how accessible this knowledge is one cannot attach great weight to this excuse. It is not too much to assert that any good teacher bent on making this work what it ought to be can obtain, through the means at hand, the necessary knowledge. What is really needed is, in the first place, the conviction of the fundamental importance of the study itself and, in the second place, a realization of the educational point of view from which the work should be done. As to the first prerequisite of success, so much has been written and said that it seems idle to attempt to say anything new. But it would seem that the most superficial observation of the place of science or the knowledge of nature in our modern life would be enough to convince one of the imperative necessity of making this knowledge fundamental in our education. The fact is, the only entrance that the young of the coming generation will have into the larger intellectual life of their day will be through the methods and results of science. This is patently true of all our social disciplines, including education, and to an increasing extent it is true of literature. An elementary school curriculum that fails to give nature-study its proper place simply ignores the child's future. For science is not merely a department of knowledge; it is a method of control of life; and it is but the simple truth that an education without science, in this day and generation, is neither life nor a preparation for life. Furthermore, the point of view from which the study should be carried on, that of problem solving, is the very point of view from which we can unify our educational theory and our practice in all departments of school work. To carry on the work successfully, therefore, we do not need a vast accumulation of information so much as a thorough appreciation of the fact that science is a way of going to work, the way, in fact, in which they work whose efforts for the world are the most succesful. It is the right of the children to know how to work successfully with plants and animals so that they may have real interest in living with them.

Physical Education

It is interesting to note the change in standpoint taking place in the work in physical eduin the Schools cation in the schools. The older method was essentially anatomical. The child was looked upon as a machine composed of levers and muscles which needed to be brought into action. Physical education consisted in developing this wonderful machine by means of exercises which trained directly these parts of the body. No doubt this standpoint had, and still has its justification. But, as in the case of other departments of school work, there is a growing recognition of the fact that the method of education, like the method of science, must be an indirect one through conditions to results. The problem of physical education in the schools is, for the teacher, the problem of creating and maintaining the conditions under which a normal, healthy physical life can go on; and, for the pupil, the recognition of these conditions as essential for his well-being in and out of school. Here, again, improvement is not to be sought so much by way of increment of exact or inaccessible knowledge as by heightening of the conviction leading to action that a few indispensable conditions must be constantly fulfilled if the normal human life is to be lived. Our educational psychology has been vastly improved by the introduction and utilization of the functional point of view. It is a mistake to assume, however, that our educational practice is only to be renovated via our educational psychology. The functional point of view must go over directly into our educational practice. This is what is taking place in our physical education. W. B.O.

The Educational Bi-Monthly

JUNE 1, 1910

Education and the Changing Social Order

T IS a common saying that a nation, like an individual,

The history of mankind seems to favor such a view; for civilizations have come and gone, and all have had their periods of infancy, childhood, youth, and so on to the grave. In the Old World to-day one may see peoples once prosperous, healthful, and progressive, now entering upon their period of decline, while more virile nations are surpassing them in the struggle for supremacy. Taking a general view only of the life of nations, one cannot escape the conviction that they must ultimately perish, in order that new civilizations better suited to promote human happiness may flourish in their stead. But a more critical study of the causes of national decay will lead one to the conclusion that dissolution is not inevitable, as is the case with the individual; the analogy is apparently, but not necessarily, true. In the social organism new generations are constantly replacing the older ones; and if the latter understood how to train the former so that they could adapt themselves to changing material and social conditions, there is no reason why nations should not continually increase in strength and efficiency.

Unfortunately the most vital problem of education in the large sense that of so equipping the plastic members of the social body that they can successfully cope with a constantly developing order of things-this great problem upon which the perpetuity of a civilization depends has not yet been given by most nations the intelligent attention that it requires in order to solve it effectively. The tendency of nations as of many individuals is to educate the young largely in traditional beliefs and actions. There lies before me at this moment a prominent daily newspaper, containing a vio

lent attack upon the "New Education". The author of this article compares the school in which he was trained with that in which his children are receiving their education; and he has only words of condemnation for the latter. With passionate earnestness he appeals to the school authorities in his community to forsake the "new ways", and return to the "sane" and "sound" old order, out of which came men and women of vigor and efficiency; while the schools of the present are turning out only "weaklings" and "incompetents". This unhappy man has a number of warm supporters among the citizens of his native city.

America can learn a useful lesson from the declining peoples in the Old World, who are degenerating because, for one reason and the most important one, they do not know how to train the young so that they can adjust themselves to the changing order, material and social, which evolution is constantly and inevitably producing. Look at the Moors, for instance. One may visit Mohammedan schools in Algiers where one will see exactly such an educational régime as was practiced in these same schools a thousand years ago, if historical accounts may be depended upon. The advances of civilization all about these people have made no impress upon their teaching. Their supreme ambition is to preserve unmodified the traditions of the fathers in respect to all the affairs of life. Habit has so fettered their thought and action that they cannot adjust themselves to the changes taking place in their environment, and as a result they are gradually but certainly losing ground in the struggle for survival; and the same is true in principle of other peoples in the Old World.

But Germany is a striking exception to the rule. Not many decades ago, as everyone knows, this nation lay under the heel of Napoleon and, as men thought, was practically destroyed. But at that moment there appeared a man who showed the German people that if they would begin at the beginning, and educate the oncoming generations so that they could deal effectively with the new conditions, they could build a new empire, and one stronger than any of its rivals. The German educational system has its defects, but it has accomplished the fundamental requirements in national

education,-it has made a people who are not the slaves of their past as are the Italians, for instance, but who understand more fully the conditions of the present, and who succeed better than most European nations in keeping their action abreast of the new knowledge and the new methods of living in the world. They are really in an important degree students of life as it is, not mere worshipers of what is old. They are forward-looking; they anticipate future needs; and and in respect to the everyday activities of life they endeavor to meet these needs by scientific inquiry and practice. Their schools largely reflect the temper of the people, and equip the young to cope independently and intelligently with the problems of every day living. This has made of the German people in the briefest space, as the lives of nations should be reckoned, one of the two or three most progressive and prosperous peoples on the earth to-day; and the Germans themselves seem to agree that their prosperity has been due mainly to the efficiency of their educational system.

The chief concern of our own people must be to keep the schools fresh and plastic, so that they may effectively prepare the young to adapt themselves progressively to the conditions which are changing so rapidly here. In Italy the schools are utterly remote from the present needs of the nation. They are mediæval in character; and some native students of the situation despair of reforming them because the nation is backward-looking. The people as a whole have little if any feeling for modernity or progress; they can deal only with a static order of things. They do not study the young in a serious way with a view to discovering more effective methods of treating them, so as to counteract the disintegrating influences of advancing civilization. Happily we have a more progressive attitude in our own country; but still educational advance with us is not keeping up with the transformation occuring in the social organism.

The most significant change taking place among us, so far as the influence upon the young is concerned, is the extraordinary development of urban life. Mr. Carroll D. Wright has shown that while the population of our country as a whole between 1790 and 1880 increased 16 fold, the population of cities containing 8000 inhabitants increased 140 fold. A

century ago not more than one-thirtieth of the people lived in cities of 8000 or more, while in 1890 more than one-third lived in such cities. In the course of a single century the cities in our country have increased 75 fold. In the older parts of the country the rural population is actually decreasing, while the urban population is increasing beyond the possibilities of adequately caring for the people. Throughout the eastern states generally, and to some extent in many of the communities of the Middle West, it is not at all uncommon to find once populous rural schools abandoned for lack of pupils. The strongest argument urged in favor of the consolidation of schools in a number of our states is that many rural schools have become so depopulated that it is wasteful to keep them in operation. Contrasted with this are such congested conditions in the cities everywhere that school buildings cannot be provided rapidly enough to accommodate the children.

This transformation in the character of society has resulted in producing profound modifications in the lives of our children. It is becoming a common saying among intelligent observers that the country was made for the young, while the city is little better than a prison for them. The difficulty of the young in adapting themselves to the requirements of urban life is attested by the startling increase of juvenile crime and delinquency in our cities, which is attracting the attention of all serious students of social conditions. One may hear the same story throughout the civilized world today. Everywhere, apparently, the city has been built for the convenience of the adult, and usually little thought has been taken of the young who are to grow up in it. One who will study child-life on the streets of any of the large cities of the Old World will discover one reason why, in the course of time, the tide of life in these cities is lowered, and degeneration sets in. Formerly, when urban peoples became weakened they were sooner or later destroyed by men who had lived simpler, more elemental lives; but in our times we have no such means of speedily weeding out the unfit, and they linger for a long period in a degenerate condition, each generation becoming weaker, on the whole, than the preceding one.