DETERMINING EDUCATIONAL VALUES 285 



complexity of society demand more and more subtle forms of treatment, 

 in order to cause justice to prevail among men, and at the same time 

 not to arrest the evolution of society. 



The layman usually feels mqre confident to give advice regarding 

 education than he does regarding medicine or legislation or even re- 

 ligion; and this is the chief cause of the vast amount of conflict over 

 teaching in these days. Those who are working on the inside, who may 

 be said to have the expert point of view, are introducing changes in 

 courses of study, in the methods of presenting subjects, and in the 

 modes of organizing and conducting school systems, which they think 

 are demanded in order to meet the changing conditions in the social 

 organism. New subjects are being added in the belief that they are 

 essential in order to give the pupil an appreciation of contemporary 

 life. It is seen that the conditions for which the school must prepare 

 its pupils are very different to-day from what they were fifty years ago ; 

 though the layman sometimes indicates his view of educational policy by 

 saying that "the little red school house produced the greatest men the 

 world has yet seen; and why not let good enough alone." He appar- 

 ently does not consider that these men may have attained their greatness 

 in spite of, or at least independent of, the school. As a matter of fact, 

 some of the most distinguished of these men were self-taught. 



The man immersed in affairs in his own field is apt not to take 

 account of the fact that knowledge, practical knowledge, is rapidly in- 

 creasing in many fields which were hardly opened up fifty years ago. 

 Everything affecting human welfare is becoming more complex; and 

 even if a relatively simple school regime a half-century ago was adapted 

 to the needs of men in those days, such a regime might be entirely 

 unsuited to the conditions of to-day. The student of education sees 

 what has happened to society in the countries of the old world in which 

 the school has kept to the simple, traditional curriculum. The pupils 

 come out of the schools in such places quite unaware of much that 

 exists in the world to-day, and they are unable to cope with modern 

 conditions as created by progressive nations. If the advice of a large 

 proportion of the lay and non-expert critics of the schools should be 

 followed, it is as certain as anything can be that we should in a brief 

 time, as such things go, come to an arrest in our development, much 

 like that to be observed in Italy or Spain at the present time. 



Of all the fault-finding regarding contemporary education, the most 

 persistent is that which charges the schools with devoting much of their 

 time and energy to " fads " and " notions." It is probable that some at 

 least of those who write this criticism have never been inside a modern 

 school building, and they doubtless have but a very imperfect concep- 

 tion of the principles underlying the evolution which is taking place in 

 the curriculum, and in methods of teaching. Such men are apt to pose 

 as authorities on every subject engaging the attention of people. They 



