42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Of first importance among the causes of waste is the lack of coordi- 

 nation between the separate parts of our organization. Until recently 

 the requirements which the college has made upon the high school have 

 not been based upon any comprehensive view of the increasing scope 

 and of the methods of secondary education. College courses have not 

 been built upon the work of the high school. College instructors have 

 failed to utilize some of the training which the student has received, and 

 have complained loudly over the lack of what they have assumed a high 

 school ought to give. An attitude of superior wisdom has furnished a 

 cloak by which college instructors have concealed their ignorance of edu- 

 cational theory and practise. But with the changed attitude on the part 

 of the high-school teachers from that of complaisant acquiescence to col- 

 lege domination to one of bumptious officiousness, we have suddenly 

 come upon a situation that is full of promise for increased efficiency 

 through better understanding. A new and strange spectacle in educa- 

 tional history was presented last year when the University of Chicago 

 invited secondary-school teachers to visit its class-rooms for a period of 

 several weeks, and based a two days' series of departmental and general 

 conferences upon a critical discussion by these teachers of the methods 

 of the university class-rooms. Another important step is being taken 

 this year in the visitation by junior college instructors of high-school 

 classes in Chicago and near-by towns, not in a perfunctory manner for 

 an hour or two, but for successive days. It is safe to say that we shall 

 soon be able to avoid no small waste at this point, due to a lack of 

 knowledge and appreciation on the part of both school and college in- 

 structors of the work done on the opposite sides of the arbitrary line 

 which has separated them. 



But lack of coordination and the waste incident thereto is not found 

 alone at the point of transition from high school to college ; it is equally 

 marked between the elementary school and the high school. The 

 ignorance of the methods and content of high-school courses displayed 

 by college instructors is, if possible, exceeded by the lack of definite 

 knowledge displayed by high-school instructors of what goes on in the 

 grades below. The abrupt change from the class-room organization of 

 the elementary school with the careful supervision of the pupil's study 

 to the departmental organization of the high school where so much 

 emphasis has been placed upon home study and so little attention has 

 been given to the method of the pupil's study, together with the sudden 

 introduction of the pupil to so many new subjects, has been responsible 

 in no small degree for the enormous percentage of failure and elimina- 

 tion in the early part of the high-school course. Again a prolific source 

 of waste is found in the lack of correlation between different depart- 

 ments, particularly in the high school, of which a more detailed discus- 

 sion will be given later. 



Another source of waste is found in the character and training of 



