horrible spectre of "Fourteen Weeks," in this, that, or the other subject still haunts many schools, and an unintelligent ambition or a foolish local vanity contemplates it with illconcealed satisfaction. When the Committee of Ten made their investigation they found that the programmes of forty unusually good secondary schools contained this appalling list of subjects: school programmes Languages: English, French, German, Span- Overcrowded ish, Latin, Greek-6; mathematics: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, analytic geometry, descriptive geometry-6; natural science: mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, natural history—6; and also rhetoric, drawing, surveying, music, physical training, elocution, psychology, ethics, history, civil government, constitutional law, commercial law, political economy, stenography and typewriting, bookkeeping, penmanship, sacred studies-17, or 35 subjects in all. The mere reading of these names must suggest to many of us programmes that we have seen in which the attempt has been made to provide for two-thirds or three-fourths of the entire list. The dissipation of energy and the shattering of the highly coveted power of concentration that must follow any attempt to keep Purpose of flexible and elective courses track of such an educational kaleidoscope can better be imagined than described. It is essential that studies should be organized in courses, and these courses may be as numerous and as diverse as the school can afford or as the community demands. These courses should not be rigid and compulsory: that involves another and hardly less serious danger. They should be flexible and elective, made by each pupil for himself with the aid of his parents and teachers. Each course should admit of attention to not more than five subjects at once, and each subject should be pursued long enough to gain such mastery of it as will cause it to yield to the student some considerable part of its educational value. My own preference is to have each subject followed for an entire academic year, at least. Think how little one knows of a foreign language, of any department of history, or of a natural science, after even a full year of study. These flexible and elective courses-the varieties of which would be very numerous to meet the diverse needs, tastes, and capacities of the students-must, of course, be organized about a common centre or core. After weighing carefully the alternative propositions, I have come to the conclusion that this centre or core should be threefold, in order to combine genuine and well-proportioned discipline with abundant opportunity to meet individual needs. The three constituent elements of this centre or core, I state in this way: (1) the study of language; (2) the study of deductive reasoning, in mathematics and formal logic; (3) the study of inductive method, in experimental science, in vocational preparation, and, in part, in history. If it be provided that the course pursued by every student must contain a subject selected from each of these three classes, we may safely trust to the student's tastes, needs, and ambitions, together with the advice of his parents and teachers, both to select the specified subjects and to add to them others that lie outside those classes. He cannot very well fail to make a satisfactory course. This arrangement suits equally well the student who has a college course in view, or his fellow who looks forward to a scientific school, an agricultural college, a technical institute, a business career, or indeed any other form of occupation. Each student will thus be given a chance to make the best use of his adolescent powers during the secondary-school period, and, under the limitations that I have suggested, he will be able, at the end of four years, to present to a higher institution of learning a certificate of graduation that it cannot, and, I am convinced, will not refuse to accept. It is in this elimination of elementary studies from the secondary school, and in the frank recognition of the paramount advantages of the elective system, that I see the way of highest usefulness opening before the secondary school. Instead of conducing to arrested development, it will then constantly spur the pupil on by putting new difficulties before him. Instead of dividing his attention and interest among eight, ten, or even twelve subjects each year, so frittering away his time and energy, it will focus them upon not more than five subjects, and pursue each far enough and long enough to gain real insight into it and genuine power over it. Instead of offering one or two rigid courses to a hundred students, no two of whom are just alike, it will make it possible (within the necessary limitations of the school's resources) for every pupil to have the course he most needs and yet one that has balance, harmony, and undisputed effectiveness. The disciplinary purpose of the secondary school will thus be gained. Its selective purpose is of almost equal importance. From what I have already said of the mental characteristics of children of secondary-school age, it is evident that at that time new tastes and unsuspected powers make The wise and observant their appearance. teacher will seize upon these, and by bringing the pupil in contact with the best means for their development will promote the discovery whether they are superficial or deep, fleeting or permanent; he will then guide the pupil's studies accordingly. The result of this attitude is to assist materially a process of educational selection by which pupils are trained for efficiency while gaining a sound secondary education as well. For it is not enough that our education should give pupils a knowledge of the civilization which surrounds them; it must also fit them to take hold of that civilization at some definite point and so to support themselves in it. That is, it must add efficiency to knowledge; and efficiency, in these days of highly organized and minutely differentiated societies, implies a great deal. No generation of pupils can be made efficient by any uniform course of study. Such a course will produce efficiency in those to whom it is best adapted; the others must go to the wall. A uniform course of secondary and collegiate study would, as higher education became general, result in |