Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/748

676 room. So there are taking place in the educational arena warm contests between the champions of conservatism and those of radicalism; between those who cling to the things of the past as adequate for the exigencies of the present, and those who feel that the complexity of our modern life demands somewhat different training in the schools, and who realize that contributions from recent scientific investigation along various lines have given us many valuable ways and means for improving and extending the work of the schoolroom that could not have been known or appreciated a century ago. Perhaps in no matter of public interest, all things considered, is there such ferment of ideas as in elementary education; and one potent cause of this disturbance is our changing standards of educational values.

Whatever things are contributing to alter the opinions of people as to the comparative values of various materials of instruction, there are at least two or three agencies whose influence may be clearly and easily traced. In the first place, modern psychological inquiry is leading toward a very different view of the mind and the mode of its development from that which has been held in previous times. This is not so much to be wondered at, though, for psychology, while a very old subject is a very new science, at least in its applications to the choosing of educational materials and the determination of educational processes; and some of the theories advocated a hundred years ago by eminent teachers show that the knowledge of mental activities in those days was extremely meager and formal, as perhaps those who follow us a century hence will be able to say of our present notions. One view commonly held at that time, and which seems to have determined school work ever since, maintained that the mind is composed of parts, each of which may accumulate general power by exercise in any special direction, in some such manner as we believe the muscles of the body grow and develop for future use in all sorts of ways by being disciplined in the gymnasium in youth. Now, it seems evident that, referring to physical things, the employment of the muscular system upon any kind of work develops a capacity which may be of service, at least in a measure, in all kinds of work, A young man, for example, who has passed his youth upon a farm engaged in manual labor is generally a more promising candidate for the football eleven or the crew when he enters college than is an individual whose early life has been spent in intellectual pursuits, or amid the idlenesses and luxuries of the city. A crew in preparation for a race, to illustrate further, spend a portion of the training period in running, believing that the strength and endurance accumulated in this way may be advantageously used in the final great effort, which will require activity of a different kind from that