EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY. 365 



he may be familiar with political discussions and able to make an 

 intelligent choice between candidates and policies. The imparting of 

 such knowledge to each individual is essential in a democratic nation,* 

 but it falls far short of the education needed to secure the highest 

 efficiency of each unit of society. Still less does it mean that wretched 

 travesty of education which would confine the work of the public schools 

 to those exercises in reading, writing and ciphering which will enable 

 a boy or a girl at the age of fourteen or earlier, to earn starvation wages 

 in a store or factory. Education for efficiency means all of these 

 things, but it means much more. It means the development of each 

 citizen first as an individual and second as a member of society. It 

 means bodies kept fit for service by appropriate exercise. It means that 

 each student shall be taught to use his hands deftly, to observe accu- 

 rately, to reason justly, to express himself clearly. It means that he 

 shall learn ' to live cleanly, happily and helpfully, Math those around 

 him ' ; that he shall learn to cooperate with his fellows for far-reaching 

 and far-distant ends; that he shall learn the everlasting truth of the 

 words uttered nearly two thousand years ago : ' No man liveth to him- 

 self ' and e Bear ye one another's burdens.' Such, I take it, is the goal 

 of American education. 



If this ideal of developing the highest individual and social effici- 

 ency of each citizen is the goal of American education, obviously the 

 curriculum of our schools becomes an object of extreme solicitude. 

 Particularly is this the case with the elementary schools, for these con- 

 tain over ninety per cent, of the children under instruction. During 

 the last quarter of a century a great movement for the reform of the 

 elementary curriculum has been gathering strength. The most prom- 

 inent characteristics of this movement would seem to be the devel- 

 opment of the imagination and the higher emotions through litera- 

 ture, and art, and music; the training of the body and the executive 

 powers of the mind through physical training, play and manual train- 

 ing ; and the introduction of the child to the sources of material wealth, 

 through the direct study of nature and of processes of manufacture. 

 At first the movement seems to have been founded on a psychological 

 basis. To-day the tendency is to seek a sociological foundation— to 

 adjust the child to his environment of man and of nature. 



At various times during the past ten or fifteen years, and particu- 

 larly during the past year, reactionary voices have been loudly raised 

 against the new education, and in favor of the old. Such was to be 

 expected. Eeactions follow inevitably in the wake of every reform, 

 political and social. Analysis will show that the reactionary tend- 

 encies in education arise from three chief sources: 



1. The demagogic contentions of selfish politicians who see that it 

 costs more money to teach the new subjects of the curriculum than the 

 old, and that thus a large proportion of the public revenue is diverted 



