disease. He learned that its spores are encased in a gelatinous
sac which resisted the entrance of the chemicals. He found how the
spores were reproduced, how they wintered, how they germinated in the
following season; and, although he did not save much of his crop that
year, he did better the next. Nor were the evidences of his superiority
limited to this very useful result. He found that, after all, very
little was known about this disease, so he set himself to find out more
about it. To do this, he started where other investigators had left off,
and then he applied a principle he had learned from his education;
namely, that the only valid methods of obtaining new truths are the
methods of close observation and controlled experiment.

Now I maintain that the education which was given that man was effective
in a degree that ought to make his experience an object lesson for us
who teach. What he had found most useful at a very critical juncture of
his business life was, primarily, not the technical knowledge that he
had gained either in school or in actual experience. His superiority lay
in the fact that he knew how to get hold of knowledge when he needed it,
how to master it once he had obtained it, how to apply it once he had
mastered it, and finally how to go about to discover facts that had been
undetected by previous investigators. I care not whether he got this
knowledge in the elementary school or in the high school or in the
college. He might have secured it in any one of the three types of
institution, but he had to learn it somewhere, and I shall go further
and say that the average man has to learn it in some school and under an
explicit and conscious method of instruction.

IV

But perhaps you would maintain that this statement of the case, while in
general true, does not help us out in practice. After all, how are we to
impress pupils with this ideal of persistence and with these ideals of
getting and applying information, and with this ideal of investigation?
I maintain that these important useful ideals may be effectively
impressed almost from the very outset of school life. The teaching of
every subject affords innumerable opportunities to force home their
lessons. In fact, it must be a very gradual process--a process in which
the concrete instances are numerous and rich and impressive. From these
concrete instances, the general truth may in time emerge. Certainly the
chances that it will emerge are g