be substantially reduced, the teaching of
the school subjects with the chief emphasis on the pupil must surely
replace the practice of teaching the subjects primarily for their own
sake. This 'subject first' treatment must give place to the 'pupil
first' idea. No subject then will overshadow the pupil's welfare, and
the pupil will not be subjected to the subject. Education in terms of
subject-matter is well designed to produce a large crop of failures.
Neither the addition or subtraction of subjects is urged primarily,
but the adaptation and utilization of the school agencies so as to make
the pupils as efficient and as productive as possible, by recognizing
first of all their essential lack of uniformity in reference to
capacities and interests,--not only as between different individuals,
but in the same individual at different ages, at different stages of
maturity, and in different kinds of subjects. This conception precludes
the school employment of subjects and methods for all alike which are
obviously better adapted to the younger than to the older. Neither does
it overlook the fact that the attitude of more mature pupils toward
authority and discipline is essentialy different from that of the
younger boys and girls; that a subject congenial to some pupils will be
intolerable and nearly if not quite impossible for others; or that an
appeal designed mainly to reach the girls will not reach boys equally
well. In brief, the treatment proposed here is neither radical nor
novel, but it is simply the institution of applied psychology as
pertaining to school procedure. What the more modern experimental
psychology has established must be utilized in the school, at the
expense of the more obsolete and traditional. Psychology now generally
recognizes the existence of what the general school procedure implies
does not exist, namely, the wide range of individual differences.

The situation clearly demands that our public schools shall not, by
clinging to precedent and convention, fall notably behind industry and
government in appropriating the fruits of modern scientific research.
As the doctor varies the diet to the needs of each patient and each
affliction, so must the school serve the intellectual and social needs
of the pupils by such an organization and attitude that the selection
of subjects for each pupil may take an actual and specific regard of
the individual to be served. The change all important is not
necessarily i