of this
method, the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme, and the dose of
information required against some later day is sugar-coated, so that
pupils may be fooled into taking something which they do not care for.

It is not of course a question whether education should prepare for the
future. If education is growth, it must progressively realize present
possibilities, and thus make individuals better fitted to cope with
later requirements. Growing is not something which is completed in odd
moments; it is a continuous leading into the future. If the environment,
in school and out, supplies conditions which utilize adequately the
present capacities of the immature, the future which grows out of
the present is surely taken care of. The mistake is not in attaching
importance to preparation for future need, but in making it the
mainspring of present effort. Because the need of preparation for a
continually developing life is great, it is imperative that every energy
should be bent to making the present experience as rich and significant
as possible. Then as the present merges insensibly into the future, the
future is taken care of.

2. Education as Unfolding. There is a conception of education which
professes to be based upon the idea of development. But it takes back
with one hand what it proffers with the other. Development is conceived
not as continuous growing, but as the unfolding of latent powers toward
a definite goal. The goal is conceived of as completion,--perfection.
Life at any stage short of attainment of this goal is merely an
unfolding toward it. Logically the doctrine is only a variant of the
preparation theory. Practically the two differ in that the adherents of
the latter make much of the practical and professional duties for which
one is preparing, while the developmental doctrine speaks of the ideal
and spiritual qualities of the principle which is unfolding.

The conception that growth and progress are just approximations to
a final unchanging goal is the last infirmity of the mind in its
transition from a static to a dynamic understanding of life. It
simulates the style of the latter. It pays the tribute of speaking
much of development, process, progress. But all of these operations
are conceived to be merely transitional; they lack meaning on their own
account. They possess significance only as movements toward something
away from what is now going on. Since growth is just a movement toward a
co