its origin, doubtless, in the traditional
concept of knowledge as power. An adage is not easily controverted or
eradicated. The copy-books of the fathers proclaimed boldly that knowledge
is power, and the children accepted the dictum as inviolable. If it were
true that knowledge is power, the procedure of the schools and the course
of conduct of the teachers during all these years would have ample
justification. The entire process would seem simplicity itself. So soon as
we acquire knowledge we should have power--and power is altogether
desirable. The trouble is that we have been confusing knowledge and wisdom
in the face of the poet's declaration that "Knowledge and wisdom, far from
being one, have ofttimes no connection." Our experience should have taught
us that many people who have much knowledge are relatively impotent for
the reason that they have not learned how to use their knowledge in the
way of generating power. Gasoline is an inert substance, but, under
well-understood conditions, it affords power. Water is not power, but man
has learned how to use it in generating power. Knowledge is convenient and
serviceable, but its greatest utility lies in the fact that it can be
employed in producing power.

We are prone to take our judgments ready-made and have been relying upon
the copy-books of the fathers rather than our own reasoning powers. If we
had only learned in childhood the distinction between knowledge and
wisdom; if we had learned that knowledge is not power but merely
potential; and if we had learned that knowledge is but the means to an end
and not the end itself, we should have been spared many a delusion and our
educational sky would not now be so overcast with clouds. We have been
proceeding upon the agreeable assumption that arithmetic, geography, and
history are the goals of every school endeavor, the Ultima Thule of every
educational quest. The child studies arithmetic, is subjected to an
examination that may represent the bent or caprice of the teacher, manages
to struggle through seventy per cent of the answers, is promoted to the
next higher grade, and, thereupon, starts on his journey around another
circle. And we call this education. These processes constitute the
mechanics of education, but, in and of themselves, they are not education.
One of the big problems of the school today is to emancipate both teachers
and pupils from the erroneous notion that they are.

The child does not go to scho