taste, ambition, and choice of vocation. It means further
provision of the special education that will best prepare him for his
chosen work, and, indeed, it means sympathetic co-operation of the
teacher and student in determining the course to be pursued.

{479}

_Research an Educational Process_.--Increased knowledge comes from
observation or systematic investigation in the laboratory. Every child
has by nature the primary element of research, a curiosity to know
things. Too often this is suppressed by conventional education instead
of continued into systematic investigation. One of the great defects
of the public school is the failure to keep alive, on the part of the
student, the desire to know things. Undue emphasis on instruction, a
mere imparting of knowledge, causes the student to shift the
responsibility of his education upon the teacher, who, after all, can
do no more than help the student to select the line of study, and
direct him in methods of acquiring. Together teacher and student can
select the trail, and the teacher, because he has been over it, can
direct the student over its rough ways, saving him time and energy.

Perhaps the greatest weakness in popular government to-day is
indifference of citizens to civic affairs. This leads to a shifting of
responsibility of public affairs frequently to those least competent to
conduct them. Perhaps a training in individual responsibility in the
schools and more vital instruction in citizenship would prepare the
coming generation to make democracy efficient and safe to the world.
The results of research are of great practical benefit to the so-called
common man in the ordinary pursuits of life. The scientist in the
laboratory, spending days and nights in research, finally discovers a
new process which becomes a life-saver or a time-saver to general
mankind. Yet the people usually accept this as a matter of fact as
something that just happened. They forget the man in the laboratory
and exploit the results of his labor for their own personal gain.

How often the human mind is in error, and unobserving, not to see that
the discovery of truth and its adaptation to ordinary life is one of
the fundamental causes of the progress of the race. Man has advanced
in proportion as he has become possessed of the secrets of nature and
has adapted them to his service. The number of ways he touches nature
and forces {480} her to yield her treasures, adapting them