human knowledge increased beyond measure and man's power to produce food, clothing, and shelter grew correspondingly. But more important than even the industrial revolution which his new-found power produced, his new riches in food and leisure have given man opportunity for thought, for knowing himself, for individual development. The growth of democracy has paralleled man's material prosperity. The emancipation of man from poverty has meant an increase in the number of children educated, and each increase in education has meant both an increase in production and in the demand for a share in the control of the benefits from production.

Modern tendencies in education are attempts to modify educational procedure to meet the need of a growing democratic spirit. They date from Rousseau. "From the point of view of Rousseau's predecessors, who, seeking always the 'man in the child,' found in it always an immature and foolish sort of creature, nothing could be more reasonable, and indeed more absolutely necessary, than for the teacher to substitute his own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling for the child's ways." The childish mind was looked upon as a blank sheet of paper whereon the teacher might inscribe what characters he pleased. Rousseau emphasized the development of the "natural" man. Little by little it came to be recognized that all human development and power spring from the possibilities innate in human beings and that growth depends more upon experience than instruction.

Dewey summarizes the story of educational development when he says: "The whole idea and scope of knowledge-getting in education has reflected the absence of a method of knowing, so that learning has meant, upon the whole, piling up, worshipping, and holding fast to what is handed down from the past with the title of knowledge. But the actual practice of knowing has finally reached a point where learning means discovery, not memorizing traditions; where knowledge is actively

constructed, not passively absorbed, and where men's beliefs must be openly recognized to be experimental in nature, involving hypothesis and testing through being set to work.”

Dewey's statement furnishes us criteria for judging our own work and for guiding us in the changes we must make to keep abreast of the times. Does our teaching emphasize knowledge as memorization, and learning as a process of acquisition, of conformity, of discipline? If so, we belong to the past. We are no longer profitable teachers. Year by year the educational tide will sweep by us and leave us farther and farther behind. The social needs of the time demand a very different type of education.

Consider, for instance, the criticisms of our present day civilization as expressed in our public press. It is difficult to pick up any paper or magazine which does not contain some reference to the inefficiency of governmental action. We make fun of our national congress, our state legislature, our municipal councils. We enlarge upon their lack of vision, their general incompetency, and the narrow "personal-privilege" basis upon which matters of public business are settled. We consider we are making progress when any representative body carries on public business free from charges of graft, however ineffectively that business may be done. We vote against national ownership of the railroads, although we believe transportation is really a function of government, "because," we say, "we can't trust the politicians to manage so great an enterprise." Worse yet, by hundreds of thousands we do not even go to the polls to vote, and dismiss our pessimistic disbelief in democratic government with the cynical phrase, “What's the use?"

Reduced to their lowest terms these criticisms indicate two basic defects in our present educational results.

The first of these is the fact that boys and girls arrive at full citizenship without an adequate conception of the proper relationship between the individual and society;

or, in other terms, their lives are not organized around ideals of service to humanity. An efficient, democratic society is possible only when the individuals comprising it are willing to restrain such of their individualistic activities and desires as may operate against the public good, and are so loyal to the ideals of democracy that they will support and uphold those ideals even at the cost of great personal effort and self-sacrifice. The new education seeks to organize school work from the kindergarten through college in such a way that there may be the fullest, freest, highest development of the individual, and at the same time an adequate binding of the allegiance of the individual to the common purposes of his social group. The forward march of progress depends upon the maintenance of a moving equilibrium 'between these two great forces in human naturethe individualistic and socialistic tendencies. This is the supreme function of education, to which, year by year and day by day, every course of study, every class exercise must designedly and systematically contribute. For failure here means ultimately the disruption of democratic co-operative

government.

The second defect of education is that boys and girls arrive at full citizenship without sufficient practice and skill in selecting leaders, in supporting representatives, in assuming personal responsibilities, and in doing their full share individually in any co-operative enterprise. Our criticisms of our representatives are frank admissions that we as citizens are incompetent-that we do not know how to make proper use of the democratic machinery and opportunities which we possess. Theoretically, a representative government "of the people, by the people, for the people," completely responsible to the citizens and modifiable by them as need arises, ought to be an ideal government. Again and again in the upward struggle of humanity, men have given their life blood for the vision of that ideal, but practically there is no form of

government which makes such great demands upon its citizens, no government in which the sins and defects of its individual members are so quickly writ large in public action where he who runs may read. The second great function of education in a democracy, therefore, is to give to each individual not only the ideal of service, but actual experience in utilizing the machinery of social co-operation in achieving social purposes. Again, year by year and day by day, every school experience, every individual assignment of work must designedly and systematically contribute to the adequate upbuilding of skill in the use of our machinery for facilitating co-operation and avoiding conflicts.

It is to be regretted that ideals of service and skill in co-operation cannot be imparted by instruction. Our poets and men of vision have long ago put into words all that is essential for our prosperity and happiness, but daily living proves that mere knowledge of ideals is not enough. To be effective, these things must be bred in the bone by precept and experience through long periods of time. It took forty years of bitter experience in the wilderness to change the ideals of the Hebrew people from the flesh pots of Egypt to the monotheistic idealism which was their birthright. Even the genius of Moses could not make mere instruction produce the desired change. The new education has seized upon this fundamental truth and made experience the basis of method. Instruction has been dethroned and relegated to its proper place.

The school of experience is admittedly the greatest and most effective school of all, but nature is a slothful teacher. With infinite time and infinite material at her disposal she cares only for the perfection of the final product. Evolution is age long and wasteful. The function of the school is to short circuit the evolutionary process, to "speed up" natural learning, to advance the child as quickly as possible from savagery to civilization, and to do so with as little waste as possible.

It is not strange, therefore, that for many long years man paid little attention to method. It appeared so evident that the function of the school was to transmit the accumulated wisdom of the race to the oncoming generation that few thought of questioning the acquisition of knowledge as the aim of education. "Knowledge is power. Therefore the way to power is to study, memorize, acquire." In every age and in every race this fundamental mistake has been made.

In future ages, it is probable that the crowning achievement of the twentieth century will be taken as the solution of the twofold but related problems of aim and method in education. For just as the changing social order has more clearly defined the aim of education, so the change in aim has operated to direct attention to method.

In the days when society undertook to change children by force, memorization reigned supreme. With the decline of corporal punishment, however, teachers began to pay more attention to the preparation of the material to be learned. It was put into more logical arrangements, the doses were made smaller, there was more predigestion by the teacher. When the psychologists discovered the importance of interest in the learning process, teachers began to try to motivate school work. Motivation, as it is frequently understood to this day, was a kind of sugar-coating to the educational pill which would make swallowing pleasant and easy. But the growth of science and the study of the child have had their inevitable results. Scientific measurement has proved beyond the possible shadow of a doubt the hopeless inefficiency of any teacher-directed process of instruction. The

great fact of the specialization of the individual, and of the basic importance of the individual differences, has been brought clearly and forcibly to light. The growth of the ideals of democracy, and the need for social reconstruction have emphasized the socialization of school work. Most important of all, the psychological investigation of the actual process of learning in animals and man has born fruit in the clear formulation of the laws of learning. The new education is the result.

Today it is possible to summarize in very brief outline the whole of the upward struggle, readjust our viewpoint and map out the path of progress a long way ahead into the future. Education is the process of developing the individual and fitting him to play his part in his social group. The methods of education are two: experience and instruction.

Experience is the basic method of learning. Nothing can take its place. Its products are the stuff out of which individuality is built, out of which personality is made. It alone is the source of all power

Progress of Education in the Past

The Education of the Future Combining these four elements into a balanced and workable program

The project method is an attempt to construct such a balanced program. Its aim is to provide for the whole-hearted, purposeful activity of the individual in a social environment which shall at once provide for the acquisition by the individual of those basic experiences which are essential to the integration of his personality, and for the establishment of those social adjustments which must be made by every individual before he is fitted to take his place in a democratic society. The project method places the emphasis on self-activity, and defines the function of both teacher and instruction as assistance. Its power and efficiency comes from both the emphasis on the right aims and its use of the right methods.

The education of the future will stress growth in purposing, not growth in knowledge. Purpose proves to be the key to the solution of all educational problems. Not

only what a child does but why he does it is an important consideration. All our educational aims, all our educational material and textbooks, all our educational methods will need to be reconstructed in terms of purpose. We, ourselves, as teachers, are under the same necessity for self-reconstruction. We must develop the ability to stimulate in our charges the power to form of themselves, and to hold, worthy life-long purposes. We must learn how to assist our pupils to achieve the purposes they form, and above all we must find the way and the time when through instruction we may bring to our developing citizens that interpretation of their experiences which we know and cherish as American ideals. As the problems to be solved are many, so is the reward great. For upon our success or failure depends the success or failure of all that we value most in both the individual and in society.

IN

N colonial days the motive for elementary education was a religious one. The Puritans brought this ideal with them to New England and during colonial times. the three R's and the Bible constituted the curriculum of the elementary school. Although the motive for public-school education is no longer a religious one, and in spite of the fact that the elementary curriculum has expanded from three or four subjects in 1776 to seventeen or more in 1920, the teaching of the three R's still persists in the public mind as the fundamental purpose of the elementary school. While there is a growing feeling that the newer subjects which have to do with health, leisure time, and vocation are of very great importance in the development of a healthy, sane, cultured American citizen, still the public demands, and rightly demands, that the traditional tool-subjects of education be taught effectively. Are the elementary schools of today meeting this demand? Are the three R's as thoroughly taught in 1920 as they were in 1870? Can the pupils of today spell as well as their parents and grandparents of a generation or two ago?

The high-school teacher who receives the grammar-school graduate into his classes. will probably answer these questions in the negative. Teachers of mathematics and English are often very much dissatisfied with the ability displayed by those who enter the high school from the grades. Is this dissatisfaction justified by the facts? Let us examine the evidence.

In the first place a study of the history. study of the history of educational progress will reveal the fact

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that each generation of adults looks back with a feeling of regard and reverence to the educational methods of its own childhood days. Each generation views with suspicion the unfamiliar methods by which its own offspring climbs the educational ladder, and harks back to the good old methods which, in the evolution of educational procedure, have been abandoned.

The truth of the matter is that until very recent times we have had no accurate means of measuring the product of educational practice and hence no way of comparing the old results with the new. Fortunately we are now able to measure with considerable accuracy the product we are obtaining in spelling, handwriting, reading, and arithmetic. We know just what progress each pupil is making in these

subjects from year to year. While we have available for purposes of comparison only a small amount of data as to the results of the earlier instruction, nevertheless such data as we have point strongly to the fact that pupils of today are more efficient in all of the fundamentals than pupils of the same age and grade a generation or two ago. Recently Mr. S. A. Courtis brought to light a complete school survey made in Boston in 1845 including examination questions and tabulated results. Similar questions were submitted to pupils in various communities throughout the United States. The results show the marked superiority of the pupils of the present day in their power to deal intelligently with situations calling for thought and judgment. Over against this data we have only the personal opinions of various people who claim that the old time results were much