viSWmwB 
 
 tTbe Ebucational 
 
 Situation 
 
 3obn 2)ew€i2 
 
Class. 
 
Contributions to Education 
 
 Number III 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
 
 FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION 
 
 Number III 
 
 The Educational 
 Situation 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENTS 
 OF PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 
 1902 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 Two C0P168 Receiveb 
 
 JAN. 20 1902 
 
 CerVRIQMT ENTRY 
 
 CLASS ^ XXo. No. 
 
 2- ^1^ -^ %6 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright, 1902, by 
 
 The University of Chicago 
 
 CHICAGO, ill 
 
 
The Educational Situation 
 
PREFATORY WORD. 
 
 In the following paper I have attempted 
 to set forth the educational situation as it 
 manifests itself in the three typical parts 
 of our educational system. In so doing, I 
 have revised papers originally prepared for 
 three different bodies, namely, the Superin- 
 tendent's section of the National Educational 
 Association ; the Conference of Secondary 
 Schools affiliated with the University of Chi- 
 cago ; and the Harvard Teachers Association. 
 If the following paper in the reading leaves with 
 the reader the impression of a miscellaneous 
 collection, not of an organic unity, it will 
 hardly be worth while for me here to iterate 
 that it is an attempt to apply a single social 
 philosophy, a single educational philosophy, 
 to a single problem manifested in forms that 
 are only outwardly diverse. I may, however, 
 be allowed to say that in each case I have 
 tried to interpret the particular member of the 
 school organism dealt with in its twofold rela- 
 tion: to the past which has determined its 
 conditions and forms ; and to the present which 
 determines its aims and results — its ideals and 
 its success or failure in realizing them. The 
 
school more than any one other social institu- 
 tion stands between the past and the future ; 
 it is the living present as reflection of the past 
 and as prophecy of the future. To this is 
 due the intensity of intellectual and moral 
 interest attaching to all that concerns the 
 school — if only our eyes are open to see. 
 
 John Dewey. 
 The University of Chicago. 
 December 12, 1901. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL SITUATION. 
 
 I. AS CONCERNS THE ELEMENTARY 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 Horace Mann and the disciples of Pestalozzi 
 did their peculiar missionary work so com- 
 pletely as intellectually to crowd the conserva- 
 tive to the wall. For half a century after their 
 time the ethical emotion, the bulk of exhorta- 
 tion, the current formulae and catchwords, the 
 distinctive principles of theory have been found 
 on the side of progress, of what is known as 
 reform. The supremacy of self-activity, the 
 symmetrical development of all the powers, 
 the priority of character to information, the 
 necessity of putting the real before the symbol, 
 the concrete before the abstract, the necessity 
 of following the order of nature and not the 
 order of human convention — all these ideas, at 
 the outset so revolutionary, have filtered into 
 the pedagogic consciousness and become the 
 commonplace of pedagogic writing and of the 
 gatherings where teachers meet for inspiration 
 and admonition. 
 
 It is, however, sufficiently obvious that, while 
 the reformer took possession of the field of 
 9 
 
The Educational Situation 
 
 theory and enthusiasm and preaching, the 
 conservative, so far as concerns the course 
 of study was holding his own pretty obsti- 
 nately in the region of practice. He could 
 afford to neglect all these sayings ; nay, he 
 could afford to take a part in a glib reiter- 
 ation of the shibboleths, because, as a 
 matter of fact, his own work remained so 
 largely untouched. He retained actual con- 
 trol of school conditions ; it was he who 
 brought about the final and actual contact 
 between the theories and the child. And by 
 the time ideals and theories had been trans- 
 lated over into their working equivalents in 
 the curriculum, the difference between them 
 and what he as a conservative really wished 
 and practiced became often the simple differ- 
 ence of tweedle dum from tweedle dee. So 
 the "great big battle" was fought with mutual 
 satisfaction, each side having an almost com- 
 plete victory in its own field. Where the re- 
 former made his headway was not in the 
 region of studies, but rather in that of methods 
 and of atmosphere of school-work. 
 
 In the last twenty or twenty-five years, how- 
 ever, more serious attempts have been made 
 to carry the theory into effective execution 
 in subject-matter as well as in method. The 
 unconscious insincerity in continually turning 
 
The Educational Situation 1 1 
 
 the theory over and over in terms of itself, the 
 unconscious self-deceit in using it simply to 
 cast an idealized and emotional halo over a 
 mechanical school routine with which it was 
 fundamentally at odds, became somewhat 
 painfully apparent ; consequently the effort to 
 change the concrete school materials and 
 school subject-matter so as to give the pro- 
 fessed ends and aims a. pou sto within the school 
 walls and in relation to the children. 
 
 Drawing, music, nature study with the field 
 excursion and the school garden, manual train- 
 ing, the continuation of the constructive exer- 
 cises of the kindergarten, the story and the 
 tale, the biography, the dramatic episode, and 
 anniversary of heroic history found their way 
 into the schoolrooms. We, they proclaim, are 
 the working counterparts of the commands to 
 follow nature ; to secure the complete devel- 
 opment of the child ; to present the real before 
 the symbolic, etc. Interest was transferred 
 from the region of pedagogic principles and 
 ideals, as such, to the child as affected by these 
 principles and ideas. The formulae of peda- 
 gogics were reduced in importance, and the 
 present experience of the child was magnified. 
 The gospel of the emancipation of the child 
 succeeded the gospel of the emancipation of 
 the educational theorist. This gospel was 
 
12 The Educational Situation 
 
 published abroad, and verily its day seemed at 
 hand. It was apparently only a question of 
 pushing a few more old fogies out of the way, 
 and waiting for others to pass out of exist- 
 ence in the natural course of events, and the 
 long-wished-for educational reformation would 
 be accomplished. 
 
 Needless to say, the affair was not quite so 
 simple. The conservative was still there. He 
 was there not only as a teacher in the school- 
 room, but he was there in the board of educa- 
 tion ; he was there because he was still in the 
 heart and mind of the parent ; because he still 
 possessed and controlled the intellectual and 
 moral standards and expectations of the com- 
 munity. We began to learn that an educa- 
 tional reform is but one phase of a general 
 social modification. 
 
 Moreover, certain evils began to show 
 themselves. Studies were multiplied almost 
 indefinitely, often overtaxing the physical and 
 mental strength of both teacher and child, 
 leading to a congestion of the curriculum, to a 
 distraction and dissipation of aim and effort on 
 the part of instructor and pupil. Too often 
 an excess of emotional excitement and strain 
 abruptly replaced the former apathy and dull 
 routine of the school. There were complaints 
 in every community of loss of efficiency in the 
 
The Educational Situation 13 
 
 older studies, and of a letting down of the seri- 
 ousness of mental training. It is not neces- 
 sary to consider how well founded these 
 objections have been. The fact that they are 
 so commonly made, the fact that these newer 
 studies are often regarded simply as fads and 
 frills, is sufficient evidence of the main point, 
 viz., of the external and mechanical position 
 occupied by these studies in the curriculum. 
 Numbers of cities throughout the country point 
 the moral. When the winds blew and the rains 
 fell — in the shape of a financial strmgency in 
 the community and the business conduct of 
 the school — the new educational edifice too 
 often fell. It may not have been built entirely 
 upon the sand, but at all events it was not 
 founded upon a rock. The taxpayer spoke, 
 and somehow the studies which represented the 
 symmetrical development of the child and the 
 necessity of giving him the concrete before 
 the abstract went into eclipse. 
 
 It is, of course, agreeable for those who 
 believe in progress, in reform, in new ideals, to 
 attribute these reactions to a hard and stiff- 
 necked generation who willfully refuse to 
 recognize the highest goods when they see 
 them. It is agreeable to regard such as 
 barbarians who are interested simply in turn- 
 ing back the wheels of progress. The simple 
 
14 The Educational Situation 
 
 fact, however, is that education is the one 
 thing in which the American people believe 
 without reserve, and to which they are without 
 reserve committed. Indeed, I sometimes think 
 that the necessity of education is the only 
 settled article in the shifting and confused 
 social and moral creed of America. If, then, 
 the American public fails, in critical cases, to 
 stand by the educational newcomers, it is be- 
 cause these latter have not yet become organic 
 parts of the educational whole — otherwise 
 they could not be cut out. They are not really 
 in the unity of educational movement — other- 
 wise they could not be arrested. They are 
 still insertions and additions. 
 
 Consider the wave by which a new study is 
 introduced into the curriculum. Someone feels 
 that the school system of his (or quite fre- 
 quently nowadays her) town is falling behind 
 the times. There are rumors of great prog- 
 ress in education making elsewhere. Some- 
 thing new and important has been introduced ; 
 education is being revolutionized by it; the 
 school superintendent, or members of the board 
 of education, become somewhat uneasy; the 
 matter is taken up by individuals and clubs ; 
 pressure is brought to bear on the managers of 
 the school system ; letters are written to the 
 newspapers ; the editor himself is appealed to 
 
The Educational Situation I 5 
 
 to use his great power to advance the cause of 
 progress; editorials appear ; finally the school 
 board ordains that on and after a certain date 
 the particular new branch — be it nature study, 
 industrial drawing, cooking, manual training, 
 or whatever — shall be taught in the public 
 schools. The victory is won, and everybody 
 — unless it be some already overburdened and 
 distracted teacher — congratulates everybody 
 else that such advanced steps are taking. 
 
 The next year, or possibly the next month, 
 there comes an outcry that children do not 
 write or spell or figure as well as they used to ; 
 that they cannot do the necessary work in the 
 upper grades, or in the high school, because 
 of lack of ready command of the necessary 
 tools of study. We are told that they are not 
 prepared for business, because their spelling is 
 so poor, their work in addition and multiplica- 
 tion so slow and inaccurate, their handwriting 
 so fearfully and wonderfully made. Some zeal- 
 ous soul on the school board takes up this 
 matter; the newspapers are again heard from; 
 investigations are set on foot; and the edict 
 goes forth that there must be more drill in the 
 fundamentals of writing, spelling, and number. 
 
 Moreover, in the last year or two there are 
 many signs that the older and traditional studies 
 do not propose to be ignored. For a long time. 
 
1 6 The Educational Situation 
 
 as already intimated, the conservative was, 
 upon the whole, quite content to surrender the 
 intellectual and emotional territory, the sphere 
 of theory and of warmly toned ideals, to the 
 reformer. He was content because he, after 
 all, remained in possession of the field of 
 action. But now there are symptoms of an- 
 other attitude ; the conservative is, so to 
 speak, coming to intellectual and moral con- 
 sciousness himself. He is asserting that in his 
 conservatism he stands for more than the mere 
 customs and traditions of an outworn past. He 
 asserts that he stands for honesty of work, for 
 stability, for thoroughness, for singleness of 
 aim and concentration of agencies, for a rea- 
 sonable simplicity. He is actively probing the 
 innovator. He is asking questions regarding 
 the guarantees of personal and intellectual dis- 
 cipline, of power of control, of ability to work. 
 He is asking whether there is not danger of 
 both teacher and child getting lost amid the por- 
 tentous multiplication of studies. He is ask- 
 ing about the leisure requisite to intellectual 
 and mental digestion, and subsequent growth. 
 He is asking whether there is not danger to 
 integrity of character in arousing so many 
 interests and impulses that no one of them is 
 carried through to an effective result. These 
 are not matters of mere school procedure or 
 
The Educational Sittiation 17 
 
 formal arrangement of studies, but matters 
 fundamental to intellectual and moral achieve- 
 ment. Moreover, some recent magazine ar- 
 ticles seem to indicate that some few, at least, 
 of the reformers are themselves beginning to 
 draw back ; they are apparently wondering if 
 this new-created child of theirs be not a Frank- 
 enstein, which is to turn and rend its creator. 
 They seem to be saying: " Possibly we are in 
 danger of going too fast and too far ; what and 
 where are the limits of this thing we are 
 entered upon ? " 
 
 My sketch, however inadequate, is yet, I 
 hope, true to the logic, if not to the details, of 
 history. What emerges from this running 
 account ? What does it all mean ? Does it not 
 signify that we have a situation in process of 
 forming rather than a definitive situation ? 
 The history reflects both our lack of intellec- 
 tual organization and also the increasing recog- 
 nition of the factors which must enter into any 
 such organization. From this point of view, 
 the renewed self-assertion, from the standpoint 
 of theory, of the adherents of the traditional 
 curriculum is a matter of congratulation. It 
 shows that we are emerging from a period of 
 practical struggle to that of intellectual inter- 
 pretation and adjustment. As yet, however, 
 we have no conscious educational standard by 
 
1 8 The Educational Situation 
 
 which to test and place each aspiring claimant. 
 We have hundreds of reasons for and against 
 this or that study, but no reason. Having no 
 sense of the unity of experience, and of the 
 definitive relation of each branch of study to 
 that unity, we have no criterion by which to 
 judge and decide. We yield to popular pres- 
 sure and clamor; first on the side of the 
 instinct for progress, and then on the side of 
 the habit of inertia. As a result, every move- 
 ment, whether for nature study or spelling, for 
 picture study or arithmetic, for manual train- 
 ing or more legible handwriting, is treated as 
 an isolated and independent thing. It is this 
 separation, this lack of vital unity, which leads 
 to the confusion and contention which are so 
 marked features of the educational situation. 
 Lacking a philosophy of unity, we have no 
 basis upon which to make connections, and 
 our whole treatment becomes piecemeal, em- 
 pirical and at the mercy of external circum- 
 stances. 
 
 The problem of the course of study is thus, 
 in effect, a part of the larger problem so press- 
 ing in all departments of the organization of 
 life. Everywhere we have outgrown old meth- 
 ods and standards ; everywhere we are crowded 
 by new resources, new instrumentalities ; we 
 are bewildered by the multitude of new oppor- 
 
The Educational Situation 
 
 tunities that present themselves. Our diffi- 
 culties of today come, not from paucity or 
 poverty, but from the multiplication of means 
 clear beyond our present powers of use and 
 administration. We have got away from the 
 inherited and customary; we have not come 
 into complete possession and command of the 
 present. Unification, organization, harmony, is 
 the demand of every aspect of life — politics, 
 business, science. That education shares in 
 the confusion of transition, and in the demand 
 for reorganization, is a source of encourage- 
 ment and not of despair. It proves how inte- 
 grally the school is bound up with the entire 
 movement of modern life. 
 
 The situation thus ceases to be a conflict be- 
 tween what is called the old education and the 
 new. There is no longer any old education, 
 save here and there in some belated geo- 
 graphic area. There is no new education in 
 definite and supreme existence. What we 
 have is certain vital tendencies. These ten- 
 dencies ought to work together ; each stands 
 for a phase of reality and contributes a factor 
 of efficiency. But because of lack of organ- 
 ization, because of the lack of unified insight 
 upon which organization depends, these tend- 
 encies are diverse and tangential. Too often 
 we have their mechanical combination and 
 
20 The Educational Situation 
 
 irrational compromise. More prophetic, be- 
 cause more vital, is the confusion which arises 
 from their conflict. ^ We have been putting 
 new wine into old bottles, and that which was 
 prophesied has come to pass. 
 
 To recognize that the situation is not the 
 wholesale antagonism of so-called old educa- 
 tion to the so-called new, but a question of 
 the co-operative adjustment of necessary fac- 
 tors in a common situation, is to surrender our 
 partisanship. It is to cease our recriminations 
 and our self-conceits, and search for a more 
 comprehensive end than is represented by 
 either factor apart from the other. It is im- 
 possible to anticipate the exact and final out- 
 come of this search. Only time, and the light 
 that comes with time, can reveal the answer. 
 The first step, however, is to study the exist- 
 ing situation as students, not as partisans, 
 and, having located the vital factors in it, con- 
 sider what it is that makes them at the present 
 juncture antagonistic competitors instead of 
 friendly co-operators. 
 
 The question is just this : Why do the newer 
 studies, drawing, music, nature study, manual 
 training ; and the older studies, the three R's, 
 practically conflict with, instead of reinforcing, 
 one another ? Why is it that the practical 
 problem is so often simply one of outward 
 
The Educational Situation 21 
 
 annexation or mechanical compromise? Why 
 is it that the adjustment of the conflict is left 
 to the mere push and pull of contending fac- 
 tors, to the pressure of local circumstances 
 and of temporary reactions ? 
 
 An answer to this question is, I believe, the 
 indispensable preliminary to any future under- 
 standing. Put roughly, we have two groups 
 of studies ; one represents the symbols of the 
 intellectual life, which are the tools of civili- 
 zation itself; the other group stands for the 
 direct and present expression of power on the 
 part of one undergoing education, and for the 
 present and direct enrichment of his life-ex- 
 perience. For reasons historically adequate, 
 the former group represents the traditional 
 education ; the latter, the efforts of the inno- 
 vator. Intrinsically speaking, in the abstract, 
 there is no reason to assume any fundamental, 
 or even any minor, antagonism between these 
 two groups. Such an assumption would mean 
 that the requirements of civilization are fun- 
 damentally at war with the conditions of indi- 
 vidual development ; that the agencies by 
 which society maintains itself are at radical 
 odds with the forms by which individual ex- 
 perience is deepened and expanded. Unless 
 we are ready to concede such a fundamental 
 contradiction in the make-up of life, we must 
 
The Educational Situation 
 
 hold that the present contention is the result 
 of conditions which are local and transitory. 
 
 I offer the following proposition as giving 
 the key to the conflict : 
 
 The studies of the symbolic and formal sort 
 represented the aims and material of education 
 for a sufficiently long time to call into exist- 
 ence a machinery of administration and of in- 
 struction thoroughly adapted to themselves. 
 This machinery constituted the actual working 
 scheme of administration and instruction. 
 These conditions persist long after the studies 
 to which they are well adapted have lost their 
 theoretical supremacy. The conflict, the con- 
 fusion, the compromise, is not intrinsically 
 between the older group of studies and the 
 newer, but between the external conditions in 
 which the former were realized and the aims 
 and standards represented by the newer. 
 
 It is easy to fall into the habit of regard- 
 ing the mechanics of school organization and 
 administration as something comparatively 
 external and indifferent to educational pur- 
 poses and ideals. We think of the grouping 
 of children in classes, the arrangement of 
 grades, the machinery by which the course of 
 study is made out and laid down, the method 
 by which it is carried into effect, the system 
 of selecting teachers and of assigning them to 
 
The Educational Situation 23 
 
 their work, of paying and promoting them, as, 
 in a way, matters of mere practical conven- 
 ience and expediency. We forget that it is 
 precisely such things as these that really con- 
 trol the whole system, even on its distinctively 
 educational side. No matter what is the ac- 
 cepted precept and theory, no matter what the 
 legislation of the school board or the mandate 
 of the school superintendent, the reality of 
 education is found in the personal and face-to- 
 face contact of teacher and child. The con- 
 ditions that underlie and regulate this contact 
 dominate the educational situation. 
 
 In this contact, and in it alone, can the 
 reality of current education be got at. To get 
 away from it is to be ignorant and to deceive 
 ourselves. It is in this contact that the real 
 course of study, whatever be laid down on 
 paper, is actually found. Now, the conditions 
 that determine this personal contact of child 
 with child, and of children with teacher are, 
 upon the whole, the survival of the period 
 when the domination of the three R's was 
 practically unquestioned. Their effectiveness 
 lies in their adaptation to realizing the ends 
 and aims of that form of education. They do 
 not lend themselves to realizing the purposes 
 of the newer studies. Consequently we do not 
 get the full benefit either of the old or of the 
 
24 The Educational Situation 
 
 new studies. They work at cross purposes. 
 The excellence which the conditions would 
 possess if they were directed solely at securing 
 progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
 and allied topics, is lost because of the intro- 
 duction of material irrelevant and distracting 
 from the standpoint of the co?iditions. The new 
 studies do not have an opportunity to show 
 what they can do, because they are hampered 
 by machinery constructed for turning out an- 
 other kind of goods; they are not provided 
 with their own distinctive set of agencies. 
 Granted this contradiction, the only wonder is 
 that the chaos is not greater than it actually 
 is ; the only wonder is that we are securing 
 such positive results as actually come about. 
 
 Let us study this contradiction somewhat 
 more intimately, taking up one by one some 
 of its constituent elements. On the side of 
 the machinery of school-work I mention first 
 the number of children in a room. This runs 
 in the graded schools of our country anywhere 
 from thirty-five to sixty. This can hardly be 
 said to be an ideal condition, even from the 
 standpoint of uniform progress in reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic, and the symbols of 
 geography and history ; but it certainly is 
 indefinitely better adapted to securing these 
 results than that of the symmetrical and com- 
 
The Educational Sittiation 25 
 
 plete development of all the powers, physical, 
 mental, moral, aesthetic, of each individual 
 child out of the entire fifty. From the stand- 
 point of the latter aim, the discrepancj^ is so 
 great that the situation is either ridiculous or 
 tragic. Under such circumstances, how do we 
 have the face to continue to speak at all of the 
 complete development of the individual as the 
 supreme end of educational effort ? Except- 
 ing here and there with the genius who seems 
 to rise above all conditions, the school envi- 
 ronment and machinery almost compel the 
 more mechanical features of school-work to 
 lord it over the more vital aims. 
 
 We get the same result when we consider, 
 not the number of children in a given grade, 
 but the arrangement of grades. The distribu- 
 tion into separate years, each with its own 
 distinctive and definite amount of ground to 
 be covered, the assignment of one and only 
 one teacher to a grade, the confinement of the 
 same teacher to the same grade year by 
 year, save as she is " promoted " to a higher 
 grade, introduce an isolation which is fatal, I 
 will not say to good work, but to the effective 
 domination of the ideal of continuous devel- 
 opment of character and personal powers. 
 The unity and wholeness of the child's devel- 
 opment can be realized only in a correspond- 
 
2 6 The Educational Situation 
 
 ing unity and continuity of school conditions. 
 Anything that breaks the latter up into frac- 
 tions, into isolated parts, must have the same 
 influence upon the educative growth of the 
 child.^ 
 
 It may, however, be admitted that these 
 conditions, while highly important as regards 
 the aims of education, have little or nothing 
 to do with the course of study — with the 
 subject-matter of instruction. But a little 
 reflection will show that the material of study 
 is profoundly affected. The conditions which 
 compel the children to be dealt with en masse^ 
 which compel them to be led in flocks, if not in 
 hordes, make it necessary to give the stress of 
 attention to those studies in which some sort of 
 definite result can be most successfully attained, 
 without much appeal to individual initiative, 
 judgment, or inquiry. Almost of necessity, 
 attention to the newer studies whose value is 
 dependent upon perso-nal appropriation, assimi- 
 lation and expression is incidental and super- 
 ficial. The results with the latter are naturally 
 often so unsatisfactory that they are held 
 responsible for the evil consequences; we fail 
 to trace the matter back to the conditions 
 which control the result reached. Upon the 
 
 ' This thought is developed in the first number of this 
 series : Isolation in the Schooly especially pp. 33-40 ; 92-98. 
 
The Educational Situation 27 
 
 whole, it is testimony to the vitality of these 
 studies that in such a situation the results are 
 not worse than they actually are. 
 
 Unless the teacher has opportunity and occa- 
 sion to study the educative process as a whole, 
 not as divided into eight or twelve or sixteen 
 parts, it is impossible to see how he can deal 
 effectively with the problem of the complete 
 development of the child. The restriction of 
 outlook to one limited year of the child's 
 growth will inevitably tend in one of two 
 directions : either the teacher's work becomes 
 mechanical, because practically limited to cov- 
 ering the work assigned for the year, irrespec- 
 tive of its nutritive value in the child's growth ; 
 or else local and transitory phases of the 
 child's development are seized upon — phases 
 which too often go by the name of the inter- 
 ests of the child — and these are exaggerated 
 out of all due bounds. Since the newer studies 
 give most help in making this excessive and 
 sensational appeal, these studies are held 
 responsible for the evils that subsequently 
 show themselves. As a matter of fact, the 
 cause of the difficulty lies in the isolation and 
 restriction of the work of the teacher which 
 practically forbids his considering the signifi- 
 cance of art, music, and nature study in the 
 light of continuity and completeness of growth. 
 
28 The Educational Sitaation 
 
 This unity and completeness must, however, 
 be cared for somehow. Since not provided 
 for on the basis of the teacher's knowledge of 
 the whole process of which his own work is 
 one organic member, it is taken care of through 
 external provision of a consecutive course of 
 study, external supervision, and the mechanics 
 of examination and promotion. Connection 
 must somehow be made between the various 
 fractional parts — the successive grades. The 
 supervisor, the principal, is the recourse. Act- 
 ing, however, not through the medium of the 
 consciousness of the class-room teacher, but 
 through the medium of prescription of mode 
 of action, the inevitable tendency is to arrest 
 attention upon those parts of the subject-matter 
 which lend themselves to external assignment 
 and conjunction. Even music, drawing, and 
 manual training are profoundly influenced by 
 this fact. Their own vital aims and spirit are 
 compromised, or even surrendered, to the 
 necessities for laying out a course of study in 
 such a manner that one year's work may fit 
 externally into that of the next. Thus they 
 part with much of their own distinctive and 
 characteristic value, and become, to a consid- 
 erable extent, simple additions to the num- 
 ber of routine studies carried by children and 
 teacher. They serve no new purpose of their 
 
The Educational Situation 29 
 
 own, but add to the burden of the old. It is 
 no wonder that, when the burden gets too 
 great, there is demand that they be lopped 
 off as excrescences upon the educational sys- 
 tem. 
 
 The matter of promotion from grade to 
 grade has a precisely similar effect upon the 
 course of study. It is from the standpoint of 
 the child, just what the isolation and external 
 combination already alluded to are from the 
 side of the teacher. The things of the spirit 
 do not lend themselves easily to that kind of 
 external inspection which goes by the name 
 of examination. They do not lend themselves 
 easily to exact quantitative measurement. 
 Technical proficiency, acquisition of skill and 
 information, present much less difficulty. So 
 again emphasis is thrown upon those tradi- 
 tional subjects of the school curriculum which 
 permit most readily a mechanical treatment 
 — upon the three R's and upon the facts of 
 external classification in history and science, 
 matters of formal technique in music, drawing, 
 and manual training. Continuity, order, must 
 be somewhat maintained — if not the order 
 and method of the spirit, then at least that of 
 external conditions. Nothing is gained by 
 throwing everything into chaos. In this sense 
 the conservative is thoroughly right when he 
 
30 The Educational Situation 
 
 insists upon the maintenance of the established 
 traditions of the school as regards the tests of 
 the pupil's ability and preparation for pro- 
 motion. He fails, however, to recognize the 
 other alternative : that the looseness and con- 
 fusion, the vagueness in accomplishment and 
 in test of accomplishment of which he com- 
 plains, may be due, not to the new studies 
 themselves, but to the unfit conditions under 
 which they operate. 
 
 I have already alluded to the fact that at 
 present the teacher is hardly enabled to get a 
 glimpse of the educative process as a whole, 
 and accordingly is reduced to adding together 
 the various external bits into which that unity 
 is broken. We get exactly the same result 
 when we consider the way in which the course 
 of study is determined. The fact that this is 
 fixed by board of education, superintendent, or 
 supervisor, by a power outside the teacher in 
 the class room who alone can make that 
 course of study a living reality, is a fact too 
 obvious to be concealed. It is, however, 
 comparatively easy to conceal from ourselves 
 the tremendous import of this fact. As long 
 as the teacher, who is after all the only real 
 educator in the school system, has no definite 
 and authoritative position in shaping the 
 course of study, that is likely to remain an 
 
The Educational Situation 31 
 
 external thing to be externally applied to the 
 child.' 
 
 A school board or a superintendent can lay 
 out a course of study down to the point of 
 stating exactly the number of pages of text- 
 books to be covered in each year, each term 
 and month of the year. It may prescribe the 
 exact integers and fraction of integers with 
 which the child shall make scholastic acquaint- 
 ance during any period of 'his instruction ; it 
 may directly or indirectly define the exact 
 shapes to be reproduced in drawing, or men- 
 tion the exact recipes to be followed in 
 cooking. Doubtless the experience of the 
 individual teacher who makes the connections 
 between these things and the life of the child 
 will receive incidental attention in laying out 
 these courses. But, so long as the teacher 
 has no definite voice, the attention will be 
 only incidental ; and, as a further conse- 
 quence, the average teacher will give only 
 incidental study to the problems involved. 
 If his work is the task of carrying out the 
 instructions imposed upon him, then his time 
 and thought must be absorbed in the matter 
 of execution. There is no motive for interest, 
 of a thoroughly vital and alert sort, in ques- 
 tions of the intrinsic value of the subject- 
 
 * See, again, Number I of this series, pp. 31-32 and 106-109. 
 
32 The Educational Situation 
 
 matter and its adaptation to the needs of 
 child growth. He may be called upon by 
 official requirements, or the pressure of cir- 
 cumstance, to be a student of pedagogical 
 books and journals ; but conditions relieve 
 him of the necessity of being a student of the 
 most fundamental educational problems in 
 their most urgent reality. 
 
 The teacher needs to study the mechanics 
 of successfully carrying into effect the pre- 
 scribed matter of instruction ; he does not 
 have to study that matter itself, or its educa- 
 tive bearing. Needless to say, the effect of 
 this upon the actual course of study is to 
 emphasize the thought and time given to 
 those subjects and phases of subjects where 
 there is most promise of success in doing the 
 exact things prescribed. The three R's are 
 again magnified, while the technical and routine 
 aspects of the newer studies tend to crowd 
 out those elements that give them their deeper 
 significance in intellectual and moral life. 
 Since, however, the school must have relief 
 from monotony, must have "interest," must 
 have diversification and recreation, these stud- 
 ies become too easily tools for introducing 
 the excitement and amusement supposed to be 
 necessary. The judicious observer who sees 
 below the surface, but not to the foundation, 
 
The Educational Situation 33 
 
 again discounts these studies. Meanwhile the 
 actual efficiency of the three R's is hampered 
 and lessened by the superaddition of the new 
 ways of employing time, whether they be 
 routine or exciting in character. 
 
 It may easily be said that the class-room 
 teacher at present is not sufficiently educated 
 to be intrusted with any part in shaping a 
 course of study. I waive the fundamen- 
 tal question — the question of democracy — 
 whether the needed education can be secured 
 without giving more responsibility even to 
 the comparatively uneducated. The objec- 
 tion suggests another fundamental condition 
 in our present school procedure — the question 
 of the status of the teacher as regards selec- 
 tion and appointment. 
 
 The real course of study must come to the 
 child from the teacher. What gets to the 
 child is dependent upon what is in the mind 
 and consciousness of the teacher, and upon the 
 way it is in his mind. It is through the 
 teacher that the value even of what is con- 
 tained in the text-book is brought home to the 
 child ; just in the degree in which the teacher's 
 understanding of the material of the lessons is 
 vital, adequate, and comprehensive, will 
 that material come to the child in the same 
 form ; in the degree in which the teacher's 
 
34 The Educational Situation 
 
 understanding is mechanical, superficial and 
 restricted, the child's appreciation will be 
 correspondingly limited and perverted. If 
 this be true, it is obviously futile to plan 
 large expansions of the studies of the curricu- 
 lum apart from the education of the teacher. 
 I am far from denying the capacity on the part 
 of truth above and beyond the comprehension 
 of the teacher to filter through to the mind of 
 an aspiring child ; but, upon the whole, it is 
 certain beyond controversy that the success of 
 the teacher in teaching, and of the pupil in 
 learning, will depend upon the intellectual 
 equipment of the teacher. 
 
 To put literature into a course of study quite 
 irrespective of the teacher's personal apprecia- 
 tion of literary values — to say nothing of 
 accurate discrimination as to the facts — is to 
 go at the matter from the wrong end. To 
 enact that at a given date all the grades of a 
 certain city shall have nature study is to invite 
 confusion and distraction. It would be comic 
 (if it were not tragic) to suppose that all that 
 is required to make music and drawing a part 
 of the course of study is to have the school 
 board legislate that a certain amount of the 
 time of the pupil, covering a certain prescribed 
 ground, shall be given to work with pencil and 
 paper, and to musical exercises. There is no 
 
The Educational Situation 35 
 
 magic by which these things can pass over 
 from the printed page of the school manual to 
 the child's consciousness. If the teacher has 
 no standard of value in relation to them, no 
 intimate personal reponse of feeling to them, 
 no conception of the methods of art which 
 alone bring the child to a corresponding intel- 
 lectual and emotional attitude, these studies 
 will remain what precisely they so often are — 
 passing recreations, modes of showing off, or 
 exercises in technique. 
 
 The special teacher has arisen because of 
 the recognition of the inadequate preparation 
 of the average teacher to get the best results 
 with these newer subjects. Special teaching, 
 however, shifts rather than solves the problem. 
 As already indicated, the question is a twofold 
 one. It is a question, not only of what is 
 known, but of how it is known. The special 
 instructor in nature study or art may have a 
 better command of the what — of the actual 
 material to be taught — but be deficient in the 
 consciousness of the relations borne by that 
 particular subject to other forms of experience 
 in the child, and, therefore, to his own personal 
 growth. When this is the case we exchange 
 King Log for King Stork. We exchange an 
 ignorant and superficial teaching for a vigorous 
 but one-sided, because over-specialized, mode 
 
3 6 The Educational Sitaation 
 
 of instruction. The special teacher in manual 
 training or what not, having no philosophy of 
 education — having, that is, no view of the 
 whole of which his own subject is a part — 
 isolates that study and works it out wholly in 
 terms of itself. His beginning and his end, as 
 well as the intermediate materials and methods, 
 fall within manual training. This may give 
 technical facility, but it is not (save inciden- 
 tally) education. 
 
 This is not an attack upon special or depart- 
 mental teaching. On the contrary, I have just 
 pointed out that this mode of teaching has 
 arisen absolutely in response to the demands 
 of the situation. Since our present teachers 
 are so largely an outcome of the older educa- 
 tion, the so-called all-around teacher is for the 
 most part a myth. Moreover, it is a mistake 
 to suppose that we can secure the all-around 
 teacher merely by instructing him in a larger 
 number of branches. In the first place, human 
 capacity is limited. The person whose interests 
 and powers are all-around is not as a rule 
 teaching in grade schools. He is at the head 
 of the great scientific, industrial, and political 
 enterprises of civilization. But granted that 
 the average teacher could master ten distinct 
 studies as well as five, it still remains true that 
 without intellectual organization, without defi- 
 
The Educational Sittiation 37 
 
 nite insight into the relation of these studies 
 to one another and to the whole of life, with- 
 out ability to present them to the child from 
 the standpoint of such insight, we simply add 
 an overburdened and confused teacher to the 
 overburdened and confused child. In a word, 
 to make the teaching in the newer studies 
 thoroughly effective, whether by specialists or 
 by the all-around teacher, there must, in addi- 
 tion to knowledge of the particular branch, be 
 sanity, steadiness, and system in the mental 
 attitude of the instructor. It is folly to sup- 
 pose that we can carry on the education of the 
 child apart from the education of the teacher. 
 If I were to touch upon certain other matters 
 fundamentally connected with the problem of 
 securing the teachers who make the nominal 
 course of study a reality, I should be started 
 upon an almost endless road. However, we 
 must not pass on without at least noticing that 
 the question is one of political, as well as of 
 intellectual organization. An adequate view 
 of the whole situation would take into account 
 the general social condition upon which de- 
 pends the actual supplying of teachers to the 
 schoolroom. The education of the candidate, 
 of the would-be teacher, might be precisely 
 that outlined above, and yet it would remain, 
 to a large extent, inoperative, if the appoint- 
 
3^ The Educational Situation 
 
 ment of school-teachers was at the mercy of 
 personal intrigue, political bargaining, and the 
 effort of some individual or class to get power 
 in the community through manipulation of 
 patronage. It is sentimental to suppose that 
 any large and decisive reform in the course of 
 study can take place as long as such agencies 
 influence what actually comes in a living way 
 to the life of the child. 
 
 Nor in a more comprehensive view could we 
 be entirely silent upon the need of commercial as 
 well as political reform. Publishing companies 
 affect not only the text-books and appara- 
 tus, the garb with which the curriculum clothes 
 itself, but also and that directly the course 
 of study itself. New studies are introduced 
 because some pushing firm, by a happy coin- 
 cidence, has exactly the books which are 
 needed to make that study successful. Old 
 studies which should be entirely displaced (if 
 there be any logic in the introduction of the 
 new one) are retained because there is a vested 
 interest behind them. Happy is the large 
 school system which is free from the conges- 
 tion and distraction arising from just such 
 causes as these. And yet there are those who 
 discuss the relative merits of what they are 
 pleased to call old and new education as if it 
 were purely an abstract and intellectual matter. 
 
The Educational Situation 39 
 
 But we cannot enter upon these larger 
 phases. It is enough if we recognize the typical 
 signs indicating the impossibility of separating 
 either the theoretical discussion of the course 
 of study or the problem of its practical 
 efficiency from intellectual and social con- 
 ditions which at first sight are far removed ; it is 
 enough if we recognize that the question of 
 the course of study is a question in the organi- 
 zation of knowledge, in the organization of 
 life, in the organization of society. And, for 
 more immediate purposes, it is enough to rec- 
 ognize that certain conditions imbedded in 
 the present scheme of school administration 
 affect so profoundly results reached by the 
 newer studies, by manual training, art and 
 nature study, that it is absurd to discuss the 
 the value or lack of value of the latter, without 
 taking these considerations into account. I 
 recur to my original proposition : that these 
 studies are not having their own career, are not 
 exhibiting their own powers, but are hampered 
 and compromised by a school of machinery 
 originated and developed with reference to 
 quite different ends and aims. The real conflict 
 is not between a certain group of studies, the 
 three R's, those having to do with the symbols 
 and tools of intellectual life, and other studies 
 representing the personal development of the 
 
40 The Edwcational Situation 
 
 chilcf, but between our professed ends and the 
 means we are using to realize these ends. 
 
 The popular assumption, however, is to the 
 contrary. It is still the common belief (and 
 not merely in popular thought, but among 
 those who profess to speak with authority) 
 that the two groups of studies are definitely 
 opposed to each other in their aims and meth- 
 ods, in the mental attitude demanded from 
 the child, in the kind of work called for from 
 the instructor. It is assumed that we have a 
 conflict between one group of studies dealing 
 only with the forms and symbols of knowl- 
 edge, studies to be mastered by mechanical 
 drill, and between those that appeal to the 
 vital concerns of child life and afford present 
 satisfaction. This assumed opposition has 
 been so clearly stated in a recent educational 
 document that I may be pardoned quoting at 
 length : 
 
 In regard to education we may divide the facirities 
 into two classes — the doing faculties and the thinking 
 faculties. By the doing faculties I mean those me- 
 chanical habits which are essential to the acquisition of 
 knowledge, and are pure arts, such as the art of read- 
 ing; that of performing arithmetical operations with 
 rapidity and correctness ; that of expressing thoughts in 
 legible characters, and in words of grammatical ar- 
 rangement. These arts can only be acquired by labo- 
 rious drilling on the part of the teacher, and labor on 
 
The Educational Situation 41 
 
 the part of the pupil. They require little instruction, 
 but repetition until they are performed with ease and 
 almost pleasure. To neglect to impart these habits is 
 to do a great injury to the child ; nothing should be 
 substituted for them, though instruction in other 
 branches which require more thought and less art may 
 be mingled as recreations with them. 
 
 I have never seen so condensed and com- 
 prehensive a statement of the incompatibility 
 of aims and method for both teacher and pupil 
 as is given here. On one side we have "doing 
 faculties," by which is meant powers of pure 
 external efficiency. These find their expression 
 in what are termed "arts," which is interpreted 
 to mean purely mechanical habits — sheer 
 routine facility. These are acquired by con- 
 tinued drill on the, part of the teacher, and 
 continued laborious repetition on the part of 
 the child. Thought is not required in the 
 process, nor is the result "instruction" — that 
 is, a real building up of the mind; the outcome 
 is simply command of powers, of value not in 
 themselves, but as tools of further knowledge, 
 as "essential to the acquisition of knowledge." 
 The scheme of contrasting studies is not so 
 well developed. It is made clear, however, 
 that they appeal to thought, not to mechanical 
 habits, and that they proceed by instruction, 
 not by drill. It is further implied that their 
 
42 The Educational Situation 
 
 exercise is attended not so much with labor as 
 with pleasure on the part of the child — which 
 may be interpreted to mean that they have a 
 present value in the life of the child, and are 
 not mere instrumentalities of remoter acquisi- 
 tion. The situation as regards school work 
 is contained in the proposition that the me- 
 chanical facilities based upon sheer drill and 
 laborious repetition must make up the bulk of 
 the elementary education, while the studies 
 which involve thought, the furnishing of the 
 mind itself, and result in a direct expansion of 
 life, "may be mingled as recreations." They 
 may be permitted, in other words, in the 
 schoolroom as an occasional relief from the 
 laborious drill of the more important studies. 
 Here is the dividing wall. The wall has 
 been somewhat undermined ; breaches have 
 been worn in it ; it has, as it were, been bodily 
 pushed along until the studies of thought, of 
 instruction and of present satisfaction occupy 
 a greater bulk of school time and work. But 
 the wall is still there. The mechanical habits 
 that are essential to the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge, the art of reading, of performing arith- 
 metical operations and of expressing thought 
 legibly and grammatically, are still the serious 
 business of the schoolroom. Nature study, 
 manual training, music, and art are incidents 
 
The Educational Situation 43 
 
 introduced because of the "interests" they 
 provide, because they appeal to ability to think, 
 arouse general intelligence, and add to the 
 fund of information. A house divided against 
 itself cannot stand. If the results of our pres- 
 ent system are not altogether and always sat- 
 isfactory, shall we engage in crimination and 
 recrimination — setting the old studies against 
 the new and the new against the old — or 
 shall we hold responsible the organization, or 
 lack of organization, intellectual and adminis 
 trative, in the school system itself? If the 
 old bottles will not hold the new wine, it is 
 conceivable that we should blame neither the 
 bottles nor the wine, but conditions which 
 have brought the two into mechanical and 
 external connection. 
 
 If my remarks in dwelling upon the split 
 and contradiction in the present situation ap- 
 pear to be unnecessarily gloomy, it should be 
 remembered that this view is optimism itself 
 as compared with the theory which holds that 
 the two groups of studies are radically op- 
 posed to each other in their ends, results, and 
 methods. Such a theory holds that there is a 
 fundamental contradiction between the present 
 and the future needs of the child, between 
 what his life requires as immediate nutritive 
 material and what it needs as preparation for 
 
44 The Educational Situation 
 
 the future. It assumes a fundamental conflict 
 between that which nourishes the spirit of the 
 child and that which affords the instrumen- 
 talities of intellectual acquisition. It proclaims 
 a fundamental opposition to exist in the mental 
 activity between the methods of acquisition of 
 skill, and the methods of development. The 
 practical consequences are as disastrous as 
 the logical split is complete. If the oppo- 
 sition be an intrinsic one, then the present 
 conflict and confusion in the school-room 
 are permanent and not transitory. We shall 
 be forever oscillating between extremes : now 
 lending ourselves with enthusiasm to the 
 introduction of art and music and manual 
 training, because they give vitality to the 
 school-work and relief to the child ; now queru- 
 lously complaining of the evil results reached, 
 and insisting with all positiveness upon the 
 return of good old days when reading, writing, 
 spelling, and arithmetic were adequately 
 taught. Since by the theory there is no pos- 
 sibility of an organic connection, of co-opera- 
 tive relation, between the two types of study, 
 the relative position of each in the curriculum 
 must be decided from arbitrary and external 
 grounds ; by the wish and zeal of some strong 
 man, or by the pressure of temporary popular 
 sentiment. At the best we get only a com- 
 
The Educational Situation 45 
 
 promise ; at the worst we get a maximum of 
 routine with a halo of sentiment thrown about 
 it, or a great wish-wash of superficiality cover- 
 ing up the residuum of grind. 
 
 As compared with such a view, the concep- 
 tion that the conflict is not inherent in the 
 studies themselves, but arises from maladjust- 
 ment of school conditions, from survival of a 
 mode of educational administration calculated 
 for different ends from those now confront- 
 ing us, is encouragement itself. The prob- 
 lem becomes first an intellectual and then a 
 practical one. Intellectually what is needed 
 is a philosophy of organization ; a view of 
 the organic unity of the educative process 
 and educative material, and of the place 
 occupied in this whole by each of its own 
 parts. We need to know just what reading 
 and writing and nurnber do for the present 
 life of the child, and how they do it. We 
 need to know what the method of mind is 
 which underlies subject-matter in cooking, 
 shop-work and nature study, so that they 
 may become effective for discipline, and not 
 mere sources of present satisfaction and mere 
 agencies of relief — so that they too may be- 
 come as definitely modes of effective prepara- 
 tion for the needs of society as ever reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic have been. 
 
46 The Educational Situation 
 
 With our minds possessed by a sane and 
 coherent view of the whole situation, we may 
 attempt such a gradual, yet positive modifica- 
 tion of existing procedure as will enable us 
 to turn theory into practice. Let us not be 
 too precipitate, however, in demanding light 
 upon just what to do next. We should re- 
 member that there are times when the most 
 practical thing is to face the intellectual prob- 
 lem, and to get a clear and comprehensive 
 survey of the theoretical factors involved. The 
 existing situation, with all its vagueness and 
 all its confusion, will nevertheless indicate 
 plenty of points of leverage, plenty of intelli- 
 gent ways of straightening things out, to one 
 who approaches it with any clear conviction 
 of the ends he wishes to reach, and of the 
 obstacles in the way. An enlightenment of 
 vision is the prerequisite of efficiency in con- 
 duct. The conservative may devote himself 
 to the place of reading and writing and arith- 
 metic in the curriculum so that they shall 
 vitally connect with the present needs of the 
 child's life, and afford the satisfaction that 
 always comes with the fulfilment, the expres- 
 sion, of present power. The reformer may 
 attack the problem, not at large and all over 
 the entire field, but at the most promising 
 point, whether it be art or manual training or 
 
The Educational Situation 47 
 
 nature study, and concentrate all his efforts 
 upon educating alike the community, the 
 teacher and the child into the knowledge of 
 fundamental values for individual mind and 
 for community life embodied in that study. 
 Both conservative and reformer can devote 
 themselves to the problem of the better edu- 
 cation of the teacher, and of doing away with 
 the hindrances to placing the right teacher 
 in the schoolroom ; and to the hindrances 
 to continued growth after he is placed there. 
 The American people believe in education 
 above all else, and when the educators have 
 come to some agreement as to what education 
 is, the community will not be slow in placing 
 at their disposal the equipment and resources 
 necessary to make their ideal a reality. 
 
 In closing let me say that I have intention- 
 ally emphasized the obstacles to further prog- 
 ress, rather than congratulated ourselves upon 
 the progress already made. The anomaly and 
 confusion have, after all, been of some use. 
 In some respects the blind conflict of the last 
 two generations of educational history has 
 been a better way of changing the conditions 
 than would have been some wholesale and a 
 priori rearrangement. The forms of genuine 
 growth always come slowly. The struggle of 
 the newer studies to get a foothold in the cur- 
 
4^ The Educational Situation 
 
 riculum, with all the attendant confusion, is 
 an experiment carried out on a large scale ; an 
 experiment in natural selection, of the survival 
 of the fit in educational forms. 
 
 Yet there must come a time when blind ex- 
 perimentation is to give way to something 
 more directed. The struggle should bring out 
 the factors in the problem so that we can go 
 more intelligently to work in its solution. 
 The period of blind striving, of empirical ad- 
 justment, trying now this and now that, mak- 
 ing this or that combination because it is 
 feasible for the time being, of advancing here 
 and retreating there, of giving headway now 
 to the instinct of progress and now to the 
 habit of inertia, should find an outcome in 
 some illumination of vision, in some clearer 
 revelation of the realities of the situation. It 
 is uneconomical to prolong the period of con- 
 flict between incompatible tendencies. It 
 makes for intellectual hypocrisy to suppose 
 that we are doing what we are not doing. 
 It weakens the nerve of judgment and the 
 fiber of action to submit to conditions which 
 prevent the realization of aims to which we 
 profess ourselves to be devoted. 
 
 My topic is the elementary educational 
 situation. In a somewhat more limited and 
 precise view than I have previously taken of 
 
The Educational Situation 49 
 
 the situation, I believe we are now nearing 
 the close of the time of tentative, blind, em- 
 pirical experimentation ; that we are close to 
 the opportunity of planning our work on the 
 basis of a coherent philosophy of experience 
 and a philosophy of the relation of school 
 studies to that experience ; that we can ac- 
 cordingly take up steadily and wisely the effort 
 of changing school conditions so as to make 
 real the aims that command the assent of our 
 intelligence and the support of our moral en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
II. AS CONCERNS SECONDARY 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 I SHOULD feel hesitant indeed to come be- 
 fore a body of teachers, engaged in the prac- 
 tical work of teaching, and appear to instruct 
 them regarding the solution of the difficult 
 problems which face them. My task is a more 
 grateful one. It is mine simply to formulate 
 and arrange the difficulties which the current 
 state of discussion shows teachers already to 
 have felt. Those concerned with secondary 
 school work have realized that their energies 
 must be peculiarly concentrated at certain 
 points ; they have found that some problems 
 are so urgent that they must be met and 
 wrestled with. I have tried in the accompany- 
 ing syllabus to gather together these practical 
 problems and to arrange them in such form as 
 to show their connections with one another; 
 and by this classification to indicate what 
 seemed to me the roots of the difficulty. 
 
 I. Problems relating to the articulation of the secondary 
 school in the educational systetn. 
 
 I. Adjustment to the grades. 
 
 a) Dropping out of pupils : extent and causes. 
 
 b) Different sorts of preparation of teachers ; methods 
 of rectifying, etc. 
 
 50 
 
The Educational Situation 5^ 
 
 c) Abrupt change of ideals and methods of teaching 
 and discipline. 
 
 d) Introduction of traditional high- school studies into 
 the upper grades ; the science course, etc. 
 
 2. Adjustment to college. 
 
 a) Modes of entering college ; examination, certifica- 
 tion, etc. 
 d) Varieties of entrance requirements. 
 
 c) Different problems of public and private high 
 schools. 
 
 d) Coaching for specific results vs. training and 
 method. 
 
 II. Problems relating to the adjustment of preparation for 
 college to preparation for other pursuits in life. 
 
 1. Is it true that the same education gives the best 
 preparation for both ? 
 
 2. If so, which shall be taken as the standard for meas- 
 uring the character of the other ? 
 
 3. If not so, by w^hat principles and along what lines 
 shall the work be differentiated? 
 
 4. If not so, shall specialized or definite preparation be 
 made for other future callings as well as for the col- 
 lege student ? 
 
 III. The adjust?nent of work to the individual. 
 
 1. The nature and limits of the elective principle as 
 applied to particular subjects, and to courses and 
 groups of subjects. 
 
 2. Acquaintance with the history, environment, and 
 capacity of individuals with reference to assisting in 
 the selection of vocation. 
 
 3. Does the period of adolescence present such peculiari- 
 ties as to call for marked modifications of present 
 secondary work ? 
 
52 The Educational Situation 
 
 IV. Problems arising from social phases of secondary -school 
 work. 
 
 1. The educational utilization of social organizations : 
 debating, musical, dramatic clubs ; athletics. 
 
 2. School discipline and government in their social 
 aspects. 
 
 3. Relations to the community : the school as a social 
 center. 
 
 V. Preceding problems as affecting the curriculum: conflict 
 of studies and groups of studies. 
 
 1. The older problem : adjustment of the respective 
 claims of ancient and modern languages, of language 
 and science, of history and social science, civics, 
 economics, etc., of English literature and composi- 
 tion. 
 
 2. The newer problem : 
 
 a) The place of manual training and technological 
 work. 
 
 b) The place of fine art. 
 f) Commercial studies. 
 
 In what I have to say this morning, I shall 
 make no attempt to go over these points one 
 by one. I shall rather try to set clearly and 
 briefly before you the reasons which have led 
 me to adopt the classification presented. This 
 will take me into a discussion of the historic 
 and social facts which lie back of the prob- 
 lems, and in the light of which alone I be- 
 lieve these problems can be attacked and 
 solved. If it seems unnecessarily remote to 
 approach school problems through a presenta- 
 tion of what may appear to be simply a form 
 
The Educational Situation 53 
 
 of social philosophy, there is yet practical en- 
 couragement in recognizing that exactly the 
 same forces which have thrust these questions 
 into the forefront of school practice, are also 
 operative to solve them. For problems do 
 not arise arbitrarily. They come from causes, 
 and from causes which are imbedded in the 
 very structure of the school system — yes, 
 even beyond that, in the structure of society 
 itself. It is for this reason that mere changes 
 in the mechanics of the school system, wheth- 
 er in administration or in the externals of sub- 
 ject-matter, turn out mere temporary devices. 
 Sometimes, when one has made a delicate or 
 elaborate arrangement which seems to him 
 exactly calculated to obviate the difficulties of 
 the situation, one is tempted to accuse his 
 generation as stiff-necked when the scheme 
 does not take — -when it does not spread; 
 when, in the language of the biologist, it is 
 not selected. The explanation, however, is 
 not in the hard-heartedness or intellectual 
 blindness of others, but in the fact that any 
 adjustment which really and permanently suc- 
 ceeds within the school walls, must reach out 
 and be an adjustment of forces in the social 
 environment. 
 
 A slight amount of social philosophy and 
 social insight reveals two principles continu- 
 
54 The Educational Situation 
 
 ously at work in all human institutions : one 
 is toward specialization and consequent isola- 
 tion, the other toward connection and interac- 
 tion. In the life of the nation we see first a 
 movement toward separation, toward marking 
 off our own life as a people as definitely as 
 possible to avoid its submergence, to secure 
 for it an individuality of its own. Commer- 
 cially we pursue a policy of protection ; in 
 international relations one of having to do as 
 little as possible with other nationalities. That 
 tendency exhausts itself and the pendulum 
 swings in another direction. Reciprocity, the 
 broadening of our business life through in- 
 creased contacts and wider exchange, becomes 
 the commercial watchword. Expansion, tak- 
 ing our place in the sisterhood of nations, 
 making ourselves recognized as a world-power, 
 becomes the formula for international politics. 
 Science shows the same rhythm in its develop- 
 ment. A period of specialization — of relative 
 isolation — secures to each set of natural phe- 
 nomena a chance to develop on its own ac- 
 count, without being lost in, or obscured by 
 generalities or a mass of details. But the time 
 comes when the limit of movement in this 
 direction is reached, and it is necessary to 
 devote ourselves to tracing the threads of 
 connection which unite the different special- 
 
The Educational Situation 55 
 
 ized branches into a coherent and consecutive 
 whole. At present the most active sciences 
 seem to be spelled with a hyphen ; it is astro- 
 physics, stereo-chemistry, psycho-physics, and 
 so on. 
 
 This is not a movement of blind action 
 and reaction. One tendency is the necessary 
 completion of the other. A certain degree of 
 isolation of detachment is required to secure 
 the unhindered and mature development of 
 any group of forces. It is necessary in order 
 to master them in their practical workings. 
 We have to divide to conquer. But when the 
 proper degree of individualization is reached, 
 we need to bring one thing to bear upon 
 another in order to realize upon the benefits 
 which may be derived from the period of iso- 
 lation. The sole object of the separation is to 
 serve as a means to the end of more effective 
 interaction. 
 
 Now as to the bearings of this abstract 
 piece of philosophy upon our school prob- 
 lems. The school system is a historic evo- 
 lution. It has a tradition and a movement 
 of its own. Its roots run back into the past 
 and may be traced through the strata of the 
 successive centuries. It has an independence, 
 a dignity of its own comparable to that of any 
 other institution. In this twenty-five-hundred- 
 
56 The Educational Situation 
 
 year-old development it has, of necessity, 
 taken on its individuality at the expense of a 
 certain isolation. Only through this isolation 
 has it been disentangled from absorption in 
 other institutions : the family, government, the 
 church, and so on. This detachment has been 
 a necessity in order that it might become a 
 true division of labor and thus perform most 
 efficiently the service required of it. 
 
 But there are disadvantages as well as ad- 
 vantages. Attention has come to be concen- 
 trated upon the affairs of the school system as 
 if they concerned simply the system itself, and 
 had only a very indirect reference to other 
 social institutions. The school-teacher often 
 resents reference to outside contacts and con- 
 siderations as if they were indeed outside — 
 simply interferences. There can be no doubt 
 that in the last two centuries much more 
 thought and energy have been devoted to 
 shaping the school system into an effective 
 mechanism within itself than to securing its 
 due interaction with family life, the church, 
 commerce, or political institutions. 
 
 But, having secured this fairly adequate and 
 efficient machine, the question which is coming 
 more and more to the front is : what shall we 
 do with it? How shall we secure from it the 
 services, the fruits, which alone justify the 
 
The Educational Situation 57 
 
 expense of money, time, and thought in build- 
 ing up the machine ? 
 
 It is at this point that particular conflicts 
 and problems begin to show themselves. The 
 contemporary demands — the demands that 
 are made in the attempt to secure the proper 
 interaction of the school — are one thing; the 
 demands that arise out of the working of the 
 school system considered as an independent 
 historical institution are another. Every 
 teacher has to work at detailed problems which 
 arise out of this conflict, whether he is aware 
 of its existence or not, and is he harassed by 
 friction that arises in the conflict of these two 
 great social forces. Men divide along these 
 lines. We find one group instinctively rather 
 than consciously ranging themselves about 
 the maintenance of the existing school system, 
 and holding that reforms are to be made along 
 the line of improvement in its present work- 
 ings. Others are clamorous for more radical 
 changes — the changes which will better adapt 
 the school to contemporary social needs. 
 Needless to say, each represents a necessary 
 and essential factor in the situation, because 
 each stands for the working of a force which 
 cannot be eliminated. 
 
 Let me now try to shov/ how, out of this 
 profound social conflict and necessity of social 
 
5^ The Educational Situation 
 
 adjustment, the particular problems arise which 
 I have arranged under five heads in the accom- 
 panying syllabus. Our first concern is with 
 the articulation of the high school into the 
 entire educational system. The high school 
 looks towards the grades on one side and 
 toward the college on the other. What are 
 the historic influences which have shaped this 
 intermediate position, and placed peculiar dif- 
 ficulties and responsibilities upon the sec- 
 ondary school ? Briefly put, it is that the 
 elementary school and the college represent 
 distinctly different forces and traditions on 
 the historic side. The elementary school is an 
 outgrowth of the democratic movement in its 
 ethical aspects. Prior to the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century the elementary school was 
 hardly more than a wooden device for instruct- 
 ing little children of the lower classes in some 
 of the utilities of their future callings — the 
 mere rudiments of reading, writing, and num- 
 ber. The democratic upheaval took shape 
 not merely in a demand for political equality, 
 but in a more profound aspiration towards an 
 equality of intellectual and moral opportunity 
 and development. The significance of such an 
 educational writer as Rousseau is not measured 
 by any particular improvement he suggested, 
 or by any particular extravagances he indulged 
 
The Educational Situation 59 
 
 himself in. His is a voice struggling to ex- 
 press the necessity of a thoroughgoing revo- 
 lution of elementary education to make it a 
 factor in the intellectual and moral develop- 
 ment of all — not a mere device for teaching 
 the use of certain practical tools to those sec- 
 tions of society before whose development a 
 stone wall was placed. What Rousseau as a 
 writer was to the emotions of the France of 
 his day, Horace Mann as a doer was to the 
 practical situation of the United States in his 
 time. He stood, and stood most effectively, 
 for letting the democratic spirit, in all of its 
 ethical significance, into the common elemen- 
 tary schools, and for such a complete reor- 
 ganization of these schools as would make 
 them the most serviceable possible instru- 
 ments of human development. 
 
 In spite of all the influences which are con- 
 tinually operative to limit the scope and range 
 of elementary education, in spite of the in- 
 fluences which would bring back a reversion 
 to the type of the limited utilitarian school 
 of the seventeenth century, that part of the 
 school system which stands underneath the 
 high school represents this broad democratic 
 movement. To a certain extent, and in many 
 of its phases, the high school is an outgrowth 
 of exactly the same impulse. It has the same 
 
6o The Educational Situation 
 
 history and stands for the same ideals; but 
 only in part. It has also been profoundly 
 shaped by influences having another origin. 
 It represents also the tradition of the learned 
 class. It maintains the tradition of higher 
 culture, as a distinct possession of a certain 
 class of society. It embodies the aristocratic 
 ideal. If we cast our eyes back over history, 
 we do not find its full meaning summed up 
 in the democratic movement of which I have 
 just spoken. We find the culture of the ancient 
 world coming down to us by a distinct channel. 
 We find the wisdom and enlightenment of the 
 past conserved and handed on by a distinct 
 class located almost entirely in the colleges, 
 and in the higher academies which are to 
 all intents and purposes the outgrowth of the 
 colleges. ' We find that our high school has 
 been quite as persistently molded and directed 
 through the agencies which have been con- 
 cerned with keeping alive and passing on the 
 treasure of learning, as through the democratic 
 influences which have surged up from below. 
 The existing high school, in a word, is a prod- 
 uct of the meeting of these two forces, and 
 upon it more than upon any other part of the 
 school system is placed the responsibility of 
 making an adjustment. 
 
 I do not mention the tradition of learning 
 
The Educational Situation 6i 
 
 kept up in the universities of the Middle Ages 
 and the higher schools of the Renaissance, and 
 refer to it as aristocratic for the sake of dis- 
 paraging it. Eternal vigilance is the price of 
 liberty, and eternal care and nurture are the 
 price of maintaining the precious conquest of 
 the past — of preventing a relapse into Philis- 
 tinism, that combination of superficial enlight- 
 enment and dogmatic crudity. If it were not 
 for the work of an aristocracy in the past, 
 there would be but little worth conferring upon 
 the democracy of today. 
 
 There are not in reality two problems of 
 articulation for the high school — one as re- 
 gards the grades and the other as regards the 
 college. There is at bottom but one problem 
 — that of adjusting the demand for an ade- 
 quate training of the masses of mankind to 
 the conservation and use of that higher learn- 
 ing which is the primary and essential con- 
 cern of a smaller number — of a minority. Of 
 course, elementary school and college alike 
 are effected by the same problem. Part of 
 the work of the grades today is precisely the 
 enrichment of its traditional meager and mate- 
 rialistic curriculum with something of that 
 spirit and wealth of intelligence that are the 
 product of the higher schools. And one of 
 the problems of the college is precisely to 
 
62 The Educational Sittiation 
 
 make its store of learning more available to 
 the masses, make it count for more in the 
 everyday life. 
 
 But the high school is the connecting link, 
 and it must bear the brunt. Unless I am a false 
 prophet, we shall soon see the same thoughtful 
 attention which for the past fifteen years has 
 characterized discussion of the relation of 
 high school and college, speedily transfer- 
 ring itself over to the problem of a more or- 
 ganic and vital relation between the high 
 school and the grades. The solution of this 
 problem is important in order that the demo- 
 cratic movement may not be abortively 
 arrested — in order that it may have its full 
 sweep. But it is equally important, for the 
 sake of the college, and in the interests of 
 higher learning. The arbitrary hiatus which 
 exists at present reacts as unfavorably in one 
 direction as in the other. 
 
 First, it limits the constituency of the col- 
 lege ; it lessens the actual numbers of those 
 who are awakened to the opportunities before 
 them, and directed towards the college doors. 
 Secondly, it restricts the sphere of those who 
 sympathetically and vicariously feel the influ- 
 ence of the college, and are thus led to feel 
 that what concerns the welfare of the college 
 is of direct concern to them. The attitude of 
 
The Educational Situation 63 
 
 the mass of the people today towards the col- 
 lege is one of curiosity displaying itself from 
 afar rather than of immediate interest. In- 
 deed, it sometimes would seem that only ath- 
 letic exhibitions form a direct line of con- 
 nection between the college and the average 
 community life. In the third place it tends to 
 erect dams which prevent the stream of teach- 
 ers flowing from the college walls from seek- 
 ing or finding congenial service in the grades, 
 and thereby tends automatically to perpetuate 
 whatever narrowness of horizon or paucity of 
 resource is characteristic of the elementary 
 school. Fourth, it operates to isolate the col- 
 lege in its working relations to life, and thereby 
 to hmder it from rendering its normal service 
 to society. 
 
 I pass on now to the second main line of 
 problems — those having to do with prepara- 
 tion for college on one side, and for life on the 
 other. Ultimately this is not a different prob- 
 lem, but simply another outgrowth of the same 
 question. A few years ago a happy formula 
 was current: the proposition that the best prep- 
 aration for college was also the best prepara- 
 tion for life. The formula was such a happy 
 one that if formulae ever really disposed of any 
 practical difficulty, there would be no longer 
 any problem to discuss. But I seem to ob* 
 
64 The Educational Sittiation 
 
 serve that this proposition is not heard so fre- 
 quently as formerly; and indeed, that since it 
 was uttered things seem to be taking their own 
 course much as before. 
 
 The inefficiency of the formula lies in its am- 
 biguity. It throws no light on the fundamen- 
 tal problem of Which is Which ? Is it prepa- 
 ration for college which sets the standard for 
 preparation for life, or is it preparation for life 
 which affords the proper criterion of adequate 
 preparation for college ? Is the high-school 
 course to be planned primarily with reference 
 to meeting the needs of those who go to col- 
 lege, on the assumption that this will also 
 serve best the needs of those who go into 
 other callings in life ? Or, shall the high 
 school devote its energies to preparing all its 
 members for life in more comprehensive sense, 
 and permit the college to select its entrance 
 requirements on the basis of work thus done ? 
 
 I shall not attempt to solve this problem, 
 and for a very good reason. I believe that 
 there are forces inherent in the situation itself 
 which are working out an inevitable solution. 
 Every step in the more rational development 
 of both high school and college, without any 
 reference to their relationships to each other 
 bring the two more closely together. I am 
 optimistic enough to believe that we are much 
 
The Educational Situation 65 
 
 nearer a solution of this vexed question than 
 we generally dare believe. Quite independent 
 of any question of entrance requirements, or of 
 high-school preparation, the college is under- 
 going a very marked development, and even 
 transformation, on its own account. I refer to 
 such developments within the college course 
 as the introduction not only of the Ph. B. and 
 B. S. courses side by side with the older clas- 
 sical courses, but also to the forward move- 
 ment in the direction of a specific group of 
 commercial and social studies; and to the tend- 
 ency of all universities of broad scope to main- 
 tain technological schools. I refer also to the 
 tendency to adapt the college work more and 
 more to preparation for specific vocations in 
 life. Practically all the larger colleges of the 
 country now have a definite arrangement by 
 which at least one year of the undergraduate 
 course counts equally in the professional course 
 of law, medicine, or divinity as the case may 
 be. Now, when these two movements have 
 reached their fruition, and the high school has 
 worked out on its own account the broadening 
 of its own curriculum, I believe we shall find 
 that the high school and the college have ar- 
 rived at a common point. The college course 
 will be so broad and varied that it will be en- 
 tirely feasible to take any judicious group of 
 
66 The Educational Situation 
 
 studies from any well organized and well man- 
 aged high school, and accept them as prepara- 
 tion for college. It has been the narrowness of 
 the traditional college curriculum on one side, 
 and the inadequacy of the content of high- 
 school work on the other, which have caused 
 a large part of our mutual embarrassments. 
 
 I must run rapidly over the problems 
 referred to under my third and fourth main 
 heads — those having to do with adjustment to 
 individual needs, and to the social uses of the 
 school. I take it that these illustrate just the 
 same general principle we have been already dis- 
 cussing. The school has a tradition not only 
 regarding its position in the educational system 
 as a whole, and not only as regards its proper 
 curriculum, but also as regards the methods 
 and ideals of discipline and administration in 
 relation to its students. 
 
 There can be no doubt that many of these 
 traditions are out of alignment with the general 
 trend of events outside the school walls — that 
 in some cases the discrepancy is so great that 
 the high-school tradition cuts abruptly across 
 this outside stream. One of these influences 
 is found in the tendency equally marked in the 
 family, church, and state, to relax the bonds 
 of purely external authority, to give more play 
 to individual powers, to require of the indi- 
 
The Educational Situation 67 
 
 vidual more personal initiative, and to ex- 
 act of him a more personal accountability. 
 There may be difference of opinion as to the 
 degree in which the school should yield to 
 this tendency, or should strive to counteract it, 
 or should endeavor to utilize and direct it. 
 There can be no difference of opinion, how- 
 ever, as to the necessity of a more persistent 
 and adequate study of the individual as regards 
 his history, environment, predominant tastes 
 and capacities, and special needs — and please 
 note that I say needs as well as tastes. I do not 
 think there can be any difference of opinion 
 as to the necessity of a more careful study of 
 the effect of particular school studies upon the 
 normal growth of the individual, and of the 
 means by which they shall be made a more 
 effective means of connection between the 
 present powers of the individual, and his future 
 career. Just the limits of this principle, and 
 its bearings upon such problems as the intro- 
 duction of electives, I shall not take up. We 
 have no time for a detailed discussion of these 
 disputed points. As I have just indicated, 
 however, I do not see how there can be dispute 
 as to the fact that the individual has assumed 
 such a position as to require more positive con- 
 sideration and attention as an individual, and a 
 correspondingly different mode of treatment. 
 
68 The Educational Situation 
 
 I cannot leave the topic, however, without stat- 
 ing that here also I believe the ultimate solu- 
 tion will be found, not along the line of me- 
 chanical devices as to election or non-election, 
 but rather through the more continued and 
 serious study of the individual in both his 
 psychological make-up and his social relations. 
 I have reserved the group of problems bear- 
 ing upon the formation of a curriculum until 
 the last. From the practical side, however, 
 we probably find here the problems which 
 confront the average teacher most urgently 
 and persistently. This I take it is because all 
 the other influences impinge at this point. 
 The problem of just what time is to be given 
 respectively to mathematics, and classics, and 
 modern languages, and history, and English, 
 and the sciences — physical, biological — is one 
 the high-school teacher has always with him. 
 To adjust the respective claims of the different 
 studies and get a result which is at once har- 
 monious and workable, is a task which almost 
 defies human capacity. The problem, however, 
 is not a separate problem. It is so pressing 
 just because it is at this point that all the other 
 forces meet. The adjustment of studies, and 
 courses of study, is the ground upon which 
 the practical solution and working adjustment 
 of all other problems must be sought and 
 
The Educational Sittsation 69 
 
 found. It is as an effect of other deep lying 
 and far-reaching historic and social causes 
 that the conflict of studies is to be treated. 
 
 There is one matter constantly accompany- 
 ing any practical problem which at first sight 
 is extremely discouraging. Before we get 
 our older problems worked out to any de- 
 gree of satisfaction, new and greater prob- 
 lems are upon us, threatening to overwhelm 
 us. Such is the present educational situation. 
 It would seem as if the question of adjust- 
 ing the conflicts already referred to, which 
 have so taxed the time and energy of high- 
 school teachers for the past generation, were 
 quite enough. But no ; before we have ar- 
 rived at anything approaching consensus of 
 opinion, the larger city schools at least find 
 the conflict raging in a new spot — still other 
 studies and lines of study are demanding rec- 
 ognition. We have the uprearing of the com- 
 mercial high school ; of the manual-training 
 high school. 
 
 At first the difificulty of the problem was 
 avoided or evaded, because distinct and sepa- 
 rate high schools were erected to meet these 
 purposes. The current now seems to be in 
 the other direction. A generation ago it was 
 practically necessary to isolate the manual- 
 training course of study in order that it 
 
yo The Educational Situation 
 
 might receive due attention, and be worked 
 out under fairly favorable influences. Fifteen 
 years ago the same was essentially true of 
 the commercial courses. Now, however, there 
 are many signs of the times indicating that 
 the situation is ripe for interaction — the 
 problem is now the introduction of manual- 
 training and commercial courses as integral 
 and organic parts of a city high school. De- 
 mands are also made for the introduction of 
 more work in the line of fine art, drawing, 
 music, and the application of design to indus- 
 try; and for the introduction of a larger num- 
 ber of specifically sociological studies — this 
 independent of those studies which naturally 
 form a part of the so-called commercial course. 
 At first sight, as just intimated, the intro- 
 duction of these new difficulties before we are 
 half way through our old ones, is exceedingly 
 distressing. But more than once the longest 
 way around has proved the shortest way 
 home. When new problems emerge, it must 
 mean, after all, that certain essential condi- 
 tions of the old problem had been ignored, 
 and consequently that any solution reached 
 simply in terms of the recognized factors 
 would have been partial and temporary. I 
 am inclined to think that in the present case 
 the introduction of these new problems will 
 
The Edwcational Situation 7^ 
 
 ultimately prove enlightening rather than con- 
 fusing. They serve to generalize the older 
 problems, and to make their factors stand out 
 in clearer relief. 
 
 In the future it is going to be less and less a 
 matter of worrying over the respective merits of 
 the ancient and modern languages ; or of the in- 
 herent values of scientific vs. humanistic study, 
 and more a question of discovering and ob- 
 serving certain broader lines of cleavage, 
 which affect equally the disposition and power 
 of the individual, and the social callings for 
 which education ought to prepare the individ- 
 ual. It will be, in my judgment, less and less 
 a question of piecing together certain studies 
 in a more or less mechanical way in order to 
 make out a so-called course of study running 
 through a certain number of years ; and more 
 and more a question of grouping studies to- 
 gether according to their natural mutual affini- 
 ties and reinforcements for the securing of 
 certain well-marked ends. 
 
 For this reason I welcome the introduction 
 into the arena of discussion, of the question 
 of providing courses in commerce and soci- 
 ology, in the fine and applied arts, and in 
 technological training. I think henceforth 
 certain fundamental issues will stand out more 
 clearly and have to be met upon a wider 
 
72 The Educational Sittsation 
 
 basis and dealt with on a wider scale. As I 
 see the matter, this change will require the 
 concentration of attention upon these two 
 points : first, what groups of studies will most 
 serviceably recognize the typical divisions of 
 labor, the typical callings in society, callings 
 which are absolutely indispensable to the 
 spiritual as well as to the material ends of 
 society; and, secondly, not to do detriment 
 to the real culture of the individual, or, if 
 this seems too negative a statement, to se- 
 cure for him the full use and control of his 
 own powers. From this point of view, I think 
 that certain of the problems just referred to, 
 as, for instance, the conflict of language and 
 science, will be put in a new perspective, will 
 be capable of approach from a different angle ; 
 and that because of this new approach many 
 of the knotty problems which have embarrassed 
 us in the past will disappear. 
 
 Permit me to repeat in a somewhat more 
 explicit way the benefits which I expect to 
 flow from the expansion of the regular high 
 school in making room for commercial, man- 
 ual, and aesthetic studies. In the first place, it 
 will provide for the recognition and the repre- 
 sentation of all the typical occupations that 
 are found in society. Thus it will make the 
 working relationship between the secondary 
 
The Educational Situation 73 
 
 school and life a free and all around one. It 
 will complete the circuit — it will round out 
 the present series of segmental arcs into a 
 whole. Now this fact will put all the school 
 studies in a new light. They can be looked at 
 in the place they normally occupy in the whole 
 circle of human activities. As long as social 
 values and aims are only partially represented 
 in the school, it is not possible to employ the 
 standard of social value in a complete way. A 
 continual angle of refraction and distortion is 
 introduced in viewing existing studies, through 
 the fact that they are looked at from an artifi- 
 cial standpoint. Even those studies which are 
 popularly regarded as preparing distinctively 
 for life rather than for college cannot get 
 their full meaning, cannot be judged correctly, 
 until the life for which they are said to be a 
 preparation receives a fuller and more bal- 
 anced representation in the school. While, on 
 the other hand, the more scholastic studies, if 
 I may use the expression, cannot relate them- 
 selves properly so long as the branches which 
 give them their ultimate raison d'etre and 
 sphere of application in the whole of life are 
 non-existent in the curriculum. 
 
 For a certain type of mind algebra and 
 geometry are their own justification. They 
 appeal to such students for the intellectual 
 
74 The Educational Situation 
 
 satisfaction they supply, and as preparation 
 for the play of the intellect in further studies. 
 But to another type of mind these studies are 
 relatively dead and meaningless until sur- 
 rounded with a context of obvious bearings — 
 such as furnished in manual-training studies. 
 The latter, however, are rendered unduly utili- 
 tarian and narrow when isolated. Just as in 
 life the technological pursuits reach out and 
 affect society on all sides, so in the school 
 corresponding studies need to be imbedded 
 in a broad and deep matrix. 
 
 In the second place, as previously suggested, 
 the explanation of the high school simplifies 
 instead of complicates the college preparatory 
 problem. This is because the college is going 
 through an analogous evolution in the intro- 
 duction of similar lines of work. It is ex- 
 panding in technological and commercial 
 directions. To be sure, the branch of fine and 
 applied arts is still practically omitted ; it is 
 left to the tender mercies of over-specialized 
 and more or less mercenary institutions — 
 schools where these things are taught more or 
 less as trades, and for the sake of making 
 money. But the same influences which have 
 already rescued medical and commercial edu- 
 tion from similar conditions, and have brought 
 to bear upon them the wider outlook and more 
 
The Educational Situation 75 
 
 expert method of the university, will in time 
 make themselves also felt as regards the teach- 
 ing of art. 
 
 Thirdly, the wider high school relieves 
 many of the difficulties in the adequate treat- 
 ment of the individual as an individual. It 
 brings the individual into a wider sphere of 
 contacts, and thus makes it possible to test 
 him and his capacity more thoroughly. It 
 makes it possible to get at and remedy his 
 weak points by balancing more evenly the 
 influences that play upon him. In my judg- 
 ment many of the problems now dealt with 
 under the general head of election vs. pre- 
 scription can be got at more correctly and 
 handled more efficiently from the standpoint 
 of the elastic vs. the rigid curriculum — and 
 elasticity can be had only where there is 
 breadth. The need is not so much an appeal 
 to the untried and more or less capricious 
 choice of the individual as for a region of 
 opportunities large enough and balanced 
 enough to meet the individual on his every 
 side, and provide for him that which is neces- 
 sary to arouse and direct. 
 
 Finally, the objection usually urged to the 
 broader high school is, when rightly consid- 
 ered, the strongest argument for its existence. 
 I mean the objection that the introduction of 
 
76 The Educational Situation 
 
 manual training and commercial studies is a 
 cowardly surrender on the part of liberal cul- 
 ture of the training of the man as a man, to 
 utilitarian demands for specialized adapta- 
 tion to narrow callings. There is nothing in 
 any one study or any one calling which makes 
 it in and of itself low or meanly practical. It 
 is all a question of its isolation or of its setting. 
 It is not the mere syntactical structure or ety- 
 mological content of the Latin language which 
 has made it for centuries such an unrivaled 
 educational instrument. There are dialects 
 of semi-barbarous tribes which in intricacy 
 of sentential structure and delicacy of rela- 
 tionship, are quite equal to Latin in this 
 respect. It is the context of the Latin lan- 
 guage, the wealth of association and sugges- 
 tion belonging to it from its position in the 
 history of human civilization that freight it 
 with such meaning. 
 
 Now the callings that are represented by 
 manual training and commercial studies are 
 absolutely indispensable to human life. They 
 afford the most permanent and persistent 
 occupations of the great majority of human 
 kind. They present man with his most per- 
 plexing problems ; they stimulate him to the 
 most strenuous putting forth of effort. To 
 indict a whole nation were a grateful task 
 
The Educational Sittiation 77 
 
 compared with labeling such occupations as 
 low or narrow — lacking in all that makes for 
 training and culture. The professed and pro- 
 fessional representative of "culture" may well 
 hesitate to cast the first stone. It may be 
 that it is nothing in these pursuits themselves 
 which gives them utilitarian and materialistic 
 quality, but rather the exclusive selfishness 
 with which he has endeavored to hold on to 
 and monopolize the fruits of the spirit. 
 
 And so with the corresponding studies in 
 the high school. Isolated, they may be charg- 
 able with the defects of which they are ac- 
 cused. But they are convicted in this respect 
 only because they have first been condemned 
 to isolation. As representatives of serious 
 and permanent interests of humanity, they 
 possess an intrinsic dignity which it is the 
 business of the educator to take account of. 
 To ignore them, to deny them a rightful posi- 
 tion in the educational circle, is to maintain 
 within society that very cleft between so-called 
 material and spiritual interests which it is the 
 business of education to strive to overcome. 
 These studies root themselves in science ; they 
 have their trunk in human history, and they 
 flower in the worthiest and fairest forms of 
 human service. 
 
 It is for these various reasons that I be- 
 
7 8 The Educational Situation 
 
 lieve the introduction of the new problem of 
 adjustment of studies will help instead of hin- 
 der the settlement of the older controversies. 
 We have been trying for a long time to fix 
 a curriculum upon a basis of certain vague 
 and general educational ideals : information, 
 utility, discipline, culture. I believe that much 
 of our ill success has been due to the lack 
 of any well-defined and controllable meaning 
 attaching to these terms. The discussion re- 
 mains necessarily in the region of mere opinion 
 when the measuring rods are subject to change 
 with the standpoint and wishes of the individ- 
 ual. Take any body of persons, however in- 
 telligent and however conscientious, and ask 
 them to value and arrange studies from the 
 standpoint of culture, discipline, and utility, 
 and they will of necessity arrive at very differ- 
 ent results, depending upon their own tempera- 
 ment and more or less accidental experience 
 — and this none the less because of their 
 intelligence and conscientiousness. 
 
 With the rounding out of the high school to 
 meet all the needs of life, the standard changes. 
 It ceases to be these vague abstractions. We 
 get, relatively speaking, a scientific problem — 
 that is a problem with definite data and defi- 
 nite methods of attack. We are no longer 
 concerned with the abstract appraisal of studies 
 
The Educational Situation 79 
 
 by the measuring rod of culture or disci- 
 pline. Our problem is rather to study the 
 typical necessities of social life, and the actual 
 nature of the individual in his specific needs 
 and capacities. Our task is on one hand to 
 select and adjust the studies with reference to 
 the nature of the individual thus discovered ; 
 and on the other hand to order and group 
 them so that they shall most definitely and 
 systematically represent the chief lines of 
 social endeavor and social achievement. 
 
 Difficult as these problems may be in prac- 
 tice, they are yet inherently capable of solu- 
 tion. It is a definite problem, a scientific 
 problem, to discover what the nature of the 
 individual is and what his best growth calls for. 
 It is a definite problem, a scientific problem, 
 to discover the typical vocations of society, 
 and to find out what groupings of studies will 
 be the most likely instruments to subserve these 
 vocations. To dissipate the clouds of opin- 
 ion, to restrict the influence of abstract and 
 conceited argument ; to stimulate the spirit 
 of inquiry into actual fact, to further the con- 
 trol of the conduct of the school by the truths 
 thus scientifically discovered — these are the 
 benefits which we may anticipate with the ad- 
 vent of this problem of the wider high school. 
 
III. AS CONCERNS THE COLLEGE. 
 
 The elementary school is, by the necessity 
 of the case, in closest contact with the wants 
 of the people at large. It is the public-school, 
 the common-school, system. It aims at uni- 
 versality in its range, at including all children. 
 It has a universal basis, coming home to every 
 citizen as a taxpayer. The higher institutions 
 of learning are less under the control of imme- 
 diate public opinion, with the ebb and flow of 
 popular sentiment. They are set apart, as it 
 were, under the control of specially selected 
 leaders. They are dominated by a more con- 
 tinuous system of educational principle and 
 policy. Their roots are in the past ; they are 
 the conservators of the wisdom, insight, and 
 resources of bygone ages. While they may 
 be part of the state system, yet they touch 
 the average citizen in a much less direct way 
 than does the elementary school. The sec- 
 ondary school is intermediate ; it is between 
 the upper and the nether millstone. On one 
 side, it is subject to pressure from current pub- 
 lic opinion ; on the other, to the pressure of 
 university tradition. While the public high 
 school is more sensitive in the former direc- 
 tion, and the private academy more sensitive 
 80 
 
The Educational Situation 8i 
 
 in the latter, neither one can be free from both 
 influences. 
 
 The elementary school has both the advan- 
 tages and the disadvantages of its more direct 
 contact with public opinion. It is thereby 
 more likely to respond promptly to what the 
 people currently want. But, on the other 
 hand, it is rendered liable to the fluctuations 
 and confusions of the public's expression of its 
 own needs. The higher institution has the 
 advantages and the disadvantage of its greater 
 remoteness, its greater isolation. The advan- 
 tage is in the possibility of more definite 
 leadership by those consistently trained in 
 continuous educational standards and methods 
 — freedom from the meaningless and arbitrary 
 flux and reflux of public sentiment. The dis- 
 advantages are summed up in the unfavorable 
 connotation of "academic," the suggestion of 
 living in the past rather than the present, in 
 the cloister rather than the world, in a region 
 of abstraction rather than of practice. 
 
 The lower schools are more variable, and 
 probably vary too easily and frequently as the 
 various winds of public sentiment blow upon 
 them. They are freighted with too little bal- 
 last. The traditional elementary school cur- 
 riculum was so largely a formal thing, there 
 was so little of substantial content in it, 
 
82 The Educational Situation 
 
 that it could not offer much resistance to ex- 
 ternal pressure. There was also less ballast in 
 the matter of its teaching force, since the 
 standard of requirement in scholarship and 
 training was so much lower than that of the 
 higher schools. But this in no respect detracts 
 from their being the public, the common, 
 schools — that with which the interests of the 
 people are most closely and universally bound 
 up. It only emphasizes, after all, the necessity 
 of their being responsive to the needs of the 
 people, and not to traditions or conventions 
 from whatever source they arise. 
 
 The higher institutions are freighted with 
 a definite body of tradition. Their curriculum 
 represents the enduring experience and thought 
 of the centuries. They are the connecting 
 links binding us of today with the culture of 
 Greece and Rome and Mediaeval Europe. 
 They are under the guidance of men who have 
 been subjected to uniform training, who have 
 been steeped in almost identical ideals, and 
 with whom teaching is a profession and not an 
 accident. In their method of administration 
 they are much more removed from public 
 opinion and sentiment than are the elementary 
 schools. 
 
 Does this mean, however, that the college 
 is relieved of the necessity of meeting public 
 
The Educational Situation 83 
 
 needs, of acting with reference to social con- 
 siderations ; or rather, that its problem, its func- 
 tion with reference to this need, is a peculiar and 
 distinctive one ? Our answer is unhesitatingly 
 the latter. If the college derives more from 
 the past, it is only that it may put more effectu- 
 ally the resources of the past at the disposi- 
 tion of the present. If it is more remote 
 from immediate pressure of public demands, 
 this should be regarded as imposing a duty, 
 not as conferring an otiose privilege. It em- 
 phasizes the responsibility of steadying and 
 clarifying the public consciousness, of render- 
 ing it less spasmodic, less vacillating, less 
 confused ; of imparting to it consistency and 
 organization. The college has undertaken to 
 maintain the continuity of culture. But cul- 
 ture should not be a protected industry, living 
 at the expense of the freedom and complete- 
 ness of present social communication and inter- 
 action. The sole reason for maintaining the 
 continuity of culture is to make that culture 
 operative in the conditions of modern life, of 
 daily life, of political and industrial life, if you 
 will. 
 
 It is comparatively easy to divorce these 
 two functions. At one end of the scale we 
 can erect the culture college ; the college 
 which, upon the whole, in its curriculum and 
 
84 The Educational Situation 
 
 methods ignores the demands of the present 
 and insists upon the well-rounded and sym- 
 metrical education of the past — an education 
 which is well-rounded simply because the in- 
 sistent demands of the present are kept from 
 breaking into it. At the other end of the 
 scale is the distinctively professional techno- 
 logical school, which prepares specifically and 
 definitely for the occupations of the present 
 day; and which certa'inly is responding in con- 
 sistent and obvious ways to current social needs 
 and demands. 
 
 But, speaking for the higher institutions of 
 learning as a whole, it is clear that both of 
 these types of institutions solve the problem 
 by unduly simplifying it. This is not to say 
 that each has not its own place. It is only to 
 say that that place is not the place of our 
 higher institutions of learning taken in their 
 entirety. Their problem is to join together 
 what is here sundered, the culture factor (by 
 which is meant acquaintance with the best 
 that has been thought and said and done in 
 the past) and the practical factor — or, more 
 truly speaking, the social factor, the factor of 
 adaptation to the present need. 
 
 But what, you may ask, is the working 
 equivalent of this proposition ? What effect 
 would the attempt to carry it out have upon 
 
The Educational Situation 85 
 
 the existing college curriculum and method ? 
 How does it bear, for example, upon the 
 mooted question of the relation of the lan- 
 guages or the humanities to the sciences ? 
 What bearing does it have upon the mooted 
 question of the required versus the elective 
 curriculum ? What bearing does it have upon 
 the question of the method of instruction ? 
 Shall it be dogmatic and disciplinary, so as to 
 secure to the student the advantage of a stable 
 point of view and a coherent body of material, 
 or shall it be stimulating and liberating, aiming 
 at ability to inquire, judge and act for one's 
 self? 
 
 The problem of the multiplication of studies, 
 of the consequent congestion of the curricu- 
 lum, and the conflict of various studies for a 
 recognized place in the curriculum ; the fact 
 that one cannot get in without crowding some- 
 thing else out ; the effort to arrange a com- 
 promise in various courses of study by throw- 
 ing the entire burden of election upon the stu- 
 dent so that he shall make out his own course 
 of study — this problem is only a reflex of the 
 lack of unity in the social activities themselves, 
 and of the necessity of reaching more har- 
 mony, more system in our scheme of life. 
 This multiplication of study is not primarily 
 a product of the schools. The last hundred 
 
86 The Educational Situation 
 
 years has created a new world, has revealed a 
 new universe, material and social. The edu- 
 cational problem is not a result of anything 
 within our own conscious wish or intention, 
 but of the conditions in the contemporary 
 world. 
 
 Take, for illustration, the problem of the 
 introduction and place of the sciences. I 
 suppose all of us sometimes hear arguments 
 whose implication is that a certain body of 
 self-willed men invented the sciences, and are 
 now, because of narrowness of culture, bent 
 upon forcing them into prominence in the col- 
 lege curriculum. But it needs only to make 
 this implication explicit to realize what a trav- 
 esty it is. These sciences are the outcome of 
 all that makes our modern life what it is. 
 They are expressions of the agencies upon 
 which the carrying on of our civilization is 
 completely dependent. They did not grow 
 out of professional, but of human, needs. They 
 find their serious application in the schools 
 only because they are everywhere having their 
 serious application in life. There is no press- 
 ing industrial question that has not arisen in 
 some new discovery regarding the forces of 
 nature, and whose ultimate solution does not 
 depend upon some further insight into the 
 truths of nature — upon some scientific advance. 
 
The Educational Situation 8? 
 
 The revolution which is going on in industry 
 because of the advance of natural science, in 
 turn affects all professions and occupations. 
 It touches municipal government as well as 
 personal hygiene ; it affects the calling of the 
 clergy as significantly, even if more indirectly, 
 as that of the lawyer. An intellectual and 
 social development of such scope cannot pos- 
 sibly take place and not throw our educational 
 curriculum into a state of distraction and un- 
 certainty. 
 
 When we are asked "Why not leave alone 
 all the new subjects not yet well organized 
 in themselves, and not well elaborated as 
 material for education ; why not confine our- 
 selves to the studies which have been taught 
 so long as to be organized for purposes of 
 instruction?" — when these questions are put 
 to us, we come upon a logical self-contradic- 
 tion and a practical impossibility. 
 
 The logical contradiction is found in the 
 fact that the new studies are not so isolated 
 from the old studies as to be lopped off in this 
 arbitrary way. In spite of confusion and con- 
 flict, the movement of the human mind is a 
 unity. The development of the new sciences 
 is not a mere addition of so much bulk of in- 
 formation to what went before. It represents 
 a profound modification and reconstruction of 
 
88 The Educational Situation 
 
 all attained knowledge — a change in quality 
 and standpoint. The existing conflict between 
 the sciences and the humanities in the con- 
 temporary college curriculum- would not be 
 terminated by eliminating the sciences. Pre- 
 cisely the same conflict would at once reflect 
 itself within what is left over, the languages. 
 The scientific method has invaded this region 
 and claims it for its own. The lines would 
 soon be drawn between those who represent 
 the distinctively "scientific" aspects of lan- 
 guage — phonology, philology, the strict his- 
 torical development, the analytic determina- 
 tion of style, etc. — and those upholding the 
 banner of pure literary appreciation. The 
 point comes out more plainly by inquiring 
 what we are to do with the modern social and 
 historical sciences. No fact in controversy is 
 more recurrent (or more amusing) than that 
 while the contestants are struggling in the 
 dark, the center of the battle somehow mana- 
 ges to remove itself to another point ; and 
 when the smoke clears away there is not only 
 a new battlefield, but an entirely new point at 
 issue. While the struggle between the classi- 
 cists and the scientists has been going on, a new 
 body of studies has been gradually making its 
 way, and is now reaching the point of con- 
 scious insistence upon its own claims. His- 
 
The Educational Situation 89 
 
 tory, sociology, political science, and political 
 economy may certainly claim to stand for the 
 humanities. Quite as much as any linguistic 
 phenomena, they represent fundamental values 
 of human life. Yet they are the offspring of 
 the scientific method. Apart from underlying 
 biological conceptions, apart from the scien- 
 tific conception of evolution, apart from that 
 more intangible atmosphere which we call the 
 scientific spirit, they would neither exist nor 
 be making their way into the curriculum. The 
 body of knowledge is indeed one ; it is a spir- 
 itual organism. To attempt to chop off a mem- 
 ber here and amputate an organ there is the 
 veriest impossibility. The problem is not one 
 of elimination, but of organization; of simpli- 
 fication not through denial and rejection, but 
 through harmony. 
 
 The simple necessities of modern life would, 
 however, force the college to face the problem 
 of studies in its entire scope even if the philos- 
 ophy of the sciences did not compel it. With 
 the perspective of years, it will become clear- 
 er and clearer that the distinguishing charac- 
 teristic of the nineteenth century is the devel- 
 opment of applied science. The earlier years 
 inherited the application to mechanics of the 
 various uses of steam in the revolutionizing of 
 industry. Succeeding years and decades 
 
QO The Educational Situation 
 
 widened the application to practically all forms 
 of chemical and physical energy. The latter 
 decades saw the devolopment of the biological 
 sciences to the point of application. We do 
 not realize as yet the extent of the revolution 
 which the profession of medicine is undergo- 
 ing because of the ability to make application 
 of chemistry, physiology, and bacteriology. 
 But it is not merely medicine and public hy- 
 giene that are affected. Simple and funda- 
 mental industrial processes — agriculture, dai- 
 rying, etc. — are being invaded more and more 
 by applied science. The bacteriologist comes 
 home to us, not only in the treatment of dis- 
 ease, but in the making of our butter, and 
 cheese, and beer. The hour could be easily 
 spent in simply mentioning the multiple and 
 important points of contact between science 
 and the affairs of daily life. The beginning of 
 a new century surely sees us upon the verge of 
 an analogous translation of political and moral 
 science into terms of application. 
 
 Now it is absurd to the point of fatuity to 
 say, under such circumstances, we will restrict 
 our curriculum to a certain group of studies ; 
 we will not introduce others because they 
 have not been part of the classic curriculum 
 of the past, and consequently are not yet well 
 organized for educational purposes. The prob- 
 
The Educational Situation 9^ 
 
 lem which the college has to face is not one 
 which has grown up within the college walls, 
 nor which is confined there. The ferment 
 which is happily going on in the college is 
 because the leaven of all modern life is at 
 work. There seems a certain lack of perspec- 
 tive, a certain lack of sanity and balance in 
 those arguments regarding the college curric- 
 ulum that assume that subjects are already 
 in a settled condition ; that there are ready- 
 made standards by which to measure their vari- 
 ous claims ; and that it only remains to pick 
 out just so much of this and so much of that 
 and put an end to all the confusion and con- 
 flict which is troubling us. Until the various 
 branches of human learning have attained 
 something like philosophic organization, until 
 the various modes of their application to life 
 have been so definitely and completely worked 
 out as to bring even the common affairs of 
 life under direction, confusion and conflict are 
 bound to continue. When we have an ade- 
 quate industrial and political organization it 
 will be quite time to assume that there is 
 some offhand and short-cut solution to the 
 problem of educational organization. In the 
 meantime it is somewhat ridiculous to argue as 
 if there were somewhere a definite set of speci- 
 fic educational recipes which the managers of 
 
9 2 The Educational Situation 
 
 the collegiate institutions might fall back upon, 
 and then serve out just such and such an intel- 
 lectual diet to those eager for the intellectual 
 feast. 
 
 I have been speaking, thus far, of the prob- 
 lem as it presents itself on the side of the cur- 
 riculum — on the side of the multiplication and 
 conflict of studies. When we turn to the 
 matter of aims and methods, the moral end 
 and the fundamental intellectual attitude 
 involved, we do not find the state of things 
 much changed. We talk, to be sure, about 
 character, and information, and discipline, and 
 culture as setting our aims and controlling our 
 methods. We ignore the fact that every gen- 
 eration must redefine these terms for itself, if 
 they are to retain vitality. We speak as if each 
 of these terms had a perfectly definite and 
 well-recognized meaning attaching to it ; we 
 appear to believe that some sort of mathemat- 
 ical ratio is possible — that by taking such a 
 per cent, of culture, such a per cent, of training, 
 such a per cent, of useful information, we may 
 get a well-rounded education. Or, to take the 
 problem in its more burning form, we imagine 
 that we have just such and such a ratio between 
 the authoritative determination of material for 
 the student and his own personal choice — 
 assuming that there is a certain ratio between 
 
The Educational Situation 93 
 
 external discipline and the play of individuality 
 in the determination of character. All our 
 universities are face to face, moreover, with 
 the problem of the adjustment of what is 
 ordinarily regarded as the strictly disciplinary 
 and culture element in the curriculum to the 
 professional element — the preparation for law, 
 medicine, theology, or whatever. The common 
 expedient, the device which works well on the 
 practical side, is to allow the last year of the 
 college course to count on both sides — for the 
 degree which stands for general culture and 
 discipline and also for the degree that stands 
 for specific professional training. Turn from 
 the matter of practical expediency and success 
 to that of the philosophy of education, and 
 what does this compromise mean ? In terms 
 of fundamental values, what is the relation 
 between general culture and professional 
 ability ? 
 
 When we go below the surface, most of us, 
 I think, would admit that we are in very great 
 doubt as to what these terms really mean in 
 themselves, to say nothing of their definite 
 relationship to each other. What do we mean 
 by character as a supreme end, or even inci- 
 dental end, of college education ? The topic 
 lends itself gracefully to purposes of orations 
 in which no cross-examination is permitted ; 
 
94 The Educational Sittsation 
 
 but suppose one of us had to answer, honestly 
 and definitely, what he took to be the exact 
 connection between each of the studies of the 
 college course, and each daily lesson in each 
 study, and the attainment of a right char- 
 acter — what would the answer be ? Indeed, 
 just exactly what is the character at which we 
 are aiming, or ought to aim, under modern 
 conditions ? Character involves not only right 
 intentions, but a certain degree of efificiency. 
 Now efficiency, as biologists have made us 
 well aware, is a problem of adaptation, of 
 adjustment to the control of conditions. Are 
 the conditions of modern life so clear and so 
 settled that we know exactly what organs, 
 what moral habits and methods, are necessary 
 in order to get the maximum of efificiency ? 
 Do we know how to adjust our teaching to 
 securing this maximum ? 
 
 Great as are the difficulties in reaching an 
 adequate definition of what we mean by char- 
 acter and its relation to education, the prob- 
 lem is slight compared with what meets us 
 when we ask about the significance of the terms 
 discipline and culture. 
 
 What is discipline? I find the same per- 
 sons who, in one connection, emphasize the 
 necessity of conducting education so as to give 
 training, are often also the persons who, in 
 
The Educational Situation 95 
 
 another connection, object to a certain kind of 
 work on the very ground that it gives too much 
 and too specific training. He who upholds 
 the banner of discipline in classics or mathe- 
 matics, when it comes to the training of a man 
 for the profession of a teacher or investigator, 
 will often be found to condemn a school of 
 commerce, or technology, or even of medicine, 
 in the university on the ground that it is too 
 professional in character — that it smacks of 
 the utilitarian and commercial. The kind of 
 discipline which enables a man to pursue one 
 vocation is lauded ; the kind of training that 
 fits him for another is condemned. Why this 
 invidious distinction ? The only clew to an 
 answer that I have ever been able to get is the 
 assumption of some mysterious difference 
 between a general training and a special train- 
 ing — as if the training that the man got in 
 the study of Latin and Greek were somehow 
 distinctively the training appropriate to man 
 as man, while the training which he gets in the 
 application of, say, mathematics and physics 
 to engineering, or of history, geography, and 
 political economy to commerce, only touches 
 some narrow segment or fraction of the man. 
 Whence the justification of any such assump- 
 tion ? Is not the whole man required in the 
 calling of an engineer or a captain of industry? 
 
96 The Educational Sittiation 
 
 If the whole man does not at present find 
 opportunity and outlet for himself in these 
 callings, is it not one of the main duties of the 
 university to bring about precisely this result ? 
 The assumption that a training is good in gen- 
 eral just in the degree in which it is good for 
 nothing in particular is one for which it would 
 be difficult to find any adequate philosophic 
 ground. Training, discipline, must finally be 
 measured in terms of application, of avail- 
 ability. To be trained is to be trained to 
 something and for something. 
 
 This brings me to the question of culture. 
 Doubtless, the current implication is that gen- 
 eral culture and professional utility are quite 
 independent of each other. The notio-n of 
 absolute antagonism is, doubtless, wearing 
 away. Like the similar conception of a fixed 
 and obvious gulf between the elect and the un- 
 regenerated, it cannot stand the pressure of the 
 free communication and interaction of modern 
 life. It is no longer possible to hug com- 
 placently the ideal that the academic teacher 
 is perforce devoted to high spiritual ideals, 
 while the doctor, lawyer, and man of business 
 are engaged in the mercenary pursuit of vulgar 
 utilities. But we have hardly reconstructed 
 our theory of the whole matter. Our concep- 
 tion of culture is still tainted with inheritance 
 
The Educational Sittiation 97 
 
 from the period of the aristocractic seclusion 
 of a leisure class — leisure meaning relief from 
 participation in the work of a workaday world. 
 Culture, to use the happy phrase of one of my 
 colleagues, has been prized largely as a means 
 of "invidious distinction." If I were to venture 
 into what might appear to you the metaphysical 
 field, I think I could also show that the current 
 idea of culture belongs to the pre-biological 
 period — it is a survival of the time when mind 
 was conceived as an independent entity living 
 in an elegant isolation from its environment. 
 We come back here to the root of the whole 
 matter. To very many the idea of culture 
 covers adequately and completely that for 
 which the college stands. Even to suggest 
 that the college should do what the people 
 want is to lay unholy hands on the sanctity of 
 the college ideal. The people, the mob, the 
 majority, want anything but culture — indeed 
 they are capable of anything but culture. The 
 college stands for the remnant. It is the 
 fortress of the few who are capable of uphold- 
 ing high ideals against the utilitarian clamor 
 of the many. To ask that the colleges do 
 what society wants done is to surrender or 
 compromise the idea of culture by requiring 
 the introduction of the professional factor — a 
 preparation for specific callings in life, 
 
9^ The Educational Situation 
 
 All this, I say frankly and emphatically, I 
 regard as a survival from a dualistic past — 
 from a society which was dualistic politically, 
 drawing fixed lines between classes, and dual- 
 istic intellectually, with its rigid separation 
 between the things of matter and of mind — 
 between the affairs of the world and of the 
 spirit. Social democracy means an abandon- 
 ment of this dualism. It means a common 
 heritage, a common work, and a common 
 destiny. It is flat hostility to the ethics of 
 modern life to suppose that there are two dif- 
 ferent aims of life located on different planes ; 
 that the few who are educated are to live on 
 a plane of exclusive and isolated culture, 
 while the many toil below on the level of 
 practical endeavor directed at material com- 
 modity. The problem of our modern life is 
 precisely to do away with all the barriers that 
 keep up this division. If the university can- 
 not accommodate itself to this movement, so 
 much the worse for it. Nay, more; it is 
 doomed to helpless failure unless it does more 
 than accommodate itself; unless it becomes 
 one of the chief agencies for bridging the gap, 
 and bringing about an effective interaction of 
 all callings in society. 
 
 This may seem pretty abstract, rather re- 
 mote, in its actual bearing upon college affairs^ 
 
The Educational Situation 99 
 
 but there is a definite body of fact by which 
 to give this general statement concreteness, 
 
 I have already referred to the fact that we 
 are living in a period of applied science. What 
 this means for present purposes is that the 
 professions, the practical occupations of men, 
 are becoming less and less empirical routines, 
 or technical facilities acquired through unin- 
 telligent apprenticeship. They are more and 
 more infused with reason ; more and more il- 
 luminated by the spirit of inquiry and reason. 
 They are dependent upon science, in a word. 
 To decline to recognize this intimate connec- 
 tion of professions in modern life with the 
 discipline and culture that come from the pur- 
 suit of truth for its own sake, is to be at least 
 one century behind the times. I do not say 
 that the engineer, the doctor, or lawyer, or 
 even the clergyman, or the average man of 
 commerce, has as yet awakened to the full 
 necessity of this interdependence of theory 
 and practice, to the full significance of the ex- 
 tent to which his activities are already depend- 
 ent upon knowledge of the truth and the right 
 attitude toward truth. I do not say that the 
 professional classes are as yet fully aware of 
 the dignity and elevation that thus come to 
 their practical callings in life. But this very 
 
 absence of clear and complete consciousness 
 LofC. ^ 
 
loo The Educational Situation 
 
 only makes the duty of the university the 
 clearer. It is so to order its affairs that the 
 availability of truth for life, and the depend- 
 ence of the professional occupations upon sci- 
 ence — upon insight into an ordered body of 
 fact, and mastery of methods — shall become 
 patent to all men. 
 
 Society needs the junction of that expert 
 knowledge and skilled discipline which the 
 college alone can supply, and the services of 
 the professions, the businesses of life. All the 
 forces and tendencies of college instruction 
 and administration are tending irresistibly, 
 even if blindly, in this direction. To say that 
 the reality of the present university is profes- 
 sional training would perhaps give little other 
 than material for misunderstanding. It would 
 seem to mean that what most would regard as 
 the important and essential feature of the uni- 
 versity was a mere preliminary or incident, 
 and that the reality is located in the schools 
 of medicine, law, engineering, etc. This is not 
 what is meant. I do mean, however, that the 
 business of the university is coming to_be more 
 and more the supplying of that specific knowl- 
 edge and that specific training which shall fit 
 the individual for his calling in life. Just how 
 the tendency shall work itself out on the 
 formal and external side is a matter of com- 
 
The Educational Situation loi 
 
 paratively little moment. The fact is sure 
 that the intellectual and moral lines which 
 divide the university courses in science and 
 letters from those of professional schools are 
 gradually getting obscure and are bound finally 
 to fade away. 
 
 What is termed general training and general 
 culture is the function of the secondary school. 
 A recent writer has stated that the college is 
 threatened with attack from two sources : the 
 high school on one side, the professional 
 school on the other. This exactly states the 
 situation to my mind — excepting that I should 
 not regard these instrumentalities as foes, but 
 rather as the twofold differentiation of func- 
 tion which the old-time amorphous college is 
 assuming. 
 
 Formally, the first two years of college 
 work probably belong to the secondary period. 
 This is not the place or time to go into the 
 question of what is meant by general training 
 and its relation to secondary-school work. It 
 certainly means, however, that the pupil shall 
 be touched, shall be stimulated, on all sides ; 
 that he shall be given a survey, at least, of the 
 universe in its manifold phases. Through this 
 survey, through this elaboration, coming to 
 know both himself and the universe, he may 
 get his orientation — his placing of himself in 
 
102 The Educational Situation 
 
 the larger world. With proper economy of 
 instruction, and harmonious organization in- 
 stead of blind confusion in the curriculum, 
 this result should certainly be attained by the 
 time the average student is eighteen or twenty. 
 
 Having found himself, a student would then 
 be prepared to enter upon that special training 
 which is needed to equip him for the particu- 
 lar calling in life which he finds adapted to his 
 own powers. This, by whatever name called, 
 is professional training. The extent to which 
 our larger universities have already moved in 
 this direction is concealed, first, by the fact 
 that they still retain considerable secondary 
 work in the earlier years of their course ; and 
 secondly, by the fact that training for the 
 calling of teaching, or of special research, is 
 marked off in the public mind from training 
 for the calling of doctor, lawyer, or engineer. 
 In reality, the kind of training which students 
 receive to make them professors, or directors 
 of laboratories is, of course, as professional 
 as is that of the school of technology or 
 medicine. 
 
 There is still, however, a great deal of 
 reconstructive work to be done. There is 
 still a good deal of so-called higher college 
 or university work which is thoroughly 
 anomalous in character. It is neither one 
 
The Educational Situation 103 
 
 thing nor the other. It does not give that 
 kind of education which awakens the student 
 to a sense of his own powers and their relation 
 to the world of action ; nor does ii afford 
 specific training for any particular walk in life. 
 It is neither genuinely secondary nor yet mani- 
 festly collegiate in character. It is aimed in 
 the air with the pious hope that something 
 will come of it somewhere and somehow. 
 Those who insist on the maintenance of the 
 traditional college free from supposed en- 
 croachments of the high school on one side 
 and the professional school on the other, are 
 definitely contending, to my mind, for the per- 
 petuation of this amorphous and artifical thing. 
 Historically, the college, like the mediaeval 
 university, was a great vocational institution. 
 Its original business was to prepare primarily 
 for the ministry, and incidentally for other 
 learned professions. That function gradually 
 departed from it, and it took on more and 
 more the form of an institution for general 
 culture. Now the high school is appropriat- 
 ing this function, and in its legitimate ex- 
 tension is bound to absorb more and more of 
 it. To give just more general culture at large, 
 after the specific period for it has ceased ; to 
 prepare in a loose and vague way for future 
 life — this is the anomaly to be corrected by 
 
104 The Educational Situation 
 
 restoring to the college its position as a voca- 
 tional institution. 
 
 The movement is steady and, I believe, in- 
 evitable in one direction. There is to be a 
 demarcation of the college into secondary 
 work on one side, and into training for voca- 
 tions on the other. The secondary period will 
 be that of individual training and culture, 
 awakening the mind to true self-conscious- 
 ness — to a knowledge of self in its needs and 
 capacities in relation to life about it, thus 
 restoring to it freshness and vitality. The 
 collegiate institution will then be an affair for 
 specific training; for securing control of those 
 specialized systems of knowledge and methods 
 of research which fit the individual for the pur- 
 suit of his own calling in life. 
 
 All of us have callings, occupations — only 
 the,^ luxuriously idle and the submerged idle, 
 only the leisure class of fashion and of pauper- 
 ism violate this law. When higher education 
 ceases to ignore the universality and signifi- 
 cance, ethical as well as material, of this fact 
 of occupations, when it recognizes it frankly 
 and fully, and adapts its curriculum and 
 methods to it, the college will be coherent in 
 itself and in relation to the social whole. It 
 is movement in the direction of the union of 
 truth and use that defines the problems and 
 aims of the existing collegiate situation. 
 
;riBa^-«ll©^ 
 
JAN SO 1902