ndpoint; as manifesting the agencies which have influenced social
development and as presenting the typical institutions in which social
life has expressed itself. The culture-epoch theory, while working in
the right direction, has failed to recognize the importance of treating
past periods with relation to the present,--as affording insight into
the representative factors of its structure; it has treated these
periods too much as if they had some meaning or value in themselves. The
way in which the biographical method is handled illustrates the same
point. It is often treated in such a way as to exclude from the child's
consciousness (or at least not sufficiently to emphasize) the social
forces and principles involved in the association of the masses of men.
It is quite true that the child is easily interested in history from the
biographical standpoint; but unless "the hero" is treated in relation to
the community life behind him that he sums up and directs, there is
danger that history will reduce itself to a mere exciting story. Then
moral instruction reduces itself to drawing certain lessons from the
life of the particular personalities concerned, instead of widening and
deepening the child's imagination of social relations, ideals, and
means.

It will be remembered that I am not making these points for their own
sake, but with reference to the general principle that when a study is
taught as a mode of understanding social life it has positive ethical
import. What the normal child continuously needs is not so much isolated
moral lessons upon the importance of truthfulness and honesty, or the
beneficent results that follow from a particular act of patriotism, as
the formation of habits of social imagination and conception.

I take one more illustration, namely, mathematics. This does, or does
not, accomplish its full purpose according as it is, or is not,
presented as a social tool. The prevailing divorce between information
and character, between knowledge and social action, stalks upon the
scene here. The moment mathematical study is severed from the place
which it occupies with reference to use in social life, it becomes
unduly abstract, even upon the purely intellectual side. It is presented
as a matter of technical relations and formulae apart from any end or
use. What the study of number suffers from in elementary education is
lack of motivation. Back of this and that and the other particular bad
method is th