insuring a little growth. This means,
too, not only that the teacher must possess a high degree of
patience,--that first principle of pedagogic skill,--but also that he
have a comprehensive grasp of the problem, and the ability to separate
the woods from the trees, so that, to him at least, the chief aim will
never be lost to view.

But, even at its best, the task is a severe one, and we need, here as
elsewhere in education, carefully controlled tests and experiments, that
will enable us to get at the facts. Above all, let me protest against
the incidental theory of teaching pupils how to study. To adopt the
incidental policy in any field of education,--whether in arithmetic, or
spelling, or reading; whether in developing the power of reasoning or
the memory, or the art of study,--is to throw wide open the doors that
lead to the lines of least resistance, to lax methods, to easy honors,
to weakened mental fiber, and to scamped work. Just as the pernicious
doctrine of the subconscious is the first and last refuge of the
psycho-faker, so incidental learning is the first and last refuge of
soft pedagogy. And I mean by incidental learning, going at a teaching
task in an indolent, unreflective, hit-or-miss fashion in the hope that
somehow or other from this process will emerge the very definite results
that we desire.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: A paper read before the Superintendents' Section of the
Illinois State Teachers' Association, December 29, 1910.]

~IX~

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION[15]

I

One way to be definite in education is to formulate as clearly as we can
the aims that we hope to realize in every stage of our work. The task of
teaching is so complex that, unless we strive earnestly and persistently
to reduce it to the simplest possible terms, we are bound to work
blindly and ineffectively.

It is only one phase of this topic that I wish to discuss with you this
morning. My plea for the definite in education will be limited not only
to the field of educational aims and values, but to a small corner of
that field. Your morning's program has dealt with the problem of
teaching history in the elementary school. I should like, if you are
willing, to confine my remarks to this topic, and to attack the specific
question, What is the history that we teach in the grades to do for the
pupil? I wish to make this limitation, not only because what I have to
say will be related to the other topics