THE PREFACE NE of the most marked characteristics of this age is the gradual transformation that is taking place in our educational system. Not only are we gradually adapting the educational process to social demands, but we are, at the same time, adapting it to the needs of the child. The school of to-day is far in advance of what it was ten years ago, and the indications are that the next decade will see even greater progress in every phase of education. School men are studying educational problems more earnestly than ever before, and this study is already bringing a rich fruitage in a better understanding of child nature and of the means to be used in bringing about the complete and harmonious development of the child. To be sure, the conservatism of the school man and of others in charge of our educational system who have been educated under the old régime will, to a certain extent, impede educational progress and delay the practical application of the advance that has been made in educational theory; but, thanks to the progressiveness of the age and the reasonableness of the new educational principles, this conservatism is becoming less and less a factor to alarm us. The greatest danger we see ahead is that both the school man and the school-board member will get the form without the spirit of the new education. In many cases it is evident that the new educational principles appeal to school officials and others chiefly because of their practical tendencies (and here we use the term practical in its narrow, material sense). This has aroused bitter opposition on the part of those who believe in the old cultural phase of education and has caused them to cling to the old-time formal study with a greater tenacity than they otherwise would have done. To be specific, manual training and domestic science have been given a place in many schools because of their vocational value, and their cultural value has been lost sight of. As a matter of fact, the vocational value of these studies should not cause us to minimize their cultural value. For, by placing chief emphasis on the cultural phase of the practical study, we harmonize the practical and the cultural conception of education, and, by pacifying the extreme culturist, reduce to a minimum the time devoted to the purely cultural study. There should be no war between the two conceptions of education; for, if they are viewed in their proper light, there is no hostility between them. What is practical is cultural and what is cultural in the true sense of the term is also practical. The cultured man is not necessarily the man who has studied Sophocles, Euripides, and Horace; who is acquainted with graphs, convergent series, and Newton's laws, and is conversant with the lore of past ages; in fact, such a man may not be at all cultured in the proper sense of the term. The cultured man is the efficient man-the man who is acquainted with his physical, spiritual, and social environment and is able to influence conditions around him for the better. To get this conception of the educated man, we must follow not merely the letter but the spirit of the new education. Another great impediment to educational progress is our inability to break loose from the past in educational practice. The school man has been a slave to conventional pedagogy, and it is next to impossible for him to break away from the stereotyped manner of doing things. While he is, in many cases, in favor of progressive idea in education, he wants to absorb those ideas into the educational system as it is now organized. He wants to put the new wine into old bottles, when it is no more possible to put the new wine of progress into the old bottles of educational formalism than it was possible to put the living spirit of Christianity into the dead formalism of Judaism. The school as it is now organized is not adapted to the spirit of the new education. Its present organization is due to former conceptions of education, and when we change the spirit of education we must adapt the school organization to the new spirit. These new ideas cannot be tacked on to the old system, but they must permeate it through and through and cause its complete rejuvenation. Failure to grasp this important point has perhaps done more to impede educational progress than any other one thing. In pointing out what seems to us the weaknesses of the present educational system, we do so, not in a spirit of pessimism, for we believe that the outlook was never more encouraging than at present; but we do so to indicate the lines along which effort must be made if we would enter into the spirit of the new education. In fact, the defects of our educational system are so glaring that they are to us a source of great hope for a speedy reform. Many of the ideas expressed herein are familiar to students of educational thought of the times, but the extent to which these views have been accepted and applied varies widely. It is the belief of the authors that the various discussions contained in this book represent very definite and positive tendencies in education at the present time. Our object will be accomplished if this volume serves to make a little more accessible these modern views to the teachers in the ranks. It has been |