mankind to follow him into new fields; but the rank and file must follow slowly if at all; the ground must be looked over carefully if disaster is to be avoided.

The question of individual instruction has been before us for some time and because it tends to discredit the old-fashioned recitation period it has been seized upon by some of the restless spirits who are hungry for reform. These people have been telling us with great insistence that the pupil is an individual and should be treated as such, that our education-methods, whereby all pupils are run thru the same mold, are all wrong. They love to borrow figures which cast opprobrium on present methods-we hear much of the "lock-step," "marking time," etc. They never by any chance refer to classwork as "teamwork" or compare it to the precision of an army corps. They lose sight entirely of the fact that the individual will always be one of a class, that his activities must be circumscribed by the activities of others, and that the more perfectly he has learned to modify his own ideas and to supplement those of others, the more successful he will be in life.

On the other hand the extreme adherents of class instruction characterize the whole movement for individual instruction as a fad, and to them "fad and failure" is an alliterative jingle which pleases the ear and satisfies the judgment. We have it on what may be considered good authority that it was carefully tried in Kansas City and abandoned. It has been denounced as uneconomic in time and energy, in short it has been shown that the whole system "hasn't a leg to stand on." But as I said in the beginning, it seems to me we should eliminate discussion on the general merits of the two systems. I take it that we are just plain people who are trying to get together to see if by an exchange of views we can improve by ever so little the work we ourselves are doing in our own classrooms.

The writer of this paper says there is some good to be found in both systems and I think we agree with him. It is to be regretted, therefore, that he has not offered out of his own experience some practical suggestions for co-ordination of individual and class instruction. We are ready to follow him in his contention that they should be combined in some way, but how is this much-desired consumation to be reached? I hope as the result of the discussion which it is my province merely to indicate that we shall get some practical answers to this question.

The problem before us is the pupil. His tastes, inclinations, and capabilities are not greatly different from those of hundreds of his fellows. With all our limitations how are we going to effect the highest function of education which Dr. Harris says is to “open the windows of the soul" so that the pupil may interpret correctly the experiences which come to him in life. If a combination of individual and class instruction will help us to do this, by all means let us have it. Some practical suggestions made by Mr. Collins of the Stevens Point Normal School are:

1. The setting apart of consultation periods to assign extra work to strong members and to aid weak ones over difficulties.

2. Conferences at the end of the recitation period.

3. Individual instruction during part of the hour; either at the beginning or end.

4. Chalk and talk, in which all members of the class work on the same problem with pencils while one student talks at the board.

If anyone can give observations based on practical experience with any of these or other similar methods it would be a very valuable item in this discussion.

THE RELATION BETWEEN GENERAL AND COMMERCIAL

EDUCATION

JAMES M. GREEN, PRINCIPAL OF THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, TRENTON, N. J. In some parts of our country, especially in New Jersey, we have what might be termed an epidemic of commercialism in education. The microbe has so worked upon our educational system that there are many who seem to

think that if a man is to follow any commercial pursuit, in reality or hypothetically, he should at a very early age take up special studies and of a narrow order.

We have a great many schools that call themselves business colleges, and which offer courses of study that are the inverse of college in that they are most elementary, narrow, and mechanical. The representatives of these so-called colleges canvass in automobiles, on bicycles, in railroad trains, by mail, and in every other way for pupils to come to them who have not gone farther in a general education than the third year of the grammar school. These pupils are deluded into the notion that these schools have some patent open sesame to business or commercial life, whatever that may mean, that does not call for the study usual to the general courses.

We also have in connection with a large number of our academies or high schools of four years' courses short courses called business or commercial courses that may be taken in two years, and for which, in a number of instances, the diploma of the school is given. In a good many places this diploma is received with the feeling that its holder is quite as fortunate from an educational point of view as the one who contemplates some other line of occupation is in holding the diploma of the four years' course.

The popularity of these special commercial courses, including commercial arithmetic, commercial geography, commercial history, etc., is due partly, I think, to the impractical selection of subject-matter in these subjects in the general school courses, and partly to the idea on the part of a good many men that equipment for business does not depend so much upon the development of the general judgment as upon the learning of a few things well and then getting behind the counter."

It is in protest to this condition of things, and with the hope of laying some emphasis on that kind of education which is general and yet supplies the demands of the usual commercial man, and also calling attention to some branches which are now regarded as commercial but that do not apply to the commercial man more than to any other man, that I have undertaken this place on your program.

Any intelligent discussion of courses of study must involve the understanding of the purposes of education in the fuller sense. To educate a man is more than to teach him to do one, two, or three things. We may teach a horse to stand on his hind feet and pull a bell-rope with his teeth, or a dog to jump thru a ring and turn a somersault, but we would not consider either of these animals educated in any human sense. Education is the development of all of the proper powers of the man to the highest practical degree. Reduced to common terms, this means the development of his powers of reasoning and judging and thinking on the ordinary problems and occupations of life, his ability to take his part among his fellow-men, and know and understand the ordinary problems as they present themselves, with their natural solutions.

We classify our education as general and special. General education is that which is essential to everyone, no matter what occupation he intends

to follow. Special education is that which relates to some particular occupation or pursuit, the preparation for which is not covered by the general e ducation.

The extent to which a general education is essential, as distinct from simply desirable, is debatable, and is more or less a matter of opinion, but that there is a large amount that is essential will not be debated. All elementary education should be general. Usually, a large portion of the secondary-school course is general, a few electives being allowed which have a special bearing. Very often the college course is general. In many cases, however, part of the college course is general, part has relation to some special occupation, as engineering or law. The university and technical school are, in the very nature of things, special.

It is not so much the object of this paper to clearly outline the distinction between that which is general and that which is special thruout the curriculum, as to show the proper relations between the general and special in secondary and lower college courses. If, therefore, I cease to keep before my hearers the grade of the education, it is simply to avoid awkwardness and dwell upon the principle involved, rather than the strict details.

General education is composed of those branches, or parts of branches, of study, which are used by man in contact with his fellow-man in the social. organization under which he lives, in correspondence, communication, in business, in short in everything which constitutes his life as man; such branches as reading, spelling, penmanship, drawing, arithmetic, geography, American history, English grammar and rhetoric, physiology and hygiene, elementary plant and animal life, the primary essentials of physics, chemistry, business and social forms.

These are the branches that may be described as the common expression of the activities of man. They are not adopted by him, they are his nature disciplined and developed.

In the selection of topics for schoolroom work under these respective branches, care should be taken to select those topics which will throw most light on usual experiences. To illustrate: The teacher of geography should not be content simply with teaching what the textbook suggests, or what he studied himself as a pupil. He should rather ask, what has common experience found to be the most useful knowledge in geography? He would find, in answer to this question, not the memoriter work of some years ago, which consisted in memorizing the names of all the different capes and bays, peninsulas, isthmuses, rivers, mountains, cities, towns, etc., a process the results of which were sure to fail him in his later experiences, but the learning rather of those essential features in geography which remain with him and make a part of his judgments in all his calculations, such as the shape of the earth, its motions, its climate, and the effects of its climate on its productions-that is to say, on its life conditions; drainage, atmosphere, field and laboratory work, interpretations of maps, etc.

In arithmetic, the question would not be, can I study elementary, advanced,

and high-school arithmetic, with all of the variety of problems, catch and otherwise, that might be imagined, but what knowledge of arithmetic will enable the boy to solve the problems that usually present themselves, such as the fundamental rules, common and decimal fractions, percentage, interest, etc.

In history, not the unrelated records of the deeds of the past, but an interpretation of the institutions under which we live in the light of the experience of the past as related to these institutions, as, for instance, municipal government, local and state and interstate relations, transportation, systems of exchange, social customs, etc.

The point that I should like especially to emphasize is that the selection of matter in this way in the departments of general education will suit best the commercial demand in all that is not strictly detailed and special.

As indicated above, the pursuit of the branches that are conceded to be general in this manner will consume most of the time of the ordinary secondaryschool course. Elections may be allowed in a few branches, such as the modern languages, bookkeeping, stenography, and commercial law, but when the elections are taken in bookkeeping and commercial law, these branches should be studied not with a view so much to keep books in a particular way and to know the commercial law of the land as to establish in the mind the systematic principle that is followed out in the keeping of books, and the natural essentials that enter into the formation of contracts for the transfer of property and for work. In so far as these branches are studied in this manner, they should be classified more as general than special subjects, and yet as a matter of fact, studying them in this way will furnish the necessary training for nearly all business houses. After a long period of observation, I have reached the conclusion that more depended on the thoroness in which the work that was done in these branches was accomplished than on the special or general nature of the school. The boy who does his work thoroly in the ordinary high-school bookkeeping is able to keep books in any institution of a common order, especially if allowed a little time to adjust himself.

My strongest point in favoring this kind of a course thru the high school is that the pupil is unable to anticipate his future employment. Of all of the boys I have known in the high schools with which I have been connected, it is safe to say that not 3 per cent. of them secured exactly the employment they anticipated. One expects to go into business. He thinks he would like to be a salesman in a wholesale drygoods house; he fails to get employment in such a house and takes it in an electric house; and so, in one way or another, practically everyone fails of being able to anticipate exactly what he will do. A few persons are actually employed in bookkeeping and stenography of a mechanical order for which, and for which only, they are prepared.

The place for special commercial courses seems to me to be in the higher institutions of learning. An examination of some of the courses in these institutions gives one the impression that there is not there a clear discrimination between that which is general and that which is commercial. For instance,

sociology, ancient and modern social ideals, projected types of an ideal society, American social problems, a study of the negro, Indian, Chinese, and other race problems, criminology, tariff history of the United States, government of the United States, a study of the theory and present practical operation of the federal constitution, citizenship, federal and state, a comparative study of civil government in Europe and the United States, a study of the executive power, its position of leadership in modern government, the present activities of political parties in the United States, international law, the police power, etc. Valuable and interesting as are these subjects, all of them quotations from business and commercial courses, I submit that they are too broad to apply to any particular occupation as distinct from another. Perhaps the men who would most need a knowledge of sociology would be statesmen and clergymen.

There can be no objection to any man in any institution studying any one or more of these subjects, provided he is interested in the subject and studies it in a manner that will bring to him valuable knowledge and disciplined habits of thought as a consequence. The only objection comes from a confused notion as to the specific relation of given subjects to given pursuits.

In closing, permit me to reassert that the education which is of greatest value and which is first in order is that education which will enable its possessor to meet the greatest number of problems and activities that are likely to present themselves.

The education that is strictly special should be taken only when the person is sure that he is to pursue a strictly definite occupation, and should then be taken in the broadest way possible consistent with that occupation.

The planning of our courses of study in this manner will tend to strengthen legitimate commercial courses as it will tend to free the public mind from delusive ideas, and to furnish that kind of knowledge which will be strictly reliable.