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A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND'S LITERATURE

By EVA MARCH TAPPAN, Ph.D., Head of the English Department, English High School, Worcester, Mass. 85 cents.

THE CHIEF AMERICAN POETS

Edited by CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE, Ph.D., Lecturer on Romance Languages, and Literature at Columbia University. A selection of the best poetry of the leading American Poets, with notes, biographical sketches, reference lists, etc. (Ready in September.)

PROSE AND POETRY OF CARDINAL NEWMAN

A selection edited by MAURICE F. EAGAN, LL.D., J.U.D., Professor of English Language and Literature, Catholic University of America.

Riverside Literature Series. Paper, 30 cents; cloth 40 cents. (Ready in September.)

DICKENS'S TALE OF TWO CITIES

Edited by R. ADELAIDE WITHAM, formerly Head of the English Department, Classical High School, Providence, R. I.

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Edited by R. ADELAIDE WITHAM.

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SHAKESPEARE'S HENRY V

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TABLE 3

TEXTBOOKS USED IN HIGH SCHOOLS, ACADEMIES AND ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS OF UNION

SCHOOLS REPORTING DURING

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The above table shows that Muene's Arithmetics are used

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THE first of the burning educational

questions of the day is What does education for efficiency mean? It does not mean that every man should be trained to be a soldier. It does not mean merely that each citizen should be able to read the newspapers and magazines so that he may be familiar with political discussions and able to make an intelligent choice between candidates and policies.

Still less does it mean that wretched travesty of education which would confine the work of the public schools to those exercises in reading, writing, and ciphering which will enable a boy or a girl at the age of fourteen or earlier to earn starvation wages in a store or factory. Education for efficiency means all of these things, but it means much more. It means the develop ment of each citizen first as an individual, and second as a member of society. It means bodies kept fit for service by appropriate exercise. It means that each student shall be taught to use his hands deftly, to observe accurately, to reason justly, to express himself clearly. It means that he shall learn "to live cleanly, happily, and helpfully with those around him;" that he shall learn to cooperate with his fellows for far-reaching and far-distant ends; that he shall learn the everlasting truth of the words uttered nearly two thousand years ago, "No man liveth to himself," and "Bear ye one another's burdens." Such,

I take it, is the goal of American education.

During the last quarter of a century a great movement for the reform of the elementary curriculum has been gathering strength. The most prominent characteristics of this movement would seem to have been the development of the imagination and the higher emotions through literature and art and music; the training of the body and the executive powers of the mind through physical training, play, and manual training; and the introduction of the child to the sources of material wealth, through the direct study of nature and of processes of manufacture. At first the movement seems to have been founded on psychological basis. To-day the tendency is to seek a sociological foundtaion-to adjust the child to his environment of man and of nature.

DEFENSE OF "FADS"

At various times during the past ten or fifteen years, and particularly during the past year, reactionary voices have been loudly raised against the New Education, and in favor of the old. Such was to be expected. Reactions follow inevitably in the wake of every reform, political and social. Analysis will show that the reactionary tendencies in education arise from three chief sources:

1. The demagogic contentions of selfish

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politicians who see that it costs more money to teach the new subjects of the curriculum than the old, and that thus a large proportion of the public revenue is diverted from the field of political spoils. These are the men who have invented the term "fads and frills." It must be theirs to learn that it will require something more than a stupid alliteration to stem the tide of those irresistible forces that are making the modern school the faithful counterpart of the modern world and an adequate preparation for its activities. The saving common sense of the common people, when deliberately appealed to, will always come to the rescue of the schools.

2. The reactionary tendency is due in part to an extremely conservative element that still exists among the teaching force. Accustomed to mass work both in learning and in teaching, they regret the introduction into the schoolroom of arts which demand attention to individual pupils.

3 The reactionary tendency has its roots even among the more progressive teachers in a vague feeling of disappointment and regret that manual training, correlation, and nature study have probably not accomplished all that their enthusiastic advocates promised ten to twenty years ago.

The feeling of disappointment, we might say even of discontent, among the more thoughtful and progressive teachers is what might have been anticipated. In the first place, public education has become a much more difficult thing than it was half · a century ago. It has become more difficult because of the constantly increasing migration of population from the country to the cities, and because of the enormous increase in immigration from abroad, and particularly because the character of the immigration has changed.

In the second place, the feeling of disappointment with the results of the newer studies arises from the fact that these studies were introduced before the teach

ers were prepared to teach them; for too long they were concerned chiefly with uninteresting formal processes rather than with interesting results: that they were not related to real needs of school and home, and were not properly co-ordinated with other phases of the curriculum. Much yet remains to be done to assimilate the environment of the school to the environment of the world.

SCHOOLS DOING BETTER WORK NOW

And yet, while we may feel discontented with the situation, and regret the increased difficulties of our work, there is no reason for discouragement. I have no hesitation in saying that in general intelligence, in all-around efficiency, in power of initiative, the pupils whom I see are superior to those of a quarter of a century ago.

And yet, the teachers of America are still far from satisfied with their achievements. They are dissatisfied with the elementary curriculum because it seems crowded by the new studies that have been added without diminishing the number of the old. They are dissatisfied with the high school curriculum because the old-style language, mathematics, and science course, however suitable it may be for admission to college, does not precisely meet the needs of boys and girls who are going directly into life. They are dissatisfied with the specialized high school because it seems lacking in some of those attributes of culture in which the old-time school was strong. And they are dissatisfied with the college course because the elective system which has taken the place of the old, prescribed course, does not seem to give a strong, intellectual fibre to the weaker students who, too often, follow the path of least resistance. And they are dissatisfied because there is less intelligence, less efficiency, and less helpfulness in the world than the world needs. So far from feeling concerned at this widespread discontent, we should rejoice that it exists.

There is nothing so blighting to educational enthusiasm as smug satisfaction with what is or what has been; there is nothing so stimulating to educational effort as a realizing sense of present imperfections and of higher possibilities.

As to the curriculum of the higher schools and colleges, the problem is really

not what studies shall be inserted and what omitted, but how shall we make it possible for the student to get that culture, efficiency, and power out of his studies which his development requires.

CHILD'S NEEDS SHOULD BE GUIDE

As to the elementary curriculum, surely we shall not go far wrong if we apply to each study and even to each detail of each study these four questions:

1. Is this study or this exercise well within the comprehension of the child?

2. Does it help to adjust him to the material and spiritual environment of the age and the community in which he lives?

3. Does it combine with the other studies of the curriculum to render him more efficient in conquering nature and in getting along with his fellows, and thus to realize ideals that transcend environment?

4. Does it accomplish these objects better than any other study that might be selected for these purposes?

If these questions are answered in the affirmative, we may reasonably conclude that the study or the exercise in question is an important element in education for efficiency. Examined from the viewpoint established by these questions, every study will assume an aspect very different from that which it bears when taught without a well-defined object. Take drawing, for example. Drawing may be so taught as not only to lay bare to seeing eyes new worlds of beauty, but to lead to that reverent appreciation of nature and the reapplication of her lessons to daily industrial art which is the way, as Ruskin has

said, in which the soul can most truly and wholesomely develop essential religion.

AGRICULTURE

Again, take the teaching of agriculture. While our soil seemed inexhaustible in fertility as in extent, the need of such teaching was not felt. Now, however, we are obliged to have recourse to lands that produce only under irrigation. The rural schools have added to our difficulties by teaching their pupils only what seemed most necessary for success when they should move to the city. The farms of New England are, in large measure, deserted or are passing into alien hands. To retain the country boy on the land and to keep our soil from exhaustion, it is high time that all our rural schools turned their attention, as some of them have done, to scientific agriculture. There is no study of greater importance. There is none more entertaining. If every country boy could become, according to his ability, a Burbank, increasing the yield of the fruit tree, the grain field, and the cotton plantation, producing food and clothing where before there was only waste, what riches would be added to our country, what happiness would be infused into life? To obtain one plant that will metamorphose the field or the garden, ten thousand plants must be grown and destroyed. To find one Burbank, ten thousand boys must be trained, but unlike the plants, all the boys will have been benefited. The gain to the nation would be incalculable. Scientific agriculture, practically taught, is as necessary for the rural school, as is manual training for the city. school.

It is not in secondary schools alone, however, that efficiency demands highly differentiated types of schools. It is absurd to place the boy or girl, ten or twelve years of age, just landed from Italy, who cannot read a word in his own language or speak a word of English, in

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