CHAPTER XX. THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM OF PUBLIC- Man and Nature the Central Subjects. It will probably be objected that the work suggested in the preceding chapter cannot be accomplished. The reply to this is that no definite amount of work has been proposed. The contention is that man and nature should be the central subjects of study from the time the child begins his school life until he leaves the grammar school. How much history and literature, how much botany, zoology, geology, geography, and physics the average pupil can learn no one can yet say. But it does appear indubitable that these ought to be the central subjects of study; that instead of treating grammar and arithmetic and language lessons and spelling as the primarily important matters, the world, the human race, with members of which he must come in daily contact, should receive the greater part of his attention. But we cannot form an intelligent opinion as to how much work can be done in the grammar school until we make persistent and intelligent efforts to give our pupils an opportunity to do the work they are fitted to do. As long as we deal with an abstraction called "the average pupil," until we concentrate our attention on individual boys and girls in order that we may adapt their work to their needs and capabilities, until we realize that it is as absurd to confine the mind of one boy to a thin diet because the mind of another can assimilate nothing more substantial, as it would be to feed a healthy boy on gruel because his sick brother requires that sort of food, we ought to know that we have no right to talk about what the grammar school can do. I believe that President Eliot uttered a profound truth when he remarked that "to discriminate between pupils of different capacity, to select the competent for suitable instruction, and to advance each pupil with appropriate rapidity, will ultimately become the most important functions of the public-school administrator those functions in which he or she will be most serviceable to families and to the state." Need of Adapting Work to Individual Students.— Why serviceable to families? Because the fathers and mothers of our children, dull as well as bright, are deeply interested in having the work of their boys and girls adapted to their capabilities. When that is not done, injury results to the dull boy by being burdened with more than he can carry, and to the bright boy by being held back for the sake of his slower classmates. Why serviceable to the state? Because the state, and a democratic state most of all, has a vital concern in the proper education of its citizens. Why the Integrity of the College is Threatened. The integrity of the American college is very seriously threatened because our school superintendents have not yet generally realized their obligation to promote bright pupils to a higher grade as soon as these are capable of doing the work of that grade. Because this is not done, our sons and daughters are often sixteen or seventeen before they enter the high school, and twenty-three or twenty-four when their student life at college ends. If they intend to enter one of the professions or fill any position which requires a technical knowledge of applied science, they must spend three years more in a professional school, so that they are at least twenty-six before they are ready to begin their lifework. Now it is only the well-to-do who can afford to prolong the education of their children to such an age. The sons and daughters of people in ordinary circumstances must, for their own sakes and for the sake of their parents, take up the burden of self-support at an earlier age. In order to meet this difficulty it has recently been proposed by President Butler to reduce the college course to two years for students who purpose taking a further course at a technical or professional school. In other words, he proposes to make the completion of a two- instead of a fouryear college course the condition of admission to professional schools, in order that the graduates of those schools may engage in "the active and independent participation of the practical work in life" two years earlier than they are now able to do. President Hyde said not long ago that "nearly all the distinguished alumni of Bowdoin College graduated at about the present average age of entrance, and were well launched on their professional careers at about the age at which our students now graduate." Among the cases which he cited were those of Jacob Abbott and William Pitt Fessenden, who were graduated before they were seventeen; Longfellow, who was through college at eighteen; Franklin Pierce, John A. Andrew, Fordyce Barker, and Egbert Smyth, who had completed the course at nineteen; and William P. Frye and Melville W. Fuller, graduated at twenty.1 Does any one seriously doubt that a Longfellow could to-day complete an eight-year grammar-school course in five years? Or that he could finish the four-year secondary and the four-year college course in seven more? Probably every one of the men mentioned by President Hyde could have done so rapidly the work now prescribed by the grammar and high schools as to enter college almost as soon as he actually did. President Eliot cites a grammarschool principal who testified that nearly one quarter of the pupils in his school of about six hundred and fifty children were doing two years' work in one.2 Few thoughtful persons would say that American society ought to encourage even one fourth of our grammar-school pupils to look forward to a college education. It is only a small minority, composed of conspicuously capable pupils, who can benefit either themselves or society by endeavoring to acquire that thorough and severe training which the college is intended to give. The case, then, may be put as follows: the college course need not be shortened in order that really able students may finish their professional education fully three years earlier than they now can. But to shorten the course in order to enable mediocre men to complete their professional education and begin the practical work of life earlier would be to encourage men to enter the professions who ought not to enter them at all. Responsibilities of the Learned Professions. - - The reason for this statement will be evident if we consider "the 1 Columbia University Bulletins of Information, No. 1 (1902), p. 39. 2 Educational Reform, p. 254. responsibilities and opportunity of the learned professions." They were forcibly stated in a recent address made by President Eliot, as follows: "It is plain that the future prosperity and progress of modern communities is hereafter going to depend much more than ever before on the large groups of highly trained men which constitute what are called the professions. The social and industrial powers, and the moral influences which strengthen and uplift modern society, are no longer in the hands of legislatures, or political parties, or public men. All these agencies are becoming secondary and subordinate influ ences. They neither originate nor lead; they sometimes regulate and set bounds, and often impede. The real incentives and motive powers which impel society forward and upward spring from those bodies of well-trained, alert, and progressive men known as the professions. They give effect to the discoveries or imaginings of genius. All the large businesses and new enterprises depend for their success on the advice and coöperation of the professions." If this is true, if society is guided in its onward and upward march by the professions, then the qualifications which professional men ought to possess should be clearly determined. Positively, they needs must have that largeness of vision, that soundness and soberness of judgment, without which they cannot exert a beneficent influence on society. Negatively, they ought not to be narrow specialists however able, or men of mediocre abilities no matter how well trained. In endeavoring to ascertain the qualifications of a man we are prone to content ourselves with one question when we ought to ask two. If a man has had the advantages of the best schools in this country and |