and a philosophy of its own, teachers must study their problems as physicians study theirs and as statesmen theirs. For the problems of teaching are at once problems of efficiency and problems of destiny. The teaching of any subject calls for scientific study of methods and ethical study of ends. How shall we teach it well? depends for its answer in part on the answer to What shall we teach it for? These questions have not yet been answered with finality for any subject. With due change of wording they may be asked of any school or course: How shall we manage it well? and, What shall we manage it for? All questions of educational practice are thus both scientific and philosophical.

(a) IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

In the elementary school we need better methods of drill-greater efficiency in the formation of habits, as for instance in arithmetic. To gain it we must turn to experiments in the psychological laboratory and to exact measurement of arithmetical progress in the school. It is only in the last few years that we have had an adequate knowledge of what arithmetical ability is. We do not yet know with. much precision how it develops under different methods of instruction. The teaching of every subject suffers for want of accurate records of results. We lack standards, fundamental tests, and a sufficiently detailed knowledge of the psychology of the subjects we teach. But measurement and experiment apply in the main to memory work and the formation of habits. They will not quickly show us how to relate one subject to another or to the life outside school walls; they cannot yet help us to vitalize our subjects and make them yield opportunity for independence and cooperation on the part of our pupils. They will not soon teach us how to make learning a light to life. In the arithmetic of the elementary school we need a social philosophy to govern our selection of topics to be taught or omitted, to justify varying emphasis on logical conceptions, drill in calculation, or exercise with real problems. So in the teaching of every subject we need new study, both exact and broad.

(b) IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

In the work of the high school this double duty is even more apparent. We face the immediate necessity of extending the period

of compulsory school attendance far into the period of secondary education. But we cannot lightly set aside both the need to earn and the impulse to work, and the demand for workers will not readily yield to the idealism of the educator who would ignore it in favor of general culture. Compromise must be the outcome, but also coöperation: we must have many forms of vocational training, and employers of young workers must aid the state to educate them through schemes of part-time schooling. Such schemes are already in operation and commend themselves as both efficient and humane. In this increased provision for schooling the purely technical subjects lend themselves readily to measurement of results and standardization of method; it is the subjects of larger social value, such as civics or English, that must be studied anew, in the light of clearer conceptions of their aims and closer observation of their effects. We have to learn how to use these traditional means of education (and such newer ones as the study of household sanitation or personal hygiene) under new and trying conditions and with new purposes, as the liberal adjuncts of many forms of vocational training.

Yet in the secondary school which aims wholly at general culture (or at preparation for college, which is not supposed to be an obstacle to general culture), the problems of aim and method in the teaching of traditional subjects are more pressing still. How shall a modern language be taught to some real purpose? For what purpose shall it be taught? The actual mastery of the tongue can be achieved very much more effectively than it is now achieved if methods of teaching can be based on fuller knowledge of the psychology of learning and completer tests of classroom work and home study. The fundamental values of the subject can be more clearly conceived and more directly pursued if we can shake ourselves free from the befogging belief in general discipline as the goal of teaching in this or any given subject. Ability to handle the language as an instrument of thought and expression-for the achievement of this aim we need a new analysis of the fundamentals and more accurate standards of progress: appreciation of the foreign civilization represented in its literature-for the achievement of this aim we need new selection of material and more vital reference to life. In this and in many traditional subjects teachers are constantly

at work at this double adjustment, and from them as well as from psychologists and students of education we may look for progress

and reform.

For scientific study of method, whether by experiment in the psychological laboratory, by classroom test, or by exact statistical record, can but provide the basis for constructive reorganization of teaching in any subject; discussion of aims by educational leaders can but define in general terms a new interpretation of material; the teachers in the schools must make effective or prove visionary the ideals thus achieved. If they cling to traditional conceptions and tried methods as many do, especially in private schools-they block progress; and if by personal worth and the power of leadership they win respect and affect deeply the lives of their pupils, the weight of their conservatism is the harder to bear. But the hasty and ill-considered application of scientific generalization or social conception is an equal if a rarer fault. The teacher must master for himself the science and the philosophy of his subject and be critical practitioner as well. He must be open-minded, critical, constructive.

(c) IN THE COLLEGE

This attitude is more general among teachers and principals of elementary schools and among school superintendents than among teachers and masters of secondary schools; among public secondary-school teachers than among private secondary-school teachers; and least general among college teachers. Yet to these latter the call to professional study of the problems of their own work is loudest. They have greatest need to test their results and possibly revise their methods, to reconceive their aims and discover new ways to achieve them. In America the college stands perforce for culture; yet it clears itself with difficulty from the snares of technical specialization in chosen fields of knowledge-a specialization essentially vocational. College professors must be specialists-scholars in the full sense of the term; but college students do not for their part commonly intend or care to specialize in the same sense. To study one field with greater thoroughness than others; to gain from it a disinterested enthusiasm for learning; to approach in one direction the limits of achieved knowledge; to taste the joy of constructive intellectual

effort; these are essential elements in a college student's curriculum. But this does not call for the methods or ideals of graduate specialization, even in the student's chosen field. The privilege of college study is the opportunity to reach safe ground, in all the more important fields of scholarship, for the exercise of reflective intelligence. With a view to providing this opportunity college teachers may well spare time from research for that close observation of methods and results and that unprejudiced discussion of aims which are needed in the teaching of all subjects everywhere.

II. FRANCIS BACON

BY DR. ERNEST BERNBAUM

1

E HONOR Francis Bacon as the prophetic inspirer of modern science. In perusing the long list of the activities of that scientific establishment which is described in the closing pages of "The New Atlantis," we are astonished by again. and again recognizing in its imaginary methods and achievements precise anticipations of what is actually being done in modern medicine, meteorology, engineering, aeronautics, etc. Bacon himself, to be sure, modestly protested that he was but "stirring the earth a little about the roots of science." He was indeed no great discoverer of data, and from Harvey to Huxley the scientific specialists have sneered at his rather futile experiments. Even his method, which he sincerely believed a new and rapid way to complete mastery of our environment, is now considered somewhat impractical. Yet the prefaces to his "Instauratio Magna," though no longer accurate guideposts, are revered as monuments in the history of scientific progress. They served an even nobler purpose than to show the scientist just where to go; they sent him forth to seek his way with a new and conquering spirit, the spirit of confidence and of cooperation. The works of Bacon instilled in his successors the faith that by united effort they would presently understand, and thus control, those physical forces which in the past had toyed with the life of man, and exposed him to poverty, disease, and all the accidents of circumstance. In this hope were undertaken the Royal Society and the French "Encyclopédie"-leading enterprises in advancing respectively the discovery and the dissemination of rational knowledge. "We shall owe most," says Diderot in his prospectus to the "Encyclopédie," "to the Chancellor Bacon, who threw out the plan of a universal dictionary of sciences and arts at a time when, so to speak, neither sciences nor arts existed. That extraordinary genius, at a 2 H. C., xxxix, 116ff., 143ff.

1 Harvard Classics, iii, 143ff.