the high school, it would be difficult to show why not in the upper grades of the grammar school. If they are not required in the latter, it would be difficult to explain why they are to be deemed necessary in the high school.

-

Why Specialists are are not Needed Through All the Grades. It may be urged that this argument proves too much; that the same reasoning might be used to prove that we should have specialists in all the grades because we have them in the high school. This objection will not bear examination from the point of view of those who accept the conclusions of a preceding chapter of this book.1 It was there pointed out that while in the first years of a child's school life concentration should be the rule, every one admits that at some point in his education specialization must begin; and it was argued that specialization — the study of facts in their logical relations — should begin when his intellect "is sufficiently developed to enable him to rethink systematic, connected thoughts, and when his interest in such activity is sufficiently great to enable him to perform it without unduly taxing the will."

Now those who admit this will certainly not deny that the transition from a system in which concentration (the consideration of facts from the point of view of the principle of mechanical association) is the rule to a system in which specialization (the consideration of facts from the point of view of logical association) is the rule, marks an epoch in the child's educational history. This transition denotes a psychological era in the child's development; that from the grammar school to the high school does not. Therefore no psychological reason exists why there should be any 1 Chapter XVII.

difference between the mode in which the work is done in the high school and that in which it is done in the upper grades of the grammar school; there is a reason for making a distinction between the method employed in the primary grades and that adopted in the upper grades of the grammar school. Those, therefore, who defend the existing system ought to be able to prove that the psychological epoch from which dates the transition from the system of concentration to that of specialization is found in the average pupil at the close of the grammar-school period that specialization should be deferred to the high school. Now, although a few enthusiasts seem to have convinced themselves that this is true, their position is not supported by actual conditions. Will any practical teacher deny that children ought to begin the study of the facts of arithmetic, history, geometry, algebra, botany, and physics in their logical relations somewhere during the grammar-school course? If not, we find a point in the grammar school where the same principle begins to obtain which has universal sway in the high school where begins the systematic study of facts or phases of the universe in their logical relations, the study of subjects. If, therefore, it is wise to have a teacher of a single subject or a group of closely related subjects in the high school, it is difficult to see why it would not be equally wise to have them in all the grades of the grammar school except those in which the work is done in accordance with the principle of concentration.

When the Study of Facts in their Logical Relations should Begin. Dr. Maxwell thinks that the period when the study of facts in their logical relations should begin is reached by the average child about the twelfth year.

"From the sixth year to about the tenth or eleventh," he says, "the child is occupied in acquiring the arts necessary to the attainment of knowledge—reading, writing, and the elements of number — and in obtaining through observation of natural objects" (and, I should add, through the study of history, in the form of biography, and of simple literature) "that experience of the world" (and of man) "which is necessary to the interpretation of more complex and general notions. During this period the knowledge acquired is necessarily loose and unsystematic," and the interest of the child grows out of the external, mechanical relations of the facts he studies rather than out of their inner, logical relations, and for that reason the principle of concentration should obtain. "About the beginning of the twelfth year, however, comes the time when it is necessary to systematize the facts learned. . . . This is the point at which specialization in teaching [and in study] should begin. The retardation of progress in public-school work is chiefly caused by this one thing-that specialization in the work of teaching is delayed until the child's fifteenth or sixteenth year instead of beginning at the eleventh or twelfth." 1

Advantages of Specialization in Teaching. Specialization in the teaching of the upper grades of the grammar school would make it much easier to keep the work of a pupil adjusted to his needs and capacities in the way which was insisted on in the preceding chapter. If each of the staple subjects of instruction in the last three or four years of the grammar school were taught by a single teacher, it would be easy for an intelligent teacher to as1 Educational Review, Vol. III. pp. 481, 482.

certain when a bright pupil could with advantage to himself undertake the work of a higher grade. By means of reviews which would not be disadvantageous to the rest of the class she could make him acquainted with important matters which the class had gone over before he entered it. She would have perfect knowledge of the work of both classes, since both of them would have done it under her direction; she would therefore be ideally qualified to supplement the pupil's knowledge in the higher class in those particulars in which this might be desirable. In a word, specialization in teaching would facilitate in two ways that promotion of the pupil which his interests demand: first, when the class from which and the one to which he might be promoted were taught by the same teacher, she would be in the best possible position to determine when such promotion was desirable; secondly, knowing precisely what ground the higher class had traversed before he entered it, she would be able to meet his needs in the most intelligent way by classroom recapitulations and by suggestions as to outside reading.

Objections to the Existing System. The existing system is not only unfavorable to a proper method of promotion in these particulars; it not only makes it impossible for the class teacher to have that knowledge of a pupil's capacity to do the work of a higher grade which a departmental teacher may have, and impossible for the pupil who is promoted before his class to have the work of the higher class properly adjusted to his needs: it interposes a powerful obstacle to a wise system of promotion in another way. To teach bright, eager, enthusiastic boys and girls is a real pleasure to the genuine teacher. Would it be a

matter of wonder if, without admitting it to herself, she should be unwilling to lose this pleasure—if she should unconsciously overemphasize the importance of the work yet to be done when promotion of her best pupils to a higher class meant promotion to another teacher? And it is worth while to notice that this motive would tend to operate most strongly with the best teachers with the very class of teachers who under the departmental system would most earnestly desire to have their pupils so promoted as to keep them doing the most helpful work.

The Existing System Requires Teachers to Teach Subjects in Which They are not Interested. Another argument in favor of the proposed system is that the traditional system requires the teacher to teach subjects for which she has little taste or aptitude and of which her knowledge is very superficial. It is not uncommon for a teacher to have a genuine interest in the subjects pertaining to nature, or in those that pertain to man, but it is only the teacher with encyclopædic knowledge and of varied talents who has a real interest in both of these great subdivisions of human knowledge. Now it is a great misfortune for children to be obliged to study a subject under a teacher who does not care for it. For apathy, like interest, is contagious, and it is almost impossible for even bright pupils to develop interest in a subject in which the teacher lacks interest.

Moreover, a lack of interest implies superficial knowledge. The teacher who is not interested in history, for example, does not see the facts of the subject in their logical relations, does not see them in their relation to the life of the individual, the nation, and the race. They are, for her, dead, meaningless facts — facts that are "going nowhere