Makch 7, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



353 



ate this accusation. We pride ourselves on 

 being the most progressive of all people. 

 Do we not all use our last bit of strength 

 to keep up to date? Yet, where there is 

 so much smoke, there must be some fire. 

 It behooves us then not merely flatly to 

 deny the charge, but rather to analyze 

 carefully our methods and results in the 

 effort frankly to discover wherein we have 

 given ground for popular misconceptions. 



This analysis might be found to be a 

 diificult, not to say embarrassing, under- 

 taking if it were not that the problem may 

 be stated in a somewhat different way 

 which permits of a ready answer. Instead 

 of asking what grounds we have given for 

 a reputation of ultra-conservatism, we may 

 ask whether we have as yet succeeded in 

 bringing the school work close to the lives 

 of the pupils. After graduation our edu- 

 cation and our lives are most inextricably 

 entangled. Is it so before graduation? 

 For if it is, the problem of vocational edu- 

 cation vanishes. If the life of the child is 

 his education, or if his education is his real 

 life, he is developing to serve society to the 

 full extent of his abilities. But if this is 

 not true, if his schooling and his life are to 

 him two strangely incompatible forms of 

 existence, then there is something radically 

 wrong with the school. Are we then 

 making education and life a unified exist- 

 ence for the pupils ? 



The answer to this question must be an 

 unequivocal No. The simple fact that this 

 conference and other similar conferences 

 aU over the country are considering how to 

 bring schoolwork close to child life is com- 

 plete proof of the correctness of this an- 

 swer. "We teachers stand convicted by our 

 own acts. We recognize that we fail at 

 this vital point. 



But even though we fail, are we willing 

 and ready to improve and constantly to 

 work for a closer union of education and 



life? Here the answer is equivocal: some 

 are, and some are not. Some are willing to 

 try, but are placed in circumstances where 

 they are not free to make the effort. They 

 are blocked by the authority that works 

 from above downward — particularly the 

 latter. Others express in words their will- 

 ingness to make the trial, but continue in 

 deeds to run along in the same old rut. 

 Still others are eager to break away from 

 the present system and to strive for a more 

 efficient one, but they do not know where 

 to begin. In the hope of helping such as 

 these in gaining a vantage-ground from 

 which to work for the union of education 

 and life, the following hints are given. 

 They constitute a brief summary of the 

 main points of agreement among those who 

 have in some measure succeeded in break- 

 ing loose from tradition and from the 

 vested interests of school paraphernalia 

 and equipment. 



The first of the false gods that holds and 

 will forever hold education and life asunder 

 is the idol of uniformity. How this graven 

 image ever came to be given an honorable 

 place in the temple of learning passeth aU 

 human understanding. The genius of a 

 man, the characteristics that mark him off 

 from his fellow men and give him his price- 

 less personality, are his individual differ- 

 ences. It is because he has traits and com- 

 binations of traits which are different from 

 those of any other man that he is interest- 

 ing and powerful or weak, as the case may 

 be. In life, it is his individual differences 

 that mark him for success or failure, but in 

 school these must be ignored and blighted. 

 "Every one is best trained for his greatest 

 usefulness in life by destroying his indi- 

 vidual differences, by putting him through 

 the same intellectual mill with every one 

 else " ; so says the idol of uniformity. 



The absurdity of this idea in general 

 needs not to be expanded here. It has 



