286 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY 



know they can strike a more or less popular chord when they denounce 

 prevailing tendencies in teaching, so they ridicule prevailing methods 

 and praise those of bygone days. It has become a sort of fashion now 

 for certain newspapers, when they find themselves short of other mate- 

 rial, to run something on "fads and frills in the schools." 



Eecently an editor printed a series of articles on the schools in a 

 western city. He said they were being "honeycombed with fads and 

 notions." When asked to name a conspicuous " fad " in the schools, he 

 replied with general statements, but without hitting the mark once in 

 his criticisms. He was asked whether the teaching of history was a 

 " fad." " Of course not," he said. " Is the reading of English classics 

 a f frill ' ? " " No." " Or the teaching of children to sing a few minu- 

 utes every day ? " " This is all right, too." " Is it a ' notion ' to teach 

 them to express themselves through drawing?" He thought this was 

 proper for most children, at any rate. " Is it wrong to have some 

 memorizing of literary gems every day ? " " No, this should be prac- 

 tised more than it is." " Where then are the ' fads ? ' " Apparently he 

 realized he was in a tight place; and yet it was impossible to keep him 

 from declaiming on the more thorough teaching of spelling, arithmetic, 

 etc. The fact is this man, and there are others like him, had only a 

 vague knowledge of the thing he was writing about. Unfortunately this 

 writing tends to corrupt the minds of the people, and so to render it all 

 the more difficult to secure educational evolution in response to the 

 demands of the times. 



It ought to be said at this point that the majority of laymen and a 

 good proportion of teachers do not view the subject of educational 

 values in any critical way whatever. The very fact that grammar, say, 

 has been long taught in the elementary school is a sufficient guarantee 

 for such people of its superior worth, and especially since they were 

 taught the subject themselves. Most people settle the question of 

 values in education much as they settle any problem of dress or of 

 household management — they consider that to be right and best which 

 is in general practcise, and which they have been accustomed to them- 

 selves. As a rule, though not always, the non-expert in education (and 

 the principle holds for other interests) is conservative. He dislikes 

 reform in studies or methods, because he can keep himself better adapted 

 to a permanent and stable than to a changing order of things. How- 

 ever, this is not likely to be true in respect to the particular interest 

 in which he is most vitally concerned, as in manufacturing, say, where 

 the keenest sort of competition makes him realize that if he does not 

 alter his methods to meet new conditions he will be crushed by his 

 competitors. Keen necessity makes him dynamic, aggressive, radical. 

 But in all those interests which he touches only incidentally, as it were, 

 in which he does not feel serious competition, he often seems incapable 

 of appreciating that progress is necessary, or even desirable. So in edu- 



