The Appeal., 1910-03-05

dGmOT d l IL
atepdsnexgaa Of public school education ,.-
The metropolis has, including high scnoo1s'
651,325 children enrolled in it's 514 school
houses, which cost $99, $4,000, and has teacn-
ing and supervising force of 16,4S9 persons,
whose combined salaries amount to $l7,5Sl,ooo
a year.
For weeks 1 went from school to school,
from class room to class room, from teacher TO
teacher from principal to professor, observ-
ing questioning, comparing, analyzing the OLD
idea of the common school with the new, par
ticularly looking to see how theory consisted
with practice and results.
To start with, I had the fact that there Is
general complaint that the boys and girls who
come from American public schools write bad
ly, spell badly, and weak in grammar and
arithmetic.
But facts are hard things to overcome and
the more I searched for evidence with which
to shame and confound modern pedagogy and
it's methods, the less disposed to con-
denim, until finally it became plain that I, in
common with the general public, was mistaken,
and that an attack upon what is known as the
new education" could not be justified. That
there is some waste and much that is expert
mental in it cannot be denied. But the great
groundwork of it seems to be sound and prac-
tical.
1t is claimed that the old system of teach
ignorant theory of the human brain. The idea
was that stern, high drill in few subjects
developed mental power that could be used
in all subjects. Teachers have assumed that
the mind was a group of general powers or
faculties, such as observation, comparison, at
tention, logic, memory, language and so on,
and that an intensive study along the line of
any mind faculty would develop that faculty
as whole and practically for all purposes.
thorities that the brain, instead of being col
lection of few general faculties, divides itself
on investigation into countless specifications,
and that mental power developed in func-
tion of the brain cannot as rule be trans
ferred to another function.
That discovery upsets the foundations on
which education has been based for centuries
and, together with the modern demand for
technical and manual training to meet indus
trial problems, accounts for the sweeping
changes observable in the public schools
To-day the teaching profession has grown
to enormous proportions. There are in the
United States alone more than half million
teachers and college professors. That is more
than third of the membership of all the pro-
fessions combined. The teachers of the coun-
try outnumber the lawyers or physicians more
than four to one. ..-- a..
Pedagogy has suddenly become conscious
profession which seeks to establish itself upon
a firm scientific basis.
The new idea is that broad curriculum
embracing, in addition to the three Rs, man.
ual training, art, science and nature studies,
touches all the latent possibilities, tastes and
ambitions of the child arouses. interests and
develops its capacities; and, so, prepares it for
self-realization in its life vocation.
Such investigators as Prof. Edward L.
Thorndike, professor of educational psychology
in the Teachers college, Columbia university,
declare that actual scientific tests show that
the specialization of the human mind is "even
greater than ordinary observation leads one to,
suppose"
That thrillingly beautiful ceremony in which
100000 New York school children and their
10000 teachers begin each mornings work by
stretching out their hands to the American
flag and solemnly pledging allegiance to it is