scholastic field of
scientific speculation, changes of method and purpose have from time to
time been intruded into the scholastic discipline.

In this connection it is to be remarked that there is a very perceptible
difference of substance and purpose between the instruction offered in
the primary and secondary schools, on the one hand, and in the higher
seminaries of learning, on the other hand. The difference in point
of immediate practicality of the information imparted and of the
proficiency acquired may be of some consequence and may merit the
attention which it has from time to time received; but there is more
substantial difference in the mental and spiritual bent which is favored
by the one and the other discipline. This divergent trend in discipline
between the higher and the lower learning is especially noticeable as
regards the primary education in its latest development in the advanced
industrial communities. Here the instruction is directed chiefly to
proficiency or dexterity, intellectual and manual, in the apprehension
and employment of impersonal facts, in their casual rather than in their
honorific incidence. It is true, under the traditions of the earlier
days, when the primary education was also predominantly a leisure-class
commodity, a free use is still made of emulation as a spur to diligence
in the common run of primary schools; but even this use of emulation as
an expedient is visibly declining in the primary grades of instruction
in communities where the lower education is not under the guidance
of the ecclesiastical or military tradition. All this holds true in
a peculiar degree, and more especially on the spiritual side, of such
portions of the educational system as have been immediately affected by
kindergarten methods and ideals.

The peculiarly non-invidious trend of the kindergarten discipline, and
the similar character of the kindergarten influence in primary education
beyond the limits of the kindergarten proper, should be taken in
connection with what has already been said of the peculiar spiritual
attitude of leisure-class womankind under the circumstances of the
modern economic situation. The kindergarten discipline is at its
best--or at its farthest remove from ancient patriarchal and pedagogical
ideals--in the advanced industrial communities, where there is a
considerable body of intelligent and idle women, and where the system of
status has somewhat abated in rigor under the disi