3o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



have been taught how to work, how to concentrate themselves upon a 

 task, how to get pleasure from the mere act of doing thoroughly and 

 well. It would be a race of studious and inventive workmen, of pro- 

 gressive business men and of enlightened citizens ; for they would have 

 tasted the delight which comes with the use of the acquisitive faculties, 

 with nimbleness of wit, ingenuity of thought and adaptation of means 

 to ends. It would be a race of self-reliant and self-respecting artisans, 

 traders and individuals; for they would have been shown the enormous 

 significance of the ego, who makes his own career and who, if he will, 

 can make that career of tremendous importance to his day and gen- 

 eration. 



Such a diminution in the size of classes, such an insistence upon 

 supreme fitness in the teacher, will add incalculably to the cost of pub- 

 lic education, through doubling the number of teachers and through 

 doubling or trebling their pay; for present salaries will not warrant 

 such a professional training as the new education demands. From the 

 industrial standpoint alone, however, this added expenditure would pay 

 vast dividends. There is frightful waste of power in the burning of 

 coal to run a locomotive; but it is as nothing to the waste in the in- 

 dustrial world in the attempted utilization of human power. Ill- 

 health, low physical force, untimely death, intemperance, vice, crime, 

 manual inefficiency, stupidity, lack of interest, shirking — all these and 

 many other human failings continually clog and stop the industrial 

 machine, so that it would scarcely be an exaggeration to place the ef- 

 fective power of the millions engaged in gainful occupations at one 

 tenth of what it should be. If by proper schooling this efficiency 

 could be doubled — and it is reasonable to say that it could be much 

 more than doubled — how infinitely would such a gain outweigh the 

 added cost of a rational public education. 



No startling changes are necessary in the free school system. Its 

 general plan is admirably suited to American conditions. It needs 

 but to be altered in this detail and in that, in the expansion of this 

 principle and in the suppression of that practise. We must, however, 

 do away with the curse of uniformity, allowing, instead, full play to 

 individuality; we must, furthermore, fit the means and methods of the 

 school to the real needs of the future worker and citizen; and we must, 

 in addition, make the profession of teaching self-respecting by releasing 

 it from its present bondage to amateurs, to well-intentioned but inex- 

 pert school boards who are jauntily settling pedagogical problems that 

 appall trained experts. The teachers, if they are to teach from them- 

 selves instead of from prescribed text-books, must have a larger share 

 in the control and development of schools and must be so trained and 

 stimulated as to be fit to assume that larger share. Not elaborate 

 buildings, or reformed courses of study, or wiser supervision will, of 



