DEMOCRATIC CULTURE 281 



will vary with the hereditary endowment, age, and 

 probable social destiny of the child. In a democratic 

 country likely to become more, rather than less, demo- 

 cratic, those subjects will naturally be taught which 

 have vital connection with the people's welfare and 

 progress in civilization. At the same time the method 

 of instruction will be less dogmatic and more in- 

 clined (under a free than under an absolute govern- 

 ment) to evoke the child's powers of individual judg- 

 ment ; arbitrary discipline must yield gradually to 

 self-discipline. The changes here indicated as de- 

 sirable are already well under way in America. As 

 regards types of educational institution, it is signifi- 

 cant that America about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century introduced the Miltonic, nonconformist 

 Academy, with its science curriculum, in place of 

 the traditional Latin grammar school. Later the 

 American high school, institutions of which type now 

 have over a million pupils, and teach science by the 

 heuristic laboratory method, became the popular form 

 of secondary school. It is, likewise, not without 

 social significance that the Kindergarten was sup- 

 pressed in Prussia after the revolt of the people in 

 the middle of the nineteenth century, and that it 

 found a more congenial home in a democratic coun- 

 try. Its educational ideal of developing self-activity 

 without losing sight of the need of social adapta- 

 tion finds its corollary in systematic teaching of the 

 sciences in relation both to the daily work and to 

 their historical and cultural antecedents. 



