Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/291

Rh, as in hygiene, religion, politics, etc., we must expect that the majority of people who have not become particularly interested in the business will vote to have things continued as they have been, or as they now are. They will resist innovations. They will cry, "Fads!" "Frills!" etc., whenever any new topic gains a foothold in the curriculum, though they may be progressive enough in their own special field, where they can appreciate the value of new methods suited to contemporary needs.

The diversity of opinion regarding values in education, to which attention has been called above, suggests that laymen as well as teachers must look at the matter involved from different points of view. The writer has asked individuals and groups in many sections of our own country, and some of the countries across the sea, what they consider the proper standards in determining the value of any study, or any method of teaching, or any principle of discipline; and the responses have impressed the fact that there is no universal mode of appraising values, which is adopted by laymen in deciding any educational problem. Some persons say that a study is valuable in the measure that it confers "culture" upon the one who pursues it. Other persons say that the true value of any educative material depends upon the extent to which it trains the mind. Still others feel that no study is of worth which does not contribute to the individual's efficiency in practical life.

All sorts of figures of speech are used by people in striving to express their conception of the nature of mind and the function of education. The present writer has heard the remark made time and again that what we must do in the schools is to "strengthen the faculties"; or we must "polish" the mind, for until it has been so treated it is like a "rough diamond," or we must "cultivate" it as we would a field, in order that it may become "fertile"; or the subjects of study should "nourish" the mind, as food nourishes the body; or we should "sharpen" the faculties as we would sharpen an edged tool. The list of figures of speech based on physical objects and phenomena and used to describe educational work might be extended almost ad libitum. The mind is so subtle and complex that we endeavor to make our thinking about it definite and concrete by ascribing to it, at least for purposes of definition, physical properties and characteristics. And individuals as well as communities tend to employ the physical conceptions most familiar to them in their reactions upon their own environment. People who live on the sea will employ figures of speech different from those who live in the mountains or on the prairies or in the city. The mechanic will draw his figures of speech from his particular work, and the same will be true of the miner or the merchant or the woodsman.

Let one ask the people whom he meets on the street, in the reception hall, or in academic halls, what effect the mastering of