EDITORIAL 



Is Amplifying the Ideals of The Agas- 

 siz Association. 



The General Education Board of 

 New York City, founded by John D. 

 Rockefeller, has recently been making 

 extended announcements as to the need 

 of the Modern School. This need was 

 first expressed by the Board in a paper 

 entitled "Changes Needed in American 

 Secondary Education" by President 

 Charles W. Eliot. 



The gist of that paper is the ideals of 

 The Agassiz Association that have been 

 promulgated into thousands of schools 

 throughout the land for nearly half a 

 century or to be more exact since 1875 

 at which time The Agassiz Association 

 was established. 



Let us hear what President Eliot 

 says. I quote as follows : 



"The best part of all human know- 

 ledge has come by exact and studied 

 observation made through the senses of 

 sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. 

 The most important part of education 

 has always been the training of the 

 senses through which that best part of 

 knowledge comes. This training has 

 two precious results in the individual 

 besides the faculty of accurate observa- 

 tion — one the acquisition of some sort 

 of skill, the other the habit of careful 

 reflection and measured reasoning 

 which results in precise statement and 

 record. 



"The boy on a farm has admirable 

 opportunities to train eye, ear, and 

 hand ; because he can always be looking 

 at the sky and the soils, the woods, the 

 crops, and the forests, having familiar 

 intercourse with many domestic ani- 

 mals, using various tools, listening to 

 the innumerable sweet sounds which 

 wind, water, birds, and insects make 

 on the countryside, and in his holidays 

 hunting, fishing, and roaming. 



"From remotest times the successful 

 physician has been by nature a natur- 

 alist. He saw and heard straight, and 

 his touch gave him trustworthy infor- 



mation. He has still, and must always 

 have, the naturalist's temperament, and 

 he must possess the naturalist's trained 



senses. 



"What has already been done in medical 

 education needs to be done in all other 

 forms of education, whether for trades 

 or for professions, whether for occupa- 

 tions chiefly manual or for those chiefly 

 mental. 



>[; ^ >|< :{< ^ 



"The devotees of natural and physi- 

 cal science during the last hundred and 

 fifty years have not shown themselves 

 inferior to any other class of men in 

 their power to reason and to will, and 

 have shown themselves superior to any 

 other class of men in respect to the val- 

 ue or worth to society of the product 

 of those powers. The men who, since 

 the nineteenth century began, have done, 

 most for the human race through 

 the right use of their reasons,, imagina- 

 tions, and wills are the men of science, 

 the artists, and the skilled craftsmen, 

 not the metaphysicians, the orators, the 

 historians, or the rulers. In modern 

 times the most beneficent of the rulers 

 have been men who shared in some de- 

 gree the new scientific spirit ; and the 

 same is true of the metaphysicians. As 

 to the real poets, teachers of religion, 

 and other men of genius, their best 

 work has the scientific quality of pre- 

 cision and truthfulness ; and their rhe- 

 torical or oratorical work is only their 

 second best." 



President Eliot is right. The Agas- 

 siz Association has been faithfully 

 working along this route for several de- 

 cades. Think, Oh, think for a moment, 

 you who are interested in the welfare 

 of the young, how much more could be 

 accomplished along all these lines with 

 a reasonable amount of financing. Mr. 

 Harlan H. Ballard, of Pittsfield, Massa- 

 chusetts, who established The Agassiz 

 Association, in 1875, ^^^ worked faith- 

 fully in its behalf for one-third of a cen- 

 tury, accomplished the Herculean task 

 of modifying the thought and the point 



