AnusT 21, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



Til 



root, and I predict that the hijirh school 

 attendance in St. Lonis will double within 

 two years. 



This result has actually been achieved 

 in Kansas City. Its high school attendance 

 has in seven years increased one hundred 

 per cent., while its population has increased 

 fifty per cent. This is largely explained 

 by the organization and equipment of what 

 appears to me to be the largest and most 

 successful manual training high school in 

 the world. The enrollment at the manual 

 high school has been as follows from the 

 start, beginning with 1897 : 843, 1,114, 

 1,244, 1,492, 1,677, 1,706 in 1903. 



But not the west alone. The high school 

 attendance has increased 48 per cent, in 

 Springfield, Mass., while the population 

 has increased 19 per cent. In Worcester, 

 Mass., the high school attendance increased 

 124 per cent., while the population in- 

 creased 36 per cent. Boston and Phila- 

 delphia show similar gains; in short, there 

 is hardly a prosperous community where a 

 similar growth is not observed. 



It would be unreasonable to attribute 

 this growth to any one thing, as for instance 

 the introduction of numual training. Be- 

 yond question that has had much to do 

 with it, but increased wealth, improved so- 

 cial conditions and a growing conviction 

 that education is a good business invest- 

 ment, have had much to do with bringing 

 about this gratifying result. Twenty 

 years hence secondary school diplomas will 

 be relatively as numerous as elementary 

 school diplomas were twenty years ago. 



2. We must be getting our houses in or- 

 der to receive, educate and train the com- 

 ing army of boys and girls. They will 

 want the best, and their wishes will be law. 

 The demand for broader curriculum for the 

 secondary school is imperative. The clas- 

 sical academy and the classical high school 

 will continue to exist and do valuable work. 



.\o one who knows the value of high grade 

 classical training wishes to do away with 

 such schools or to lower their moral and 

 intellectual tone, but we must not shut our 

 eyes to the fact that they do not cover the 

 whole field of secondary education, nor do 

 they meet the wishes and needs of the great 

 majority of fourteen to fifteen and sixteen- 

 year-old boys and girls. It is not a ques- 

 tion of brains, nor of morals, nor of health ; 

 it is a question of environment, of taste, of 

 ambition, of outlook. The men and women 

 who are to do the world's work need and 

 wish to be trained to do it well. They 

 nuist not only be strong, but they must be 

 versatile, skillful and wise. Solomon 

 prayed for a 'w-ise and understanding 

 heart.' In a measure that is what every 

 healthy boy and girl prays for. I would 

 put emphasis on the word 'understanding.' 

 Everything in education should conduce 

 to understanding, just as everything which 

 conduces to understanding is education. I 

 have no use for studies which yield culture 

 without understanding— in fact I deny that 

 there is valuable culture without under- 

 standing. I have no patience with people 

 who know that a study is useful only in 

 proportion as it is understood, and yet 

 claim that its culture value is inversely as 

 its utility in practical life. Whether we 

 teach Latin, geometrj% physics, the theory 

 of a tool or a process of construction, let 

 us give our pupils understanding. The 

 I)uiiil who has formed the habit of under- 

 standing what he sees or reads or handles 

 will carry into the world the habit of study- 

 ing life's problems with eyes, hands and 

 brain, till he understands them. 



There is really no necessity for a plea 

 for new courses of study in the secondary 

 school. We are substantiallj- agreed on 

 that point. Not one half of the boys and 

 girls of Boston ever get inside of a high 

 school. Why is it? The high schools are 



