June 19, 19G3.] 



SCIENCE. 



965 



course is now to transfer him to the school 

 of his trade, or to that which most nearly 

 supplies its place, where expert instruction 

 in every department may contribute with 

 maximiun efficiency to the proposed end. 

 If the 'business' to be pi^rsued is commer- 

 cial, it would seem that the youth should 

 remain in the academic schools just as 

 long as time and money and natural ca- 

 pacity permit, and then he should take vip 

 the work of the business or the commercial 

 school. The sciences taught, meantime, in 

 the academic public schools should evi- 

 dently usually be those which may fairly 

 be assigned to a general course, as being 

 valuable to all citizens. Specialization 

 implied by technical science should be de- 

 ferred as long as practicable. 



When the vocation or the profession is 

 finally chosen, the pupil will demand prep- 

 aration for the technical or the professional 

 school and, where the demand is sufficiently 

 large to justify it, special arrangements, if 

 necessary, should be made for meeting its 

 requirements. This may mean the estab- 

 lishment of electives for pupils preparing 

 for the academic college, the law-school or 

 the school of engineering. It may mean 

 some substitution of scientific for the usual 

 educational courses where the latter may 

 be safely thus displaced. Those require- 

 ments determine the nature and extent of 

 the scientific and of the technical instruc- 

 tion to be introduced. Wliere the pupil 

 is to go directly into business and his pre- 

 cise line of work is not settled, or where 

 it is evident that he is of that class, large 

 in this country, liable to pass from one 

 vocation to another, the technical sciences 

 of the curriculum should be, in general, 

 the mathematics and the sciences of physics 

 and, particularly, of chemistry. The con- 

 stant endeavor of our school boards and 

 committees to crowd the whole pantology 

 of an extensive liberal education into a 



common-school system can never succeed, 

 and the attempt only embarrasses and 

 renders inefficient the work actually 

 squeezed in. If the school is large enough, 

 as often in the cities, it may be practicable 

 to arrange a system of electives, as is done 

 in the colleges, wherever it appears that a 

 sufficient number may be classed together 

 to compensate the specialist to be employed 

 as teacher. In smaller schools this course 

 is usually impracticable. 



Education for a vocation being the lead- 

 ing object of any school, its curriculum 

 properly involves mainly those subjects 

 which contribute especially and directly 

 to, and are essential to, its purpose. Gen- 

 eral education has no place, as such, here, 

 and the student should clearly understand 

 that his education, in the ordinary sense 

 of the term, should be obtained, and as 

 fully and liberally as practicable, else- 

 where, and usually previously to taking 

 up the scholastic apprenticeship. The cur- 

 riculum of the school should include the 

 essential studies, the sciences and the tech- 

 nical information regarding materials and 

 products, processes and apparatus, which 

 contribute to accurate and efficient work 

 and to economical production. There is 

 always a certain sequence which is entirely 

 logical and which settles all questions of 

 order in taking up the various subjects, 

 and this problem is usually non-existent 

 in the technical school. Thus the mathe- 

 matics must be taken in a fixed order ; the 

 applied science must follow the study of 

 the pure science ; and physical and chem- 

 ical and mechanical work miist be given 

 after the mathematics have been more or 

 less completely mastered; for, in the tech- 

 nical school, these sciences are quantitative 

 and involve mathematical processes. In 

 this assignment there is no question of the 

 place of these sciences in the work, as the 

 object to be attained fixes all requirements. 



