PAPERS PRESENTED AT GENERAL SESSIONS 55 



theory that the nature of the facts which one is to need 

 in later life, whether he go on to a university or not, is of 

 so problematical a nature that the best we can do is to 

 insist on the mastery of a few fundamentals, such as Eng- 

 lish and mathematics. The rest of the time should then 

 pent, not jumping frantically from one thing to an- 

 other, but in studying intensively subjects designed to 

 give the maximum of mental training and discipline and 

 at the same time a cultural outlook on life. They hold to 

 what we might consider as the ''mind-training" concep- 

 tion of education. 



Let us now examine the American and English systems 

 of secondary education, the former beimi - , as I conceive it, 

 an outgrowth of the first viewpoint, and the latter of the 

 second. The mechanical details of the American High 

 School are too familiar to detain us long. The work of 

 the average four years falls into 16 more or less discon- 

 nected '•subjects", each studied as a separate and unre- 

 lated field. As a rule, except for the requirement of 

 three years of English and probably two of some foreign 

 language, (and even this varies somewhat from place to 

 place) the pupil is left to choose pretty much as he likes, 

 so the specified number of subjects are taken and he ar- 

 rives at the end of the four years with the required mini- 

 mum of credits. Now from the point of view of the 

 ''broad-education" advocates, this system is ideal. By 

 due choice the whole realm of knowledge can be visited 

 in the short span of four years and there is no danger of 

 turning out narrow specialists, for the pupil has never 

 spent an appreciable length of time on any one subject. 



It has nevertheless its disadvantages. The individual 

 fields being taught from set text books in set courses 

 come to be regarded as residing in water tight compart- 

 ments, and the student is never taught and seldom has 

 time to study out for himself the relationships which 

 connect the various fields and join them one with another. 

 As a result, he takes the facts as they are given, memor- 

 izes them blindly, or at any rate such ones as he finds 

 necessary and lets it go at that. The idea of reading 

 outside of a text book, in other than novels, has never 

 occurred to him. Furthermore, it has seldom, if ever, 



