7. I believe that I could study real hard at my grammar and geography and arithmetic and spelling if I could do cooking or sewing with the other girls in the afternoon.

8. I do not want to go to town and leave my father and mother and my brothers and sisters, for I know I shall miss them all and the trees and the creek and the green grass and the old woods and everything; but oh! I do not want to stay at home and do nothing but wash dishes and carry water and do the chores and grow old like auntie. I want to laugh and love and live.

9. I believe I can learn to sew and cook and do laundry work and do them well, and I want to learn them and I want to learn to do them well.

10. I believe in the square deal for girls as well as boys and I want everybody to be happy all the time-the old as well as the young.

JOINT DISCUSSION

THE MINIMUM ESSENTIALS VERSUS THE DIFFERENTIATED COURSE OF STUDY IN THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES

I. LOTUS D. COFFMAN, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

There has been a growing educational theory that individual rights and liberties are paramount to social duties and to the social will. It is true that the most distinctive and valuable contribution of current educational psychology is a knowledge of individual differences. The discovery of these differences has resulted in an exaltation of the importance of the individual, and that exaltation has become the dominant note in educational theory and practice. So deeply enmeshed is the doctrine of individual differences in educational thought that we are in some danger of forgetting that interest, one of its by-products, is not always a measure of value, that mere spontaneous activity in itself never produced reflective thinking, that natural learning, apart from human intervention, is a fiction, a dream, an anomaly.

The only national rights anyone has are those he uses for collective welfare. Certain standards and certain values must be set up for the training so that all may more satisfactorily satisfy the conditions of good citizenship, of neighborhood, and of family life. At this particular time it is becoming increasingly imperative that we ask what is best for society, what is best for the state, rather than what is best for the individual. The gigantic problems this country is facing and will soon have to solve will demand new conceptions of responsibility, a more wholesome respect for the ideals of American life, a stiffening of our moral fiber, and a more rigorous mastery of the tools of learning.

If the efficiency of a state or of a nation depends upon the trained intelligence of the people, the school must play its part in solving those problems which are basic to social welfare and to national integrity; and in doing so it must provide first and above all a curriculum consisting of

minimum essentials, a curriculum consisting of those great facts and principles which all should be expected to acquire within the limits of their respective capacities.

The violent reaction we are experiencing against providing a curriculum consisting of minimum essentials is due to the wholesale attempt to apply a uniform curriculum uniformly to all classes of children. This practice has placed no premium upon variations in methods. But initiative upon the part of teachers will be stimulated and encouraged if we vary the methods of instruction to harmonize with the capacities of the children for the purpose of securing more uniform outcomes in matters of skill, knowledge, standards, ideals, appreciations, obligations, and duties. We regard it as a healthy sign and as a mark of progress that teachers enjoy great freedom in the adaptation of materials to the abilities of children. Any educational program that offers little opportunity for the exercise of resourcefulness and initiative on the part of teachers is the product of mediaevalism. A certain amount of freedom is desirable because it stimulates ambitious teachers to improve their methods; a certain amount is necessary because some individuals and some classes will do more work than other individuals or other classes.

But the great fact remains that there is a certain irreducible amount of material, constantly increasing in character and in amount, which all children should be required to master if they are to be in possession of those things which constitute the essentials of our common life and common welfare. It is quite as necessary, and certainly as valuable, that we emphasize the stabler aspects of society in the curriculum as that we be conversant with every variation proposed. Initiative is an eminently desirable quality, but initiative without guidance becomes anarchy; initiative without being founded upon a substratum of common ideals determined by sane leaders will result in national destruction. But ideals cannot be formulated in a vacuum. They always follow in the wake of or cluster about ideas, and it is those ideas and practices which constitute the basis of social life for which we are pleading.

It is not uncommon to hear the special pleaders of individual differences proclaiming that reading should be taught without readers, arithmetic without arithmetics, and that we should abandon all textbooks and courses of study. The discovery of an obsolete bit of material in the curriculum or some defect in method has encouraged them to declare the entire school system to be antiquated and worthless, the "most gigantic and momentous failure of modern times." They also urge differentiation in the seventh and eighth grades because of the elimination and retardation found in these grades, and they cite as the cause of this retardation the lack of adjustment between the different grades of ability found in the school and the course of study. While this mal-adjustment has no doubt contributed to the mortality of the schools, still the total population in school between 1900 and 1910,

as shown by the census returns, increased proportionately more rapidly than the general population for each age group, and more rapidly for boys than for girls in every state in the Union except Nevada. Altho mortality is descriptive of a condition to be ameliorated, we have much evidence to show that both enrolment and attendance are improving. The greatest achievement of the last century, one unparalleled anywhere else in all the world, is the retention in school of four children in ten to the age of fifteen and of one child in ten to the age of nineteen. We are not familiar with a single trustworthy investigation that establishes beyond question the fact that retardation and elimination are due primarily to the uniformities of the curriculum. That much of the retardation and elimination is due to causes over which the school has little or no control has been clearly demonstrated. Moreover, a recent investigation in one state has shown that enrolment and attendance have increased as rapidly in 120 schools having no vocational work as in 117 schools having vocational work. Evidently there is a nation-wide faith in public education, whether it be general or special, cultural or vocational.

Another of the stock arguments for the differentiation of the curriculum in these upper grades is that it should be organized to serve the needs of the community in which the school is located. We have no desire to minimize the importance of this conception. We are convinced that there should be many more contacts than now exist between the school and the community, that we have not yet become sufficiently sensitive and selfconscious concerning the possibilities of social service thru such contacts. The localization of the activities of the school in terms of the dominant industries and activities of the community will vitalize the curriculum and motivate instruction. It will make a direct appeal to the pupils and it will encourage local support for the schools. These results are highly desirable. But attempts to localize the school curriculum may result in a situation inimical to the interests of democracy. The natural consequence of localization may mean an accentuation of the differences already existing between the communities. If such be the case, and if the practice be extended indefinitely, then one of the great obligations of the public school will be neglected. If, as is generally admitted, the common school, and in that we would include the seventh and eighth grades, is the agent of universal education, if the station of a nation among the nations of the world can be determined by the attention it is giving to the general education of the masses, if social solidarity depends upon likemindedness rather than upon unlikemindedness, then we must safeguard those things which made for the homogeneity of our people, and not accentuate unduly community differences.

We cannot educate all who live in farming communities to be farmers, or all who live in mining communities to be miners. We know that a majority of the sons of any generation will not follow the occupations of

their fathers. Since there is a tremendous shift in occupations from generation to generation, is it not all the more important that all people be educated alike in those things which are essential to mutual understanding and to mutual intercourse? This does not imply that all shall think alike all the time, but that all shall have the basis and the instruments for similar thinking when it is required. Otherwise, the charlatan, the mountebank, and the demagog will need to appeal only to the emotions, the superstition, and the ignorance of the people to lead. But few will deny that an educated citizenry is as necessary to fight the battle of peace as a trained citizenry is necessary to fight the battles of war, and neither can be secured without common elements in our educational program.

Frequently the advocates of localization forget the fact that approximately one-half of the people living in cities were born, reared, and educated in rural districts. Had they been trained in the district schools in a narrow curriculum, colored by one or two local occupations, they probably would have found it far more difficult to adapt themselves to city life. Moreover, the mobility of our population between states, a tendency we should hardly think of restricting, must be reckoned with when we are considering education in terms of national good and national integrity. Unless we safeguard all those things which make for social welfare and mutual understanding and social intercourse in our educational program, the localization of the curriculum, valuable as this conception is, must lead to occupational stratification.

When any educational theory seeks to establish new ethical standards, to undermine our codes of personal morality, when it strikes powerfully and sharply at the value of racial experience, when it declares that many of our stabler institutions are antiquated and worthless, the validity of its arguments should be tested. Not education merely, but every phase of American life has been permeated and infected by the invidious implications of the doctrines of individualism.

The extent to which the doctrine of individual liberty has forced itself into business is a matter of common knowledge. Men will refuse to buy of a grocer or a butcher whose scales are not properly adjusted when they themselves resort to trickery in disposing of stocks and securities. Men will vote to imprison the dealer of adulterated milk when they themselves do not scruple in selling watered stock. In other words, business has become a game. At least, it is called a game in which each player is dominated by self-interest.

The same tendencies are at work in the political field. Politics, as such, is looked upon as a game in which trickery, deception, and fraud are the proper cards to play.

It would seem that we need a new conception of public responsibility. Taking morals and public duties as we find them, we are impressed with the necessity of devising new standards if we are to prevent degeneracy. We

must prevent the spirit of our trusteeship from sinking into abeyance and from being replaced by the spirit of selfish or local ends. To divert attention from the immediate and alluring and to center it upon the stabler aspects and interests of society is a problem of paramount importance.

The trial of democracy as a form of government before the civilized world has been going on too long to be overlooked in the burst of enthusiasm for human freedom. All human freedom is limited by its capacity for stable and efficient government. Democratic nations have died only by self-slaughter. The last shreds of autocracy can be extirpated in a democracy only by learning submission to law, not to a master; to efficiency of organization under a higher servant, not under a ruler; to energy and efficiency of devotion to the common welfare, not to individual liberty. Our nation faces the task of reinterpreting its ideals and readjusting its life. Purpose must take the place of destiny, and there must be a change from drift to mastery. Our domestic and public affairs and our educational program must all be more efficiently organized. In the future there will be less talk of rights and more insistence on duties. It will be realized that there can be no solidarity without sacrifices. If we do not loyally volunteer for the new life of our country, we shall be drafted. In this work of national readjustment our educational system will be tested as never before.

President Eliot has recently declared that democracy is on trial now and that unless it can effect a highly efficient organization with national unity as its goal it must perish when it comes into competition with more efficient nations. National integrity and economic efficiency depend upon intelligent citizens and they depend upon the educational ideals fostered by the country. If education is not used to promote the resources of the nation as a whole, but to divert these resources into individual channels, it becomes a source of weakness instead of strength. As Fouillée points out, "The danger that above all others the democratic nation must avoid is the disintegration of society into units with no immediate concern but self-interest, into individuals to whom social duties and bonds are gradually ceasing to appeal." A growing consciousness of social welfare and of social organization is calculated to shift the emphasis from the demand for individual liberty to a demand for social unity.

Modern educational psychology has not only made us aware of variations in ability, it has also discovered that there is a common central tendency around which individuals cluster or tend to cluster. Slight variations from this central tendency are numerous; large variations from it are rare. Similarities in mentality as well as similarities in social ideals and standards are after all important criteria for determining the selection of the materials of education and the attainments of children. Variation in ability is essential to social progress, but resemblances in ideals, customs, skills, and standards are essential to social stability. Differences among people are no more basic to democracy than likeness among people. That