Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/374

368 the world than the world needs. So far from feeling concerned at this widespread discontent, we should rejoice that it exists. There is nothing so blighting to educational enthusiasm as smug satisfaction with what is or what has been; there is nothing so stimulating to educational effort as a realizing sense of present imperfections and of higher possibilities.

As to the curriculum of the higher schools and colleges, the problem is really not what studies shall be inserted and what omitted, but how shall we make it possible for the student to get that culture, efficiency and power out of his studies which his development requires. This is really a question for psychology to answer. Well may we ask of our universities with their psychological laboratories and their sensitive apparatus for measuring mental reactions: Will psychology ever accomplish what phrenology once promised but has never performed—the determination of a young student's capabilities and of the line of work he ought to pursue?

As to the elementary curriculum, surely we shall not go far wrong if we apply to each study and even to each detail of each study these four questions:

1. Is this study or this exercise well within the comprehension of the child?

2. Does it help to adjust him to the material and the spiritual environment of the age and the community in which he lives?

3. Does it combine with the other studies of the curriculum to render him more efficient in conquering nature and in getting along with his fellows, and thus to realize ideals that transcend environment?

4. Does it accomplish these objects better than any other study that might be selected for these purposes?

If these questions are answered in the affirmative, we may reasonably conclude that the study or the exercise in question is an important element in education for efficiency. Examined from the view point established by these questions, every study will assume an aspect very different from that which it bears when taught without a well defined object. Take drawing, for example. Drawing may be so taught as not only to lay bare to seeing eyes new worlds of beauty, but to lead to that reverent appreciation of nature and the reapplication of her lessons to daily industrial art which is the way, as Ruskin has said, in which the soul can most truly and wholesomely develop essential religion.

Again, take the teaching of agriculture. While our soil seemed inexhaustible in fertility as in extent, the need of such teaching was not felt. Now, however, we are obliged to have recourse to lands that produce only under irrigation. The rural schools have added to our difficulties by teaching their pupils only what seemed most necessary for success when they should move to the city. The farms of New