The following table gives the number of minutes weekly which may be given to each group of subjects, using the previous table of percentages as a basis, and allowing six hours for the school day.

Time program, showing the Number of Minutes a Week spent in Recitation by a Pupil or Group of Pupils in Five Groups of Subjects; also the Number of Minutes a Week given to Opening Exercises and Recesses and to Study in School.

GROUPS OF STUDIES.

*Sub- Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade primary 1

*Figures in this column indicate the number of minutes spent in recitation and seat work taken together.

work.

Including opening exercises, physical exercises, games, singing, drawing and construction

§ The time for study is given upon the supposition that in some subjects the class is divided into two sections, one section studying while the other section is reciting.

The above table is given upon the presumption that the school day is divided into two sessions of equal length. For some reasons it might be well to put the more intellectual studies into a morning session of four hours, and all the music, drawing and industrial training into an afternoon session of two hours. Time for a study period might also be given in the afternoon. In some communities it might be desirable to make attendance upon this short afternoon session optional. But the program made up in the way proposed would be so attractive that few would deny themselves the privilege of attending.

Conflicting Tendencies in American

Elementary Education

HERBERT G. LULL, ASSOCIATE Professor of EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY
OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE

I

HAVE chosen from the many conflicting tendencies in elementary education three which seem most important. In the first place, I wish to discuss two positive tendencies in educational theory and practice, and in the second place, and finally, a negative tendency, taking its origin in a social tradition. In a country like our own, where educational theories are readily adopted, and rapidly tend to gain currency in practice, all serious discussions of aims and values are timely. In Germany there is much less opportunity for realizing educational theory in practice than in our country. The United States serves as a training school for the application of German theories. Let it not be supposed, however, that our German adoptions remain in their original content and form. While it is true that the Americans have not originated any system of education in its first principles, yet there is an abundance of evidence to show that they are greatly extending, elaborating, and in some instances, profoundly modifying foreign pedagogical inheritances. It is in the spirit of this evident Americanism in education that I wish to speak.

So far as teachers are practicing on the basis of a thorough study of pedagogics they are drawing upon one or both of the two great modern streams of thought initiated by Froebel and Herbart. I say this with all due regard for the contributions of Pestalozzi, who, without doubt, gave to Froebel and Herbart their first points of contact in the field of education. Yet this relationship to Pestalozzi does not harmonize or establish a bond of union between their doctrines, for their first principles are fundamentally different. Froebel moves from the fact of sensation back to what he conceives as fundamental-the selfactivity of the soul. Herbart moves forward from sensation to

a mind conceived as a psychological machine, whose processes are dependent upon the relationship of ideas within the mind, and upon the outer presentations to the mind. The soul is reduced to a single activity, that of resistance. To Froebel, the free activity of the child unfolding its life naturally in the presence of its environment, and in accord with its own laws of development, is the educational principle par excellence. In the field of Herbartian doctrine the æsthetic presentation of the universe, the systematic ordering of the child's environment, the making of outer connections in order that inner connections may follow are characteristic expressions. According to Froebel the soul is self-active in the presence of its environment, and goes out to meet it, but according to Herbart the only activity of the soul is resistance, and if left alone it would never change at all. According to Herbart, therefore, the necessity follows of making outer active presentations. Thus we see that environment and soul are essential factors in the philosophy of both. Herbart cannot dispense with some sort of self-activity even in the first stage of mental life, and in the later stages, according to his doctrine, a self-active, self-determining personality is developed. Froebel, on the other hand, cannot escape the necessity of an appropriate environment for the mind, for the mind cannot unfold in a vacuum. Theoretically speaking, the systems of these two fathers of modern education are as far apart as the poles of the universe. But the very necessity of working in the same world, using the same means, and attaining to the same great ends, which are revealed to us in history and society, has brought them into some sort of relationship to each other. This relationship will be understood by considering the scope of their two great

schools in educational doctrine.

The school of educators who work in the spirit of Froebel have advanced far beyond the field developed by him. They are bringing to their assistance all the illumination afforded by evolution. They are discovering the heretofore hidden springs of the emotions, instincts and capacities. They are discovering that the will has other sources than knowledge. They are studying motor activity in relation to mental. They are

observing the child's periods of development with a view to supplying the appropriate environment. But I am sure no enthusiastic Herbartian would allow all of these educational activities to be credited entirely to the influence of Froebel. Within the field of Herbartian influence, on the other hand, educators are studying environment in terms of interest, the relation of various knowledge contents to development of will and character, the doctrine of specific disciplines, the relation of the development of the child to the culture epochs of the race, the elaborate theory of apperception, the problems of correlation and concentration of courses, and many-sidedness of interest. But a well-known enthusiastic follower of Froebel claims for his master a superior development of some of these doctrines, notably apperception. And thus it follows that each school claims the entire field of education by explaining the other's doctrines in terms of its own philosophy. But what are the practical bearings of these two schools of educational doctrine upon elementary education? First, let us consider the school of Froebel.

The Froebelian interest is actually centered upon early childhood, although it was not Froebel's idea that it should stop with the child. With him all stages in the education of man are beginnings. Life is a continual unfoldment and revelation through self-activity. Education begins with the child, yes, even back of the child in motherhood, and continues without ceasing to the end of complete self-realization and unity with God. That his principles of education should not have been emphasized in the elementary grades as well as in the kindergarten was not the intention of Froebel. Froebel, himself, was at one time a grammar grade teacher, and he applied his theories to the instruction of these grades. Just how far the Froebelian principles are gaining admission into the elementary education of the public schools will be seen by directing our attention briefly to the growth of the public kindergarten in the United States. Its growth seems to be rather slow, but steady. Within the last ten years the number of pupils attending the public kindergarten has more than doubled, a rate of increase in enrollment about double that of

the grades in the public schools. The enrollment constitutes approximately four per cent of the entire enrollment of the grades and high schools in villages and cities of the United States. The enrollment of the first grades of the village and city schools is about twenty per cent of the whole. Before the kindergarten, therefore, becomes an integral part of the school system its percentage of enrollment must reach approximately twice that of the first grade, that is, forty per cent of the whole, instead of four per cent as it now stands. This fact, and the fact that only about thirty per cent of the whole number of village and city school systems report the existence of any public kindergartens, and the further fact that in many of these cities and villages kindergartens are organized only in response to local demands, lead us to believe that the kindergarten is not accepted nor appreciated by a majority of the patrons of the public school, or by a large number of educators.

The fact is that many prominent educators, especially of the West, consider the kindergarten a sort of slum institution. To them it is a reformatory for the children of the poorly organized home. And then again it is recommended for defective children, and is placed in the same category as schools for the blind, schools for children of indigent families, parental schools, etc. Now this may be a correct view of the matter, but it is not the view of Froebel. To Froebel and his followers the kindergarten affords the natural conditions for the early education of children of the best families as well as of the lowest, for the normally born and developing children as well as for the abnormal. Another reason why the kindergarten has failed to receive the recognition that it should, is to be found in the kindergarten teacher's exclusiveness in her work. It should be her aim to make the transition to the grades gradual by making concessions to their ideals as well as by extending to the grades some of the method and aim of the kindergarten. As a matter of fact she has done neither. She has been content to regard the kindergarten as one thing and the grades as another, quite separate and quite distinct in their aims. There is some truth in the charge made by many primary teachers that the kindergarten unfits the child for grade work. Until