logically or not we
certainly _feel_ strongly that too early specialization will work a
serious injury to the cause of education, and, through education, to the
larger cause of social advancement and enlightenment. We view with grave
foreboding any policy that will shut the door of opportunity to any
child, no matter how humble or how unpromising. And yet we also know
that, unless the general education that we now offer can be distinctly
shown to have a beneficial influence upon specialized efficiency, we
shall be forced by economic conditions into this very policy. It is
small wonder, then, that so many of our educational discussions and
investigations to-day turn upon this problem; and among the various
phases of the problem none is more significant than that which is
covered by our topic of to-day,--How may we develop in the pupil a
general power or capacity for gaining information independently of
schools and teachers? If we could adequately develop this power, there
is much in the way of specialized instruction that could be safely left
to the individual himself. If we could teach him how to study, then we
could perhaps trust him to master some of the principles of any calling
that he undertakes in so far as these principles can be mastered from
books. To teach the child to study effectively is to do the most useful
thing that could be done to help him to adjust himself to any
environment of modern civilized life into which he may be thrown. For
there is one thing that the more radical advocates of a narrow
vocational education commonly forget, and that is the constant change
that is going on in industrial processes. When we limit our vocational
teaching to a mere mastery of technique, there is no guarantee that the
process which we teach to-day may not be discarded in five or ten years
from to-day. Even the narrower technical principles which are so
extremely important to-day may be relatively insignificant by the time
that the child whom we are training takes his place in the industrial
world. But if we can arm the individual with the more fundamental
principles which are fixed for all time; and if, in addition to this,
we can teach him how to master the specialized principles which may come
into the field unheralded and unexpected, and turn topsy-turvy the older
methods of doing his work, then we shall have done much toward helping
him in solving that perplexing problem of gaining a livelihood.

II

I shall