Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/646

626 is sometimes said, the Committee of Five, since it is the report of one third of the committee—on the Correlation of Primary Studies, that has become most noted. Though these are ostensibly on different subjects, the report on secondary schools could not fail to take into account the previous school training, nor could the primary work be reported without a long look forward.

Both reports aim at progressive effort for the improvement of the lower schools, and are valuable contributions to the educational literature of the age. The specific suggestions of the two apparently differ less than the guiding principles that seem to have moved the committees. For, consciously or unconsciously, the one seems to have the eye fixed upon certain established ideals of culture and scholarship which are held as the standards for the colleges, and hence, it is assumed, must be the goal of effort for the lower schools. In the other report we seem to hear the note of a different philosophy—a reaching forward toward all the possible activities of the child's future. Yet in this also there is an ideal which beckons onward; but it is not found in traditional types. It is based on the complex needs of our great American life—to prepare the child to understand and to meet those needs and to direct the forces of the future.

If it be said that the collegiate standards are shaped according to the same ideal, the answer must be: Perhaps so; yet the American people will not accept their standards at second hand, or as established for them by a single class in the community. In determining their own educational needs, the great middle class of the people is also in the jury box. The schools that are "for the people" must be planned in a good degree "by the people," instead of following wholly the lead of the highly educated few.

There is a time-honored maxim of the universities that educational influences proceed from the top downward. But, like all epigrams, it is a brilliant half-truth. There is no "top" to education, or if there be it is higher than all human standards, reaching into the very heavens. And this is a ladder over which the angels must pass both ways, ascending and descending upon it. The way must be kept open, and the touch must be free all along the line. There must be no dividing gap where either type of thought can say to the other, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." Especially in the high school should there be the largest welcome to good influences from either side. Then the one that can show the largest sympathy and most intelligent understanding of the whole problem will have the greatest influence in the final shaping of affairs.

Yet even as I write a growing doubt arises. Is there really any such conflict in the forces that move educational affairs as we sometimes think? Or, if there be, is it wholly to be