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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 740 



in essential social and individual func- 

 tions. It does not mean pushing the 

 boundaries of science a little farther into 

 the still unexplored regions of the north, 

 but rather employing our scientific re- 

 sources to make life itself more highly in- 

 telligible and satisfying; it means not 

 delving more deeply for such fragments of 

 historic detail as may have hitherto es- 

 caped detection, but making our historic 

 and ethical knowledge tell, in comprehend- 

 ing and rationally modifying what now is. 

 This is a different thing from merely 

 mining for additional facts; a different 

 thing from just getting to know the stock 

 on hand. The business of the college is 

 human and disciplinary, formative and 

 cultural. Its important relations are to 

 society, not to knowledge, as such; rela- 

 tions through knowledge, rather than to 

 knowledge. Knowledge is its tool, not its 

 end. From the college point of view, 

 knowledge is just so much raw material, 

 and the more refined, abstract, logically 

 separate and complete, the rawer it is; the 

 more it needs reconstruction, digestion, re- 

 combination in ways suggested from the 

 boy's side by genetic psychology, from the 

 social side by the forms into which at a 

 given epoch common activities have been 

 differentiated. 



Surely this is what "adjustment " 

 means. When we talk of adjusting the 

 college to life, we mean in plain language 

 working out a concrete educational scheme 

 which will adjust each individual boy to 

 the concrete social situation. Of course 

 this is not all we mean. Education is 

 something more than a mere adjustment. 

 It is also concerned with developing de- 

 mands on the child's part calculated to 

 upset the existing adjustment. The child 

 must be, in a word, fitted to play his part; 

 straightway that part and the actual social 

 order including it offend his awakened 

 rationality. It is then equally the busi- 



ness of education to fit him to assist in 

 further progress. The college is in this 

 respect but the culmination of, not funda- 

 mentally disconnected from, the elementary 

 and high schools. Throughout all these 

 stages of growth and adjustment, educa- 

 tion contemplates an actual emergency— 

 a here and now, made up of ascertainable 

 factors. Such a situation can be either 

 superficially or profoundly analyzed in the 

 effort to reach its essential constituents. 

 The elementary school analyzes it largely 

 from the physical and impulsive sides. 

 The high school penetrates farther on the 

 civic and ethical sides; on the individual 

 side, it distinctly seeks to exploit the boy 

 in the hope, among other things, of dis- 

 closing the particular way in which he can 

 himself function in society. On both sides 

 the college must proceed still further. 

 Individual differentiation on vocational 

 lines comes in the college period still more 

 sharply to the front; simultaneously, it is 

 all the more important, if the college is to 

 make good the alleged breadth of its dis- 

 cipline, to open the boy's eyes to what is 

 characteristic and significant in the life 

 that is to be the background, basis and 

 standard of all his subsequent activity. 

 An educated man is, in a word, a citizen of 

 the world, of his time, of his nation, just 

 as really as he is a member of a craft, a 

 profession, or a union. And he needs 

 specific training for the former as for the 

 latter. 



The common backbone of an adequate 

 educational scheme is thus suggested. 

 Practically the best that the college can 

 now count on in this matter from previous 

 education is a fair knowledge of the facts 

 of our own and English history and some 

 appreciation of the workings and ideals of 

 our own institutions. Hence the college is 

 at once confronted with the necessity of 

 working out a common discipline which 

 will give all students alike a wider outlook, 



