ded against. Certainly high-school pupils ought
distinctly to understand that the authors of their text-books are not
always the most learned men or the greatest authorities in the fields
that they treat. The use of biographical dictionaries, of the books that
are appearing in various fields giving brief biographies and often some
authoritative estimate of the workers in these fields, is important in
this connection.

McMurry recommends that pupils be encouraged to take a critical attitude
toward the principles they are set to master,--to judge, as he says, the
soundness and worth of the statements that they learn. This is certainly
good advice, and wherever the pupil can intelligently deal with real
sources, it is well frequently to have him check up the statements of
secondary sources. But, after all, this is the age of the specialist,
and to trust one's untrained judgment in a field remote from one's
knowledge and experience is likely to lead to unfortunate results. We
have all sorts of illustrations from the ignorant man who will not trust
the physician or the health official in matters of sanitation; because
he lacks the proper perspective, he jumps to the conclusion that the
specialist is a fraud. Would it not be well to supplement McMurry's
suggestion by the one that I have just made,--that is, that we train
pupils how to evaluate authorities as well as facts,--how to protect
themselves from the quack and the faker who live like parasites upon the
ignorance of laymen, both in medicine, in education, and in Arctic
exploration?

And I believe that there is a place, also, in the high school,
especially in connection with the work in science and history, for
giving pupils some idea of how knowledge is really gained. I should not
teach science exclusively by the laboratory method, nor history
exclusively by the source method, but I should certainly take frequent
opportunity to let pupils work through some simple problems from the
beginnings, struggling with the conditions somewhat as the discoverers
themselves struggled; following up "blind leads" and toilsomely
returning for a fresh start; meeting with discouragement; and finally
feeling, perhaps, some of the joy that comes with success after
struggle; and all in order that they may know better and appreciate more
fully the cost and the worth of that intellectual heritage which the
master-minds of the world have bequeathed to the present and the future.
And along w