EDUCATIONAL FAILURE. 7 



no formal recitations abo\-e all, no home study to be required, 

 and no night work to be permitted. 



The details of such a plan as this would have to be worked 

 out — they would have to work themselves out in the course 

 of the teaching, but in that working out we might confi- 

 dently expect to prepare children to enter upon the study for 

 their chosen life work, able to read and write English accu- 

 rately, and even to speak it accurately Twhich our college 

 men do not, always;. They should be able to draw as freely 

 as they speak, to use freely the ordinary arithmetical pro- 

 cesses ^ which our High School graduates cannot;, and above 

 all to look with interested intelligence and scientific under- 

 standing upon the processes of nature and the methods of 

 work of men. This also our High School graduates cannot, 

 and the fault is in those schools in that they have recognized 

 neither the value of spontaneous interest, the natural order in 

 which ideas are assimilated, nor the failure of the home as an 

 educational factor. 



Of course it wil.l be easier to create this atmosphere for the 

 scientific and mechanical interests thati for purely cultural 

 studies because the instinct tu make and to do is strong, and 

 needs little mcjre than guidance. Yet at this time it seems 

 necessary to reaffirm the value of those cultural studies. The 

 test of craftsmen or professionals is apt to be only that, 

 and it is just those studies which do not bear directly 

 on a man's work that make him more than the "'tool of 

 some superior intelligence.'' That is what Aristotle calls a 

 slave, and I am willing to grant that if the schools can do no 

 more it is right that they should help people to be better 

 slaves. But I am not yet willing to grant that that is all we 

 can do. I think we must confess error of method, and an 

 almost complete failure as to results, but this is still far from 

 abject surrender as to the general plan. I do not think there 

 are yet many teachers worthy of the name who are ready to 

 step aside and make way for a teaching body of mechanics 

 and stenographers, nor to see the school library reduced to a 



