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was left out of sight, except as mathematics gave the general conditions of all nature-the structure of time and space.

The private secondary school, therefore, in the last generation slighted history, modern literature, natural science, and sociology. The public high school undertook to develop these important sides of a rounded education and succeeded in a measure. But it was obliged to adopt another course of study for its pupils fitting for college. Hence there arose a general or English course, and a classical course.

I have compared the classical course of study to a palm tree which first builds a tall stem and then suddenly expands into foliage at the top. So the preparatory school and the college required six years (four in the preparatory and two in college) to be devoted almost exclusively to Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and then in the last two years of the college made a hasty survey of nature and modern literature and history, as a sort of finishing touch.

There is no doubt that the high school course laid out by the school committees is more rational than the secondary course of the private preparatory schools, prescribed for them by the colleges. And yet the college course was the conscious product of the highest educated minds of the community. The unconscious evolution by "natural selection" in the minds of school committees elected by the people was wiser on the whole. Individual members of city school boards are always found who oppose classical studies altogether. But the pressure of popular demand always prevails to secure in the public schools what is needed.

The difficulty in this case is that the high school pupil taking up all the five branches-mathematics, natural science, history, modern literature, Latin and Greek— in his four years, is not so far advanced in the classic languages as the special preparatory school, and does not compete with it on an equal footing. Special classical courses in the public high school are a costly experiment wherever carried on.

This produces what we may call a national disaster in our education, namely, the discouragement of pupils in high schools from taking up higher education. The public high schools, in proportion to their enrollment, send comparatively few to the colleges.

The disadvantages of this to the nation are great, for higher education even with a "palm-tree" course of study educates the majority of the real leaders of society. It might be supposed that those best versed in natural science would have this prestige, and doubtless natural science counts for much. But the classically educated man has advantages over all others. That this should be so may be seen by a brief consideration of the rationale of its course of study.

We have seen that there are needed five windows in the soul to see the five classes of objects in nature and humanity. Natural science relates chiefly to the organic and inorganic phases of nature but gives little insight into human nature. On the other hand language study, and especially literature, leads directly toward this knowledge of man that is essential to large directive power.

As to the dead languages, Latin and Greek, they are the tongues spoken by the two people who invented the two threads united in our modern civilization. The study of Greek puts one into the atmosphere of art, literature, and science, in which the people of Athens lived. This is the effect of Greek literature; it is also the effect of the mere language in its idioms and in its grammatical structure.

The study of Latin puts one similarly into the stern, self-sacrificing, political atmosphere of Rome. The Romans invented laws for the protection of life and private property, and also the forms of combination into corporations and city governments. To study Latin makes the pupil more attentive to, and conscious of, the side of his civilization that deals with combinations of men into social organizations.

No other ancient or modern language gives us anything of equal value for gaining an insight into the institutions under which we live, except the study of the Bible. The Hebrew thread of our civilization is still more important, because while the Roman secures civil freedom, and the Greek intellectual freedom and artistic taste,

the Hebrew oracles give us the revelation of the personality of God, the fountain of all freedom. For unless the absolute is a free personality, man's freedom must be all a temporary and abnormal affair; the iron fate which pantheism sees as the first principle will get the advantage after all.

We may see that the colleges ought to continue to lay chief stress on Latin, Greck, and mathematics as the studies that foster directive power, but they ought to add also the three moderns, natural science, modern literature, and history, incorporating them into the course throughout, so that the oak rather than the palm tree becomes the symbol of the curriculum.

This

By "directive power" is meant the influence that molds the actions of men. may be exercised not only by the military, political, or the industrial leader, but by the lone scholar who publishes great discoveries to the world; by the editors of periodicals, by the orators, preachers, and teachers, and especially by the poets and literary men.

There has been a process of adjustment going on in higher education in several directions, especially since 1870. First, an elevation of the standard of admission took place, chiefly brought about by the action of Harvard College. Secondly, an extension of the scope of elective studies as a consequence of the raised standard which now brought the freshmen class nearly up to where the junior class had been. Thirdly, the requirements for admission began to be more varied and to require something of English literature and a modern language, with some natural science and history; but much more Latin and Greek.

Had the Latin and Greek requirements remained the same, the new standard of admission would have fitted the course of study of the public high school, and the problem would have been solved. As it is now, the situation of the high school as a feeder for the college is worse than before 1870. Then the classical requirements for graduation at the high school would admit the students to college, while the collateral branches of history, science, and English literature that he had begun in the high school gave him greater apperceptive power, or greater ability to grasp the practical application of what he had learned.

Is it not a mistake that higher education has made in trying to lengthen the school life of youth by increasing the length of the secondary school course? Is it not far better to take the student into college at 16 or 18 years of age, and after the course of study that leads him to see the unity of human learning take him into a postgraduate course that teaches him how to specialize and pursue lines of original investigation in the laboratory or seminary?

This radical question is now in a fair way to be answered rationally; for this report of the committee of ten will lead to such investigations of the educational value of secondary branches and methods of instruction as will put us in possession of accurate knowledge in regard to the nature and limits of elementary, secondary, and higher education. We shall learn the fitting age for each and not, as heretofore, esteem it an advantage to hold back the pupil as long as possible in the elementary and secondary courses under plea of securing greater thoroughness. We shall understand that the elementary methods are of necessity too mechanical to be used to advantage beyond the fourteenth year, while the secondary methods consist too much of copying styles and classic forms, in aping modes of work and habits of thinking, to be continued to advantage beyond the eighteenth year. We shall know better than we do now what is fitting for each age and period. With this we shall enter on a new and more scientific epoch of educational theory and practice.

THE UNITY OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM.1

BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, President of Harvard University.

The report of the committee of ten has now been in the hands of the teachers of the country for about six months, so that there has been time to formulate and publish some criticism and objections. I propose to comment in this paper on one criticism or objection which in various forms and by several different persons has been brought before the educational public. Whenever I speak of the report I intend to include the reports of the conferences as well as the proper report of the committee of ten, for the chief value of the total report lies in the conference reports.

The objection to the report which I shall discuss is contained in the question, "What do college men know about schools?" Those who urge this objection say in substance," More than half the members of the conferences were at the moment in the service of colleges and universities, and the same was true of the committee of ten. The wise management of schools for children of from 6 to 18 years of age is a different business from the wise management of colleges and universities. Not only is the age of the pupils different, but their mode of life and the discipline they need are also different. The mental capacity of young children is low compared with that of college students; their wills are weaker, and their moral qualities undeveloped. How can men who teach and govern young people from 18 to 24 years of age know anything about schools for children? Let them attend to the higher education and not attempt to teach experts in elementary and secondary education how to conduct their very different business. That a man has succeeded in conducting a college or a university makes it altogether probable that his advice will be worthless as to the best mode of conducting a school or a system of schools. We school superintendents and principals have to handle masses of average material; your college and university teacher has only a small number of exceptional individuals to deal with."

To meet this objection I wish to affirm and illustrate the proposition that the chief principles and objects of modern educational reform are quite the same from beginning to end of that long course of education which extends from the fifth or sixth to the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year of life. The phrase "educational construction" would perhaps be better than the phrase "educational reform;" for in our day and country we are really constructing all the methods of universal democratic education. We seldom realize how very recent and novel an undertaking this educational construction is. As a force in the world universal education does not go behind this century in any land. It does not go back more than twenty years in such a civilized country as France. It dates from 1871 in England. Plato maintained that the producing or industrial classes needed no education; and it is hardly more than a hundred years since this Platonic doctrine began to be seriously questioned by social philosophers. It is not true yet that education is universal even in our own land; and in all lands educational practice lags far behind educational theory. In this process of educational construction, so new, so strange, so hopeful, I believe that the chief principles and objects are the same from the kindergarten through the university, and therefore I maintain that school teachers ought to understand and sympathize with university reform and progress, and that college and university teachers ought to comprehend and aid school reform and progress. Let us review together those chief principles and objects, although in so doing I shall necessarily repeat some things I have often said before.

I. The first of these objects is the promotion of individual instruction—that is, the addressing of instruction to the individual pupil rather than to groups or classes. At present the kindergarten and the university best illustrate the progress of this

A paper read before the American Institute of Instruction at Bethlehem, N. H., July 11, 1894. Reprinted from the Educational Review, October, 1894.

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reform; but the beneficent tendency is clearly exhibited all along the line. In elementary and secondary schools the effort is constantly made to diminish the number of pupils assigned to one teacher; and in some fortunate secondary schools the proportion of pupils to teachers has already been intentionally made as favorable as it has incidentally become in the most prosperous universities which have been adding rapidly to their advanced courses of instruction. In urban school systems the number of pupils assigned to a teacher is recognized as the fundamental fact which determines better than any other single fact the quality and rank of cach system among those with which it may be properly compared. Into the curricula of schools and colleges alike certain new matters have of late years been introduced for teaching which the older methods of instruction—namely, the lecture and the recitationproved to be inadequate or even totally inapplicable. These new matters are chiefly object lessons in color and form, drawing and modeling, natural sciences like botany, zoology, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, and geology, and various kinds of manual training. In school and college alike the really effective teaching in all these subjects is that which is addressed to each individual pupil. All laboratory and machine-shop teaching has this character, no matter what the subject. The old-fashioned method of teaching science by means of illustrated books and demonstrative lectures has been superseded from the kindergarten through the university by the laboratory method, in which each pupil, no matter whether he be 3 years old or 23, works with his own hands and is taught to use his own senses. General explanations and directions may be given a class; but in the laboratory each individual's work must be separately supervised and criticised. There is nothing more individual than a laboratory notebook. In all laboratory and machine-shop work the rates of progress of different pupils vary widely. Quicker eyes, defter hands, greater zeal, and better judgment will tell, and the teacher has every opportunity to discover the natural gifts or defects of the different pupils and to develop the peculiar capacity of each mind. All the artistic subjects, as well as all the scientific, require individual instruction. In drawing, painting, and modeling the instruction is, of necessity, individualized. It is one of the best results of the introduction of manual training that each pupil must receive individual criticism and guidance. The instructor is compelled to deal with each pupil by himself and to carry each forward at his own rate of speed. In short, manual training breaks up class-room routine and introduces diversity of achievement in place of uniform attainment. I say that this principle applics all the way from the kindergarten to the professional school. It applies conspicuously in medical instruction; and within twenty-five years it has been there applied so successfully that it is no exaggeration to say that within this period the whole method of teaching medicine has been revolutionized throughout the United States. It is now universally recognized that it is impossible to teach medicine and surgery to large numbers of persons simultaneously by general descriptions, or by the use of diagrams, pictures, or lantern slides which many can see at once. Not that illustrated lectures and general demonstrations are wholly useless; but they hold only a subordinate place. The really important thing is individual personal instruction under circumstances which permit the student to sce and touch for himself, and then to make his own record and draw his own inferences. Finally, the highest type of university teaching-the so-called seminary or conference method-is emphatically individual instruction.

It is hard to say at what stage of education from the primary grade to the final university grade the individualization of instruction is most important. The truth is that the principle applies with equal force all along the line. For the university president, the school superintendent, and the kindergartner alike it should be the steady aim and the central principle of educational policy; and whoever understands the principle and its applications at any one grade understands them for all grades.

II. Secondly, let me ask your attention to six essential constituents of all worthy education-constituents which in my opinion make part of the educational process from first to last, in every year and at every stage-and let me ask you particularly to consider which of these constituents belong to schools but not to colleges, or to colleges, but not to schools.

The first constituent is the careful training of the organs of sense, through which we get incessant and infinitely diversified communications with the external world, including in that phrase the whole inanimate and animate creation with all human monuments and records. Through the gate of accurate observation come all kinds of knowledge and experience. The little child must learn to see with precision the forms of letters, to hear exactly the sounds of words and phrases, and by touch to discriminate between wet and dry, hot and cold, smooth and rough. The organs of sense are not for scientific uses chiefly; all ordinary knowledge for practical purposes comes through them, and language, too, with all which language implies and renders possible. Then comes practice in grouping and comparing different sensations or contacts, and in drawing inferences from such comparisons-practice which is indispensable in every field of knowledge. Next comes training in making a record of the observation, the comparison, or the grouping. This record may obviously be made either in the memory or in written form; but practice in making accurate records there must be in all effective education. Fourthly comes training of the memory, or, in other words, practice in holding in the mind the records of observations, groupings, and comparisons. Fifthly comes training in the power of expression-in clear, concise exposition, and in argument or the logical setting forth of a process of reasoning. This training in the logical development of a reasoning process is almost the consummation of education; but there is one other essential constituent, namely, the steady inculcation of those supreme ideals through which the human race is uplifted and ennobled-the ideas of beauty, honor, duty, and love.

These six I believe to be essential constituents of education in the highest sense. We must learn to see straight and clear; to compare and infer; to make an accurate record; to remember; to express our thought with precision; and to hold fast lofty ideals. The processes I have described as separate often take place in the mind so rapidly that they, or some of them, seem to us simultaneous. Thus, intelligent conversation involves observation, comparison, record, memory, and expression, all in a flash. But if these be constituents of education, is not education a continuous process of one nature from beginning to end? Are not these six constituents to be simultaneously and continuously developed from earliest childhood to maturity? The child of 5 years should begin to think clearly and justly, and he should begin to know what love and duty mean; and the mature man of 25 should still be training his powers of observing, comparing, recording, and expressing. The aims and the fundamental methods at all stages of education should therefore be essentially the same; because the essential constituents of education are the same at all stages. The grammar school pupil is trying to do the same kinds of things which the high school pupil is trying to do, though, of course, with less developed powers. The high school pupil has the same intellectual needs which the university student feels. The development of a mind may be compared with the development of a plant-it proceeds simultaneously and continuously through all its parts without break or convulsion. If at any stage there seems to be a sudden leafing or blooming, the suddenness is only apparent. Leaf and bloom had long been prepared-both were enfolded in last year's bud. From first to last, it is the teacher's more important function to make the pupil think accurately and express his thought with precision and force; and in this respect the function of the primary school teacher is not different in essence from that of the teacher of law, medicine, theology, or engineering.

III. A considerable change in the methods of education has been determined during the past twenty-five years by the general recognition of the principle that effect

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