mbus
Public Schools for the Year Ending August 1, 1913.]

[Footnote 29: Annual report of the Columbus Public Schools, 1913,
p. 18.]

CHAPTER XIII

THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION

I The Standard of Education

The educational experiments described in the preceding chapters are
replete with the spirit of the New Education. From the virile
educational systems of the country a protest is being sounded against
traditional formalism. School men have learned that that which is is not
necessarily right. Each concept, each method, must run the gauntlet of
critical analysis. It is not sufficient to allege in support of an
educational principle that the results derived from its application have
been satisfactory in the past. Insistently the question is repeated,
"What are its effects upon the problems of to-day?"

Educational ancestor worship is no more acceptable to the progressive
spirit of the Western World than is ancestor worship in any other form.
The past has made its contribution, and has died in making it. For the
contribution the present is grateful, but it must steadfastly refuse in
its own name, and in the name of the future, to be bound by any decree
of the past which will not stand the acid test of present experience.

The old education was beset by traditionalism. Under its dominance,
education, defined once and for all, was established as a standard to
which men must attain; hence a preceptor, guiding his young charges
along the straight path to knowledge, might, with perfect confidence,
admonish them, "Lo here, the three R's is education," or "Lo there,
Greek and higher mathematics is education," according as his training
had been in the three R's or in Greek. In either case he felt certain of
his general ground. Once and for all the educational standard had been
set. By that standard new ideas were judged, and either justified or
condemned.

Under this predetermined scheme there was a formula for education--a
formula as definite as that for making bread or pickling pork. The
formula was applied to each child who presented himself to the
administration. If the formula worked successfully the child was
declared educated in the same way that pork which has been successfully
treated by the proper processes is declared to be pickled. If the
formula did not work the child was not educated. He sat in school with a
dunce-cap upon his head, or else played hookey and spent his hours in
fishing,