board where they can use the whole-arm movement. The mental development seems to follow the order of the muscular, starting with whole-arm movements of thought and coming down gradually to the minutest investigation. The early years of adolescence are the period of sweeping generalization, of cosmical theorizing, of wild speculation, of unbounded ambition. Doubtless this tendency of the adolescent mind to enlarge its orbit has to be held in check lest it run off on a tangent and arrive nowhere. Yet like other natural tendencies it should be guided rather than thwarted. A study of biographies of great scientists shows that many of the most important and revolutionary generalizations of science have been conceived in youth, often in the latter teens or early twenties, though it required a lifetime of labor to substitute them. One of the factors in scientific progress, the free formation of bold hypotheses, is allied to the creative capacity of the artist, musician, or poet, and normally appears at the same early age. When the tourist comes into a strange city he generally takes the first opportunity to ascend the highest building in the place. The Washington Monument, the Woolworth Building, the Eiffel Tower or the Venetian Campanile, to get a bird's-eye view of the whole city before he begins its study in detail. It cannot be denied that such a preliminary survey may correctly be called superficial. From such a height nothing is distinct and much is hazy. But if the stranger does not get such a general idea of the city at the start he is never likely to obtain it later by any process of combing his close-ups of individual squares and buildings.

The study introduced into the schools some years ago under the title of "General Science" was designed to give the student such a bird's-eye view. It has become established in the curriculum, but it has not altogether fulfilled the expectations of its promotors. I cannot say who is to I cannot say who is to blame. The teachers say that it is the

fault of the text-books. The text-book writers say it is the fault of the teachers. But in either case the fault lies in the fact that General Science has not yet quite found its field and that it is apt to be a collection of samples of the several sciences instead of a scientific survey of nature as a whole. The subject tends to fall apart along the cleavage planes of the conventional classification of the sciences which are to follow it.

If General Science is to retain an honored and useful place in the schools it must maintain its own point of view. which is as legitimate as that of the several sciences. It is simply a question of the method of attack. There are two ways of cutting up a jelly-cake. One is horizontally,taking off layer by layer from the top to the bottom. The other is to cut down perpendicularly through all the layers. You get just as much cake in the latter case as the former, and even a thin slice from top to bottom gives you a better knowledge of what the cake consists of than you can get from the most thorough mastication of a single layer. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” only when what little is known is inaccurate, indefinite or overestimated.

I have heard it said that no one person could know enough to teach General Science. But if that is true, no one student is capable of acquiring it. There is admittedly a limit to the capacity of any human cranium but what it shall be filled with is a matter of choice. "Study one thing thoroughly" is good advice, but what is the "thing?" what is the "thing?" May it not be a plant, an ant-hill, an automobile or a house, as well as the chemistry, the mechanics, the sociology or the microscopy of these and all other things? Aristotle or Alexander von Humboldt did not know so much about any one science as a Grade C graduate of a modern college, but neither could they be called "scatter-brained" or "shallow-pated." I feel sure that either Aristotle or Humboldt, if their information were freshened

up a bit, could teach high school General Science in a way to win the respect of a - university specialist.

The latest survey of science teaching in the secondary schools of the United States, that made by Dr. George W. Hunter of Knox College, shows that General Science is coming into the first year of the four-year senior high school, biology in the second year, and usually chemistry in the third and physics in the fourth. Teachers of the special sciences report that General Science, properly taught, aids their work by laying a broad foundation and serving as an orientation course at the entrance of the high school. Formal learning is a tool. Its value depends on what is done with it. Give a jack knife to a boy and he may whittle wood or cut his fingers with it. The knife is neutral. Much of elementary education must be merely formal, the giving of tools to children. The three R's are nothing in themselves. They are merely the keys to the knowledge of good and evil. Whether they prove beneficial or injurious to the student depends on what use he makes of them. Reading the wrong books may make a man worse than an ignoramous. Learning writing may qualify him for forgery and learning arithmetic for swindling. The value of a ship's load cannot be calculated by the inspection of the Plimsoll mark. The value of an education depends more on the character of the cargo than on the capacity of the cranium that carries it. Neither an information test nor an intelligence test can determine what the man's mind will be worth to the world.

In repeating these hackneyed observations I am not presenting an argument against the alphabet, but I am pleading for its proper employment. Illiteracy is always a bad thing but literacy may be an evil thing. I mention this here because educators, like everybody else, are apt to become so absorbed in methods that they do not think enough of results. Means always tend to overshadow ends. We

need to pay more attention to what people read after they get through reading their readers. Opportunity does not insure progress.

Christian missionaries like Livingstone rejoiced over the opening up of Africa by commerce and communication because they naturally and naively assumed that it meant the spread of Christianity. On the contrary it led to an unprecedented spread of Mohammendanism, their most formidable foe.

If science teachers merely teach their students to use the appliances of science and fail to train them in the scientific way of thinking they may find the intellectual aims of science defeated by the machinery of science. The printing press contributes to the spread of superstition and obscurantism as well as to the spread of science. The newspapers publish a lesson in astrology more often than a lesson in astronomy. In our books and magazines fiction vastly outweighs fact. By means of the radio Voliva's argument for a flat earth is broadcasted from Zion City all round the world.

Science teachers in the secondary schools occupy a strategic position for influencing the thought of the nation. They give all the instruction in science that most of the people ever get and they have the first chance at those who go on to the university. Upon such science teachers therefore rests the responsibility of presenting science in the beginning in its integral and humanistic aspects. I venture to say that such a presentation gives the best foundation for future specialization and abstraction.

The science teacher has a double duty: (1) to train the student in a new way of thinking and (2) to acquaint him with the mass of facts and laws that science has acquired, to see that he gets his share of the inheritance of the accumulated wisdom of the ages. No one can appreciate the aim and achievements of science unless he has had some little practice in the experimental processes by which

scientific principles are discovered and established. Otherwise he will not be able to distinguish between genuine scientific discoveries and its pseudomorphs, the fakes, in after life. He will not know how to distinguish the man who knows from the man who pretends to know. This ability is more important in a democracy than anywhere else. The danger in an aristocracy is that the people will respect and follow those that are not worthy. The danger in a democracy is that the people will fail to respect and follow those who are worthy of such confidence. Envy of the expert is a common human failing. We none of us are free from the desire to look down on those who have the right to look down upon us. We all of us take a secret delight in the humiliation of our superiors and we rejoice in disclosing the ignorance of those who know more than we we do. This natural human weakness becomes a public menace when it is multiplied by a million. It accounts for the votes cast against Aristides, the Just, and for the disposition to elect as our representatives not the leaders of men but average men. This does not matter much in ordinary political affairs, for politics is not yet a science and there are many ways of reaching the same result. In science there is only one truth but an infinitude of false hoods. A problem has a single solution. An unwise popular vote on a political question may bring a temporary calamity upon a nation, but an unsound popular opinion on a scientific question may bring permanent ruin to a race. It would

not have mattered much if the legislature of Indiana had passed the bill fixing « fictitious value of Pi, but it would have made lots of trouble if the engineers and mathematicians of the world had adopted the wrong figure. The fate of the nation depends less on how they combine their chromosomes. If one of your pupils should become president, you would properly take pride in it but you would not have benefited the nation nearly so much as if you should train one of you: boys so that he could discover how to kill the corn-borer or make synthetic gasoline. For whoever is president, the corn-borer keeps on boring and the gasoline keeps or burning.

The main object of education in a democracy is not to teach the students how to vote right, but to train them how to think right. Under any form of form of government, in an autocracy no less than in a democracy, the real power lies in the people, and it is their individual conduct, guided by their personal beliefs, that determines whether the nation shall advance, stagnate or retrograde. The most and the best that any government can do to control the destiny of the nation is to provide a system of education such as will insure that every child has a chance to learn whatever is known about the world he is to live in and the consequences of his conduct. He should be taught how to steer his course by the fixed stars of fact. even though he may in after life prefer to follow a will o' the wisp or shut his eyes and plunge ahead blindly.

such school agencies as the departments of compulsory attendance, working certificates and permits, medical inspection, and such other agencies as serve to hold pupils in school and to protect them from unscrupulous employers.

The second requirement in the vocational guidance program of the secondary school is the selection of teachers who shall serve as vocational directors in the schools. Some adjustment as to salary or teaching load will be necessary in order to secure the best efforts of a teacher who sympathetically understands the vocational and educational problems of adolescent boys and girls.

The work of the vocational guidance director in the high school will be of three types:

(a) Educational Guidance.
(b) Vocational Guidance.
(c) Placement and Follow-up.

A. EDUCATIONAL GUIDANCE

This phase of the director's work makes it necessary that he become thoroughly acquainted with the various courses which may be offered in the particular high school. He must also become acquainted with the general entrance requirements of the larger colleges and universities. A file of the various college catalogues is essential for reference. Insofar as possible

he should secure reliable information con

cerning the educational requirements of the various professions and vocations. The latter information may be obtained from the central bureau or by actual visitation

and consultation with leaders in the particular vocations and professions.

The three types of information mentioned above are especially valuable in aiding the student to select the proper course at or near the beginning of his high school career. Individual and smallgroup conferences are desirable for the purpose of presenting these data to the pupils. In some cases the parents should be called into conference. Educational guidance of this type if carried on in

tensively and systematically with all of the first-year students, will, in the opinion of the writer, develop an attitude of voluntary interest and attention on the part of the students. They will appreciate the more remote values of the distasteful subject-matter and take a greater interest in those subjects which are directly related to their ultimate goals. Furthermore, there will be less changing of courses at critical periods when the students are given an opportunity to secure definite and accurate information during the first semester of their high school work.

B. VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Vocational guidance can hardly be entered upon from too many points of view. The students know little or nothing about the various vocations. They must be bombarded with information and urged to seek it from reliable sources. The following methods of attack have proved particularly advantageous:

(1) A course in "Occupational Studies" should be provided during the first year. Twenty weeks can be profitably spent in a survey of the various occupations with special emphasis upon those vocations which predominate in the community. This course should be required of all pupils. It should include the use of a text-book, outside readings, and class discussions. The project method could be used to advantage. A similar course in Vocational civics might be substituted for the occupational studies if necessary in order to meet college entrance require

ments.

(2) During the first semester of the second year the students should meet in small groups each week under the leadership of the director. Each meeting should be devoted to an intensive analysis of a vocation by the director, followed by group discussions. These students must be fairly saturated with vocational information. They are at or approaching the age limit of compulsory school attendance