Study Life, Pupils'. Elizabeth Thorndyke Study, Supervised. Clinton E. Farnham Study, Teaching Pupils to. Frank R. Page Subconscious Mind in the Schoolroom. Pearl Tyer Your Responsibility and Mine. Maro S. Brooks PAGE How will it affect our Democracy? W. Carson Ryan Teachers' Agency, Development and Function of. Everett O. Fisk Teacher, The New, and Discipline. Frances Lester Warner Teacher-Training, Shall it be Raised to College Rank? Arthur Teaching for the Future. E. W. Dolch, Jr. Tests, Psychological. Stephen Sheldon Colvin, Raymond Dodge, Vocational Counselor, A. Frank P. Whitney Vocational Guidance, Community Organization for. Committee's World Statesmen, Education of, the Key to World Peace. Ralph H. Bevan 511 of American education points out the road to progress. Writers who search into the ultimate purposes of instruction necessarily expose the shortcomings of our educational system: but they do so without offence because they show the way to better things. Three noteworthy books of this type are: Smith's ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE. Published seven years ago, this protest against the age-long attempt to cast all young minds in one mold has done immeasurable good. Its simplicity and unassuming charm of style have made it a favorite reading-circle book. No teacher who has read it can fail to graduate her instruction to suit precocious Johnny or stunted Jim "whose handicap is, after all, not a feeble mind but a feeble body." Teachers' edition, $1.20 Gerwig's SCHOOLS WITH A PERFECT SCORE. "The author's aim is to picture in vivid fashion certain ideals of school grounds, school buildings, the activities of teachers, intellectual education, vocational education, and moral training. The book closes with a scathing arraignment of the defects of present school practices, and a summary of specific improvements to correct these defects." (From a review in "The Journal of Educational Psychology.") $1.20 Weeks' SOCIALIZING THE THREE R'S. Miss Weeks is both a teacher and a sociologist. This being the case, she cannot help seeing that the purposes of education (which ought to mean, above all, social betterment) are often but poorly served by teachers who have no knowledge of social problems. The socialized recitation is invoked as a cure for some very real ills. $1.12 New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Boston Chicago Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature VOL. XL. of Education SEPTEMBER, 1919 An Educational Situation No. 1 E. EVERETT CORTWRIGHT, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, BRIDGEPORT, CONNECTICUT. I F the question were asked, "What is an educational situation?" the easiest and simplest answer, of course, would be that it is such a situation that education results from it. Such an answer, however, does not bring a settlement of the question involved. We are immediately thrown back upon the question, "What is education?" There have been dozens of answers made to this question. Most of them agree in fundamentals and differ only in non-essentials. Our difficulty lies chiefly in the fact that when we think of education, we think of a certain individual and his education instead of life and its conditions for advancement. Substituting for the individual, the race, and for the race all animal life, and again for the animal life an organism—a single cell-we can get to the fundamental process. This cell, if it has life, has action, and through that action, development results. Education then, in its simplest terms, would be the process of action and interaction between an organism and its environment. In plant life and in lower forms of animal life, the environment is almost constant. Seasonal changes-and these come slowly -are the only changes that plants and the lower animals know. Take a fish as an illustration. His environment is very constantalways water. His enemies are not many, so that his environment becomes stable, and most of his time can be given to play or exercise. He does not work very hard, because he doesn't have to, and since he doesn't work very hard, he doesn't get very far in the scale of intelligence. His environment is too stable to excite sufficient action to provide a high level of development of intelligence. The environment of the higher animals, however, is constantly changing, and their higher development in intelligence is due to this fact. The environment of a baby born in 1850 and living for 25 years is decidedly different from the environment of a baby born in 1900 and living for 25 years. In the case of the latter, his environment is a much more complicated affair, and entails a great deal better and broader preparation for action between himself and that environment. It is not only harder to be a baby today than it was ever before, but it is far harder to be a grown-up today than heretofore—that is, a successful grown-up and by the same analogy, it is still harder for one to teach another to be a successful grown-up, so that the teacher's problem is many-fold harder today than it was a century ago. Complexities of modern social and industrial life become a part of one's environment, and since education consists in the action be tween one and one's environment, education has become a very extended and complicated process. One's education manifests itself always through self-reliance, self-respect, or self-control. These are personal habits or powers, and for one to be educated and to possess means of education, they must be personal. In a schoolroom, for an educational situation to exist, means that either through his curiosity or his necessity, a child has a personal problem that he must solve. A child's problem must be real, must be felt, and must be personal, if he is to increase his self-control, self-reliance, or self-respect. It is a very simple matter to increase some one else's self-respect, but the child's problem is a self problem-that is, it is a self problem if a true educational situation exists. Who may be present in an educational situation? A boy with a hammer and a saw and some bits of wood may construct an aeroplane. If he had not done it before, or wished to do it better, this is a real educational situation. There was only one person present although there might have been more. We are so accustomed to |