THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 485 



THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 



By Dr. C. HANFORD HENDERSON. 



IN venturing to speak or write about a topic so much spoken 

 about and so much written about as education, one may be 

 pardoned a little hesitation. In the midst of our present wealth 

 of educational theories, the need seems not so much for any addi- 

 tion to them or any restatement of them as for a little genuine, 

 wholesome action in carrying them into effect. And yet this 

 problem, the education of our children, though so very old and so 

 much discussed, is always new and never exhausted. The last 

 word has not been spoken. 



This perennial interest in education springs, I think, from two 

 sources from a feeling that much of the current action that goes 

 under the name of education is obviously ill-advised, and from an 

 appreciation of the tremendous importance of the whole matter. 

 For, mark you, what we propose to discuss is no more nor less 

 than this the unfolding of the human spirit. It is a process for 

 whose preparation the mighty drama of evolution has not been 

 counted too great; and, now that that drama has become in our 

 hands a conscious process, we can scarcely overestimate the 

 unique significance of this, its concluding scene. It is an august 

 problem, one that I stand before in reverence and humility. 



In a day of more childlike faith one can readily conceive the 

 attitude of mind of those who, in the presence of such an issue as 

 this, devoutly waited for the working of the Spirit, and listened to 

 its utterance as to the oracle of God. But though the old faiths 

 are dead, or at least certain aspects of them, there is a new faith 

 no less inspiring and no less revered. Modern faith believes in 

 the essential sanity of the human spirit. It believes that it is 

 possible by pure and holy living to so strengthen and clarify the 

 spiritual vision that one may catch some glimpse of the divinely 

 human truth. And this glimpse comes not to one man alone but 

 to you and to me, when together, in the disinterestedness of a 

 common purpose, we attempt to let the light play about the prob- 

 lems of the inner life. 



And first let me say, in considering the aim of modern educa- 

 tion, that I do not do so as the advocate of any special system or 

 of any limited cult. I am in no sense a special pleader. It may 

 be known to some of my readers that I have had for several years 

 the charge of a manual training school in Philadelphia, and the 

 thought would be quite natural that I may have come to regard 

 the salvation of chilflhood as dependent in some occult way upon 

 the training of its extremities. But, believe me, this is far from 

 the truth. We hold, rather, the deep conviction that the province 



