Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1906-12-15
PROGRESS IN EDUCATION.

Christmas is essentially the childrens holiday and few
lines on education would therefore appropriate at this
time.
New courses Of study recommended for the schools by
leaders in educational work and less adopted by
superintendent and principals show strong tendency to-
wards industrial activity in schools and the correlation OF
school work with the great occupations and industries OF the
country That this subject is of immense Importance may
be gathered from the attention paid by President Roose
welt in his message to Congress,
The former basis OF elementary education still continues
to be pracsed leading proficiency in the socaed three
RS reading writing and arithmetic; but the basis OF train
ing has been shifted Formerly the training in these
branches mainly upon words selected from stories or
literature liked by adults with the idea that the children
should be drilled into the and meaning OF these words
and facts by an exercise of the memory This principle OF
education long since obsolete in theory even if occasional
vestiges of it are found to survive in practice.
The new education deals primarily with things, with
facts with laws it uses words merely the vehicle for
pressing what has been learned by experiment and ober
Walton This way of looking upon education so much
work to be done upon things has resulted in the establishment
Of the laboratory method of the colleges and the activity
rethodthe play work development exerciSesof the kin
dergaren
But between the kindergarten and the college stand
the elementary or schools and the secondary or
high schools
A candid inquiry among our leading educators met by
equally candid from Them has elected the almost
uniform declaration that neither the common nor the high
schools have been fully converted in practice at least to
the real laboratory principle and that in some respects the
mere laboratory method is still struggling to find foothold
in most Of the common and in Of the high schools.
1t is not asserted that either the common or the high
schools Of this country do not in form recognize and prac
se to some extent the laboratory methods but that they do
not as rule put into operation what that method really
signifies.
All the schools study things to greater or less degree
according to the genius and training OF the teachers Out
the trouble is that some study things as mere things
and not as related to the vital permanent and real interests
OF the learner.
The high school or district school course in physiology
m example usually deals with certain elements OF the sci
ence Of anatomy the mysteries OF the internal ear the COM
oostion of bone or muscle etc. II the student were TAX
r tho FIRST steps in medical and would next study
- oeoc ~ medicine But that is what less than one in
@ hundred is preparing do and even for that one it is
doubtful whether or not such instruction would be OF real
value 10 him in his subsequent career The relation OF
nbvsioogy to daily life the hygiene OF deep breathing OF
ov eating OF muscular exercise OF regular and sufficient
ceo OF preserving the eesight ec-these are the KIND
~ things which every student requires and it not so much
knowledge Of them as drill IN their practice tha the
schools should give High school botany we apprehend'
has little significance when largely consists as generally
the case OF peerng through microscope to learn the mys
teries beautiful as they are, OF cel-tormaton and
and the theories OF biology The great science
and art OF agriculture IS what botany should
not lead to, as the high school teachers explain
hut what it should actually be in the school itself The idea
that any subject should not be- but should only prepare or
- ,har s,b;ec valuable in itself, seems to originate
from the theory that the school prepares the stu
dent not to do independently anything for himself but
prepares him for another school, the high school, that the
high school, in like manner, prepares not for e but for
college and that tbesoege prepares for the university.