to do her work and usually nothing is gained by undertaking to hasten Nature's processes.

I remember about twenty years ago a prominent business man, and at that time the president of the original Chautauqua, gave an address before an association of teachers in which he took occasion to criticize the public schools because they had not kept pace with the progress made in other lines. While wonderful strides had been made in transportation and patent devices had shortened the time required for the completion of work in almost all lines, no teacher had succeeded in devising a plan or perfecting a process whereby the boys and girls could be thoroughly prepared for college or properly fitted for their several vocations in life in a shorter period than formerly. He regarded educational processes in the same light as industrial, and he ignored the fact that time is an important factor in education, and no one has as yet been able successfully to hasten child development or shorten the period required for reaching maturity. If you wish to build a patent fence around a ten-acre field, you can do the work much more quickly today than it could have been done thirty years ago; but if you wish to surround the same field with a natural hedge it will take just as long now for it to grow and reach maturity as it did then.

I believe it is time to call a halt on the shortening of the school day and the school year. While the brighter pupils may finish their preparation for college or complete the high-school course in the twelve years usually allowed, it is better for the average pupil to take nine years for the elementary work and four years for the high school, and the student who is graduated from college at twenty-three will derive far more benefit from the studies of the junior and senior years than the one who completes his course at an earlier age.

With the multiplicity of branches in the course and the same, or shorter, period of time, we should naturally expect more of superficiality and less of thoroughness. As the work is made more extensive it will become less intensive. Elementary pupils will be apt to go to the high school with a limited and uncertain knowledge of many subjects and lacking in a thorough mastery of the fundamental branches. They know something about many things; they are better informed than pupils of former times, but they have not as much power to grapple with the problems that confront them in the highschool course. This seems to be a somewhat general criticism that is passed upon our present courses of study.

Graduates from the high school who enter our colleges are better prepared in many ways, especially in English, than the students of twenty-five years ago, but they are said to be deficient in the power to think for themselves and the ability to do things, a power that comes from the habit of quiet, uninterrupted study of one subject for a longer period than twenty or thirty minutes at a time, and the custom of solving problems by individual effort without outside assistance.

It occurred to me that our college presidents are in a good position to judge

of the results of our present-day work as compared with that of former years, so I submitted this question to quite a number and received from them very prompt replies.

Allow me to quote a few extracts from their letters. One says:

Speaking generally, and with no pretense at precision, I should say the multiplication of subjects of study and the refinement of methods have had a harmful influence on preparation for college.

A college needs as preparation not general information but thorough and systematic instruction in English, foreign language, mathematics, and a few subordinate subjects. To my mind, the tendency of modern methods is to give the pupil a little knowledge of a good many subjects, without a thorough or workable knowledge of any. As compared with the entering classes fifteen years ago, the average student is better informed but less well prepared.

There is danger, too, that the extreme refinement of method may lesson the disciplinary training of preparatory work. The subjects are all made too easy and attractive. The student's power of sustained concentration becomes weakened and his will enervated. I think the college freshman of today is less thoroughly trained and disciplined than were the men of a generation ago. He is more afraid of a hard task and shows less energy and persistency in grappling with it.

Another says:

It is very difficult to define causes and effects, and especially in education. It is, however, my impression that boys now come to college with a wider knowledge than in former times. I should hesitate to confirm what is sometimes said, that boys come to college less willing to tackle hard tasks. The community always has those who yield to slight temptations. If there is an increase in the proportion of these, this is due to an increase in wealth, rather than to any change in educational methods.

A third writes:

The great difficulty we find with students when they come to us is that they do not think for themselves, and I believe it to be due to the fact that teachers now do a great deal for their pupils which formerly the pupils were obliged to do for themselves. Whether the multiplicity of studies has been the cause of this on account of the wider range of work which the teacher must cover and consequently less time which can be devoted to each subject, I do not know, but I strongly suspect this to be true. My personal opinion is that we need now in our schools thorough instruction in mental arithmetic, to be followed by mathematical subjects, science, modern languages, English, history, civics. These are the important things to which time should be given.

From a fourth I quote as follows:

Pupils from the high school are coming to college now better prepared than ever before. I do not believe that method can be made a substitute for matter. I do believe, though, that the matter can be improved by the method.

From another letter I make the following selection:

My opinion is that we are attempting too much in every field of educational effort. The child in the elementary school is not overtaught but is overburdened with subjects of study-some of questionable utility. The high-school pupil must round out a course of study-in name-and the result is mental shallowness with its attendant insufferable conceit. Even in college halls some students are attempting much and doing little. The thinker is becoming an almost unknown factor in the educational life of our pupils and

students. I doubt the power of the college student of today to think more vigorously and rightly than his brother of forty years ago. Let some of our extensive work give way for a little more intensive work. Let us in school life wisely recognize our limitations. We cannot do everything the crochety brains of some would-be reformer of school work may invent and we ought not so to attempt; but we can use better judgment in modifying our courses of study. We can recognize that to do a few things well and with power is better than to do many things with enervating result, and we can give greater force than we do to a just demand for more sympathetic and better trained teachers for our youth. Still another writes:

There has been such an improvement in the general work of the lower schools that it is difficult for a college president to answer your question categorically. The maladjustment of the curriculum to the child has been such that he has not gotten the full benefit of it in many cases. Method is useful simply in applying the curriculum to the child. Possibly we have had too much method in proportion to the curriculum. I think it is a fact that the boys and girls coming to college today are better developed all around than they were when I went to college.

From these extracts it will be seen that there is a difference of opinion in reference to this question even among those in high places, men who have perhaps the best opportunity to pass correct judgment upon the results obtained from our present system of training as compared with that of former years.

Probably no one of us would advise that we go back to the old course of study of thirty years ago. The course should contain something besides the three R's. There was need of elimination and enrichment. Elimination of some features of arithmetic, geography, and grammar that could well be spared, and the addition of other subjects that would be helpful in the training for good citizenship. The difficulty has been in many cases that there has been no elimination. The enrichment has come as an absolute addition to all that was included in the course before. This has resulted in an overcrowded course and pupils have been overburdened. They have acquired a smattering of many things and a thorough knowledge of no one subject. Worse than this, they have had no chance to form a habit of concentration or acquire the mental power that would enable them to take up the work of the higher departments in a satisfactory manner or grapple with the problems of life successfully. No course of study should contain so many branches that it will not permit of a program that allows a half-hour or more of quiet individual study for each pupil in the elementary grades and a longer period in the secondary school. But a small per cent. of our pupils enter upon a college course; less than half take up high-school work. Those who receive all their training in the elementary schools have a right to something besides the formal studies. They may be brought into touch with literature and become interested in a line of reading that will be of great value to them in the future. Through stories of our history told by the teacher or read in the grades they may be made better citizens and leave the school with a desire to know more of that history. They should have their eyes opened to some of the beauties of nature in this world that has been fitted up with such wisdom and beauty

for the home of man-especially the trees, plants, flowers, and birds to be found in their own neighborhood. All these things can be correlated with reading, geography, and language lessons.

What is needed is the right kind of teaching, as a friend said in a recent letter:

Every day's experience adds to the strength of my conviction that the crying need in our schoolrooms is better-trained teachers-those possessed of better scholarship, having a better understanding of child nature and able to devise and use sensible methods of teaching. An unwise teacher can plunge a child's mind into confusion and wreck, under any course of study, old or new. A child may be forced into the ranks of the mental incapables as well by the manner in which he is taught the "Three R's" as by making him "a Jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none," in an attempt to get through a course of study that a sensible adult would draw back from with alarm.

In one of the quotations which I read a few moments ago the writer makes this statement: "The great difficulty we find with the students when they come to us is that they do not think for themselves," and he further says he believes it to be due to the fact that teachers now do a great deal for their pupils which formerly the pupils were obliged to do for themselves.

The same complaint comes from other sources. Dr. Greenwood, in the last number of the Southern Educational Review, writes:

I believe one of the most serious defects in our entire educational system from the nursery through the post-graduate work in our best universities is that the teachers and professors carry too much of the loads for the learners, that they explain and direct and lift the learners over too many hard places. The pupils are slided over the hard places so easily that they really do not get hold of anything thoroughly enough to understand it.

Says the same writer: "The American teachers do not only the thinking, but very nearly all the work for the pupils, as compared with the European teachers.'

To what extent this may be due to the multiplicity of branches and refinement of methods it is difficult to determine. It may be that, having a large amount of work to cover, and being anxious to advance as many of the pupils as possible, the teacher finds it easier and quicker to lift them over the hard places than to allow them the time necessary to dig out the problems and do the work for themselves. No greater mistake could be made.. Unfortunately, many students seem willing to be carried, and it is greatly to be deplored that so many helps are available.

Some of you may have noticed a catalog of a publishing firm that has been distributed broadcast throughout the country, with a view of reaching as many students in secondary schools and colleges as possible, advertising handy, literal translations and interlinear translations of all the classics used in high school and college, with the statement that a literal translation is a convenient and legitimate help. Students who rely upon these helps make a most grievous mistake. No student ever learns the Greek or Latin language from an interlinear translation.

Dr. Greenwood well says on this point: "The 'pony' is the worst possible mount for the youthful traveler toward the mountain-tops of knowledge."

The same catalog calls attention to commencement parts and efforts for all conceivable occasions, ready-made for the student's use. Under such conditions, the teacher has a hard task to secure original work.

Let me say in conclusion, the study-hour is as important as the recitation period. Any course of study that does not allow a sufficient amount of time for both study and recitation is overcrowded and has been too much enriched. The teacher should make every effort so to arrange the program that the pupils will have a fair opportunity for individual study, and they should be advised, encouraged, and obliged, if need be, to do their own work. One of the most valuable results that can come to our boys and girls from their training in the elementary and secondary schools and colleges is the ability to focus the attention upon one subject for a considerable period of time and the power of clear and rational thinking.

One of our poets has well said:

I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt
If one be better with them or without,—
Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
Knows the high art of what and how to read;
At learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
'Tis wise to learn; 'tis god-like to create!

ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT AND STUDIES SUITED TO EACH STAGE

WILLIAM E. CHANCELLOR, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, DISTRICT OF

COLUMBIA

If everything in the world is well enough, why not build a lodge in the wilderness, and be happy? But if all is not well, why not take a little innocent recreation in the way of reform, beginning with that profitable surgical carpentry of plucking the beam out of one's own eye?

For several years past, in the occasional quarter-hours that I have been able to devote to thought and work in education as such, I have been trying to resolve certain difficulties in the relations of the educational world to the society that environs and supports it. I have been asked and am asked these questions:

1. Why does not formal education always educate ?

2. Why do children leave school, or why are they taken from school, before they are educated?

3. Why do so many men and women criticize, distrust, censure, or reject education as it is for not being genuinely what it purports to be?