TWO PROBLEMS IX EDUCATION. 589 



appeal to him. Under most circumstances one year is enough — and it 

 is not too much — to ascertain whether a study does, or does not, really 

 challenge a youth's interest and capacity. Hence, to answer the second 

 of the two questions just proposed, first, I should say that, in general, 

 after a pupil has made his choice of a study, he should he required to 

 ] 1 111 sue it for a year. As to the first question, namely, What studies 

 shall be prescribed for all? it seems to me clear that no youth should 

 be allowed, through ignorance or caprice, to cut himself off from any 

 one of the great sources of human inspiration and guidance. If we 

 could rely on having a varied and substantial program of studies dur- 

 ing the pre-high-school years, some of the prescriptions I am about to 

 suggest might well be omitted: notably the mathematics. But as long 

 as the pre-high-school grades, even those immediately preceding the 

 high-school grades, cannot yet be seriously regarded as the beginning 

 of high-school education in most school systems — among them some of 

 the best in the country — in order to guard against the blindness of 

 ignorance when pupils come up to the high school, it is necessary to 

 insist on a considerable amount of prescription. 



I would, therefore, prescribe for every non-collegiate pupil, during 

 his secondary school career, at least one year of the study of his mother 

 tongue, giving most of the time to literature with its inspiring and 

 guiding influence-: at least one year of science, so taught as to show 

 the pupil how man is coming to master nature by understanding her, 

 and at the same time, also, how completely one who knows nothing of 

 natural science is cut off from participation in some of the most inter- 

 esting, profound and far-reaching problems of contemporary thought; 

 one year of a modern foreign language, through which he may learn to 

 appreciate fully his mother tongue, and through which at the same time 

 he may widen his mental horizon so as to include ultimately the litera- 

 ture, the institutional life, the ideals in a word, the intellectual re- 

 sources of another modern nation besides his own; one year of history- 

 English or American — so taught as to show the meaning of democratic 

 institutions and the means of safeguarding and improving them. If 

 American history is prescribed, I would have it so taught as to fill the 

 pupil's mind with the most important truths about what his country 

 is, and what it really stands for; not glossing over its past and present 

 defects and unduly exalting its merits, hut bringing into strong relief 

 our worthiest political ideals, and laying special emphasis on the lesson 

 that the approximate realization of worthy political ideals has always 

 been and still is possible only through the intelligent participation of 

 citizens in public affairs, not primarily as office holders, but still more 

 as alert and active private citizens; to do this, not so much by didactic 

 instruction or exhortation, as by the inevitable logic of events skil- 

 fully portrayed; I would prescribe, further, one year of the history of 



