DETERMINING EDUCATIONAL VALUES 289 



and then they assigned them to a place in the scale of values according 

 to the results of this analysis. They did not think it imperative to ob- 

 serve whether or not the organism would easily and economically assimi- 

 late any particular food, or whether the factor of appetency should be 

 taken account of. They did not inquire whether there were elements 

 in cheese, say, which the organism might resent, so that instead of this 

 being a good article of food it might be nearer a poison. 



We seem to-day to be abandoning the practise of relying wholly upon 

 the analytic method of determining food values. We are now attach- 

 ing chief importance to observing how the organism reacts upon any 

 article of food when it is taken into the system. This method is likely 

 to modify greatly our conception of food values. It is of special sig- 

 nificance for our purpose that it seems already to have been shown that 

 an article of food which may be of great service to the organism at one 

 period of its development may be relatively valueless or positively detri- 

 mental at another period. It has been shown, for example, that while a 

 calf may thrive on milk during the first months of its life, still if it be 

 kept on a milk diet too long it will begin to decline, and it will literally 

 starve unless other foods are added to the dietary. But the chemical 

 methods of determining the values of foods make out milk to be a 

 valuable food without regard to age or individual differences. 



The principle under consideration can be illustrated further by 

 referring to the methods employed in an earlier day in the study of the 

 parts of speech in children's language. Men like Hale and others wrote 

 down the words an eighteen-months old child, say, used in his daily 

 expressions. Then they went to work and classified these words accord- 

 ing to their grammatical properties, so that they found that 60 per cent, 

 of the words a child used were nouns, 20 per cent, were adjectives, and 

 so on. Then they inferred that the child's thought relates mainly to 

 objects as contrasted with actions, and qualities, and spacial relations, 

 since nouns predominate in his vocabulary, and they denote things. 

 But to-day we appreciate that the outward form of a word does not 

 furnish clear evidence of the way it functions in the child's expression. 

 He may use the word " cat," say, with verbal, adjectival, and exclam- 

 atory as well as pure nominal function. That is to say, the fact that 

 " cat " is grammatically a noun does not show that the child employs it 

 as such. Indeed, it is certain that at the outset he does not use it with 

 strict nominal function. The only effective way to determine the parts 

 of speech in a child's vocabulary, viewing the matter from the stand- 

 point of the function of words in expressing thought, is to observe the 

 child as he reacts upon his environments when he uses particular words, 

 so that we may notice what his attitudes are when he employs them. 



This principle is mentioned here simply to impress it as of special 

 importance in application to the study of educational values. In order 



VOL. LXXXV. — 20. 



