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most ignorant person in the community; he is at the mercy of his environment, and, instead of being able to take hold of conditions and shape them so as to make them serve him, he must stand helpless until he has mastered those things which the school has failed to teach him. This is true not only of the graduate of the college; it is also true of the graduate of the professional school. The fact that the graduate of the law school or of the school of medicine has to go through a starving period is abundant evidence that these schools are not as practical as they should be. They may give practical information, but they do not give sufficient opportunity for the organization and application of that information.

This leads us to another important truth that we have overlooked heretofore in our school work: The question of effectiveness or efficiency in education is not solved when we have arranged the right kind of a course of study. There seems to be an idea in the minds of some that when we have filled our course of study with practical subjects we have nothing else to do. Some seem to think that, when we have eliminated the formal studies and have substituted for them bookkeeping, domestic science, manual training, and agriculture, there is nothing to do but to stand by and see the miracle wrought. As a matter of fact, however, the right kind of a course of study is but the beginning of the solution of the problem. Not only must the course of study be composed of practical subjects which meet the child's needs, but there must be opportunity in our school program for the other two steps in the educational process-the organization and the application of knowledge. The practical study may become as formal as the old-time cultural study, and will become so if the school program is not so arranged that the pupil will have time to organize what he has

learned and make application of it to his everyday needs. If such opportunity for organization and application had been insisted on heretofore, there would not be the present wide divergence between the work of the school and the pupil's needs. There would have been no such idea as knowledge for knowledge's sake.

It is true that some effort is being made to-day to give the pupil opportunity for the organization and application of his knowledge. The laboratory is supposed to be a place where the application is made of the knowledge acquired in the text; but its work has been and still is altogether too formal. The applications made are too artificial. The laboratory of the average school is not a place where a practical application is made of knowledge. In many places it is installed merely because the school authorities want to keep up with the times, and it is not organized on a broad enough basis to make a practical application of knowledge. It should be made, however, the center of school activities and organized on a large enough scale to make the practical test of all knowledge acquired in textbooks and from observation.

We do not mean that the equipment for such a laboratory must be purchased from a supply house. Some of it must be purchased that way; but such equipment is the least important. The playground is an important factor in testing information; but the best laboratory is the laboratory of the world, where the pupil comes in contact, not with artificial, man-made apparatus, and where there is a formal test made of knowledge, but with real conditions which the pupil must know when he leaves school and takes his place as an active citizen of the world. Conditions in the schools must be made such that there will not be the broad chasm between the school and practical life that there is to-day, but the two

must be brought together in such a way that one will shade off imperceptibly into the other.

TOPICS FOR REPORT AND INVESTIGATION

1. Teaching children to study.

2. The economy of time in education.

3. Interest and attention in teaching.
4. The training of the judgment.
5. The motivation of school work.

FURTHER READINGS

Betts, G. H. The Recitation. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Earhart, Lida B. Teaching Children to Study. Houghton Mifflin Co. Jones, O. M. Teaching Children to Study. Macmillan.

McMurry, Frank. How to Study and Teaching How to Study.

Macmillan.

Strayer and Norsworthy. How to Teach, pp. 34-54, 55-72, 104-125, 151-170, 220-234. Macmillan.

CHAPTER XV

EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENTS

HERE is little doubt that during the past twenty

THERE

five years there has been a large increase in the efficiency of our educational system. The schools are doing better work and they are better adapted to the needs of the children. There is better organization, a better curriculum, and better methods of instruction. However, while we are reasonably sure that much progress has been made, we have no means of knowing quantitatively the extent of such progress. We do not know how much more efficient our schools are in organization, in methods of instruction, or in the subject matter of their curricula. We have no means of knowing that the increase in the efficiency of the schools is proportionate to the increase in expenditure. We do not know how much more effective the school organization of to-day is than was that of the school of twenty-five years ago, nor do we know that this organization is better than some other that we might substitute for it. We do not know that the methods used are better than others that might be employed. In other words, we are working very much in the dark, and no doubt we should be very much surprised if we knew the facts in the case. Doubtless much of our pride and self-satisfaction would vanish if we knew just how far our educational program and procedure are below what they should be. We sometimes point with pride to this or that man or woman who has gone out from our schools, but we do not consider how much greater the success of such men and women would

have been had we employed better methods and a program of studies more adapted to their needs. It does not often occur to us that these men and women attained success in spite of what we did for them and not because of it, and we have nothing to say about the hundreds who have gone out from our schools unprepared to cope with the problems of the world. Almost any kind of a school will, in the course of several years, send out a few successful men and women. We should not, however, estimate the results of our work by the few, but by the many.

Then it is not enough for us to be able to point in twenty-five years to a few successful men and women who have gone out from our schools. It is too expensive a business to wait for twenty-five years to find out whether our work is a failure or not. Twenty-five years is a long time, and in that time those who go out from the schools have opportunity to come in contact with many things that will counteract the bad work we may have done, and, on the other hand, they have many opportunities to render void the good work we have done. One of the chief weaknesses of our educational system, and one that has permitted more downright fraud and covered up more incompetency than anything else, is the fact that we have not been able to evaluate our work at the time it is being done. Before our schools become the efficient institutions they should be and command the respect and confidence on the part of the public they should command, we must be able to evaluate our work from day to day. We must cease to talk in general terms as to the efficiency of the schools. When we say that we have an efficient school system, we must be able to give evidence to substantiate that fact. The measuring of school efficiency by personal opinion is one

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