TWO PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION. 585 



TWO CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION". 



By Professor PAUL H. HANUS, 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



^THWO of the important problems that the contemporary interest 

 J- in education has brought prominently before the public are 

 1. What shall we do about the elective system of studies which is daily 

 extending its sway over schools and colleges throughout the 

 country? and II. How shall we bridge the gap between the high school 

 and the lower grades; i. c, how shall we minimize the waste in the 

 pupil's school education, and make his entire school career serve con- 

 tinuously and progressively — as it should — his gradually expanding 

 interests, needs, powers, and duties? 



It is well known that even those secondary schools and colleges 

 which do not recognize electives, as such, and cling to 'courses of study,' 

 permit not merely a choice between different 'courses,' but they also, 

 usually, permit substitutions of studies in one 'course' for studies in 

 another; so that, really, if not nominally, a considerable range of 

 choice, or election of studies, is permitted in most secondary schools 

 and colleges nearly everywhere throughout the country. 



Both experience and observation seem to justify this wide- 

 spread adoption of the elective system, in some form, in secondary 

 schools and colleges. During the years of secondary school and col- 

 lege education the pupil passes through the important stage of adoles- 

 cence and youth. He emerges from childhood to manhood. During 

 these years he may be, and should lie. led to self-revelation, and he should 

 be aided to organize his mental life in accordance with his dominant 

 interests and capacities, both for vocational and extra- vocational 

 activities. After an individual's interests have emerged distinctly, all 

 voluntary effort is reserved for his preferences; and that achievement 

 is most productive when it is based on interests and capacity, 

 need not be argued. Daily experience proves that an individual's 

 dominant interests ultimately determine the extent of his private and 

 public usefulness and the sources of his pleasures — that, in short, they 

 determine the richness or the poverty of his life, in the broadest 

 sense of those words. 



If this be admitted, the importance of discovering and cultivating 

 a youth's dominant interests is apparent. He should, therefore, choose 



