swimming or idling.

Perhaps, in view of the recent contributions of science, it would be
more illuminating to say that the old education inoculated the child
with a predetermined educational virus. If the virus "took" the child
was declared immune to the bacteria of ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity
and other prevalent social complaints. If the virus did not take the
schoolmaster ostentatiously washed his hands of the recreant.

II Standardization Was a Failure

Only one argument need be urged against this method of attacking the
educational problem--it did not work. In the first place, the most
brilliant school successes often turned out to be the most arrant life
failures, while the school derelicts frequently became life successes of
stellar magnitude. To the thinking man the inference was plain; the
formula was not an unqualified success. Not only was this true of the
children who went through school, but there were crowds of children for
whom the school held no attraction whatever. They attended a few
sessions, wasted a scant bit of energy in educational effort, and then
dropped out, hopeless of obtaining results by further "study."

The old education read out of the school those children who could not
benefit by its teachings. How utterly different the concept which has
gripped the minds of progressive, modern educators! Under their guidance
education has become what Herbert Spencer called it--a preparation for
complete living. No longer a fixed, objective standard, education has
been recognized as an enlargement of the life horizon of each individual
boy or girl in the community. "Teach us individual needs," proclaim the
educational progressives, "and we will tell you what the character of
education must be."

Thus has education ceased to be an objective standard, created by one
age and handed down rigidly immobile to the ages succeeding. Instead it
is accepted as a fulfilment--a complement--to child needs. Always
education has been regarded as a process of molding life and character.
The chief difference between the old and the new education is that the
old education made a mold, and then forced the child to fit the mold,
while the new education begins by determining the character of child
needs, and then fits the mold to the needs. The old education was like
the farmer who built a corn-sheller, and then attempted to find ears of
corn which would fit into the sheller; the new education is like the
farmer