580 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 670 



work whicli they were charged to ad- 

 minister. If we look back upon the his- 

 tory of elementary education in this 

 country since 1870, we can not fail to 

 realize how much its progress has been re- 

 tarded by errors of administration due 

 very largely to the want of scientific 

 method in its direction. It is painful to 

 reflect, for instance, on the waste of time 

 and effort, and on the false impressions 

 produced as to the real aim and end of 

 education, owing to the system of payment 

 on results, which dominated for so many 

 years a large part of our educational sys- 

 tem. We mtist remember that it is only 

 within the last few decades that education 

 has been brought within reach of all classes 

 of the population. Previously it was for 

 the few ; for those who could pay high fees ; 

 for those who were training for profes- 

 sional life, whether for the church, the 

 army, the navy, law or medicine, or for the 

 higher duties of citizen life. This had been 

 the case for centuries, not only in this 

 country but in nearly all parts of the 

 civilized world. If we read the history of 

 education in ancient Greece or Rome, or 

 mediaeval Europe, we shall see that popular 

 education, as now understood, was un- 

 known. All that was written about educa- 

 tion applied to the few who got it, and not 

 to the great mass of the people engaged in 

 pursuits altogether apart from those in 

 which the privileged classes were employed. 

 Trade and manual work were despised, 

 and were considered degrading and im- 

 worthy of the dignity of a gentleman. I 

 need sc3,reely say that these social ideas are 

 no longer held. The fabric of society is 

 changed, and we have to ask ourselves 

 whether the methods of education have 

 been similarly changed, whether they have 

 been wisely and carefully adapted to the 

 new order of things. What is it that has 

 really happened? Is it not true that we 

 have annexed the methods and subjects of 



teaching which had been employed during 

 many centuries in the training of the few 

 and applied them to the education of the 

 people as a whole— to those who are en- 

 gaged in the very callings which were more 

 or less contemned? Surely it is so, and 

 the results are all too manifest. We have 

 applied the principles and methods of the 

 secondary education of the middle ages to 

 our new wants, to the training of the 

 people for other duties than those to which 

 such education was considered applicable, 

 and it is only within the last few years that 

 we have begam to see the error of our 

 ways. In the report of your committee, to 

 which I have referred, it is pointed out 

 that the problem of primary education has 

 been complicated by the introduction of 

 the methods which for many years pre- 

 vailed in secondary schools, and at a meet- 

 ing of the National Education Association, 

 held only a few weeks since, it was truly 

 said: "In this country secondary educa- 

 tion preceded primary by several centuries, 

 and so the nation now finds itself with the 

 aristocratic cart attempting to draw the 

 democratic horse." 



Let it not be supposed that in the days 

 not so far distant, yet stretching back into 

 the remote past, the people as a whole 

 were uneducated. This was not so. But 

 we have to widen the meaning of education 

 to include the special training which the 

 people then received— an education that 

 was acquired without even the use of 

 books. It can not for one moment be said 

 that the artisans, the mechanics, the farm 

 hands, male and female, were wholly un- 

 educated in those far-off days. In one 

 sense possibly they were. Very few of 

 them could read or write. But from 

 earliest childhood they had received a kind 

 of training the want of which their de- 

 scendants have sadly felt in the cloistered 

 seclusion of the modern elementary school. 

 They were brought face to face with 



