THE HIGH SCHOOL COURSE 29 



graduate who has a training worth while in the conduct of life is also 

 well fitted to enter college for further training. In general, too, the 

 high school must consider its individual students. A well-rounded 

 training for one is a very lop-sided discipline for another, and the 

 development of special interests must not be overlooked. For these 

 reasons a considerable range of choice is necessary in a good high 

 school. This does not, however, imply an elective system such as the 

 colleges have found necessary. In an ideal high school system the elec- 

 tion should be mainly in the hands of the teachers. But at the same 

 time the wise teacher makes sure that the student maintains a con- 

 tinuous interest in something. The lack of such sustained interest is 

 the main reason why most of the boys drop out of the high school to 

 get where they will be doing something dealing with things, not words. 



It is clear that even yet with all the advances or encroachments the 

 sciences have made, the study of words still fills too large a part in 

 our secondary schools. The traditional college education was a train- 

 ing in words. It is easier and cheaper to teach language than anything 

 else. The average child learns words by rote, while other subjects 

 demand a more complex method, and the tendency is to fill the child 

 with words regardless of the dyspepsia and disgust the abnormal diet 

 may produce. 



In my judgment, with the average student and especially the 

 average young man, some study of natural science ought to go with 

 every year in the school. The child is surrounded by a world of actuali- 

 ties, each producing a definite effect on his senses. In an out-of-door 

 world, he recognizes that external things are real. He knows that the 

 sun rises in the east, and he soon learns the various phases of woodcraft 

 and fieldcraft — how to comport himself in the presence of realities. 

 The constancy in these relations gives to him a kind of moral training, 

 and the knowledge he obtains he wins at first hand. It is acquired in 

 terms of his own experience and in such terms all real and helpful 

 knowledge must always be stated. 



In our cities we can not replace the training of the farm, the knowl- 

 edge of the woods and hills, but we can continue to give in some degree, 

 the essential part of it — contact with realities and extension of knowl- 

 edge in terms of experience. This is through real contact with animals, 

 plants, rocks, chemical compounds and physical instruments, and a 

 well-conducted scientific laboratory has the same value as out-of-doors 

 experience, with the great addition that it can be made systematic and 

 therefore effective for power. The value of genuine nature study, study 

 of science in out-of-door laboratories is of the very highest order. Not 

 so the imitation nature-study, the study of sentimentalisms about nature, 

 of nature words smothered in painted adjectives, now popular in some 

 quarters. Of still less value are the nature books written as pot- 



