Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/263

Rh from the channels of vital usefulness. Nature is sternly and rigidly utilitarian, and yet she is splendidly idealistic. Her aim is always an enlarged, and ever enlarging, life, and to this end she can tolerate nothing in her economies that is functionless and therefore an obstacle to progress.

Here, then, is the clue that modern education is beginning to accept for its guidance. As a result, the ideal of general culture in education is being subjected to standards of criticism that are as new as is our better understanding of the nature of life. Men have believed for centuries that certain studies, or forms of discipline, have the peculiar virtue of generating in the mind, or the body, a power, or wealth of resources, that may subsequently be available for any purpose to which mental or physical energy is applied. From the days of the renaissance to the present time, universities and colleges have contended for this ideal of general culture. Mathematics and the classical languages have been regarded as, in a special sense, indispensable to such culture. In the organization of secondary schools, these institutions have been subordinated to university and college entrance requirements. And so throughout our educational system, above the elementary schools, and frequently in the elementary schools themselves, the culture ideal has largely determined the subject-matter and methods of instruction. Thus it is that in our very midst, every boy and girl who looks towards higher education in our standard institutions of learning is compelled to have certain courses in mathematics and the classical languages. Greek has at last been made an optional entrance requirement, but Latin and mathematics still hold their distinctive places. No difference what the ulterior life-purpose of the adolescent boy or girl may be, no difference what their tastes or aptitudes may be, Latin and mathematics they must have; and Latin and mathematics they must look forward to pursuing even after they enter college. All for the sake of the general culture these subjects are supposed to give!

In the light of the biological law of wasted energy and disease, in connection with organs that are parasitic on the life, we are now prepared to estimate this ideal of general culture from a new point of view. And first of all, as being more obviously amenable to this biological law, let us consider the ideal of physical culture. Now it has been contended for generations, in accordance with the general culture ideal, that certain courses of discipline will give a fund of physical energy that may be available for all the demands of subsequent life. Thus physical culture has been separated from the natural, every-day functions of life, and made a matter of general courses of training in the gymnasium. Even since the play-idea of physical culture has come to the front, and the gymnasium has had to share its prerogatives with the athletic field, much of the justification of the undue absorption of