homespun and log cabin and flintlock — the 
 days of the simple Hfe, the hardest kind of living. 
 
 The willingness to take a chance. — It is httle wonder 
 that the t)Tjical American has learned to take chances, 
 that the gambler's instinct within him amounts almost to a 
 passion, that on the thing he wants he wiU stake his last 
 doUar, even life itself. Without this passion to win out 
 or die in the attempt, a direct inheritance with our Anglo- 
 Saxon blood, this country could not have been developed 
 as it. has. Without it we should doubtless be playing the 
 r6le of a South American republic, or be like Africa, a 
 bone to be snarled over by European dogs of war. As 
 a people we have taken the chance that was offered to us 
 a century ago and we have played the game, most of the 
 
 TREND IN ED. — 5 
 
66 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 time with a lone hand. It has been a desperate sort of 
 training, this game with fate and fortune, but it has 
 developed a type of civihzation such as the world has 
 never before seen. It has raised up men who have dared 
 to harness the steeds of the Sun and drive them abreast 
 across our heavens from the Massachusetts Bay to the 
 Golden Gate, men who have burrowed into the earth 
 and brought forth Kght and heat and power that defy 
 the limitations of time and space, men who have organized 
 and directed commercial enterprises productive of wealth 
 beyond the wildest dream of oriental potentate or of the 
 avarice of imperial Rome. 
 
 The land of opportunity. — In the olden time men saw 
 eye to eye, they stood shoulder to shoulder, and they 
 fought hand to hand. Individual initiative, personal 
 prowess, reckless daring, and persistent effort were the 
 vital factors in securing success. These quahties are still 
 important, indeed they are absolutely indispensable, 
 but in the future that awaits the young American of to- 
 day, it is a different kind of initiative and another type of 
 prowess that is needed. The extraordinary increase 
 of man's power over the forces of nature witnessed in the 
 lifetime of those of us who are not yet willing to be called 
 even middle-aged, has revolutionized communication and 
 bids fair to put transportation by steam out of business. 
 Who knows but the next generation may see new methods 
 of transportation as far superior to the steamship and 
 railroad as the telephone and telegraph are superior to 
 the post rider and letter carrier? Who will search out 
 these undiscovered forces and who will direct their use in 
 ways beneficial to mankind? Who, indeed, if not the 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OE PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 67 
 
 young men, who are going forth strong to battle and con- 
 fident of victory? If it be true that the Hfe of to-day is 
 far removed from the hfe of yesterday, it is equally true 
 that the man of to-day far surpasses the man of yesterday, 
 surpasses him, I mean, in ability to do simply because 
 he has more power, infinitely more power in many ways, 
 with which to do the work of the world. The youth of 
 to-day have the hand, the eye, and the strong right arm 
 that their great-grandfathers had, and I doubt not could, if 
 necessary, acquire something of their skill and cunning; 
 they have inlierited their zeal and indomitable courage 
 and, if need were to arise, would demonstrate it again as 
 their fathers did before them; they are, or may be, all that 
 the men of the past have been, but they are more — in- 
 finitely more — than their forefathers ever were simply 
 because the intervening years have added untold wealth 
 to the patrimony of every person who enters this new 
 century. They are " the heir of all the ages, in the fore- 
 most files of time " and may be the possessors of the best 
 the world can give. The fact that some will seize this 
 birthright and lead the way to new conquests and enjoy 
 new triumphs discloses the meaning of civilization. If 
 human genius has increased the working efficiency of Ger- 
 many ten- or iifteenfold in two generations, what may not 
 be expected in young America in the next half century? 
 "Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay," 
 sang the English poet eighty years ago. I say to you 
 better fifty years of America than anything that the 
 world has to offer. America still is the land of oppor- 
 tunity for us as it was for our fathers when they spied it 
 out and took possession. 
 
68 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Popular history records an age of stone, succeeded by 
 ages of bronze and iron and gold. But the age in which 
 we live will surely go down in history as the age of power 
 and wealth. It is an age in which man has counted less 
 as a mere laborer and more as a human being than in any 
 past time. Increased power means increased wealth, 
 and wealth makes leisure possible. The widespread use of 
 machinery on the farm, for example, makes it possible 
 for the farmer to gain subsistence with less expenditure 
 of time and labor than in the days of hand power; or if he 
 works diligently and intelligently he may accumulate 
 wealth in a manner not usually gained by tillers of the soil. 
 
 Science and natural resources. — The markets of the 
 world are controlled by those who can best use the forces 
 of nature. Danish farmers, I venture to say, are no 
 stronger, no more diligent, no more anxious to succeed than 
 are New York or Georgia farmers, and Danish farms are 
 naturally no more productive than the farms of New York, 
 and far less fertile than the best of the South or of the 
 central West. But Denmark has been making good use 
 of trained leaders. When, some forty years ago, she saw 
 depression settling down on her agriculture like a mist, 
 she set about finding the means of dispelling it. She sent 
 envoys to the London markets to find out what was 
 wanted; she established Agricultural Colleges to find out 
 new methods of farming; she founded scores of Agricultural 
 Schools accessible to aU farmers' boys and girls; she sent 
 out trained inspectors to advise and counsel with farmers 
 on ways and means of improving their output; she set up 
 testing stations where anyone might ascertain the quality 
 of his goods; she organized cooperative agencies for 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 69 
 
 distributing and marketing her products. The result is 
 apparent: Denmark has gained precisely that which New 
 York and every other state in this Union lacks and some 
 day must have — leadership in fields to which modern 
 science is applicable. 
 
 The age of democracy. — I have said that this is an age 
 of power and of wealth; I should add to this the further 
 characterization that it is par excellence the age of democ- 
 racy. The use of machinery driven by steam and electrical 
 power has made possible great accumulation of wealth! 
 and has put the intelHgent workman in possession of 
 forces that are productive far beyond the productivity 
 of any simple pair of hands. It has made leisure possible, 
 as I have said, to a degree unknown in any previous age. 
 A man is more a man to-day than ever before. The 
 power that he can wield is greater, and the leisure that he 
 can find after . earning his daily bread is so much greater 
 than ever before that we are confronted with problems 
 and situations never before met with in social life. Power 
 of itself is not dangerous and wealth is not dangerous, 
 but a democracy pledged to grant to each individual the 
 greatest possible freedom supplied with wealth untold 
 and capable of wielding irresistible power, may become 
 either the greatest curse or the most signal blessing ever 
 bestowed upon human society. No great nation that I 
 know of has ever undertaken to grant a square deal to 
 every man; no one has ever attempted to make every 
 person fairly intelligent and capable of using his powers 
 in any way that seems to him most fit; no nation has ever 
 pinned its faith so implicitly to the good that is in the 
 common man; no nation expects so much of self-sacrifice 
 
70 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 and unselfish devotion from its leaders in public and private 
 life. The American Republic is still on trial; it remains 
 to be seen whether a " nation, conceived in liberty, and 
 dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
 equal . . . can long endure." 
 
 Education a necessity. — The world offers no such 
 opportunity elsewhere as lies just ahead of the young 
 American who shares Nature's secrets and knows how to 
 use the forces that Nature supplies. The leadership of 
 the olden time may have been dependent upon the accident 
 of birth, but the leadership of the time that lies just ahead 
 is a matter of professional training. One may grow up 
 naturally to be a leader of men on the field, or in the 
 forum; it is conceivable that great statesmen or business 
 men may yet be graduated merely from the "school of 
 Hf e " ; but the day has passed when the great engineer is 
 self-taught, or when the intending physician comes up 
 from cleaning the old doctor's buggy to the mixing of 
 pills and practicing on country folk, or when the law 
 student attaches himself as oflEice-boy and copyist to some 
 law ofSice. The standard set to-day for the engineer, the 
 physician, and the lawyer will be required to-morrow or 
 the day after of the preacher, the teacher, the farmer, the 
 statesman, the business man. Simple operations, even 
 those of a professional character, may be learned by obser- 
 vation and perfected by practice, but few of nature's 
 forces are simple when followed up. It requires no ex- 
 traordinary intelligence, for example, to convert com into 
 pork — any fairly healthy hog will do that if you give 
 him a chance — but it requires the patient research of 
 the professional chemist, the skill of the engineer and the 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 71 
 
 practical capacity of the great business man to convert 
 com into the hundred and more different kinds of products 
 now on our markets, ranging from Vermont maple syrup 
 to guncotton and from glucose to pyroxylyn varnishes 
 and battleship armor. 
 
 Advancement of medical science. — Time was when 
 smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, cholera, and yellow 
 fever were regarded as dispensations of Divine Providence, 
 scourges of an angry God which might well terrify even 
 the most stout-hearted; to-day, thanks to the advance of 
 medical science, they have been shorn of their terrors and 
 relegated to the hst of preventable diseases. Modem 
 surgery, thanks to methods of antiseptic treatment intro- 
 duced by Lister and to the discovery of anaesthesia made 
 by one of our own American physicians, has brought into 
 this world within a generation more genuine thankfulness 
 for the alleviation of pain and suffering than the human race 
 since its creation has ever had cause to show. These 
 conquests of medical science, and others of which no lay- 
 man is competent to speak, are due, every one of them, to 
 better knowledge of Nature's laws and to increasiag profes- 
 sional skill. And how modem it all is. The man (Doctor 
 Bowditch) who organized the first laboratory for phys- 
 iological research and microscopic investigation in any 
 American medical school has but recently retired from 
 active service in Harvard University. In 1871, when he 
 began his teaching, the Harvard Medical School was 
 graduating physicians after one year's hearing of lectures 
 with only a little dissection in the anatomy course. Think 
 of it — no laboratories, no microscopes, no bacteriology, 
 no hospital service, in the foremost University medical 
 
72 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 school of this country — and that in the lifetime of most 
 of my readers. 
 
 Growth of professional schools. — And how was it a 
 generation ago with other professional schools; such as 
 Schools of Law for example? Well, the one at Columbia 
 University, under Professor Dwight, was certainly not 
 inferior to any other that can be named. It was then a 
 proprietary institution to which almost anyone who could 
 pay the fees might find admission, and while eminently 
 successful it bore little resemblance to the carefuUy or- 
 ganized, scholarly professional school which to-day 
 admits only college graduates. The schools of engi- 
 neering, I hardly need mention here. Fifty years ago 
 there were only three in this country, and four-fifths of 
 all we have to-day have been established in the last thirty 
 years. Civil engineering then comprised practically the 
 whole field; mining and mechanical engineering were in 
 their infancy; electrical engineering, sanitary engineering, 
 chemical engineering, and all the rest of them existed then, 
 if they had any existence, only in the embryonic stage. 
 As for our schools of veterinary medicine, dentistry, 
 agriculture, horticulture, and the hke, they are the product 
 chiefly of the last quarter century. The professional 
 training of elementary teachers has had a history of 
 about sixty years, but I have personally had a part in 
 building up the first University professional school for 
 teachers in this country, or, for that matter, in the world. 
 
 The dilemma of the public. — Professional training 
 on a university plane, training that seeks to make use 
 of and apply the highest scholarship in every field of 
 scientific research, is very, very modern. When I look 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 73 
 
 about me and see what has been accomplished in a few 
 short years, I marvel at our attainments and take courage. 
 When, on the other hand, I consider how far short we 
 come of perfection, how we fail to do even that which 
 we could do if only we had more time for study, greater skill 
 in teaching, higher standards of admission, better equip- 
 ment in hbrary, laboratory, and shop. I feel like be- 
 rating the public for its lack of confidence in professional 
 ability and its want of faith in professional service. But 
 these lapses are momentary. I know the world is full 
 of quacks and charlatans whose sole business is to prey 
 upon the ignorant and to get money falsely from those 
 in need of professional service. I know, too, and I blush 
 to say it, that there are those who have enjoyed the priv- 
 ileges of professional training, who have been for years 
 together the recipients of public generosity and private 
 beneficence, who have taken day after day the best that 
 devoted teachers can give, but who seem to have no pro- 
 fessional honor and to recognize no professional obligations. 
 These are they of whom the world has a right to ask 
 for bread and yet who, when asked, give instead a stone. 
 The great fraternity of professional man has no greater 
 burden to bear than that imposed by its own dehnquent 
 membership. There is no obstacle to professional success 
 comparable to that set up by men professionally 
 trained who lack professional instincts and professional 
 honor. What wonder that the public finds it difficult 
 to discriminate between the quack and the physician, 
 between the honest engineer and the knave who slights 
 his job, between the teacher who educates and the 
 person who merely gives instruction! The success of 
 
74 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 every professional leader is measured, not so much by 
 his material accomplishments, by what he can get for 
 himself, as by what he can do for others and the con- 
 fidence he can estabhsh in himself. Every professional 
 man who fails to measure up to the highest professional 
 ideals not only falls short of his own best good but posi- 
 tively harms every other man who would attain the best. 
 No man can be a leader in any field who does not have the 
 confidence of those who should foUow him; no group 
 of men can lead effectively if some of them are 
 unable or unwiUing to stand the test of professional 
 efficiency. 
 
 The obligations of youth. — Standing as do the young 
 people of America at the opening of their careers, facing 
 opportunities which no one before ever enjoyed, equipped 
 for service as few of their predecessors have been, they 
 owe a duty to their profession and to society which de- 
 mands the highest endeavor. They are what they are 
 by virtue of parental devotion, social beneficence and 
 professional training; the least they can do to honor 
 those whose name they bear is to be true to themselves; 
 the least they can do for their State is to repay its invest- 
 ment in them by upholding its standards of citizenship; 
 the least they can do for their profession is to defend 
 its honor and to serve it with loyalty and devotion. 
 
 The Hippocratic oath. — On every Commencement 
 Day in my own university I hear the Hippocratic oath 
 administered to the graduating class of our College of 
 Physicians and Surgeons. It never fails to rouse in me 
 the deepest emotions. When I realize that for centuries 
 those entering the oldest of our learned professions have 
 
OPPORTUNITIES OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 75 
 
 sworn directly or indirectly to discharge those profes- 
 sional obligations which were as patent to the Greeks of 
 two thousand years ago as to us of the twentieth century, I 
 think I understand why it is that the good physician is 
 jealous of his honor and how it comes that high and low, 
 rich and poor, may appeal to the good physician in certain 
 faith that to the best of his ability he will serve them all 
 alike. Listen to that oathl^ 
 
 "Candidates for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine: 
 
 " In our profession it is a custom, established more 
 than two thousand years ago, that no man may be ad- 
 mitted to its honors who has not first expressly taken 
 upon himself its obHgations. Now, therefore, in behalf 
 of your elders, I call upon you to take, as we have taken 
 before you, the oath which bears the name of Hippo- 
 crates. . The language in which our predecessors first 
 pronounced it is no longer spoken; the very gods whom 
 they called to witness have been discarded; but still we 
 can find no nobler words than the most ancient in which 
 to hand down the traditions of our calling. 
 
 "You do solemnly swear, each man by whatever he 
 holds most sacred : 
 
 " That you wiU be loyal to the Profession of Medicine 
 and just and generous to its members; 
 
 " That you will lead your lives and practice your art 
 in uprightness and honor; 
 
 "That into whatsoever house you shall enter, it shall 
 be for the good of the sick to the utmost of your power, 
 
 1 Introduction, by J. G. Curtis, M. D., to the " Hippocratic 
 Oath," spoken annually at the Commencement of Columbia Uni- 
 versity. 
 
76 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 you holding yourselves far aloof from wrong, from cor- 
 ruption, from the tempting of others to vice; 
 
 "That you will exercise your art solely for the cure 
 of your patients, and will give no drug, perform no opera- 
 tion, for a criminal purpose, even if solicited; far less 
 suggest it; 
 
 " That whatsoever you shall see or hear of the hves of 
 men which is not fitting to be spoken, you wiH keep in- 
 violably secret. 
 
 " These things do you swear? Let each man bow 
 the head in sign of acquiescence. 
 
 " And now, if you shall be true to this your oath, may 
 prosperity and good repute be ever yours; the opposite, 
 if you shall prove yourselves forsworn." 
 
 Other professions call for no such formal asseveration 
 of intentions. But I charge the youth of America, in the 
 name of those who have gone before, in the name of all 
 those who have contributed to that wealth of knowledge, 
 that store of custom and tradition, that accumulation of 
 spiritual gifts,. which are so freely theirs, in the name of all 
 those who have made their opportunity greater than that 
 which they themselves enjoyed, I charge them to be men, 
 good men, strong men, men ready to aid the suffering, 
 to succor the weak, and to uplift the faint-hearted, men 
 devoted to your profession, jealous of its integrity, faith- 
 ful to its trusts and anxious for its advancement, men 
 capable of leadership in this new century, and worthy of 
 American citizenship, the finest flower of advancing 
 civilization. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE * 
 
 THE choice of a profession marks a crisis in a young 
 man's life. It is the end of a period of irrespon- 
 sible Uving, of acquisition without purpose, 
 and of expenditure without reward. It is the beginning 
 of a period of self-direction and self-control, of struggle 
 for mastery, of devotion to duty and service to others. 
 
 The selection of a calling. — No wonder that the young 
 man — when I say " young man " I mean also the young 
 woman with professional aspirations — approaches this 
 crisis with strangely conflicting emotions. He is uncertain 
 of himself. He has no means of knowing whether he is 
 physically fit and temperamentally adapted to meet the 
 strains of professional life. Nothing in his personal 
 experience enables him to judge of his ability to excel in a 
 particular professional career; and he has only the most 
 superficial views of the duties and obligations of any kind 
 of professional service. But the necessity of making 
 a living drives him on. He is attracted by the prizes 
 that reward the successful practitioner and he longs to 
 do something that will count in the estimation of his fel- 
 lows. His youthful optimism buoys him up and he 
 dreams of the good he may do. The choice is made 
 despite the doubts which arise and which occasionally 
 continue to harass until he finds himself, years afterward, 
 in and through his professional work. 
 
 ' A revised reprint from the Columbia University Quarterly, December, 1908. 
 
 77 
 
78 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Since many of my readers have either chosen a pro- 
 fessional career or are in the way to do so, I shall discuss 
 some aspects of professional service. I purposely limit 
 the scope of this survey, because some things are obvious 
 to all who have eyes to see what is going on about them, 
 and because some things may safely be neglected in 
 addressing an American audience. Therefore, I shall 
 say nothing of the relative importance of the professions. 
 It is obvious that any profession has its advantages and 
 disadvantages — for some who contemplate its exactions; 
 and that aU are in need of the uplift that comes through 
 strong and capable men. We may safely neglect, too, 
 the pecuniary rewards of professional service, for who is 
 not aware that the laborer is worthy of his hire and that 
 in every profession the assiduous devotee is assured of a 
 decent living? There is opportunity, abundant oppor- 
 tunity, in every field, and no one need turn aside from any 
 preferred course for fear that it will not yield the neces- 
 saries of life or give free scope to honest effort. 
 
 Professional service. — I use the term profession in 
 a liberal sense, as any vocation in which specialized 
 knowledge is rationally, ethically, and skiUfuUy appHed 
 in practical affairs. In this sense we recognize profes- 
 sions of engineering, teaching, agriculture, architecture, 
 banking, military affairs, and the like, as well as the 
 traditional professions of theology, law, and medicine. 
 With increasing knowledge, higher ethical standards, 
 and more rational practice we shall some day have pro- 
 fessions of merchandising, journalism, housekeeping, 
 nursing, pharmacy, dentistry — possibly even a pro- 
 fession of politics. Some occupations are debarred from 
 
THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 79 
 
 the professional class because of lack of scientific attain- 
 ments, others by want of an ethical code, and a few by 
 reason of insufficient technical skill. Conversely, any 
 profession may be debased by practitioners who profess 
 what they do not know, or cannot do, or who fail to 
 recognize the moral obligations of their position. Pro- 
 fessional service implies the possession of knowledge and 
 power restricted to the few, but denied to the many. It 
 implies leadership and bespeaks leaders who are worthy 
 of the trust that the many should place in them. 
 
 The function of the university. — The relation of the 
 university to the professions is clearly apparent. The 
 function of such an institution as this, indeed its sole 
 function, is the training of leaders. First, in its quest 
 for new knowledge in every field and in its provision for 
 giving instruction in what is known, the university dis- 
 charges its foremost duty to the professions that it rep- 
 resents; second, by formal teaching and through the 
 influence of its social life the university promotes those 
 ideals of social conduct which obtain between man and 
 man; finally, in its professional schools, the university seeks 
 to organize knowledge for professional ends and to give 
 training in acceptable methods of procedure. 
 
 The obligations of service. — The man who chooses a 
 profession deliberately purposes to become a leader of 
 men. He takes advantage of opportunities for study 
 and training which few can enjoy. He equips himself 
 for work in which he has few equals and may have no 
 superior. He professes to be able to do what the many 
 wish to have done but cannot do for themselves, and he 
 invites the confidence and support of those who lack his 
 
8o THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 ability. The professional man, therefore, voluntarily 
 assumes obhgations which can be adequately met only 
 by the most conscientious preparation maintained 
 throughout a lifetime of devoted service. 
 
 The value of a liberal education. — We must distinguish 
 between the preparation necessary to enter upon a pro- 
 fessional career and the equipment essential to the highest 
 success in a particular profession. Time was when most 
 of what was needed could be acquired in professional 
 practice. The apprentice system did enable the beginner 
 to assimilate the accumulated experience of his masters 
 and to acquaint himself with the ethical standards of 
 his colleagues. When knowledge was limited, experience 
 counted for much, and the graduated steps in the ad- 
 vancement of the novice gave him that understanding 
 of human nature without which no one may aspire to 
 be a leader of men. To-day there is much to learn before 
 professional work can be begun. Every decade sees 
 scholastic requirements advanced and insisted upon. 
 The maximum of to-day is the minimum of to-morrow, 
 Just because we are adding daily to the knowledge that 
 honest professional men must use in their practice. The 
 only question of an academic nature that can be raised is 
 where to draw the line between what is essentially prepara- 
 tory and what can safely be left to later acquisition. 
 There is no limit to what the professional man needs 
 short of the furthermost bounds of scientific knowledge 
 applicable to his professional work. Indeed, he must go 
 further than merely professional needs. He who would 
 be a leader of men in any profession must see his work 
 in its relation to the work of other men, see it as a part 
 
THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 8l 
 
 of a greater whole in which all things work together har- 
 moniously in the upbuilding of a higher hfe. This, I 
 take it, is the justification of a hberal education prepar- 
 atory to the professional course. It appeals to me as a 
 higher motive than that of personal gratification or gen- 
 eral culture. It means knowledge of use, directly or 
 indirectly, in promoting a better civihzation. 
 
 The opportunity of the student. — The student who 
 begins his professional course in a modern university 
 finds it a storehouse of knowledge. A part of what is 
 taught may be unscientific and much of it may be poorly 
 organized and inadequately presented, but these are the 
 problems of scholarly research and university adminis- 
 tration. No student in our university classes heed 
 languish for lack of intellectual stimulant or hunger 
 for substantial mental pabulum. The honest student 
 may discover our defects, but he wiU have no time for 
 faultfinding. He will be too far on the road to discovery 
 to share his secrets with the uninitiated. The most serious 
 obstacle to the advancement of the professional student 
 is the presence in our classes of those unable or unwilling 
 to keep the pace. An inscrutable Providence, it may be 
 assumed, inspires to professional study even those who 
 are least capable, but why they should be inflicted is a 
 mystery understood only by those who know why you 
 get measles and mumps and second teeth. You may 
 endure stoically the blunderings of your incapable asso- 
 ciates, they will always be with you, but you have a right 
 to resent the interference of those who are able to keep 
 step but refuse to do it. It is a curious commentary 
 on student life that those who deHberately seek to retard 
 
 TREND IN ED. 6 
 
82 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 the advancement of a class by " bluffing " the instructor 
 or absorbing an undue proportion of his attention, 
 should ever be tolerated by honest students. It is per- 
 haps still more remarkable that those who intentionally 
 and persistently shirk class duties deceive themselves 
 in thinking that it is of little consequence. 
 
 Why such self-deception? Who has not sized up every 
 classmate from the primary school on? One knows 
 every shirk and every trickster with whom one has been 
 associated. In the ordinary course of events the asso- 
 ciates of these defaulters in years to come will know 
 them as their associates do now. Talent and brilliancy 
 cannot redeem such reputations. Some day when you 
 wish to retain a lawyer in an important case you will 
 not turn to the man, however brilliant or talented, who 
 tricked you in class. You will never entrust your life, 
 or the life of anyone you are responsible for, to the care 
 of that physician who undervalued scientific facts and 
 Jumped at conclusions in the classroom. You will place 
 no confidence in the business man who as fellow student 
 could not be depended on to do the fair thing. When 
 the crucial time comes you wiU search out the man who 
 knows how to do honest work, and you wiU prefer him 
 for his straightforwardness rather than for any other 
 qualification. Your way in such cases is the way of the 
 world. It is the penalty — silent, unobstrusive, but no 
 less effective, — that society inflicts on those who shirk 
 its responsibihties. No further explanation is needed 
 of the failure of some men to attain commanding success. 
 
 The need for socialization. — He who would be a 
 leader in professional life should understand human 
 
THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 83 
 
 nature. He needs an intimate knowledge of his fellow 
 men, quick insight into human passions and prejudices 
 and a sympathetic understanding of man's ambitions and 
 aspirations. He must be wiUing to bide his time and know 
 how to act when the right time comes. In all his dealings 
 he must exercise tact and common sense. In a word, 
 he must know how to get on with his fellows. 
 
 There is no factor in professional equipment so diffi- 
 cult of acquisition as this personal one. We take it for 
 granted, other things equal, that the man who has it will 
 succeed and that without it failure is almost certain. 
 Strange that in our training courses we take no account 
 of it. We seem to forget that while we are born with 
 social instincts, we learn by experience the traditions of 
 social life and acquire painfully the habits and customs 
 of those among whom we Hve. A man learns how to get 
 on with his fellows and how to lead them just as he learns 
 everything else worth doing. A Robinson Crusoe exist- 
 ence is no preparation for social living. 
 
 The ethical import of professional service requires that 
 the professional man maintain a healthy interest in his 
 fellows. He may not divorce himself from those whom 
 he serves or from his professional colleagues. He should 
 not live to himself alone, least of all during those years 
 of preparatory training when habits are being fixed and 
 customs established for all one's later life. This, I take 
 it, is the justification of all our so-called college-life, our 
 clubs and fraternities, newspapers and periodicals, debates 
 and athletic sports. We need them — the more the 
 better, provided they are well conducted and kept within 
 their proper sphere. 
 
84 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 The value of college athletics. — Much has been said 
 of late concerrung American college sports. It is pointed 
 out that relatively few engage in them, that they are 
 unduly expensive, that they absorb too much time and 
 are attended by serious abuses, and that instead of manly 
 sports they have become games in which the determina- 
 tion to win outweighs all other considerations. It is a 
 pity that such charges can be brought against a legitimate 
 activity of student Hf e and a greater pity that our students 
 do not themselves make such criticism impossible. 
 Despite all criticism, however, college sports and athletics 
 are here to stay until something better is found. They 
 afford healthful pastime for many who take only unim- 
 portant parts. There is variety enough to hold the 
 interest of all who can be induced to cooperate with their 
 fellows. Note the hst: walking, ruiming, jumping, hurd- 
 hng, vaulting, throwing, wrestling, fencing, boxing, tennis, 
 rowing, lacrosse, baseball, basket ball, and football. Yes, 
 even football, the most maligned of all, is worth playing, 
 provided it can be a clean sport. I have no fear of serious 
 harm from a few bruises and sprains and broken bones. 
 AU these will mend. They are the price youth pays for 
 good health and animal spirits; they are part of the cost 
 of learning how to get on with one's fellows, how to lead 
 and be led in the practical affairs of life. The curse of it 
 all is its taint of professionalism, a misnomer, by the 
 way, because true professionalism, as I have tried to show, 
 is guided by the highest ethical motives. The fault 
 lies in exaggerating the element of contest and in making 
 the determination to win paramount to all other con- 
 siderations. It is the same kind of mistake that some 
 
tM. CAlL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 85 
 
 college students and some college professors make when 
 they consider the acquisition of knowledge, however 
 valuable, an end in itself. A more wholesome view, in 
 my opinion, is that both college studies and college sports 
 are means to ends, the chief purpose of which is not the 
 winning of the game. 
 
 College fellowship. — The social life of our American 
 colleges is rich in educational possibilities. I would 
 not limit the activity of any decent club, or society, or 
 association of students in which men get acquainted 
 with one another, learn one another's strength and weak- 
 ness, and become familiar with the ways of thinking and 
 acting that prevail in student Hfe. Here they learn to 
 give and take. Under the stress of such social inter- 
 course the youth restrains his personal whims, modifies 
 his family prejudices and becomes one of a social group, 
 a group which ought to be tj^ical of the best the world 
 has to offer. If our college life falls short of this high 
 ideal it is due to the frailties of human nature and the 
 inexperience of college students. 
 
 There never was a time when college life was cleaner, 
 freer from immoralities and youthful excesses, than it is 
 to-day. The typical college student is honest of purpose, 
 fair in his dealings, upright in his Hfe, and enthusiastic 
 in his interests. The coUege community is far safer 
 than city streets or country villages. Some there are 
 in every community who transgress the limits of pro- 
 priety. We know the college student who thinks it smart 
 to have his fling, and we hear the excuse that one must 
 know the seamy side of life in order to cope with it. But 
 the honest student is fully aware of the fallacy. He knows 
 
86 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 that in order to cope with snakes he doesn't need to crawl 
 on his belly. The man who debases himself can offer 
 no excuse for it save that of selfish gratification. 
 
 University ideals. — If university studies afford the 
 substantial materials out of which the professional man 
 carves his career, it is equally true that his college life 
 is the medium in which he develops his standards of 
 personal worth. The professional school seeks to organ- 
 ize the scientific knowledge within a particular field and 
 to adapt it to practical ends. The way in which this 
 is done, the character of the instruction, the spirit of the 
 instructors and the tone of the place determine in a large 
 measure the ethical as well as the scientific status of the 
 school. Careful, exact, conscientious workers are not 
 trained by teachers who are indifferent to scientific accuracy 
 in the classroom and unresponsive to the claims of the 
 profession they represent. On the other hand, we ap- 
 preciate the inspiring uplift of the great teacher — the 
 man who through devotion to his subject leads his students 
 to a clearer vision of the truth as he sees it and rouses 
 within them the ambition to give equally noble service. 
 But however great the skill and inspiring the presence 
 of teachers in a professional school, they cannot supply 
 all the training that a professional school should give; 
 they cannot give that which students should give to 
 each other. Just as college life furnishes the means 
 of quickening the social and civic conscience of college 
 students, so, the professional school needs a Hfe of its own 
 for the promotion of professional ethics and the develop- 
 ment of professional morals. The student of law should 
 enter upon his life work not only familiar with legal facts 
 
THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 87 
 
 and procedure, but also helped by his fellows to appreciate 
 his position as the peacemaker of society. The teacher 
 should go out not merely grounded in the subjects he will 
 teach and skilled in giving instruction, but also eager to 
 serve society in the way that he knows others of his fellows 
 can and will serve it. The engineer who makes rail- 
 roads, builds bridges, devises and operates machines, 
 constructs canals and aqueducts, and directs great indus- 
 trial plants should somehow come to reahze that his 
 chief end is not the making or saving of money for himself, 
 or for anyone else, but that he is a responsible factor in the 
 present industrial order for the betterment of social 
 conditions. Is he likely to get that notion in his active 
 career, urged on, as he is sure to be, by business com- 
 petition and the thirst for gain? Will the solemn promise 
 of the medical graduate to observe the vows of the Hippo- 
 cratic oath be of much avail if during the years of his 
 preparation the fuU import of that historic formula is 
 not borne in upon him by aU the force of example in his 
 daily intercourse with teacher and fellow student? 
 
 Ethics of the profession. — Great as is the need of 
 scientific attainment in every profession, there is even 
 greater need of moral responsibility. We want lawyers, 
 physicians, teachers, engineers, business men, who not 
 only know how to do things but who will also insist on 
 doing them right — men who, conscious of their abiHty 
 as leaders, are jealous of their professional honor — men 
 who will readily sacrifice personal gain to uphold the 
 dictates of conscience in their professional service. The 
 professional school is the place above all others where 
 such ideals can be impressed upon young men. There 
 
88 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 is no time in life when men are so susceptible to generous 
 impulse and no place where so many can be influenced 
 at once. But, as I have already said, it is not the work 
 of teachers and faculty alone; it is preeminently the 
 result of the interaction and interrelation of students 
 engrossed in a common undertaking and stirred by a 
 common ambition to make their Hves count for most. 
 The duty of the student is to join hands with teachers 
 and fellow students in making these years of professional 
 study also years of growth into professional stature. 
 The Ufe outside of class can be so ordered as to reinforce 
 and supplement the instruction received. It is serious 
 work to which the student puts his hand and he wiU be 
 held strictly responsible both by his own conscience and 
 by the judgment of his fellow men for the way he per- 
 forms this task. 
 
 The inspiration of professional service. — The call to 
 professional service comes to young men in the form of 
 imperious command. If it were the call to arms in the 
 defense of cotmi-ry they would respond by tens and hun- 
 dreds, and not one would falter whithersoever duty led. 
 This call to service which I voice comes from fellow country- 
 men who are engaged in that everlasting war with sin 
 and ignorance and greed and selfish ambition. They 
 call on us to equip ourselves for leadership and they con- 
 fidently expect us to stand forth when the time comes, 
 fully prepared to merit the confidence they would place 
 in us. They have put at our command all the resources 
 of the universities which bring to us the wisdom of the 
 ages and line us up with the great men who have preceded 
 us. It is an inspiring company of leaders in statecraft, 
 
THE CALL TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 89 
 
 theology, law, medicine, business, engineering, and in 
 all arts and sciences of every field. No one of those 
 whom we to-day call great, no one whose life we would 
 set up as a measure of our own, has failed to respond to 
 that appeal in the cause of righteousness which comes to 
 all in the call to professional service. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LITE ' 
 
 THE American school is under fire — it is always 
 under fire. Just now it is said that its cur- 
 riculum is overloaded with fads and frills which 
 burden the child and hamper his training in subjects 
 essential to his success in life. Pubhc opinion is critical 
 of a system which makes easy the advancement of a few 
 to positions of commanding influence, but which provides 
 no vocational training for the many who cannot afford 
 to remain in school beyond the elementary grades. The 
 demand is for equality of opportunity in education without 
 regard to social rank or wealth or any special privilege, 
 that kind of equaHty which enables one to become a good 
 American citizen, and which, as I understand it, is estab- 
 lished on the ability to earn a decent liveHhood and the 
 determination to make one's life worth the living. 
 
 The motor element in learning. — The instruction 
 given in our public schools is chiefly of two kinds: (i) 
 humanistic, including language and literature, history 
 and civics, and the fine arts; and (2) scientific, includiag 
 mathematics, geography, physics, chemistry, and biology. 
 Our schools also provide for training in the practical 
 arts which are required in the study of these subjects, 
 preeminently the arts of reading, writing, singing, and 
 drawing. Of late years the attention given to hygiene 
 
 ■ A revised reprint from the Educational Review, December, 1909, used by courtesy 
 of the publishers. 
 
 90 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 9 1 
 
 has begotten systematic training in gymnastics and 
 athletic games. Our school work, however, is bookish, 
 a term of reproach with some, but properly understood 
 it stands above criticism. That which is worth knowing 
 about human progress is for the most part contained in 
 books. The scientific studies, as well as the humanistic, 
 have been recorded in books; indeed, it would hardly 
 be creditable to our civilization if the achievements of 
 one generation were not made available for the genera- 
 tions that follow after. And what form is more endur- 
 ing, what form more available, than the writing which 
 may be read by all who are wilKng to master the con- 
 ventional arts confirmed by use and tradition? If our 
 schools are culpably bookish, it is because our teachers 
 misuse the book and confound methods of teaching with 
 the acquisition of knowledge. Given something to learn, 
 whether contained in a book or not, it is the teacher's 
 business to see that the learner approaches his task in 
 such a way as to make his progress certain and the re- 
 sults secure. If motor expression will help ease the way 
 or better define the end, the good teacher will surely 
 use it. And one should know that reading, writing, 
 and' singing are as truly means of motor expression as 
 drawing or dancing or handiwork. In so far, therefore, 
 as the aim of learning is to acquire knowledge, there is 
 no good reason for spending an hour in manipulation 
 when the fact may be as well taught without it in a 
 minute. On the other hand, the fact which calls for motor 
 expression and the process which demands technical 
 skill, may never be acquired in their completeness with- 
 out persistent drill. But drill for the sake of technical 
 
92 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 skill is one thing; motor expression for the sake of clari- 
 fying, strengthening, and assimilating knowledge is an- 
 other thing. To learn by doing is well enough, if there 
 is no better way; to do, without learning from it, is to 
 drop to the level of the brute, a travesty on pedagogical 
 insight. 
 
 Manual training in school curricula. — The significance 
 of motor expression in the learning process came to con- 
 sciousness in our schools only a generation ago; indeed, 
 we are only now becoming alive to its place and possi- 
 bilities. Some got the notion at first that there was a 
 magical charm in the training of hand and eye. Manual 
 training was heralded as the remedy for all defects of 
 vision, mental and physical, and the claim was made that 
 in whittling paper-knives out of wood the boy was really 
 shaping his own character. To follow exactly the speci- 
 fications of a blue-print drawing was thought to be the 
 surest way of bringing home the lessons of honesty, sobriety, 
 and truthfulness. Until within ten years, manual train- 
 ing was defended by its over-zealous advocates on the 
 grounds of its value as a mental and moral disciph'ne. 
 It is difficult for us to see, even after the lapse of so few 
 years, why such great worth was imputed to manual 
 dexterity and so little value attached to good reading 
 or legible writing or correct translation. 
 
 It is past our comprehension, even now, how anyone 
 could have supposed tliat mere doing could rank in educa- 
 tional value with the doing of something worth while. 
 The fact is, of course, that no one really thought, regardless 
 of what may have been said, that making nothing and 
 making something were one and the same. The early 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 93 
 
 projects in manual training may seem to us trivial, but 
 their value is not to be reckoned in terms of accomplish- 
 ment, but rather in terms of effort. They represent an 
 effort to secure at any cost the motor expression demanded 
 by child nature. If the teacher of the humanities and the 
 sciences would not employ it intelligently, here was a 
 group of enthusiasts who would use it anyway, unintel- 
 ligently, if necessary. Public opinion, not always a safe 
 pedagogical guide, supported them, and the result is a place 
 in the curriculum for a subject which few know how to 
 teach and which perhaps no one should teach in the way at 
 first proposed. 
 
 In supporting the demand for manual training in the 
 industrial and household arts, pubhc opinion outran the 
 educational theorists. Fathers and mothers care relatively 
 little for formal discipline of any kind. They want tan- 
 gible results. They want their children to be able to 
 read, write, and reckon. Some go so far as to ask for 
 an appreciation of good literature and the fine arts, and a 
 working knowledge of history, civics, and the sciences, 
 but such are always in the minority. The one thing 
 that every parent wants, the one thing that gives him 
 most anxious thought, is how best to make his child 
 self-supporting. In manual training he sees a chance to 
 develop that skill of hand required by the craftsman; 
 in the technical processes he discovers a likeness to the 
 processes with which he is acquainted in the home or 
 in the industrial world. The study promises material 
 reward and he seizes the chance to turn it to account in 
 the vocational training of his child. 
 
 The development of applied design. — Manual train- 
 
94 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 ing in some form is here to stay. The teacher needs it in 
 teaching not one subject, but most subjects; the public 
 demands it because it offers the most obvious means of 
 beginning the training for vocational Hfe. Under the 
 combined influence of pedagogical needs and public 
 demands, the content of our manual training courses 
 has been radically changed within the past decade. In 
 the effort to give free expression to the child, all manner 
 of projects have been carried out through handwork. 
 Woolly sheep have sported with polar bears under fir 
 trees set in a desert of sand. Bookbinding and block 
 houses, Indian war bonnets and water wheels, inkwells 
 and Navajo blankets, bent iron jimcracks and raffia 
 baskets, book shelves and dolls' clothes, broom holders 
 and picture frames — all these and a thousand more 
 mixed up in indescribable confusion! Is it any wonder 
 that someone should raise the cry of fads and frills? The 
 wonder is that anyone should try to justify such work in 
 school on any ground other than mere recreation. Absurd 
 as it may seem when one reads over a Ust of manual proj- 
 ects actually put before our children in school, there has 
 been consistent progress along two lines: (i) in the usable- 
 ness of the completed article, and (2) in the design and 
 artistic finish given to it. The difficulty of children's 
 making really usable things contrasted with the ease 
 of executing artistic design has largely changed the char- 
 acter of manual training within the past ten years. In 
 fact, manual training to-day is little more than applied 
 design. In this respect it is quite worth while. It is the 
 best thing that has come into our schools in recent years, 
 and we cannot afford to lose it. 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 
 
 95 
 
 Manual training as applied design is a subject quite 
 different from the sloyd and formal projects of twenty 
 years ago. If manual discipline is no longer wanted for 
 itself, one may ask why the term manual training should 
 be retained. Why not combine with drawing and call it 
 all " art " or " applied design? " Another question — Why 
 should we have distinct courses in the household arts in 
 the lower grades of the elementary schools? The work 
 done in these Hues is either applied design or training in 
 the technic of housewifery. This consideration raises 
 another question: What is the place of vocational training 
 in the elementary school? 
 
 School levels and specialization. — One characteristic 
 of the American school system is apparently fixed. The 
 work of the first six years of the elementary school is 
 fundamental, the same for all regardless of sex or future 
 occupation. Six years of schooling is the usual legal 
 requirement, and there is a consensus of opinion that 
 specialization should not begin before the twelfth or 
 thirteenth year of age. Some would defer it two years or 
 more, but the number of children leaving school at or 
 before the end of the sixth grade warrants the attempt 
 to make the work of the first six years of the elementary 
 course complete in itself, and as comprehensive as pos- 
 sible. Such a course should be cultural in the best sense, 
 a course calculated to put the child in possession of his 
 inheritance as a human being and fit him to enter upon 
 whatever work may be expected of him in the years im- 
 mediately following. With six years of good funda- 
 mental training, the child is ready at thirteen or fourteen 
 to look forward to his life work. The physiological age 
 
96 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 suggests differentiation for the sexes. For those who go 
 to college, it is time to begin specialization along academic 
 lines; for those who are to become artizans or farmers, 
 or tradesmen, as soon as possible, it is time to begin voca- 
 tional training. Specialization at the age of twelve to 
 fourteen years should begin gradually, and in the voca- 
 tional lines it should be essentially preparatory to the 
 later years of trade school or apprentice training. My 
 point is that when the boy or girl hears the call of voca- 
 tional hfe, specialization should begin and gradually narrow 
 into technical training for specific occupations — for some 
 at the age of twenty-five in professions; for others at the 
 age of sixteen in the trades. Between these extremes 
 will be found most vocations in which men and women 
 engage. A fundamental course of six years, at once 
 cultural and preparatory to the widest possible range of 
 differentiated courses beginning with the seventh grade, 
 is the chief desideratum of our American school system. 
 
 Study of economics for perspective. — The present 
 curriculum of our pubHc schools, as I have already shown, 
 is chiefly composed of humanistic and scientific subjects. 
 We have made an attempt to introduce certain industrial 
 and household arts, but they are so lacking in coherency 
 as to raise serious doubts of their value as fundamental 
 subjects. Nevertheless, there is another subject of in- 
 struction as fundamental as any now contained in the 
 curriculum. If the humanistic studies are essential 
 in the training of the child in his social relations, and the 
 scientific in his relations to the physical world in which 
 he lives, it is equally important that economic studies 
 be included in the curriculum to provide instruction 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 97 
 
 in the industries from which man gains his material 
 possessions. 
 
 Of course, I do not mean to include economic studies 
 in the elementary school for the sake of technical training 
 in any industry any more than I advocate the study of 
 poetry in the grades for the training of the poet, or design 
 for the artist, or biology for the physician. I mean the 
 study of industries for the sake of a better perspective 
 on man's achievements in controlling the production, 
 distribution, and consumption of the things which con- 
 stitute his material wealth. For these he labors for 
 life; on the use he makes of them depend much of his own 
 happiness and the well-being of his fellows. It is only 
 by means of such studies, whether pursued systematically 
 in schools or picked up under the adverse conditions of after 
 life, that we acquire the basis of Judgment concerning 
 the acts and aspirations of our fellow men, either those 
 who provide the capital for exploiting natural resources 
 or those who do the work required in the several indus- 
 trial pursuits. In our political life, no knowledge is of 
 more consequence than that which is concerned with the 
 relations of capital and labor; for us, as a people, there is 
 nothing more to be desired than a sympathetic under- 
 standing of the conditions under which men earn their 
 living. Is a liberal education possible in this age without 
 a knowledge of these things which more than all others 
 make men free or leave them slaves? 
 
 Defining life-aims. — A threefold division of the cur- 
 riculum — humanistic, scientific, industrial — has the ad- 
 vantage over the present twofold division not only in 
 providing a more liberal education, but also in affording a 
 
 TREND IN ED. — ^ 
 
g8 THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 better preparation for the differentiated courses which 
 begin in the grammar school. The training now given 
 in language and literature, and in the arts and sciences 
 of the elementary school, is of prime importance as a 
 preparation for any course that a child may pursue later 
 on; in some respects, no other training can approach it in 
 practical worth even for the work of the lowest grade 
 of trade school. Nevertheless, it is an assured fact that 
 our boys and girls do not enter industrial life with the 
 same confidence that they exhibit in other fields for which 
 their academic training has fitted them. They see no 
 fascination in industrial activity and they have no basis 
 of judgment for choosing any particular career. The 
 fault is largely due to avoidance of industrial instruction 
 in the schools, as something degrading if not positively 
 unclean, and the setting up in its place of unattainable 
 ideals at variance with the actual conditions of society. 
 I would not check the ambition of any American child, 
 however high his goal — it is his birthright as an American 
 citizen — but I would have the school help him define 
 the aim of his Hfe in terms of his own natural endowment 
 and possible attainment. The child has a right to this 
 kind of guidance; the school must give it, and what the 
 school gives must be determined by sympathetic instruc- 
 tion along the Knes leading to the goal. 
 
 Revision of present practices. — The public, in giving 
 support to manual training and the household arts, un- 
 doubtedly intends these subjects to promote closer rela- 
 tionship between the school and vocational life; some 
 teachers of these subjects unquestionably do use them 
 with precisely this intent; but efficient instruction pre- 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 99 
 
 supposes something definite to teach and a consistent 
 way of teaching it. Subtract from our present manual- 
 training course that which is essentially applied design 
 and those exercises which are intended to afford motor 
 expression in the learning of other subjects in the cur- 
 riculum, and what is left is an incoherent, unorganized 
 series of projects without purposes or educational value. 
 However good the artistic treatment, and however desir- 
 able the assistance giv^en in acquiring knowledge of other 
 subjects, the results now obtained contrast most un- 
 favorably with what might be secured from a series of 
 projects harmoniously organized to attain a specific end 
 and at the same time incidentally to provide for the nec- 
 essary motor expression and all needful application of 
 artistic design. In other words, motor expression and 
 art training may as well be secured as by-products in doing 
 something worth while as by making them ends in them- 
 selves. Whatever value may attach to the subject 
 matter in such procedure is clear gain. The plan I pro- 
 pose, therefore, is intended to retain all that is of real 
 worth in manual training and at the same time to get 
 something still more to be desired. It is precisely the 
 plan long followed by good teachers of reading and writing. 
 The child in his reading may as well read the best of lit- 
 erature as the poorest, and in writing learn how to ex- 
 press himself clearly, concisely, and in good form as to 
 follow everlastingly a copy-plate. 
 
 It may be interjected at this point that some teachers 
 of manual training have used the subject as a means of 
 introducing the child to the complexities of social Hfe, 
 that it has been a means of socializing him, that it has 
 
lOO THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 given Mm a chance to find himself in the midst of a highly 
 artificial and conventional environment. If this be true, 
 and the aim is certainly not an unworthy one, the end 
 may as well be attained by putting the activities proposed 
 on the high plane of real life. 
 
 Social needs and subject matter. — The problem, then, 
 is to organize the information within the industrial field 
 in such a way as to make it valuable, first, in the edu- 
 cation of the masses and, second, in technical training 
 for specific vocations. There is no lack of information; 
 what is knowable in any industry is beyond the reach of 
 anyone save the most expert specialist, and even he is 
 tantalized by his inability to grasp all within his reach. 
 That a field is large, overwhelmingly large, ought not 
 to deter the educator from entering it. The scientific 
 field, for example, is large, overwhelmingly large, but 
 when it is systematically classified the teacher is in a posi- 
 tion to select that which may have educational value 
 even for the youngest cluld. Without classification it 
 might be possible to teach much of practical value, but the 
 school course from infancy to adult life would present a 
 sorry spectacle. The logical arrangement of scientific 
 information is the only criterion of the worth of the com- 
 pleted scientific course. The selection of materials for 
 presentation at any particular stage depends upon peda- 
 gogical insight which takes into account both the goal 
 to be reached and the peculiarities of the learner. The 
 way in which children learn determines the method of 
 approach to any subject, but it sets no standard of worth 
 upon the acquisition. The only criterion of excellence 
 is to be found within the subject itself in its relation 
 
THE SCHOOL AISTD INDUSTRIAL LIFE lOI 
 
 to human needs. How the child learns that 2 X2=4 
 is a problem in psychology; whether 2 x 2 is actually 4, 
 what relation it bears to other mathematical facts, and 
 whether it is worth learning at all, are problems reaching 
 far beyond child-psychology. In classifying the informa- 
 tion mthin a given field, we estabHsh standards by which 
 we judge the relative worth of component parts and dis- 
 criminate between what is essential or characteristic, 
 and what is accidental or accessory. Such categories we 
 have in the humanities and the sciences, and they control 
 the trend of instruction throughout the school course. 
 We need such a guide to the industries in order that every 
 step from the kindergarten on to the technical school may 
 fit into our plan for industrial education. 
 
 Selection of subject matter. — Much confusion in the 
 work of manual training has come from a failure to dis- 
 tinguish between the psychological guide to methods of 
 teaching and organizing subject matter, and the logical 
 guide to the sequence of topics and the value of the com- 
 ponent parts. The need of food, clothing, and shelter, 
 for example, is easily brought home to a child. The 
 psychical reaction to the suggestion that he satisfy these 
 needs for himself is an excellent starting-point for the 
 study of primitive life; it gives a splendid clue to ways of 
 approaching certain fundamental industrial processes, 
 and for that purpose may often be used advantageously 
 in teaching. But to set up this principle as a guide for 
 making courses of study is to confound means and ends. 
 Everything worth having in this life has a place in the 
 gratification of human wants — language and literature, 
 science and fine arts, politics, law, and religion, no less than 
 
I02 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 food, clothing, and shelter. What is stiitable food, how 
 it is produced, distributed, and prepared for eating, and 
 what becomes of it in nutrition is a subject for study 
 quite apart from the satisfaction of hunger. The need 
 of sustaining life may make the study of great importance, 
 but it suggests no classification of the knowledge aboimd- 
 ing in the scientific and industrial processes. Likewise 
 the need of speech for the interchange of ideas gives 
 no clue to the systematic structure of language, to say 
 nothing of the vocabulary and the grammatical charac- 
 teristics of any particular language. The conclusion, 
 therefore, is that the method of rediscovery of ways and 
 means of satisfying human needs is no sufi&cient guide 
 either to what children should learn or to the sequence 
 of materials employed in instrurtion. 
 
 The industrial processes by which man acquires his 
 material possessions and shapes them according to his 
 desires, are directed to the transformation of natural 
 resources. Raw materials are produced and worked 
 over; they are distributed and put to use. Each step, if 
 properly taken, adds to their value. What constitutes 
 value and what means are employed to effect the change 
 should be made the subject of instruction. True, the 
 amount of human labor involved is immeasurable, the 
 variety of human occupation almost inconceivable, and 
 the range of productive activity well-nigh beyond our 
 understanding, but the fundamental processes are limited 
 and relatively simple in their operation. 
 
 Studying products of commerce. — For pedagogical 
 purposes, the materials of most significance in the in- 
 dustries are (i) foods, (2) textiles, (3) woods, (4) metals, 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE IO3 
 
 and (5) clays and other allied earth materials. Fuels, 
 supplying great industries in themselves, occupy a middle 
 ground between industrial materials and the motive 
 power employed in the industrial arts. Commerce is 
 that industry which uses the products of all other in- 
 dustries in making things available for human consump- 
 tion. This classification has the advantage of fixing 
 attention on the stuffs out of which things are made and 
 upon which human ingenuity brings to bear its most 
 lavish expenditure of industrial effort. The next step 
 is to single out the dominant processes in the successive 
 stages of production, manufacture, and distribution, and 
 their interrelations, pecuHar to each class of materials. 
 The facts concerning these processes constitute the subject 
 matter of instruction in the industries. The technical 
 skill required in the operation of any industrial process 
 is the object of vocational training. 
 
 The curriculum in industrial arts. — A well-organized 
 course of study in the industries must be the joint work 
 of technical and pedagogical experts. The scientist will 
 be called upon to contribute his share, and his contribu- 
 tion will be no inconsiderable amount. At one stage 
 of the course, emphasis may be placed upon the processes 
 of production; at another stage, the stress may be 
 upon manufacture, distribution, or consumption. Nature 
 study, agriculture, the fisheries, forestry, and mining wUl 
 furnish indispensable information. Geography, biology, 
 physics, and chemistry will each add its quota of knowl- 
 edge. Facilities for transportation, the production and 
 transmission of power, and the agencies of trade and 
 commerce will have a bearing on the problem. But the 
 
I04 THE TEEND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 chief consideration in the course of study is the ordering 
 of the industrial processes by which raw materials are 
 transformed into things of greater value for the satis- 
 faction of human needs. 
 
 Historical development of Industry. — The simplest 
 industrial processes are often the most primitive. This 
 fact suggests the desirability of , sometimes approaching 
 the study in the primary classes from the historical stand- 
 point. To make the study of primitive life, however, 
 the dominant purpose of instruction leads to the intro- 
 duction of much superfluous material which tends to 
 crowd the curriculum and overburden the child. Wher- 
 ever the approach can be made advantageously by way of 
 primitive life or by plays and games which express chil- 
 dren's emotions, that method may be employed. The 
 impetus gained in this way should be directed to the 
 apprehension of the systematic .knowledge contained in 
 the field under consideration. When textile processes, 
 for example, are to be studied, the need of clothing may be 
 emphasized and means suggested for gratifying the want. 
 Projects for carding, spinning, and weaving may be car- 
 ried out in simple ways and illustrated by reference to 
 actual operations in bygone times or by the practices of 
 contemporaneous primitive people. But to rediscover 
 every step in the original development of these arts is to 
 miss the purpose of industrial education; it may be good 
 industrial history, but it is not good industrial training. 
 
 The industrial aspects of the study, as distinguished 
 from the historical, require that the child should acquire 
 in some way and at some time — presumably in many 
 ways and at widely separated times — a fairly well- 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 105 
 
 rounded conception of textile processes and should become 
 familiar with the most important types of textile prod- 
 ucts. It is not enough to acquire a knowledge of the 
 primitive process of spinnings even spinning on a wheel, 
 and then to pass on to the weaving of a simple rug. Spin- 
 ning is an important industry in modem life; it means 
 yams for all manner of fabrics made from a great variety 
 of raw materials; it means thread of all kinds; it means 
 cordage. How many of our school children, how many 
 adults, have any adequate conception of the extent of 
 these industries or their bearing on every-day hfe? And 
 yet the processes are simple, and, by actual demonstra- 
 tion, supplemented by illustrations cut from current 
 magazines or by visits to neighboring factories, the lesson 
 can be taught in such a way as to make the learning a 
 delight and the knowledge a permanent possession. On 
 leaving the elementary school, every child should know, 
 it seems to me, the characteristics of cotton, wool, silk, 
 and linen, both in the spun and woven forms, and have 
 some notion of their value as determined by the processes 
 to which they have been subjected. A proper combina- 
 tion of handwork, the application of design and the giving 
 of information should produce the desired results with- 
 out strain and with constantly increasing interest in the 
 study. At the end of a high-school course, possibly 
 at the end of the grammar school, a girl should be able 
 not only to make many articles of clothing, but also to 
 discriminate in the choice of fabrics by reference to what 
 she has learned in school concerning the nature of the 
 several materials and the processes of manufacture. If 
 she doesn't get this knowledge in school, when and where 
 
Io6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 will she ever get it? And isn't it something which she has 
 a right to know? How much time will it take, I ask, to 
 give her a vastly bette'r equipment in this field than 
 ninety per cent of adults have to-day? It is less a problem 
 of instruction or school administration, than it is a point 
 of view and selection of materials for instruction. Once 
 accept my proposition that this is worth doing, and the 
 time can easily be found, and some day we shall have 
 teachers prepared to do the work. 
 
 The evolution of ceramics. — Again, let me illustrate 
 from another field — from the clay industries. Children 
 like to make mud pies. The kindfergarten turns this 
 aptitude to good use in fashioning things by hand mold- 
 ing. Of late, primary teachers have adopted clay as a 
 convenient medium for expressing art forms. The result 
 is thirty plaques, thirty inkwells, or thirty vases — all 
 very pretty, decorated and glazed, when put in a row 
 on exhibition day. So far I have no criticism. My com- 
 plaint is that they stop right there. The chief processes 
 in the clay industries are very few: hand molding, turning 
 on the potter's wheel, pressing into set forms, and build- 
 ing up in permanent shape, as in cement and concrete 
 construction. Why not, then, pass from hand molding, 
 which can be approached through primitive types, to the 
 use of the potter's wheel? A single demonstration of 
 this machine, with the use of illustrations which may be 
 had in abundance, will give the clue to the entire round 
 of the pottery industries. A few samples, var5dng from 
 unglazed earthenware to fine china, will complete the 
 teaching equipment. Next come brick and terra cotta. 
 But who has ever heard of brickmaking in school? I 
 
THE SCHOOL AND DSTDtTSTRIAL LIFE 107 
 
 should like to hear of it because it is an immense industry, 
 the products of which are visible on every hand — soft 
 brick, hard brick, fire brick, red brick, yellow brick 
 ornamental brick, terra cotta. Why should not our 
 children know more about these things than we do? I 
 venture to say that ten hours of instruction judiciously 
 spread over two or three years, and properly correlated 
 with nature study and geography, will give to sixth-grade 
 children a better appreciation of one of the staple building 
 materials than ninety out of every hundred adults have 
 to-day. Is it worth the time? If so, the time can be 
 found. 
 
 I might illustrate my point by any of the staple foods, by 
 glass, by woods, or by metals. The working up of these 
 materials, the getting them ready for use, does not in- 
 volve many processes. The combination of processes is 
 most intricate and the variety of products simply inde- 
 scribable, but with an eye single to typical ways by which 
 raw materials are transformed it is not impossible to leave 
 with twelve-year-old children a lasting impression of the 
 modes of operation in any industry and the nature of the 
 most important results. 
 
 Strengthening the curriculum. — I am well aware that 
 this plan will be criticized by some as being retrogressive, 
 a return to a logical control of childish activities, and by 
 others as abandonment of the new education through 
 motor training. It may mean revolution, but if it results 
 in a richer and more unified curriculum one critic is an- 
 swered, and if the curriculum is thereby simplified the other 
 critic will get no hearing from the American public. But 
 how is the curriculum strengthened? First, it must be 
 
Io8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 conceded that the content of industrial education, as I 
 have defined it, has some value; whatever that may 
 amount to is a distinct gain. In the second place, the 
 plan calls for richer courses in arithmetic, nature study, and 
 geography. The quantitative measurements of arith- 
 metic will find concrete application in every step of the 
 industrial process from the first step of production of 
 the raw materials to the end of the series when goods are 
 turned to practical use. How much, how many times, 
 how often, in what proportion, at what cost, are ques- 
 tions which must be answered by the child at every turn. 
 The computations called for in the manufacture, trans- 
 portation, and final distribution of any commodity are 
 in daily use in trade and commerce, and should be the 
 staple reqiurement of the school. Nothing will vitalize 
 the study of arithmetic more than to create in the school 
 a need for quantitative measurement and for the employ- 
 ment of business methods in business affairs. Such a 
 situation suggests clearly the place and scope of commer- 
 cial training in the upper grades or in high school for those 
 who are in training for commercial vocations. The natural 
 distribution of metals, fuels, clays, and other earth 
 materials, the cUmatic and physiographic conditions which 
 determine the location, amount, character, and avail- 
 ability of our flora and fauna, the factors which control 
 transportation by land and water — these are problems 
 in geography which become concrete and vital in the 
 study of industries. The correlations are so obvious 
 that only a stupid teacher can miss them. In nature 
 study we shall find a real place for the elements of agri- 
 culture and forestry; no longer aimless meandering in 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE lOp 
 
 any scientific field, but definite attention to those occupa- 
 tions concerned with the production of materials good for 
 food, clothing, and shelter, the conditions calculated to 
 give best results, and the resistance which men meet in 
 doing their work. The growing of any crop, even in a 
 window garden, will epitomize the farmer's labors in tilling 
 the soil, supplying plant food, utilizing light, heat, and air, 
 overcoming disease and insect pests, and reaping his 
 harvest. Every step takes on new meaning when the 
 learner sees its place in the series of operations culminat- 
 ing in the commercial food supply of his own community, 
 its sanitary regulation and domestic consumption. The 
 elements of physiology and hygiene, and of physics and 
 chemistry, are also called into requisition; they are all 
 indispensable in fixing values of industrial products and 
 determining economy in technical operation. What 
 makes for hygienic living is from the economic standpoint 
 as weU worth knowing as what mechanical appliance 
 win most increase the output. A proper study of the 
 industries, therefore, I contend, will bring about a unified 
 and closely correlated course in the biological and phys- 
 ical sciences by way of supplying the information wanted 
 by the child in adjusting himself to the real world. 
 
 Correlation between school subjects. — Perhaps some 
 timorous soul will interpret my outHne of the pedagogical 
 relations between the sciences and the industries as a 
 denial of any independence to arithmetic, nature study, 
 and geography. Far from it. The scientific subjects 
 have a function of their own in the curriculum, as do the 
 humanities and the industries. The use of language and 
 the arts of reading and writing in studying the Indus- 
 
no THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 tries, even the generous use of supplementary' readings 
 giving industrial information, does not preclude the study 
 of literature in progressively systematic form. The 
 course of study in every subject may have two aspects, 
 one peculiar to itself by virtue of which we recognize it 
 as a distinct subject, the other relative to other subjects 
 which the child may be learning. In arithmetic, that 
 which is peculiarly mathematical looks forward to the 
 systematic development of the science of mathematics, 
 and it is possible so to emphasize this aspect as to make 
 the study almost exclusively formal. The natural 
 sciences may be so taught as to have no direct bearing on 
 the child's experience. My thought is that any sub- 
 ject worthy of a place in the school curriculum should be 
 developed along systematic Hnes characteristic of the 
 subject itself by means which function in the child's 
 experience with other subjects of information. This is 
 only another way of saying that whatever is learned 
 should be appHed in practice. Perhaps better said, it 
 is the harmonious interaction of all subjects in the cur- 
 riculum which gives zest to study, soHdarity in the knowl- 
 edge acquired, and efficiency in converting knowledge 
 into power. The reason for this is that the learning process 
 is a unity; the child's experience in gathering information 
 from many sources is unified, and it is his own; his in- 
 stincts, impulses, and all his activities belong to him alone, 
 and however segregated the ultimate ends of his endeavor 
 may be in the mind of his teacher, he weaves all his ex- 
 periences into the fabric of his own life. Whether or no 
 that fabric be technically correct depends upon the 
 systematic ordering of his experiences; its serviceable- 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE m 
 
 ness for any particular purpose depends upon the mate- 
 rials which have entered into it. 
 
 Revising the school program. — One other important 
 question awaits an answer. Will the plan I have proposed 
 tend to simplify the curriculum? My answer is that at 
 least four subjects will be combined into one, and in some 
 elementary schools one teacher will take the place of 
 four. Manual training, fine arts, domestic art, and 
 domestic science wiU drop out below the seventh grade, 
 and in their place we shall have the one subject of in- 
 dustrial arts, the elements of industries. The term 
 "manual training," if used at all, will cover the forms 
 of motor expression employed in teaching reading, writing 
 and drawing, as weU as the manual exercises used in 
 agriculture or weaving or pottery-making or carpentry. 
 There will be no hours set apart in the school program 
 for work exclusively with the hands, and teachers will 
 not be expected to provide manual occupations for every 
 minute of the time assigned to any subject. When 
 manual work is needed it will be demanded as insistently 
 and employed as successfully in the humanities and the 
 sciences as in the industries. In the lower school, manual 
 exercises will be used as a means of self-expression, a 
 method of teaching rather than a subject of instruction 
 or a way of acquiring technical skill. That is, cooking 
 in the lower school enables the child to know what hap- 
 pens when heat is applied to foods, and in what respects 
 foods thereby are made more serviceable; cooking as an 
 art in which a girl should excel belongs to a later period 
 when she is fitting herself for housekeeping. Technical 
 skill is a distinct aim in vocational training, but in the 
 
112 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 earlier years of school the purpose is general rather than 
 specific, cultural rather than vocational. 
 
 Development of the creative instinct. — In aU industrial 
 processes, wherever man transforms materials into things 
 of greater value, he employs a technic pecuhar to the 
 situation, and gives to the product a touch which pleases 
 his aesthetic sense. Earthen bowls might be made, I 
 suppose, without appreciable artistic merit, but the fact 
 is, that the crudest pottery" shows an effort to attain 
 some ideal standard. This striving for artistic effect is 
 as instinctive in childhood as in primitive man, and no 
 worker ever loses it imtil he loses all pride in his handi- 
 work. It is the source of every fine art. It is self-expres- 
 sion, which is at its best when bodied forth in doing things 
 worth doing well. The teacher of art, therefore, finds 
 his best opportunity in that field which offers greatest 
 inducement to constructive design. The art training 
 which belongs in the elementary school is that training 
 which makes for a better appreciation of aesthetic stand- 
 ards and which finds expression in making things more 
 pleasing than they otherwise would be. It adds no 
 burden to the curriculum; on the contrary, it enlivens it 
 and makes its tasks more pleasurable because more grati- 
 fjdng to personal wants. 
 
 Revitalizing school subjects. — A systematic course 
 in the industries wiU have the additional advantage of 
 making it easier to teach everything else in the curricu- 
 lum. Not only wiU the study of industrial processes 
 give rise to concrete problems in mathematics and the 
 natural sciences, but the practical character of such 
 problems will incite children to find the surest and most 
 
THE SCHOOL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE 1 13 
 
 businesslike way of solving them. Time wiU be saved 
 for drill in every other line. With fewer subjects and more 
 practical problems, I should confidently expect better 
 results in the three R's and a more thorough discipline 
 resulting from work in every subject. There would be no 
 attempt to cover the whole field of human effort; the 
 standard set in the study of industries whereby only the 
 essential processes should be included in the course would 
 react upon the courses of study in the humanities and the 
 sciences. Let it be agreed that only fundamentals have 
 a place in the elementary curriculum, and it will be com- 
 paratively easy to insist upon thorough work. Under 
 such conditions there can be no excuse for not getting 
 it. Those who believe, as I do, in the educational value 
 of work well done, will join hands right here with those 
 who advocate a curriculum which imposes tasks worth 
 doing well. 
 
 Education for equality. — My conclusion is that in- 
 dustrial education is essential to the social and political 
 well-being of a democracy. It is the privilege of all, 
 rather than the duty of a few, to be informed on matters 
 affecting the social welfare of the body politic. A knowl- 
 edge of how men get a living, the nature of their work, 
 and the value of it, is a prerequisite to intelligent apprecia- 
 tion of the dignity of labor. A sympathetic understand- 
 ing of the conditions underl}dng industrial competition 
 wiU make for civil order and social stability. Training 
 for citizenship may not safely disregard the dominant 
 interests of the great majority of citizens. The public 
 school must teach that which aU should know. If only 
 six years can be had for this work, the work must be done 
 
 TREKD IN ED — 8 
 
114 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 in six years. There is no alternative. It must be done 
 in such a way, too, that children will grasp its significance 
 and carry its impressions throughout ■ their lives. It 
 must establish such habits of thought and conduct that 
 all subsequent work will be aided by the discipline. This 
 is the ideal of the elementary school. Joined with the 
 humanities and the sciences, a study of the industries 
 rounds out the education of the citizen and equips him 
 to begin his vocational training. On the threshold of 
 active life it puts him on a par with his fellows. It assures 
 him that kind of equahty which is the opportunity of 
 every American. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 PROFESSIONAL FACTORS IN THE TRAINING OF 
 THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 
 
 MY purpose in this chapter is to discuss what may 
 be properly considered professional in the 
 training of the high-school teacher, as distin- 
 guished from the academic or cultural. What con- 
 stitutes professional training? What light is shed on this 
 problem by the example of other learned professions? 
 
 Ethical relationships between mankind. — The eco- 
 nomic law of supply and demand determines the vocations 
 of most men as it controls the products of their labor. 
 In some vocations, however, another factor comes into 
 play. The rights of others in mind, body, and estate 
 have to be reckoned with. In most occupations these 
 human rights are implicit; they are cared for in the common 
 law. But in others they are guarded specifically by 
 statute. Not everyone who has the opportunity and 
 inclination may practice law or medicine. By the law 
 of the State, those who are pledged to see justice done 
 between man and man, those who by the nature of their 
 calling are in a position to imperil the health or Hves of 
 their fellows, those upon whom the public depends for 
 protection, or who belong to the civil service, are licensed 
 to pursue their vocations. Putting aside those voca- 
 tions which are licensed for revenue only, it appears that 
 
 ' A revised reprint from the Educational Review, March, 1913, used by courtesy 
 of the publishers. 
 
 "5 
 
Il6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 when the State interferes between the practitioner and 
 the pubUc, there is an ethical principle at stake. The 
 weU-being of the many must not be sacrificed to the 
 ambition or the cupidity of the few. 
 
 The pursuit of ethical ideals was once the chief character- 
 istic of the learned professions. Witness the moral code 
 contained in the Hippocratic oath which has been the 
 gateway to the profession of medicine for two thousand 
 years. Think of the vows taken by the candidate for the 
 priesthood, and of the pledges exacted upon admission 
 to the bar. The modern State but reenacts the profes- 
 sional decalogue when it insists upon proper evidence of 
 moral character in licensing the lawyers, physicians, and 
 teachers. Some day the principle will be extended to 
 embrace all vocations which touch on the ethical relations 
 of man and man. 
 
 Cardinal principles of professional service. — The first 
 qualification for professional service, therefore, is good 
 character — the Hving embodiment of moral standards, 
 the conscious striving for high ideals. The professional 
 worker looks to the future and is pledged by his vocation 
 to make the future better than the present. Such an aim 
 implies in these days the possession of two other quali- 
 fications, each potent and indispensable. One of these 
 is specialized knowledge, and the other is skill. These 
 three — an ethical aim, specialized knowledge, and tech- 
 nical skill — are the trinity upon which professional 
 service rests. The stonecutter may have superior skill, 
 but with only a modicum of specialized knowledge and lack- 
 ing an ethical aim, he remains the artisan; the physician 
 who is ignorant of his subject, however high his aim or 
 
TRAINESfG OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER I17 
 
 however skillful in practice, is still a quack; if he is learned 
 in high degree but lacks professional skill, he is a confirmed 
 bungler; the lawyer who is versed in all the subtilities of 
 the law and adroit in legal procedure, but who disregards 
 the ethics of his profession, is a charlatan, despised of men. 
 
 The teacher may be a professional worker. But he 
 who puts himself in the professional class must know ac- 
 curately what he is to do, have the requisite skill for 
 doing it, and do his work under the guidance of high 
 ethical principles. The teacher who is ignorant of his 
 subject is a quack; the teacher who lacks professional skill 
 is a bungler; the teacher who is not inspired by high ideals 
 is a charlatan. 
 
 The road the masters have trod. — My idea of profes- 
 sional training is that it is a process of giving to novices 
 what the masters have acquired. It is helping the begin- 
 ner to get what he might get for himself under favorable 
 conditions. There is nothing in the training of a teacher 
 in a professional school, for example, that differs from the 
 training of any teacher anywhere, except that the good 
 professional school affords opportunities, equipment, and 
 guidance that few teachers can get elsewhere. The pro- 
 fessional school for teachers, Hke the professional schools 
 of law, medicine, and engineering, is intended to help the 
 novice travel the road that every great master has trav- 
 eled, but to do it more quickly, economically, and 
 confidently than he otherwise could. 
 
 Focusing educational effort. — In my discussion of the 
 professional training of the high-school teacher, I appeal 
 directly to the experience of the best teachers before me 
 and to the best in each one of my readers. What is the 
 
Il8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 process by which you have made yourselves masters? Re- 
 calling your own experiences, what would you do if you 
 had a fair field and all possible favors? How would you 
 attain your standards of excellence in the three cardinal 
 principles of professional service? 
 
 First, specialized knowledge. — It is generally taken for 
 granted that the coUege graduate knows enough to teach 
 in a high school; in some locaHties graduation from a 
 normal school, or even from a secondary school, is con- 
 sidered sufficient evidence of abihty to do high-school 
 work. I wish to go on record as one who beheves that 
 graduation from a coUege is no evidence whatever of 
 ability to teach anything. So far as the college is a col- 
 lege and not a professional school, its business is not the 
 training of the teacher or of any other professional worker. 
 The college aims to give that general knowledge which 
 should lie at the foundation of every kind of professional 
 superstructure. What the profession demands is special- 
 ized knowledge, the mastery of some small field in its 
 relations to other fields of knowledge. But knowledge spe- 
 cialized for the sake of professional service is not isolated 
 information. It is rather the product of broad scholarship 
 focused upon a particular subject. 
 
 Right here is where many excellent persons, chiefly some 
 of our ancient classicists and modern scientists, make a 
 grave mistake. They argue that the chief end of scholarly 
 study is the mental disdpHne that it affords, or the pur- 
 suit of truth for its own sake, rather than the under- 
 standing of the subject in its cultural setting. Isolated 
 knowledge may be useful in certain technical lines, but 
 knowledge teeming with human interests and speciahzed 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER II9 
 
 along cultural Hnes is indispensable in professional service. 
 
 A need for an intellectual perspective. — It follows, 
 therefore, that there must be a general preparation for 
 the beginning of professional study. Call it what you 
 please — intellectual perspective, cultural setting, liberal 
 education — it is something which gives breadth of view 
 and that largeness of life which form the very foundation 
 of every kind of professional service. It is precisely this 
 training for which the college stands. I do not pretend 
 that every college graduate has it, or that there is no other 
 way of getting a Uberal education; nor do I claim that a 
 college degree should be the stepping-stone to every 
 learned profession. But I do claim that the intending 
 high-school teacher needs a course of general training the 
 equivalent of the best given in any coUege in the land, and 
 needs it, too, as a prerequisite to the technical studies of 
 his profession. 
 
 A plea for sane scholarship. — The professional train- 
 ing of the teacher properly begins with the process of nar- 
 rowing the field or of intensif)dng work in some part of 
 it, or, to use a better figure., of focusing what one knows 
 on the problem in hand. It is more than mere specializa- 
 tion in the subject. For example, a teacher once came 
 to me from the wilds of New York state, a region barbaric 
 only in an educational way, however, saying that he 
 wanted to fit himself in a six-weeks' summer session to 
 teach Latin. My first question was, " How much Latin do 
 you know? " Because my business is the training of 
 teachers I have become hardened to the pitiful exhibition 
 of ignorance so often displayed by those who want to teach, 
 but I was not prepared for the answer to my question in 
 
I20 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 this particular instance. " I don't know any Latin," he 
 said; " that is what I have come here for." " But how do 
 you expect to get ready to teach Latin in six weeks? " 
 " Well," he replied, " J" don't have to begiu tiU Septem- 
 ber and aU I have to do next year is to teach Latin lessons 
 and Caesar; I guess I can do that." A little further prob- 
 ing disclosed the fact that the candidate was a high- 
 school teacher in good standing, legally certified to do 
 what he proposed, had the sanction of his principal and 
 school board for the step, and was actually engaged to 
 teach, two months hence, a subject which he had never 
 studied in his hfe. It is a striking commentary on the 
 situation to say he was more surprised than I had been 
 when I told him that he had come to the wrong place. 
 His last word to me was, " Why, I thought Teachers Col- 
 lege was a school for the training of teachers." 
 
 Actual fact as this tale is, it sounds enough Hke a parable 
 to furnish me a moral for to-day's sermon. Suppose this 
 teacher did get what he wanted and after two months of 
 cramming actually began to teach Latin according to 
 the Regents' syllabus. What kind of equipment did he 
 have? I suppose one might say it was highly specialized 
 and focused on his problem. But it is a fine example 
 of what I have called isolated knowledge. It is not 
 sound scholarship. 
 
 Now, take as an example the opposite extreme. Sup- 
 pose a scholar in Latin, one who has made an exhaustive 
 study of the Latin language, Roman history, archaeology, 
 literature, law — in short, one who appreciates the genius 
 of Roman civilization and knows its bearing on modem 
 life — suppose such a scholar were asked to teach Latin 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 121 
 
 lessons and Caesar to high-school pupils, aged fourteen 
 years, boys and girls, untamed Americans who idolize 
 Christy Mathewson, and by parental ambition dedicated 
 to the college. What chance has your scholar of getting 
 ready for this job in six weeks? Safe to say that the 
 teacher who starts with nothing in July will meet his class 
 with more assurance in September than the scholar who 
 has spent years in getting ready. 
 
 The building of a curriculum. — There is no possibihty 
 whatever of giving professional training to an ignoramus. 
 The sculptor may be a stonecutter if he have the tech- 
 nical skill, but a stonecutter can never become the sculp- 
 tor until he gets the vision of the angel in the unformed 
 block of marble. The teacher whose knowledge of the 
 subject is confined within the covers of two or three 
 books — Somebody's Latin Lessons and Caesar's Com- 
 mentaries, Books I-IV, we will say — has no trouble in 
 selecting what he wiU teach. No more has the stone- 
 cutter to do with determining his task when it is defined 
 for him in a blue-print drawing. But the master, he 
 who has command of himself and of his subject as weU, 
 must pick and choose at every step. Time is precious; 
 opportunity will not wait. He must act, and his artistic 
 eye is quick to condemn every slip that he makes. 
 
 Right here is the chance for the most helpful lessons 
 in professional training. In the professional school for 
 teachers we call it a course in the selection of materials 
 and in the arrangement of these materials in a curriculum. 
 The wider the range of scholarship, the more one knows 
 of his subject, the greater is the need of wise selection 
 and orderly arrangement of materials. One who is full 
 
122 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 of his subject does not unload it all in one year or upon 
 one class. What may safely be given out will ultimately 
 be learned by any conscientious teacher, but he who 
 has much to give is the one who learns most readily and is 
 most appreciative of what the experienced guide can 
 tell him. 
 
 Injecting vitality into the course of study. — We find 
 in practice that even the best scholars among our college 
 graduates are not ready for a technical course in the 
 selection and arrangement of materials. Too often 
 their training is scrappy. The elective system makes it 
 easy to foUow a favorite professor or to omit some essen- 
 tial part of a subject. I recall the case of a graduate of 
 one of our best universities who had studied Latin four 
 years in high school and four years in coUege, but who 
 had never had a course at any time in Roman history, 
 and who knew next to nothing of Roman Hfe. It is not 
 at all unusual to find coUege graduates who have had 
 years of training in history made up of fragments called 
 the Reformation, the Renaissance, the French Revolu- 
 tion, and the like, but with no real understanding of the 
 sweep of modern history. A large part of the trouble 
 with teaching the sciences is due to the fact that physics, 
 chemistry, geography, physiography, meteorology, zoology, 
 entomology, physiology, bacteriology, and the rest are 
 taught as isolated units. Even in mathematics, the most 
 clearly defined of aU our high-school subjects, the college 
 graduate comes to his work removed by just four years 
 from the problem with which he has to deal. In all such 
 cases the first step is to get back on high-school ground. 
 The Latinist must read Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil, not neces- 
 
TRAINING or THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 23 
 
 sarily stopping with four books of the Gallic War, or with 
 the CatiHnian orations, or with an abbreviated edition of 
 the Aeneid; he should learn to speak the language at least 
 well enough to keep it from seeming dead; and he should 
 inject himself far enough into Roman history to feel the 
 glow of that Golden Age forever imperishable. Likewise 
 the mathematician needs to know what arithmetic, algebra, 
 geometry, and trigonometry stand for, what they are, 
 what they mean in every-day life, and what they prepare 
 for in the higher mathematics. It is perspective that is 
 wanted in this subject, as in every other subject of the 
 high school. 
 
 Intrinsic worths. — Only by knowing intimately what 
 these subjects are worth in and of themselves, what their 
 _ practical application is, and what they signify for later 
 development, can we expect our teachers to put correct 
 emphasis on what they teach. The ignorant teacher 
 is prone to drive every nail home by the hardest kind of 
 knocks; the scholarly teacher knows that time and strength 
 are easily wasted on trivial topics, while too much atten- 
 tion can scarcely be given to important matters. What 
 is important and what is relatively unimportant at any 
 stage is well worth knowing. It is professional knowledge 
 which may come from experience, but which thrives best 
 when many minds, and all of them acute, are bent on solving 
 a professional problem. This is one sufficient reason 
 for the existence of the right kind of professional school 
 for teachers. The school which does not make it a corner 
 stone has no excuse for being. 
 
 The complement of knowledge — practice. — The next 
 factor in professional traim'ng is technical skUl. Im- 
 
■124 THE TEEND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 portant as this is in equipment of a teacher, or of any 
 professional worker, no one will claim, I fancy, that any 
 considerable amount of it can be acquired in a professional 
 school. The young physician does get some chance to 
 try his hand in hospital practice, but nowadays the pro- 
 spective lawyer and engineer are stiU novices on entering 
 their life work. Some direction along practical lines, 
 it is generally admitted, should accompany the theoretical 
 training of the professional course, but for many years 
 there has been a steady decrease in the time given to 
 practical work in all our professional schools. In some 
 quarters, in medicine for example, there are signs of 
 renewed emphasis upon the practical side, but in the 
 large I think it may be safely said that modem profes- 
 sional training is chiefly concerned with imparting scientific 
 knowledge. The ideal union of theory and practice is 
 conspicuous for the absence of practice. 
 
 Be this as it may, it wiU also be conceded that to the 
 extent which the young practitioner is obliged to work 
 independently from the beginning is it necessary to equip 
 him with the skiU requisite to do his work acceptably. 
 The young physician, to a greater degree than the young 
 lawyer or engineer, is obliged to work alone; hence the 
 demand for practical training in the hospital. So with 
 the teacher. He is obliged to do his work, under super- 
 vision, to be sure, and along a prescribed course, but still 
 to a large extent independently. The call is for teachers 
 of experience, and the experience gained by practice 
 teaching is always considered better than none at all. 
 We need more of it in our training schools, rather than 
 less. 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 125 
 
 Individual differences. — It is important, however, 
 that we keep in mind a fundamental distinction in the 
 quality of work that may enter into a teacher's equipment. 
 That which is suited to one type of mind may be out of 
 place with another. For example, when we wish to give 
 technical skill to an artisan's apprentice we see to it that 
 he knows what he is to do, that he is shown how to do it, 
 and that he repeats the operation often enough to make 
 it automatic. The best results come from long practice 
 without break or variation. The artist, on the other hand, 
 encourages initiative and invites variety of treatment. 
 The gulf fixed between the two in this respect is one of 
 intellectual ability. The lower the grade of intelligence, 
 the more nearly the training approximates that employed 
 in breaking animals; the higher the grade of inteUigence, 
 the better the understanding of what is to be done and of 
 the means to accomplish the purpose. The person of 
 high intelligence is, or may be, self-directive. 
 
 The real problem of the training school for teachers with 
 respect to technical skill is in the differentiation of t3^es 
 according to intellectual and professional acumen. It 
 seems obvious to me that the kind and extent of prac- 
 tical work appropriate to the needs of the normal school 
 may not be best adapted to the training of high-school 
 or college teachers. It may well happen that the rural 
 teacher who enters a normal school at the age of." eighteen 
 will require an apprentice training strictly analogous 
 to the training given the carpenter or the plumber, while 
 the university graduate at twenty-five may safely be left 
 to his own devices in directing a seminar course. In the 
 latter case the important thing is that the teacher knows 
 
126 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 his subject, appreciates what he is to do, and has a lively 
 sense of his personal responsibility in getting the work 
 done. Success depends primarily upon the combination 
 of knowledge and understanding guided by high ethical 
 ideals. The man of power wiU find his way even in the 
 classroom; the worth of his work will be measured by 
 his ethical standards. 
 
 The high-school teacher stands midway between these 
 extremes. He is not overly intelligent but he is generally 
 not an ignoramus. He needs practice under guidance, 
 and most of all he needs practice in self-criticism and 
 self-direction. 
 
 A need for an ethical attitude. — This leads directly to 
 my third point — the ethical aim of instruction. Efficiency 
 in work presupposes that the worker have a clear concep- 
 tion of what he is working for. If the work be merely 
 hewing to a line, the line must stand out and the worker 
 must know what it means. If it means merely a boimdary 
 beyond which he dare not go, we put the laborer on a low 
 plane; if he sees in it the expression of a scientific calcu- 
 lation of the strength of material, or if he regards it as a 
 unit in some artistic creation — above aU, if he has him- 
 self drawn the line and knows that it belongs scientifically 
 or artistically Just where he has put it, we place the 
 worker unhesitatingly in the professional class. The 
 essence of professional service is found in the ethical 
 attitude of the worker. AU else is subsidiary, however 
 essential it may be to the work in hand. In the case of 
 the teacher, the knowledge of the subject which he 
 teaches is the instrument which he uses more or less skill- 
 fully in the accomplishment of his purpose. His purpose 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 27 
 
 is to educate by means of the formal studies of the cur- 
 riculum and the discipline of the school used in such way 
 as to produce the results desired. 
 
 Developing a professional consciousness. — The chief 
 criticism of the high school is that it doesn't know what 
 it is doing. Teachers are deluded into thinking that they 
 are teaching Latin, or history, or mathematics, when they 
 are really giving instruction in fragmentary and unrelated 
 parts of a subject. A high-school principal once told me 
 that he has teachers of arithmetic and algebra and geom- 
 etry but no teacher of mathematics. Furthermore, it rarely 
 happens that even our best teachers of the mathematical 
 subjects know the commonest applications of mathematics 
 in industrial and commercial life. Few secondary teachers 
 have any real grasp of the subjects of the curriculum, 
 and fewer still seem to know that any subject other than 
 their own has any excuse for being. In a word, teamwork 
 is conspicuously absent from our high schools. 
 
 This situation is due partly to lack of academic 
 training, but largely to lack of interest in the pro- 
 fessional aspects of school subjects and the school cur- 
 riculum. Possibly the comprehensive examination will 
 correct the academic deficiencies, but the evolution of a 
 suitable curriculum and the making of character by means 
 of scholarly instruction and moral suasion depend upon 
 professional insight. Some teachers seem to have in- 
 tuitive knowledge of this kind, but the best learn some- 
 thing from experience. It is the function of professional 
 training to bring this knowledge to consciousness and to 
 put even the dullest teacher in the way of appreciating 
 what the best teacher may do instinctively, and to enable 
 
128 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 the most favored to acquire mastery more surely and 
 expeditiously than he otherwise could. 
 
 It is not my intention to weary my readers by a dis- 
 cussion of the meaning of education or of the function 
 of education in a democracy. It suffices here to enumer- 
 ate the methods of securing such an understanding on the 
 part of young teachers and to point out a rough-and- 
 ready way of testing the efficiency of teaching. 
 
 Aids to instruction. — Teaching is no new art. There 
 were teachers worthy of the name before books were 
 invented or football was made a university discipline. 
 Schools and school systems played their part before 
 ours were thought of. The more one studies the history 
 and principles of education, the less one is inclined to dis- 
 agree with the preacher who declared that there is no 
 new thing under the sun. The teacher who thinks his 
 problems peculiar to himself and to his pupils wUl find 
 light and inspiration in the historical accoimts of the work 
 of other teachers in other times. As a check on provin- 
 cial notions of educational aims and values I commend a 
 comparative study of the educational methods and school 
 administration of the leading European countries. As a 
 guide to schoolroom practice we are Just beginning to 
 appreciate the value of modem educational psychology. 
 It opens up a new world to the beginner and forces him to 
 self-criticism. It helps him to understand the learn- 
 ing process and makes him conscious of the way children 
 think and acquire their habits. From physiology and 
 hygiene we can get light on the physical well-being of our 
 pupils. It were easy to dwell at length on the pos- 
 sibilities of such studies, all of which should have some 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 1 29 
 
 part in the curriculum of a professional school for teachers, 
 but I prefer to conclude my argument with a statement 
 of one phase of the general subject. It is, however, only 
 one phase of many which might be treated at length. I 
 select it as a sample because it has special value in second- 
 ary education. 
 
 The obligation of American schools. — What is the 
 essential character of education in a democracy and how 
 may we judge its efficiency? What obhgations are im- 
 posed upon the American public school by virtue of the 
 fact that it is American and public? 
 
 It is apparent that there can be no great difference in 
 opinion regarding the desirability of those virtues which 
 make for character. In respect to most of these we are 
 one with the educators of other civiHzed countries, past 
 and present. Our ideals of scholarship and discipline 
 and of vocational efficiency may outrun our practice, 
 but they are not essentially different from those which 
 obtain elsewhere. I say nothing of the right of anyone 
 to seek another type of education, or of the preference 
 which anyone may express for the private institution 
 or for individual training. I have now no quarrel with 
 those who think that art can be taught for art's sake, or 
 mathematics for the sake of mathematics. What I do 
 insist on is that the American pubKc school, supported 
 by public taxation, is imder obligation to train American 
 citizens, men and women able and willing to cooperate 
 with their fellows in the attainment of American ideals. 
 
 A new social order. — Our mode of government is not 
 our only, or even our chief, point of difference from other 
 countries. It seems to me from the educational stand- 
 
 TREND IN ED. — Q 
 
130 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 point that the crux of the matter is to be found in our 
 social order. American Hfe is not regulated by tradition 
 of class or caste; we have no controlling institutions of 
 church or guild; there is no social standard which is author- 
 itatively binding on any American youth. As yet the 
 way is open to talent and ability all along the line. Our 
 only controlling institution, if such it may be regarded, 
 is our school system — a self-imposed and self -directed 
 organ of our democracy. 
 
 Whatever else the typical American is or may be, he is 
 alert, progressive and independent. We expect him to 
 be capable of directing his personal affairs, of keeping 
 abreast of the times, of initiating reforms, and passing 
 judgment on his own acts and those of his fellows. Peri- 
 odically we ask him to pass upon questions of national 
 policy and of international importance. Theoretically 
 the American voter is a sovereign in his own right. I 
 am well aware that the picture is easily overdrawn and 
 that the American voter is less than he should be, but if 
 the American citizen were what he should be, we should 
 spell " Voter " with a capital letter. 
 
 The fact is that we do look for intelligent self-direction 
 in every act of life. The farmer looks for it in his laborers; 
 the business man expects it in his clerks; the corporations 
 want it in their employees; we need it in the professions, 
 and count it a failure when we fail to get it. We have 
 no other criterion so universal and so reliable by which 
 to judge of efficiency in American life. 
 
 Schooling for intelligent self-direction. — Suppose we 
 apply it to our schools and school work. What is a good 
 school in a system of schools? Surely one that knows 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 13 1 
 
 what part it plays in the total scheme and is capable of 
 playing that part in an intelligent manner. What is 
 good school administration? Surely that kind of control 
 which permits and encourages intelligent self-direction 
 in all parts of the system. And yet how often do we see 
 school systems governed by autocratic dictum in which 
 the component parts are permitted no shadow of initiative 
 and denied all chance of self-direction. Such a system 
 belongs under a paternal government in which laws and 
 orders take the place of democratic freedom. What is 
 good discipline in a school or classroom? Is it the kind 
 that is begotten of fear and imposed by authority? I 
 have heard principals and teachers read out on the opening 
 days of school a list of penalties for infractions of the 
 law, but I have never been persuaded that laws unsupported 
 by public opinion are any more successful in school than 
 outside. The lockstep and monitorial system no more 
 belong by right in American schools than they belong 
 in the American home, or in public meetings, or in busi- 
 ness. The best discipline is that which secures the great- 
 est freedom to the individual consistent with the rights 
 of his fellows. The trained observer can tell at a glance 
 whether a class is held in order by superimposed authority 
 or is orderly because all want to do some task. It is an 
 impressive and reassuring sight to see, as I did recently, 
 fifteen hundred high-school pupils walk leisurely from their 
 classrooms to the assembly hall, find their places with- 
 out confusion, and instantly stop their conversation 
 when the clock indicated the hour for the exercises to 
 begin. Herein is self-control worthy of American citizen- 
 ship. To say to one, come, and he cometh, and to another 
 
132 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 go, and he goeth, may be an ideal of military discipline 
 and it may occasionally be necessary in home and school, 
 but the ideal of disciphne in American schools will not 
 be reached until such commands are unnecessary to 
 secure obedience and effective cooperation. 
 
 The tests of instructional efficiency. — The same test 
 may be applied to teaching. Does it make for intelligent 
 self-direction? First consider the prevaiKng method of 
 assigning home tasks. How often the order is to solve 
 the next twenty problems, to translate the next fifty lines, 
 or to read the next ten pages, with no instruction on the 
 method of approach, not even a hint as to the purpose 
 of the task or its connection with what has gone before. 
 The result we are all familiar with. Blind guessing at 
 the answer, cut-and-try methods of solution, time wasted 
 in thumbing a lexicon, illegitimate assistance sought 
 from parents or fellow pupUs — almost everything except 
 straightforward learning. From such a method, when per- 
 sistently used, we have no right to expect anything but bad 
 intellectual habits. Moreover, I am persuaded that it 
 ultimately leads to moral degeneracy, because the prize 
 goes generally to the most dishonest player. The only 
 corrective that I know of is to assign tasks that can be 
 done without assistance and to see to it that they are 
 worked logically step by step from data already in the 
 possession of the pupil. The ability to tackle a problem 
 courageously, to analyze its component parts, and to work 
 through it logically, is of vastly more account in school 
 and in later life than the art of guessing at the result, 
 however brilliantly the guessing may be done. We need 
 to put greater emphasis on how pupils learn and less 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 133 
 
 on what results they get. If they are trained to be in- 
 telligently self-directive there need be no fear of the 
 results. 
 
 The functioning of knowledge. — Next consider class- 
 room practice. At its worst it may be merely hearing 
 recitations or a demonstration of guesswork with black- 
 board accompaniment. It were a euphemism to label 
 such efforts teaching or instruction. It may be something 
 better, however, and still not merit approbation. For 
 example, much of the best teaching we find in our schools 
 and colleges contents itself with imparting information. 
 Pupils may seem interested and stow away fact upon 
 fact against the duty of examination. The final test 
 may be satisfactory, measured in percentage of correct 
 answers. Nevertheless such work may be whoUy de- 
 ceptive. What is learned may be useless because it is 
 isolated, or untrustworthy because it is improperly related 
 in the experience of the individual. The old-time books 
 on arithmetic had a chapter on AUigation which some of 
 us learned to perfection. It was isolated knowledge 
 then, and has remained imperfectly related to the experi- 
 ence of all of us whose business is other than the blend- 
 ing of Hquors. The only benefit derived from that chapter 
 was practice in computation, which might have been 
 gained from any other arithmetical task. Memorizing 
 of facts or processes is of Httle value, even though an 
 examination shows that they are accurately and tena- 
 ciously kept in mind, unless such facts and processes can 
 be used by the learner. So much time and energy are 
 wasted in this way that one pities teachers who fail to 
 see the good they might do. Just a little intelligent self- 
 
134 THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 direction would lead them to take the next step. It is 
 highly important that fundamentals be accurately learned. 
 The alphabet, multiplication table, declensions, paradigms, 
 and the like, must be memorized, but the good teacher 
 does not stop there or with any number of similar tasks. 
 He uses them in all possible combinations and permu- 
 tations. He counts them means or instruments for a 
 higher purpose. One reliable test of success is found in 
 the widening intellectual horizon of his pupils; another 
 is in their ability to use what they have in the acquisi- 
 tion of new knowledge. When a pupil learns to direct 
 himself intelligently in interpreting the facts of his own 
 experience and in enlarging that experience by gaining 
 new knowledge, he is on the highroad to a liberal 
 education. 
 
 Training competent leaders. — I have dwelt at some 
 length on what I consider the chief essential of good 
 teaching because we see so httle of it in our high schools, 
 notwithstanding the fact that it is a characteristic of 
 training for leadership in all kinds of schools the world 
 over. If we are to get competent leaders we must train 
 them to be intelligently self-directive. The secondary 
 school exists for the purpose of selecting and training, 
 so far as it goes, those who must bear the responsibihty 
 that attaches to the enjoyment of superior advantages. 
 Historically, the secondary school exists for this purpose 
 and to this end it is supported in America at public 
 expense. 
 
 The teaching personnel. — Now that I have had my 
 say, or tried to say what I had in mind, I realize that 
 I have said little on the training of high-school teachers. 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 13 5 
 
 But I confess to little interest in the routine training of 
 secondary teachers or of any other teachers, if by that 
 is meant courses of instruction in formal pedagogy or 
 predigested pedagogic methods. As I look at it, there 
 are many ways of getting educational results. Your 
 way may not be my way and your pupils may differ 
 from mine in ability, in accomplishment, and in aim. 
 So long as teachers differ and pupils differ there can be 
 no invariable method. That is best which is best adapted 
 to the occasion, all factors considered. My interest 
 centers in ways and means of getting teachers who are 
 liberally educated, who know their subjects and have the 
 high ambition to train their pupils for leadership in a 
 social order that demands intelligent self-direction. I 
 have no patience with those who pretend to esoteric wis- 
 dom by virtue of their office or their training. By their 
 fruits ye shall know them. The good teacher is not a 
 pedant, a pedagogue, or an egotist. He labors that others 
 may enter into the fruits of his labor. Unless it be guided 
 by this ethical ideal, professional training is useless and 
 worse than useless. 
 
 Instruction as a fine art. — One other feature of second- 
 ary education deserves more than passing mention, but 
 in addressing high-school teachers it were superfluous 
 to dwell upon it. I refer to school management, the act 
 of making a school a good place to live in. It is some- 
 thing acquired by all good teachers, but, like skill in 
 teaching, it can hardly be taught to those who most need 
 it. The satisfaction that comes from giving instruction, 
 however artistically the work may be done, does not com- 
 pare with the joy of living with adolescents when one has 
 
136 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 the ability to control adolescent emotion and to direct 
 adolescent will. That is the superlatively fine art of teach- 
 ing, the birthright of a few, the despair of the many. 
 Nevertheless, few schools can boast of having many 
 geniuses on their staffs, and in some way the average 
 teacher must be trained to realize the responsibility of 
 his position. School organizations of many kinds — 
 for social intercourse, mutual benefit, recreation, 
 athletics — springing up over night must be directed 
 aright or they wiU surely go wrong. Each boy is a prob- 
 lem, each girl an enigma, and yet the well-being of the 
 school demands instinctive, prompt, sjonpathetic, ef- 
 fective action on the part of those who stand in loco 
 parentis. I mention this, not because our high-school 
 teachers are ignorant of their duties or neglectful of their 
 opportunities — in my experience they are prodigal to 
 a fault of their time and energy when their pupils are in 
 need of personal guidance — but because I .want to sug- 
 gest a way of measuring the efl&ciency of their action. 
 I would apply the same test that I use in other forms of 
 school work. Is the fraternal society intelligently self- 
 directive? Can the debating dub single out a worthy 
 topic for discussion, attack it logically, reach sane con- 
 clusions and maintain self-control in doing it? Does the 
 athletic team stand on its own feet, fight its own battles, 
 and win its prizes as men do who struggle honestly for 
 the prizes in business? Is the boy who needs correction 
 encouraged to face his problem rationally and work out 
 his own salvation, or is he told what to do and commanded 
 to do it, or worse still, is he made a dependent upon some 
 stronger personality? These are questions which every 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 137 
 
 teacher, he who is bom as well as he who is made, may 
 profitably put to himself. The professional school may 
 help him find his way, but only experience under wise 
 guidance will bring the answer. 
 
 Proficiency standards in training. — I have a word to 
 say to the college professor and the school superintendent. 
 The training of high-school teachers is a work in which 
 they are both vitally interested and in which they should 
 take a part. Unfortunately, neither has as yet seen fit 
 to recognize the obligation. The college teacher is prone 
 to give his recommendation as soon as the student has 
 acquired a smattering of his subject. CoUeges should 
 know better than to turn loose the average graduate on 
 unoffending children. The college department of mathe- 
 matics does not consider its graduates engineers, or the 
 department of physiology its graduates physicians. Why 
 should they think the college student of Latin a fit teacher 
 of Latin? And how does the superintendent of schools 
 justify himself in putting the novice in teaching, even a 
 graduate of our best professional schools, in independent 
 charge of a class? When it is known that so much of 
 our academic training is faulty and that professional 
 training at best is only a preparation for service, how is 
 it that no provision is made for a period of probationary 
 teaching under competent guidance? I venture to say 
 that if our colleges should treat the profession of teaching 
 as they do other professions, and if our school system 
 should provide adequate apprentice training, we should 
 have no excuse to spend a session in discussing the theme 
 of this afternoon. The main reason why we talk so much 
 on this subject and say so little is that the two dominant 
 
138 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 influences in shaping the preparation of teachers are in 
 league to hinder progress. Let the colleges refuse to 
 sanction poor teaching and let the schools make it pos- 
 sible for a teacher to perfect his art, and we shall soon 
 have teachers who can do professional work. Until that 
 time we shall waste our breath in talking, and the crafts- 
 men in our schools will head straight for trade-unionism. 
 If that is what you want you will surely get it without 
 effort. But that is not what you want; you want some- 
 thing better. The time is ripe for a change. The public 
 is dissatisfied with what is being done. Greater efficiency 
 is the watchword of the hour, and with greater efficiency 
 go better remimeration and more certain professional 
 standing. It is the high privilege of some of us to help 
 make a few teachers more worthy of their positions. 
 We need cooperation in a task which combines in highest 
 degree professional service with patriotic duty. 
 
 The trinity of professional service. — In summary, I 
 repeat that the professional training of the high-school 
 teacher follows a course of general training which should 
 give sound scholarship and breadth of view character- 
 istic of the culture such as may be best acquired in a good 
 college course. The distinctive professional factors in 
 a teacher's training are (i) specialized knowledge of the 
 subjects to be taught, including their relations to other 
 subjects of the curriculum and their applications to every- 
 day life, (2) technical skill in teaching, and (3) the ethical 
 aim of education. The perfection of the teacher's equip- 
 ment along all these lines is a hfe work, but the profes- 
 sional school may make a begimiing by putting the novice 
 in the way of understanding what others have done and 
 
TRAINING OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER 139 
 
 are doing, and by making him self-critical and self- 
 directive with respect to his own work The greatest need 
 to-day in the development of professional training for 
 high-school teachers is the cooperation of the colleges and 
 the schools — of the colleges by way of making suitable 
 preparation for professional study, and of the schools by 
 way of providing adequate means for giving apprentice 
 training under competent guidance. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION * 
 
 THE finest portrait of the general practitioner, 
 drawn in our time, is that of the Scotch doctor 
 in Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush? "There were 
 no specialists in Drumtochty, so this man had to do every- 
 thing as best he could, and as quickly. He was chest 
 doctor, and doctor for every other organ as well; he was 
 accoucheur and surgeon; he was oculist and aurist; he 
 was dentist and chloroformist, besides being chemist 
 and druggist." For fifty years he rode up and down the 
 glen, in fair weather and foul, through snowdrifts and 
 flooded fords, to bring consolation and health to the 
 sick and suffering in his district. His presence inspired 
 confidence — "the verra look o' him wes victory"; "a 
 blister for the ootside an' Epsom salts for the inside dis his 
 wark, an' they say there's no an herb on the hills he disna 
 ken." 
 
 But when the life of Annie Mitchell, Tammas' wife, 
 was ebbing slowly away. Dr. MacLure reached the h'mit 
 of his skill. Then one hour's work of the city speciaUst 
 brought relief to the distracted husband and joy to every 
 heart in the glen. No one rejoiced, however, more than 
 the old doctor who saw himself eclipsed; while the great 
 speciaHst learned enough in his short visit to enable him 
 
 ^A revised reprint from tne American Schoolmaster, September, 1913, used by 
 courtesy of the publishers. 
 
 ' These extracts from Ian Maclaren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush are used by special 
 arrangement with the publishers, Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. 
 
 140 
 
SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 141 
 
 to measure the country physician at his true worth. At 
 the parting the Queen's physician turned to the old doctor, 
 rough, gaunt, ill-clothed, scarred by many an accident 
 and bowed by the weight of years, — " Give's another 
 shake of the hand, MacLure; I'm proud to have met you; 
 you are an honor to our profession." 
 
 In another chapter of the same book, a book, by the way, 
 that is fit to rank with the best educational classics, 
 is a sketch of a great teacher, a general practitioner who 
 is also an honor to his profession. " He could detect a 
 scholar in the egg, and prophesied Latinity from a boy 
 that seemed fit only to be a cowherd. . He 
 
 had a leaning to classics and the professions, but Domsie 
 was cathoUc in his recognition of 'pairts'. ..." 
 But it was Latin Domsie hunted for as for fine gold, and 
 when he found the smack of it in a lad he rejoiced openly. 
 He counted it a day in his life when he knew certainly 
 that he had hit on another scholar." His triumph came 
 when George Howe, one of his own lads of "pairts," 
 carried off the medal from the university in both humanity 
 and Greek. 
 
 A life of professional service. — The sketch puts master 
 and pupil in the foreground. Apparatus and equipment, 
 even books and schooLhouse, are barely mentioned. " Per- 
 haps one ought to have been ashamed of that school- 
 house, but yet it had its own distinction, for scholars 
 were bom there, and now and then to this da;y some 
 famous man wiU come and stand in the deserted play- 
 ground for a space." And well he may, for the place is 
 hallowed by the associations of a hfe of devoted service — 
 a service that is professional in highest degree. Fortunate, 
 
142 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 thrice fortunate, is the man who can find in some class- 
 room, long since deserted or now echoing to the sound of 
 strangers' voices, inducement to meditation and cause 
 for thankfulness. And thrice fortunate the teacher 
 whose memory compels man to bless him. 
 
 The vogue of specialization. — One hears it said now- 
 adays that the general practitioner is passing, that the 
 age of specialism has succeeded the happy time when 
 everyone knew everything and could do everything that 
 was to be done. To a certain extent it may be true, 
 but it is not the whole truth. True it is that the special- 
 ist flourishes in these times like a green bay tree. He is 
 recognized by the mighty and lauded by all the world. 
 And by the acid test, I mean by the size of the fees he 
 charges, one knows surely that the speciaJist has come 
 into his own. If one wants a mountain tunneled, a river 
 bridged, or the east and the west joined by a canal, the 
 spedahst can be found to do it; if one wants a seedless 
 orange, drought-resisting alfaKa, or a new breed of com, 
 the speciahst can be foimd to produce it; if one wants to 
 rid a city of yellow fever, find a serum for diphtheria, or fit 
 up a partially furnished human body with organs discarded 
 by their former owners, the specialist can be found to do it. 
 Moreover, when we want to find a cure for cancer, to walk 
 with seven-leagued boots, or to communicate with Mars, 
 we have faith that some day the speciahst will be found 
 who can do it. We have reached the stage of evolution 
 when nothing seems incomprehensible or unattainable. 
 
 A connecting link. — But however overwhelming the 
 vogue of the specialist, the days of the general practitioner 
 have not passed and they will not pass. Just in proper- 
 
SPECIALISM ESf EDUCATION 143 
 
 tion as the specialist withdraws himself from everyday 
 contact with men and affairs, just to that extent is it 
 necessary to have mediators between him and those 
 through whom he works or for whom his work is done. 
 The man who designs the bridge, lays out the tunnel, 
 or conceives the canal depends for his success on the fore- 
 man and workers on the job. The spedahst in horti- 
 culture or agronomy may discover the new type, but 
 it is the gardener or the farmer who brings the t}^e to 
 fruition. The specialist in medicine or surgery finds a 
 new way of controlling disease, but it is the family doctor 
 who brings it to our homes or goes with us to the hospital 
 when our need outruns his skill. The general practitioner 
 is the connecting Hnk between those who can give and 
 those who wish to receive. 
 
 Placing the emphasis. — The strength of the spedahst 
 is in what he knows and can do; his weakness is in his 
 narrowness and lack of experience with the forces and 
 influences outside his own sphere. The strength of the 
 general practitioner is in his knowledge of the world and of 
 human nature; his weakness hes in his inabihty to be 
 expert in everything at once. The distinction, as I see 
 it, is mainly a matter of emphasis, having to do on the 
 one hand with the extent of one's work and on the other 
 hand with one's attitude towards it. Everybody may 
 be a specialist in something and a general practitioner in 
 many other things at the same time. Whatever contradic- 
 tion exists is due to the contest between high effidency 
 within narrow limits and general ability in a larger field. 
 
 Specialization in education. — In the field of educa- 
 tion we are coming to recognize the existence of specialists. 
 
144 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Formerly the country teacher was a country teacher; 
 the grade teacher a grade teacher; the high-school teacher 
 a high-school teacher. Even the college professor enjoyed 
 the distinction of belonging to a type of his own. But 
 how rapidly is aU this changing. The rural teacher is 
 now expected to be expert in agriculture or the household 
 arts or in both of them, and in rural economy besides. 
 The grade teacher is coming to be known as a primary 
 teacher, or a grammar-school teacher, if, happily, she 
 escapes being labeled by the exact number of the grade 
 to which she is consigned. In the secondary field we no 
 longer have the general practitioner, except in schools 
 too poor to afford the spedaJist in English, or Latin, or 
 mathematics. The teacher of science has given way to 
 the specialist in physics or chemistry or biology. Nature 
 study is breaking up into bits in places where nature is 
 viewed in fragments. The college professor has been 
 inoculated with the Ph.D. virus and has come out of it 
 pockmarked with the German university. In fact, we 
 no longer have colleges of the old type, but instead we have 
 hybrid institutions — part school, part university. And 
 the end is not yet. Experts, real or fancied, are springing 
 up everjrwhere. Experts in supervision and administration, 
 experts in school surveys, experts in accounting, experts 
 in child study, experts in farm demonstration, experts in 
 com clubs and tomato dubs, experts in ever3rthing that 
 anybody wants and for which a comfortable salary is 
 forthcoming. 
 
 It were easy to poke fun at the popular craze for 
 spedalization in education, but the situation is far too 
 serious to warrant ridicule or justify levity at the expense 
 
SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION • 145 
 
 of either the budding specialist or the educational reformer. 
 Within the past ten years we have seen an almost complete 
 revolution in pubHc opinion with respect to public educa- 
 tion. Few of us are so young as not to recall the time 
 when it was professionally dangerous to advocate voca- 
 tional training, but to-day it is a sure mark of the old 
 fogy to oppose it. The grip of this new idea on the pub- 
 lic mind is clearly shown in the enormous sums of money 
 now annually voted for public funds for the promotion 
 of the practical arts of agriculture, industry, commerce 
 and home-making. And in true American fashion mil- 
 lions of money are being poured out for these purposes 
 before schools have been estabhshed or teachers trained 
 for the work; or even before it is surely known that 
 children can be foimd to accept the new kind of 
 schooling. What matters it, so the pubhc seems to 
 think, whether the money be wisely spent; we want 
 results, and it is the business of schools and teachers to 
 give us what we want. 
 
 Needs in special fields. — The seriousness of the situa- 
 tion lies in the fact that we have at present neither the 
 teachers nor the means of getting the teachers to do this ^ 
 work. For fifty years we have been building up a system 
 of normal schools for the training of teachers who may 
 be called general practitioners in elementary and second- 
 ary education. Now, of a sudden, the call comes for 
 specialists of infinite variety — teachers of carpentry 
 and cabinet-making, of Hthography and printing, of 
 blacksmithing and molding and founding, of machine 
 work and tool cutting, of house decoration and furniture 
 design, of agriculture and farm demonstration, of garden- 
 
 TREND IN ED. 10 
 
146 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 ing and horticulture, of cooking, dressmaking, millinery 
 and laundering, of music and the fine arts, of physical 
 training and nursing — only to mention a few of the special 
 demands made upon me within a few months. It is 
 impossible to satisfy these demands. AU of the normal 
 schools, departments of education, and special training 
 schools in this cotmtry together cannot meet the needs of a 
 single state. The city of New York alone needs to-day 
 more competent teachers in these special fields than all of 
 the training schools of the United States will turn out ia 
 the next few years. 
 
 What win the harvest be? Why, surely this: The city 
 of New York, the state of Michigan, and all the other states 
 will put teachers to work who will not know their business, 
 but who will draw salaries and hold their jobs tiU a merciful 
 Providence disposes of some by death or old age and fills 
 their places with better material. Meantime our train- 
 ing schools must struggle on with inadequate support, 
 trying to make bricks without straw. We know, how- 
 ever, from past experience, that the only way to get more 
 straw is to turn out our tale of bricks, each one better than 
 the last. 
 
 A foundation for citizenship. — This latest innovation 
 in public education has come to stay. Make no mistake 
 on that score. It is not a passing fancy. It has its roots 
 deep down in the economic consciousness of our people. 
 It is a phase of the struggle for existence. Our population 
 is increasing; our natural resources and our unimproved 
 land remain fixed or tend to diminish. Two must some 
 day live where one lives now, and then three and four. 
 Men hve together peaceably when all are well fed, but 
 
SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 147 
 
 let some hunger for food and you have trouble. A few 
 go hungry now; more will be hungry next year and the 
 next. Then look out for more trouble. The present 
 trend in education has regard for the time when the man 
 who is inefficient will be a disturber of the peace, and the 
 demand for a new t3T)e of education is the groping of the 
 public mind for a solution of this great economic problem. 
 It cannot be explained away; it ought not to be disregarded 
 by those who see in education something more than 
 finger play and the acquisition of skill. Indeed, the time 
 is coming when those who cherish the highest ideals of 
 education will find the ground swept from under their 
 feet, unless they realize that in order to make life worth 
 living men must be taught to live decently. The man who 
 can do something well will surely take pride in his work, 
 as well as get a decent living from it. Pride in one's 
 work and the ability to gain a competence from it — these 
 are the foundation upon which conservative citizenship 
 rests. These are the ends towards which vocational 
 training strives. 
 
 Trends toward specialization. — The tendency to 
 specialization has been strongly marked in our national 
 hfe for more than fifty years. It has developed in response 
 to the demand for more efficient service. First felt in 
 the field of the mechanical and industrial arts, Morrill 
 land grants stimulated the movement during the time of 
 national peril in the sixties, and from that time to this 
 there has been no halt in the evolution of professional 
 training. The university has grown out of the college 
 purposely, to provide more highly specialized courses 
 in the training of experts, and every kind of professional 
 
148 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 school that I know of has enormously expanded its cur- 
 riculum in response to the popular call for more highly 
 trained specialists. Compare the engineering curriculum 
 of to-day with the course of study called engineering 
 forty years ago. Do the same with the schools of agri- 
 culture, of medicine, and of law. Then go over the hst of 
 new professional schools established in the last twenty 
 years — schools of dentistry, ceramics, lithography, print- 
 ing, nursing, chiropody; Christian science at one extreme, 
 and at the other extreme the great foundations for research 
 in the natural sciences, medicine and surgery, endowed 
 by a Rockefeller, a Phipps, or a Carnegie. Vocational 
 training for the boy or girl who leaves school at fourteen 
 years of age and the most specialized research work under 
 the Carnegie Foundation are part and parcel of the same 
 educational movement. This tendency to specialization 
 is the dominant educational characteristic of our time. 
 
 Meeting the demand for educational specialists. — 
 Considering the signs of the times, what response should 
 our training schools for teachers make? What need have 
 we for general practitioners in education? What demand 
 is there for specialists? What are the qualifications for 
 experts in education and how shall experts be made? 
 
 Until very recently the training schools for teachers 
 have been of one type, and that type has been the normal 
 school. Until within, say, ten years the university schools 
 of education have really been academic institutions, 
 and only a few of them have yet grown out of that stage. 
 So far as dififerentiation has taken place, the difference 
 between them is that the normal school has emphasized 
 training for elementary work and the university school 
 
SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION I49 
 
 has emphasized the training for secondary work. But, 
 as everyone knows, there has been and is still much over- 
 lapping. In one respect both are alike; both are engaged 
 in training the novice for whatever work offers surest 
 employment and brings quickest returns. Most American 
 training schools for teachers are engaged in turning out 
 general practitioners. 
 
 Training the educational practitioner. — A cursory 
 examination of the curricula of training schools of every 
 grade discloses a striking similarity in the scope and 
 content of the courses offered. First will be noted the 
 fundamental courses common to all. These are quite 
 generally psychology, and the history and principles of 
 education. Next come courses in methodology, which are 
 specialized according to the standard subjects of the 
 curricula in elementary and secondary schools. Beyond 
 this point there is considerable variety, but so far as I 
 can find there is no eflScient cause for it except the personal 
 preferences and institutional idiosyncrasies. Whatever 
 difference exists is due more to the age and academic fitness 
 of the student-body than to the character of the work that 
 individual students will later be called upon to do. 
 
 The status of teachers' training schools to-day is very 
 similar to that of medicine, or engineering, or agriculture 
 twenty years ago. These technical schools were then 
 providing a general curriculum and their graduates were 
 general practitioners. Within the period under review, 
 however, these schools have not only greatly strengthened 
 the scientific content of their fundamental courses, but they 
 have added to their offerings a surprising number of 
 highly specialized courseSk The result is that while they 
 
150 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 still train the general practitioner, they give him a more 
 specialized training and also make it possible for a few 
 of their best graduates to become expert in some particular 
 field. 
 
 The problem of training teachers differs somewhat from 
 the problem of training other professional workers. First, 
 more teachers are needed, very many more, than workers 
 in any other profession. Second, the salaries paid to 
 many teachers do not justify a long period of training, or 
 permit of rigid academic requirement. Third, teachers 
 are generally denied that free and open competition 
 which leads to eminence in most other professional lines. 
 Fourth, teachers are civil servants and are dependent 
 upon the will of the public for their tenure of office. These 
 facts have to be reckoned with, and they generally operate 
 to depress the level of professional service. 
 
 The demand for the educational expert. — But when all 
 is said that can be said to excuse stagnation in the training 
 of teachers and to justify conservation in the teaching 
 profession, the fact remains that there is a growing demand 
 for more expert teachers and better equipped educa- 
 tional leaders. It is this call for something more and 
 something better that we must heed. 
 
 There is no need, I assume, to argue the proposition 
 that the state must continue to provide schools for the 
 training of the army of teachers, elementary and secondary, 
 needed every year to fiU the gaps in the ranks. The need 
 is so great and the economic pressure so keen that many 
 normal schools must be maintained solely for the purpose 
 of keeping our educational system from retrogression. 
 The duty of such training schools is clear to all. They 
 
SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 151 
 
 stand in the breach and must do the best they can with 
 the means and material at their command. Until the 
 teacher's life is made more agreeable, tenure more secure, 
 and remuneration more adequate, many state normal 
 schools wiU be forced to sacrifice professional ideals to 
 popular expediency. Some that I know are showing a 
 heroism that merits the compliment paid to the old Scotch 
 doctor — we are proud to know them; they are an honor 
 to our profession. 
 
 The trend of the times is first to provide general prac- 
 titioners and then to make a few of the general practitioners 
 really expert in a particular field. In education this means 
 that a way should be found to single out those fit for special 
 service, and that provision be made for giving them special- 
 ized training. If the exigencies of the situation force 
 ninety-five out of every hundred teachers into routine work, 
 it is all the more important that the other five be qualified 
 to lead the ninety-five aright. If all cannot be experts, 
 the greater the need of some experts. And when I say 
 experts, I do not mean solely principals and superin- 
 tendents and supervisors. The influence of one superior 
 teacher of Latin, or geography, or mathematics can be 
 made to pervade a whole city system. The person who 
 knows and can do, is the expert, whether he be in surgery, 
 criminal law, or animal husbandry, or in teaching reading 
 in the first grade, mathematics in the high school, or phi- 
 losophy in the college. The time is coming when expert- 
 ness will be as highly prized in the teachers as in the 
 administrative ofiicer, and I am confident that some 
 schools some day will find a substantial way of recognizing 
 superior merit, however it may be shown. 
 
152 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Equipping the expert. — The obviously correct pro- 
 cedure in making educational experts is first to make 
 good general practitioners — teachers who have some- 
 thing to teach and know how to teach it; teachers well 
 grounded in academic subjects who have acquired by 
 training and reflection an all-round view of educational 
 aims and values, and who have learned by practical ex- 
 perience how best to give professional service. The next 
 step is to provide the general practitioner with a body of 
 specialized knowledge and equip him with superior skiU 
 in some particular line of work. Knowledge and skill 
 focused on a particular problem are the chief factors in 
 the solution of the problem. 
 
 Great as is our need for properly equipped teachers, 
 there is little prospect of our getting many of them. So, 
 too, our ideals of training educational experts will not 
 soon be realized.- Just as we are forced to compromise 
 with the public in the training of the novice, so are our 
 efforts to make good specialists likely to prove abortive. 
 Nevertheless, the work must go on. Here and there 
 an institution will be Justified in devoting its whole strength 
 to specialized instruction, and it may well be that every 
 teachers' training school can perform some part of the 
 task. The task itself is to find out what to do and how 
 to do it. It is a task of heroic proportions — one that 
 dwarfs every other educational problem of our time. 
 
 Responsibilities of educational institutions. — The in- 
 stitution which dedicates itself to specialism in education 
 assumes a grave responsibility. In so far as it is successful 
 its graduates will lead in educational thought and practice 
 and exercise a dominant influence in shaping educational 
 
SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 1 53 
 
 affairs. The danger is that we may send out blind teachers 
 of the blind. 
 
 Sound learning as an asset. — My experience in an 
 institution which has been specializing in education as long 
 as any other, leads me to the conclusion that a teachers' 
 college cannot neglect a few very definite rules of procedure. 
 They are so obvious to me as to seem axiomatic. First, 
 a teachers' college, while a professional school and working 
 solely towards professional ends, should prize sound learn- 
 ing as its principal asset. The chief hindrance to good 
 teaching is lack of knowledge, academic and professional. 
 The greatest obstacle in the way of professional advance- 
 ment to-day is the ignorance of those charged with educa- 
 tional leadership in school and in public hfe. So long as 
 we don't know scientifically what should be done or how 
 to do it — know it in such a way that any rational being 
 who takes the trouble to examine the proofs will be 
 convinced — so long will the conduct of school affairs 
 be a matter of opinion. And where opinion prevails the 
 ward politician will always win. Our first duty then, 
 as I see it, is to encourage research and investigation in 
 every line of school work. In some departments it means a 
 specially selected body of academic knowledge, as, for 
 example, that which a teacher of high-school mathematics 
 should know; in other departments it means scientific 
 research into the psychologic foundations of the learning 
 process; and again it means such a knowledge of municipal 
 administration as to make of school management a science 
 as well as an art. The great object is to bring under 
 scientific control the traditional arts of school-keeping 
 and school-teaching. 
 
154 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Knowledge for professional ends. — The second axiom 
 is that a teachers' college should use knowledge for pro- 
 fessional ends. A university department of education 
 might conceivably pursue research and investigation 
 regardless of its outcome, but a professional school for the 
 training of educational experts cannot afford to neglect 
 the practical application of approved facts. A teachers' 
 college, in other words, must be a school of both pure and 
 applied science. I have Httle faith in the abiUty of any 
 one to draw the line between the two aspects of higher 
 study, but if it can be done, then the teachers' college must 
 be found in the field of appKed science. Our success 
 depends upon our ability to use correctly the knowledge 
 of facts and processes concerned in education. Our work, 
 therefore, has a twofold aspect — first, the pursuit of 
 knowledge that will stand the test, and, second, learning 
 how to use such knowledge skillfully for the benefit of 
 society. 
 
 Cutting academic red tape. — A third axiom relates to 
 the conditions under which we work. A teachers' college 
 must be free to pursue its work without overmuch regard to 
 academic traditions. While some sort of connection 
 with a university is highly desirable, both for the sake of 
 the inspiration gained from workers in other fields, and the 
 contributions that come from those not directly concerned 
 in our work, there is danger, nevertheless, that too close a 
 union may stifle the life of the young professional school 
 with the windings of academic red tape. A teachers' 
 college, if it deserves to exist as something apart from a 
 collegiate course, must, like a university department, and 
 every other professional school, be given freedom to develop 
 
SPECIALISM IN EDUCATION 155 
 
 its field. The spirit of its work, its esprit de corps, and its 
 mode of giving instruction must develop normally and 
 naturally according to its needs. This can't be done 
 if some extraneous power decides ex cathedra that certain 
 lines of work, generally those nearest akin to those already 
 in existence, are worthy of university recognition, and 
 certain other lines to which they are strangers are unworthy 
 of recognition. In a teachers' college the methods of 
 teaching speUing, or memorizing a Latin declension, 
 or cooking a beefsteak are as worthy of attention as a 
 study of the principles of causation, the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion, or the history of coeducation. No one doubts 
 that the expert surgeon does right in giving attention to 
 methods 'of tying an artery and bandaging a wound. It 
 takes time to learn the necessary details in professional 
 practice, and a professional school is fully Justified in 
 giving the time and allowing credit for it. I mention 
 this desideratum, seemingly so self-evident, because 
 I have found it the chief stumblingblock in umVersity 
 circles. I would go further and say that the ordinary 
 system of counting courses of instruction by the number 
 of hours per week, or the number of weeks per year, 
 should be abandoned in a teachers' college, or at least 
 be modified in such a way as to permit of a combination 
 of courses of variable length given by several instructors. 
 Academic tradition assigns to a given faculty of a univer- 
 sity certain functions, and credits only that instruction 
 which members of the faculty may give. A teachers' 
 coUege should be free to supplement the instruction of 
 its own staff with the services of experts drawn from a 
 wide circle, and it should not hesitate to send its students 
 
156 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 into the field for study and instruction under recognized 
 leaders who cannot bring their work to the college. We 
 need something akin to the clinic and hospital service 
 of the medical school. When academic tradition inter- 
 feres with professional needs, away with red tape. When 
 something can be learned from an expert in a few hours, 
 why refuse to caU in the expert or tie it up with a dozen 
 other things in order to make out a two-hour course for 
 a semester? A teachers' college supported by the state 
 should have aU the educational resources of the state at 
 its command. Its students should be welcome in any 
 schoolroom and have access to aU the information pos- 
 sessed by any principal or superintendent of schools. 
 Its invitation to any teacher in the state to share instruc- 
 tion for an hour or a week should be deemed both a profes- 
 sional honor and a patriotic duty. To one accustomed 
 to the limitations placed upon a private institution, the 
 opportunities open to such a state institution as this seem 
 boundless. 
 
CHAPTER rx 
 
 COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS ' 
 
 "^COEDUCATION is a failure: The Horace Mann 
 
 • ^ i School decides to abandon it." 
 
 This startling headline in a New York daily 
 paper prefaced the announcement of a change in policy 
 with respect to our college schools. The fact is that 
 after twenty-five years of coeducation we tried the experi- 
 ment of separating the sexes during the last six of the 
 twelve years' course. The kindergarten and first six 
 grades of the elementary school will remain coeducational. 
 Beginning with the seventh grade, the boys go to a school 
 at 246th Street, six miles distant, and the girls remain 
 in the present building at 120th Street. The boys' school 
 has a playground of four acres fitted for their use in all 
 kinds of weather. The girls have the fine gymnasium 
 and swimming-pool formerly shared with the boys. 
 Material equipment, therefore, is about equalized. The 
 special feature of the boys' school is its outdoor hfe — 
 a country school for boys; the special advantages of the 
 girls' school will be its fadhties for teaching the house- 
 hold arts, fine arts, and music. 
 
 Is coeducation a failure? — If a country school is good 
 for city boys, why not for city girls? Can't the house- 
 hold arts and other technical subjects be taught as well 
 in one place as in another? Why separate the boys and 
 
 ' A revised reprint from Good Housekeeping, October, 1913, used by courtesy of 
 the EJublishers. 
 
 157 
 
158 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 girls — unless, perchance, you think coeducation a failure? 
 A matter of expediency. — Those who believe that 
 coeducation is a failure will not be changed by any ex- 
 planation that I can give, but I insist that our action has 
 no bearing whatever on the main question. We have 
 done only what every good school and every wise com- 
 munity would do under similar conditions. When the 
 present school building was erected it was surrounded 
 by vacant blocks. Playgrounds were easily accessible. 
 Now the city hems us in. Moreover, the school was 
 much smaller than now. School Ufe was simpler, and no 
 such demand was made upon us for the technical training 
 of girls as has come everyTvhere within the past ten years. 
 Our policy is to keep the school to the front and make it 
 in every way as good as we know how. Our present 
 building and equipment represent an investment of up- 
 ward of $500,000. It is too valuable to abandon, but 
 it can be made into an ideal school for girls. For three 
 years the boys have been going afternoons in good weather 
 to the playground at 246th Street. The time spent 
 on the trains — twenty-five minutes each way — is a 
 considerable loss, and in order to get in an hour or two in 
 dayHght the school has had to dose at two o'clock. Under 
 the new plan the boys wiU spend the day at the country 
 school, and get their lessons and sports whenever each can 
 be done best. The separation wiU give ample room for 
 both schools, simplify the program, and make possible a 
 more complete curriculum for each. These are the con- 
 siderations which led us to change a policy of twenty-five 
 years' standing. They are all matters of expediency, 
 and say nothing of the success or failure of coeducation. 
 
COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1 59 
 
 What is coeducation? — My explanation is intended 
 merely to show that our action was not the result of 
 profound conviction of the right or wrong of coeducation, 
 and most certainly it was not forced by any dissatisfaction 
 with a school of both sexes, nor any inability to accomplish 
 what the school set out to do when it was established. 
 No breath of scandal has ever touched it, and from first to 
 last it has been a big happy family. 
 
 I assume that what prompts a discussion of coedu- 
 cation in the high school is the knowledge that the prob- 
 lem which confronts us also confronts many other schools. 
 Our experience is not isolated. Communities which have 
 maintained coeducational high schools for a generation 
 are now raising the question for the first time whether 
 or not it is best to do as they have been doing. Questions 
 which many of us thought settled years ago are coming 
 up to vex us. In the light of recent development in 
 secondary education, how shall they be answered? 
 
 The first step is to get a clear understanding of what 
 is meant by coeducation. In the minds of some it appar- 
 ently means that girls should have identically the same 
 schooling as boys. Such a conception may have been 
 justified at a time when it was claimed that girls' intellects 
 were inferior to boys', that a woman should not aspire 
 to do a man's work axiywhexe — least of all in school 
 and college. But no one who has taught boys and girls 
 together can make that argument and keep a straight face. 
 It is no longer necessary to put boys and girls together in 
 school or college simply to demonstrate that girls are not 
 the inferiors of their brothers. 
 
 Equipment and efficiency. — When coeducation is un- 
 
l6o. THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 derstood to mean identical education for all, the problem 
 is reduced to its lowest terms, and becomes an ab- 
 surdity. It is long since any one has seriously advocated 
 a curriculum so narrow and impoverished as to be accept- 
 able to aU. Even in schools where all must take the same 
 lessons and submit to the same instruction, it does not 
 foUow that all pupils get the same mental pabulum. 
 No two pupils get the same reaction, mental or spiritual, 
 from any school exercise. One boy may pick his way 
 laboriously through Caesar's Commentaries and retain 
 just enough to earn a passing mark at the end of the term; 
 another, apparently doing the same task, may be leading 
 an imaginary Roman legion in a conquest of the world. 
 The one is working for a diploma; the other is getting an 
 education. 
 
 Meeting the pupil's needs. — The pedagogical advance 
 in recent years has been directed primarily toward better 
 teaching. There has been great material betterment, 
 to be sure, but fine buildings and improved equipment 
 are worth while only as means of helping the teacher 
 to do more inspiring work. In methods of instruction 
 our teachers are trained to depend less upon the grind 
 and discipline of school-keeping, and more upon teaching 
 in such a way as to secure a wholesome respect for the 
 subject of instruction and, if possible, an abiding interest • 
 in it. It is well known that most boys and girls have 
 their likes and disHkes in school subjects. Time was when 
 a schoolboy's soul was saved by the mortification of the 
 flesh. In some places, where the school is too poor to 
 afford a variety, the puritanic argument is still heard, 
 but I do not know of any school that has grown from, say, 
 
COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS l6l 
 
 fifty to five hundred pupils which has not increased its 
 curriculum in almost equal ratio. When a school has only 
 two teachers the subjects taught are naturally those 
 which two teachers can best teach; when the third teacher 
 comes in a few new subjects enter, and the curriculum 
 becomes more flexible; when the tenth, or twentieth, or 
 fiftieth teacher is added, less is said of what the pupil 
 needs and more of what he wants. Apparently the pupil 
 needs what he can get when he can get but little; when 
 much is offered his wants determine his needs. 
 
 Equal opportunity. — The bane of education is that 
 plausible arguments can be put up to justify any end 
 however unworthy it may be. Identical education was 
 justified so long as it cost less to give a narrow curriculum 
 than a broad one. When it costs no more to give a variety 
 of subjects, the argument changes. Then we argue that 
 there should be equality of opportunity — opportunity 
 for each boy and each girl to get in school the training 
 which will best fit them for the work of Hfe. So far have 
 we gone in this latest stage that vocational training is 
 being introduced everywhere. The rural schools are 
 teaching agriculture and the household arts. By con- 
 tinuation schools, night schools, and special trade schools, 
 both boys and girls in our cities are being fitted to earn 
 a better living. Once grant that equality of opportunity 
 has a place in school poHcy, and no state dare provide 
 high schools, coUeges, and professional schools for the 
 few, without making provision for the' vocational train- 
 ing of the many. 
 
 Meeting the need for differentiation. — The doctrine of 
 equality of opportunity is plasang havoc with many of 
 
 TREND IN ED. — II 
 
l62 THE TItEND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 our earlier American notions of education. Our first 
 secondary schools were really coUege-preparatory schools, 
 and our colleges were a step toward professional training 
 for the service of church and state. They were aristocratic 
 institutions, for the benefit of the few who could afford 
 to take advantage of them. When high schools came in, 
 maintained at public expense, the common sense of the 
 community insisted on opening these schools to girls. 
 The public that paid the bills was as much interested in 
 one sex as in the other, and thereby coeducation became 
 the rule in American high schools. But, unwittingly, 
 in admitting girls the seeds of heterodoxy were sown. 
 The admission of girls doubled the possible number of 
 pupils at once, and with the growth of numbers more 
 teachers were necessary. With more teachers, greater 
 flexibility of curriculum was inevitable. The next step 
 is the one we are all facing. When it is possible to provide 
 schooling adapted to the needs of later life, what differen- 
 tiation, if any, shall be made for boys and girls? 
 
 Vocational training. — The fact that eighty per cent of 
 the girls in any high school wiU marry within a few years 
 and be settled in homes, and that the only specific train- 
 ing they wiU ever get for their life work must be had ia 
 the high school, suggests the desirabihty of giving girls 
 something more than the boys want. So strong has this 
 feeling become that few high schools to-day omit the house- 
 hold arts from their curriculum. If it be granted that 
 differentiation is desirable in one respect, it is difficult to 
 refute the argument that it also may be desirable in other 
 respects. I fancy that the movement, begun with the 
 introduction of the household arts, will continue until 
 
COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1 63 
 
 the high-school training for girls who do not go to college 
 wiU be sharply set off from the college-preparatory course. 
 Moreover, the colleges will not long refuse to credit for 
 admission the courses pursued by most girls in high schools; 
 the state universities cannot do it if they would, and the 
 women's colleges will finally fall in line. Consequently I 
 predict a growing tendency to differentiate the work 
 of boys and girls in our high schools. 
 
 But all this may be beside the mark. It does not answer 
 the question whether boys and girls should be educated 
 together in the high school. Coeducation, if it means 
 identical education, seems to me an absurdity. Coeduca- 
 tion as equahty of opportunity for both sexes, and for aU 
 individuals, wiU be settled chiefly by considerations of 
 expediency. 
 
 A normal school life. — Judging from what I know of 
 boys' schools and girls' schools and schools for both sexes, 
 I am satisfied that boys and girls can live together in schools 
 as naturally and helpfully as they do in the homes from 
 which they come. I doubt whether a boys' school is any 
 safer for a normal boy, or a girls' school for a normal 
 girl, than is a mixed school. Some boys, perhaps, and 
 some girls would be better off in separate institutions, 
 but in most communities there is no cause to fear any 
 worse outcome from a mixed school than would proba- 
 bly arise if the sexes were separated. This is a hard 
 proposition for a foreigner to understand, but to most 
 Americans it is axiomatic. With us, school life with boys 
 and girls is as normal and as safe as home life. More- 
 over, there are many refining influences present in a mixed 
 school which are distinctly helpful to boys, and, so far as 
 
164 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 my observation goes, the girls lose nothing by being looked 
 to as guardians of the social life of the group. Respon- 
 sibility builds character, and in a mixed school each sex 
 is charged with the responsibility of maintaining its own 
 social status. This I consider a positive advantage, and 
 one that should not Ughtly be set aside. 
 
 The school as a replica of community life. — School 
 life in an American high school is the life of the community 
 in miniature. If the community life is sound and healthy, 
 the life of the school should be sound and healthy, too. 
 When public opinion is weak or uncertain, however, there 
 is a danger that the mixed school may su£Fer. Hence 
 it is that the high school in one community may be easily 
 managed and a model of propriety, while not far away 
 another school may fall far short of the ideal. In a great 
 city, for example, where pupils come from all classes and 
 where the parents are flat-dwellers, knowing nothing 
 of those who live on the other side of the partition, a con- 
 trolling public opinion is out of the question. Pupils 
 know each other only in school, and the gossip of the 
 school does not penetrate the homes, because those at 
 home do not know John or Sarah toward whom gossip is 
 directed. Under such conditions the school is hampered 
 by lack of restraining public opinion. It is natural, there- 
 fore, that parents should hesitate to send a daughter 
 into a group of which they know little, but fear much. 
 Such a situation invites opposition to coeducation, and 
 the opposition naturally comes from the patrons of the 
 school. 
 
 Physiological maturity. — The strongest argument for 
 the separation of the sexes during the high-school age 
 
COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 1 65 
 
 comes from the difference in physiologic age. Girls mature 
 earlier than boys. Girls of fifteen are a year or two ahead 
 of boys of the same age, and the boys never catch up 
 during the high-school period. The inferiority of the boys, 
 socially and mentally, is noticeable in any high-school 
 class. I speak, of course, in general terms. In every 
 ■ school some boy will be physiologically older and intel- 
 lectually more alert than some girls, but in the large, 
 the girls outstrip the boys. The result is a certain stagna- 
 tion of the boy group, due in part to immaturity, and in 
 part to the repeated failure to excel. When a boy gives 
 up trpng because some girl always wins, he soon acquires 
 the habit of being satisfied to stay behind. It is a common 
 saying among high-school teachers that girls learn more, 
 but boys think better. But the boy who becomes ac- 
 custoined to second place soon fails to think at his best. 
 He marks time, and frequently does not wake up till he 
 finds himself in college in an entirely different atmosphere, 
 dealing with new subjects in open competition with his 
 fellows. 
 
 Degrees of sensitivity. — Some boys, a relatively 
 large number, I fear, should be pushed harder in high 
 school than is commonly the case with mixed classes. 
 A hand heavy enough to be felt by boys of sixteen may 
 be too heavy for the girls of the same class. The relatively 
 greater sensitiveness of girls may be disputed, but I think 
 most teachers will agree that girls are prone to take school 
 work more seriously than boys. 
 
 Collegiate coeducation. — Whatever the value of the 
 argument for a separation of the sexes during the high- 
 school period, it does not hold good for either the earher 
 
1 66 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 or later educational stages. I cannot see any inherent 
 differences in college men and women, and I fancy no one 
 finds them in the elementary school. Some women 
 whom I know are physically stronger, intellectually 
 keener, and spiritually more robust than some men of my 
 acquaintance. I doubt whether there is any profession, 
 or even manual vocation, that might not be better served 
 by certain women than by many men. On the other hand, 
 there are men who are essentially more feminine than some 
 women; even the maternal instinct is better developed 
 in some men than in many women. Our environment 
 and occupation, quite as much as any inherited tendency 
 or physical limitation, mold us into the shapes we take. 
 
 Equality of opportunity for similarity of aims. — The 
 doctrine of equality of opportunity — a fundamental 
 principle of American society, it seems to me — forces 
 us to the conclusion that our school system must provide 
 free and ample training for every boy and girl. If a boy 
 and a girl aspire to professional service, there should be 
 full equality of opportunity; so, too, if either wants to 
 become a farmer, a builder, or a stenographer, the way 
 should be open and the means available. 
 
 The obvious corollary of this proposition is that those 
 whose aim is the same should have the same education. 
 The woman who studies medicine, or teaching, or law, 
 needs no spedahzed course of training because she is a 
 woman. Professional service is without distinction of 
 sex. Merchandizing, stenography — even laundering and 
 dressmaking and dishwashing — are not pecuHarly femi- 
 nine occupations. The man who wishes to excel in them 
 must fit himself as does the woman. 
 
COEDUCATION IN HIGH SCHOOLS 167 
 
 Opening the door to future needs. — I see no reason, 
 therefore, to modify a college-preparatory course to suit 
 the needs of girls or boys; their needs are identical, so far 
 as they go. The fact that two thirds of the girls will soon 
 marry means that the career of the largest group in the 
 school is definitely known; for them a specialized course 
 is not only desirable, but it is almost criminal not to give 
 it. But if any girl prefers Latin to cookery, and aspires to 
 become a classical scholar rather than a domestic tech- 
 nician, I think she is entitled to all the help the school can 
 give, and that what she gets should be what the boy with 
 the same ambition gets. There is a study of science that 
 leads to a sane understanding of the principles of nutrition 
 and sanitation as required by the housewife, and there 
 is a study of science that leads to the practice of medicine. 
 The girl who is to marry should choose the one, and the 
 girl who is to become a physician should take the other. 
 It would doubtless strengthen the future housewife to 
 take both, just as it would be well for the married phy- 
 sician to have both, but hfe is too short to do everything 
 that one would hke, or to get all the training that one 
 should have. Choices must be made, and fortunate is 
 the man or woman who chooses wisely. All that the 
 school can do is to offer the widest possible range of choices, 
 and to keep the door open toward future needs. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION ' 
 
 SOME time ago I was asked to address a convention 
 on the subject, " What are the vital things in the 
 education of young women? " The topic was not 
 of my choosing, but the question interested me. It 
 should interest everyone, either teacher or parent. From 
 the parent's standpoint it is oftentimes a very proper 
 question to put. What have courses of study and methods 
 of teaching to do with things that are vital in education? 
 Where are the ablative absolute, the rule of three, and 
 quadratic equations in such a scheme? Is there anything 
 of more consequence than the ability to parse " Paradise 
 Lost," to spell Nebuchadnezzar, or to work every example 
 in partial payments (every one, I mean, that the textbook 
 gives — no one ever saw the like outside a textbook)? 
 To ask a pedagogue what is vital in education is a shrewd 
 way of finding out whether he belongs to the union or not. 
 Nevertheless, I told them plainly what I thought of the 
 education of girls. 
 
 Problem of coeducation. — Since then I have been 
 thinking of what is vital in the education of boys. And 
 I really cannot see where to draw the line. We want our 
 girls to become women — the best possible women; and 
 we want our boys to become men — the best possible 
 
 ' A revised reprint from Good Housekeeping, March, 1914, used by courtesy of the 
 publishers. 
 
 168 
 
THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 69 
 
 men. The sexes may differ in important particulars, 
 just as individuals of the same sex have peculiar char- 
 acteristics; but what is essential in education pertains to 
 all aUke. 
 
 The other day I received a letter from the president of a 
 city school board in England who wanted to know what I 
 thought of coeducation. My reply was that I didn't 
 think much about it; if he meant the presence of both 
 sexes in the same school, I could see no harm in it as 
 long as parents supphed us with both boys and girls; if he 
 meant the same training for both sexes, he would have 
 to seek further for his information, because in this country 
 no two boys have the same training, to say nothing of the 
 identical training of both sexes. 
 
 The attainment of ends. — Herein is an educational 
 principle of wider appHcation than we ofttimes realize. 
 If it is hard to find two people who look alike, it is harder 
 still to find two personalities who are ahke. By inherit- 
 ance, temperament, and taste I am unlike any other 
 being, so far as I know, and no conceivable discipline 
 that I could be subjected to would make me just like 
 anyone else. Browning says in his " Paracelsus " that 
 
 Truth is within ourselves . . . 
 and, to know. 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape. 
 Than in effecting entry for a Hght 
 Supposed to be without. 
 
 What is essential in education is not so much a matter 
 of discipHne and training as it is a question of ends to be 
 
170 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 attained. For every mountain peak worth scaling there 
 may be innumerable paths that lead to the summit. For 
 every boy or girl worth raising there may be many routes 
 to success in life. But a person's attainment of success 
 should be as patent as standing on the mountain peak. 
 
 Where education begins. — Knowing what we want 
 our children to become, the practical question is: What 
 should we do for them while they are growing into manhood 
 and womanhood? It is a question directed to parents 
 as well as to teachers — I myself am speaking as a parent. 
 What counts most in the making of men and women? 
 If we parents were free to act in the best interests of our 
 children ; if schools did not have fixed schedules and classes 
 and courses of study and marks and examinations and 
 prizes and promotions and graduations and bouquets; 
 if teachers were all-wise and omnipotent; if our friends 
 and neighbors would only let us do some things that they 
 don't care to do, instead of forever goading us on to do as 
 others do; if only we had the courage to do what our com- 
 mon sense dictates — what would we do with our children 
 while they are growing into men and women? 
 
 Laying a sound foundation. — Shall we send them to 
 college? I fancy some of us put that question to the babe 
 in the cradle. At any rate, I know of parents who enter 
 their boys in a famous New England school as soon as 
 their names are decided upon. Unfortunately, or for- 
 tunately, I don't know which, the schooling of girls is not 
 taken quite so seriously. But nevertheless we do begin 
 to think very early of the schools to which our daughters 
 are to be sent. We begin inquiries concerning dancing 
 masters and music teachers; we discuss the relative values 
 
THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 71 
 
 of classical and modern languages; we are very insistent 
 on good spelling and a proper pronunciation; all these 
 are matters within our own control. But the baby's 
 food, the air she breathes, and the water she drinlcs, these 
 are mysteries known only to nurses, physicians, and 
 grandmothers. Just as the bacteria and bacilli are dis- 
 pensations of Divine Providence. So long as the baby is 
 contented and happy and lets us sleep o' nights, what 
 difference does it make whether or not her diet contains 
 the proper proportions of fats, proteids, and carbohydrates? 
 Carbohydrates are starch, and starch becomes sugar 
 in digestion; what harm, then, can sweets do? The only 
 trouble with this argument is that most of us parents do 
 not even know enough of chemistry to use the terms 
 properly, to say nothing of making the right food com- 
 binations. Like politicians who are wiUing to overlook 
 a little matter of constitutional law among friends, so we 
 are quite willing to neglect the nutrition of our children 
 in the home. No greater shock ever came to me than 
 when J once called a physician to diagnose the illness . 
 of one of my children and was told very bluntly that what/ 
 primarily ailed the child was lack of food. I am satisfied 
 that the major part of our bodily iUs is due to the bad\ 
 start made in the nursery. With proper nutrition and \ 
 plenty of sunshine and out-of-door exercise, resistance i 
 to disease is at its maximum, and the conditions are 
 right for the development of a sound mind in a sound 
 body. 
 
 The prime essential. — The first question, therefore, 
 is not as to what college we shall send the child to, but 
 What shall we give it to eat? If higher education is con- 
 
172 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 cemed at all, the question should be, What college or 
 course of study should the parents enter? 
 
 When you ask me what counts most in education, I 
 have no hesitation in putting to the front good health. 
 I cannot think of anything worth attaining in life for 
 man or woman that will not be worth more, that will not 
 give more joy, satisfaction, and zest to life, if good physical 
 health accompanies it. " What shall a man give in ex- 
 change for his soul? " He has nothing to give that is 
 worth taking if his digestion is ruined, his nerves shattered, 
 or his brain unbalanced. 
 
 Health - instruction for parents. — The responsibility 
 for good health does not rest primarily with the school. 
 It is the duty of the teachers, of course, to observe hygienic 
 laws, and not to ask more of a pupil than can reasonably 
 be expected, but what is usually called " overburdening " 
 of the pupil is really underfeeding and malnutrition. 
 The schools have sins enough of their own to atone for 
 without adding those that are committed by the ignorant 
 but well-meaning parent. The pathetic part of it all is 
 that the mischief is done before the school has a chance 
 to try its hand. Only one recourse is left to the school 
 and to the intelligent parent, namely, to instruct the boy 
 and girl, who will some day have children of their own, 
 how to save their children from those faults from which 
 they themselves have suffered. " Is it not an aston- 
 ishing fact," Herbert Spencer asks, " that though on the 
 treatment of our offspring depend their life and death, 
 their moral welfare or their ruin, yet not one word of 
 instruction is ever given to those who will hereafter be- 
 come parents? " 
 
THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 73 
 
 I do not know how long we shall wait for such instruct 
 tion, but the time is coming when it will be given. If 
 it is incompatible with college education, then coUege 
 education will have to give way to something more rational. 
 If a boy cannot be taught how best to use his own body, 
 there is something lacking either in the boy or in his 
 teacher. If the principles of reproduction and heredity, 
 of physiology and hygiene, of food selection and prepara- 
 tion, cannot be given properly in a secondary school to 
 girls who will soon be in need of such information, then 
 there is something radically wrong with those schools, 
 or with our modern notions of what is worth teaching. 
 
 Pledges unfulfilled. — The greatest peril of our educa- 
 tion to-day is that it promises an open door to every boy 
 and girl up to the age of fourteen, and then turns them 
 ruthlessly into the world to find most doors not only 
 closed but locked against them. Throughout this country 
 we are telling thousands — yes, millions — of boys and 
 girls that anything they please may be had for the asking, 
 and during the six or eight years of the school course they 
 are instructed that nothing is beyond attainment. Then, 
 too, our democratic notion of equahty of opportunity is 
 responsible for the attempt to hitch some very ordinary 
 wagons to stars of the first magnitude. The result can 
 only be bitter disappointment. Instead of a happy, 
 contented, and able farmer, we make of the ambitious 
 country boy a clerk or helper in some city industry, or a 
 cog in some factory wheel. Instead of helping the quick- 
 witted city boy, who leaves school at twelve or fourteen, 
 wise far beyond his years, to employ his mental strength 
 in shortening the term of apprenticeship in the trades 
 
174 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 and in improving the quality of the output, we turn him 
 over to the tender mercies of the trade union, or allow 
 him to bungle ahead in his efforts to become a capable 
 workman. What wonder that our skilled craftsmen are 
 foreigners, and that our best TVmerican boys become 
 petty politicians or walking delegates or seekers after the 
 soft places? We do not teach them to do the day's work 
 in such a way as to find pleasure and satisfaction in it. 
 The result is grumbling and faultfinding and discontent 
 in private life, and in civil life the beginnings of social- 
 ism and anarchism. 
 
 Morals and manners. — Think of what it means to our 
 girls to enjoy for eight or ten years daydreams which 
 the first contact with life shatters. Is it any wonder that 
 the girl of eighteen or twenty who has never had an hour's 
 instruction in the scientific and aesthetic interpretation of 
 those duties which confront her should find no pleasure 
 in home-making? The situation is bad enough in the 
 country, but it is infinitely worse in our great cities. What 
 chance has the girl of the tenements even though she be 
 well-schooled and quick-witted? She leaves the school 
 at fourteen or fifteen to get her postgraduate training 
 in housekeeping from her mother. Think of what that 
 means. A home of two or three or four rooms in a crowded 
 quarter; every member of the family at work or seeking it; 
 living confined to the barest necessities; no conveniences 
 for doing the ordinary work of a home, even if that were 
 necessary. What is left to the girl? The street; and it is 
 not remarkable that some thoughtful persons should hold 
 our public schools responsible for adding to the danger 
 of city life for bright and attractive girls. The surest 
 
THE VITAL THINGS EST EDUCATION 175 
 
 way to break down family life and destroy the sanctity 
 of the marriage tie is to mate an ignorant man with an 
 ignorant woman — ignorant, I mean, of what marriage 
 means, and unfitted to meet its obligations. 
 
 Effective social participation. — The next desideratum 
 is proper manners and morals; in a word, suitable habits. 
 I am not sure that there is any hierarchy in these prac- 
 tical ideals. Good health was put first because without 
 it all else is worthless; proper manners and morals next, 
 because without some such norm there can be no effective 
 participation in social Kfe. 
 
 It is a commonplace that a man must be honest, and 
 that a woman must bear a good reputation. We go even 
 further and say that the great object of education is the 
 development of good character; but we do not always 
 include in that the whole round of conduct which marks 
 the agreeable member of society. 
 
 The true aim of education. — We are not concerned here 
 with the origin or inculcation of customs or conduct. 
 It matters little whether they come from mere imitation, 
 or result from definite instruction reinforced by persistent 
 effort. It is what we do that counts most in society. 
 And every grade of society demands that its members 
 conform to an accepted norm. We recognize this insist- 
 ent demand when we require our children to eat with a 
 fork, to dress becomingly, and to speak grammatically. 
 Reverence, courtesy, gentleness, sympathy, modesty, 
 obedience, bravery, when socially considered, are virtues 
 crystallized in good manners and morals. They are the 
 surest evidence of what we call good breeding. More- 
 over, from the social standpoint these virtues have a value 
 
176 THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 directly proportional to their habitual expression. 
 Veracity as a fixed habit is far preferable to truth-telling 
 for a consideration. Temperance induced by fear of evil 
 consequences is far less efifective than instinctive self- 
 restraint. When these desirable modes of conduct become 
 thoroughly ingrained — become " natural " as we often 
 say — then character is fixed. " Manners makeyth man " 
 is an adage of greater truth than is commonly recognized 
 in our modern educational practice. 
 
 The joy of fellowship. — How to get on with other 
 people — for that is really the criterion of proper manners 
 and morals — is the. chief end of one great type of educa- 
 tion. The Persians, according to Xenophon, insisted 
 that their leaders should learn both to rule and to be 
 ruled, to command and to obey. These ends are not 
 secured by formal instruction; they are the result of dis- 
 cipline under conditions which are favorable to the fixing 
 of habits. Education, Professor James says, is the or- 
 ganization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies of 
 behavior. Walt Whitman, in one of those strange out- 
 bursts of his, tells bow it is that the child goes forth every 
 day into a new world and becomes part and parcel of all 
 that he beholds. 
 
 There was a child went forth every day; 
 
 And the first object he looked upon, that object he became; 
 
 And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part 
 
 of the day, or for many years or stretching cycles of years. 
 The early lilacs became part of this child. 
 And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red 
 
 clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird . . . 
 And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school, 
 And the friendly boys that pass'd — and the quarrelsome boys, 
 
THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 177 
 
 And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls — and the barefoot negro boy ' 
 
 and girl, 
 And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went. 
 His own parents, . . . 
 
 The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table; 
 The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a whole- 
 some odor falling ofiE her person and clothes as she walks by; 
 The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust; 
 The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, ' 
 The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, 
 
 the yearning and swelling heart. 
 Affection that wiU not be gainsay'd, the sense of what is real, 
 
 the thought if after all it should prove unreal, 
 The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious 
 
 whether and how, 
 Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and 
 
 specks? . . . 
 These became part of that child who went forth every day, and 
 
 who now goes, and will always go forth every day.' 
 
 A very serviceable education can be given with a modi- 
 cum of formal instruction. In fact, we seldom hear a 
 course of study justified because of the information it 
 gives. It may be well that some of these courses put 
 forth no such claim, but the truth is that much of what 
 we claim for study may be gained — and is gained by far 
 the greatest number in any society — from leading a 
 wholesome life with one's fellows. English education, 
 as given in the great public schools, is preeminently of 
 this t}^e. 
 
 The day's work. — The next vital thing in the education 
 of anybody, man or woman, is the ability to engage in 
 useful occupation. I had almost said the ability to earn 
 
 ^ This selection from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is used by special ar- 
 rangement with the publishers, Doubleday, Page and Company. 
 
 TREND IN ED. — 12 
 
178 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 a livelihood, but someone may object to the utilitarian 
 limitation of that statement. Let me put in the word 
 decent — the ability to earn a decent livelihood — and 
 I am as satisfied with the one expression as with the 
 other. We do want both our boys and our girls to succeed 
 in doing something worth while and suited to them. We 
 also want them to have siifficient ability in some useful 
 occupation to gain a living thereby in case of need. 
 
 Now I wish to emphasize this demand. We do want 
 just this thing — all of us — regardless of our social 
 standing, or our wealth, or any other consideration. If 
 sometimes we fail to talk out loud about it, the reason is that 
 we are willing to take chances on the future, to run the risk 
 of leaving to someone else the duty of instructing our 
 children in doing the day's work when the need of the day's 
 work arises. 
 
 I have said that this categorical imperative is directed 
 to girls as well as to boys. The woman who has nothing 
 to do in Ufe may be left out of account. And if there be 
 work for woman to do, her pleasure and satisfaction in 
 life, her influence upon others, and her returns for her 
 labor, all demand that she be fitted for her task. I am 
 not thinking only of so-called " working-women," nor of 
 professional women, nor of any particular class of those 
 who work for money. If anyone thinks that getting 
 married relieves a woman of work and responsibility, 
 let him try it and see for himself. If there is any occupa- 
 tion that induces greater physical strain and nervous 
 waste, any profession that calls for more of the moral 
 virtues, or profits more from the use of common sense, 
 than the profession of wife and mother, I should like 
 
THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION 1 79 
 
 to know what it is. It is not a money-making profession; 
 it is, on the contrary, preeminently the money-spending 
 profession. 
 
 Earning and spending. — In my opinion, to spend 
 money wisely is even more difficult than to earn it. We 
 hear much of a living wage, but the real problem is not in 
 what the workman receives, but in what his wife spends. 
 I will imdertake to guarantee the stability of our American 
 democratic institutions if you will see to it that American 
 wives are taught how best to spend the money their 
 husbands earn. Somewhere in that last ten per cent of 
 a man's income are hidden away his present happiness 
 and future prospects. If that last ten per cent is ex- 
 pended along with what has gone before, hfe must soon 
 become a dreary routine, destructive ahke of good health 
 and high ambitions. If we could stop the noisy clatter 
 of our educational machinery for a moment, I think we 
 should hear in the awful silence these words, " With all 
 thy getting, get understanding." And their interpreta- 
 tion is this: the chief end of education is not, as many 
 seem to think, to earn, to earn, to earn, but rather to spend, 
 to spend, to spend; to spend prudently that there may be 
 no waste; to spend wisely that the. best may be obtained; 
 to spend generously that as many as possible may be 
 benefited thereby; to spend money that represents a 
 man's toil so as to lighten his labors; to spend energy 
 in such a way as to give increased strength; to spend time 
 in order that more time may be had for the things that 
 count. 
 
 The art of discrimination. — This leads me to my fourth 
 point — the appreciation of what is best in life. Good 
 
l8o THE TREND IN AMEMCAN EDUCATION 
 
 health, proper conduct, ability to earn a livelihood (even 
 to the extent of accumulating great wealth) are meaning- 
 less to him who knows not the relative values of what 
 life offers. Lord Kelvin has said that the end of educa- 
 tion is first to help a man earn a living, and then to make 
 his life worth living. Life ' — human life — is a succes- 
 sion of choices. It is the glory of man that he can choose, 
 that he is free to put his own valuation on what is offered 
 him. How important, then, that he should see life in its 
 proper perspective, that he should feel the charm of 
 nature, see the beauty in art, feel the uplift in Uterature 
 and history, respect the truths of science, take comfort 
 in religion, and find good in everything. This is the goal 
 of all education. All else is a means to this great end. 
 The one thing needful is the ability to discriminate in 
 what Hfe offers, to single out the best, and to appropriate 
 it in the struggle for attainable ideals. 
 
 Educating the leader. — Notwithstanding what I have 
 said of the shortcomings of our public schools, I do beheve 
 in the best ideals of American education, just as I have 
 an abiding faith in the ideals of American life. Equality 
 of opportunity as guaranteed in our civil and industrial 
 life is a possession of which we may well be proud. It 
 comes to us sealed with the blood of our forefathers, and 
 it is our duty to hand it on unsullied to our children. 
 But we should not blind our eyes to the fact that it is the 
 greatest experiment of the ages. Every other great nation 
 that I know of has attained its greatness by a system of 
 education that is calculated to keep the many down, 
 while helping up the few. Germany and England have 
 had one system of training the masses and another and 
 
THE VITAL THINGS IN EDUCATION l8l 
 
 quite different system of training leaders. Our salvation 
 depends upon our ability to work out a scheme of educa- 
 tion which will make of every person who wills it a leader 
 in his own way. The man of trained intelhgence who 
 works on the farm, or in the factory, or at a trade, may 
 be a leader of as much social value as the man who engages 
 in business or enters a profession. Granted good health, 
 and habits of conduct which make of one an agreeable 
 member of a community, and the abihty to earn a decent 
 livelihood, I have no fear of social unrest or domestic 
 unhappiness. The man or woman who can do something 
 well is sure to take pride in the work, and to find satis- 
 faction in doing it. 
 
 The life worth while. — The final effort in all education, 
 therefore, should be directed to the proper appreciation 
 of the opportunities that life offers. The education to 
 which we are accustomed in school and college is properly 
 the evaluation of what is best in life. I do not ask that 
 we abate in the slightest degree our zeal for the best in 
 literature, history, and science. My plea is that we do 
 also these things of which I have been speaking — not 
 that we should leave the others undone. 
 
 The struggle to find what is best, and the determina- 
 tion to pursue that course to the end, is the record of every 
 good man's Hfe. It is well that history and literature 
 portray great characters and record their struggles. What 
 man has done, I can do! — is the watchword of the boy i 
 who is surely going forward. The attainment of any/ 
 virtue is made easier if good example attend the precept./ 
 The great ideals of Christian character were exemplified' 
 in the life of the Master. He did not appeal to his dis- 
 
l82 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 ciples to follow truth for its own sake, nor did he present 
 the beautiful and the good in the abstract. And anyone 
 who would upUft boy or girl, man or woman, must show 
 that the good, the beautiful, and the true are the dynamic 
 forces which make Ufe worth Hving. The greatest good 
 is the good that man can do; the purest beauty is the 
 beauty that man may be; the noblest truth is the truth 
 that makes man free. 
 
 \ The lesson of life. — Not long since I visited in the South 
 an institution that is Unked with the names of two great 
 men — Washington and Lee University. I was taken into 
 the chapel on a beautiful spring afternoon by a man 
 eminent in Southern life, who himself was a student in 
 that institution about forty years ago. He said: " My 
 home was near here in the Shenandoah Valley, and I was 
 a boy too young to go to war. My father went, and did 
 not come back. One brother after another followed him, 
 and failed to return. Home was broken up, everything 
 lost, father and brothers gone. After the war was over, 
 when General Lee returned to the ways of peace and 
 settled down as a teacher and as president of this institu- 
 tion, my mother and I felt that there was only one thing 
 for me to do, to become a student under General Lee." 
 
 I thought of those four horrible years when that valley 
 was a scene of carnage and destruction, when Lee's vic- 
 torious army would sweep northward, and then Sheridan 
 and his men force him back; back and forth through that 
 valley, the granary of the Confederacy, they fought. 
 And then I thought of that little boy, too young to take 
 an active part in it, but not too young to suffer the con- 
 sequences, striving to get inspiration from the nearer 
 
THE VITAL THINGS DST EDUCATION 1 83 
 
 approach to the man who was reckoned a demigod by the 
 people of Virginia. And as we stood in that chapel that 
 afternoon and looked upon that magnificent recumbent 
 statue of General Lee, this man said: "Do you know, 
 the turning point in my life came one night right on this 
 spot. It was a custom after General Lee died for the 
 cadets of the school, the students, to stand guard over his 
 tomb, and all night long I stood in this aisle with a musket 
 in my hand, standing guard." 
 
 Can you imagine what that means for a boy or for a 
 girl? Why, that is almost all of education — standing 
 guard, not over, but with, a noble soul! 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 SCOUTING EDUCATION ' 
 
 IN times of unparalleled storm and stress, when the 
 traditions of centuries crumble and the ideals of 
 civilization are weighed in the balance of war, the 
 patriots of every nation give anxious thought to the 
 social order that shall arise from such chaos. Prepared- 
 ness is the word that springs to every lip. It is used 
 alike by those who would take the easiest way to let 
 well enough alone, and by those who wish to reconstruct 
 the world. In its lowest terms, it means preparation for 
 miUtary defense against foreign aggression; in its highest 
 reaches, it aspires to the regeneration of human nature, 
 so that the brute in man shall forever be held in leash. 
 However men may differ as to the means of bringing on 
 the millennium, the fairest flower in the blood-soaked 
 fields of the world to-day is the universal desire for peace 
 on earth and good will to men. 
 
 Rights and their correlatives. — There can be no peace 
 without good will among men, and no will is good that 
 does not beget justice, protect ownership, and secure 
 hfe, Uberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are the 
 rights of man, incorporated by our forefathers into the 
 fabric of our government and bequeathed to us as a pre- 
 cious legacy to have and to hold in trust for all those who 
 would be citizens of a free and independent state. The 
 
 ' A revised reprint from the Teachers College Record, January, 1917. 
 
 184 
 
SCOUTING EDUCATION 185 
 
 right to worship God in one's own way; the right to trade, 
 to conduct commerce, to accumulate property, to take-up 
 land, and, by occupation, to own it without restriction; 
 the right to barter with one's neighbors in matters spiritual, 
 temporal, and poHtical; the right to be one's own master — 
 these are the ideals of the founders of our nation. And 
 when they set up a government of their own, they took 
 particular pains to see that their rights were secure. 
 
 Read the Constitution of the United States, and note 
 the rights and duties enumerated. Duties are enjoined 
 only upon ofl&ce-holders for the protection of the rights 
 of citizens; and, as if the directors of the joint-stock cor- 
 poration could not be trusted to return adequate dividends, 
 a string of amendments has been added, still further 
 defining the rights of individuals. No word anywhere 
 in that famous document directly defines the duties of 
 citizens — an omission that would have wrecked the 
 Republic in its infancy, except for the genius of Chief 
 Justice Marshall and the assiduous labors of a few patriotic 
 statesmen. But for more than a century we have slowly 
 been learning the lesson that rights have their correlative 
 duties; that the right to one's own property imposes the 
 duty of protecting the property of others; that the right 
 to freedom brings with it the duty of obedience to the law; 
 that the right to pursue happiness enjoins the duty of 
 guarding others from misery; and, in a word, that the 
 rights of citizenship, secured by government, make it 
 the duty of every citizen to give patriotic service when- 
 ever needed and at whatever cost. 
 
 Problems of individuality. — Individualism has so long 
 been dominant in our social and political life, it is no wonder 
 
l86 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 that it has also directed the course of our education. The 
 theory that all men are created equal is easily interpreted 
 to mean that any man may become anything. Granted 
 that the individual has a right to direct his own develop- 
 ment, does it follow that he may do as he pleases? And 
 if the state provides schools and teachers for the educa- 
 - tion of the young, what has the state a right to expect 
 from its training, and what is the duty of its pupils towards 
 the public? Can individuals naturally selfish, who have 
 the American way of wanting to do as they please, be 
 trained in schools to be efficient, patriotic citizens? If 
 so, what kind of training should an American school give 
 to the prospective American citizen? Such questions 
 as these are pressing for answer now as never before in 
 our history. 
 
 Teaching the duties of citizenship. — A survey of Amer- 
 ican education does not disclose much evidence of a con- 
 trolling desire to promote patriotic service. Indeed, if 
 one were to confine one's attention to the work of the 
 schools, particularly of the public schools, where, if any- 
 where, one might expect to find the most direct efforts 
 towards teaching the duties of citizenship, surprise and 
 disappointment would foUow. Teachers there are, in 
 great numbers, who see the future man or woman in 
 their pupils, and who labor unceasingly to fortify them 
 against their day of need; but the test that passes pupils 
 from grade to grade does not take into account growth 
 in character or moral strength. The work of teachers is 
 judged primarily by what their pupils know. The vir- 
 tues and vices of our future citizens are a sealed book 
 which our educational authorities do not open to inspec- 
 
SCOUTING EDUCATION 187 
 
 tion. The state seems to have overlooked the fact that 
 intellectual power is as great an asset to the crook as to 
 the honest man. Public safety, therefore, calls for more 
 than the schools are ofl&ciaUy encouraged to give. 
 
 Environment as an educational factor. — Education, 
 however, is not wholly a matter of schools and school 
 training. Indeed, if it were, we should come badly off. 
 Consider for a moment the time problem. Our children 
 are in school at the most five hours a day, five days in the 
 week, for forty weeks in the year — a total of 1,000 hours. 
 The average child of school age is awake fifteen hours a 
 day for 365 days in the year — a total of 5,475 hours. 
 Any way you reckon it, the normal child is receptive, 
 getting impressions, using ideas, reaching conclusions, 
 fixing habits, organizing his modes of behavior which, 
 Professor James said, is education, four hours outside of 
 school for every hour spent in school. Let the school 
 be administered by directors of the widest vision and the 
 highest ideals; let it be equipped with the best appliances, 
 and staffed by teachers with the ripest scholarship, the 
 finest training, and the clearest pedagogical insight, and 
 you stiU have to reckon with forces inherent in the nature 
 of the child and incident to his life in a society that are 
 overwhelmingly and persistently directing his personal 
 development. 
 
 Educational deadwood. — Next consider what the child 
 is required to learn in school: first, to read, write, and 
 spell correctly, and to speak grammatically a language 
 almost as foreign to the child and as artificial at the time 
 as any alien tongue; second, to learn numbers and their 
 manipulation in a way that does not appeal to him, be- 
 
l88 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 cause beyond his needs, and to an extent that often sur- 
 passes belief; third, to learn something of history and 
 literature, which may or may not be amenable to reason; 
 fourth, to become familiar with certain elements of geog- 
 raphy and natural science, which may or may not be 
 elementary nor natural nor science; fifth, to dabble in 
 music, art, handwork, cooking, sewing, and a variety 
 of subjects more or less dependent upon the whims of 
 school boards and the preferences of teachers. If to this 
 showing of what is ordinarily regarded as essentials, you 
 add the " deadwood " that has floated into our schools 
 on the stream of tradition and remained there, because 
 of the conservatism of teachers and the wisdom of college 
 faculties, you have a very formidable collection of materials 
 which custom decrees shall be packed away somewhere 
 and somehow in a child's cranium. 
 
 The child's share of the teacher's time. — In the third 
 place, I want you to consider how much of a teacher's 
 time the average child gets in a school-day. In our rural 
 ungraded schools, the teacher may have from fifteen to 
 forty different classes in a five- or six-hour day. When 
 such a school has six or eight groups — not an uncommon 
 occurrence — the hours of schooling become minutes, 
 and not many of them. Our Commissioner of Educa- 
 tion reports: " If every minute of the five-hour school-day 
 could be used for recitations, the recitations would have an 
 average of nine and one-half minutes each." Then turn 
 to our city schools, with their classes of forty to sixty 
 pupils ranged in rows, disciplined to silence, worked in 
 teams. How many minutes a day does the average child 
 get for personal contact with the teacher? How much 
 
SCOUTING EDUCATION 189 
 
 time is given him for reflection on what he learns and for 
 its assimilation into his spiritual life? What per cent 
 of efiiciency should be expected from his work? 
 
 Inadequacy of the teaching staff. — And, finally, take 
 account of the administration of our schools. Note that 
 our rural teachers are but little older than their eldest 
 pupils, with httle more training for their work than the 
 schools give in which they teach; that the teachers in our 
 city schools are mostly young women who can be forced 
 to work for less than the wage of street cleaners or of the 
 cooks in our kitchen; that few of our principals and super- 
 intendents have had any professional training whatever, 
 although we live in a generation that requires trained 
 physicians, trained lawyers, trained engineers, even trained 
 veterinarians to look after our hogs and horses and cattle 
 and lap dogs; and that the state entrusts the management 
 of the largest, most far-reaching and expensive depart- 
 ment of civil goverimient to boards of directors with little 
 knowledge of child nature or school work or social needs. 
 What wonder that school funds are squandered in this 
 country by the millions of dollars annually, that teaching 
 is regarded as a trade rather than a profession, and that 
 there is widespread dissatisfaction with the results of 
 schooHng! It is providential, however, that guardian 
 angels keep watch over children and fools, otherwise the 
 pupils in our schools and we who send them there would 
 long ago have come to ruin. The truth is that, however 
 badly our children do, it is safe to say that their teachers 
 do worse; and, bad as teaching is, the adminstration of 
 our schools is worse still. 
 
 Limitations of school offerings. — Under prevailing 
 
I go THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 conditions, therefore, the most that can reasonably be 
 expected is that our children should acquire in school a 
 very moderate amount of useful knowledge, a few desir- 
 able habits in the use of language and numbers, and some 
 ability in facing squarely and solving accurately the prob- 
 lems that they meet in life. We have no right to expect 
 children on leaving our pubUc schools at fourteen or 
 sixteen years of age — and about nine tenths of them get 
 no schooling after sixteen, — to be either clear thinkers 
 or independent workers. They are unformed, not to say 
 uninformed, but energetic and ambitious humans. At best, 
 the school has given them a taste of the good things of 
 life, has opened the door to opportunity, and roused in 
 them a desire to take advantage of what Kfe offers. It 
 has done httle, and, as things are at present, it can do 
 Uttle, to make them efficient workers in any vocation, 
 or to equip them with those habits of mind and body 
 essential to good citizenship. In other words, the school 
 of to-day lacks the time, the means, and the professional 
 ability to develop in its pupils the moral character which 
 we expect in the good citizen. It does afford, however, 
 the foundations on which that kind of character rests, 
 and it does uphold the ideals towards which its pupils 
 strive. 
 
 The world outside the classroom. — Fortunately, educa- 
 tion is more than schooling. The development of character 
 for good or ill goes on, whether the child is in school or 
 out of school. His impulse to imitate what he sees and 
 adopt what he likes in the real world about him is more 
 powerful, because more natural, than the tendency to 
 identify himself with the artificial life of the schoolroom. 
 
SCOUTING EDUCATION 191 
 
 Hence the commanding importance of the playground 
 and the educational significance of games that enlist a 
 boy's best self in active cooperation with his fellows. 
 If nothing better offers, he will take to the streets and find 
 his place in a gang of kindred spirits, tearing down or build- 
 ing up his neighbor's property and his own character at 
 one and the same time. The real world of the public- 
 school boy, " the world in which things of vital importance 
 happen," as Kipling puts it, is the world outside the 
 classroom — the world of the home or the street, of the 
 church or the saloon, of the library or the pool room, 
 of the club or the gang, or the world of brooks and trees 
 and God's out-of-doors, or the world of alleys and back- 
 yards and Hell's Kitchen. 
 
 Teachers who are concerned with the education, as 
 distinguished from mere instruction, of their pupils are 
 earnestly seeking to merge their work with the best in- 
 fluences in the home, in the church, and in society. They 
 welcome all supplementary means of arousing a boy's 
 ambition, of quickening his emotions, of attracting his 
 interests, and of fixing his habits. They like to see him 
 give himself whole-heartedly to something worth doing, 
 whether it be work or play, and like to see him stick to the 
 job until it is done They know that self-reliance, self- 
 direction, and self-control come in no other way, and that 
 preaching about the finest ideals of Hfe leaves the boy 
 untouched, unless he himself builds them into his ot 
 character. 
 
 A power for boy betterment. — It is for these reasoni, 
 therefore, that I declare the Boy Scout movement to be 
 the most significant educational contribution of ouj: 
 
192 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 time. The naturalist may praise it for its success in put- 
 ting the boy close to nature's heart; the moralist, for its 
 splendid code of ethics; the hygienist, for its methods of 
 physical training; the parent, for its ability to keep his boy 
 out of mischief; but from the standpoint of the educator, 
 it has marvelous potency for converting the restless, 
 irresponsible, self-centered boy into the straightforward, 
 dependable, helpful young citizen. To the boy who will 
 give himself to it, there is plenty of work that looks 
 like play, standards of excellence which he can appreciate, 
 rules of conduct which he must obey, positions of 
 responsibility which he may occupy as soon as he 
 qualifies himself — in a word, a program that appeals 
 to a boy's instincts, and a method adapted to a boy's 
 nature. 
 
 The scout curriculum. — This is not the place to dis- 
 cuss the Boy Scout program. Most of you know it much 
 better than I do. But I would consider myself a prince 
 among schoolmen, if I could devise a school program in 
 which the curriculum should appeal so directly to a boy's 
 interests and the courses of study apply so serviceably 
 to adult needs. Every task in scouting is a man's job 
 cut down to a boy's size. The appeal to a boy's interests 
 is not primarily because he is a boy, but particularly be- 
 cause he wants to be a man. Scan the list: agriculture 
 and angling, blacksmithing and business, carpentering 
 and civics, dairying and mining, music and plumbing, 
 poultry and printing, first aid and politeness, life saving 
 and nature study, seamanship and campcraft, patriotism 
 and cooking, and scores of other accomplishments and 
 activities requiring accurate knoweldge that is susceptible 
 
SCOUTING EDUCATION I93 
 
 of direct and immediate application to everyday life. Every 
 one of these tasks holds the boy, not only because he is 
 a boy and likes to do them, but because they are tasks 
 which grown men find useful. It is the man in the boy 
 that is emphasized, and the type of manhood idealized 
 is that which strives " to stand for the right against the 
 wrong, for truth against falsehood, to help the weak and 
 oppressed, and to love and seek the best things of Hfe." 
 Hence the scout oath taken by every boy on becoming a 
 tenderfoot: " On my honor, I will do my best (i) to do 
 my duty to God and my country, and to obey the scout 
 law; (2) to help other people at aU times; (3) to keep my- 
 self physically strong, mentally awake, and morally 
 straight." 
 
 The scout curriculum may appear superficial to the 
 pedagogue, and doubtless much that is taught is neither 
 systematic nor comprehensive. But scoutcraft is not 
 intended to be a substitute for schooHng. It is a device 
 for supplementing the formal instruction of the schools, 
 by leading the boy into new fields and giving him a chance 
 to make practical use of all his powers, intellectual, moral, 
 and physical. The best thing about it is its extraordinary 
 diversity, reaching out to boys of all degrees of mental 
 abihty, in all kinds of social environment, and creating 
 for them a real need to do their level best. 
 
 Upholding character and citizenship. — But the most 
 significant contribution of the Boy Scout movement to 
 education is its pedagogical methods. As a teacher, I 
 take my hat off to Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the genius 
 who in a bare decade has done more to vitalize the methods 
 of character training than all the schoolmen in this country 
 
 TREND IN ED. 1 3 
 
194 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 have done since the Pilgrims landed on the New England 
 coast. We have preached the virtues of a government 
 of the people, by the people, and for the people, and have 
 sought for the best means of perpetuating a nation con- 
 ceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all 
 men are created equal. There have been times when we 
 doubted whether a nation so conceived and so dedicated 
 can long endure. We know full well that the experiment 
 must eventually fail, if our citizens grow up accustomed 
 to the evils of selfishness and greed and indifferent to 
 the ravages of pillage and plunder. And failure is Just 
 as certain, even if a little longer deferred, if our citizens 
 are not trained to participate actively and constructively 
 in upholding the virtues on which both personal character 
 and good citizenship are based. 
 
 Education through habit. — In the development of char- 
 acter two processes are constantly at work, one tending 
 to restrict the initiative of the subject, and the other to 
 strengthen his personal v/ili. The human infant is a rank 
 individualist. His first cry is a protest against the treat- 
 ment he receives. He wants what he wants when he 
 wants it. But gradually, despite his objections, he becomes 
 habituated to his environment. He must take the food 
 supplied him, whether he likes it or not, and eventually 
 he calls it good. He acquires a language that is not of 
 his own making, and finally speaks as those about him 
 speak. Even the inflections and intonation of voice 
 peculiar to his locality come to mark him as provincial. 
 He may prefer to eat with his fingers and he may abhor 
 the clothes he wears, but in time his table manners and 
 habits of dress conform to prevailing fashions. Tasks at 
 
SCOUTING EDUCATION 1 95 
 
 first laborious grow easy with practice, and practices, at 
 first distasteful, become agreeable and necessary to his 
 happiness. This is the process of education through 
 habit, by which the individual is accustomed to the re- 
 strictions and requirements of his social group. It is the 
 way he acquires the likeness of his kind; it gives him his 
 morals and his manners, and it sets standards of conduct 
 which he dare not disobey. Witness the tyranny of the 
 fashions and the punishment visited upon the obstreperous 
 member of society who ventures to disregard the injunc- 
 tions of the prevailing code of honor or the mandates of 
 the moral order. Habits are the basis of aU efficiency in 
 accompHshment, whether in personal service or vocational 
 employment. Otherwise, we should spend our days in 
 learning anew the art of lacing our shoes or holding a pen 
 or reciting the multiphcation table. Moreover, a work- 
 man hkes to do what he can do well, and doing something 
 well brings its own reward in pride of accomplishment, 
 a living wage, and contentment with results. The sat- 
 isfaction that comes from doing an honest day's work is 
 the surest guarantee of conservative citizenship. 
 
 The development of individuality. — The other process 
 in education exerts a force diametrically opposed to the 
 trend of custom and habit. It springs from the innate 
 desire of the individual to be himself rather than to 
 be someone else; is the outgrowth of his impulse to so 
 protest when pressure is brought to bear upon him. One 
 way consists in yielding to guidance; the other, in guiding 
 one's self. One force makes for identity of kind, con- 
 servatism and efl&ciency; the other, for individuahty, 
 initiative and progress. 
 
196 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Scout pedagogy. — These two forces, however, are but 
 the two sides of the same shield, opposed, yet essentially 
 one in the course of education. A man rises on his dead 
 self only in the sense that he rises by steps fixed in habit. 
 The more steps in his ladder securely fixed, the higher he 
 can rise. Once a child is in control of the comphcated 
 process of walking, he may use that habit in learning to 
 run, to swim, to skate, and to ride a wheel; writing, made 
 habitual, becomes so easy that the writer's whole atten- 
 tion may be centered on what he writes. Habit gives 
 such command of language that speech unconsciously 
 follows thought; habit makes us familiar with our alphabet 
 and tables, written signs and symbols and rules and ab- 
 stract terms; habit begets our attitudes and appreciations, 
 and determines our behavior in every crisis in Ufe. Never- 
 theless, habit is only the handmaid of invention. Origi- 
 nality consists in giving to fixed habits a new organization 
 and a progressive existence on a higher scale. When 
 Bell invented the telephone, he used no material, law, or 
 habit of operation not known before; but he did devise 
 a new combination of them, which has forced us all into a 
 new round of customs and habits in communication. 
 Every normal human being, and every social group, from 
 the family to the nation, is on the way somewhere; the 
 important thing is that they should have leaders who 
 know the way and who, like trustworthy scouts, will risk 
 their lives that their comrades may live. 
 
 While I have been speaking in parable, you surely realize 
 that I have had the pedagogical methods of scouting in 
 mind. When the tenderfoot takes his oath, he promises 
 to do something. To be sure, it is stated in abstract terms 
 
SCOUTING EDtrCATION 
 
 197 
 
 and is a bit grandiloquent, but it serves the purpose of 
 rounding up his moral energy. He is asked, as it were, 
 to gird up his loins and to get set on his mark for the race 
 to come. Then he is obliged to do something; in fact, he 
 has already qualified in certain small " stunts," and every 
 step in advance is marked- by new habits fixed through 
 persistent effort. Step by step, habit by habit, he passes 
 from grade to grade. The content of his curriculum I 
 have already discussed. What concerns me now is the 
 method; and that, I repeat, is superb. 
 
 Doing well something worth doing. — In contrast to the 
 loose control of the home, sometimes severe, often lax 
 and always personal, and to the discipHne of the school, 
 which is generally mechanical and autocratic, the methods 
 of scouting asks the boy to do something that he thinks 
 worth while and that he wants to do. Many of the tasks 
 are self-imposed, because the boy chooses what he shall 
 undertake; many of them require practice which he must 
 do alone. His best efforts are enlisted in the acquisition 
 of the right habit. And for every success some reward 
 is given, a testimonial that converts a universal weakness 
 of human nature into an element of strength. A great 
 contribution to educational procedure — one that reflects 
 severely upon the games and sports of our schools and 
 colleges — is that in scout competition there are no losers. 
 One scout's gain is not another's loss; when one patrol 
 wins, some other one does not go down in defeat. Yet 
 who will say that scouting exhibitions lack " pep " or vim 
 or dogged determination? Scouting does not depend for 
 its success upon side lines and cheer leaders; it finds its 
 reward in the virtue of doing well something worth doing. 
 
1 98 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 The human element. — Then, too, human nature is 
 appealed to in the administrative system of scouting. The 
 device of patrol and troop and community units and 
 national organization puts the boy in touch with other 
 scouts everywhere, gives him responsibility for the conduct 
 of his fellows, and inspires him with pride in the cause. 
 I venture to say that most scouts are in closer touch with 
 their scoutmasters than they are with their school-teachers, 
 and know Mr. West better than they know their super- 
 intendent of schools or the state commissioner of education. 
 The personal touch inherent in the system induces a sense 
 of corporate responsibility, makes a virtue of obedience 
 to law, and through imitation, gives concrete expression 
 to a code of honor unparalleled in modem chivalry. Its 
 most striking feature is that it stresses duties instead of 
 magnifying rights. The twelve commandments of scout- 
 ing are stated in positive terms, rather than in the form 
 of the Mosaic decalogue: "Thou shalt not." The scout 
 is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, brave, clean, and reverent. 
 Each of these laws, extraordinarily abstract in the sim- 
 plicity of its formulation, is illustrated in the daily round 
 of every boy's life. The scout's duty to do a good turn 
 daily — a device worthy to rank with the sewing machine, 
 the steam engine, and the telegraph, and of infinitely 
 greater worth than any such mechanical contrivance for 
 the development of character and the making of citizens — 
 puts the boy not only in a position to understand the moral 
 laws under which he lives, but to incorporate them into the 
 fabric of his life. 
 
 Regenerating the American boy. — The scout program, 
 therefore, is essentially moral training for the sake of 
 
SCOUTING EDUCATION 199 
 
 efficient democratic citizenship. It gives definite em- 
 bodiment to the ideals of the school, aiid supplements 
 the efforts of home and church. It works adroitly, by a 
 thousand specific habits, to anchor a boy to modes of right 
 living as securely as if held by chains of steel; but best 
 of all, it exhibits positive genius in devising situations 
 that test a boy's self-reliance and give full scope to his 
 talent and originality and leadership. These two aspects 
 of the scout program are so evenly balanced and so nicely 
 adjusted as to make them well-nigh pedagogically perfect. 
 The entire organization is a machine capable of working 
 wonders, not only in the moral regeneration of the American 
 boy, but also in fitting him to assume the duties of an 
 American citizen. 
 
 Scout leadership. — The more delicate and intricate 
 the machine, the greater the need of skilled operators. 
 On you, therefore, who assume leadership in the Boy 
 Scout movement rests a heavy responsibility. If you are 
 true to the motto of scouting, you, too, must " be prepared." 
 You must know that your business is not primarily to make 
 cooks or campers or hikers or students of nature, nor 
 even efficient workers in any vocation. All these are means 
 to ends, not ends in themselves. The real purpose of your 
 office is to help boys to translate the Golden Rule into 
 concrete terms and to keep themselves physically strong, 
 mentally awake, and morally straight. I have tried to 
 show you that the method you must follow is the simple 
 one of fixing habits and creating situations that invite 
 leadership. The danger is that the very simplicity of 
 procedure may betray you into mistaking means for ends. 
 It is the mistake that so many fraternal organizations for 
 
200 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 adults make; it is the error into which so many teachers 
 fall. Be prepared to measure every task by its results 
 in character building. Weigh the relative value of the 
 habits that you can inculcate. Fix the best ones by 
 insistent practice, keep them alive by repetition, and make 
 each one a step to a higher level. Then strive to locate 
 responsibility; put on a boy' shoulders all the load that he 
 can carry ; increase it as he gathers strength ; let him feel the 
 joy of mastery; and reward him according to his service. 
 
 The program for the future. — If your vision is faulty, 
 the ditch that yawns for blind leaders of the blind is not 
 far ahead of you. On the other hand, if you see things 
 straight and see them whole, you have every inducement 
 to demonstrate your ability to lead. Opportunities to 
 show initiative, self-direction, and self-control are not 
 confined to the boys of your troops. Splendid as your 
 program is, it is not beyond the reach of improvement. 
 Genius gave it life, and only genius can keep it alive. 
 If ever this program, which I have praised so highly, 
 becomes formal; if your work as scoutmasters and 
 scout leaders drops into routine; if your system of 
 administration gets so enamored of its success that it 
 becomes autocratic, you will all be on the highroad to 
 oblivion. The best of athletics may grow stale, and the 
 strongest team may fail from over-confidence. It is rela- 
 tively easy to build up a business, but it is extraordinarily 
 difficult to keep it at its maximum efiiciency. The maxi- 
 mum efficiency of this great movement depends finally upon 
 the worth of your contributions to it. The call still is for 
 men of vision, men with initiative, men of nerve and daring, 
 men who, by every test, are fit to be called "good scouts." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY ' 
 
 THE teaching profession, it seems to me, is singu- 
 larly indifferent to the signs of the times. Either 
 we are content to attend to business as usual 
 because we don't know what else to do, or we fail to realize 
 the significance of the revolution which is upon us. It 
 would seem that of all vocations, ours should be the quick- 
 est to respond to the call to democracy, and the first to 
 propose ways and means of making democracy safe for 
 the world. Inasmuch as a confession of not knowing 
 what to do beKes our claims to professional leadership, 
 and failure to understand the meaning of events impHes 
 an awful ignorance of precisely that history which we are 
 supposed to teach, I am obliged, out of polite considera- 
 tion for my coworkers, to seek elsewhere for the causes of 
 our somnolence. 
 
 Our faith in democracy. — The truth is, as I see it, we 
 teachers are much like other folks; we have not taken 
 our democracy very seriously. We have all wanted to 
 do as we pleased, and to be let alone in working out our 
 own individual salvation. For this private advantage, 
 we have been willing to entrust our civil government 
 to the tender mercies of petty politicians and party bosses; 
 we have winked at the violation of law, and tolerated 
 slavery, and serfdom, and industrial oppression; we have 
 
 'A revised reprint from the Teachers College Record, May, 1918. 
 
 201 
 
202 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 been indifferent to the ravages of plunder and greed, 
 and to the losses due to administrative inefficiency. All 
 these faults we have been guilty of at times, — and worse, 
 if worse there be — but such faults as these are in reality 
 the concomitants of our virtues. We have sinned in these 
 respects, simply because our faith in mankind is so strong. 
 We are essentially optimists, and we have relied on the 
 best in humanity to overcome the worst. In evidence of 
 our national good intent I have only to point out what 
 has happened when the pubhc conscience has been aroused. 
 Political parties have been punished for their shortcomings, 
 slavery has been abolished, plunderers have been over- 
 whelmed, the thraldom of child labor has been lightened, 
 corporate greed has been checked, and the prohibition 
 of social evils has been enjoined by highest law. It is 
 characteristic of the democratic mind to believe the best 
 of all mankind, to have faith that somehow the good will 
 triumph over the bad. But it is equally true of the in- 
 dividualist that he wants his own way, and that he will 
 wreak his vengeance upon those who persistently betray 
 his confidence. The present world commotion 'shows that 
 the optimists have been betrayed by those in whom they 
 put their trust. Vengeance is mine, is their watchword. 
 The outcome bids fair to match the bitterness of their 
 disappointment. 
 
 The obligation of democracy. — The striving of the 
 world towards democracy is as old as human society. 
 The " inalienable rights of man " are the natural outcome 
 of the instinct to self-expression and self-realization. 
 The doctrine of brotherly love formulated by Jesus and 
 propagated by the Christian Church as a world religion, 
 
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 203 
 
 has been bedded deep in the consciousness of the modern 
 world. But nowhere has there been a democratic State. 
 The age-long struggle between autocracy and democracy- 
 has never resulted in the complete suppression of the one 
 or the complete victory of the other. At best the result 
 has been an aristocracy or oligarchy, with leanings towards 
 autocracy or towards democracy. The ordinary affairs 
 of life go on much the same under any decent government. 
 One must keep off the grass, if the park is worth preserv- 
 ing; keep the fire-escape clear, if safety is essential; observe 
 the regulations of the health officer in time of quarantine; 
 pay one's debts, and live up to contracts; help others when 
 they are in need; teU the truth, fear God, and shame the 
 devil. It matters a great deal, however, what is one's 
 attitude toward these obligations and how one comes to 
 recognize them as obHgations. If the attitude is one of 
 subservient acquiescence engendered by fear, or even by 
 unquestioning obedience to external authority, the lean- 
 ing is towards autocracy. If, on the contrary, conduct 
 springs from an understanding of the necessity of such 
 action, or if obligation is accepted after reasonable con- 
 sideration by those concerned, the emphasis is democratic. 
 A study in extremes. — Our policy has been to abide by 
 the rule of the majority. We have advocated liberty 
 under the law, and assumed that the law was just. Now 
 the previous question is being put. Is the law just? Who 
 shall say? What is Hberty? On the answer to these 
 questions depends all our future happiness, all our hope 
 for ourselves, for our children, and for our country. If 
 justice cannot be assumed by the rule of the majority, who 
 shall decide what is right? Shall a group of intellectuals? 
 
204 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 Shall a political party? Shall an industrial corporation? 
 Shall a labor union? Shall any one class in the State enjoy 
 the privilege of setting standards for all others? If not 
 a class or a group or a party, shall each one decide what is 
 right for himself? Our oldest history tells us in its own 
 strong Biblical phrase, that when " every man did that 
 which was right in his own eyes," there was anarchy in 
 the land. It may be providential that we see clearly 
 to-day the logical end of two extremes of government: 
 Germany, the confessed autocrat, surfeited with ambition 
 and drunk with power, trampling on the rights of individuals 
 to gain world dominion for a favored few; Russia, the 
 would-be democrat, impatient of restraint and blind to 
 all sense of civic duty, groveling in anarchy, that each 
 citizen may do as he pleases. If these lessons shall be 
 learned, the war will not have been fought in vain. 
 
 Living the Golden Rule. — Whatever may have been 
 the purpose of those who started the war, however selfish 
 the intent of either party at the beginning, it is perfectly 
 clear now that the public conscience of those opposed to 
 the forces of autocracy is stirred to the depths. The 
 whole world is leaning towards democracy. We may not 
 know what democracy means; we may be blind to the evils 
 of a system that easily substitutes license for liberty; we 
 may be selling our birthright for a mess of pottage; but we 
 have reached the decision that a change is inevitable. 
 Indeed, the change has already come. Every day a 
 new order of Government is handed down, regulating 
 transportation by raii and water, fixing prices of necessary 
 commodities, telhng us what we shall eat and how we shaU 
 clothe ourselves — all to the end, it is said, that we may win 
 
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 205 
 
 the war. It seems to me, rather, that we are being dis- 
 ciplined by an inexorable schoolmaster to meet the hard- 
 ships of the future. Just now, like naughty children, we 
 are doubtless scared into being good. Later on, when 
 the fright is past, we shaU be disposed to slip back into our 
 old ways. The slogan, " Business as usual," will ring 
 out over all the land. Trade and transportation wiU make 
 desperate efforts to recoup their losses; store and factory, 
 farm and market, school and college, will gravitate towards 
 their old positions. Let no one, however, make the mis- 
 take of thinking that any of these enterprises will ever 
 again be what they were before the war. A government 
 that shows it can take over railroads and commandeer 
 shipping fleets, will never again be helpless in the regula- 
 tion of transportation; the power that can fix the price 
 of coal and wheat, will have the chance to try it again 
 on a larger scale, when the majority so decrees; if sub- 
 sidies can be provided to buy farms, build workmen's 
 houses, and supply luncheons for school children, it is only 
 a short step to public largesses for all who are hungry or 
 in need of financial aid. And by these very means democ- 
 racy may be easily transformed into anarchy. Call it 
 what you wiU — sociahsm, Bolshevism, or something 
 worse, — we have passed the era of free competition, 
 where each stood on his rights and was disposed to define 
 his rights to suit himself, into another era, wherein the ideal 
 is justice for all, and for each the right to get what he 
 deserves. The majority may continue to rule, but it must 
 be a majority that exercises the duty of protecting the rights 
 of the minority. While philosophers are striving to define 
 the meaning of democracy and statesmen are giving a 
 
2o6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 civic form to social justice, schoolmasters will be wrestling 
 with a new set of pedagogical problems. The doctrine 
 that all shall get what they deserve presupposes that the 
 largest possible number shall be taught to want what it is 
 right that they should have. The fundamental problem 
 of a democratic State, as I see it, is an educational one: 
 the problem of teaching the proper appreciation of life- 
 values and of training citizens to act in accord with the 
 precepts of the Golden Rule. 
 
 An educational challenge. — It is easy to talk in general 
 terms, as I have been doing. Almost everybody now- 
 adays who talks at all, talks in that way. It is a con- 
 venient way of concealing thought. It is high time, 
 however, that someone should make concrete suggestions 
 of the " brass tack " variety. It is even more important 
 that someone should do something worth while. No- 
 where is the need greater than in our own field. I would 
 that I could both say the proper word and do the proper 
 thing, but I am neither a philosopher nor a pedagogical 
 expert. The most I can do is to appeal to you graduates 
 of Teachers College to do your bit, and to do it before it 
 is too late. I can put to you the questions which the 
 public will soon be asking, and for which answers speedily 
 wiU be demanded. The reaction of any one of us may be 
 of little weight, but the voice of 25,000 Teachers-College 
 students can make itself heard. 
 
 The first question is. What are the schools for? The 
 stereotyped answer is. The schools are for all the people. 
 Suppose, however, that when the balance of power in our 
 Government goes over to those who, in Mr. Schwab's 
 words, " work with their hands, " your new masters say 
 
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 207 
 
 that the schools are not, and never have been, intended 
 to meet the needs of their children, that they were estab- 
 lished to train leaders for Church and State, that their 
 chief function to-day is to equip a favored few for profes- 
 sional work, that they cater to an aristocracy of high- 
 brows and money-getters, that they spend the people's 
 money to make one of a hundred the master of the other 
 ninety-nine, and that, in short, they are not democratic 
 either in aim or method. The ready retort to such a 
 challenge is that American schools, from the lowest to the 
 highest, are open to all, that no one is denied educational 
 advantages by reason of race, creed, or previous condition 
 of servitude, that public education is free, and that the 
 system provides for instruction in any subject and to any 
 extent that the public is wiUing to support. 
 
 Is educational progress restricted? — But in saying that, 
 you are really asking the next question. What should our 
 schools teach? Should they offer instruction in any 
 subject and to any extent that the public is willing to 
 support? Is the converse true, that what the public, 
 or that part of the pubHc that happens to be in control, 
 does not want, or has no use for, should be eliminated? 
 If it be true that class interests in the past have operated 
 to restrict educational advantages to a favored few, will 
 new class interests in the future seek to retaliate by giving 
 special privileges to some other class? 
 
 And finally, Who shall control our schools? Shall it 
 continue to be lay boards, chosen by popular vote, or 
 selected to represent some pohtical party or local group? 
 Shall our schools and teachers be at the mercy of those 
 who, happening to have a little power, use it in a little 
 
2o8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 way? Is the expert in education to be merely the paid 
 agent of a board or a party or a labor union? How other- 
 wise can a democracy attain its ends but by controlling 
 the education of future citizens? If some citizens are set 
 aside for the purpose of teaching, how can you be sure 
 they wiU teach the democratic faith? Shall we have 
 some day a pedagogical creed to which teachers, like 
 theologues, must subscribe? WiU that lead to trials for 
 heresy and the dismissal of nonconformists? WiU a 
 democracy find it expedient to substitute for the estab- 
 lished church of the old regime a state-supported and state- 
 controUed school system? If that should come to pass, 
 wherein would democracy essentiaUy differ from autocracy? 
 The stamp of autocracy. — Despite the apparent redtictio 
 ad absurdum, these questions are not trivial. It were 
 easy to point out sufficient cause for every question listed 
 here. For example, who doubts that our schools denied 
 equal opportunity to aU for gaining a livelihood until, 
 within a decade, the demand for vocational training could 
 no longer be resisted? And who would say, even now, 
 that children who want training for work in shop and 
 factory, for store and countinghouse, for farm and home, 
 can get what they need as freely and as universaUy as those 
 who can afford to go forward to professional service can get 
 theirs? Moreover, it is aU too true that many of those 
 who have profited most from professional training, given 
 them at pubUc expense, have miserably failed to return 
 to the public that kind of service which professional honor 
 demands. When the great state of New York undertakes 
 to prescribe miUtary drill, and Ohio to portray the evils 
 of alcoholic indulgence by textbook and prescribed lessons. 
 
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 
 
 209 
 
 we may confidently expect other states to require the study 
 of civics of a particular brand. If German can be elimi- 
 nated from the schools by act of a board of education, 
 why not Latin or history or mathematics? If Gar3Tzed 
 schools can be a party issue in the city of New York, and 
 thrown out by popular vote on the grounds of expense, 
 who knows when the high schools and the College of the 
 City of New York wiU go the same route? If teachers 
 can be dismissed from service because they cannot con- 
 scientiously support some of the actions of our present 
 Government, how can permanence of tenure be assured to 
 disloyalists under some succeeding goveriunent? The 
 theory that to the victors belong the spoils has been too 
 long a recognized principle of action to make improbable 
 that it will never again be revived. If democracy under- 
 takes this line of advance, it will need for fulfillment both a 
 State Church and a State School, supplemented by hberal 
 largesses to the proletariat, to keep the citizens in order. 
 The final scene is reached when the travesty of democracy 
 gives way to a mihtary dictatorship. 
 
 The program of education. — Perhaps I have said enough 
 to cast some doubt on the sufiiciency of old ways and means 
 to meet new conditions. My own beh'ef is that so long as 
 we chng to our old habits of thinking and acting, we shall 
 never solve the problems of our new democracy. The 
 new order demands a new philosophy and a new mode of 
 attack. If the difference between an autocratic State and 
 a democratic State be a matter of emphasis, it follows 
 that the system of education adapted to an autocratic 
 society wiU differ from the system adapted to a democratic 
 society chiefly in the way it leans. The autocratic State 
 
 TREND IN ED. — 1 4 
 
2IO THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 puts power in the hands of a few, and trains them to use it 
 in the interests of a privileged class; it binds the many 
 down by the discipline of obedience, of reverence, and of 
 poverty. The thirst for power stimulates the greed of 
 money, the search for usable knowledge, and the demand 
 for practical efl&ciency. The democratic State, on the 
 other hand, emphasizes the rights of man, and imposes 
 on each citizen the duty of being his brother's keeper. 
 The educational program of a democracy, therefore, must 
 stress the universaUty and the practicability of moral 
 forces. 
 
 Forgetting relative worths. — A survey of the recent 
 history of education in the United States raises consider- 
 able doubt of our pedagogical contribution to democracy. 
 In our universities, we have made an idol of scientific 
 research; we have weighed and measured and timed 
 everything capable of being accurately tested by quan- 
 titative methods; we have used our technical schools to 
 forward every conceivable application of science to art 
 and industry; we have rejoiced in invention, and — too 
 often — -have set the dollar mark as the crown of success 
 in discovery. In our lower schools we have concerned 
 ourselves with curricula and courses of study and efficiency 
 in administration. We have systematized and standardized 
 and organized our work so that untrained or half-trained 
 teachers might get measurable results. From grade to 
 grade and from school to school, promotion has depended 
 upon the passing of examinations on what pupils have 
 accumulated for exhibition purposes. Had it not been for 
 the wholesome common sense of our public-school teachers, 
 I doubt not that the German standard of scholarship 
 
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 211 
 
 and the German standard of efficiency would long ago 
 have dominated our lower schools as they have controlled 
 the policy of our universities. 
 
 Now, I have no quarrel with scholarship or scientific 
 research. If a democracy cannot stand the truth, it can- 
 not endure; and if it ceases to add to himian knowledge, 
 it will surely stagnate and finally deserve to perish. The 
 trouble with our schools and colleges is that they have 
 been satisfied with knowledge put up, like breakfast foods, 
 in small packages with attractive labels but indigestible 
 contents. The main thing has been to get knowledge 
 because, in the words laboriously copied when we were 
 learning to write, " Knowledge is Power," but in our 
 getting we have sometimes forgotten the injunction of the 
 wise man to get understanding. We have been so keen 
 to get the exact letter of the truth, so exact that the degree 
 of variability can be measured and recorded in decimals 
 of many points, that we have often missed the spirit that 
 giveth life. Exactness is no crime, however, and measure- 
 ment is not a sin. In fact, Americans might safely accus- 
 tom themselves to greater exactness and apply more 
 certain measurement to their work. The fault is, not 
 that we have been too accurate, but that we have given 
 too little attention to the relative worth and moral sig- 
 nificance of the facts at our command. 
 
 The quest for moral standards. — The ideals of the 
 democracy towards which we are leaning are essentially 
 moral, rather than intellectual or material. The intel- 
 lectual and the material we have with us, and we are not 
 likely to quit our hold on either. What I fear is that we 
 shall not quickly seize upon the moral issues now presented 
 
212 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 to US and incorporate them into our educational system. 
 There is an autocratic way of doing things and there is a 
 democratic way. The autocratic method stresses con- 
 stituted authority, hands down rules and regulations, 
 asks not the reasons why, assumes to know a priori what is 
 best and right, and brooks no interference from those who 
 may prefer not to be benefited in such predetermined 
 fashion. The democratic method depends for its success 
 upon cooperative efifort and the acceptance of standards 
 that are reasonably convincing. The one tends to drive; 
 the other to lead. The subject of a monarchical State is 
 not asked to understand, he need only obey. The free 
 citizen who understands but does not obey is a menace to 
 the State; he must know the right, accept it, and then un- 
 hesitatingly do his duty. In a final analysis, the safety 
 of the State, the maintenance of civil order and social 
 stability, depends primarily upon the discipline that 
 makes right conduct habitual. 
 
 Americans are obsessed with a knowledge of the rights 
 of man. We take it in our mother's milk; it seems to 
 pervade the very air we breathe. But we are slow to learn 
 that for every right there is a corresponding duty, for 
 every privilege, a corresponding responsibility. A right 
 once learned is immediately in working order, but a duty 
 recognized may result in nothing more than a twinge of 
 conscience. A duty does not become a potent force until 
 it is fixed in habit. Once grant that schools are respon- 
 sible for the character of their students, that they must 
 teach the moral law, and see that its precepts function 
 in the lives of citizens, we are transported into a new peda- 
 gogical realm. The most important part of our business, 
 
EDUCATION' FOR DEMOCRACY 213 
 
 then, becomes a matter of method. Discipline of a special 
 kind takes a commanding place. How shall right habits 
 be inculcated, and how shall selfish traits be eliminated? 
 Answer this question, and you are on the highroad to 
 success in the new pedagogical era. 
 
 Freedom of choice. — Someone may say, however, that 
 right habits and good character are matters of opinion, 
 that what suits one may not suit another, and that it will 
 be just as difficult to satisfy our prospective masters on 
 these points as on any other. My reply is that the free- 
 dom of a democracy consists not in doing what you please 
 as an individual, nor in doing what you please as a class 
 or party, but rather in the privilege of choosing your own 
 authority and following your own leaders. It is the es- 
 sence of government to rule, and the authority of a govern- 
 ment must be respected. No one of us can escape the 
 necessity of obedience to custom and law. We must 
 yield or be outcasts of society. Under an autocracy we 
 obey without question; under a democracy, we question 
 and then obey. In either case, obedience is a virtue and 
 disobedience is a sin or crime. The strongest motive to 
 conformity in the one case is confidence in the ruling 
 power; the dominant force in the other is the desire to see 
 things straight and see them whole. The valuation of 
 authority, either in the choice of leaders or the acceptance 
 of standards, is a responsibility that may not be shirked 
 by any citizen of a democratic State. It is the raison 
 d'Stre of public education for all the people and to the 
 widest extent. 
 
 Servants of the State. — A democracy does not raise 
 the question of transcendental right. It sees nothing 
 
214 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 esoteric in the Golden Rule, and knows that no government 
 or nation can long endure that disregards it. If the new 
 democracy be merely a guise for a new kind of class selfish- 
 ness, it wiU not last; if it have no higher purpose than to 
 exploit those who disagree, it is bound to lose. I have 
 faith that men capable of reconstructing a world that has 
 been drenched with blood, weighed down with poverty, 
 and overwhelmed with sorrow, will not be found wanting 
 either in sympathy or vision or common sense. Mistakes 
 will doubtless be made, and progress may be slow, but if 
 the new generation be taught aright, success wiU surely 
 come. The comer stone of the new state wiU. be educa- 
 tion — not merely instruction in things worth knowing 
 but also discipline in things worth doing. It will be 
 education for citizenship in a society that is pledged to 
 maintain justice for all and to guarantee to each the at- 
 tainment of what he deserves. This is work for strong 
 teachers — teachers who can free themselves from ham- 
 pering traditions, teachers who can rise above party and 
 class and creed, teachers who practice what they preach, 
 and who preach only the truth. Such teachers need fear 
 no act of legislature nor any mandate of a governing board. 
 Bound by professional honor, they wiU command liberty 
 for themselves by assuring freedom to their fellow men. 
 Servants of the State, they wiU show their loyalty in patri- 
 otic deeds. They call to us to come up higher. It is our 
 reasonable service. We can do no less and be true to the 
 highest ideals of our profession. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS ' 
 
 THE obvious outcome of the World War. in educa- 
 tion is that schools more than ever before are 
 agencies of the State. The need is for better 
 and more patriotic citizens. More and better education 
 is the only certain means of getting a better citizenship. 
 
 Teachers are servants of the State. — The greatest 
 obstacles to the Americanization of our schools are the 
 traditions affecting the employment, remuneration, and 
 qualifications of teachers. The teacher as a civil servant 
 whose foremost duty is the promotion of the welfare of 
 the State is a new conception in American Ufe. "Eme was 
 when the teacher was a chattel sold in the open rriarket, 
 or a private tutor employed to give instruction in subjects 
 selected by parents, or an adherent of some church whose 
 chief qualification was his ability to safeguard the tenets 
 of his sect. Now teachers are employed by boards of 
 education of a district or city under rules and regulations 
 only shghtly limited by state laws. And despite all laws 
 enjoining it, the principle that education is a function of 
 the state is recognized; practically, the conduct of schools 
 is a local enterprise, controlled by petty ofScials who are 
 ever biased by local interests and personal whims. The 
 teacher is in reaHty the employee of the local board, and 
 as an employee, is subjected to all the vagaries of local 
 
 * An address delivered before the students on the occasion of the Opening Session of 
 Summer School, Teachers College, igig. 
 
 215 
 
2l6 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 pride and prejudice. To overcome these faults, some 
 of our states have created laws to protect the teacher and 
 define his work, but an individual teacher, no matter 
 how just his cause or how patriotic his intent, has Uttle 
 chance of being heard, if his desires run counter to the 
 whims of the local board. Group action seems to be the 
 only way to progress in a democratic State. 
 
 Upsetting tradition. — The tradition that a teacher is an 
 employee of a family or institution or community, to 
 give such service as the employer wants, is responsible 
 for the practice of hiring teachers in the cheapest market. 
 When teachers are paid less than janitors, milkmen, and 
 street cleaners, it is obvious either that sweatshop methods 
 prevail or that the services given are of little worth. 
 Whether a person's service is worth much or little depends 
 upon his vocational skill and his will to work. Back of 
 technical ability lies knowledge. The person who knows 
 what to do and how to do it is an artisan, a trade worker; 
 he who also knows why he does it, and in his doing is guided 
 by high ideals, is a professional worker. By tradition, 
 teaching is a trade; we hope to make it a profession — 
 not merely for the well-being and comfort of teachers, 
 but because the country has need of instructors possessiag 
 culture, technical knowledge, and professional skill who will 
 patriotically devote themselves to the service of the nation. 
 In the Americanization of our pubHc schools we need 
 professional experts, and it is the duty of those who know 
 the kind of expert service needed, to use all honorable 
 means of securing it. 
 
 A policy of employment. — When teachers are regarded 
 as employees, it inevitably follows that their services are 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS 217 
 
 measured in terms of private interest rather than public 
 good. Tenure of office, remuneration, and vocational ad- 
 vancement are all conditioned upon satisfying their 
 employers. Resistance to official demands, however unrea- 
 sonable, and advocacy of reforms, however desirable, are 
 alike dangerous experiments, when the take-it-or-leave-it 
 policy of employment is in force. Under such circum- 
 stances, cooperation for any purpose except mutual pro- 
 tection is hardly to be thought of. So it happens that the 
 individual teacher is left to himself to ply " the sorriest 
 of trades." 
 
 A premium on specialization. — Once grant, however, 
 that the Americanization of our public schools caUs for 
 expert leadership, and that the methods used and the 
 ends sought are not subject to private control or local 
 bias, and you put teachers on a different status. Not 
 only is a premium put on culture, technical knowledge, 
 and professional skill, but it becomes a patriotic duty to 
 realize the highest professional ideals in the training of 
 American citizens. The individual teacher wiU find in- 
 spiration and renewed courage in the consciousness of 
 marching shoulder to shoulder with his fellows in the 
 mighty army recruited to fight the battles of civihzation 
 and modem democracy. 
 
 Fostering consciousness of kind. — The time is past, it 
 seems to me, when teachers should be dissuaded from group 
 organizatron. Th« war has made some kind of organiza- 
 tion inevitable in that it has given to teaching a new 
 objective and to teachers a new consciousness of kind. 
 The new patriotism, founded in justice and devoted to 
 freedom, must be imprinted on the coining generations. 
 
2l8 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 It is this sense of overwhelming responsibility that is 
 forcing our ablest leaders to devise ways and means of 
 unif3dng the latent strength of the half-million of teachers 
 in the country. In this efifort, they are but following at a 
 respectful distance the example of our oldest professions, 
 law and medicine, which long ago set up professional 
 standards and adopted codes of professional ethics. They 
 also have before them the example of trade-unions, and 
 some teachers, smarting under the injustice of insufl&cient 
 wage, have not hesitated to grasp the hand of labor. The 
 time has come when teachers must decide whether they 
 wiU lead in their own way, or be led in some other way, 
 whether they will set up standards worthy of a profession, 
 or continue to be employees in a trade. 
 
 Professional standards. — An organization of teachers, 
 nation-wide and properly authoritative, must be founded 
 on principles that will be universally recognized as valid, 
 and its conduct must be above reproach. No selfish motive 
 can be allowed to interfere with the realization of its ideals. 
 If the present world crisis makes such an organization 
 possible, it also imposes acceptance of professional 
 standards. 
 
 A code of professional ethics, therefore, is the first and 
 most important desideratum — a code reaching to the 
 individual teacher and defining the purpose of the organi- 
 zation. The organization itself exists merely to consoli- 
 date the strength of its individual members and to apply 
 it at strategic points. The problems of tactics and strat- 
 egy, however, must be in the hands of competent leaders 
 who themselves shall be guided by professional ideals. 
 
 I do not flatter myself that I have any special quali- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS 219 
 
 fications for writing a code of ethics for teachers. A code 
 that will command the confidence of the public and at the 
 same time protect the rights and deiine the responsibiUty 
 of the teacher, wiU be the work of many persons. Con- 
 stitutions that last are works of genius, but most of them 
 grow from very humble beginnings. 
 
 An ethical code for teachers. — This, then, is my con- 
 tribution: 
 
 1. Every teacher in the organization must be one 
 hundred per cent American. 
 
 Training for citizenship is more than giving instruction 
 in school subjects. Patriotism, loyalty, and courage are 
 as contagious as measles. Right example is the surest 
 way to inculcate appreciations and attitudes and to 
 demonstrate the value of fair play, teamwork, and self- 
 control. 
 
 2. The work of the teacher must be professional in 
 character and honestly performed. 
 
 Malpractice in teaching is more serious than malpractice 
 in medicine; the fact that proof of incompetence in the 
 teacher is buried in the retarded Hves of children is no 
 release from moral responsibiUty. The organization must 
 concern itself with the qualifications of teachers — their 
 training, certification, and classroom abihty. A corol- 
 lary is that good service should be rewarded and the honest 
 teacher protected. 
 
 3. The teacher, as a faithful servEint, is worthy of his 
 hire. 
 
 No true teacher ever has worked, or ever will work, 
 solely for money. The necessity of standardizing salaries 
 in a great school system will always miUtate against the 
 
220 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 recognition of individual merit, but this is no excuse for 
 rating all at the value of the poorest. A living wage is 
 one that counts the cost of preparation and the value of 
 the output, as well as the expenditure of time and energy 
 in the day's work. There should be no discrimination 
 against sex, grade, or school — equal pay for equal work 
 by those giving equal service. The same devotion to 
 the kindergarten or the rural school or the high school 
 given by teachers of equal attainments, whether men or 
 women, theoretically merits the same professional stand- 
 ing and the same remuneration. Practically, however, 
 classification is imperative in a school system as a basis 
 for the assignment of duties and adjustment of salaries, 
 but it shovild not operate to check personal ambition or 
 restrict professional advancement. One object of organiza- 
 tion is to protect the weak from exploitation and to help 
 them to a higher professional and economic status. An- 
 other object of no less importance, is to minimize the 
 practical difficulties incident to the operation among 
 teachers of the law of supply and demand, and to the 
 varying standards of fitness as set for different grades. 
 No democratic nation can endure that does not have 
 good teachers. And no teacher can give his best who 
 does not enjoy a Hving wage. 
 
 4. The organization must be honest and straightforward 
 in its dealings with the pubhc. 
 
 Collective bargaining is a two-edged sword. It must be 
 used by the organization in securing proper buildings and 
 equipment, higher professional standards for teachers, 
 better teaching in the schools, and adequate salaries for 
 those who do the work. It means appeals to public opinion, 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF TEACHERS 221 
 
 bargaining with school boards, and arguments to legis- 
 lators, but it should not mean threats, intimidation, and 
 strikes. A contract is inviolable. The teacher who is 
 not forced to accept appointment and who cannot be 
 locked out of his schoolroom has no excuse to strike. 
 When every expedient is exhausted and a school or system 
 is stm unwilling to put its work on a professional basis, 
 the last resort that is honorable is for teachers to refuse 
 appointment and to brand that school or system as un- 
 patriotic. It foUows that no teacher with any professional 
 pride will fill a place left vacant under such circumstances. 
 
 5. The organization should cooperate with every other 
 group of citizens for the promotion of the public good, but 
 should avoid entangling alliances with anyone. 
 
 Entangling alliances. — The teacher occupies a pecuhar 
 position in the body poUtic. He instructs children in 
 the rights and duties of citizens. His wards of to-day 
 are the voters of to-morrow. Some of them will be found 
 in every group, party, sect, and organization that exists 
 in the community. He should teach them the fundamental 
 principles of American life and help them to make wise 
 choices in their affiliations, but he may not proselytize 
 or conduct propaganda for any cause on which citizens 
 are divided. A decent respect for the opinions of others 
 must characterize all that he does. The organization, 
 therefore, which acts as the super-teacher cannot favor 
 either Jew or Gentile, republican or democrat, capitaHst 
 or laborer. It honors them all for the good they scrive 
 to do, and will join with them in all good works, but it 
 cannot be subservient to anyone. I realize that the 
 American Federation of Labor is potentially one of the 
 
222 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 most beneficent organizations in the United States, and I 
 have the highest regard both for its leaders and for their 
 objects, but it would be a mistake both for the Federation 
 of Labor and for the prospective organization of teachers, 
 to form an offensive and defensive alliance. It might 
 be the easiest way to secure an increase of teachers' salaries, 
 but more pay is not the only object of a teachers' organiza- 
 tion, and not the one that will insure its greatest usefulness 
 either to the profession or to the pubHc. 
 
 It would be just as fatal to become entangled with the 
 Manufacturers' Association, the Bar Association, the 
 Christian Association, or the Democratic Party. If this 
 latter suggestion is ludicrous, so also is the example set 
 by some groups of teachers who have already identified 
 themselves with the labor organizations. " Friends with 
 all, but allies of none," must be the slogan of a teachers' 
 organization. 
 
 The attainment of professional aims. — These five 
 points seem to me worthy of consideration by those who 
 would write a code of ethics for teachers and a constitu- 
 tion for a teachers' organization. My chief concern is to 
 free teachers from local oppression, to change their status 
 from employees of a school board to servants of the State, 
 to demand of them professional fitness, and to expect of 
 them professional service, and to evaluate their worth by 
 their contribution to American citizenship. Once these 
 ends are attained, I am certain the public will gladly pay 
 the price. Center the united strength of half a million 
 of teachers on these points, and the teachers' millennium 
 will soon be ushered in. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING ' 
 
 THE problem of professional training is to-day the 
 most important problem in the administration 
 of American universities. Reckoned in terms of 
 cost, or of equipment necessary, or of students and teachers 
 engaged, there is no other feature of university work 
 so prominent. Indeed, if student population continues 
 to increase at anything like the ratio of increase experi- 
 enced in the last decade, the time is surely coming when 
 some of our universities — particularly state univer- 
 sities — ' wiU be exclusively devoted to professional train- 
 ing and to the prosecution of research — itself a highly 
 specialized form of professional training. The academic 
 instruction now given in the freshman and sophomore 
 years will be relegated to junior colleges, as is now being 
 done in California, where the State University is over- 
 crowded. Even a short look ahead Justifies special 
 consideration of the nature and extent of professional 
 training in the future development of the university. 
 
 Shortening the period of apprenticeship. — What is 
 professional training? Let me say at the outset that I 
 do not regard it as anything esoteric. It is merely a device 
 to shorten the period of apprenticeship undertaken by 
 every learner who would acquire the knowledge and skill 
 possessed by the leaders in his field. It is a means of 
 
 * An address delivered at the inauguration of Lotus D. Coffman as president of the 
 University of Minnesota 1921. 
 
 223 
 
224 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 carrying the novice over the road already trod by his 
 masters, and of saving him from some of the dangers that 
 lurk in his way. Its highest aim is attained when, in 
 addition to the modicum of knowledge and technical 
 skin required for admission to the profession, the young 
 practitioner goes forth with unselfish ideals of service and a 
 mental equipment that impels him to develop his own 
 professional strength. 
 
 Knowledge, skill and ideals. — The aim of the pro- 
 fessional school is to fit its graduates to give expert service 
 in a society that feels its need of technical skill and is 
 willing to pay for it. The world buys products of htiman 
 labor, but what it really pays for is the technical skill of 
 the worker. And back of technical skill lie specialized 
 knowledge and the fine art of using it properly. Indeed, 
 the only difference between the artisan who repeats a 
 thousand times an hour the same clever trick of manipu- 
 lation, and the operative skill of the great surgeon, Ues in 
 the extent of knowledge focused on their tasks and the 
 ideals that inspire the workers. Both workers may have 
 skill of the highest order, but in the one, the center of 
 control is the spinal cord; in the other, a higher center 
 takes charge. Specialized knowledge,- high ideals, tech- 
 nical skill — these three are the trinity of professional 
 guidance. 
 
 Proportioning professional aims. — It follows, therefore, 
 that a professional school should set up three dominant 
 ends to aim at. In its cmrriculimi it should strive to 
 organize and systen^atize the knowledge available in its 
 particular field so that its students may get the essential 
 facts needed at the beginning of their career; in its teaching 
 
THE tlNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 225 
 
 it should give inspiration to creative effort and altruistic 
 service; and at some stage of its training provision must be 
 made for gaining technical skill. The pedagogical prob- 
 lems of all professional schools grow out of these three 
 fundamental requisites. These factors, however, are all 
 variable quantities. A professional school may be accept- 
 able in general and yet be weak in one or more of these 
 essentials. The ideals that guide the faculty may be rightly 
 conceived, and yet faU to function in the Hves of students and 
 graduates. The knowledge gained in course may be defect- 
 ive because of lack of scholarship on the part of instructors, 
 want of intelligence in students, or through bad teaching. 
 Technical skill may be purchased at too great a cost, or 
 neglected to the point of leaving graduates helpless on 
 entering their vocational employment. Right propor- 
 tion in the adjustment of these essentials is the crux of 
 administration in every type of professional school. 
 
 The curriculum of the professional school. — Consider 
 first the problem of the curriculum. The professional 
 student is not concerned with science in general, or phi- 
 losophy in general, or anything else in general. His needs 
 are very specific. He is given absurdly short time to get 
 the information that scholars and masters of his subject 
 have been collecting for centuries. His task is to select 
 what is usable, to rearrange and classify it, to order it in 
 such a way that principles shall emerge which may guide 
 him to new knowledge or direct his practice. The whole 
 process of education lutherto experienced is now reversed. 
 Instead of getting a liberal education that aims to develop 
 the man through culture and discipline of academic studies, 
 the professional student finds himself in a situation that 
 
 TREND IN ED. 1 5 
 
226 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 demands he focus all his strength on making himself an 
 intelligent, conscientious, efficient technical worker. There 
 is no room for academic instruction in a professional 
 curriculum once professional training really begins. The 
 mental attitude of the student precludes the possibility 
 of success, and the needs of the profession make it imprac- 
 ticable. No professional curriculum gives half as much 
 as is available in any professional field, nor half as much 
 as the practitioner in any particular field can profitably 
 use. Unless the liberal education acquired before pro- 
 fessional training begins is dynamic and continues to 
 function in making the man, there is small chance of further 
 development under professional training. On the other 
 hand, an education that does not result in making a man 
 good for something is an anomaly in this work-a-day world. 
 Vocational training is the complement of academic train- 
 ing. It can never be a substitute for a liberal education, 
 and it should never be confused either in aim, content, or 
 method with academic training. 
 
 Conflicts in organization. — A part of our trouble comes 
 from the organization of our university system and arises 
 from the fact that students are admitted to professional 
 schools poorly prepared for professional training. The 
 lack of academic training in some essential subjects ex- 
 cuses the introduction into the professional curriculum 
 of subjects that properly belong to the college. The 
 consequence is that most of our professional curricula 
 are partly academic. On the other hand, no American 
 college that I know confines its students to instruction 
 that has no bearing on their future vocation. More and 
 more the American college caters in its later years to the 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND PE.OPESSIONAL TRAINING 227 
 
 professional interest of its students. This overlapping 
 of the coUege and the professional school is peculiarly 
 American; it is the natural outcome of our individualistic 
 system of higher education. 
 
 From the standpoint of the professional school, the 
 interlacing of academic and vocational courses has two 
 serious consequences. First, it tends to shorten the 
 period set apart for professional training, and in the second 
 place it intrudes into the professional school academic 
 standards and methods of instruction wholly foreign to 
 the professional spirit. 
 
 Limits set by time. — The time that can be devoted to 
 professional training is determined by hard economic 
 facts. Theorizing on what the profession demands or 
 what society should have by way of expert service plays a 
 minor part. Society gets ia the long run what it is willing 
 to pay for. Professional workers, hke other capitalists, 
 are not inclined to increase their stock in trade beyond 
 the point of satisfactory economic return. Fortunately, 
 however, the professional worker is an idealist who counts 
 as part of his reward the joy he finds in his work. But 
 by and large, expert service is balanced by a cash equiv- 
 alent, the size of which predetermines the expertness 
 of the service as measured by the time expended in getting 
 it. Lengthening a professional course is not necessarily 
 S3monymous with raising standards. Passing the Hmit 
 of satisfactory economic return inevitably tends to de- 
 crease the number of applicants or to lower the profes- 
 sional ability of those content to plod through a longer 
 course. The curriculum may be lengthened upwards, 
 therefore, only if the graduates can increase their income 
 
228 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 enough to warrant the increase of capital represented in 
 their training. So long as only a few can profit from a 
 lengthened curriculum, the device of a graduate profes- 
 sional course, as distinguished from research work, is the 
 obvious way of meeting the situation. 
 
 Crowding the curriculum. — The output of productive 
 scholarship, increasing as it is every year in all professional 
 fields, puts a heavy strain on professional teaching. Alert 
 teachers find something new to add to their instruction 
 every year. Some teachers in every faculty lack the 
 abiUty to substitute the new for the old, and go on teach- 
 ing this year what they taught last year. They invariably 
 excuse themselves by an appeal to mental discipline, as 
 though mental discipHne could best be secured by present- 
 ing half-truths or irrelevant facts. Others add to an 
 overcrowded course more and more material until their 
 students succumb to mental dyspepsia. But, with the 
 best of foresight, the inevitable tendency is toward an 
 overcrowded curriculum, and its accompanying discomforts 
 for both teachers and students. 
 
 Economy of time for the student and efl&ciency of 
 teaching for the instructor are vital problems before every 
 faculty. I suppose the only method of determining cor- 
 rect procedure is by trial and error. The trouble with 
 most coUege faculties is that they make the trial without 
 profiting from their errors. They don't bury their mistakes, 
 as physicians do, but they do graduate them. 
 
 Paving the way to specialization. — The introductory 
 courses in most of our professional schools are the chief 
 obstacles to lengthening the curriculum by extending it 
 downwards. If they are really pre-professional, are they 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 229 
 
 the best and most expeditious means of getting students 
 ready for serious work in the several fields in which they 
 specialize? The stock answer that these courses are well 
 taught, that they are comprehensive, and that they afford 
 excellent mental discipline, is beside the mark. Grant 
 all that. The same can be said for scores of other courses — 
 some of which would be of incomparably greater worth 
 to the farmer or the engineer or the physician who may be 
 asked to represent his constituents on the County Board 
 or in the Legislature, or who in his leisure hours wishes to 
 read his daily paper intelligently and find pleasure in human 
 affairs. 
 
 The fact is, I assume, that these so-called introductory 
 courses are included in the curriculum, first, because they 
 are preparatory to the later work, and, second, because by 
 university tradition (but more because of university 
 poverty) they are regarded as fundamental. I am wiUing 
 to grant that early in the course, preparation should be 
 made for what is to foUow; but every hour, from the time 
 the student enters, is a preparation for all that comes 
 after. Any Hne that may be drawn between general and 
 special courses, or between pure and appHed sciences, is 
 purely artificial and arbitrary. The whims of academic 
 teachers too often determine what introductory courses 
 shall be given and how they shall be taught. Professional 
 needs make way before the omniscience of academic 
 specialists. 
 
 Consulting the specialist. — The opinion of specialists 
 on matters outside their own field, however, is of no more 
 consequence than the opinion of other good people. Indeed, 
 it may be not quite so good, if their personal interests are 
 
230 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 involved. Nevertheless, interdepartmental courtesy is 
 so prevalent in every college faculty with which I have 
 been connected, that it becomes dangerous' to question the 
 judgment of a strong man entrenched behind the entangle- 
 ments of his own specialty. The fact is, however, that 
 there is no one course universally recognized in American 
 colleges as the best introductory course in any depart- 
 ment. And even if the topics treated appeared on paper 
 to be the same, the personaUty of teachers and their selec- 
 tion of illustrations would differentiate their instruction. 
 The choice of topics for such courses has been conditioned 
 by the interests of teachers and the needs of students, 
 The needs of investigators in the several fields have un- 
 doubtedly bad first consideration, and next have come the 
 needs of students in the older professional schools. A 
 new school, such as the school of agriculture or journalism 
 or business, has a hard row to hoe and receives tardy 
 acknowledgment of its rights. 
 
 A matter of false economy. — Probably the strongest 
 prop for the idios}nicrasies of collegiate heads of depart- 
 ments is the disposition of those who hold the purse- 
 strings to take the cheapest way. It undoubtedly costs 
 less to give the same introductory courses for aU students, 
 at least during the formative period of university history; 
 but there comes a time when the student enrollment in a 
 particular school is large enough to justify special 
 consideration. For example, it would not appreciably 
 increase the cost of instruction in most of the science de- 
 partments of a large university to give special introductory 
 courses to students in the school of agriculture or engineer- 
 ing or medicine. If that were done intelligently, the 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 23 1 
 
 selection of topics could be restricted to principles needed 
 by the particular group of students, and all of the illustra- 
 tions might have a direct bearing on the professional 
 course. And the proper persons to decide what principles 
 are needed and what illustrations are most serviceable, 
 are those who have the professional understanding. The 
 result would surely be a better preparation for professional 
 work and a saving of students' time. Otherwise, I see 
 no escape from an overcrowded curriculum, with the 
 inevitable consequence of narrow specialization and bad 
 teaching. 
 
 Meeting professional needs. — It may be too much to 
 expect that the American professional school should so 
 early burst the swaddling bands of its academic nurse. 
 Our oldest university professional schools had their begin- 
 ning scarcely more than fifty years ago, and thirty years 
 ago the best medical school and the best law school in the 
 city of New York were really proprietary institutions. 
 The foundations of agriculture and engineering were laid 
 under the stress of our civil war, but the superstructure 
 as we know it has been built in the last thirty years. 
 These schools are aU offshoots of the college, and the 
 college supplied most of their early teachers. What 
 wonder, then, that academic ideals of scholarship and aca- 
 demic methods of teaching found their way -into the pro- 
 fessional schools. The framework and nomenclature of 
 the college still remain. We have departments and sub- 
 jects of study and semesters and credits — all according 
 to the strict letter of the academic law. And yet we know 
 that a department in the academic sense exists for the 
 development — not to say illimitable expansion — of a 
 
\ 
 
 232 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 subject, even to the bankruptcy of the institutional purse. 
 A professional school has no need of departments except 
 for administrative convenience. It has no excuse for 
 courses of set length or for credits measured in semester 
 hours. It needs only a faculty, because a faculty as 
 distinguished from a department in our university system 
 exists to protect and further the interests of a particular 
 group of students. Professional students demand that 
 their instruction concern itself with the real work of life. 
 Such a demand is perfectly legitimate, and no professional 
 school can afford to ignore it. In fact, so far as I know, 
 there is no other end worth working for in a professional 
 school. We must rid ourselves of the notion that because 
 an act or a process is simple or common, therefore it is un- 
 worthy of a place in a university school. The material 
 of instruction in a professional school cannot be measured 
 by academic standards. The needs of the practitioner 
 in his practice are the sole standards for determining what 
 he should be taught. The binding of a wound or the 
 tying of an artery is not a superlative test of intelligence, 
 but no medical school thinks of graduating a physician 
 without giving that ability. The professional school 
 must teach what the student needs and has not already 
 learned. 
 
 Padding the curriculum. — A corollary to this proposi- 
 tion is that what the professional student needs should be 
 taught in the most efl&cient way and in the shortest possible 
 time. A professional school has no excuse for following 
 academic tradition in giving courses aU of the same length 
 and mostly of the same credit. Graduates complain of 
 padding in some courses given by academically minded 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 233 
 
 teachers. How can it be otherwise, if an instructor must 
 spread over a semester, three hours a week, what might be 
 better done in one third or one fourth that time? I know 
 the disposition of college faculties to look askance at 
 courses that can be given in less than semester units. 
 Some are sure to say that they are not of university grade. 
 My reply is that such critics are not of professional grade; 
 they are either academic or research teachers. And no 
 professional school should be controlled either by an aca- 
 demic or a research faculty. The professional school 
 that hesitates to teach what is needed by the practitioner 
 in his practice, or to teach it adequately and in the short- 
 est way, is headed toward the tail end of the procession. 
 
 Improvement in university teaching. — It takes more 
 nerve than I have to discuss the practical problems of 
 methods of teaching in a university. One may have 
 his suspicions of the procedure behind the dosed doors 
 of a college classroom, but only the students subjected 
 to the ordeal are really in a position to judge. But students 
 are not competent to pass judgment on a teacher's work 
 except in an empirical way, by comparison with the work 
 of other teachers. The most serious obstacle to good 
 workmanship in the teaching profession is the fact that 
 the teacher rarely has a chance to measure himself with 
 his equals. He deals only with his inferiors in point of 
 inteUigence, experience, and skill. AVhat wonder, then, 
 that some teachers fall into ruts, become intolerant of 
 innovations, and resentful of criticism either from their 
 students or colleagues? 
 
 There is, however, one general principle of teaching 
 that should commend itself to every instructor in a pro- 
 
234 THE TREND EST AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 fessional school. Granted that no professional student 
 can possibly get in the time allowed for a professional 
 course all that he needs in his future career, it follows that 
 the materials of instruction should be those of most prac- 
 tical service, and should be presented in such a way as to 
 beget the cleanest understanding of their use. Useful 
 knowledge comes from facts carefully coordinated — done 
 up in packages and labeled " principles." There is no 
 one best method of doing anything in general, but there 
 may be a best method for a particular worker under very 
 particular conditions, to do a particular thing. The 
 teacher who is alive to his responsibiUty, conscious of his 
 faults and ambitious to improve, will find^a better way of 
 doing his work with each succeeding class. The pity is 
 that he should be willing to travel the path alone, giving 
 pain to himself and doing injury to others, when so many 
 of his predecessors and colleagues are competent to act 
 as guides. 
 
 Craftsmanship for the practitioner. — Intelligent work- 
 manship is the final test of professional abihty. High 
 ideals and abounding knowledge will not save the prac- 
 titioner from merited condemnation, if he fails in tech- 
 nical skill. Malpractice in medicine is not essentially 
 different from incompetence in farm management. Such 
 competence as is necessary to start the professional worker 
 in the right way must come from practice under a master. 
 Technical skill is established in habit. Bad habits are 
 as easily acquired as good habits — and far harder to 
 break. The steps in habit formation are three: (i) the 
 learner should know what he is expected to do; (2) he should 
 be shown how to do it; and (3) he must be kept doing the 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 235 
 
 right thing until it becomes automatic. The conscious 
 effort of an intelligent learner aids powerfully in determin- 
 ing the proper procedure in a particular case, but only- 
 persistent practice can ever give the skill demanded of 
 the successful practitioner. 
 
 Improvement of technical skill. — Some professional 
 schools, like law, medicine, and engineering, have a well- 
 defined body of special knowledge which can be imparted 
 to relatively young students. The business of such a 
 school is to uphold its professional ideals and give com- 
 petent instruction in professional subjects, leaving the 
 acquisition of technical skill to come during a period of ap- 
 prenticeship in an office, a hospital, or a shop, under the eye 
 of a master. In the case of other professional schools, like 
 those of teaching, journalism, and agriculture, the graduate 
 must make good the first day on the job, at least have 
 the ability to conceal his faults. Under such conditions, 
 technical skiU is at a premium. It is true, however, in 
 every profession that technical skill is an asset which must 
 be acquired, if not in course, then in the lower grades of 
 professional service. How much should be given in the 
 professional school is always determined by the condi- 
 tions prevaiHng in the profession. The profession that 
 expects its novice to stand on his feet when he graduates 
 must teach him to walk while in school. It does not i 
 follow, however, that a college graduate needs the same 
 automatic precision in technical skill that the trade worker 
 finds necessary. The lower the intelligence of the worker,'; 
 the greater need of training in habit; the higher the in- 
 telligence, the more can be left to self-direction. But 
 every graduate of a professional school should have 
 
236 THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 
 
 practice enough in doing the real work of his future vocation 
 to make him conscious of his faults and to give him con- 
 fidence in his abiHty to direct himself in the application 
 of his knowledge. It is not a question of the necessity 
 of practical work; that must be conceded. The real 
 question is, how and when can it best be given? Given 
 in one way, the college is reduced to the rank of a trade 
 school; given in another way, it places the institution on 
 the professional plane. 
 
 The basis for continued growth. — Professional training 
 as I have said, is merely a device to shorten the period of 
 apprenticeship undertaken by every learner who would 
 acquire the knowledge and skill possessed by the leaders 
 in his field. The professional school teaches only a part 
 of the game; it succeeds best when it induces its students 
 to become learners during the rest of their lives. When it 
 provides the minimum required of its graduates on enter- 
 ing their vocations, the rest of their instruction may safe- 
 ly deal with the reasons underlying their professional 
 practice. These reasons are embodied in the specialized 
 knowledge that I have characterized as an essential factor 
 in professional training. 
 
 A golden mean. — It is obvious that the reasons for a 
 particular treatment can best be illustrated by reference 
 to the act itself. It is the principle underlying aU labora- 
 tory work, except when laboratory work is made an end 
 in itself. The student who sees what happens to a soggy 
 field is better able to appreciate the reasons for imder- 
 drainage. A month in charge of a dairy herd wiU vitalize 
 the teaching of the principles of feeding as nothing in 
 books or lectures can do. The case system has revolu- 
 
THE UNIVERSITY ANfi PROFESSIONAL TRAINING 23) 
 
 tionized the study of law, and the appeal from the lecture 
 and the textbook in medicine to the laboratory, the bed- 
 side, and the cHnic has transformed the professional train- 
 ing of the physician. Hence, I maintain that success in] 
 teaching the principles of professional practice is con-' 
 ditioned by actual experience in the practice of the pro- 
 fession. Here, then, is where the professional school 
 kills two birds with one stone. The ideal balance is 
 obtained when enough practice is given to check up the 
 theory, and enough theory to direct the practice aright. 
 Disturb this balance by teaching theory as an end in 
 itself, and you have an academic institution. Teach 
 theory as reasons for practice, and you have the makings 
 of a professional school. More caimot be expected until 
 teaching itself becomes a profession and its novices are 
 subjected to the same rigorous training that the best 
 professions now expect of their candidates. Meantime, 
 there is only one unpardonable sin that a professional 
 faculty is likely to commit, and that is the failure to up- 
 hold its own professional standards without fear or favor 
 of academic tradition. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Agriculture, 13, 68, 72. 
 
 American characteristics, 26, 65, 
 
 130- 
 Americanization, 215, 217. 
 Applied design, 93-95. 
 Appreciation, training for, 181. 
 Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 25. 
 Athletics, 84. 
 Autocracy, 208. 
 
 Baden-Powell, Sir Robert, 193. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, 48. 
 
 Belgium, 20. 
 
 Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, 140, 
 
 141. 
 Boston Latin School, 10. 
 Bowditch, Henry P., 71. 
 Boy scouts, 191, 192, 193, 196-199. 
 Browning, Robert, 169. 
 
 Capital, 97. 
 
 Ceramics, 106. 
 
 Church, training for the, 12, 54, 
 
 207. 
 Citizenship, 76, 113, 146, 185, 186, 
 
 I93> 215. 
 
 Classical training, 15, 27. 
 
 Classroom practice, 133. 
 
 Code, educational, 44, 45. 
 
 Coeducation, 157, 159, 163, 165, 
 167, 168. 
 
 College Entrance Examination 
 Board, 58. 
 
 College graduate as secondary- 
 school teacher, 27-30. 
 
 College training, 27, 31, 34, 38, 41, 
 
 139. 
 Community life, 164. 
 
 Consciousness of kind, 217. 
 Correlation, 109. 
 
 Courses of study, 15, 18, 109, 122. 
 Creed, educational, 23. 
 Curriculum, 90, 97, 107, iii, 112, 
 
 121, 161, 224, 225, 232. 
 " Cuteness," 22, 62. 
 
 Deadwood in education, 187. 
 Democracy, 9, 21, 24, 25, 69, 113, 
 
 129, 201, 202, 204, 205, 209, 211, 
 
 213. 
 Denmark, 68. 
 Denominational control of schools, 
 
 12. 
 Dentistry, schools of, 13, 72. 
 Discipline, mental, 118. 
 
 Economics, study of, 96. 
 
 Elementary schools, 11, 17, 26, 
 95-96, 113, 206, 207, 215. 
 
 Engineering, 13, 72. 
 
 England, 9, 20, 21, 51-52, 53-55. 
 
 Environment as educational fac- 
 tor, 187. 
 
 Ethical code for teachers, 218, 219, 
 222. 
 
 Ethics, 87, 115, 116, 126, 218. 
 
 Examinations, 47, 48-49, 50-51, 
 53-54. 57. 58-59. 210. 
 
 False economy, 230. 
 
 France, vocational training in, 19. 
 
 Golden Rule, the, 204, 214. 
 
 Habits, 175, 176, 194, 195, 212, 
 213. 234- 
 238 
 
INDEX 
 
 239 
 
 Harvard College, 10; University, 
 
 71- 
 Health instruction for parents, 172. 
 Hippocratic oath, 74, 116. 
 Holland, 20. 
 Horace Mann Schools, 157. 
 
 Ideals, 51-52, 56-57, 175, 224. 
 Immigration, 12. 
 Individualism, 185. 
 Individuality, development of, 195. 
 Industrialism, 12. 
 Industrial arts, 103. 
 Industrial education, 108, H2, 113. 
 Industries, 102, 104, 106, 112. 
 
 James, Edmund J., 64. 
 James, William, 176. 
 Junior colleges, 223. 
 
 KipUng, Rudyard, 52, 56, 191. 
 Knowledge, 118, 133, 224. 
 
 Labor, 22, 24, 97. 
 Law, 13, 72, 235, 237. 
 ^Leadership, 11, 14, 22, 39, 70, 79, 
 134, 135. 180, 217. 
 Lee, General, 182. 
 Liberal education, 28, 80, 97. 
 
 Majority rule, 203, 205. 
 Man as social being, 32. 
 Manual training, 24, 92, 93, 95, 
 
 98-101. 
 Mechanical arts, 13. 
 Medicine, 13, 71. 
 'Money-spending profession, 179. 
 Morals and manners, 174, 175. 
 Moral standards, 116, 211. 
 Mosely Commission 61, 62, 63. 
 Motor element in education, 90. 
 
 Natural resources, 63, 68. 
 New England, 9-1 1, 49. 
 Normal schools, 33, 39-42> 125. 
 
 Opportunity (equality of) in edu- 
 cation, 16, 21, 56, 113, 114, 161, 
 166, 173. 
 
 Organizations of teachers, 217, 218, 
 219-221. 
 
 Personality, 37. 
 
 Pioneering, 64, 65. 
 
 Practice, 123, 237. 
 
 Practitioner, general, 142, 149, 
 
 151, 234- 
 
 Professional consciousness, 127. 
 Professional schools, 13, 41-42, 72, 
 
 224, 225, 226, 228, 231, 232. 
 Professional service, 38, 77, 78, 79- 
 
 81, 82, 83, 88, 116, 126, 138, 141. 
 Professional standards, 41, 218. 
 Professional training, 13, 29-35, 
 
 37, 70, 72, 117, 123, 137, 138, 
 
 139, 223, 224, 227, 236. 
 
 Relative worths, 211. 
 Religion, 17, 18. 
 
 Sadler, Michael Ernest, 52, 55-56, 
 Salaries, 28, 30, 222. 
 Science, applied, 12, 68. 
 School management, 135. 
 School organizations, 136. 
 Scouting education, 184. 
 Secondary schools, 26, 27, 28, 30, 
 
 31. 35. 37-39. 41. 44-45. 50-51. 
 115, 127, 139, 159, 164, 206, 207, 
 
 215- 
 
 Self-direction, 130, 132, 136. 
 
 Self-made men, 70. 
 
 Social life, 85, 175. 
 
 Socialization, 82, 99. 
 
 Social needs, 100. 
 
 Specialist the, 142-143, 148, 150, 
 
 152, 229. 
 
 Specialization in education, 33, 95, 
 
 140, 142, 143, 145, 147, 217, 228. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 172. 
 Standards in training, 137. 
 
24<1 
 
 JM)EX 
 
 State control, 12, 208. 
 
 State, training for the, 12, 54, 207. 
 
 Subject matter, selection of, 101. 
 
 Support of education, 19. 
 
 Sweden, 20. 
 
 Switzerland, 20. 
 
 Teachers' colleges, 30, 43, 153-156. 
 Technic of teaching, 34. 
 Technical skill, 123, 125, 224, 234, 
 
 235- 
 Textbooks, use of, 34, 91. 
 Theory as reasons for practice, 237. 
 Three R's, 17, 113. 
 
 Tom Brown 's School Days, 54. 
 Trades Unions, 41, 208, 218. 
 
 University, the, 27, 43, 79, 81, 233. 
 
 Vocational training, 13, 17, 18, 19, 
 
 24, 90, 95. 96, 98. 100. 145. 161. 
 162, 208, 227. 
 
 Washington and Lee University, 
 
 182. 
 Whitman, Walt, 176. 
 Worship, freedom of, 12. 
 
I