before. How can we overcome them? By proceeding
psychologically. The instructor refers to two or three important wage
disputes in current industrial life; these conflicts are analyzed; the
contending demands are studied, and the forces controlling the
adoption of a new wage scale are noted. After this study of actual
economic conditions the students are led to formulate their own
definition of wages, and to discover the forces that determine wage.
Their conclusions are of course tentative. The textbook or textbooks
are consulted in order to verify the formulations and the conclusions
of the class. Thus the course is developed entirely through a series
of contacts with economic life. The final topic in the course is the
formulation of a definition of economics. Now the class sums up all
that it has seen and learned of economics during the year. The cold
and empty definition now glows with meaning. Such a course awakens an
intelligent interest in economic life; it develops a mode of thought
in social sciences and a sense of self-reliance; it teaches the
student that all conclusions are tentative and constantly subject to
verification; it fosters a critical attitude toward printed text.

The college graduate who studied college mathematics, advanced
algebra, trigonometry, analytical geometry, and calculus, looks back
with satisfaction at work completed. Each of these subjects seemed to
have little or no relation to the other; each was kept in a
water-tight compartment. He remembers few, if any, of the formulae,
equations, and symbols. He recalls vividly his admiration of the
author's ingenious method of deriving equations. Every succeeding
theorem, formula, or equation was another puzzle in a subject which
seemed to be composed of a series of difficult, unrelated, and
unapplied mathematical proofs. The course ended, the mass of data was
soon obliterated from the mind's active possessions.

What is the meaning of it all? What is its relation to life? There is
no doubt that much of this mathematics has its application to life's
needs, and that these successive subjects of mathematics are
thoroughly interdependent. But nothing in the mode of instruction
leads the student to see either the application or the interrelation
of all this higher mathematics. Would it not be better to give a
single course called mathematics rather than these successive
subjects? Would it not be more enlightening if each new mathematical
principle