ols for the introduction of the newer
subjects making for increased vocational efficiency. They would cut the
Gordian knot with one single operation by eliminating enough of the
older subjects to make room for the new. I confess that this solution
does not appeal to me. Fundamentally the core of the elementary
curriculum must, I believe, always be the arts that are essential to
every one who lives the social life. In other words, the language arts
and the number arts are, and always must be, the fundamentals of
elementary education. I do not believe that specialized vocational
education should ever be introduced at the expense of thorough training
in the subjects that already hold their place in the curriculum. And yet
we are confronted by the economic necessity of solving in some way this
vocational problem. How are we to do it?

It is here that the scientific method may perhaps come to our aid. The
obvious avenue of attack upon this problem is to determine whether we
cannot save time and energy, not by the drastic operation of eliminating
old subjects, but rather by improving our technique of teaching, so that
the waste may be reduced, and the time thus saved given to these new
subjects that are so vociferously demanding admission. In Cleveland, for
example, the method of teaching spelling has been subjected to a rigid
scientific treatment, and, as a result, spelling is being taught to-day
vastly better than ever before and with a much smaller expenditure of
time and energy. It has been due, very largely, to the application of a
few well-known principles which the science of psychology has furnished.

Now that is vastly better than saying that spelling is a subject that
takes too much time in our schools and consequently ought forthwith to
be eliminated. In all of our school work enough time is undoubtedly
wasted to provide ample opportunity for training the child thoroughly
in some vocation if we wish to vocationalize him, and I do not think
that this would hurt him, even if he does not follow the vocation in
later life.

To-day we are attempting to detect these sources of waste in technique.
The problems of habit building or memorizing are already well on the way
to solution. Careful tests have shown the value of doing memory work in
a certain definite way--learning by unit wholes rather than by
fragments, for example. Experiments have been conducted to determine the
best length of time to give to drill processes,