366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from the field of political spoils. These are the men who have in- 

 vented the term ' fads and frills ' to designate art, manual training, 

 music and nature study. It must be theirs to learn that it will require 

 something more than a stupid alliteration to stem the tide of those 

 irresistible forces that are making the modern school the faithful 

 counterpart of the modern world and an adequate preparation for its 

 activities. The saving common-sense of the common people, when 

 deliberately appealed to, will always come to the rescue of the schools. 



2. The reactionary tendency is due in part to an extremely con- 

 servative element that still exists among the teaching force. For the 

 most part, teachers who are extremely conservative were themselves 

 brought up chiefly on the dry husks of a formal curriculum. They 

 find it difficult to learn and to teach the new subjects. They dislike 

 to be bothered by the assistance of special teachers. Accustomed to 

 mass work both in learning and in teaching, they regret the introduc- 

 tion into the school-room of arts which demand attention to individual 

 pupils. 



3. The reactionary tendency has its roots even among the more 

 progressive teachers in a vague feeling of disappointment and regret 

 that manual training, correlation and nature study have probably not 

 accomplished all that their enthusiastic advocates promised ten to 

 twenty years ago. 



The feeling of disappointment, we might say even of discontent, 

 among the more thoughtful and progressive teachers, is what might 

 have been anticipated. In the first place, public education has become 

 a much more difficult thing than it was half a century ago. It has 

 become more difficult for two reasons : 



1. Because of the constantly increasing migration of population 

 from the country to the cities. Children removed from rustic to urban 

 life lose that most valuable education which comes from the work and 

 the associations of the farm-yard and the fields. 



2. Because of the enormous increase in immigration from abroad, 

 and particularly because the character of the immigration has changed. 

 Up to the middle of the last century the majority of our immigrants 

 were of kindred blood with the American people and a large proportion 

 spoke our language. Gradually, however, the tide of immigration, 

 while swelling until it has now reached the enormous total of one 

 million a year, has shifted its chief sources from the shores of the 

 North and the Baltic Seas to the shores of the Mediterranean. The 

 peoples of southern Europe, illiterate, accustomed to tyranny, without 

 individual initiative, and habituated to a low standard of living, 

 huddle themselves together in our large cities and factory towns under 

 conditions inimical alike to morals, to physical well-being and to 

 intellectual advancement. Teachers have a good right to complain 

 that municipal authorities in permitting the over-crowding of immi- 



