in small coin,--of dealing with and emphasizing trivialities,--and yet
every time that the scientific method touches the field of education, it
reveals the fundamental significance of little things. Whether the
third-grade pupil should memorize the multiplication tables in the form,
"8 times 9 equals 72" or simply "8-9's--72" seems a matter of
insignificance in contrast with the larger problems that beset us. And
yet scientific investigation tells us clearly and unequivocally that any
useless addition to a formula to be memorized increases the time for
reducing the formula to memory, and interferes significantly with its
recall and application. It may seem a matter of trivial importance
whether the pupil increases the subtrahend number or decreases the
minuend number when he subtracts digits that involve taking or
borrowing; and yet investigation proves that to increase the subtrahend
number is by far the simpler process, and eliminates both a source of
waste and a source of error, which, in the aggregate, may assume a
significance to mental economy that is well worth considering.

In fact, if we are ever to solve the broader, bigger, more attractive
problems,--like the problem of vocational education, or the problem of
retardation,--we must first find a solution for some of the smaller and
seemingly trivial questions of the very existence of which the lay
public may be quite unaware, but which you and I know to mean an untold
total of waste and inefficiency in the work that we are trying to do.

And one reason why the scientific attitude toward educational problems
appeals to me is simply because this attitude carries with it a respect
for these seemingly trivial and commonplace problems; for just as the
greatest triumph of the teaching art is to get our pupils to see in
those things of life that are fleeting and transitory the operation of
fundamental and eternal principles, so the glory of the scientific
method lies in its power to reveal the significance of the commonplace
and to teach us that no slightest detail of our daily work is
necessarily devoid of inspiration; that every slightest detail of school
method and school management has a meaning and a significance that it is
worth our while to ponder.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: An address delivered before the St. Louis Society of
Pedagogy, April 16, 1910.]

[Footnote 13: Dr. W.T. Harris.]

~VIII~

THE POSSIBILITY OF TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY[14