the relative merit of studies and their adaptability to
nurture mental, moral, and physical qualities has not been made.

The Germans have worked to a better purpose. Quite a number of able
thinkers among them have given their best years to the study of this
problem of relative educational values and to a working out of its
results. Herbart, Ziller, Stoy, and Rein have been deeply interested
in philosophy and psychology as life-long teachers of these subjects at
the university, but in their practice schools in the same place they
also stood daily face to face with the primary difficulties of ordinary
teaching. At the outset, and before laying out a course of study, they
were compelled to meet and settle the aim of education and the problem
of relative values. Having answered these questions to their own
satisfaction, they proceeded to work out in detail a common school
course. The Herbart school of teachers has presumed to call its
interpretation of educational ideas "scientific pedagogy," a somewhat
pretentious name in view of the fact that many leading educators in
Germany, England, and elsewhere, deny the existence of such a science.
But if not a science, it is at least a serious attempt at one. The
exposition of principles that follow is chiefly derived from them.

With us the present time is favorable to a rational inquiry into
relative educational values and to a thorough-going application of the
results to school courses and methods.

_In the first place_ the old _classical monopoly_ is finally and
completely broken, at least so far as the common school is concerned.
It ruled education for several centuries, but now even its methods of
discipline are losing their antique hold. The natural sciences, modern
history, and literature have assumed an equal place with the old
classical studies in college courses. Freed from old traditions and
prejudice, our common school is now grounded in the vernacular, in the
national history and literature, and in home geography and natural
science. Its roots go deep into native soil. _Secondly_, the door of
the common school has been thrown open to the new studies and they have
entered in a troop. History, drawing, natural science, modern
literature, and physical culture have been added to the old reading,
writing, and arithmetic. The common school was never so untrammeled.
It is free to absorb into its course the select materials of the best
studies. Teachers really