90 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [8 :3— Mar., 1912 



a new method of control, a new occupation. There will be a 

 new skill or culture to be transmitted. Now by common con- 

 sent the agent of conscious education,, the institution that must 

 transmit this new skill or culture is the public school. It is 

 no longer some form of apprenticeship. Sooner or later pressure 

 will be brought to bear upon the school for the transmission of 

 the new skill or for the cultivation of an appreciation for the 

 new culture. 



Subjects of study are born out of the stresses and strains 

 that the race has made at attempts at environmental adjustment. 

 The adjustment geography would have us make is not the same 

 that physiology would have us make. The adjustment one voca- 

 tional subject would have us make is not the same that any other 

 vocational subject would have us make. Each subject represents 

 a unique environment control. Each functions in conduct, but 

 in its characteristic way. Some train in valuable habits, others 

 give possession of useful information, still others inculcate the 

 priceless ideals and spiritual inheritances of the race, and all give 

 methods of work or attitudes toward life. 



It is clear that the need for some adjustments disappears 

 with time and that subject or phase of a subject that has been 

 utilized to train one to make this adjustment is dropped from the 

 list of school materials. It is true also, that some things are re- 

 tained long after they have ceased to be useful, but it is because 

 the traditional habits of the schoolmaster leads him to believe that 

 they are still socially serviceable. 



We know that for centuries educational processes were 

 carried on more or less unconsciously by the race; at' least there 

 was no purposeful program. The aim in every case, no matter how 

 small the group, has been that of active participation in the prac- 

 tices and functions of the group, which practices and functions 

 were but the expressions of the needs and ideals of the group. 

 Every subject of study passed through a long preconscious period 

 before it arrived at the point of conscious formulation. Even 

 after it was once formulated its evolution did not cease ; it con- 

 tinued to be altered to meet changing social conditions. Before 

 the needs and ideals became defined and assumed a more static 

 character they were experienced as mere feelings, dim wants or 

 impulses. As efforts increased to define these feelings, to satisfy 

 the.se wants, to express these impulses, through the operation 

 of the principle of selection, a mode of action or a subject of studv 

 became proportionally defined. Professor Dewey commented 

 upon this as follows: "The race has found certain things worth 



