n and floundering about in solving their problems, the most effective
methods will ultimately be evolved through what we call the process of
trial and error. The teaching of the very oldest subjects in the
curriculum is almost always the best and most effective teaching, for
the very reason that the blundering process has at last resulted in an
effective procedure. But the scientific method of solving problems has
its very function in preventing the tremendous waste that this process
involves. English literature is a comparatively recent addition to the
secondary curriculum. Its possibilities of service are almost unlimited.
Shall we wait for ten or fifteen generations of teachers to blunder out
the most effective means of teaching it, or shall we avail ourselves of
these simple principles which will enable us to concentrate this
experience within one or two generations?

I should like to emphasize one further point. No one has greater
respect than I have for what we term experience in teaching. But let me
say that a great deal of what we may term "crude" experience--that is,
experience that has not been refined by the application of scientific
method--is most untrustworthy,--unless, indeed, it has been garnered and
winnowed and sifted through the ages. Let me give you an example of some
accepted dictums of educational experience that controlled
investigations have shown to be untrustworthy.

It is a general impression among teachers that specific habits may be
generalized; that habits of neatness and accuracy developed in one line
of work, for example, will inevitably make one neater and more accurate
in other things. It has been definitely proved that this transfer of
training does not take place inevitably, but in reality demands the
fulfillment of certain conditions of which education has become fully
conscious only within a comparatively short time, and as a result of
careful, systematic, controlled experimentation. The meaning of this in
the prevention of waste through inadequate teaching is fully apparent.

Again, it has been supposed by many teachers that the home environment
is a large factor in the success or failure of a pupil in school. In
every accurate and controlled investigation that has been conducted so
far it has been shown that this factor in such subjects as arithmetic
and spelling at least is so small as to be absolutely negligible in
practice.

Some people still believe that a teacher is born a