524 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 431. 



like the multiplication table, and often are, 

 but it is only when subjects are pursued 

 with interest that they become permanently 

 profitable. And this leads directly to the 

 question, shall the elective system be intro- 

 duced into the high schools ? The answer is 

 so far simple, that a choice must neces- 

 sarily be made among the great niunber of 

 subjects available, but how that choice 

 shall be made is not so easily answered. 



The most sensible solution to this much- 

 discussed problem of high school curric- 

 ulum would seem to be the selection of a' 

 certain course of study by the boy or his 

 parents, and the prescription of the studies 

 within the course by the faculty. The de- 

 velopment of interest is properly made the 

 comer stone of our modern educational 

 system, but in our efforts to attain this end 

 we are in danger of overlooking the fact 

 that side by side with interest should be 

 the consciousness of power and mastery. 

 The latter are not acquired by following 

 the lines of least resistance. 



The likes and dislikes of a school boy 

 should not be taken very seriously in lay- 

 ing out his course of study, since they are 

 too often founded on ignorance of the real 

 nature of the subjects he would elect or 

 reject. The interest that is developed in 

 a subject, as the result of hard, patient 

 study, is of infinitely more worth than the 

 interest which rests on a passing fancy. 

 The former is associated with a feeling of 

 conquest and power, and with a sense of 

 having gotten to the bottom of things; the 

 latter is too often an interest which is 

 satisfied with what is on the surface. 



The current drift of educational thought 

 is towards the perfection of methods and 

 of systems of teaching. It is one of the 

 happy signs of the times that teachers of 

 all grades and of all degrees of experience 

 are trying to tell their brother and sister 

 teachers how this and that subject should 

 be taught. A happy sign, in that it gives 



evidence of the deep and absorbing interest 

 on the part of the hosts of men and women 

 throughout our country engaged in this 

 noble work. And yet these sincere and 

 devoted souls, who have their daily reward 

 in the bright and responsive faces of their 

 pupils, generally overlook the fact that 

 their success is not due so much to their 

 methods as to themselves. Teachers are 

 born, but they can also be made, not by 

 studying rules and routine, or by the 

 imitation of the ways of others, but through 

 the inspiration which comes from patient, 

 loving service. 



' The whining school boy — creeping like 

 a snail unwillingly to school ' is not un- 

 known in our day, but sympathetic treat- 

 ment and bright surroundings have done 

 much to take the terror from the school 

 associated only with the task and the rod. 

 Carlyle makes his hero in Sartor Resartus 

 say: "My teachers were hide -bound 

 pedants without knowledge of man's 

 nature or of boys' or of aught save the 

 lexicons and quarterly account books. How 

 can an inanimate mechanical gerund- 

 grinder, the like of whom will, in a subse- 

 quent century, be manufactured at Niirn- 

 berg out of wood and leather foster the 

 growth of anything, much more of Mind, 

 which grows not like a vegetable (by hav- 

 ing its roots littered with etymological 

 compost) but like a spirit- by mysterious 

 contact of spirit; thought kindling itself 

 at the fire of living thought ? How shall he 

 give kindling in whose inward man there 

 is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a 

 dead grammatical cinder? The Hinter- 

 schlag professor knew syntax enough and 

 the human soul this much: that it had a 

 faculty called Memory, and could be acted 

 on through the muscular integument by 

 appliance of birch rods." 



The ideals of education, looking to the 

 development of the whole man, find full 

 ex'pression in the philosophers of the six- 



