Problems of Instruction in the Secondary School 175 



returns for the time spent if the teacher had told the boy to 

 leave one-half of the field untreated. It would not have taken 

 one minute longer, it would have taken less time if anything. 

 The crop could have been no worse than it would have been 

 anyway, and all other factors would have been eliminated except 

 that of the special treatment of the potatoes planted. In this 

 way, and only in this way was it possible to show that the 

 treatment, and not favorable weather or extra sprinkling, or non- 

 appearance of bugs, or other causes, was responsible for the 

 improved yield, even in the absence of scab. 



In demonstration plats attached to schools this idea of the 

 " control " or " check " experiment is of utmost importance. 

 Otherwise it can not be proved scientifically that the results are 

 not due to superiority of the soil, drainage, or fertilizer used. 

 In schools that had orchards at their command, everything in 

 sight was pruned and no trees exposed to the same conditions 

 were left unchanged, so as to have a basis of comparison in 

 yielding season. The prevailing idea was that of a good work- 

 man and not of the investigator. The famous corn plat of the 

 University of Illinois should be commended to all schools teach- 

 ing agriculture. This corn plat has yielded for the last three 

 years an average of 2y bushels to the acre, while another plat 

 near it yielded, under a dififerent system of farming, at the rate 

 of 96 bushels. Farmers who visit the experimental farm show 

 considerable contempt for this field until they learn that it is 

 an object lesson on how not to do it, and that it has taken about 

 thirty years to get this field in its present poor condition by 

 keeping it in corn. 



We do not have to believe that the unrelated chemistry experi- 

 ment is the only thing giving opportunity for making and cor- 

 recting judgments; nor is this the exclusive attribute of that 

 particular kind of mathematical physics that is killing itself off 

 except as bolstered up by college entrance requirements. The 

 contests between the disciplinarians and the phenomenologists 

 tend to drive the latter class into an extreme and untenable posi- 

 tion. The remark made recently that " there are no methods of 

 teaching above the grades " is an indictment of the high-school 

 instruction and not of pedagogy. And even in the grades the 



