HAPTER XII

THE AIM OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

We have seen that on its intellectual side the Primary School has two
main functions to perform in the education of the child. In the first
place, the school must endeavour to secure that the elementary arts of
reading, writing, and arithmetic are well organised and well established
in the mind of the child. The more effectively the language and number
systems are organised and established the more efficiently will they
function in the performance of future action. Moreover, it is only when
they have become so organised as to function automatically that they
reach their highest efficiency as instruments for the further extension
of knowledge or of practice.

In the second place, the Primary School must train the pupil to the use
of these systems as instruments for the realisation of other and
concrete ends or interests. _E.g._, the number system may be used in the
furtherance of the measuring interest, the weighing interest, and so on.
The two dangers we have to avoid are on the one hand the barren
formalism of treating the acquisition of these arts as ends in
themselves, and on the other of supposing that the real interests can be
intelligently understood merely through the instrumentality of the
elementary arts and that they do not require independent treatment of
themselves.

If the child is destined to go no farther than the Elementary School
stage, then at least the concluding year of the school should be mainly
devoted to training him to the use of the primary instrumental arts in
the establishment of systems of knowledge necessary for the realisation
of the simpler practical ends of life.

If, however, the child is selected for a course of higher education, the
educative process becomes different in nature. In the first-named case
we are content to give the child practice in the application of an
already established system to concrete problems. In the second case we
endeavour, using the elementary systems as means, to establish other
systems of knowledge as means to the attainment of still further ends.
We may, _e.g._, on the basis of the vernacular language build up a
foreign language system as a means either to commercial intercourse or
to literary culture. In short, the aim of the Secondary School is, using
the elementary systems as the basal means, to organise and establish
other systems of means for the attainment of the more complex interests
of after-lif