rtainly, no harm
would ensue from a revelation of this purpose. If they are studied as a
means to some high end, they will prove no less important after this fact
has been explained. We may need more arithmetic than we have, but it is
our due to be informed why we need it; to what use it is to be put. These
things we have a right to know, and no superintendent, who is charged with
the responsibility of making the course of study, has a right to withhold
the information. If he does not know the explanation of the course of
study he has devised, he ought to make known that fact and throw himself
"on the mercy of the court."

In these days of conservation and elimination of waste every subject that
seeks admission to the course of study should be challenged at the door
and be made to show what useful purpose it is to serve. Nor should any
subject be admitted on any specious pretext. If there are subjects that
are better adapted to the high purposes of education than the ones we are
now using, then, by all means, let us give them a hearty welcome.

Above all, we should be careful not to retain a subject unless it has a
more valid passport than old age to justify its retention. If Chinese will
help us win the goal of appreciation more effectively than Latin, then, by
all means, we should make the substitution. But, in doing so, we must
exercise care not to be carried away by a yearning for novelty. Least of
all should any subject be admitted to the course of study that does not
have behind it something more substantial and enduring than whim or
caprice.

The subjects that avail in generating and stimulating the growth of
appreciation are many and of great variety. Nor are they all found in the
proverbial course of study of the schools. When the boy first really sees
an ear of corn from another viewpoint than the economic, he finds it
eloquent of the marvelous adaptations of nature. From being a mere ear of
corn it becomes a revelation of design and beauty. No change has taken
place in the ear of corn, but a most important change has been wrought in
the boy. Such a change is so subtle, so delicate, and so intangible that
it cannot be measured in terms of per cents; but it is no less real for
all that. It is a spiritual process and, therefore, aptly illustrates the
accepted definition of education. Though it defies analysis and the rule
of thumb, the boy is conscious of it and can say with the man who was born
blind, "One th