an inner process and not an outward result, the obvious need is to organize that process. Up to the present the school authorities have been busy organizing knowledge, not education. The school program of to-day is made up of carefully distributed information among the successive stages of school work. We have yet to devise a system of activities of really educational significance. The laboratory method has been a step in that direction, but an immense amount of such organization, to make it consistent throughout, remains to be done in all departments of learning.

If the significant part of the educational process is in the act of putting the powers of the child in operation so as to automatically produce results that are physically and spiritually beneficial, then it may safely be said that the only educators worthy of the dynamic significance of the term are the kindergarten teachers, the manualtraining teachers, the drawing teachers, and the teachers of physical training. They are not concerned with the transmitting of information for its own sake. They preside over an activity, the performing, on the part of the pupil, of a set of actions which science and experience have shown to be of educational value to the child. They let nature do the rest.

When we have planned the exercises a boy has to perform with the dumb-bells, we know that he will be better off physiologically and that he has added some oxygen to his blood. We trust nature then. But we seem to lack a corresponding faith in nature and in the pupil's power to enrich his intellectual store by the mere fact of his performing a set of intellectual activities. Yet this is exactly what must be done if a system is to be devised that truly responds to present conceptions of education. The slogan should be: "Let us train and let knowledge take care of itself."

When a set of occupations has been devised that will train the spiritual possibilities stored in man, we shall have a system of education which will be the intellectual and ethical counterpart to the many systems devised for building up the human body. Strangely enough, although many nations claim to possess their own systems of physical education, none has so far organized a system of intellectual education; that is, a system of activities that will bring out the latent individual powers of the child, the adolescent, and the youth, with all its sequel of rightly obtained information.

Three other types of educators should be included with those just mentioned: The playground director, the boy scout leader, and the organizer of any of those happy devices for training children in the practice of citizenship and the golden rule, introduced in the public school by Mr. Gill and in reformatories by Mr. George. They also preside over an activity, and let nature do the rest. The superiority of their methods over those to which academic education still clings

is shown by the fact that the moment educators forget that their mission is to train and let knowledge take care of itself, the moment they think they ought to lay the stress on the result, rather than on the process itself—that is, the moment they think they ought to teach-the whole activity collapses, interest and life are gone, and the scheme soon shows unmistakable signs of sham and superficiality, which are as harmful to the moral character of the children as dogmatism is to their intellect.

A system of organized and correlated occupations should receive full recognition from the university. When we are ready to conceive and plan such a system, the problem before us will not be what kind of secondary schools we ought to have in order to fit them for the university, but rather what kind of university activities would be likely to continue, develop, and perfect the work begun at the lower educational agencies.

Free from the university bias, therefore, secondary education should be organized as a system of activities through which the pupil can not help but obtain by himself the information that we now pour into his mind through books and lectures. We will no longer entertain a quantitative view of the process; we will not ask the pupil what he knows, how much knowledge he has gained through the activities performed, any more than we measure the physical strength of the boy or girl with the perverse purpose of depriving the weaker of just the exercise they most need. We will trust nature this time and assume that any normal child performing the right kind of educational activities has necessarily gained the right kind of knowledge. Above all, we will not ask the child how much he has learned, because by so doing we put the teacher in the dangerous temptation to dogmatize, to give second-hand information by short cuts, to reach the goal of knowledge by timesaving and educationsaving devices. We have many of these at present. The very eagerness to teach exhibited by schools of any kind to-day stands in the way of real education and therefore of real teaching. Much has been said about faulty methods of teaching, but it has not been realized that it is university standards that have resulted in the organization of the very elements of dogmatism throughout the educational fabric. These elements are the textbook and the course of study, in the midst of which the free action of the conscientious. teacher is badly handicapped.

This paper could not possibly be considered a complete presentation of the subject if it did not include an exposé of the practical ways that might make possible the operation of such a system. Of course, it would be impossible to give here a complete program of the educational activities recommended. Yet it may be possible to indicate how, by shifting the conception of the essential part in the

process of education, the very instruments that now are put sometimes to the service of dogmatism may be turned into wonderful implements of intellectual freedom; how, to be more precise, the textbook, which, as already implicated, often enslaves the mind to the authority of the printed page, may be turned into a help, a guide, an instrument of freedom for the mind. The books of to-morrow are bound to be just the opposite of those of to-day. They will not be screens that keep the realities of the world away from the student and make him dispense with the observing, analyzing, comparing, thinking. They will be real connecting links between the child and the world of concrete things and phenomena. Such books will organize the seeing, the measuring, the comparing, the discovering by the pupil. They will not confine themselves to the laboratory as humble laboratory manuals do to-day. They will take the pupil to the museum and ask him to sketch, to describe, to compare, to induce. They will take him to the Brooklyn Bridge and ask him to make a pen picture of the crowd, or they will take the boy and girl to the country road, the city park, the seashore, and ask them to describe such and such light effects, such and such contrasts of form. The observational powers of the child will be directed, educated, trained. Such books will also place the student before the masterpieces of art, both of painting and music, and will drive from the observer whatever power is at his command according to his individual temperament.

They will serve as keys to other books. They will direct the pupils to certain pages of certain books where conflicting opinions appear on historic events; they will direct the intelligent observation of the young writer to the wealth of language stored under the dusty covers of literary masterpieces. They will serve as keys to understanding the pupil's own mind, feelings, and volitions through the introspection of his own self. Truly, there is no field of human learning where the child could not stand as man himself has stood before an unrevealed world. There is no avenue of life where the powers of the child could not be really educated in a nobler sense of the word. Unlimited possibilities lie before the editorial houses of to-morrow, as practically the whole present output of educational literature is waiting to be reshaped from the uninteresting, dogmatic, dead, and static way of the present day, to the suggestive, quickening, and dynamic way of to-morrow.

To be sure, there is much important knowledge that pupils can not possibly acquire themselves. But, as Dewey remarks, "this transmitted material is likely to be fruitful in just the degree in which it is conveyed in connection with these activities in which the pupils acquire something through their observation and reflections." Therefore, the business of the reformed textbook will be to inter

weave the transmitted information with the facts actually discovered by the pupil. Such books will therefore be something more than laboratory manuals, for they will bring together sets of facts wisely correlated with the activities engaging the pupil's observation, while in the humanistic arts they will open before the student lines of personal research and opportunities of self-expression.

In describing the textbook of to-morrow the idea has been to show what is meant by an education based on the organization of educational activities. No doubt such an education would not only "equip the child for life," but would enlarge the scope of human life itself. The present disadvantages of common education in regard to preparing the pupils for practical life are causing some reformers to blame the curriculum, on the ground that the kind of knowledge imparted by the average school of to-day is of little use in everyday life. Attention is therefore being directed to vocational activities as more apt to develop in the pupils the qualities that are at premium in the social market.

But, in order to make the school vital and real, it is not necessary to bring about a great change in the contents of the curriculum. It is the direction of its activities that makes all the difference. When education is interpreted in qualitative and functional terms, we fit the pupil for life, for we open his mind, enlarge his feelings, and train his will. He who as a boy has applied himself to the solution of the little problems that arise in the examining of a stone will perhaps be able as a business man to detect the causes of a rise in prices; he who discovers the important facts among irrelevant details or who affirms his faith in his judgment by having reached the truth by his own means is educating himself for life.

For the primary and secondary schools, promotion should be based on the real democratic principle of equality of opportunity. As it is now, no value is given to the possession of the qualities that really distinguish the worth of men, such as love of work, quickness of perception, ability to plan, to observe, to discriminate, power of invention, and originality of procedure. The training of these is the most legitimate purpose of education, particularly in the formative periods of life. The primary and secondary school should be the places where all these qualities should have an opportunity to play. The maximum training of these activities, within individual limitations, should be the only just and democratic basis for promotion. Present methods of promotion based on the ability to retain facts learned in books introduce an utterly artificial standard only attainable by a minority. Such methods, therefore, can never be the basis of a democratic education in the true sense of the word. We see, therefore, that the method of education which emphasizes knowledge-getting as the chief condition of continuance in school is

by its very nature incompatible with the idea of a secondary school devoted to the education of all the people, simply because the process by which the secondary school eliminates the so-called unfit is an artificial one, founded on the ability of the candidate to bring the memory into play and to submit to an unnatural way of getting information. Such is the basic reason why the percentage of failures is so great. Failure in education has no meaning save as a reflection on the efficiency of educational methods. From the point of view of the education of the individual, the idea of failure is irreconcilable with the idea of education, just as it is irreconcilable with the idea of life. What is now called failure is the outcome of an attempt to submit all to process which only a few can successfully undergo.

An educational process, to be considered natural and therefore applicable to any normal being, has to be founded exclusively upon the fulfillment of such activities as are exercised with zest. This is the case with all activities that are of individual and social signifi

cance.

In the light of these considerations the question of the relations between the secondary school and the university has to be approached from a new angle. If the education conferred by the secondary school as defined above is the best that can be conceived; if such kind of education is sure to develop the pupil's qualities to the highest degree, it behooves the university to accept the new standards thus introduced by the secondary school in the field of education and to measure educational values in terms of activity instead of in terms of information. Assuming that the university is to be the place where only the best-equipped are allowed to enter, it devolves upon the university so to frame requirements for admission that only the best products of the secondary school can find a ready access to it. Furthermore, by accepting the secondary school standards instead of forcing its own, the university would render a further service to the cause of education by indorsing and consecrating, as it were, the new educational ideals. It is also evident that by enhancing the educational value of the qualities the world prizes most, those qualities the possession of which increases human efficiency in every walk of life, the university will be sure to assemble a selected student body, better equipped, than ever before for the pursuit of professional careers.

Just as in the Army, entrance requirements are founded on the degree in which the candidate shows he possesses the physical qualities that are necessary to an efficient soldier, so the university should accept from the secondary schools only those graduates whose mental and moral equipment indicates a high type of professional