THE NEW DEPARTURE IN SECONDARY EDUCATION

J. J. SHEPPARD, PRINCIPAL OF HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, NEW YORK CITY The dedication in New York city a short time ago of a high-school building devoted to commercial education, and the recent action of the Chicago Board of Education in making provision by an appropriation of a half million dollars for the erection of a building for a similar purpose, mark unquestionably a new departure in secondary education. The two foremost cities in the United States recognize in no uncertain way the important part played by commerce in the modern world, and follow the example set by Germany in adapting education to the needs of the business man. In Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburg, and Paterson commercial education of secondary grade has been given for some time, but New York and Chicago are the first cities to plan entirely independent schools offering a four-year course. One may safely predict, I think, that within a comparatively few years commercial high schools will have greatly increased in number, and that eventually no important city in the country will neglect this phase of education.

The development of commercial education is but one of the striking instances of efforts now being made to adapt education to actual community needs. Those in charge of secondary education have been rather slow to realize that the old-time course of study for high schools, planned especially as a preparation for college, was failing to attract or to hold great numbers for whom preparation for vocation is of immediate and pressing importance. In spite of the fact that an almost insignificant proportion of high-school pupils seek admission to college, the influence of the latter institutions in determining the course of study for the lower school has been all-powerful, and the program neglected those subjects, however useful they might be, which did not count specifically for college preparation. But all that is changing now. The secondary school is fast coming to assume an independent position, with its own problems to solve in its own way; and these problems concern themselves no longer chiefly with the occasional student looking to a higher institution, but to the great numbers who must immediately take their place among wageearners. Not the least important among those problems is, in a commercial age and a commercial country, how best to prepare the youth to render intelligent and valuable service in the world of trade.

It hardly needs any presentation of data to prove that this is a commercial age and America a commercial country. It has been well said by one of the foremost of European statesmen that, as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were marked by religious wars, the eighteenth by the development of liberal ideas, and the nineteenth by questions of nationality, so is the twentieth century to be distinguished by the struggle for existence among the nations in the field of commerce. The economic phase of history has been always important, but today its importance receives a recognition which gives it

tremendous emphasis. One who notes with a seeing eye present conditions in Europe is strongly impressed by the almost nervous solicitude shown by those in authority on the question of the maintenance of commercial advantage. England is debating with fierce interest proposals to regain lost industrial prestige by a return to protective duties. Continental nations, and notably Germany, are devoting themselves with conscious energy to the task of securing an increasing share in the markets of the world. The present struggle between Japan and Russia is fundamentally a commercial war. The great industries of this country are no longer content with home markets, but are boldly entering into competition with foreign rivals on their own ground. The recent establishment of a Department of Commerce is but an indication of the desire to give governmental aid in the development of commercial interests.

The marvelous inventions of recent decades, multiplying productive power as they do many fold, and bringing the whole civilized world into wonderfully close intercommunication, enormously intensify division of labor, which involves and implies exchange and distribution-processes which are distinctly commercial. And with the vast increase in the extent of exchange and distribution there has come an increasing complexity in their management. Trade has long since ceased to be simple barter. Its rules and processes can no longer be picked up by the fairly intelligent in a few weeks. In its higher phases it puts to test the keenest minds, and in its ordinary phases it affords ample opportunity for the exercise of more than ordinary gifts. In a notable address, delivered in Philadelphia a decade ago, Speaker Reed made a significant prediction concerning the importance in the near future of the man of affairs. Business men, he said, would in a short time be the dominant factors in American public life, and business, rather than law, or medicine, or the ministry, would offer the greatest opportunities to ability of the highest grade. In the light of this prediction, an examination of the statistics gathered concerning this year's graduating classes at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton is both pertinent and interesting. In each of these universities the greater number of graduates now make choice of a business career, or some technical pursuit intimately related to business. At Harvard more than half the graduates who responded indicated that business, or some vocation closely allied to it, was to be their life-work, while Yale and Princeton show an even greater tendency in the same direction. This is a striking and a very suggestive change from the time, not very remote, when the ministry, the law, and medicine seemed to be the only suitable careers for the college graduate. Little wonder that our universities one by one are establishing schools of commerce designed to give appropriate and adequate scientific preparation for a field of activity fast approaching the dignity of a profession.

If the secondary school is to render the best service to society, it must adapt its instruction to the needs of the time. If the activities of a community are chiefly or largely commercial, then provision should be made in the course of study for an educational preparation for these activities, and the preparation

should not be merely general. It should include so-called "practical" studies. Those who have contended that education should look only to the cultivation of general power and the acquisition of general knowledge, and should ignore everything designed to be immediately and directly useful, have argued ably, but they have not won their case. The unrest in secondary education noted by Commissioner Sadler in the very conservative German atmosphere owes its origin to the feeling that the training of the school should be more practical; and the same unrest is to be noted in every advanced community. Everywhere we note the loosening hold of the classical studies, and the gradual exaltation of the purely modern curriculum. Almost a decade ago Professor Friedrich Paulsen wrote these lines in his History of Higher Education in Germany:

For the majority of pupils in our secondary schools, even of those who are destined to pursue their studies at some higher seat of learning, the cultivation afforded by modern languages and literature, and by natural science, is a more indispensable matter than the so-called classical education. They need a kind of school oriented to the claims of the present day a modern Gymnasium. Relieve the classical school from the burden of what must be to it an alien task, and it may, I grant, conduct a select number of scholars to a deeper, and therefore to a more really fruitful, study of classical antiquity—a province of culture which I should be the last to underrate. One may, on the contrary, perhaps go so far as to say that there is still no sphere in which a pupil may be so quickly led to the free exercise of comparatively independent habit of thought as in the defined and limited domain of classical culture. Yet it must be allowed that schools the curriculum of which is classical in this definite sense will have no easy place in the coming century. We live no longer in the happy age when the German people, as Bismarck said, fixed their gaze upon the hills of Thüringen. The capital of Germany is Berlin, not Weimar. The outlook of our time ranges across the seas. The active mind of the nation is centered, not on literature and art, but in gaining command of the forces of nature, and in possessing the earth. The point of view is not without its effects even on the thoughts and interests of the generation still at school. Can we deplore it? Would it help matters if we did? The wind bloweth where it listeth. The school cannot create the tendencies of the age, and will therefore do well easily to adapt itself to them.

It needs but a superficial study of the history of secondary education to realize how steadily the modernizing tendency has been at work. Progress in the earlier stages, when classical ideas were so firmly intrenched and suitable alternatives were not easy to offer, was slow indeed. But gradually there has been an enrichment, and English, modern languages, science, and history have now firmly established themselves in the curriculum. Manual training, at first accepted as a harmless fad, a spes of "busy work," is now generally regarded as of great educational value, not alone in a general way, but immediately and directly for confessedly practical purposes. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the modernizing tendency just at present is the prominence given to the idea of utility in a consideration of the educational value of subjects. In other words, we are breaking away from the doctrine that a subject should be taught merely for its own sake, and not for any utilitarian purpose. It may safely be said that sciences are studied largely because they serve certain important practical purposes. Physics and chemistry are essential to the

equipment of those who intend to devote themselves to work of a technical character, while the medical man needs both chemistry and biology. Side by side with the colleges whose chief aim is to give a liberal training intended to promote general culture are growing up scientific and technical schools. aiming directly to fit their students for immediate participation in industrial activities.

But even from the standpoint of general culture, it may very appropriately be urged that for vast numbers the road to it cannot be along the lines of classical scholarship. It would be a sorry thing, indeed, if the classical education should be thrown overboard as entirely unsuited to the times. It has served its purpose well thru the centuries, and we shall always have need of the sort of scholarship and culture it insures. It should be wisely conserved. But, on the other hand, it should not be forced upon the many to whom it is a discouragement rather than an inspiration. Many a boy and girl to whom classical studies do not appeal evince an interest in subjects whose practical bearing is easily discerned, and for them practical subjects often prepare the way to a broader culture, because latent intellectual interests are incidentally and indirectly aroused.

So much by way of a general argument for secondary commercial education. It would be interesting to trace the gradual development of business instruction from the primitive type of business college to the present ambitious course offered in the great universities, to note the widespread interest and great activity in commercial education in Europe, and to make some predictions as to the future. But, in the brief time allotted to me, it would be perhaps more serviceable to indicate as clearly as may be just what the secondary school can and ought to do by way of preparing its students for business careers.

We may well start with the admirable statement of Commissioner Sadler, of England. He declares that it would be a blunder, from the point of view of the later efficiency of the pupil, to deprive him of a liberal education in order to impart to him an early knowledge of the technicalities of business life. Surely the man of affairs has need of cultivated perceptions, breadth of vision, and the forward-reaching gift of imagination. The accumulated experience of the race, as depicted in the pages of history, will not go for naught in his equipment. The logical and exact training of mathematics, the accuracy of observation and inference which science developes, the discrimination and appreciation which language imparts-all of these are vitally important in making him a more intelligent doer of the many things which present themselves for consideration and disposition to the man of business. The oldline commercial course of the "business college" assumed that a certain technical facility was practically all that was necessary, and so its studies were what might be called form studies. Of content there was little or none. The modern commercial course assumes that a broadly trained intelligence is essential to success in business, and it turns to its use the typical secondary subjects, rich and varied in content. Science is important, not only because

of its intrinsic value, but because of its close relation to the materials of commerce. History not only contributes to an understanding of the main currents of civilization, but throws light upon the economic and commercial changes. in a nation or a period. Modern languages are instruments not alone for developing refinement of perception and appreciation, but also for facilitating an understanding of the international aspects of present-day trade. In short, the modern commercial course takes the standard secondary subjects and makes them more vital to the pupil by relating them directly to the world of affairs. There is a danger, of course, of making a study too "practical" and the teacher in the commercial school may sometimes have to be cautioned against an unprofitable application of his subject to a commercial purpose. Literature, for instance, should be taught chiefly for its own sake. A certain amount of so-called "business English" may be useful and necessary, but it should not usurp time which rightfully belongs to a study of the world's masterpieces or the training in spontaneous expression.

The four-year commercial course should then include language, science, mathematics, history, and art. French, German, and Spanish should be offered for the pupil's choice, and it is desirable that the program permit of his taking at least two of them. They should be so well taught that a fair degree of facility in conversation in at least one language should become the possession of the commercial graduate. In other words, they should not be weak substitutes for the rigid training given by the study of Latin and Greek. Science (including biology, chemistry, and physics), mathematics, and drawing should be required for at least three years. History should be studied continuously thruout the course, special emphasis being laid upon the economic aspect of the development of civilization. It should include a very careful and thoro study of civics-a subject too often neglected or inadequately treated in even the best secondary schools. Drawing is of very great commercial value. The refinement of taste which it develops is alone sufficient reason for giving it a place in the curriculum. Esthetic form is the chief element of worth in many a commodity which finds wide sale in a civilized community. In this respect America has much to learn from its European competitors. Another liberal subject hitherto studied almost exclusively in the college deserves an important place in the commercial curriculum. Economics lends itself readily to advantageous treatment in the secondary school. The laws governing the production, exchange, and distribution of wealth are within he comprehension of the high-school senior, tho he may not any better than his college brother grasp all their subtleties. Economics presents for the pupil's consideration data of the most interesting character, and in its practical applications touches upon nearly all of the vital social and political questions of the day. Banking and finance, international trade, taxation, socialism, all fall within the scope of the subject. And from the purely disciplinary point of view, economics is peculiarly adapted to advanced secondary instruction. Its laws and principles are drawn from facts which must be care